TODD RUNDGREN - A WIZARD, A TRUE STAR @ 50

 

Released 50 years ago today, it’s the fourth solo album from Todd Rundgren, A Wizard - A True Star, which hit the record shops on March 2nd, 1973. After the pop chart success of Todd’s previous record, this album saw him veer off into some far more challenging and experimental avenues than where he’d gone before. It was an album inspired by Rundgren’s indulgences in psychedelic drugs and his desire to bring the music he was hearing in his head out into the world.

With limited exceptions, the entire album was created from the ground up by Rundgren, who wrote, performed and produced most of it save for a few bits and pieces here and there. It’s the kind of approach which would be of direct inspiration to young talents like Prince, who often cited Rundgren as a key touchstone. Todd envisioned the album to function as a kind of “flight plan” for a psychedelic trip, carefully crafting it so that each track progressed from one to the next in a seamless manner. No singles were released from the album as Rundgren wanted the LP to be considered as a whole.

After the success of his previous record, Something/Anything, Rundgren began to feel uncomfortable with the praise he was receiving and the comparisons being made to past classics. When he returned to NYC in 1972, he began experimenting with psychedelic drugs for the first time in his life. To his recollection, this included DMT, mescaline, psilocybin, and possibly – but not certainly – LSD. These inner journeys caused him to question his prior work, coming to the conclusion that the simple pop songs he’d made his name on were lacking in effort and true creativity, often feeling formulaic and perfunctory. This realization made him determined that his next record would be far more eclectic and experimental. He explained, "It wasn't like I suddenly threw away everything that I was doing before and decided that I was going to play the music of my mind", rather, the experiences allowed him "to actively put some of my songwriting habits away and to absorb new ideas and to also hear the final product in a different way." However, he "wasn't really aware, at that time, that I'd make such a radical shift".

To record the album, Rundgren and keyboardist Moogy Klingman established a professional recording studio, Secret Sound, to accommodate the Wizard sessions. Located at Manhattan's 24th Street, the studio was designed to Rundgren's specifications and was created so that he could freely indulge in sound experimentation without having to worry about hourly studio costs. During these sessions, Rundgren came to certain revelations, like the idea that the general approach to synthesizers, which was to try to make them sound like traditional instruments, was completely misguided. He realized the instrument had the potential to sound like ANYTHING and that limiting it to pale imitations of horns or strings was a waste of its potential. Rundgren assembled o plethora of instruments in the studio, including vibraphones, organs, keyboards, Fairchild equalizers, and his Stephens 16-track machine. As much as he was able, he’d work by himself, but in some instances, particular songs required others to be available. In these cases, he’d recruit Moogy & the Rhythm Kingz, a band that included drummer John Siomos, keyboardist Ralph Schuckett, and bassist John Siegler. Rundgren encouraged the musicians to contribute any ideas they felt would benefit the music. According to Siegler, "when Todd needed guys to play on his record, we were already there. It was like a club. Secret Sound was our clubhouse, and suddenly Todd was the leader of the club.”

Stylistically, the album runs the gamut from prog & psychedelic rock to Broadway show tunes, bubblegum pop, Philadelphia soul, jazz and funk. The album’s flow is somewhat of an expression of musical ADD, with Rungren unconcerned about the apparent completeness of his ideas, flitting about from one to the next with sometimes abrupt transitions. Regardless, the album is intended to have a specific flow to it, beginning in a kind of chaos and then evolving through a sense of “utopian” idealism, culminating in a medley of Todd’s favorite Philly soul tunes. Music writer Bob Stanley commented that, with Wizard, Rundgren combined all his musical loves, such as "bits of Gershwin, Weimar cabaret and a fight between electronic dogs", into "a red-blooded synth stew".

With the runtime of the album pushing the hour mark, making it one of the longest single disc LPs ever engineered, mastering the vinyl became something of a technical challenge. Most records tend to stay below the 20 minute mark per side, maybe pushing a few minutes beyond that in a pinch. The longer the runtime, the less spacing you can have between the grooves. To accommodate this, the volume level of the mastering had to be dropped, which compromised the sound quality. The liner notes on the album actually address this and advise listeners to increase playback volume to compensate.

Upon its release, the album was met with critical praise, but its eccentric nature knocked it out of contention for much commercial viability, causing it to sell poorly compared to his previous records. Yet commercial success was never the point of the album for Rundgren. After this, he’d spend much of the decade further pursuing his progressive passions with his super-group, Utopia, releasing several albums with them and touring with an elaborate stage show. Todd’s success as a record producer would earn him more than enough commercial success to enable his indulgences on more adventurous projects as a performer.

PINK FLOYD - THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON @ 50

Fifty years ago today, on March 1st, 1973, Pink Floyd released their 8th and most iconic studio LP, The Dark Side of the Moon. It would become a career defining album and enshrine the group as one of the most significant rock bands of all time.

The album began life on stage as the group worked out their ideas live, in front of their audiences. The entirety of the album was even performed for an assembled press on 17 February 1972 at the Rainbow Theater, more than a year before its release, and was critically acclaimed. Structurally, the album builds on ideas which had been evolving over the course of the previous albums, but the major shift for this record was the restraint in regards to extended jamming interludes, which had often dominated their earlier works. As such, the album offers up a set of relatively concise songs, with many clocking in under four minutes, and the longest just shy of the eight minute mark. While the album employs many experimental elements, like tape loops and analogue synthesizers - including the EMS VCS 3 and a Synthi A (aided by engineer Alan Parsons), the end results remain accessible and melodic. The experimentation successfully augments the songs without becoming distracting.

The title for the album is an allusion to lunacy, rather than astronomy, as the basic theme that Roger Waters had proposed related to “things that made people mad”, a concept heavily inspired by the band’s experiences touring on the road plus their history with Syd Barrett and his mental breakdown. However, during production the title was temporarily changed to “Eclipse” because another band, Medicine Head, had released an album with the same title. When that LP failed to garner any commercial or critical notoriety, the band reverted the title back to its original form. Lyrically, the group were intent on offering more explicit content in these songs, rather than the vague suggestiveness of their previous works. As the songs developed, they fell together into suites which blend seamlessly together on each side. lyrical themes include conflict, greed, the passage of time, death and insanity. The five tracks on each side reflect various stages of human life, beginning and ending with a heartbeat, exploring the nature of the human experience and, according to Waters, "empathy”.

Various elements of musique concrète are interwoven throughout the record, often functioning as transitional interludes, like the voice recordings from interviews with the band's road crew alongside philosophical quotations. Other elements, like the cash register tape loop, form the underpinning rhythm of the song. Yet these are carefully integrated into the compositions so as to maintain the musical restraint which is a feature of the album’s compositions. This conservative production approach both highlights the album’s more surreal, psychedelic influences while preventing them from becoming overt self-indulgences. In the end, it’s a remarkable exercise in its meticulous balancing of elements.

The actual recording of the album began on May 31st, 1972, and continued until February 9th, 1973 at Abbey Road Studios. As previously mentioned, Alan Parsons was assigned as engineer as he had previous experience with the group, working as assistant tape operator on Atom Heart Mother in 1970. This was the first album where the group used 16 track recording tech, which offered far more flexibility than 8 track, but even at that, they still used so many tracks that 2nd generation sub-mixes had to be created to accommodate the arrangements. For the final mix, producer Chris Thomas was hired to provide "a fresh pair of ears". There are somewhat conflicting reports of various band members being at odds in terms of how the album should sound, though Thomas reports he witnessed no such conflicts while he was present. His input ultimately helped the band arrive at a balance of inputs, however, with his objective input proving invaluable in arriving at the finished product.

For the album cover, the Hipgnosis design house were again tasked with the job of coming up with something special, which they certainly managed in spades. Their past work with the band had been somewhat controversial in some cases as designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell opted for some less than traditional approaches, often eschewing basics like band names and titles on the front, which could lead to confusion for the record label. Richard Wright had offered the basic guidance that the band wanted something minimal yet impactful, elegant and refined. Several ideas were put to the band, but they all ended up agreeing on a concept inspired by a photograph they’d found of a light beam being refracted in a triangular prism. The final artwork was created by design assistant, George Hardie, who took that image and refined it into a precisely rendered masterwork of simplicity. It’s such a perfectly realized representation of both the album and the band that it’s since gone on to be one of the most instantly recognizable images in pop culture. For the gate-fold LP sleeve, the rainbow of light continues through the inner fold and then reverses back through the prism again on the back image, with heartbeat like wave forms overlaid on the inner gate-fold. This ties the graphic in with the heartbeat sound which opens and closes the album.

The album was a massive success upon its release, both commercially and critically. In fact, it has become something of a cultural touchstone in its half century on the planet, inspiring a plethora of tributes and cover versions, including two dub versions by the Easy Star All-Stars. Pink Floyd have also issued elaborate collectors editions of the album, vastly expanding it with alternate mixes, outtakes and live versions. Its legacy has made it regularly referenced when it comes to lists of greatest LPs of all time and it continues to inspire new generations. It’s likely to continue to do so for generations to come.
 

DUET EMMO - HEART OF HEARTS (OR SO IT SEEMS) 12” @ 40

Marking it’s 40th anniversary today is the 12” single from Duet Emmo, Heart of Hearts (Or So It Seems).  In a year of dance floor monster hits, this neglected gem deserves to have far more attention paid to it than has been given since its release.  This was the kind of single that you only heard at the absolute hippest underground clubs and it was one that got my ass on the dance floor every time it came on.

Duet Emmo were a one off collaboration between Wire & Dome members, Bruce Gilbert & Graham Lewis, and Mute Records founder, Daniel Miller.  The group name is an anagram of the names “Dome” and “Mute”.  The trio recorded together a couple of times intermittently throughout 1981/1982, releasing a single and LP in 1983.  The single, with the B-side being a dance mix version of Or So It Seems, became a predictive harbinger of future underground trends like atmospheric Drum & Bass and Minimal Techno.  A close friend once remarked that it sounded like dance music from the future, and indeed it was!

When I first heard this track shortly after its release, it immediately became one of my favorite club cuts of the era.  It was right up there with New Order’s Blue Monday and The The’s Perfect.  Looking back on that year, it seems to have been a golden age for underground dance music, with classic after classic finding life on the underground dance floors of the day, often tucked away in dimly lit warehouse spaces in the small hours of countless mind-altered late, late nights.

ALICE COOPER - BILLION DOLLAR BABIES @ 50

 

Marking its 50th anniversary today is the sixth studio album from the Alice Cooper band, Billion Dollar Babies, which was released on February 25th, 1973. It was the most popular LP from the band up to that point, hitting the number one slot in both the US and UK. It was also the penultimate album by the band before its lead singer, one Vincent Furnier, would strike out on a solo career, taking the band name with him.

The first recording sessions for the album took place in Greenwich, Connecticut, in a mansion called the Galesi Estate. While at the estate, to achieve certain vocal sounds and echoes, microphones were run through rooms of various sizes, including a greenhouse. After beginning recording there in August of 1972, sessions were then held at Morgan Studios in London, wrapping up by January, 1973. While in London, Donovan contributed to the album by singing on its title track. The album was produced by Bob Ezrin, who had been behind the desk for their albums since Love It To Death in 1971. A quadraphonic mix of the LP was released on vinyl and reel to reel which featured radically different mixes, including alternate vocal takes.

The tour to support the album broke box office records in the US previously set by The Rolling Stones, with ticket sails pushed by the popularity of the album and the four hit singles that were taken from it. It represents the high water mark for the band. The album rocks consistently from end to end with buckets of memorable hooks littering virtually every song.

THE THE - PERFECT 12” @ 40

 

Released on February 11th, 1983, The The’s single, Perfect, turns 40 years old today. It’s my favorite song ever released by Matt Johnson and completely summed up my feelings about the the times, as well as being the best dance floor fodder in a year with some dead-on all-time classics in the clubs.

In 1982, Matt Johnson was working closely with Stevo from Some Bizarre Records and jockeying with a number of major record labels for a contract. He’d released a debut solo album under his own name, but was now working on a debut under what would become his more popular moniker, The The. Johnson and Stevo had gone to NYC to work with producer Mike Thorne, who had been at the console for the recent success of Soft Cell. They initially worked on the Uncertain Smile single, which was released in October of 1982. Work on that song proceeded very effectively, though there was some issues in terms of Stevo and his verbal agreement with London Records to release the singles. He’d reneged on that agreement and, instead, had Johnson sign a deal with CBS/Epic, despite London Records footing the bill for their trip to NYC.

At the time of the NYC sessions, the new album was tentatively titled The Pornography of Despair. After the release of Uncertain Smile, Johnson and Stevo returned to NYC to record a second single in advance of the LP. The song they chose to work on was written for the new album and called, Screw Up Your Feelings, but would become re-titled as "Perfect". By the time Johnson had returned to NYC, he’d gone from penniless to having an £80,000 advance from CBS, so he took advantage of his financial situation to partake in some of the pleasures of the city, disappearing from the studio to explore the Lower East Side and take drugs. He and Stevo also took a side trip to Detroit where Johnson felt he could spend some time really getting into the headspace he needed to sing the lyrics for his new song, which were about being “down-and-out”, so he wanted a taste of that lifestyle so he could bring some authenticity to his performance.

Eventually, the pair managed to get back into the studio to record, but by this time, their indulgences were wearing thin on Mike Thorne’s patience and further disagreements on the song’s production didn’t help. Thorne had wanted to use his fancy new Synclavier sampler/synth on the track, but Johnson was insistent on using his “cheap & cheerful” Omnichord electronic auto-harp instead. With all this conflict, Thorne bailed from the project after completing the single and Johnson headed back to London to start from scratch, where he’d record the entirety of what would become the Soul Mining LP, recording new versions of both Uncertain Smile and Perfect.

The single for Perfect, especially it’s 12” extended mix, clocking in at nearly 10 minutes, became an immediate sensation on the dance floors of the underground and alternative clubs. I had just started going out to them at exactly the time this song was released and I remember being immediately enthralled by it from the very first listen. I have to agree with Matt about that Omnichord because the bass sound it created is completely essential to the song’s groove, backed up by that insistent, hypnotic Linn Drum machine back-beat. And that high-lonesome harmonica on it was played by none other than New York Dolls front-man, David Johansen. Lyrically, Matt tapped into the quintessential mood of youthful despondence and malaise that was essential for the emerging Goth/Industrial dance scene of the day. His lyrics were so poetic and I had so many days like that where his words echoed in my head as my post-teen angst over the sadness of the world loomed in my mind. Yet it was all done with this killer fucking groove.

Every time this song came on in a club, I HAD to get on the dance floor, and I was NOT at all into dancing in clubs before this, being painfully shy and self-conscious. This song, along with Blue Monday by New Order and All Lined UP from Shriekback, were irresistible when they came on. Heaven forbid some DJ should play all three in sequence, which I distinctly remember happening at least once, necessitating nearly a 30 minute continuous stint of high energy boogieing until I was a sweaty rag doll. It remains one of my all time favorite songs, EVER!!!

THE JAMS - WHO KILLED THE JAMS? @ 35

Released 35 years ago today, on February 8th, 1988, it’s The JAMs (Justified Ancients of Mu Mu) and their sophomore and final LP, Who Killed the JAMs?. Not that Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond stopped recording, but they’d go forward predominantly as The KLF after a short stint as The Timelords for their Doctorin' The Tardis hit single.

After forming The JAMs to kick off 1987, their debut LP, 1987 (What the Fuck Is Going On?) literally went up in flames, with all unsold copies roasted in a bonfire after losing a copyright complaint from ABBA and the Mechanical-Copyright Protection Society, who ordered all remaining copies of the album destroyed. After toying with the media by musing about their second album being a heavy metal cover of Deep Purple songs, in the end, the real album followed many of the same paths as the first one, taking samples from popular hits and reworking them into new pieces with drum machines, synths and vocal choruses added. This time around, however, the samples were a bit more stealthily handled in order to avoid legal issues. The cover of the LP shows photos of the burning of the first album with the front long shot showing Jimmy & Bill with the car that would become known as Ford Timelord, who would be credited with composing Doctrorin’ the Tardis. The back cover image is a closeup of the pile of burning LPs.

Though it was not formally announced at the time, the music press, based on the album title and some cryptic comments from the group, assumed this was the swansong for the JAMs and, in a sense, they were correct, though the group would issue the album Shag Times to collect together a number of singles from the era. Upon its release, Who Killed the JAMs? was met with generally favorable critical responses. Melody Maker declared it to be "divine nihilism", "an outward show of self-deception, irrationality and bankruptcy that worries and rejoices itself to death". Sounds thought the album "a masterpiece of pathos", referring to its "hopeless bravado in the face of massed corporate opposition", and awarded the maximum five stars. While the duo were still refining their methodologies and mythologies, the album definitely contains seeds of what they were trying to grow, with themes and hooks that would continue to resurface throughout the KLF's career in the early 1990s. Since its initial release, however, it has never been reissued except in a very limited CDr unofficial edition of a couple of hundred copies.

 

IGGY AND THE STOOGES - RAW POWER @ 50

 

Released on February 7th, 1973, Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges is celebrating half a century on the shelves today. Despite struggles to get a proper mix of the album, it continues to stand as one of the most ferocious proto-punk albums of all time. It’s fierceness and savage intensity have made it a high water mark for aggressive rock & roll and kept it as a template for bands who aspire to ascend to its brutal heights.

By 1972, The Stooges were in a shambles. With their first two LPs failing to garner any serious record sales, the group had fallen into despair and substance abuse, with Iggy slipping deeper and deeper into his heroine addiction. The group had functionally ceased to exist and Iggy had gone off to London to try to dry out under the wing of David Bowie. Bowie had long been a fan of Iggy’s and was appreciative of the Stooges’ song writing abilities, far more than most of Pop’s peers of the time. While in London, Iggy was planning on working with guitarist James Williamson, who had handled second guitar duties on the last Stooges tour, and Pop had even negotiated a solo record deal with CBS. As he and Williamson began to try to get the ball rolling in the UK, they soon found themselves struggling to put together an acceptable rhythm section from the local talent available to them. It was at this point that Williamson suggested recruiting original Stooges, the Asheton brothers, Ron and Scott, with Ron reluctantly agreeing to move over to bass so that Williamson could handle all the guitar duties. This effectively reconstituted the Stooges, albeit in a modified configuration, but the solo contract with CBS would still necessitate the band being identified as “Iggy and the Stooges”.

With Williamson on guitar, the songwriting took on a different feel than the first two albums, moving away from their funkier grooves into a more anthemic hard rock kind of sound, though the label insisted on including two “ballads” on the new album to act as counterpoints on each side of the record. Recording took place at CBS’ London studio, occurring from September 10 to October 6, 1972, with Iggy acting as producer. After this, an initial mix of the album was done by Pop, but the results of that were rather botched as he mixed most of the instruments into one stereo channel with the vocals mixed into the other, with little regard for balance or tone quality. Because of budgetary constraints, they had little to work with to remedy that situation, but they were able to hire David Bowie to come in for a day and do a mix of the album. Bowie recalled:

“(It was) the most absurd situation I encountered … the first time I worked with Iggy Pop. He wanted me to mix Raw Power, so he brought the 24-track tape in, and he put it up. He had the band on one track, lead guitar on another and him on a third. Out of 24 tracks there were just three tracks that were used. He said 'see what you can do with this'. I said, 'Jim, there's nothing to mix'. So we just pushed the vocal up and down a lot. On at least four or five songs that was the situation.”

However when Morgan Neville's documentary film on Raw Power was released in 2010, they demonstrated that each individual instrument was indeed recorded on its own track on the original multi-track tapes, suggesting that Bowie was either mistaken or working with a copy that had mixed down the instruments on to the same track, likely the rejected mix Iggy had done before Bowie’s arrival.

What Bowie achieved with those limited resources has always been debatable, with some liking it while most found it murky and lacking in low end. Thus began the long, sordid story of alternate mixes of the LP. The original rejected Iggy mix was eventually released as “Rough Power”, and then, in 1997, Iggy himself created a brand new mix from scratch using the original multi-track tapes. This version, while addressing some of the issues with the Bowie mix in terms of lack of bottom end and buried drums, ended up creating its own issues as Iggy brought back in a lot of bits Bowie had cut out and pinned the levels on everything to such an extent that it introduced a layer of digital distortion which unsettled many purists and fans of the original LP’s mix. Personally, I find the Iggy mix more listenable overall, though the saturation caused by the excessive loudness does obliterate any sense of dynamics in the recordings. Therefore, it remains a flawed album no matter how you slice it, but a landmark, nonetheless.

Upon its release, the LP received a lot of critical high praise, but commercially, it was simply too extreme for any radio play and barely grazed the bottom of the top 200 LP charts in the US. That failure was a final nail in the coffin for the Stooges and, though Iggy and Williamson did attempt what would become another aborted project together, subsequently released as Kill City (1975), Pop would end up returning to Bowie’s care for a far more successful solo career with his back to back albums, The Idiot and Lust for Life (1977). The legacy of Raw Power, however, like the previous two Stooges LPs, would grow over the decades to enshrine all three of these albums as precursors to, and fundamental foundation stones for, the punk revolution to come.