DAVID BOWIE - HUNKY DORY @ 50

December 17th marks the 50th anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s fourth studio album, Hunky Dory, which was issued this day in 1971. While his previous album had not quite “Sold the World”, this would be where he’d put together the core of his “Spiders from Mars” and set the stage for the music revolution he’d lead with its follow-up.

After the somewhat lackluster reception of The Man Who Sold the World, upon returning from a US tour to promote that album, Bowie sequestered himself in his home, eschewing touring and studio time for the moment, and planted himself at his piano in order to start composing songs for his next album. Shifting his writing process off the guitar sent him veering away from the more hard-rock styling of his last album and into a more “pop”, melodic sound. When it came time to start assembling his band for the new album, he managed to bring back guitarist Mick Ronson and drummer Mick Woodmansey, despite some creative fallout after the previous album, but bassist Tony Visconti was replaced by Trevor Bolder to create the core ensemble which would become known as The Spiders from Mars.

Inspired by his trip the the US, Bowie came up with a number of songs that paid tribute to some of the personalities he’d become enamored with over there. These included Andy Warhol, Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, all of whom found themselves immortalize in song on the new album. Moreover, Bowie’s agenda for this album was freed from the influence of the demands of record companies and their executives insisting he pursue some vision of success which was outside his own agenda. For this album, he only sought to satisfy himself and it’s one of the main reasons it is looked back upon as a turning point in his career and the moment when he fully began to cut his own path through the popular music landscape. While most artists of the time were looking to revisit the past after the wild experimentation of the late ‘60s, Bowie was keen to discover new musical lands to inhabit.

While it met with immediate critical praise upon its release, commercially, it stalled and failed to chart prior to the release of the Ziggy Stardust album in 1972. Part of the problem when it came to sales for Hunky Dory was down to Bowie's new label, RCA Records, pulling back on promoting it when they got wind that he was about to change his image AGAIN for the Ziggy album, which was already being recorded. It gave them cold feet and caused them to pull their support for Hunky Dory until they saw where he was going. However, once Ziggy took off, the backlash of success ended up sweeping Hunky Dory off the scrap heap and pushed it up the charts as well where it eventually peaked at #3 in the UK.

For many Bowie aficionados, Hunky Dory is the turning point in Bowie’s career where his artistic vision and abilities finally came into complete focus at their full potential. It’s the album which put all the pieces in place to set the stage for his success on his next album. While on it’s own, it wasn’t the spark that lit the fire, it provided the additional fuel to help reinforce his trajectory once that flame was ignited. The album is loaded with songs that have become classics in Bowie’s canon of essential works. Changes, Oh! You Pretty Things, Life On Mars, Andy Warhol & Queen Bitch all attest to his ability to craft solid, inventive pop music that has stood the test of time for half a century.

KRAFTWERK - ELECTRIC CAFE @ 35

 

December 16th marks the 35th anniversary of the release of Kraftwerk’s ninth studio album, Electric Café, which was issued this day in 1986. After a five year gap since their previous LP, Computer World (1981), this album would mark the end of their “classic” period and lineup of Ralf Hütter, Florian Schneider, Wolfgang Flür and Karl Bartos, which had been consistent since 1975 following the release of their groundbreaking Autobahn LP.

Though Wolfgang was still credited as a member of the group and performed with them during their tour to support Computer World in 1981, he had not actually played on that album and would not contribute anything in the studio for Electric Café either. With the increased reliance on sequencers, his duties as percussionist became drastically reduced and, coupled with certain creative differences, he chose to make his permanent exit from the group shortly after the release of Electric Café.

Work on the album began in 1982 and one of the first songs to emerge from these sessions was Tour De France, which was originally intended to be part of the new album. After completing their last tour, Ralph had become obsessed with the idea of finding a form of exercise which fit in with the philosophies and aesthetics of the group and become an avid cyclist, even encouraging the rest of the group to take up the activity as well as become vegetarian. He was so enthusiastic about it that he campaigned to make cycling the central theme of the new album, but was ultimately unsuccessful in that effort. Instead the original concept for the album was to call it “Technicolor”, but this idea had to be abandoned because of the branding of that name, so it became “Techno Pop” for a while before being renamed to Electric Café for its initial release. However, it ended up being renamed again for its remastered CD reissue back to “Techno Pop”.

Though the album’s production began in 1982, Ralph’s obsession with cycling kept him out of the studio more and more, delaying production. This was greatly exacerbated when he was involved in a serious cycling accident, which left him in a coma for several days. A long recovery kept him out of the studio for some time. As a stop-gap, the group released Tour De France as a single and decided to keep it as a stand-alone release and not include it on the new album.

As Ralph recovered and production gradually got back on track, the group sought to develop their sound in order to keep pushing the envelope of the technology. This involved moving to progressively more digital based sound production and processing gear. Tour De France had set the stage for this with its extensive use of sampled sound effects of bicycle gears, breathing patterns and other associated noises. Even so, when it came to trying to put together the finished mixes, Ralph was not confident that they were reaching the level he had envisioned in terms of keeping the group on the cutting edge of their genre. To help them with this, they brought in the help of New York DJ/producer, François Kevorkian, who had helped with the mix on Tour De France. Aside from the move towards a more digital sound, the album also features the first and only lead vocal from Karl Bartos on The Telephone Call.

Upon the album’s initial release, it was rather limply received. The gap between Computer World and Electric Café had seriously lost the group the momentum it has gained from that previous release and Ralph was right to worry about the group not seeming cutting edge anymore as the album, despite their best efforts, still managed to feel more “of the times” than ahead of it. Critics called it dull and sales were disappointing. I remember buying it when it came out and my own initial reaction to it was a feeling that the group weren’t anticipating the future like they’d done on previous albums. I loved the opening track, Boing Boom Tschak, with its syncopated voice samples and had hoped to hear more of that throughout the album, but it all seemed like familiar territory after that and even a bit like a self-parody in some cases. Ultimately, it would be the groups last full album of new material until the release of Tour De France Soundtracks in 2003. The only other releases before then were the 1991 “best of” rebuilds for The Mix and the 1999 single, Expo 2000.

Though it is mostly considered one of Kraftwerk’s weaker albums, lacking the focused conceptual framework of classic period masterpieces like, Radio Activity, Trans Europe Express, The Man Machine and Computer World, several of its songs have become mainstays of their live performances and have proven themselves to be durable and just as melodically infectious as anything else in the upper echelons of their catalogue. The title song, Electric Café, in a slightly sped-up form, became something of a cultural meme thanks to its use by Mike Myers on SNL in the 1990s for his recurring "Sprockets” German television spoof. My own appraisal of the album has changed for the better over the years as I have grown to find more and more to love about it now that it no longer seems to feel diminished by its relationship to their earlier works. I’m more able to appreciate it on its own merits. These days, I think it has earned its place as an essential piece of the Kraftwerk puzzle among the sacred 8 of their official “Catalogue”.

MICHAEL NESMITH - 'AT-A BOY, MIKE...

 

I was 3 years old when The Monkees TV show debuted on NBC in September of 1966. I probably wasn’t watching TV that night and most likely don’t remember the show from its initial run, but when it went into syndication and became a Saturday morning staple of the late 1960s and early 1970s, it became essential viewing for this kid. I never missed the show for as long as it held that slot along with Batman and Star Trek. Those were my “holy trinity” of childhood TV and I’m sure there’s something in that to explain why I became the fucked up adult that I am now.

Hearing about Michael Nesmith passing today, the third member of the group to leave the material realm, is somehow unreal in some ways. It has been said that certain aboriginal peoples believe that photography steals your soul, so I can only imagine what being on a hit TV show that’s been in syndication for five decades does to it. Somewhere in my psyche, they’re still all in their early 20s, romping around their LA beach house under the watchful gaze of Mr. Schneider, the stoic mannequin who occasionally offered up sage advice. They’ve become immortal in that sense, their images and antics forever cycling in the minds of successions of generations who keep rediscovering their magic.

Mike was an exceptional component of what turned out to be an extraordinary cast. Four guys who were brought together in order to cash-in on the popularity of a British group of mop-tops while simultaneously offering the show’s producers a chance to subvert primetime TV with some Beat generation counter-culture. Co-creator, Bob Rafelson, was a hip dude who was turned on to the underground and wanted to inject those influences into the mainstream and he succeeded by hiring four similarly hip kids to be his proxies. But he and his co-conspirator, industry insider Bert Schneider, also played Frankenstein and cobbled together a monster when they hired those boys to play the parts of a struggling rock band who could never catch a break. In the case of The Monkees, the errant brain that caused the monster to develop a mind of its own, or as Micky would put it, “turned Pinocchio into a real boy”, was Nesmith.

He was a true artist and bristled at the idea of being nothing more than a tool and a puppet for his masters. He fought tooth-and-nail to get the band control over their music, both as writers and performers. It was a well placed fist through a wall next to a network executive’s head that was the catalyst that got music director Don Kirshner fired and put the boys in the driver’s seat. After that, Mike was responsible for contributing some of the most memorable of their original songs. Even if their record sales never again reached the peak that Kirshner’s productions achieved, what they may have missed commercially, they more than made up for in terms of artistic integrity.

After leaving the band to go solo, Mike spent the better part of the ‘70s pioneering the genre of country rock, a thankless, unrecognized contribution that was lost behind the backlash of post-Monkees infamy, where they were individually dismissed as has-beens. While I recall songs like Joanne and Silver Moon from my mom’s stack of 45s as a kid, it wasn’t until the early 2000s that I started to collect his solo albums and discovered how truly magnificent they are. It’s a stunning catalogue of sophisticated, thoughtful and fully original music that remains utterly timeless. But Mike was just getting started and his next move would light the match that would change the music industry, for better or worse, for the rest of the 20th century and beyond.

In 1978, he made a promotional video for his song, Rio, not even really comprehending that all the label wanted from him was a clip of him singing the song. His mind went somewhere else entirely and he came up with the idea of making a little “movie” of the song with a fully developed narrative thread and structure, complete with sets and extras and props. Oddly enough, this idea hadn’t really been done before. A lot of people give Queen credit for “inventing” the music video with their promo for Bohemian Rhapsody, but it was Nesmith who truly hit on the structure which would become the modern music video. Shortly after producing this clip, he created the first full video album, Elephant Parts, and started to develop the idea of a TV program that was composed entirely of little music stories. This lead to the idea of putting to use a failed shopping channel satellite feed and, BAM!, MTV was born!

But Mike didn’t want to run a music TV channel, so he sold the rights to it and, with additional funding from his inheritance after his mother, the inventor of liquid paper, had passed, he formed Pacific Arts, a film production company. He then began to work on producing films, eventually succeeding in helping to create cult favorites like Tape Heads and Repo Man. He’d spend most of the ‘80s focused on this phase of his career and wouldn’t return to music until 1992 when he released his critically acclaimed Tropical Campfires album. Since then, he’s been a pioneer in the realm of internet VR tech, starting one of the first portals for subscribers to experience interactive virtual concerts and performances.

For a long time, people assumed he kept his distance from The Monkees out of some sense of shame, but the truth was simply that he was too wrapped up in other business to be able to participate in reunions with the group, though he did make a guest appearance for a show in LA in 1986 following the group’s revival after a marathon of their series aired on MTV. It’s somehow fitting that the channel he birthed would become instrumental in giving the group new life for a new generation 20 years after their debut. Ten years later, he was instrumental in spearheading a return to the studio by all four members for the recording of a brand new album, 1996’s Justus, where the band returned to their Headquarters roots and did it all themselves, even more so than in their early days. Flawed as that album may have been, it at least showed that he wasn’t averse to stepping back into the fray again and he even produced a TV special to coincide with the album’s release.

After the death of Davy Jones, the first member of the band to pass in 2012, Mike started intermittently touring with the group in the ensuing years, at least when he wasn’t busy performing solo concerts or working on his memoir, Infinite Tuesday, a book that’s well work checking out if you want a marvelous insight into his amazing and complex life. After Peter Tork passed in 2019, Mike & Micky set about putting together what would become their farewell tour. I was actually going to see them when they came to Vancouver, but that show was scheduled for March of 2020, right when the first wave of the pandemic shut the world down. The show was then postponed twice before being cancelled, though US dates were eventually pulled off this year and their final show in LA happened only a couple of weeks ago. I was heartbroken when I knew I wouldn’t get to see them on this tour because I had a sense that this was it and the last chance I’d get to see him live. I did get to see Micky and Peter when they came to Vancouver’s PNE on their 50th anniversary tour in support of their magnificent Good Times album in 2016, but Mike wasn't on that tour, except for the LA gig.

Michael Nesmith was a true artist, from the tips of his toes to the top of the ball on that wool hat he made famous 55 years ago. He may have started out as merely a character on a TV show about a made-up band, but the sheer strength of his creativity and character almost singlehandedly transformed it into a credible creative force, one which ultimately produced some of the most memorable and timeless pop music of the 20th century. Without him, all we’d have had was some sticky sweet bubblegum that would have lost its taste after a few chews and ended up in a forgotten wad under the desk of history. Instead, he helped ensure The Monkees left behind a sprawling landscape of incredibly well crafted musical gems and then he went and did the same with his solo career. He leaves behind a magnificent legacy and an indelible impact on the cultural landscape in ways that are both profound and sublime.

ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA @ 50

 

December 3rd marks the half century anniversary of the release of the eponymous debut album by the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO), which landed in UK record shops on this day in 1971.

The group was founded as an offshoot project by members of The Move: Jeff Lynne, Roy Wood & Bev Bevan. They instigated the project with the conception of fusing sophisticated Beatles inspired pop music with classical overtones by incorporating instruments like violins, cellos, brass and woodwinds to augment the standard drums and guitars of the typical rock band. The band came about when Wood added some of these instruments to one of Lynne’s songs which had been intended as a Move track, but which ended up becoming the debut ELO song. The members had intended to retire The Move as a band and shift their focus entirely to ELO before releasing their debut, but financial necessities pushed the two projects to exist concurrently in the studio in order to complete a final pair of Move LPs to secure sufficient record label funding for ELO. This ended up pushing the ELO debut album off until December of 1971.

Re-titled to "No Answer" for its US release in March of 1972, that title came about purely by accident when a US record label executive tried ringing the UK offices to get the name of the album, but there was literally NO ANSWER, so he simply put that note on the tape, which was misconstrued as the title by the US offices and the error stuck. The album delivered a UK top ten hit with the opening song, 10528 Overture. It offers a glimpse into the hit making powerhouse that would come to dominate the charts throughout the coming decade. The basic elements were in place for the signature sound of the band, though the core lineup would quickly lose Roy Wood and the band would become fronted by Jeff Lynne throughout the remainder of its existence and future revivals. Though the debut album was performed almost entirely by Lynne, Wood and Bevan, later albums would eventually incorporate a regular roster of musicians to form the string section and Richard Tandy would come in on keyboards to replace Wood and solidify the classic lineup of the band.

Though the group had all the key elements falling into place on their debut, it wasn’t until their iconic 1974 Eldorado album that they would realize their fully formed manifestation into the ensemble that would become unstoppable chart toppers throughout the remainder of the decade and beyond.

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.