Boogie Chillun: The Reverend's Archives, Volume 4

BOOGIE CHILLUN

THE REVEREND’S ARCHIVES, VOLUME FOUR

(1974 – 2016)

Articles, album & book reviews by Rev. Keith A. Gordon

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BOOGIE CHILLUN

The Reverend’s Archives, Volume Four

Articles, album & book reviews by Rev. Keith A. Gordon (circa 1974-2016)

INSIDE THE BOOK:

Introduction

CD & DVD Reviews

Album Reviews – Shorts

Book Reviews

Articles, Rants & Dubious Journalism

Acknowlegements & Other Stuff

INTRODUCTION: FROM MUSIC ZINES TO THE WORLDWIDE WEB

Here we are, kiddies, knee-deep in the exhaustive (exhausting?) fourth volume of my personal archival series, a book that nobody asked for and few will read. Boogie Chillun is the final volume in this series as well as the largest collection of mindless crapola and bloato-hype to float to the top of the Reverend’s (seemingly endless) personal archives. I’m your humble host, the Rev. Keith A. Gordon, the guilty party behind the dubious music criticism that you’re about to read…

As the three of you who stayed awake during my previous introductions may remember, long before I became a rock ‘n’ roll man of the cloth, I was a snot-nosed teenage rockcrit wannabe sending out sample album reviews to every music-oriented publication listed in the Writer’s Digest’s big, fat book of magazines that would never publish my hopeless script. I finally got a bite, thanks to the self-addressed, stamped envelope (S.A.S.E.) included with my review, when legendary Creem magazine writer and friend of Lester (Bangs, that is) Rick Johnson took pity on a po’ Southern boy…sensing, perhaps, a kindred spirit, and believing that I had the sort of ‘moxie’ that would take me far in music journalism, Rick sent me a couple albums to review for SunRise, the journal of music & liberation.

I was a mere lad of fifteen, writing wordy reviews of albums by Smokey Robison & the Miracles, Bad Company, and the Hello People, but the thrill of one’s name smudged across a grimy sheet of newsprint was as sweet as liquor…not to mention that I got free promo LPs, and could also buy promotional albums that Rick had for sale for stamps purloined from my father’s office! Flash forward ten years or so and, inspired by an article I read in High Times magazine about a traveling writer who created his own publications on the road using a portable typewriter and a photocopier, I dove headfirst into the abyss of zine self-publishing.

The titles came as fast ‘n’ furious as a bad burrito working its way through your colon: Anthem, Radical Pizza, R Squared (R²), Radio Star, R.A.D! (Review and Discussion of Rock ‘n’ Roll)…yeah, I had a thing for Rs. Over 100 issues altogether in about 15 years, poorly-distributed in the Detroit and Nashville areas, typically in press runs of 100 to 500 copies depending on which one of my friends was working at Kinko’s at the time (Hey, Dru! Dagmar, my man!). Some of the zines were abandoned in the face of ‘cease & desist’ orders for trademark infringement, reappearing a month or two later with a new title. Copies somehow made their way across the country and overseas, leading to correspondence with fellow travelers from Germany, Poland, Greece, and the U.K.

Give or take another decade, and I’m publishing music zines on the pre-web Internet, text files posted to newsgroups and Gopher servers, some of which still haunt the dusty, antique corners of the ‘net. R.A.D! was one of the first music zines published online, and I wrote articles for mainstream business and lifestyle publications on this brand new thing called the ‘Internet’ and its ‘Worldwide Web.’ With its graphic capabilities and rapid growth, the web became the place to be for music zines, and I launched Alt.Culture.Guide, which ran roughly from 1999 to 2007; some of the best writing by myself and contributors like Bill Glahn, Tommy Hash, and Eric Saeger has been archived in three books available exclusively from Excitable Press.

It’s been a long, strange trip, indeed, from music zines to the Worldwide Web, and along the way I’ve written for the All Music Guide website and several of their books; I was the ‘Blues Guide’ (i.e. Editor) for About.com for 6½ years; I contributed album reviews and articles and such to Blurt magazine for better than four years; and I even wrote oddball video recaps for something called Gloob.TV (a failed attempt by U.K. powerhouse Dennis Publishing to create viral online content) for a (very) short while. I’ve also created two successful music blogs – Trademark of Quality (2006-2008) and, currently, That Devil Music (www.thatdevilmusic.com) – as well as writing for print publications like Blues Music magazine and The Blues (U.K.).

Which brings us back ‘round to Boogie Chillun. For those few rock ‘n’ roll fanatics that care, this volume spans my entire 44+ years as a music critic, including material from the 1970s through the present day, from the aforementioned publications and many more. As the ‘Reverend of Rock ‘n’ Roll,’ I’ve penned over 2,600 album and DVD reviews as well as hundreds of articles, interviews, book and show reviews, columns and such…not as many as my buddy Martin Popoff (a prolific lil’ bugger, he…find him online at www.martinpopoff.com), but still a rather largish truckload of work nonetheless.

As mentioned above, Boogie Chillun – named for the classic 1949 song by legendary bluesman John Lee Hooker – represents the final volume from my archives, better than 150 reviews and over 120,000 words that I’ve written over four decades (and it still only scratches a small part of what I’ve written overall). I figure that four books of my literary narcissism are probably (at least) three too many. Firmly ensconced in the morass of middle age, it feels like I’ve been at this party too damn long...perhaps it’s time for something new…

Rev. Keith A. Gordon

March 2017

Somewhere outside of Buffalo, New York in the heart of the ‘Rust Belt’

CD & DVD REVIEWS

Yeah, I’m a long-winded, old school rock critic, but only because I tend to write about the music that exites me and provokes thought and/or emotion. I’ve been lucky through the years that I’ve found venues like Blurt magazine or, before that, Nashville’s The Metro in whose pages I could spread out and really pontificate on a record that I like, to share my enthusiasm about an artist and their work with the reader. Several musicians have told me through the years that I really ‘got’ what they were doing with a particular album, and I’ve been driven – often at 1,200 to 1,500 words – to ‘get’ every album that I’ve reviewed...

BAD COMPANY

Straight Shooter

(Swan Song Records)

Do you remember the swinging sixties? All you had to be to become a big success in rock music was a natural born resident of the British Isles. Well, as we all know, history has a way of repeating itself. Just take a look at the names that are dominating the rock music world: the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Led Zeppelin, the list goes on and on. And then there is Bad Company, the brainchild of English culture, the wet dream of every corporate manager. What a gimmick! Not just an English rock band, but one made up of members from three other top name English rock bands, the essence of Free, Mott the Hoople, and King Crimson.

Why is it that, when talking of Bad Company, one inevitably ends up comparing them to Led Zeppelin? Bad Company has been made innocent understudies to their Swan Song counterparts, Zeppelin flunkies as it were. Reception of their music has been fairly acceptable, but what have they got to offer us?

Their first LP, appropriately titled Bad Company, was the very picture of boredom. Inane and repetitive, it was an exercise in extended musical sadism. Forty minutes of the same lyrics and chords played over and over again placed even some of the hardest-core heavy metalists into a stupor.

Straight Shooter, their new album, has little more to offer. It is somewhat better than their first effort, but in the same sense that David Cassidy is better than Donny Osmond. Once again referring to Led Zeppelin, Bad Company seems to be a parallel of their career. Who knows, maybe Bad Company will evolve into another Zeppelin. Although Paul Rodgers is as good a vocalist as Robert Plant, Mick Ralphs is nowhere near as good as Jimmy Page. Also, Zeppelin’s songwriting outdoes Bad Company’s although it is so illusionary. So, as it now stands, we can only hope for a period of maturation in Bad Company’s music.

I must be fair and point out the strong points of Straight Shooter. Shooting Star, a popular radio cut, is somewhat like the title cut of Bad Company. The group sounds at its best on the few slow, melodious numbers they do, such as is witnessed on the best cuts on the album: Shooting Star, Anna, and Call On Me. Perhaps if they changed their style and tried playing ballads, they could leave the rocking heavy metal to Zeppelin. Until then, I’ll just stick with the New York Dolls. At least they know how to move… (Sunrise magazine, 1975)

BILLY GIBBONS AND THE BFG’S

Perfectamundo

(Concord Records)

For nearly half a century, Billy Gibbons has fronted ZZ Top, that ‘little ol’ band from Texas.’ If only for acclaimed ZZ Top albums like Tres Hombres, Deguello, and Eliminator, Gibbons’ place in the rock ‘n’ roll history book would be assured. But the talented singer, songwriter, and guitarist extraordinaire has carved his legacy in stone with a rusty penknife via decades of constant touring and by (literally) showing up to play on recording sessions by anybody that takes a chances and rings him up. Through the years, Gibbons has lent his distinctive fretwork to a veritable ‘who’s who’ of rock ‘n’ blues music, from John Mayall, B.B. King, and Shemekia Copeland to Joe Bonamassa, Ministry, and Gov’t Mule, among many others.

So why, this late in his career, would Gibbons deem it necessary to record a solo album like Perfectamundo? Gibbons has often brought his fascination with other genres of music to experiments with his longtime band, whether it’s the new wave synthesizers that modernized ZZ Top’s sound during the Eliminator and Afterburner era or his flirtation with hip-hop style on the band’s 2012 album La Futura, to cite but two examples. Gibbons has been interested in Latin and Afro-Cuban music for some time, studying percussion with Mambo legend Tito Puente back in the day and, more recently, performing alongside Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi at the 7th Latin Grammy® Awards in 2006.

Dominated by Afro-Cuban rhythms and other Latin music influences, Perfectamundo was recorded, I’d guess, primarily to provide Gibbons with a way to get his groove on without being kneecapped by the obvious restrictions of playing with a three-piece blues-rock band. Working again with musician and producer Joe Hardy (who co-produced La Futura), Gibbons put together a multi-cultural band, The BFG’s, for this ‘solo debut,’ allowing him to flesh out his trademark sound and providing room for the guitarist to explore creative turf that he couldn’t with his regular band. ZZ Top fans picking up a copy of Perfectamundo expecting a reprise of La Grange or Sharp Dressed Man are going to be surprised – not kindly, perhaps – by Gibbons’ solo experiment.

Gibbons’ bold, ballsy fusion of sultry rhythms and his blues roots works more often than not here, the five-piece band and Gibbons’ Latin influences serving as a blank canvas on which the guitarist can paint as he wishes. The album-opening cover of Slim Harpo’s Got Love If You Want It is a perfect example of the experiment done right, Gibbons’ breathless, subdued vocals complimented by colorful rhythms, along with the dueling B-3s of keyboardists Mike Flanigin and Martine GuiGui, as well as his own spicy fretwork. A cover of the Roy Head hit Treat Her Right follows a similar blueprint, drummer Greg Morrow’s excellent percussion supported by bassist Alex Garza’s righteous bass lines and Gibbons’ fluid, soulful vocals. The guitarist’s original Sal Y Pimiento strays further from his blues-rock roots; the largely instrumental jam is an exhilarating showcase for the band’s talents, a rollicking tune that one could expect to hear blasting from the windows of a Mexico City bar.

Other songs on Perfectamundo cautiously mix ZZ Top’s lyrical bravado with an enticing soundtrack. A bawdy story-song, Pickin’ Up Chicks On Dowling Street is the sort of thing that one would expect from late 1970s/early ‘80s era Gibbons, but here it transcends the blues-rock genre to travel worldwide, the blazing keyboards and foot-shuffling percussion providing a high-energy counterpoint to Gibbons’ scorching guitar. However, the musical experimentation falls flat on songs like Quiero Mas Dinero (translates as I Want More Money), where Garza’s awkwardly rapped vox are shockingly at odds with Gibbons’ brief, but otherwise stellar guitarplay. The song’s too-busy instrumentation rapidly jumps from one notion to another, with mere scraps of brilliance shining through the fog until Gibbons’ inspired, Chicago blues-styled six-string vamp walks us out of the darkness.

The album’s title track suffers from a similar fate, the song introduced by a booming cacophony before descending into Garza’s trite spoken vocals. It’s a shame, too, ‘cause the song’s funky instrumental undercurrent is simply contagious. On the other hand, a cover of the Big Joe Williams (by way of Lightnin’ Hopkins) classic Baby Please Don’t Go is afforded a new coat of paint, Gibbons and crew re-inventing the blues standard much as Williams himself did when he recorded the song back in 1935. With a big-beat backdrop, Gibbons’ growling vocals dance atop the menacing instrumentation, the B-3 keys kicking up a bit of soul while Gibbons’ short solos carpet-bomb the mix. The invigorating Q-Vo is a mostly-instrumental jam, an energetic hybrid of Booker T & the MG’s inspired groove and John Lee Hooker styled boogie-blues, with lively keyboards clashing with shards of bluesy guitar and fatback bass above a rock-solid rhythmic foundation, closing the album on a high note.

Billy Gibbons’ Perfectamundo grows on you, kind of like kudzu – on first listen, my impressions were along the lines of what the hell was he thinking? Two, three spins down the road and my interest was piqued, and by the fifth or sixth time putting Perfectamundo on the box, I found myself grinning in spite of myself. Gibbons expands his musical palette here, allowing his guitar greater freedom to soar into new territory while exploring different tones and textures with his lyrics and singing.

The BFG’s – named after Gibbons’ line of personally-branded BBQ and hot sauces – are a top-notch musical outfit that effortlessly blends Gibbons’ blues-rock leanings with more exotic fare, and save for the embarrassing hip-hop stylings forced into the mix with a crowbar on a couple of songs, Perfectamundo is an engaging, and entertaining – if surprising – solo debut from one of rock music’s legendary guitarists. (2015)

BLACK OAK ARKANSAS

The Complete Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live

(Real Gone Music)

Black Oak Arkansas may well be the great lost Southern rock band. Sure, the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd may have had more impressive album sales, and Charlie Daniels and the Marshall Tucker Band may have garnered more respect, but when it comes down to the nitty-gritty, BOA were easily the rowdiest and most entertaining of 1970s-era redneck rockers during their initial run in the sun. Between 1971 and 1976, Black Oak Arkansas cranked out a whopping ten studio and live albums, none of them commercial chartbusters but most of them listenable and hard rockin’.

The roots of Black Oak Arkansas date back to the mid-1960s and a band by the name of the Knowbody Else, the band recording one unremarkable album for the legendary Stax Records label in 1969. Subsequently moving from Memphis to Los Angeles in 1970, the band was signed by Atlantic Records subsidiary Atco and changed its name to Black Oak Arkansas. Their self-titled 1971 debut album was produced by Iron Butterfly’s Lee Dorman and Mike Pinera and included several songs that would become a major part of the BOA live show during the ensuing years, including Hot and Nasty, Uncle Lijiah, and When Electricity Came To Arkansas.

The band’s debut album grazed the Billboard albums chart, rising to #127 and earning BOA its first Gold™ record, but the band’s raucous live shows provided BOA a favorable reputation that helped push subsequent releases like 1972’s Keep the Faith and If an Angel Came To See You…Would You Make Her Feel At Home somewhat higher up the charts. The band line-up of audacious frontman Jim Dandy Mangrum, guitarists Stanley Knight, Harvey Jett, and Rickie Reynolds; bassist Pat Daugherty; and drummer Wayne Evans (replaced by future Ozzy Osbourne timekeeper Tommy Aldridge for If an Angel…) marched across America like Sherman through Atlanta, frequently blowing headliners off the stage with their high-octane blend of twangy hard rock, blues, and electric boogie.

Atco decided to capitalize on BOA’s reputation as live performers and release a live set as the band’s fourth album, and the acclaimed Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live was culled from two performances in the Pacific Northwest in December 1972. Released a few months later in February 1973, the seven-track album hit the band’s highest chart position yet at #90, and the gatefold LP would serve as an introduction for many to the band’s considerable charms. But Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live only told part of the story, a tale that is told in full with the release by Real Gone Music of The Complete Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live. A two-CD set featuring two dozen songs, The Complete Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live features the band’s entire performances from a pair of concerts in Portland, Oregon and Seattle, Washington.

As popular as Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live proved to be with its audience in ‘73 (my stoner high school friends and myself included), this full expanded set provides a more authentic snapshot of the band’s onstage dynamic at the time. These 24 performances overlap considerably, which is to be expected from two shows on subsequent nights, but there are four songs that were only performed once during the two concerts, none of which appeared on the original 1973 album release. There are some differences in performances as well to be found across the two discs.

Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live was unusual at the time in that it included a handful of previously-unreleased new songs amidst tracks from If an Angel Came To See You… and earlier BOA albums. Of these, the live staple Hot Rod is the most memorable, the song a sexually-turbocharged rocker with smothering percussion and stunning guitars laying in behind Mangrum’s growling, guttural vocals. Up is another fresh track and, for the life of me, I don’t know why the band didn’t reprise the electrifying live performance with a later studio version. Aside from stellar fretwork from the band’s trio of talented guitarists, Up features a lengthy but explosive drum solo by Aldridge that is anything but dull. Spanking the skins with machinegun precision and maximum clamor, Aldridge keeps the song’s rapid-fire dynamic rolling until the full band kicks back in to finish up with a bang.

The Complete Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live offers up plenty of other breathtaking performances for the rookie BOA fan and the hardcore faithful alike. A favorite from the debut album, Uncle Lijiah features the perfect mix of instrumental twang ‘n’ bang alongside Mangrum’s whiskey-soaked vox while the ragged but right Keep The Faith provides a fine six-string showcase for the band’s guitarists. Surprisingly, the ever-popular Lord Have Mercy On My Soul only appears on the first disc, the song a flamethrower mix of melodic fretwork (that, in itself, reminds of the Allman Brothers) and jackhammer percussion, with Mangrum’s raw vocals providing emotional heft to a lyrical tale of sin and redemption. A cover of the traditional Dixie is unlike any other you’ve ever heard, Mangrum’s off-kilter a capella vocals evincing plenty of Southern drawl but also an uncertain menace as the band cranks up a righteous din of crashing drumbeats and clashing guitars.

Hot and Nasty remains a BOA fan fave to this day, and its syncopated percussion and funky guitar licks support a groove deep enough to drive a truck through. Mangrum’s vocals are appropriately down ‘n’ dirty here, the sonic equivalent of a flaming bucket of lard, delivered by the flamboyant frontman with a wink and a leer. Another debuting track, Gigolo, is a delightfully smutty tale with a melodic hook stronger than most BOA tunes and some fine chicken-pickin’ by the band’s guitarslingers. The ever-welcome Mutants of the Monster is a virtual saber-rattling golem with an impressively jazzy bass line, finger-poppin’ rhythms, and a swelling crescendo of instrumentation that provides a real sense of urgency for Mangrum’s howling, apocalyptic vocals. The band’s magnum opus, however, is its instrumental When Electricity Came To Arkansas, a rockem-sockem black cat moan that gets the crowd to stomping their feet and clapping with a rowdy washboard solo, bludgeoning guitarplay, throbbing bass runs, and powder keg drums.

To be truthful, Black Oak Arkansas wasn’t the most talented of the era’s Southern rock bands, nor were they the most innovative of the lot. Their albums were often considered inconsistent, their musical vision somewhat erratic. But dang, son, they were a hell of a lot of fun. The band’s onstage chemistry was second, perhaps, only to the Skynyrd gang at the time, and any long-haired teen that put down a fiver for a Black Oak Arkansas show ticket in the early ‘70s was all but guaranteed a rowdy rock ‘n’ roll party.

The Complete Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live corrects a wrong made some 40+ years ago when Atco decided to release a meager single LP instead of cranking up the record presses and providing fans with a rich banquet of live performances from the tapes available at the time instead of just a mere seven-song taste. The new two-disc set places Black Oak Arkansas in an entirely different light, offering a better representation of the band’s talents as well as full-length examples of their hurricane-strength live performances. Black Oak Arkansas was never the best band of the Southern rock era, but they sure knew how to rock – and The Complete Raunch ‘n’ Roll Live presents the band at its best, warts and all. (2015)

BLACK SABBATH

Headless Cross

(I.R.S. Metal)

The 1970 release of Black Sabbath’s self-titled debut, along with the release of the band’s Paranoid a year or so later, set the standard by which much of that decade’s emerging heavy metal bands would be judged. Thunderous and plodding, dark and disturbing, the early Sabbath – fueled by the Gothic vocals of charismatic frontman Ozzy Osbourne and the razor-sharp guitar of Tony Iommi – presented a Victorian-styled Armageddon tango with nightmare lyrics centering on a fascination with death, destruction, madness, and the occult, offering naught but despair and no hope for salvation.

During those days, Sabbath’s mighty influence inspired scores of prototype head-bangers to pick up guitars and appropriate their parents’ garages; by the time those early ‘70s influences showed up in the form of the hundred and one bands that created the ‘80s metal boom, Sabbath – without Osbourne and with an ever-changing line-up centered on guitarist Iommi – was a hollow imitation of its former self, an anachronism merely churning out lifeless vinyl featuring the Black Sabbath name and not much else.

With Headless Cross, the first Black Sabbath album in a decade to truly deserve that legendary metal moniker, the band has come screaming back with a vengeance. With a change of labels (to I.R.S. Records’ Metal imprint) and a healthy new line-up, Iommi and crew have created a disc that combines the best qualities of classic, early Sabbath with a sleek, sharp, modern sound. Vocalist Tony Martin sounds a bit like Ronnie James Dio, evoking a similarly haunting treatment of the lyrics, which still feature doom ‘n’ gloom as their prevalent subject matter.

Headless Cross is an impressive comeback for Sabbath, a headlong plunge into molten madness which proves that the new Black Sabbath is as contemporary as any band working the heavy metal/hard rock genre today. (Play magazine, 1989)

BLACKFIELD

NYC: Blackfield Live In New York City

(K-Scope Records)

Steven Wilson is a busy guy…damn busy…and considering his accomplishments over the past couple of years, it makes a rockcrit wonder just how the guy gets this stuff done. Yeah, he’s talented. Sure, he’s an artistic visionary. Considering his prodigious musical output, however, the Reverend is beginning to think that Wilson is an android, or that he doesn’t sleep, or that he’s some sort of eternal, non-sleeping zombie-like creature from another plane of existence…or something along those lines.

Don’t believe me? OK, consider this, bunkie…over the last two years, Wilson has released an album under the Blackfield rubric (2007’s Blackfield II); put together a new solo album (this year’s Insurgentes), with a subsequent remix album; and he recorded a new disc with his full-time band, Porcupine Tree (the thoroughly excellent Incident). Oh yeah, somewhere in between all of this activity, he also found the time to stop by the studio and record with friends like Opeth and Dream Theatre, and work on remixes of the 40th anniversary King Crimson reissue series with Robert Fripp. While most artists have trouble scraping up enough tunes to fill an album every couple of years, Wilson seemingly has songs coming to him in his sleep…if he ever sleeps, that is.

On top of all this musical goodness comes NYC: Blackfield Live In New York City, documenting a live performance recorded in March 2007 by Wilson’s side project Blackfield. A musical collaboration between prog-rock genius Wilson and Israeli pop giant Aviv Geffen, Blackfield’s roots reach back to 2000 when Geffen asked Wilson to perform a series of concerts with him in Israel. The pair’s mutual admiration of ‘60s and ‘70s-era classic rock led to the collaboration that resulted in 2005’s Blackfield album, with Blackfield II following a couple of years later.

NYC: Blackfield Live In New York City is housed in a beautiful book-like package, the extravagant two-disc set containing an eighteen-track CD with the concert performance, and an audio/video DVD with the performance presented in both high-rez stereo and 5.1 surround for the audiophiles among you. The DVD also includes promotional videos for three of the album’s songs. There’s not much in the way of liner notes, just a perfunctory list of credits, but the CD booklet features better than a dozen pages of gorgeous color photos for the Wilson/Geffen/Blackfield fan.

As for the music, Wilson and Geffen and band have done an admirable job of re-creating material from Blackfield’s two studio discs in a live setting, expanding on the relative brevity of the original versions with lush instrumentation and flowing arrangements. Musically, Blackfield’s forte is a curious mix of melodic pop/rock and progressive rock, and here Wilson and Geffen swap vocals and lead instrumentation, accompanied by a smallish band that includes keyboardist Eran Mitelman, bassist Seffy Efrati, and drummer Tomer Z.

In spite of the sparse number of band members – heck, Rick Wakeman used to have more guys flitting around just to wipe the spilled cola off his monstrous keyboard/mellotron/synth set-up back during the glory days of Yes – Blackfield nevertheless manages to imbue each song with a fantasia-styled soundtrack that cleverly mixes light and dark, subtlety and harshness. For instance, Blackfield, the band’s kinda, sorta theme song, lures you in with a quiet piano intro before its metamorphosis into a lofty, 4AD label-styled dark-pop masterpiece with fine harmonies, chiming guitars, and fluid keyboard washes swirling behind tense vocals.

Fusing Beatlesque pop with Roger Waters-styled methodology and a madness entirely of Geffen’s creation, The Hole In Me jumps headfirst into musical and lyrical turf that Radiohead fears to tread. Epidemic opens with another deceptive piano intro, except that this one sounds slightly askew, like something’s not quite right, before the song descends into a menacing, claustrophobic mix of clashing rhythms, dominant guitar notes, and that damn tinkling piano. The hauntingly beautiful My Gift of Silence offers up swelling guitars, crashing drumbeats, and elegant piano-play alongside the transcendent, ethereal vocals.

Although NYC: Blackfield Live In New York City is a package tailor-made for the existing Blackfield fanatic, it offers more than enough musical thrills-and-chills to pull in those Porcupine Tree, Opeth, or Aviv Geffen fans looking to expand their musical palette. For newcomers, the Reverend would recommend coughing up the coin for one of Blackfield’s first two studio discs to provide an introduction to the band’s beautiful, exhilarating music…if you get into one of those albums, you’ll get around to NYC: Blackfield Live In New York City soon enough… (Blurt magazine, 2009)

BOB DYLAN

Oh Mercy

(Columbia Records)

After years of gazing intently at ‘The Conspiracy,’ I have discovered many sordid facts…no, Elvis is not dead – he and that guy Eddie from the Cruisers are putting together a mixed-media performance art group with Jim Morrison. Perhaps the most shocking revelation of them all, though, was when I found a Dylan imposter touring the states last summer, slaughtering classic Dylan originals with inept AOR arrangements and hackneyed instrumentation served up for the arena crowd. I now know that the individual I saw performing during the waning days of the so-called Dylan tour had to be an imposter, a fake, a charlatan (choose one) because I’ve heard Oh Mercy, the recently-released album by the real Bob Dylan.

Recorded in New Orleans and produced by Brian Eno protégé Daniel Lanois, Oh Mercy is the same sort of bellwether effort that Lanois helped Orleans’ native sons the Neville Brothers create earlier this year. With this album, the spark of genius has returned to Dylan’s work, a spark unseen for the better part of a decade. Dylan’s voice is deep, gruff and, at times, eerily haunting. The songs are inspired, driven by the particular worldview created by the dichotomy that is Dylan. The arrangements are original, often-times sparse, serving to highlight Dylan’s vocals and lyrics rather than drown them in a sea of pretentious album-rock drivel. The players, including Lanois, six-string gangster Mason Ruffner, Cyril Neville, and drummer Willie Green, among others, are talented, reserved, and skilled.

Easily containing at least two new Dylan classics in Ring Them Bells and Disease of Conceit, Oh Mercy is Dylan’s most fully-realized and artistically-focused work since Infidels, or possibly even Blood On The Tracks. Who can tell where last summer’s in-concert deception originated, or when? It’s just good to know that while Dylan the imposter was entertaining the masses with a made-for-teevee tour and lukewarm performances, the real Bobby D, the Zimmerman we all know and love, was sheltered in a New Orleans recording studio creating Oh Mercy. For an album like this, I, for one, am willing to forgive Dylan for a decade of sins. (Play magazine, 1989)

BOB SEGER & THE SILVER BULLET BAND

Radio Chicago 1976

(All Access/MVD Audio)

At 1976’s opening bell, Detroit’s favorite son – Bob Seger – was just another blue-collar rocker who’d been treading the boards for better than a decade in search of the fabled brass ring of success. By the year’s end, he’d be a shooting star on his way to legend status, and all because of one little ol’ album that, if it hadn’t have sold the copies it did, might have consigned Seger to history’s teetering stack o’ cult rock obscurities.

Released in the spring of ‘76, Live Bullet captured Seger and his road-tested band’s electrifying stage show in front of a frenzied hometown crowd at Detroit’s Cobo Hall on wax. The double-LP set earned the singer his first Top 40 album, Live Bullet eventually certified as five-times Platinum™. Seger ended the year with a studio album, Night Moves providing a fine bookend to an explosive year, the album cementing his success with a Top Ten showing, three hit singles (including the title track’s #4 chart showing), and over six million copies sold.

Even as stardom loomed over the horizon, Seger’s popularity was entirely regional, his hard-charging rock ‘n’ roll style – peppered with soul and blues and former Third Power guitarist Drew Abbott’s underrated, impressive fretwork – was perfectly suited to his fans’ Rust Belt mentality. Even while he was beginning to break through to mainstream audiences, the dichotomy of his appeal was obvious to band and critical observers alike. In June 1976, Seger played to a sold-out crowd of nearly 80,000 fans at the Pontiac Superdome outside of Detroit; the next night, Seger and the Silver Bullet Band performed for a few hundred fans at the B’Ginnings club in the Chicago suburb of Schaumburg, Illinois.

The show was originally broadcast live on WXRT-FM radio in Chicago, and has recently been released for the first time on compact disc as Radio Chicago 1976 for long-suffering Seger fans. Although released underground as a vinyl bootleg incorrectly titled as Live In Montreal 1978, this proper CD release features a superb live recording of the band kicking out the jams with a performance as vital and exciting as the previous night’s party at the Silverdome. Offering up twelve songs (Lookin’ Back and Mary Lou, split by a DJ announcement, are two separate performances), the set list reaches back to Seger’s early career, Radio Chicago 1976 showcasing a band about to burn down the world with talent and ambition.

Radio Chicago 1976 opens, seemingly with the concert already underway, the band cranking out a raw-boned performance of Bo Diddley/Who Do You Love? from Seger’s excellent 1972 Smokin’ O.P.’s album. With Drew Abbott’s stinging guitar licks and Robyn Robins’ fleet-fingered keyboard runs leading the way, the band establishes a raucous foundation for the remainder of the show. Chris Campbell’s funky bass solo, embellished by Robins’ keys, keeps the party rolling for nearly eight minutes. Seger’s originals Travelin’ Man and Beautiful Loser hail from his fan favorite 1975 LP Beautiful Loser, which flirted with Top 40 status upon its release. The former song is a rollicking, mid-tempo rocker’s life on the road style song that features Abbott’s wiry guitar and some fine percussion from drummer Charlie Martin while the latter is a rockin’ ballad fueled by Robins’ chiming keyboards, with Seger’s earnest vocals augmented by Abbott’s sly, nuanced guitarplay.

The blazing Katmandu is, hands down, one of Seger’s most all-time popular tunes, delivered here as a rapid-paced, soul-flavored rocker that features the singer’s vocal gymnastics, Abbott’s Chuck Berry-styled git-pickin’, and Alto Reed’s raging saxophone dancing atop a pile-driving rhythmic groove. The R&B standard I Feel Like Breaking Up Somebody’s Home offers up some of Abbott’s tastiest Southern-fried fretwork with Seger acquitting himself nicely as a soul shouter while Lookin’ Back, released only as a single, revisits the late ‘60s incarnation of the Bob Seger System, the gospel-tinged performance featuring reverent vocal harmonies and Robins’ inspired keyboard riffs. A cover of the Ronnie Hawkins’ ‘50s-era jam Mary Lou would become a favorite track from Night Moves; performed here, the song is provided a wired, imaginative arrangement that pivots on Abbott’s distorted rattletrap guitar and a swinging, ramshackle rhythmic backdrop.

Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man was actually Seger’s first Top 20 charting single (#17) in 1968, the song breaking out nationally but doing little to improve the singer’s fortunes (the subsequent album only made it as high as #68 on the charts); during the ensuing years, it has become a bona fide classic rock treasure. With Seger’s voice accompanied by a heavy keyboard riff and a dense, fluid rhythm, the band’s backing harmonies fit hand in glove with Seger’s livewire vox and Abbott’s buzzsaw guitar. A cover of Chuck Berry’s classic "Let