MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: THE ROLLING STONES - GOATS HEAD SOUP (Super deluxe edition)

 

Goats Head Soup is usually considered a disappointment in the Stones discography, not so much for what it holds, but rather for what it followed. Coming hot on the heels of 1972's Exile On Main Street, it clearly doesn't match up to that double album, considered by many the best of their LP's. Also, most Stones fans consider the band's best albums are found in the run from 1968 to 1972, beginning with Beggars Banquet and ending with Exile. I can't argue that; Goats Head Soup is certainly no Sticky Fingers or Let It Bleed.

So, one must look at it on its own merits, and there's lots to enjoy. First, the dark ballad and hit single "Angie," as close to singer-songwriter as the Stones got, is underrated among their hits. It's a throwback to '60's numbers such as "Play With Fire" and "Lady Jane," but without the ornate touches, instead more influenced by U.S. country. "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker)" is another underappreciated gem, catchy and devious, a song you'll get stuck in your head for days. It may not be the strongest lyric, but the band took it up three levels in the production.

Lyrics were the biggest problem, with no great and memorable images, no crossfire hurricanes or tumbling dice for fans to shout. The next level of tracks on the disc, better-known numbers "Dancing With Mr. D." and "Star Star" were weak ideas that relied on old standby shock, the devil and sex. Of course, "Star Star" did have plenty of shock value for the time, and it is plenty catchy too, but that mild controversy seems eye-rolling typical misogyny now, like an out-take from a Trump tape.

Those are the big cuts on the album (the anchor songs, I like to call them), but the secondary numbers in between get little acknowledgement as well. I think that's because the album doesn't get played too much, in favour of bigger ones or compilations. There are good numbers there though, including "100 Years Ago" and "Silver Train." I've always loved hearing Jagger sing "lazy bones" in the former tune. Stones filler tracks are miles above most people's hits, and while side 2 loses some momentum before the "Star Star" finale, there's nothing to damn the album over.

Apparently the sessions in Jamaica, L.A. and England yielded some 30 tracks in various levels of completion, and were mined for other albums right up to 1981's Tattoo You, where outtake "Waiting On A Friend" finally found a home. The Stones have opened up their famously tight vaults a little for this deluxe box, including three previously unreleased outtakes. I can see why they never were further developed, or put out on the band's next album (It's Only Rock 'n' Roll) like "Short And Curlies." Again though, they are decent tunes, the most notable being "Scarlet," featuring Jimmy Page on guitar, subbing for Mick Taylor who missed the session. Instead of presenting more of the outtakes, disc two on the box is filled with instrumental versions and alternate mixes of the regular album cuts. Some of these are quite illuminating, especially the piano demo version of "100 Year Ago." and hearing "Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo' as an instrumental really hammers home are tight these productions are, how solid the groove is.

Disc three is the real bonus here, a fantastic live show from the tour celebrating the album release. Known as The Brussels Affair," the disc first came out in 2011, but only as a crazy-expensive box available from the Stones website. It's considered one of their best, a 75-minute set compiled from two shows in Belgium in October of '73. It features the four anchor songs from Goats Head Soup (see above), bookended by songs only from '68 on. Exile gets a still-heavy presence, with "Happy," "Tumbling Dice," "All Down The Line" and "Rip This Joint" included. The rest are all mid-period classics, "Brown Sugar," "Gimme Shelter," etc., featuring perhaps the best Stones live band, with Mick Taylor and Billy Preston major contributors.

There's a good hardbound book included, with long essays and tons of great photos, a Blu-ray with hi-res audio, four period tour posters, and a recipe for goat's head soup, for the daring. Most previous Stones boxes have been short on content and long on photos and packaging, but this set does deliver with both. Also available as a much-cheaper two-disc set with the demos/outtake disc.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: PAUL RANDY MINGO - STOP TAKING OFFENCE

 

Nova Scotia country-rocker Paul Randy Mingo has been itching to get back to playing, and a couple of weeks back came up with a unique stage, mindful of social distancing. Mingo set up outdoors, on the Port Greville beach, just down from his home along the north shore of Minas Basin. All went grand, says the veteran performer, as a few dozen folks were able to come out, not get too close, and still enjoy a show.

Mingo's been busy on the recording side during the Covid downtime as well, and has just issued his latest, a six-track E.P. It features what he calls an upgrade to his sound, which means a whole lot more instruments on some of the tracks. Opener "Another Round" has a great big, rocking band backing him, with loud guitars, piano fills and huge drums, Waylon on steroids. "You Know What I Mean" is another track with country cahones, an affirmation of Saturday night, drinks with friends and the back roads around Seal Brook.

In just six tracks Mingo shows lots of songwriting range, with "I Loved You Most Of All" a piano ballad with some grand synth-string orchestral touches. "The Way" could have been from your favourite '70's rock band, and the title cut is a honky-tonk reminder to not get so worked up about everything on the internet. Mingo's small-town Nova Scotia is sounding plenty big.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: BOBBIE GENTRY PERFORMS THE DELTA SWEETE

 

If you missed out on the tremendous 2018 box set of complete Gentry recordings, here's a deluxe version of her 1968 concept disc, a southern suite of country-blues.  This was the followup to her momentous debut, Ode To Billie Joe, and proved she was a formidable talent with lots of ideas. The album was an expansion of her sound, with more electric instruments, more strings, horns, and a series of linked songs. While surrounding herself with high-quality players, such as L.A. session stars James Burton, Hal Blaine, Ray Brown and Earl Palmer, and using arrangements from Jimmie Haskell once again, it was obvious that Gentry was in charge. She had a much greater role than most country performers in the song choices, writing and production, men or women.

Sadly the album didn't catch on as strongly as her debut, partially because of the lack of a hit single, and probably because the idea of a country concept release was a little too ambitious for that audience. It didn't stall her though; within months she was teamed up with Glen Campbell, and forging ahead with a very successful TV career, especially in the U.K. But The Delta Sweete was largely forgotten, until the box set brought it back to many ears.

The album featured songs written by Gentry that looked back on her Mississippi upbringing, moody and warm. While there was a celebration of those days and people, at the same time the lyrics were tinged with sadness. The effect of her haunting voice, nylon-string acoustic guitar (yes, she played on all her records) and Haskell's unique arrangements brought that same sense of melancholy to the album that featured so strongly in the hit "Ode To Billie Joe." More positive were the cover versions, Gentry choosing numbers which reflected the connection between country and the blues in the south: "Big Boss Man," "Parchman Farm" and "Tobacco Road."

This set features stereo and mono mixes of the album, the stereo a brand-new mix from the original masters, a welcome upgrade over the less dynamic 1968 mix. There are also a couple of tracks that weren't on the box set, including a demo of a song that didn't make the final album, "The Way I Do." There are also a series of demos that were on the box, best of all her version of Nina Simone's hit "Feelin' Good." The vinyl version includes the new stereo mix on the first album, with all ten bonus tracks on the second.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: COOTES PARADISE - DOWNSTREAM

 

Hamilton-area blues and soul vets make up this group, nominated for a Maple Blues Award for their debut in 2017. This follow-up was delayed by the death of producer Nick Blagona before he finished the album, but his superior audio touch is all over the half-hour, seven-track disc. It's a worthy project to cap the famed engineer's career, which saw him as the in-house wiz at Le Studio for luminaries such as Cat Stevens, The Bee Gees and Deep Purple, and producer for The Tea Party, Kim Mitchell and April Wine, among hundreds of projects.

Downstream is a grittier set than the band's self-titled debut, as the band takes full advantage of its wide range of experience, and having two strong singers on board. Both Wayne Krawchuk and Sue Leonard take their own leads, and team up for some strong duets, including the cooking closer "Until The Rain Stops," a heavy and funky blues. The other duet, a cover of Van Morrison's "You Gotta Make It Through The World," hints at gospel, and lets the pair sing with gusto.

"Knack For That" and "Scratching Post" both feature inventive arrangements, touches that take each song past the usual blues workouts. Surprising bits and pieces pop up at just the right times, such as Mark Volkov's brief flute line and Lily Sazz's keys in the latter tune. As for songwriting, "Meant For Something More" would have made a great '70's soul single, when soul singles were great.

Best of all (I didn't think of this until this very second, and I've been listening to this album for a couple of weeks), I can't think of another band, at least in the roots/adult world, with three men and three women, counting in Amy Di Nino on drums and Ian Taylor on bass. Parity.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: PAUL MCCARTNEY - FLAMING PIE (DELUXE EDITION)

You may pay through the nose, but nobody does these big deluxe sets better than McCartney. There are booklets, reproductions, photos, archival treasures and a guitar pick, enough reading and perusing to cover the better part of a day. The box itself is a manufacturing gem, lovely quality paper and packaging. It's filled with Linda-snapped images from intimate settings, and virtually every bit of publicity churned out by the official McCartney company back in the day. Then there are the five CD's and two DVD's worth of listening and viewing. Better set aside two days.

But why Flaming Pie? Most people can't even remember the 1997 album, let alone name one song featured on it. It certainly has nowhere near the acclaim of Band On The Run, Ram, or even the later gem Flowers In The Dirt. Well, it turns out to be one of those peaks McCartney hits every few years, when he needs to get back, get off his comfortable throne, and make some music that lives up to his name.

The mid-'90's were a quiet period for McCartney, at least in terms of new studio albums. His latest was 1993's Off The Ground, a somewhat lifeless affair with strained songwriting. He was still very busy though, having done a classical album, an ambient one as The Fireman, and gone on a world tour, with a live album following. After that, it was his old band taking his time and the headlines. The Beatles Anthology hit TV screens in 1995, and the accompanying CD collections put the group back at the toppermost of the poppermost. The band was as big as, well, The Beatles again, and the group members spent tons of time together reliving the old days in interviews, and even recording two new songs using old Lennon demos.

It was that experience that inspired McCartney for his next album. He remembered how the group used to knock off a new song in a three-hour session, and not worry it to death. He vowed to make his sessions simpler and faster, and more relaxed. He also enjoyed being a Beatle again briefly, and vowed to work with Ringo again sooner than later. Plus, he liked Jeff Lynne a lot, who had produced the "Free As A Bird" and "Real Love" sessions, and wanted to work with him again.

With the Anthology albums at number one, McCartney realized even he couldn't compete with The Beatles, so he laid low, vacationed and wrote a few new tunes. It took about four years to get Flaming Pie finished and released in 1997, but in truth each session had only lasted a couple of days. McCartney went for the simpler approach, and instead of lining up a band, he mostly worked solo or with one other musician, mirroring the first solo sessions he'd done on 1970's McCartney album. After all, he could play almost everything.

Lynne produced about half the album, and joined in on guitar, keyboards and vocals, with McCartney covering the rest. Some tracks stayed simple and acoustic, just Paul and guitar, in the "Blackbird" style. When he felt like a guitar duel, he got his 19-year-old son James, who did a fine job. And he rang up an old friend, Steve Miller, with the two jamming away, Paul on drums and Miller on guitar, to start. The only time he did give up the drum stool was when Ringo dropped in for a couple, because, you know, he's Ringo.

There was surprisingly limited interest in the record on release. Yes, it hit #2 on the British and U.S. album charts, but that was more through reputation and leftover Beatle buzz. There were no hits, despite several singles and videos being released. But the deep state McCartney fans (they are out there, believe it), swore there were some classics on it, if you listened more than once or twice.

And that's exactly what I found, living with this box for a few days. "The World Tonight" showcases an edgier McCartney side, guitar rock similar to high period Wings songs like "Let Me Roll It." "Young Boy," the best of the Steve Miller cuts, is one of those ridiculous earworms he makes, light and breezy and instantly hummable. "Calico Skies" and "Little Willow" are acoustic gems that sooth from the first note, timeless songs you can imagine some British minstrel singing at the king's court a few centuries back.  The capper though was "Beautiful Night." McCartney always knows when he's hit a home run, and he dug into it with gusto. It starts out simply enough, but explodes near the end, in the style of "Live And Let Die." George Martin comes aboard to add brass and strings, Ringo hits that classic drum sound, and as a cherry on top, joins Paul on vocals, as close to a Beatles song as we could hope for, a "Hey Jude" moment.

Then you get going on the box set bonuses. There's a disc of most of the songs done as acoustic home demos, either guitar or piano. Then comes a disc of studio run-throughs, early attempts and rough mixes. Disc four is my favourite, a collection of recordings that didn't make the album, including a leftover Miller jam issued as a b-side, and a wacky production done with poet Alan Ginsberg called The Ballad Of The Skeletons. The best thing here is the inclusion of the "Oobu Joobu" sessions, a limited radio show he produced that featured some of his unreleased music, experiments and out-takes.

A fifth CD, and the two DVD's get a little tiresome, as they collect all the promotional material created for the album. These are interviews and documentaries that do provide lots of access to McCartney and his recording techniques, but there's too much repetition among the various mini-docs, electronic press kits and official videos. Well, at least they tried to give it all, as in the past McCartney has been criticized for not including everything. There are some highlights, including a solo performance on a British TV show, with live Paul drumming and singing along to various video Pauls in TV monitors. And a revealing interview by David Frost is the only mention of Linda McCartney's then-recent cancer diagnosis, which was playing behind the scenes during the album's launch.

So yes, Flaming Pie is one of the better McCartney albums, and only includes a couple of those embarrassing lyrics that he seems to think funny. In this case, the whole "Flaming Pie" song, a take on John Lennon's made-up story about how The Beatles came to be named ("a man on a flaming pie"), is just a goof, although it does rock. And one of the Miller cuts, a blues jam, only proves McCartney can't do the blues. But there are several really great songs, it's a grand overall listen, and there could be a couple of numbers here that would make it to your personal McCartney mixtape. And if you don't want the massive doorstop edition, there's a two-CD set that should satisfy your ears

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: IGGY POP - LUST FOR LIFE (Deluxe Edition)

 

Iggy's late '70's recovery period has been reissued in a 7-disc box called The Bowie Years, reflecting his time spent working with buddy Dave and the release of two of his most acclaimed albums. Both The Idiot and its 1977 followup Lust For Life are also out separately as 2-disc deluxe editions, in case you want to cheap out, and don't need the four discs of somewhat similar live shows included in the box.

This period could just as easily be called The Iggy Years from Bowie's standpoint, because the pair were certainly feeding off each other, rather than Pop simply basking in Bowie's fame. In fact, when Bowie's songwriting dried up and became rather lame in the 80's, he went back and grabbed several co-writes from this period, including "Tonight" and "Neighbourhood Threat" from Lust For Life, and most famously "China Girl" from The Idiot. And Pop was the lyricist for these and all the tracks, so Bowie wasn't dominited. It can be argued that Bowie helped Iggy clean up his music (like the pair were cleaning up from substance abuse), and certainly these albums are much more accessible than the raw Stooges work of his past. But we also get to hear more of the depth of what Iggy writing, a little bit more complicated than "I Wanna Be Your Dog." Also, who would say that "Lust For Life" doesn't rock hard and fun, propelled by Hunt Sales' glorious drums.

Lust For Life is also home to the effective and dark "The Passenger," eerily catchy and epic, and smaller but punchy numbers such as "Sixteen," and the terrifying "Turn Blue" ("Whoa mamma, I shot myself up"). There's a distance in the songs, written under the cold Berlin influence where the pair had decamped for part of this period, and while Iggy had changed dramatically from the Stooges period, in truth there wasn't much more to do in that earlier style, and the Bowie/Iggy collaboration was more about art than ferociousness.

If you opt for the 2-disc Lust For Life, you get a reissue of the concert album from the period, T.V. Eye 1977 Live. Although an edited affair, it does catch this tremendous band firing well, famously with Bowie on keyboards. While he was somewhat hidden on stage, the mix features his backing vocals up loud at times, as the troupe goes through new Iggy material and some Stooges faves. It's worth the upgrade if you don't have this live set in your collection.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK - ABSOLUTE BEGINNERS

 

Best-known as the home of one of David Bowie's better soundtrack songs, Absolute Beginners was a 1986 British film that looked at racial and cultural challenges of late 1950's London. Directed by Julien Temple, who had previously collaborated with Bowie on the "Jazzin' For Blue Jean" video, the movie saw several musicians cast in roles, including Bowie, Ray Davies, Sade, and, quite poorly, co-lead Patsy Kensit. The movie was a bust, lost a ton of money, but the soundtrack proved a much more worthy project.

Bowie was commissioned to write the theme song and really came through, presenting a cut that was much, much superior to his most recent material on the Tonight album. It was lost in North America, coming from a film that got no box office traction here, but the single was a huge hit elsewhere, hitting #2 in England, and going top ten in several other countries. He contributed two other songs to the double album (reissued now as two CD's), but neither are essential for fans. His "That's Motivation" is character-driven for his part in the film, and if you've ever thought you had to hear his version of the classic Italian crooner "Volare," you're dead wrong.

However, the rest of the soundtrack is quite a fine listen. The film looks at jazz culture in England, and uses a lot of cool vocals and brassy orchestrated numbers. On board was the great Gil Evans, in one of his final projects. The famous Miles Davis collaborator arranged several cuts, and composed all the instrumental music. It is rich, detailed, sometimes curious and always arresting, It's probably better not to see the film, but rather imagine what it hints at.

There were more hits on the album, including The Style Council's "Have you Ever Had It Blue?" and Ray Davies' first-ever solo single, "Quiet Life". Sade turns in a fine non-album cut, "Killer Blow" and reggae great Laurel Aitken provided the lively "Landlords & Tenants" for that element of the movie's cultural mix. Two really intriguing pieces close each disc. The Specials' Jerry Dammers was brought in to score a fight sequence, and handed in a brilliant, eight-minute montage that saw him embrace film music tropes with some of his zaniness. And Evans put together a closing number with British reggae singer Smiley Culture with new lyrics to his classic Kind Of Blue number "So What." If it wasn't such a lark, it might have been sacrilege to fans of Miles Davis, but clearly Evans was telling us to open our ears to music, not keep it in closets. If the movie had been any good at all, this soundtrack might be far more renowned today.