ALICE COOPER - KILLER @ 50

 

November 27th marks the half century anniversary for the fourth album by the Alice Cooper band, Killer, which was released 50 years ago on this day in 1971. Produced by Bob Ezrin, the album would succeed in solidifying Alice Cooper as one of the premier hard rock bands of the era.

After spending the latter half of the 1960s floundering around, mostly in LA, confusing the hell out of the hippies and generally being misunderstood and ignored, the group relocated back to the mid-west, near Detroit, where they found themselves with a much more sympathetic audience. While they faltered on their first two albums, by the time they came out with their surprise hit single, I’m Eighteen, and its accompanying album, Love it To Death, they’d secured a solid relationship with young-gun producer Ezrin and the financial support of Warner Bros. Records. Ezrin weened them off their meandering psychedelic tendencies and pushed them into a much more concise, sharper hard rock sound and worked their asses off until their songwriting was tightened up enough to make them reliable chart contenders.

Killer is a fully realized representation of Alice Cooper as a band and features some of their most memorable songs. Both the album and its two singles charted respectfully, though not quite as high as I’m Eighteen or the hits that would come after like School’s Out from their follow-up album, but that doesn’t take away from the vitality of Killer nor its ability to deliver a blistering, catchy riff. In the arena of ’70s hard rock and proto-metal, it sits in the top range of classic albums. It certainly belongs on the list of “must have” records by the band or even Alice Cooper as a solo artist after their 1975 breakup. It even has one of the band’s more controversial songs in Dead Babies, though that controversy is entirely misplaced as any cursory examination of the lyrics will show it’s clearly AGAINST child abuse, but that didn’t stop desperate fretting parents from wringing their hands in dismay!

The album would garner predominantly strong critical reactions and many of its songs became live concert staples for both the band and throughout Alice’s solo career and also feature heavily in many of the his/their career retrospective compilations that have been released over the years. It’s classic rock in all the best ways. Even Johnny Rotten considered it one of the best rock albums ever released!

FREDDIE MERCURY - GONE FOR 30 YEARS

 

November 24th marks the 30th anniversary of the passing of Freddie Mercury at the age of 45 on this day in 1991.

After having been a rabid Queen fan in the late 1970s, by 1991, Queen were pretty well off my musical radar and had been for some time. I hadn’t bought one of their albums since The Game in 1980 and had since gone on a musical journey which had taken me into the far flung outer reaches of the most challenging and experimental music. Actually, by 1991, my attention was coming off the tail end of the Acid House movement, which had sprung up in 1988. In 1991, my interest was moving towards things like Aphex Twin and the latest in UK electronica. It all seemed miles away from Freddie, Brian, Roger and John.

I wasn’t completely unaware of Queen during the ‘80s. Occasionally I’d see a video and even find them amusing from time to time, especially the drag video for I Want to Break Free, but I wasn’t following their career at all and was oblivious to any of the rumors circulating about Freddie’s health. I had no idea he’d been diagnosed with HIV, but neither did anyone else until shortly before his death. There were only suspicious stories in the media to stoke speculation, but I didn’t encounter any of that.

The day the news broke, I remember I was hanging out at a friend’s place, having a few beers and getting a bit wasted. We had the TV on just as a news report showed the announcement that he’d died. I remember seeing shots of Brian May being ushered to a car and I think Roger Taylor was there too. It didn’t seem real to me, at first. Not having any inkling anything was wrong, it all seemed to come out of the blue. I remember feeling a weight in my stomach as I realized it was actually happening and one of the icons of my youth had just been snuffed out. It didn’t seem possible or real.

Soon enough, the news was out as to what had taken him and the true tragedy and sadness of it all came into focus. How could someone so vibrant, so brazen with LIFE not exist anymore? Since then, I’ve watched as the mythology and legend has continued to grow around him in ways that are reserved for a precious few. He’s in the ranks of the “Godstar” now, a term coined by Genesis P-Orridge for Brian Jones. It’s that echelon where celebrity meets mythology and the dead become iconography for the masses. They become something beyond human as their fame continues to grow beyond their mortality. It’s the realm of Elvis, Marilyn, James Dean, John Lennon… etc. It’s surprising to me in the sense that he died from a disease that was so stigmatized at the time, the punishment for a life of sin, according to some. It’s an end that would have buried the reputation of most along with their corpse, but the impact of Mercury was too significant to be snuffed out by the ignorance of prejudice and bigotry. Now, his fabulousness is revered rather than scorned and I’m happy for that.

Eventually, my musical tastes evolved to a point where I could rediscover my love of Freddie’s music and embrace it again, wholeheartedly. As that has unfolded, I’ve found myself reevaluating things that I’d previously dismissed. Albums like Hot Space, which I once considered the bottom of the Queen barrel, I now experience with the intent that Freddie had hoped for. As he’d say, it’s only music and a bit of fun, so why not try something new? He was always up for that, and it’s what attracted me to Queen in the first place. Of course, that appreciation only makes me feel melancholy thinking about all that he didn’t get to do. He certainly put the effort into leaving as much behind as he could. His final years were filled with him recording any time he could, banking up material for the band to finish off as much as he could, even as he struggled with the ravages of his illness. I just wish he’d been able to go further. But I do think he’d be so utterly tickled to see what his legacy has become and I know he’d be wallowing in it with both feet, darling!

THE KINKS - MUSWELL HILLBILLIES @ 50

 

November 24th marks the 50th anniversary of the release of The Kinks’ 10th studio album, Muswell Hillbillies, which was issued on this day in 1971.

Coming in with the first wave of the British Invasion of the early 1960s and following on the success of their blistering proto-metal hits like You Really Got Me, The Kinks had built a career refining their songwriting sophistication through a series of albums which brought out Ray Davies’ talents as a storyteller to a degree that was quite unequaled in the realm of pop music. Yet, while they’d had success in the UK charts throughout the latter half of the decade, the US was pretty much a lost territory after their 1965 tour resulted in the American Federation of Musicians refusing to grant them performance permits until 1969, likely due to their rowdy reputation on the road. The result was that the US mostly forgot about them for the back half of the ’60s.

That began to change in 1970 with the release of the album, Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. The album’s title track, Lola, an account of a confused romantic encounter with a transvestite, became an unlikely top 10 hit on both sides of the Atlantic and brought the band back into the spotlight in the US. That album also signaled the ended of their contracts with Pye and Reprise Records as they signed a five album deal with RCA. That got them enough of an advance to set up their own recording studio, where they recorded Muswell Hillbillies.

Muswell Hill is the area where the Davies brothers grew up and the themes of the album delved into working class subjects reflective of their background. Critically, the album was a success and garnered glowing reviews right out of the gate and the success of its predecessor had seemingly set them on course to continue that trend as they began their tenure with their new label. Yet neither critical acclaim nor momentum from the previous album managed to secure significant sales for Muswell Hillbillies, even though it had all the earmarks to succeed. The songs are top-notch, the styles reflect both British sensibilities, when it leaned into music hall influences, while also bringing in American influences of bluegrass and country. For many, it is considered the band’s last truly “great” album! Yet it flagged in the stores and ended up signalling the band entering into a downward trend until they rebounded in 1977, reinvigorated by the “new wave” vibrancy of the times.

While the band would go on to have more hits in the late ‘70s and beyond, Muswell Hillbillies, in retrospect, seems to be a marker of the end of their “golden age” that began with Face to Face in 1966. It caps a run of music that remains peerless in terms of its visceral connection to its subjects and Ray Davies’ ability to deftly concoct his narratives around the framework of meticulously crafted, unforgettable pop music. It’s music that defined the gold standard for its genre of narrative driven, folksy realism.

JAH WOBBLE - METAL BOX - REBUILT IN DUB

 

Released today! Jah Wobble's newest is a walloping great rethink of his magnum opus, Metal Box (plus a couple of First Issue bonus tracks thrown in for good measure). For anyone wondering what the point of this set is, why he'd tackle a reboot of such a classic monolithic slab of post-punk angular alienation, it feels like a perfect time to assess a journey of some 40+ years as an artist by taking his most iconic work and reinterpreting it through the lens of four decades of personal exploration and artistic growth.

At the time it was originally produced, Wobble was barely beyond being a novice as a musician. Yet his latent talents came to fruition with remarkable rapidity and his presence on the original Metal Box is essential to defining its distinctions. The album belongs to him just as much as to Levene and Lydon, but his bass is, unquestionably, the rock solid foundation upon which everything else rests. So he's perfectly justified in wanting to use those songs as a way to examine his past and juxtapose it against his present by "rebuilding" the songs that made it possible for "The Legend" to live on!

To be clear, it's not an attempt to replace or supersede the original in anyway. That's simply an impossible task and it's clear that's not what's happening here. What IS happening is Wobble taking the liberties he's well earned to present these songs in a fresh, updated context that fully integrates all he has to offer as an artist today. There are times when it stick fairly close to the bone, but then it'll freely fly off the handle in some unexpected way that makes you hear the songs with virgin ears. It's both familiar and alien, which is kinda what made the original special in the first place. It's a bit more "rock" than I was expecting, but not in a bad way. It has a toughness that cuts appropriately for the times where it finds itself manifesting.

I'm sure there will be some purists who will not see the point, but Wobble doesn't need anyone's permission to mess with his own legacy. His brazenness is part of why this ultimately succeeds as an exercise in using the past to remake the future.

NEW ORDER - MOVEMENT @ 40

 

November 19th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the debut album by New Order, Movement, which hit the shelves this day in 1981. After the tragedy of Ian Curtis’ suicide, which put an end to the meteoric rise of Joy Division as one of the UK’s most respected post-punk bands, Movement faced the impossible task of overcoming the infamy of that sorrow while attempting to convince fans that there was still a reason for this band to continue under it’s new banner.

In a sense, it was always a no-win proposition to have to go up against the mythology of Joy Division and, in many regards, Movement wasn’t up to the task, at least for some minds of the time. It’s not that the band didn’t have it in them, as was decisively proven with their next album, Power Corruption & Lies and the mammoth companion single, Blue Monday. They most definitely had the ability to crawl out from under that shadow, but there had to be an inevitable transitional period to make that rebirth fully possible. And while the impossible expectations for New Order coming out of the gate doomed their debut to unfair comparisons, retrospectively, people have been able to go back and give the album a fairer shake and reassess its attributes without the weight of what had gone before.

The fact is that it’s a troubled album as it tries to come to grips with recent history, but it’s also true that it does so with a sense of steely determination. While there’s a lot of gloom to cope with, there’s light peeking out all over the place as the desire to move forward and survive burns determinedly from the very first song to the last. There’s sadness here, but it’s not hopelessness. That feeling died with Ian Curtis. This is an exercise in coming to terms with grief and finding out how to move past it and forge an optimistic future.

Even with that determination, there’s still a bit of hesitation going on here. The vocals are often buried in the mix and they weren’t sure who should take the lead, so the guys all take their turn giving it a go. It’s the only place where the album feels hesitant. It’s the first thing I noticed about it when I first played it when it was originally released. When you’ve got shoes like Ian’s to fill, it’s gonna be imposing for anyone to try them on. In the end, by the time the second album came along, they’d wisely set those shoes aside. But the vocal duties were not the only thing that needed sorting out.

The production chair was, by the this album, still held by Martin Hannett, but his relationship with the band was on the outs with Movement and it would turn out to be the last album he’d do with them. By this time, Hannett was embroiled in legal disputes with Factory and was crumbling in the grips of substance abuse. It’s been noted by the band that he was mostly uncooperative when working with them and the production may have suffered somewhat because of this. It’s not terrible or noticeable, for me anyway, but the band members have commented on being less than fully satisfied with the end product. There was even talk of re-recording the whole album at one point, but scheduling left that option in the dust.

Though it has a somewhat troubled genesis, it was essentially an unavoidable stepping stone the group had to take in order to find their footing again. I still find it a good listen and, these days, I can easily overlook any hesitancy in its execution. I tend to hear more of its positive attributes and the sense of survival that radiates from it. You can’t say they weren’t trying their best to deal with a shit situation and it still stacks up better than most other albums of the era.

JAPAN - TIN DRUM @ 40

 

November 13th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Japan’s fifth and final studio album, Tin Drum, which was issued on this date in 1981. It would become the band’s most commercially and critically successful album, decisively pulling them out of the shadows of any previous comparisons to bands like Roxy Music and into a sound that was entirely their own.

Only a few years earlier, the band had emerged as a bunch of out-of-step glam-rock, lipstick and dyed-hair pretty boys. This was right in the middle of the punk explosion! How they ended up in the lofty artistic position they found themselves in with this last album is something of a marvel of improbability. Where their first two albums, when they garnered any attention at all, tended to attract mostly scorn and ridicule, Quiet Life and Gentlemen Take Polaroids were committed to the Herculean task of rehabilitating their credibility and the pieces came into their sharpest arrangement on Tin Drum.

Given the Eastern inclination of their name, which they bore as a burden in some ways, the idea of diving headlong into Asian influences may have been inevitable, but I don’t think anyone was prepared for what they’d do with them. As musicians, they’d been grossly underestimated and Tin Drum put to bed any lingering doubts about their capabilities. The album is complex, intricate and dazzling in its array of textures and tones. As far as mastering the tools of the modern day, they found ways to put synthesizers and sequencers to work for them in tandem with more tradition percussion instruments in ways that became completely idiosyncratic to them. Nothing else on the airwaves came close to this sound and it was entirely their own creation.

By the time recording began on the album, guitarist Rob Dean had departed thanks to the reduced reliance on guitar as a central component of their sound. With the emphasis on keyboards, David Sylvian was more than able to handling what little guitar duties were called for. This allowed the rhythm section of Steve Jansen on drums and Mick Karn on fretless bass to push forward even more and create a framework of rich complexity, though never so indulgent as to work against the integrity of the music. Nothing sounds cluttered or overwrought on the album. There’s a lot going on at any given point, save for the minimal hit single, Ghosts, but it’s all meticulously balanced. Richard Barbieri shines on the keyboards as he augments Karn and Jansen with an expansive sound palette that seem to come from an entirely exclusive reservoir. And David Sylvian, of course, brings it all together with his inventive, evocative lyrics and sultry croon.

It seemed like they were just hitting their stride with this album, so it’s all the more confounding that it would be their swan song. They’d put out a live album in 1983 recorded on the tour that supported Tin Drum, but that was it. A brief reunion would happen ten years after Tin Drum for the Rain Tree Crow project, though that didn’t garner significant attention, despite being a very satisfying album. Perhaps it was best for their legacy for them to have gone out on such a stunning high note. It ultimately worked to reinforce their legend and highlight the trajectory they traveled, from dismissed objects of scorn to the peak of critical respectability, all in less than a half decade. I came on board the Japan wagon with Quiet Life in 1979, so that album, Gentlemen Take Polaroids (1980) and Tin Drum form a fabulous trifecta of musical distinction. They all continue to find themselves creeping into rotation at regular intervals. In fact, I find myself listening to them in recent years even more than I did when these albums originally came out. Time has only highlighted their assets and deepened my appreciation for them.

THE STRANGLERS - LA FOLIE @ 40

 

Celebrating its 40th anniversary today is the sixth studio album by The Stranglers, La Folie, which was released on November 9th, 1981. Directly translated as “madness”, the French title was elaborated on by the band as a reference to the madness of romance and love, a theme which is carried through the album’s lyrical content.

At the time this album came along, The Stranglers’ career trajectory was decidedly waning, commercially. Their previous album, The Gospel According to the Meninblack, had not performed as well as their earlier albums, which had positioned them as one of the most commercially successful UK bands to come from the “punk” movement of the late ’70s. To try to boost their appeal, their record label recruited acclaimed producer Tony Visconti to help craft each song on the album with an ear towards it potentially being a single. The effort, initially, seemed to be in vain as the first single from the album failed to make any impact and album sales dragged as a result. Then came the second single, Golden Brown, which ignited on the airwaves and ended up propelling the album into the upper reaches of the charts and steadily climbing sales. Despite its controversial musings on the pleasures of heroine, It ended up putting the band back on the map as far as being hit makers and was one of the labels biggest selling singles for several years.

The album, as a whole, represents some of the most polished and intricate music the group had produced to that point. Personally, it’s one of my favorite Stranglers albums along with The Raven. It has a progressive edge to it while maintaining a professional sheen to the production and the songwriting hooks are insistent and unforgettable. It also has a sophistication that showed off the group’s true prowess as musicians while never quite betraying the more cynical, dark humored undercurrent that had always been at their core. The theme may have been the emotional turmoil of romance, but the intellectualism of the lyrics retains a constant counterpoint. It’s almost a baroque sense of ornateness in some areas, especially with things like the harpsichord on Golden Brown, courtesy of the late, great Dave Greenfield. It’s a richly layered and textured album of complex, multidimensional themes delivered with precision and panache!

LED ZEPPELIN IV @ 50

 

November 8th marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Led Zeppelin’s eponymous fourth album, alternately known as Led Zeppelin IV or sometimes “ZOSO” in reference to the mysterious symbol used by Jimmy Page for the album graphics. It remains the group’s most critically and commercially successful album, being home to what has become their “signature” song, Stairway to Heaven.

With the somewhat lukewarm & dismissive critical response to Led Zeppelin III, which is MY personal favorite of their canon, Jimmy Page determined to stick it to the critics a bit by making it deliberately difficult to reference the new album by virtue of the fact it technically has no title. Even down to the album graphics on the cover, there’s virtually no information present anywhere. This was a decision the band’s record company resisted as much as they could, considering it commercial suicide, but the band, by this point, had enough clout that they stubbornly hung onto the master tapes until the label agreed to release the album precisely according to the group's instructions. It’s a decision vindicated by the successful mystique that ended up enveloping them and the album in the wake of its release.

Musically, the group found a relaxed retreat to record the bulk of the album when they located production to the Headley Grange country house in Hampshire, England. For recording, they rented the Rolling Stones mobile studio facility. This setup allowed them to work out ideas in a loose, improvisational manner where some compositions could arise out of impromptu jam sessions. The result is an album that manifests organically from the band members, who were able to contribute a wide range of elements to the finished product beyond their established roles. The album also features the extremely rare presence of guest performers in the form of Fairport Convention vocalist Sandy Denny’s contribution to The Battle Of Evermore and Rolling Stones pianist Ian Stewart on "Rock and Roll".

The album has gone on to achieve legendary status in the realm of classic rock, no doubt propelled to astronomical heights thanks to Stairway to Heaven and its near ubiquitous presence on FM radio over the past half century. Personally, I find the song suffers from over exposure and overshadows a lot of other great material that is contained on the album, but you can’t really fault the band for their success. In a sense, this could be considered the peak of their perfection as subsequent releases struggled to live up to this level of achievement.

ORCHESTRAL MANEUVERS IN THE DARK - ARCHITECTURE & MORALITY @ 40

 

November 5th marks the 40th anniversary of the release of the third album by OMD (Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark), Architecture & Morality, which was issued on this day in 1981. It’s an album that redefined electronic music’s potential, though it was clearly a shot over the heads of some critics of the day.

At the time work began on the A&M album, OMD were looking to infuse a fresh sense of warmth and humanity into the often cold, mechanical landscape of the growing electronic music scene. This was a trend that was working its way through the ranks of other synth driven artists like John Foxx, who’d done an about-face from his debut solo album, with all it’s grey metallic machinations, to the green of forgotten gardens with his follow-up. For OMD, their inspiration for where to find warmth and humanity in their music came from religious choral music, thanks to some experiments from former OMD member, David Hughes, who was using the group’s studio to tinker with some processed choral recordings he’d made. Though the group were themselves not religiously inclined, they appreciated the power and emotive capacity of the music. With this in hand, they focused on historical themes and characters to provide a conceptual framework for the album.

The title was suggested by Martha Ladly (Martha & the Muffins) after the 1977 book Morality and Architecture by David Watkin. The group felt that the duality suggested by the words perfectly meshed with their desire to take the rigid “architecture” presented by electronic instruments like drum machines, sequencers and synthesizers, and balance them with the “morality” of the human experience. The cover by acclaimed designer Peter Saville, known for his work with Factory Records and Joy Division, austerely reflected this concept and reinforced the thematic integrity of the entire project. Ladly & Saville were, incidentally, romantically involved at the time the album was produced.

Musically, the group went to great lengths to expand their sonic palette beyond the usual synths and drum machines, incorporating acoustic instruments, guitars and especially a vintage Mellotron, a rather unwieldy keyboard contraption that predated digital sampling by utilizing banks of audio tape loops of real instruments to create its sounds. Its presence often lends a haunting sense of surreal romanticism to the album’s aura. Structurally, the songs have a stately, procession type of movement to them. There’s a sense of drama and scale, though never bombastic or overblown. The results come across as heartfelt and sincere as they delve into the history and impact of their subjects.

The initial critical response to the album was baffling and mixed, however. After putting so much into this project, the group were taken aback by how harsh some critics were. Lynden Barber of Melody Maker wrote, "I don't believe the Orchs even care about this record... the style is the same, the content profoundly different, the onslaught of emptiness, frivolity disguised by furrowed brows, a new brand of meaninglessness." The response of the listening public, however, was immediately enthusiastic and the album spawned no less than three hit singles in the UK and European markets. The tide of negativism from the critics soon shifted, however, as the fog began to clear from their perception of the album and people began to comprehend the scope of what the group had accomplished. The critical standing of the record after 40 years on the shelves now puts it solidly in the “classic masterpiece” category with it frequently topping “best of the 80s” lists.

For me, it was my gateway drug for OMD and still sits as their high water mark as far as my personal estimation of their career is concerned.

NASH THE SLASH - DECOMPOSING @ 40

 

Celebrating its 40th anniversary this month is Nash the Slash's groundbreaking EP, Decomposing. Released independently on Nash's Cut-Throad imprint, it was claimed to be the first album to be playable at any speed, though I'd suggest Boyd Rice may have something to say about that with his "black" album offering similar potentials a few years earlier. Regardless, it was still an innovative approach and marketing strategy. In actuality, the recordings did lend themselves to working at the various speeds available on a standard turntable. They were all instrumental and heavily processed and electronic, so the concept proved to be entirely practical without making the music sound "wrong" (though at 78rpm, it may have felt a bit "rushed"). It likely occurred to Nash to do this after his first EP, Bedside Companion, was inadvertently played at the wrong speed on a radio show. That error eventually lead to that EP being released on CD in both its native 45rpm speed AND the 33-1/3rpm variation. The original vinyl version of Decomposing has since become a rather rare collectors item given that it was only ever independently released in Canada and not licensed to any European market like his other Cut-Throat titles. For me, it's one of my favorite releases from Nash along with the Bedside Companion EP and the Dreams and Nightmares LP.

CHRIS & COSEY - HEARTBEAT @ 40

 

40 years ago this month, in November of 1981, Chris & Cosey officially stepped out of the Throbbing Gristle shadows and began their career as the dynamic duo of electronic music.

It wasn't long after Chris Carter joined Genesis P-Orridge, Cosey Fanni Tutti & Peter Christopherson to form Throbbing Gristle that sparks began to fly between him and his future life and creative partner. By the time TG began to spiral down towards their termination, Chris & Cosey had already started working on material that would end up on their first post TG album. Heartbeat would come as a celebration of their new freedom and the beginning of their life together as they became a family with the addition of their soon to be born child, pictured in an ultrasound on the cover and commemorated by the title. It's an album about birth and new life and is bursting with a sense of liberation, enthusiasm and optimism about facing the future. While it still hints at some of the darkness that was the hallmark of TG, there's much more of a sense of beauty and wonder about it all as they were in the flush of their romance and finally being able to live openly and create freely within their own domain. Signing to Rough Trade records, the duo were able to focus on the music without having to deal with the administrative issues of running an independent label, though they'd eventually get back to doing that soon enough.

For me, Heartbeat is a critical release within the arena of electronic music as it offers clear signposts towards styles and approaches which would become foundational for the future of the genre, particularly as the 80s ran out the clock in its final years. What makes this album so important is that it was so far ahead of the curve and ended up becoming a touchstone years later as producers inspired by the first waves of the techno & acid house movements began to look for ideas as to where to take that music as they strove to innovate and evolve. Many people quickly began to realize that Chris & Cosey had already plotted out the paths of where to go, nearly a full decade beforehand. As such, the album has retained a certain vitality and timelessness as it was so effective in opening the floodgates for the potential of electronic music for generations to come.