MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: BAND ON THE RUN

PAUL MCCARTNEY & WINGS - BAND ON THE RUN

It isn't the first time Paul's acknowledged best has been given a deluxe treatment, but it is an improvement over the last version, and makes for a dynamite way to rediscover this old favourite.  As is the trend these days, there are a couple of different ways to get this, with the most expensive going for fifty bucks, with 3 CD's, a DVD, and a nice big book.  Far more affordable and sensible is the 2 CD - 1 DVD version, going for around $20.  You miss out on an audio documentary that came with the old reissue from the 90's, and it isn't really that great.

But the 3-disc set is.  In addition to the original album, you get a second disc of period singles and b-sides (Helen Wheels, Zoo Gang), plus several cuts from the One Hand Clapping documentary, which was basically Wings live in the studio playing cuts from Band On The Run and some others.  Then, the DVD is a gas, with the original One Hand Clapping film, which is very cool.  You can tell this is one fine live unit, even if Denny Laine comes across as either a complete moron or incredibly stoned.  Also, there are several promo films from the time, including a nice animation for Band On The Run, another for Mamunia, and footage in Nigeria, plus behind-the-scenes at the famous cover shoot.

So, if you're a fan, you'll love this set.  As for the original album itself, here's why it's his best:  It's one heck of a great production, with a great mix of rockers (Jet), ballads (Bluebird), and McCartney whimsy (Picasso's Last Words).  It flows, it has the feel of a journey, from the Band On The Run at the start, to the futuresque (for then) Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five at the end.  These aren't his best lyrics, in fact they are sometimes feeble, for instance the "Jailer Man and Sailor Sam" of the title track, or the plain nonsense of Jet.  What McCartney had learned by then is that it's more important if they sound right than if they win any Nobel votes.  Leave that to Dylan, this was arena rock he was crafting.  So while "I can't tell you how I feel/my heart is like a wheel" is far from his greatest line, "Let Me Roll It" is one of his best songs.  Go ahead, listen again if you haven't in awhile, and you'll find yourself pretty happy, if you're any kind of a McCartney fan.  Me, I think Ram is a better artistic effort, but that's another argument.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: BEST OF APPLE RECORDS

COME AND GET IT - THE BEST OF APPLE RECORDS

The folly of The Beatles' venture into commerce is well documented, with the whole Apple concept a miserable mess, from its clothing boutique to the film department to its electronics division all a joke and big money losers.  Such was the bad state of the books that the notorious Allen Klein was brought on board against Paul's wishes, to fix things.  This helped kill the mighty band, so Apple can only be seen as a failure.

Still, there was one good apple amongst the rotten ones.  The music division did have its share of hits and artistic triumphs, and since The Beatles records and subsequent solo albums ended up on the label, it was financially solid.  Yet like the group themselves, there was much experimentation, silliness, and vanity included in the label's output.

Most of the catalogue has been untouched in the CD and download eras, until now, with a new set of discs that cover the highlights and some obscurities as well.  Along with those full albums, there's also this compilation, a best-of from the label, that pretty much covers all corners of what they did, with the exception of any Beatles tracks.  There's the truly excellent band, Badfinger, represented here with their hits Come And Get It and Day After Day, plus the group's early track as The Iveys, Maybe Tomorrow.  The other hitmaker was cute singer Mary Hopkin, with her music hall singalongs Those Were The Days and Goodbye.  There's the one that got away, James Taylor, with Carolina In My Mind, inexplicably unnoticed until two years later and Sweet Baby James, for another company. 

As for the rest, you can't accuse The Beatles of not being involved or trying.  George recorded a bunch of Krishna Temple singers, John had a reggae group doing Give Peace A Chance, Paul wrote a soundtrack song for a brass ensemble, and Ringo played with whoever asked him.  Even buddy Billy Preston, fresh off his guest appearance on Let It Be, couldn't get a hit out of his singles, nor could early 60's hitmakers Ronnie Spector and Doris Troy.

Some of these tracks are pretty good (Preston), some questionable (Spector), and some just bizarre (the previously unheard King Of Fuh...get it?).  At 21 cuts, you'll find something worthy, and at least everything's interesting, which was the whole point, wasn't it?

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: LEONARD COHEN - BIRD ON A WIRE

LEONARD COHEN - BIRD ON A WIRE (DVD)

Back in 2008, I was interviewing famed British filmmaker Tony Palmer on the phone, and mentioned I was going to see the premiere show of Leonard Cohen's world tour that night.  Palmer was in a hotel in Toronto, and got excited, telling me he was trying to get a hold of Cohen, to try to track down an old film they had made together.  Would I pass on a note for him, asking Cohen to get in touch?  Well, the note was duly passed on.  I don't know if they hooked up, but the lost raw film was found, apparently in a Hollywood warehouse, and Palmer re-edited his long-missing film.

Palmer was given complete access to Cohen's 1972 tour of Europe, on stage, backstage, Cohen taking a swim in the nude, Cohen dropping acid, making out with a fan, crying after an intense show, and even home movies of Cohen not more than 2 or 3.  Palmer calls it "an impression" of the tour, and what an impression it makes.  This is warts and all, a tour at times on the ropes, dealing with crappy sound gear, a near-riot in Israel, and a highly emotional singer who is contemplating quitting touring and music all together.  It's probably pretty close to what every big-name rock tour was like in those days, a barely-contained chaos. 

Amidst this swirling existence, came the beautiful music each night, which thankfully Palmer kept at the heart of the film.  From powerful segments to full performances, the intensity of the performances matches the friction of the rest of the film.  The beauty of So Long, Marianne, Suzanne, Sisters Of Mercy and Famous Blue Raincoat is riveting.  An almost-acoustic tour, Cohen is aiding here by two other guitar players, a stand-up bass, two singers (including a young Jennifer Warnes) and famed producer Bob Johnston (Dylan, Cohen) on organ.  We're treated to an early, quite different version of Chelsea Hotel as well.

There are plenty of cinema verite moments, including nervous women propositioning Cohen, on-stage breakdowns, a stoned and distraught singer trying to cancel the rest of a concert, and plenty of journalist interviews.  In one, Cohen sums up his singing style better than anyone has as yet:  a combination of Montreal chansonnier, a European vocalist, and a synagogue cantor.  This is an essential document for understanding the life and success of Leonard Cohen, and helps explain why a solitary monk's life on Mount Baldy would be so appealing a couple of decades later.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: SLOWCOASTER

SLOWCOASTER - THE DARKEST OF DISCOS

Hey, here's a last-minute Christmas suggestion, and it's a really good East Coast CD, for the young or not-so-young rock fan on your list. The band is Slowcoaster, from Cape Breton, but please: no typecasting. They aren't Celtic, they are rock, and the new album is called The Darkest Of Discos. Slowcoaster is a big fan favourite in the college rock and live music circuit, known for an enticing blend of jam band, reggae, grooves, danceable tunes, all solidly structured and surprising. You never know what kind of rhythm you're going to get, except that all of them make you head to the floor to join in the energy.

Slowcoaster is blessed with an excellent singer in Steven MacDougall, and what's special about that is it makes the band stand out in their particular genre. Most jam bands don't really put the emphasis on the vocals, and there are lots that consider that secondary to the playing. But in Slowcoaster, MacDougall's lyrics and delivery are key, because there are some fine and different themes brought to table. On The Darkest Of Discos, we go into the modern rock club scene with some little dramas and metaphors for life. There are lots of fun plays-on-words, and I like MacDougall's take on life, he's questioning all the weirdness and emotional drama that goes on between people.

And on top of it all, there's that Slowcoaster trio, just guitar, bass and drums, but they make it count, a full wall of sound that just pulses. They'll slip into a reggae groove in the middle of a dance beat, and then jump back just as fast. In short, the disc is just as fun as the group's live show.

REVIEW OF THE DAY: CONCRETE BLONDE REISSUE

CONCRETE BLONDE - BLOODLETTING 20th ANNIVERSARY EDITION
Gee, too bad Concrete Blonde didn't put this album out this year, what with all its vampire references. In these Tru Blood and Twilight times, Bloodletting would have fit in just fine, and singer Johnette Napolitano certainly could have been cast. But back in 1990, she was just another Anne Rice fan in a struggling L.A. band. That is, until the non-representative and extremely catchy Joey became a Top 20 hit, propelling the band to gold status.

Joey has always stood out on the disc, a spooky and dark collection. That's thanks to the melody, and excellent vocal performance of Napolitano, a strong and deep-lunged singer who never gets the props she deserves. The number was actually as serious as the rest of the album, a love song from a woman to her alcoholic partner. Match that with Tomorrow, Wendy, about a woman dying of AIDS (strong stuff for 1990), and the vampire theme, and you get that this batch of songs had a lot more going on than most Top 40 albums.

Perhaps Concrete Blonde just never found a sound that connected. It's well-played stuff, well-written, but here they were with a near-punk attitude just pre-Nirvana, but too studio polished for that crowd. An acquired taste perhaps, yet this album still stands out. The reissue includes six b-sides, all previously released but hard-to-find, including three live cuts and a pretty smooth version of Hendrix's Little Wing.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: FREDERICK SQUIRE - MARCH 12

FREDERICK SQUIRE - MARCH 12

The first song here tells the tale. Frederick Squire's new disc, called March 12, starts off with a little old-fashioned tape feedback, the kind you got from open reel tape recorders. Then later in the tune, everything speeds up, the tape is playing at the wrong speed... and ha, how cool, Fred's producer or engineer or somebody has figured out how to replicate those old problems of the studio. Except it's not a replication, it's the real deal, the real reel-to-reel. And there's no hotshot producers or engineers around, Fred did it all himself, on vintage gear.

Hey, we used to call that low-fi, back in the day, back in the 1990's, when it was a hip thing to do, a direct reaction to higher-than-high tech studio productions, slick robotic sounds then dominating music. Low-fi went hand-in-hand with the early 90's re-imergence of punk, it's quieter, artier sibling. And we had one of the heroes of low-fi in New Brunswick, the beloved (by a few around the world) Eric's Trip in Moncton. Rick White and pals recorded their music in Rick's parent's basement on an old 1975 4-track reel-to-reel recorder. The thing was dated then. Now...it's an antique.

And guess what? That's the same machine Frederick Squire used to record March 12. Rick loaned it to him, and he carted it off to his Sackville, N.B. home and garage, and started playing and writing. Fred is no newcomer, and has long had connections to the Eric's Trip crew. He was a member of the defunct Shotgun & Jaybird, one of the Sappyfest regulars in Sackville, has toured with Mount Eerie, and most notably worked a ton with Erics Trip member Julie Doiron, including lots of touring, and on her last album, which was produced by Rick White. And, he made an excellent disc in 2009 with Julie and Daniel Romano, all folk music covers.

After all this time playing well with others, Fred decided he should do his own thing for awhile, and get back to writing. The classic folk music of the Daniel, Fred And Julie project obviously had an impact on him, and the new material is intense, haunting, simply structured but lyrically potent. Some of the tunes even use standard and famous folk tales as a background, such as his reworking of Frankie and Albert into a cautionary tale called The Future Of Tradition, or his retelling of The Cuckoo, one of the oldest folk ballads, now set in modern times with an electrical lineman cutting down the pretty bird's tree home.

Given the studio limitations, Squire has done lots with the instruments and effects available to him. Whether piano or guitar-based, each song features some subtle layers and clever tricks. Unlike other low-fi creators, Fred doesn't bury his voice, and that's a good thing. He has a fine, low and melodic instrument, and its wisely recorded closely, and mixed up to be the dominate sound here. There's a couple of tracks here you'd think came out of a big pro mixing board, that's how good a recording he got on his voice.

Squire originally made part of this disc because he needed something to sell at his solo shows. He had been recording through February and March of 2010, finishing March 12, and he had a show that night, so he burned the tracks onto CDR's, called it that day's date, and voila, instant record. Blue Fog Recordings heard it, loved it, got some more tracks from it, and now we have this full-length release.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: 2 SHELBY LYNNE CD'S

SHELBY LYNNE - TEARS, LIES, AND ALIBIS and MERRY CHRISTMAS

 

Lynne returns with a couple of discs for the fans, seemingly much more at ease now that she's self-producing and releasing her own work.  Her two-decade career has seen her battle record labels and genre labels, people eager to place her in a category and aim her at a larger audience.  But Lynne is a notoriously tough cookie, and her bluesy country-soul doesn't fit formats.  It does, however, fit your ears just fine.  On her new studio disc, written and directed all by herself, she's able to relax into the smokey and bittersweet tales at which she excels.  It's mostly lightly adorned acoustic music, guitar songs you can tell were beautiful on their own, now lightly layered with the right kind of moody backgrounds.  While there's some optomism and good humour on the first cut, Rains Came, that quickly falls away with Southern songs of alibis, unreturned calls, old dogs, and booze taking over.  Old #7 would be a perfect George Jones song.

 

Unfortunately Lynne falls for that old standby, the Christmas record.  Apart from a couple of okay new ones she penned herself, it's all the usual numbers here, Rudolph, Silent Night, White Christmas, yadda yadda.  Even though she owns one of the great female voices of our day, there's not much life in the acoustic blues treatment given the songs.  The disc is too low key, and it sounds like she'd rather celebrate by herself, or cry into a stiff egg nog.