Tony's Favorite 1990s Albums

When in doubt, make a list. I subscribe to several YouTube channels, some of which are run by amateur online music critics. As is their wont, they too make lists – top ten prog rock albums, top 10 Deep Purple albums, etc. You get the idea. Thus inspired I thought I would list my Top 10 albums from the 1990s, which to these ears is the last good musical decade. To be clear, this isn’t a “best of” list, because any such pronouncements by anybody are completely subjective. These are “favorites,” so opinions [like recollections] may vary. Without further ado:

U2 - Achtung Baby (1991) – After The Joshua Tree [1987] and Rattle and Hum [1988], U2 faced an existential crisis. The Joshua Tree was their big artistic statement. To punctuate that statement, they decided they would film their subsequent tour. They envisioned a U2 version of A Hard Day’s Night. Rattle and Hum was more like a home movie, four guys looking to discover American music, and a joyless home movie at that. The reviews of Rattle and Hum were scathing, and the guys in the band were a bit shell shocked. Up to this point they were critical darlings and weren’t used to people telling them they weren’t perfect. And they [most especially Bono] had gotten too caught up in their own self-importance. Bono’s wife Ali summed it up best – she told him “you’ve gotten so serious.  The boy I fell in love with was so full of mischief, so full of madness.  You were a much more experimental character – what’s happened to you?” They went away to re-invent themselves, but in the process discovered they weren’t on the same page musically, hence the existential crisis. They pulled themselves together and re-invented themselves. They exorcised the “preachy” U2 [for a while, anyway], stopped Bono’s posturing and hectoring for social justice, and became rock stars that could make music that was fun. Achtung Baby is my favorite U2 album by far.

Rush - Counterparts (1993) – After a five-album run where all kinds of keyboards served as the focus of Rush music, Alex Lifeson finally re-emerged from the shadows with a vengeance. Rush started out as a guitar band, but after Moving Pictures [1981] they moved further and further away from that ethos to the point that Alex Lifeson became a musical afterthought.  There were just too many damn synthesizers for my liking, and the songwriting was pretty weak after Grace Under Pressure [1984]. Counterparts is the album for which I waited nine years. Keyboards were relegated to the background, and Lerxst’s guitar was finally front and center again. Of the eleven songs on the album [one is an instrumental: Leave That Thing Alone], nine are strong, while the remaining songs are merely “ok.”  Once again, Rush was a fire-breathing beast, and I couldn’t be happier as a fan.

R.E.M. - Out of Time [1991] and Automatic for the People [1992] – I’m cheating a little bit here because I think of both of these albums as two sides of the same coin. Both are mostly acoustic, and unlike the louder album that preceded them – Green [1988] – they have aged very well. They don’t sound dated. I admit I didn’t get into these guys at the time, as ubiquitous as they were in the late Eighties/early Nineties. But with the passage of 32 years, and with Carol passing away, I was nostalgic for a happier time and thus I did a reappraisal. For the most part, I haven’t a clue about what Michael Stipe was singing about. I don’t think he had any idea, either. But there is a moment of clarity on Man On The Moon, an elegy for Andy Kaufman. It proved to me that if he wanted to, Michael Stipe can make complete sense. And he had a sense of humor. With that said, I cut him some slack on the rest of his lyrics, which can be very obtuse and impenetrable. At a time when grunge and alternative music were all the rage [some of which I like very much], these two statements, released nineteen months apart, were outside the norm. Instead of loud, detuned guitars, there are mandolins, acoustic guitars, pianos and bouzoukis. There’s a lot to be said for going against the grain, and R.E.M. are to be commended for it. I appreciate them now – better late than never. But when I think I’ve had enough of quiet music, I’ll throw on Dirt or Superunknown.  Speaking of which…

Alice in Chains – Dirt [1992] – A long time ago, MTV had this show on Saturday nights called The Headbangers Ball. It was on this show that a video caught Carol’s eye. It was made by a band from Seattle. The singer was going on about being buried in his own shit. Carol didn’t impress easily, but she liked what she heard and told me “you’ve got to hear this.” The band was Alice in Chains, and the song was Man in the Box. The song was from their debut album, Facelift [1990]. We were both immediately hooked. A couple of years later, I saw a movie called Singles [1992]. It takes place in Seattle and is about the love lives of twentysomethings, with the burgeoning grunge movement serving as the backdrop for the story. It was here that I got a preview of the next AIC album. Their new song, Would? [an elegy for Mother Love Bone vocalist Andrew Wood], featured in the movie. Dirt, the album from whence it came, is a musical 2x4 across the forehead. Jerry Cantrell’s riffs were dark and sludgy, very Sabbathesque but recorded a helluva lot better. Though not a concept album per se, this harrowing album has drug addiction as its theme for the last half of the album. Layne Staley, in a vice grip of heroin addiction that just wouldn’t let go, articulated his own downward spiral and self-destruction. The album also includes themes of mortality, relationships, and depression, with a tribute to Cantrell’s father [a Vietnam vet] thrown in for good measure. Of note, they began recording Dirt during the LA riots in the summer of 1992, which only added to the album’s vibe of doom. Alice in Chains have recorded some stellar music since 1992, but Dirt remains their magnum opus. It still remains in heavy rotation for me.

Soundgarden - Superunknown (1994) - Of the four big bands to come out of Seattle in the early 1990s [Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains, and Soundgarden], Soundgarden was the first to get a major label record deal, but the last to get the big break. They got people’s attention with Badmotorfinger (1991), but in 1994 Superunknown launched them into the stratosphere. Superunknown opens with a thunderous one-two punch of Let Me Drown and My Wave. Fell On Black Days which follows slows the pace and is dark and very moody. Mailman is one of Matt Cameron’s songs. As the title says, it’s about a mailman, who is about to “go postal.” Kim Thayil pours the sludge on thick with his detuned guitars in a grinding riff, and Ben Shepard’s bass makes the sludge even thicker. I have no idea what Superunknown [the song] is about, and I don’t care. It’s loud, it’s fast, it’s brutal in its intensity, and it’s relentless. Black Hole Sun is the monster hit, which is more of a mood than a song, but that’s ok. Spoonman is another fast one…and another hit. It’s all good. Carol and I saw them at Red Rocks in 2011, and they played most of this album. To date, it’s the loudest concert I ever attended. We lost some hearing that day.

Pink Floyd- The Division Bell [1994] – The last real Pink Floyd album. I don’t count The Endless River because there’s only one real song on it, and not a very good one. As much as I like 1987’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason, it’s really a David Gilmour solo album in all but name. It has more in common with Gilmour’s About Face [1984] than it does with Pink Floyd. Rick Wright didn’t play much on it, and Nick Mason didn’t play at all. But that album served its purpose. In the aftermath of Roger Waters’ 1985 departure, it proved the band could function without him, much to Waters’ distress. After touring AMLOR for two solid years, Wright and Mason were back in playing shape. Wright has five songwriting credits on The Division Bell and sang on a Pink Floyd album for the first time since Dark Side of the Moon. Unlike AMLOR, this sounded like a Pink Floyd album. David Gilmour isn’t a lyricist, and he isn’t big on the whole “concept album” thing. But in contemporary interviews, he did say the underlying theme of the album was the inability of people to communicate. Both he and Rick Wright opined that The Division Bell sounds more like Wish You Were Here [the favorite of both Gilmour and Wright] than anything else in Pink Floyd’s canon. For me, it took just one listen to Keep Talking to know that this album was going to be a good one. But, the emotional center of the album is the final song, High Hopes. It is a wistful look back on happier times in Cambridge before fame. Carol and I saw two shows on this tour. They were the best shows we had ever seen, with film clips playing on a giant screen behind the stage, flying pigs, lasers, and a giant mirror ball that illuminated everything during Comfortably Numb. The music was pretty good, too. 😊

Deep Purple - Purpendicular (1996) – One can’t discuss Deep Purple without talking about the interpersonal drama of the players. They shocked the rock world by reuniting the classic Mark II lineup [Ritchie Blackmore, Ian Gillan, Roger Glover, Jon Lord, and Ian Paice] in 1984 with the album Perfect Strangers. The House of Blue Light [1987] followed, but the disagreements between Blackmore and Gillan that led to their 1973 split resurfaced. Soon, Gillan was fired in 1989, to be replaced by Joe Lynn Turner. The resulting album, Slaves and Masters [1990] sounds like a bad Rainbow album. Blackmore was happy, but the rest of the band wasn’t. They wanted Gillan back, so he returned in 1992. They recorded The Battle Rages On [1993], and it was Ritchie’s turn to be unhappy. The band toured in Europe and played their last show [Helsinki] in November 1993. In three weeks hence, they were supposed to go to Japan, but Ritchie tore up his visa and left the band. The band had to honor the Japan dates, and somehow, they got Joe Satriani to fill in for Ritchie. They had a world tour ahead of them and they played the dates with Satriani, but there was a hitch. Satriani had his own career and couldn’t stay with Deep Purple. Deep Purple needed a new guitar player [or, as Gillan would say, a “banjo player”]. Each member made a list. The only player on everyone’s list was Steve Morse. Morse turned out to be an enlightened choice. He’s nothing like Blackmore, and that’s the point. If one doesn’t hire someone to sound like Ritchie Blackmore, the less likely people are going to make comparisons to him, other than to say “he doesn’t sound like Ritchie.” With Morse, they could afford to take a fresh approach, to exercise the musical muscles that had atrophied and get away from making generic hard rock albums. Morse’s own work before joining Deep Purple spanned a variety of styles, genres and moods. This is what he brought to Deep Purple, and to their credit they embraced the change. This album swings like no other Deep Purple album. Ian Paice gets to do more than just a 4/4 bash like he had to do from Perfect Strangers onward. The rest of the band was able to write and contribute more than they had when Ritchie was the musical director. The result was Purpendicular, which would be their most experimental album since before Gillan and Glover joined the band in 1969. This album proved that there was life after Blackmore, so much so that the Morse-Purple marriage lasted twenty-eight years. Highly recommended.

Gov’t Mule - Dose (1997) – The Allman Brothers Band reunited in 1989 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the band founded by Duane Allman. Guitarist Warren Haynes and bassist Allen Woody were the new guys. After the success of the Dreams tour, the band decided to create new music. The new album, Seven Turns [1990], was their best album since Brothers and Sisters [1973]. Subsequent albums [Shades of Two Worlds (1991) and Where It All Begins (1994)] were almost as good. To occupy themselves during ABB downtimes, Haynes and Woody had formed power trio Gov’t Mule with Matt Abts, who played with Haynes in Dickey Betts’ band before the 1989 reformation. It was going to be a busman’s holiday, like what Hot Tuna started out to be vis-à-vis the Jefferson Airplane. They recorded one self-titled album in 1995. The plan was just one album, but the ABB was a dysfunctional unit. Gregg Allman had his substance abuse issues, and Dickey Betts was in and out of the band due to his own substance abuse issues [to be charitable, he was a mean drunk]. The interpersonal dynamic was a bit toxic. Haynes and Woody decided they had enough and left the Allman Brothers in 1997, and they didn’t look back. The Mule would be their full-time gig. Dose is jam band music at its finest. This album spawned three (!) sprawling, monster classics – Blind Man in the Dark, Thorazine Shuffle [known in some spiritual circles as the “Thorazine Clusterfuck”], and Game Face. Throw in two instrumentals [Birth of the Mule and Thelonious Beck], the folk blues of Son House’s John the Revelator, and a jam take on the Beatles She Said She Said, you have a classic.

Bob Dylan – Time Out of Mind [1997] – At the conclusion of the 1980s, Bob Dylan released an outstanding album, Oh Mercy, about which I have already commented. As he had more than enough songs for that album, he rerecorded those leftovers [and a handful of newer songs] for the next album, Under the Red Sky [1990]. This wasn’t a bad album, but in the wake of Oh Mercy it was a bit of a letdown. Afterward, he went silent. Not for the first time, many began to doubt whether he could still be creative. The man himself had his doubts, wondering aloud whether he had enough songs to sing and stop writing. He went back to his folk roots and cut two albums - Good as I Been to You [1992] and World Gone Wrong [1993] - that were traditional folk songs, performed by him alone with only an acoustic guitar and a harmonica to accompany him. It took him until 1996 to find the inspiration to write new material. His new songs addressed love, heartbreak, betrayal and loss, old age and mortality. For his sound, Dylan found his inspiration in the blues. When in doubt, go back to the source. I’ve waxed poetic about 2001’s “Love And Theft” in these pages before and how I thought [and still think] that album was the best he had done since Blood on the Tracks. I had done a Top 10 list of Dylan albums. I had Time Out of Mind at #6, Oh Mercy at #3, and  “Love And Theft” at #2. Thanks to a remix of the entire Time Out of Mind album as presented on the Fragments box set [released in 2022], I may have to rethink the order of things. Time Out of Mind is truly extraordinary.

Tom Petty – Wildflowers [1994] – Tom Petty had a new record deal with Warner Brothers, but there was a catch. He was still signed to MCA, and he wanted out. His relationship with MCA was tempestuous. MCA had originally rejected Full Moon Fever. They butted heads over his compensation, artistic control and album prices. The price for his freedom was a greatest hits compilation, but it had to include two new songs. One song turned out to be Mary Jane’s Last Dance. Tom wasn’t done with making clean breaks. After recording Mary Jane’s Last Dance, he fired drummer Stan Lynch. In his place he hired Steve Ferrone, an inspired choice. They didn’t get along anymore, and Tom thought it was time for a change. No change was more drastic for him than his marriage. His 22-year marriage to Jane Benyo was falling apart. Daughter Adria took one listen to Wildflowers and knew immediately that her parents’ marriage was over. Welcome to middle age. Another break Petty made [though not permanent like the rest] was with Jeff Lynne. Lynne produced Petty’s first solo record, Full Moon Fever [1989] and Into the Great Wide Open [1991]. For Wildflowers he worked with Rick Rubin at Mike Campbell’s suggestion. For this record, Petty said that after spending almost twenty years making records with the Heartbreakers, he wanted to branch out and work with others in order to learn and grow. He credited Rubin with guiding him back to a musical place where he would feel very comfortable. At this point in his life, Petty got more comfortable making music that wasn’t just loud rock ‘n roll. To be sure, there is plenty of loud rock ‘n roll on this record, but there are also folky, confessional moments as well. The album alternates between the loud and the quiet. Originally, Petty planned Wallflowers to be a double album. He wrote twenty-five songs for it, but when he finished it and played it for Warner Brothers, they said it was too long. He pruned Wildflowers to fifteen songs. Some of the leftovers came out for his soundtrack to the movie She’s The One. Others remained unreleased until the Wildflowers & All the Rest box set came out in 2020. There was quantity as well as quality. He wanted to revisit the whole Wildflowers thing after his final tour, but fate had other ideas. Wildflowers is Tom Petty’s masterpiece.

Steely Dan - Pretzel Logic and The Royal Scam

Steely Dan is one of those bands that people love to hate. George Carlin once listed people who should be beaten with heavy clubs as “people who sort their garbage, jog with their dogs and listen to Steely Dan.” Last year the recently departed Steve Albini, a self-proclaimed “punk that shits on Steely Dan,” wrote some tweets about how much he loathed and despised Steely Dan, saying that they sounded like a Saturday Night Live warm-up band and wondered why they would expend so much effort to sound like one. Writer Joe Goldberg referred to their music as “Hippie Muzak.” Carol absolutely hated them. So, to avoid being beaten with heavy clubs by She Who Must Be Obeyed, I stopped listening to them. Things have changed… I listen, but only in small doses. One can take only so much of Donald Fagen’s voice before wanting to hear something else.

But what’s the appeal? Dark humor and cynicism, something that’s right up my alley. Their music is a skeptical view of American culture populated with interesting characters, be they sleazy, creepy, desperate, obsessive, jealous, other various lowlifes, lots of losers and very few winners. Fagen and Becker didn’t take themselves too seriously. After all, they took the name Steely Dan from a steam-powered dildo in William S. Burrough’s Naked Lunch. Their lyrics were equal measures of humor, irony, and sarcasm. They finished each other’s musical sentences on both sides of the music and lyric divide.

Whatever one thinks of Steely Dan, they’re still better than the Eagles…

In 1977, Steely Dan crafted Aja, an album that is widely recognized as their best album. It's sound quality is such that if one wanted to test a car stereo, one could pick either this one or Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. When Walter Becker died in 2017, I wrote that Aja was my favorite Steely Dan album. Things have changed in the years since then. As good as Aja sounds, I prefer a couple of their earlier releases, Pretzel Logic (1974) and The Royal Scam (1976). Their notorious studio perfectionism started here.

Steely Dan started as Denny Dias’ band. A jazz guitarist from Philadelphia who had his own band, he put an ad in The Village Voice that read "Looking for keyboardist and bassist. Must have jazz chops! Assholes need not apply!" [little did he know…] The keyboardist and bassist were Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. They were Brill Building songwriters who met at Bard College in 1967. Dias, Fagen and Becker moved to California to seek fame and fortune. Guitarist Jeff ‘Skunk’ Baxter, drummer Jim Hodder, and vocalist David Palmer joined their band and Steely Dan was born. They recorded two albums - Can’t Buy a Thrill (1972) and Countdown to Ecstasy (1973). Palmer sang lead on a few of the songs on Can’t But a Thrill but was relegated to background vocals on Countdown to Ecstasy. They recorded Countdown to Ecstasy in a hurry by their standards]. As Fagen and Becker didn’t like the sound of Countdown to Ecstasy, things would change for the next album.

Pretzel Logic is the album where Steely Dan entered its Plastic Ono Band phase. John Lennon described the Plastic Ono Band as a group where the membership varied from time to time, meaning that the group was whoever was in the room at the time. And so it was with Steely Dan. They stopped being a band and became a concept. Since Fagen and Becker were the songwriters, they took over the band, much the same way as Jagger and Richards did with the Rolling Stones. And since Steely Dan was now Fagen and Becker’s band, they decided to enlist studio musicians at the expense of Baxter, Dias and Hodder. Fagen and Becker didn’t like touring and preferred studio work. Skunk Baxter was a road dog who lived for touring. He left and joined the Doobie Brothers after touring for Pretzel Logic was done. Jim Hodder opted for session work [he later drowned in his swimming pool in 1990]. Denny Dias continued to play on Steely Dan albums, but as one of many session musicians. Pretzel Logic is the transition between Steely Dan the band and Steely Dan the concept. The core of Becker, Fagen, Dias and Baxter appear on every song. The first band casualty of Fagen & Becker using hired guns was drummer Jim Hodder. Relegated to background vocals, Hodder is replaced by Jim Gordon [Derek & the Dominoes, Traffic] and Jeff Porcaro [later of Toto fame], sometimes both on the same track. Bassist Chuck Rainey makes his first appearance on a Steely Dan record.

Countdown to Ecstasy had six songs that exceeded five minutes. The album had no hit singles. Their record company wanted shorter songs and hit singles. Out of Pretzel Logic’s eleven songs, only two of them were over four minutes and they were the singles [Rikki Don't Lose That Number (#4) and Pretzel Logic (#57)]. Both songs are still in Steely Dan setlists. I like nine of the eleven songs, to wit:

Rikki Don't Lose That Number – Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes there aren’t any hidden meanings in song. This is Donald Fagen giving his phone number to a crush in college, who was married AND pregnant at the time. Fagan is an obsessed admirer of Rikki. That percussion instrument that opens the song [cut from the single version] is a flapamba. The piano figure is “borrowed” from Horace Silver’s Song for My Father. Skunk Baxter plays the solo.

Night by Night – An ode to life on the streets with lots of horns and two guitar solos from Skunk Baxter that slay.

Any Major Dude Will Tell You – This one is a message of sympathy from one friend to another. Yawn…

Barrytown – Social satire set in a New York hamlet not far from Bard College. A commentary on racial integration perhaps? "I'm not one to look behind/I know that times must change/but over there in Barrytown/they do things very strange/and though you're not my enemy/I like things how they used to be/and though you'd like some company/I'm standing by myself/go play with someone else." Just a tad cynical…

East St. Louis Toodle-Oo – Duke Ellington! Becker uses a talk box guitar to simulate muted trumpets [very effectively]. Skunk Baxter uses a pedal steel to mimic a trombone [also very effectively].

Parker's Band – A funky tribute to Charlie Parker. Is the lyric “We will spend a dizzy weekend smacked into a trance” a reference to Parker’s heroin habit? I think so.

Through with Buzz – At 1’30”, this is Steely Dan’s shortest ever song. It’s also a throwaway. I treat it as such.

Pretzel Logic – A moody, bluesy time travel fantasy with traveling minstrels and Napoleon. Becker plays the guitar solos. A classic.

With a Gun – Biting satire with a “country” [?!?] shuffle. This is Steely Dan’s idea of a murder ballad. The humble narrator tells the story of a man obsessed with vengeance against those he perceives as doing him wrong, using a gun, of course.

Charlie Freak – How does one follow a murder ballad? This one is really dark. It’s told from the point of view of a guy who buys someone’s last remaining possession, a gold ring. The seller buys drugs with the money and dies of an overdose, all to the sound of jingle bells.

Monkey in Your Soul – Fuzz bass, great horns, and a nice solo from Becker. “I’ll pack my things and move so far from here…” Sounds like somebody’s had enough and can’t get away fast enough.

The Royal Scam is Steely Dan’s “guitar” album. Here Fagen and Becker made the full transition to their “band” being more of a collection of musicians at any given time. With the addition of R&B musicians Chuck Rainey [bass] and Bernard Purdie [drums], this is also one funky album. Becker put away his bass and switched to guitar. He thought Rainey’s presence eliminated the need to bring his own bass to the studio. Fagen and Becker employ guitarists Larry Carlton, Denny Dias, Elliot Randall [who played solo on Reelin’ in the Years], and Dean Parks. They also employ five background singers, Michael McDonald and Timothy B. Schmit among them.

As with Pretzel Logic, I like all but two of the songs [see below]…

Kid Charlemagne – Lead guitar: Larry Carlton. Based on LSD chemist Owsley Stanley. Rainey and Purdie make their presence felt immediately. That’s Becker chugging along on rhythm guitar. A classic.

The Caves of Altamira – Prehistoric cave paintings in Spain and a youngster who finds peace and solace among them. Lot of horns on this one.

Don't Take Me Alive – Lead guitar: Larry Carlton. This was inspired by crime in Los Angeles. The criminal in this story is suicidal.

Sign In Stranger – Lead guitar: Elliot Randall. Fagen and Becker do reggae [Walter loved reggae]. This one is a sci-fi place where a criminal can go to establish a new identity. "Do you have a dark spot on your past?/ Leave it to my man he'll fix it fast/Pepe has a scar from ear to ear/He will make your mug shots disappear…"

The Fez – Lead guitar: Walter Becker. A throwaway song about having sex with a condom. 

No I'm never gonna do it without the fez on/Oh no

No I'm never gonna do it without the fez on/Oh no

That's what I am/Please understand/I wanna be your holy man…

That’s all there is to this to this song. In my version of Hell, this song on repeat. I can do without this one.

Green Earrings – Guitars: Denny Dias and Elliot Randall. With clavinet all over this song and the playing by Rainey and Purdie, one can be forgiven for thinking this sounds almost like a disco song…almost. Some very tasty solos from Dias and Randall. The lyrics are about a jewel thief who shows no remorse.

Haitian Divorce – Lead guitar: Dean Parks. More reggae from Fagan and Becker. Engineer Elliot Scheiner asked for some time off during recording so he could fly to Haiti and get a quickie divorce. Fagan and Becker made a song out of it. Becker put Parks’ solo through a talk box. A good idea, but the talk box wears out its welcome. Depending on my mood, this can be a “skip” song.

Everything You Did – Lead guitar: Larry Carlton. Becker and his girlfriend fight over infidelity, and he wants to hear about everything she and her lover did before he finds him and kills him. Apparently she played the Eagles a lot [probably too much for Becker’s liking], to which he says “turn up the Eagles, the neighbors are listening…” This song could have been about my high school girlfriend, who also cheated and listened to the Eagles too much for my liking. If a Steely Dan song has vicious lyrics, chances are they were written by Becker.

The Royal Scam – Lead guitar: Larry Carlton. Just what is the “royal scam”? If you’re an immigrant, it’s the American Dream.

Pretzel Logic and The Royal Scam – two albums that maybe are not as immaculate sounding as Aja but definitely more interesting, and infinitely much better than the Eagles [or as my friend Alan calls them, the Egos].

I’m not the only one to rag on the Egos. I found this little bit written by someone under the pen name Streetmouse who had this take:

There's a Pretzel Logic conspiracy that suggests that the movie The Big Lebowski is a coded tribute to Steely Dan, and that much is related to this album. Most obvious is the prominence of the 'Dude' word, and the underlying attribute of the warm hearted ideal that bad times indeed don't last forever. Things get even more suspicious when you consider that The Dude's (Jeffrey Lebowski/Jeff Bridges) bowling teammates are named Walter and Donald, along with the ever-present bartender who is named Gary (Gary Katz, producer of Steely Dan's music.) There's also The Dude’s hatred of The Eagles, where The Dan and The Eagles both reference each other in verse, all with good natured ribbing.

Stephen Stills - Manassas

After their summer 1970 tour, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young imploded. With 20/20 hindsight, it seemed inevitable. As if having four highly opinionated musicians with titanic egos to match wasn’t enough, Stills’ girlfriend Rita Coolidge decided dump him and run off with Graham Nash. David Crosby wrote the coolest song of his career about the entire saga, Cowboy Movie. She was the little Indian girl in the story [Raven], Stills was the fast gunslinger from the South [Eli], and Nash was the group’s dynamite expert [The Duke]. Stills’ subsequent album after CSNY’s implosion [Stephen Stills (1970)] was a very fine album that mixed folk, rock, blues, and gospel. It is the only album to feature both Eric Clapton [Go Back Home] and Jimi Hendrix [Old Times Good Times]. Stills dedicated his album to “James Marshall Hendrix,” who died two months before its November 1970 release. The second album incorporated horns, and this is where things began to slip. Stephen Stills 2 was ok, but not as good as the first album. The Memphis Horns were just NOT a good fit.

The beginnings of Stills’ third album after CSNY started with a 1971 chance meeting Stills had with Chris Hillman in Cleveland. Stills was on tour with bassist Calvin “Fuzzy” Samuels, drummer Dallas Taylor, and the Memphis Horns, promoting his first two solo albums. Hillman later opined that Stills and his band sounded really shitty that night in Cleveland. I’ve heard the Live at Berkeley 1971 release – he wasn’t wrong. Hillman’s Flying Burrito Brothers were having their own problems with losing money and continuous turnover in personnel [most notably Gram Parsons and Bernie Leadon]. Stills and Hillman had known each other since the mid-1960s. Stills was with Buffalo Springfield while Hillman was in the Byrds. But in 1971 both men were at somewhat of a career crossroads. Hillman was weary of the chaos that was the Flying Burrito Brothers, and Stills wanted a foil with whom he could collaborate. Stills jettisoned the horn section, and went to Miami to record with Samuels, Taylor and two other musicians from his band – keyboardist Paul Harris and percussionist Joe Lala. He also invited Hillman and fellow Burrito Brother Al Perkins to join them. Magic ensued and Manassas was born.

Stills earned the nickname “Captain Many Hands” because he can not only play guitar, he also plays bass, assorted keyboards, and percussion. He handled most of the instrumental work on Crosby, Stills and Nash’s debut album as well as his first two solo albums. But Manassas is a different animal. It is the work of a band. Stills still played lots of parts, but he didn’t have to do all the work this time. Hillman played rhythm guitar [as opposed to his usual bass as he did in the Byrds and the Burrito Brothers] and mandolin. Al Perkins is not only proficient on guitar but is also an excellent steel guitarist. Paul Harris can play piano in any style. Stills, Hillman, Samuels and Lala sang four-part harmonies that sound better to my ears than those sung by CSN.

How does Manassas sound? The debut solo album effortlessly mixed folk, blues (acoustic and electric), hard rock, R&B and gospel. Manassas does that and more, adding country, bluegrass, and Latin textures to the mix. The songs of the album’s four sides are thematically grouped. Side One is The Raven [three guesses what the theme here is]. Latin-influenced blues rock, the sides five songs are arranged such that there are no gaps between the songs, like the medley on the second side of Abbey Road. The band would play these songs as-is from start to finish in concert. Side Two [The Wilderness] is the country/bluegrass side of the band. Chris Hillman and Al Perkins show of their talents here, bringing the Burrito Brothers vibe. There are steel guitars, fiddles, mandolins, acoustic guitars, and lush vocal harmonies that would make David Crosby and Graham Nash jealous. The Wilderness is the contemplative, back-to-nature side. One can experience the healing power of the Rockies [Colorado], lick his wounds and lament a lost love [So Begins the Task], then try to recover from it [Jesus Gave Love Away for Free]. Conversely, Fallen Eagle is a bluegrass protest song about helicopter-flying ranchers who kill endangered golden eagles for fun. Don't Look At My Shadow takes a detour to Bakersfield.

Side Three is Consider. This is the folk/folk rock side of Stephen Stills, Chris Hillman and Al Perkins. It Doesn’t Matter [which would appear with different lyrics on Firefall’s debut album in 1976] is my favorite song on Manassas. I first heard it in Fort Collins and it always reminds me of Carol. Johnny’s Garden is Stills’ tribute to the gardener who worked at the English house he bought from Ringo Starr. Bound to Fall is a Stills/Hillman duet that again strays into Burrito Brothers territory. The Love Gangster is a co-write with Bill Wyman that goes back to rock territory. It doesn’t fit with the rest of Side Three, but because of the constraints of vinyl it had to go somewhere. It is a good segue to Side Four - Rock & Roll Is Here to Stay. Right Now addresses Rita Coolidge running off with Graham Nash. Stills didn’t drop any names, but… What to Do is a commentary on CSNY. The Treasure [Take One] is “jam city.” There’s a better, shorter version to be found on Stills’ box set Carry On. Manassas ends with Blues Man, a solo acoustic blues dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, and Al Wilson [of Canned Heat]. It’s a companion piece to Black Queen from Stills’ first album.

Manassas is for Stephen Stills what Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs is for Eric Clapton – it is both a masterpiece and a career high water mark. And like Derek and the Dominos, the band that made Manassas didn’t last long. Chris Hillman was distracted by an ill-fated Byrds reunion in 1973, while Atlantic Records [and Ahmet Ertegun in particular] were more interested in a CSNY reunion, which happened in 1974. What a shame. Manassas is better than anything he did with CSN [and sometimes Y].

Tony's Picks - Dave Alvin

I saw Dave Alvin live once, though I didn't know it at the time. It was the summer of 1983 at Red Rocks. He was in a band called the Blasters, and they were opening for Eric Clapton. I had no idea who these guys were. They played music that sounded like a throwback to the 1950s. They looked the part too – greased back hair and blues bowling shirts.  KILO never played their music, so I had no clue about them. There wasn’t much of a music press back then. Rolling Stone was more interested in stuff like Duran Duran and various and sundry New Wave shit. They were no help – I still no clue. The Blasters were an unknown quantity to me. I couldn't name a single song of theirs. They played for about thirty minutes. Their music wasn't bad, but I just wasn't interested. I was there to see Clapton, who had yet to enter his Adult Contemporary Hell phase. While I didn't rush out to buy any of their music, I hadn't forgotten about them either.

About three months ago I was searching iTunes for new music when I came upon a couple of albums by Dave Alvin [Eleven Eleven and From An Old Guitar: Rare and Unreleased Tracks]. I know him by his reputation for being a damn fine guitar player. I knew he wrote Long White Cadillac [Dwight Yoakam]. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but what I did find was pure roots music gold. Alvin once wrote on his Bandcamp page “There are two types of folk music: quiet folk music and loud folk music. I play both.” This is the best description I have found anywhere that describes the music that writers classify as ‘Americana.’ Alvin’s music incorporates elements of blues, R & B, rockabilly, country, jazz, gospel, Western swing, Tex-Mex and Cajun music. Gram Parsons had a different name for it – he called it Cosmic American Music. Whatever one chooses to call it, I call it my latest musical addiction. As addicts are wont to do, I’m always searching for my next fix. Right now, Dave Alvin is the next fix that will do for awhile.

A fellow Scorpio, Dave Alvin was born November 11, 1955 [“Eleven Eleven”] in Downey, California. He and his older brother Phil [two years older] used to frequent places like the Ash Grove and the Shrine Auditorium. They would see the likes of Big Joe Turner, T-Bone Walker, Buddy Guy, Lightnin' Hopkins, and Johnny "Guitar" Watson. Not only did the Alvin brothers watch these guys, they got to be friends and hang out with them. They learned roots music from the source. They and their friends formed The Blasters in 1979. They were rockabilly but a little bit more, including blues, R&B and country. Their music could easily have come from Sun Records. The Blasters were contemporaries of Dwight Yoakam, Los Lobos and X. In the early 1980s they weren’t in the picture as far as musical interests go. English hard rock and heavy metal and American blues rock were more my speed, but as they say, better late than never. All was not well in the band, though. Phil Alvin was of the mind of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Dave wrote most of the songs and wanted to go in a more singer/songwriter direction. The Blasters lasted three albums before they imploded. Phil got his way, and Dave went solo. Of the band, Dave Alvin said: 

“The Blasters were 5 guys who all grew up together loving old blues, rockabilly, etc. So we were/are all brothers and we all played together and fought like brothers. It wasn’t just Phil and I who were fighting. We all did. That emotional intensity between all five of us is why I think we were such a tight and, well, intense live band. I left for too many reasons to go into but that intensity that I just mentioned, got to be to too much to take on a daily basis.”

Eleven Eleven and From an Old Guitar were the hook. I figured that whatever he did in between the two albums had to be good as well. He recorded two albums with Phil - Common Ground: Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin Play and Sing the Songs of Big Bill Broonzy [2014] and Lost Time [2015] – and one with Jimmie Dale Gilmore - Downey to Lubbock [2018]. All three albums were done with the same band, The Guilty Men. The two albums with Phil were blues records. The album with Jimmie Dale Gilmore, the “hippie country singer” with a high lonesome voice, was a little of everything [blues, country, folk, rock]. It’s all good and I was “all in” – I had to get the rest. Not only is the choice of material first-rate, but I like the band. Alvin plays with another guitarist [Chris Miller] who plays slide. They trade solos much like two guitar players from a band of renown from Georgia. Phil Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore are great singers. Dave Alvin isn’t as good, but he doesn’t embarrass himself, either. He does that “half-singing, half-talking” thing the way Frank Zappa did.  Alvin and Jimmie Dale Gilmore are recording their second album together as I write this. It will be mine!

Dave Alvin’s music is fairly eclectic, and I can put it into three different “boxes”: blues rock, singer/songwriter, and musicologist/song interpreter.

Blues rock

Romeo's Escape [1987] – After Alvin left The Blasters, he joined The Knitters [recording Poor Little Critter on the Road], a country folk offshoot of X. In a “seemed like a good idea at the time” moment, he joined X, long enough to record See How We Are. But Alvin wanted to go his own way. This album was Alvin’s first as a singer, about which he said:

“I had never sung before, and I had to get drunk to do it. So when I listen to it, I hear a drunk caterwauling. Now, I'm more gentle about it. It's taken a lot of years to figure out how to sing.”

Here Alvin rearranged three Blasters songs [Long White Cadillac, Border Radio and Jubilee Train] and the one song he wrote for X [Fourth of July].

Blue Blvd [1991] & Museum of Heart [1993] – If Raymond Chandler wrote songs instead of novels, this is what they would sound like. The songs are very good, the musicianship is top-notch. I have only one complaint – the drums are too loud. If I was “king for a day” I would fix that and put them lower in the mix. Dave Alvin’s songs don’t need an arena rock sound.

Ashgrove [2004] – After two albums of acoustic music [King of California and Blackjack David], Alvin plugs back in and looks back. The album alternates between blues rock and country folk. The opening title song describes the long-closed LA nightclub where Dave Alvin and brother Phil would see their musical heroes – Big Joe Turner, Lightnin’ Hopkins, the Rev. Gary Davis and many more. Not only does he look back but he also describes his own life of being a musician and all it entails. The blues are spread out in Black Sky, Black Haired Girl, Sinful Daughter, and Out of Control. He leaves the blues of the Ashgrove and heads for Texas where he does a country tune, Rio Grande. Another country tune, Nine Volt Heart, is a nostalgic look back on the importance of the radio in peoples’ lives. The hushed, fingerpicked The Man In The Bed is a eulogy to his late father. Somewhere in Time co-written with Los Lobos’ David Hidalgo and Louis Pérez which appeared on their release The Ride, released a month before Alvin’s version here. Alvin’s band of minstrels, the Guilty Men [including Greg Leisz], are superb.

Singer/Songwriter

King of California [1994] – Alvin decided, after three records with an electric band, to cut his next batch of tunes acoustically. Relieved of the burden of having to compete with a loud band, Alvin found his voice, to which he credits producer Greg Leisz. As with Romeo’s Escape, Alvin decided to re-record several songs from his back catalog [Border Radio, Barn Burning, Fourth of July, Bus Station, Little Honey, Every Night About This Time]. These songs from loud electric bands [The Blasters, X] are done in a quiet, intimate setting. He added some well-chosen covers [East Texas Blues (Whistlin' Alex Moore), Mother Earth (Memphis Slim), and What Am I Worth (George Jones), a duet with Syd Straw].  The 25^th anniversary release also includes a duet with Katy Moffat (The Cuckoo), and a very fine cover of Merle Haggard’s Kern River. The addition of several covers goes a bit against the “singer/songwriter” thing, but it does add to a quitter, acoustic direction that accommodates Alvin’s limited singing range. He’s not a shouter like his brother Phil, but with these songs he doesn’t need to be. The quiet arrangements and his low baritone voice are a perfect fit.

Blackjack David [1998] – Blackjack David picks up where King of California left off. Like King of California,  Blackjack David  is produced by Greg Leisz and was recorded with pretty much the same team that created King of California. Unlike King of California, Blackjack David has only one cover – the title track. The two albums complement each other very well.

Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women [2009] - Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women [2009] was done with an all-female band [most of whom are from Austin], excellent musicians all. The most notable collaborator is Cindy Cashdollar on dobro and steel guitar. The drummer is Lisa Pankrantz, who replaced Don Heffington in the Guilty Men [making them the Guilty Ones] after he passed away. There are two fiddle players [Laurie Lewis and Amy Farris], one other guitarist [Nina Gerber], bassist Sarah Brown, and singer Christy McWilson. The band came together as a one-off to play San Francisco’s Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival, but Alvin like playing with these musicians so much he wanted to cut an album with them.  The music combined folk, blues, rock and roll, Western swing,  bluegrass, R&B, rockabilly and Cajun. They change the Blasters’ Marie Marie into a zydeco number. Boss of the Blues is a Western swing nod to Big Joe Turner, with whom Dave and Phil Alvin got to know and hang out as teenagers when they would see him at the LA nightclub the Ash Grove. Nana and Jimi is about Dave’s mom dropping him off at the LA Forum to see a Jimi Hendrix concert. Downey Girl is about Karen Carpenter. They even recorded Que Sera, Sera [!].

Musicologist/Song Interpreter

Public Domain [2000] – As the title suggests, these are traditional songs that have been around so long nobody knows who wrote them  Instead of note-for-note recreations that would be museum pieces, Dave Alvin does these old folk, country and blues tunes in a most nontraditional way.

West of the West [2006] - Unlike his collection of traditional folk and blues songs, this one is a tribute to California songwriters. I am unfamiliar with some of the songwriters - Kate Wolf, Kevin Blackie Farrell, Richard Berry, Jim Ringer. Conversely, everybody knows the others – Merle Haggard, Jerry Garcia, John Fogerty, Jackson Browne, Tom Waits, and Brian Wilson. He also gives Los Lobos a shout. Wait! A Beach Boys song? Yes, Surfer Girl. It has to be heard to be believed. Dave Alvin the musicologist gives us a California history lesson in song.

I put the two albums with Phil Alvin and the one album with Jimmie Dale Gilmore in the Musicologist/Song Interpreter box

Just when I thought I’d heard all of Dave Alvin there was to hear, along came The Third Mind. He read a biography of Miles Davis that detailed how he made such works like Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson. Miles gathered musicians in a studio, picked a key and a groove then had the musicians play for days while he recorded the whole thing. Once recorded, Miles and producer Teo Macero would edit the music into compositions. Alvin had the same idea. He said “I had a crazy idea and was looking for musicians who perhaps didn’t think it was so insane.”  Alvin had a safety net that Miles Davis didn’t have [or need]. He picked music that was associated with the 1960s underground from the likes of Michael Bloomfield, Fred Neil, Alice Coltrane, and Roky Erikson. The musicians didn’t rehearse. They decided on a key and started recording to see what happened. They sat in a circle, watched and listened to what each other played, and improvised, as much as one can within the confines of known songs. Hearing an improvised 16-minute take on Bloomfield’s East West is well worth the purchase. It’s a tuneful psychedelic freakout.

In 1980, a guy named Chris Desjardins [aka Chris D.] formed a punk band in Los Angeles [The Flesh Eaters]. This band had three members of The Blasters [Dave Alvin, drummer Bill Bateman, and sax player Steve Berlin] and two guys from X [bassist John Doe and percussionist D.J. Bonebrake]. They recorded one album - A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die [1981]. Band members came and went with regularity. Chris D. recorded six more Flesh Eaters albums between then and 2004. In 2007, the ”all-star” lineup reformed and played shows whenever schedules allowed. They went back into the studio in 2019 and created I Used to Be Pretty. Of the album’s eleven songs, there are two new songs, three covers, and the rest are new recordings of songs from the previous six albums. Alvin gets to be just the guitar player here. Alvin gets to rip your face off on Peter Green’s The Green Manalishi, and the 13-minute finale Ghost Cave Lament reminds me of those really long Doors songs like The End and When the Music’s Over.

What about that Blasters music that I ignored forty years ago? In 2002 Rhino Records compiled Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings. I didn’t feel like paying $55 for the set on Amazon, but I found two live recordings from the reunited original band - Trouble Bound [2002] and The Blasters Live: Going Home [2004]. Of the 33 songs between the two albums, only four of them appear on both. This is a comprehensive enough overview of the Blasters, and it’s live [even better].

Here's my recommended playlist:

The Green Manalishi [The Flesh Eaters, I Used to Be Pretty – 2019]

Downey to Lubbock [Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock – 2018]

World's in a Bad Condition [Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin, Lost Time – 2015]

Mister Kicks [Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin, Lost Time – 2015]

Silverlake [Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock – 2018]

Harlan County Line [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

Johnny Ace Is Dead [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

Dirty Nightgown [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

Who's Been Here [From an Old Guitar – 2020]

Highway 61 Revisited [From an Old Guitar – 2020]

Sonora's Death Row [West of the West – 2006]

Murrietta's Head [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

Mobile Blue [From an Old Guitar – 2020]

Signal Hill Blues [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

Downey Girl [Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women – 2009]

Marie Marie [Dave Alvin & the Guilty Women – 2009]

Beautiful City 'Cross the River [From an Old Guitar – 2020]

Never Trust a Woman [Eleven Eleven – 2011]

On the Way Downtown [From an Old Guitar – 2020]

Southern Flood Blues [Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin, Common Ground – 2014]

Wee Baby Blues [Dave Alvin & Phil Alvin, Lost Time – 2015]

Get Together [Dave Alvin & Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Downey to Lubbock – 2018]

Dry River [Blue Blvd. – 1991]

Andersonville [Blue Blvd. – 1991]

Thirty Dollar Room [Museum of Heart – 1993]

As She Slowly Turns to Leave [Museum of Heart – 1993]

Stranger in Town [Museum of Heart – 1993]

King of California [King of California – 1994]

Fourth of July [King of California – 1994]

Border Radio [King of California – 1994]

East Texas Blues [King of California – 1994]

Bus Station [King of California – 1994]

Mother Earth [King of California – 1994]

Blackjack David [Blackjack David - 1998]

California Snow [Blackjack David - 1998]

Evening Blues [Blackjack David - 1998]

1968 [Blackjack David - 1998]

Shenandoah [Public Domain: Songs From The Wild Land – 2000]

Out in California [The Best of the Hightone Years – 2008]

Ashgrove [Ashgrove – 2004]

Rio Grande [Ashgrove – 2004]

Black Sky [Ashgrove – 2004]

Black Haired Girl [Ashgrove – 2004]

Loser [West of the West – 2006]

Kern River [West of the West – 2006]

East West [The Third Mind, 2020]

Ghost Cave Lament [The Flesh Eaters, I Used to Be Pretty – 2019] 

David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name

David Crosby surpassed all expectations and lived until he was past eighty. He died on January 18^th at the age of 81. His passing was not unexpected, but it was sad, nonetheless. While it is tempting to write about his famously irascible personality and his long-time dalliance with substance abuse, I’ll pass. Others have written about those things – I don’t need to go there. Usually when a musician I like [usually a guitar player] passes, I’ll put together what I would consider a career-spanning playlist and talk about the “hits and misses.” Not so today. I want to address the single work which I think defines David Crosby – his album If I Could Only Remember My Name, released in February 1971.

By the fall of 1970, David Crosby was still thunderstruck by the sudden death [in a traffic accident] of his girlfriend Christine Hinton [Author’s note: she was the subject of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ song Christine’s Tune (Devil in Disguise)]. His means of coping with tragedy involved living on his sailboat in Sausalito, drinking lots of alcohol, doing hard drugs and creating music in his “safe space,” the recording studio. The recording studio in question was Wally Heider Studio in San Francisco, where CSNY did the bulk of recording 1970’s Déjà Vu. By this time Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young had gone their separate ways. Stills, Nash and Young had each recorded solo albums [Stephen Stills, Songs for Beginners, and After the Gold Rush respectively]. Each album had the same radio-friendly accessibility as Déjà Vu. The album David Crosby would make, the only album under his own name for eighteen years, would be a different story.

In that fall of 1970, Wally Heider’s was a busy place. The Grateful Dead were recording American Beauty. Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner was recording his first solo record, the science-fiction themed Blows Against the Empire. It featured musicians from the Grateful Dead, Santana and the Jefferson Airplane – when assembled it was the San Francisco musical collective known as the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra. These people were all friends, and these friends were all hitting their respective peaks of success at the same time. Not only did these musicians pool their resources for Blows Against the Empire, they also featured on If I Could Only Remember My Name. While Stills' and Nash's albums both produced enduring Top 40 hits ("Love the One You're With" and "Chicago," respectively) and After the Gold Rush became a “stone cold classic,” Crosby’s album would become, to borrow a phrase, a stoner classic.

David Crosby’s music had always been different. He would use alternate tuning to great effect on songs like Everybody’s Been Burned, Guinnevere, and Déjà Vu. The somewhat exotic qualities of each of these songs made the albums from whence they came a bit more interesting. With this album, Crosby got to indulge himself for an entire album. From start to finish, Jerry Garcia was the album’s midwife. He helped Crosby arrange and produce the record. Whether it was his transcendent guitar solos or his keening steel guitar, Jerry had a sense for what each song needed. This period saw Jerry Garcia at his absolute best as a musician and as a creator of music. Jerry was a true musical foil for David Crosby. Croz would later say this about Jerry - He’s a decent human being with a nice heart, and he’s funny and stoned and good and can play like God on a good day. Every time he sits down with a guitar and I sit down on a guitar with him, magic happens. Magic. Not bullshit. Magic.

As much as I don’t care for Graham Nash as a singer, songwriter, or as a person, I have to give the devil his due on this album. His harmonies with David Crosby throughout this album are exquisite. He and Crosby are consistently in a vocal sweet spot. This album is a masterclass in harmony singing. Sometimes the voices are Crosby and Nash in harmony. When Nash isn’t singing, Crosby harmonizes with himself, recording stacks of harmonies that are simply breathtaking. It isn’t for nothing that Crosby’s voice was considered one of the very best of his generation. Sometimes, Joni Mitchell’s voice is thrown in the mix. If that wasn’t enough, Grace Slick and Paul Kantner would also chime in. There are no vocal missteps on this album.

To call each of the individual tracks on this album “songs” is a bit of a misnomer. A “song” would imply lyrics with a verse- bridge [maybe]-chorus-verse structure. That structure does not apply here. It was this lack of song structure that would baffle some, including me. I didn’t “get it” until roughly fifteen years ago, then suddenly the light went on. Without sounding too cliché, this music is cosmic. It has a “CSNY meets the Dead” vibe. The opener Music Is Love is a folky communal hippie campfire singalong. Two of the songs have wordless vocals - Tamalpais High (At About 3) and Song with No Words (Tree With No Leaves). Imagine CSNY harmonies matched with acid-drenched music from the Grateful Dead. Laughing has one of those alternate tunings [DGDDAD] with lyrics written for George Harrison where Croz cautions Beatle George to take the Maharishi with a large grain of salt. Jerry Garcia’s otherworldly steel guitar takes the song into the stratosphere.

Cowboy Movie is my absolute favorite David Crosby song. It’s the only song on the album with any kind of narrative, but still no verse-chorus-verse structure. Clocking in at just over eight minutes, this “CSNY meets the Dead” epic is Crosby’s narration of the first breakup of CSNY, told as if it was an Old West story. The four members of the outlaw gang in the song were celebrating a train robbery [CSNY’s last tour before their implosion] that is complicated by a love triangle which began when an Indian girl named Raven appeared at their camp.  The characters of the story:

Fat Albert – the story’s narrator with a twelve-gauge shotgun (a 12-string guitar) – [Crosby]

Eli - the gang’s “fastest gunner [guitarist], kinda young and mean, from the South” [Stills]

The Duke – the gang’s dynamiter [Nash]

Young Billy – the gang’s sentry with a sixth sense of impending doom [Young]

Raven – the Indian girl [Rita Coolidge]

After Raven wandered into their camp, Eli and the Duke each wanted Raven for himself. Fat Albert cautions them about her, saying “she might be the law.” A fight broke out between Eli and the Duke, with Fat Albert being the only gang survivor. As he lay dying in Albuquerque, Fat Albert confirmed that Raven really was “the law.” If you know the history of CSNY, they really did bust up because Stills and Nash fought over Rita Coolidge. A clever bit of storytelling this one.

On Traction in the Rain [a song about loss], Croz puts the listener in a trance without a band, just his voice and acoustic guitar [with some autoharp for coloring]. He injects politics once with What Are Their Names. If Neil Young’s Ohio has a cousin, it’s this song:

I wonder who they are
The men who really run this land
And I wonder why they run it
With such a thoughtless hand
What are their names and on what streets do they live?
I’d like to ride right over this afternoon and give
Them a piece of my mind about peace for mankind
Peace is not an awful lot to ask

The album concludes with two short pieces, the first of which is a traditional French song – Orleans. Croz layered many vocal parts, all in French, with only two acoustic guitars for accompaniment. At less than two minutes, it’s over almost as soon as it begins. The final piece, I'd Swear There Was Somebody Here, is Croz singing a cappella. This was David Crosby experimenting with the studio’s echo booth. As Croz told it many years after the album’s creation:

I don't know where that came from. It was a hallucination. I've always been drawn to strange vocal works. I overdubbed six tracks a cappella, with echo. Later I was left with a persistent feeling it was about Christine Hinton, my girlfriend who was killed. I was very much in love with her, and she went away very suddenly. I was not equipped to deal with the loss. This piece was a sudden, improvised, overwhelming requiem.

If I Could Only Remember My Name can be described with many adjectives, all of which are equally valid – psychedelic, ethereal, hazy, hallucinatory, ghostly, dreamy, floating, and loosely coherent. David Crosby suffered for his art on this album. He wouldn’t pull out of his downward spiral until he was a guest of the Texas prison system. This album is like John Lennon’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band in that it is one an artist can make only once. David Crosby would later make records with Graham Nash that were listenable, but they were nowhere near as this creative, or interesting. In the last eight years of his life, David Crosby would finally rediscover his muse and make some of the best music of his life.

Revolver - Bigger and Better

On the occasion of the 50^th anniversary of its release in 2016, I wrote a piece about what I consider the Beatles best album, Revolver. Rather than rehash what I wrote before, you can read about it at this link: https://tonysmusicroom.blogspot.com/2011/05/beatles-revolver.html.  On October 28^th, Apple Records released the Revolver edition in the series of Beatles remixes. Creating new stereo mixes for Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the White Album, Abbey Road, and Let It Be was relatively easy for Giles Martin [original producer George Martin’s son] to produce because he had eight tracks to play with.  Not so Revolver…

The recording technology of 1966, compared to today, was rather primitive. Even though EMI’s studios at Abbey Road were then considered “state-of-the-art,” the Beatles were limited to recording with four tracks. Basic tracks [rhythm guitar, bass, drums] were recorded at the same time and mixed down to a single track. This allowed for the remaining three tracks to have vocals and overdubs. That works fine for mono recordings, which were fine for listening to music on devices that had only one speaker. Up until and including the White Album in 1968, the Beatles and their producer George Martin focused their energy on mono recordings. Stereo mixes were an afterthought. George Harrison had this to say about stereo – “When they invented stereo, I remember thinking ‘what do you want two speakers for?’ because it ruined the sound from our point of view…” When stereo mixes were created from the mono recordings, you would hear all the instruments in one stereo channel and the vocals in the other. This set-up becomes very frustrating if one of your stereo speakers blows out and you’re left with half a recording to listen to.

In 2009 the Beatles remastered their entire catalog. I thought these were the best these songs would sound and couldn’t be improved upon. The songs had a new shine to them. But in 2017 we started seeing 50^th anniversary remix releases beginning with Sgt. Pepper and culminating with Let It Be. Giles Martin explained the difference between remastering and remixing – “The best analogy I can give is like when you have a car and if you want it to look nice, you might polish it, you might have to do some body work – that’s remastering. If you’re remixing, you tear the car completely to pieces again, and you rebuild it, and then you polish it.”  Giles Martin took all of the multitracks for those albums, tore apart the songs and then reassembled them. Instead of the vocals being isolated on one side or another, they are front and center. One can hear the bass and the drums together as they should be. All of the sounds have been rebalanced to give the listener a feeling of being immersed in the music.

Revolver was recorded using four tracks. EMI Studios then had two four-track machines that allowed them to mix down groups of instruments into a single track and then “bounce” that single track onto another tape, giving the Beatles more tracks to work with. Giles Martin had loads of multitrack recordings to work with between Sgt. Pepper and Let It Be but taking the Revolver recordings apart and reassembling them would require a different method. It wasn’t until Peter Jackson reimagined the Beatles film Let It Be as The Beatles Get Back that it was possible to isolate different sounds on a single track. Jackson’s challenge to improve upon the sounds of the Get Back tapes, much of it being spoken words being drowned out by instruments. A team of audio engineers led by a guy named Emile de la Rey developed a machine-learning tool that would learn what each of the Beatles’ voices sound like and be able to separate those voices from other sounds on a given piece of tape. Giles Martin took that step further by having this tool learn what each of the instruments sounds like. This is how he could disassemble all of the album tracks, give the instruments and the voices their own space, and then reassembled them to rebalance all of the sounds when put back together.

The contents [Deluxe edition]
Disc 1 – The complete album remixed in stereo
Disc 2 – The complete album in mono
Disc 3 – An extended play of the single recorded during the Revolver sessions, Paperback Writer [A-Side] and Rain [B-side], presented here in remixed stereo and in the original mono mix
Discs 4 and 5 – Session material and demos

For those who don’t want to part with a lot of money, there is a two-disc version. The first disc is the same as the deluxe version. The second disc has the stereo remixes of Paperback Writer and Rain, and selections from the session materials presented in the deluxe version.

If you don’t want the two-disc version you can get a single CD that is just the 2022 stereo remixes.

The sound
The vocals are front and center in all the mixes. You no longer have to tolerate them being heard in only one ear. All of the instruments are crisper, sharper, and clearer. The drums get the most benefit from the remixing. They no longer sound like they were recorded inside a cardboard box. The sounds are louder and fuller, but they aren’t louder in the “loudness war” sense. There is still plenty of dynamism in the sounds that don’t overwhelm the listener.

Taxman – George Harrison’s rhythm guitar tone is nasty, befitting the subject matter. Paul McCartney has said that he felt his guitar solo from Taxman sounded too “polite.” Giles Martin fixed that.

Eleanor Rigby – String instruments had never been closed-mic’d as they were on this song, which gave the strings more “bite.”  Not only that, you can hear the violins and violas on one channel, while you can hear the cellos in the other.

Love You Too – George’s first mini raga was said to have just a sitar and electric guitar, but also an acoustic guitar. I could not hear the acoustic guitar until now [it’s in the right stereo channel]. The sitar is shimmering. The tabla used to be buried in the mix, but no longer.

Here, There and Everywhere – Still not one of my favorites, but those of whom love this song will be thrilled at how the harmonies sound.

She Said She Said – This one is the first bum note of the stereo remix. The drums are almost too loud on the remix. The original stereo mix sounded better to these ears precisely because the instruments were blended together. While the vocals are placed perfectly on the remix, there are some empty spaces on the left stereo channel where instruments should be. The mono remaster, however, is the gem here.

And Your Bird Can Sing -  Despite all the hooky pop songs that came before, this is a rock band at work with the sound to match [finally].

I Want To Tell You – George’s guitar starts in the right channel and slowly pans all the way to the left. At the end of the song as the riff is played for the third and final time, the guitar slowly pans right, all the way back to where it started.

Got To Get You Into My Life – The horn section is “beefier” – it has more punch.

Tomorrow Never Knows – John Lennon’s acid test. When I got the box set, this was the first song I listened to. This is the song that I felt would be the benchmark of whether the rest of the album would be a good remix because I figured it would be the hardest song to remix. I didn’t think it possible, but the new mix makes John’s meditation on the Tibetan Book of the Dead sound even more trippy. When it was recorded, all the various tape loops that made the sound effects were all rolling at the same time, with the Beatles themselves playing the mixing desk as if it were its own instrument, bringing up the sounds and lowering them in the mix as the tapes were rolling. It was, in effect, a performance which can never be duplicated. Given that all the sounds from the tapes loops were captured on the same track, I had no idea how Giles Martin would be able to separate them so they could be given their own individual spaces, but he did it. This is magical.

Rain – This song has always been best when heard in mono – until now. This mix is immaculate.

Paperback Writer – What I said about Taxman also applies here. This mix smokes!

Revelations from the sessions
Sessions previously released – Tomorrow Never Knows [Take 1], Got To Get You Into My Life (First Version) - Take 5, And Your Bird Can Sing (First Version - Take 2), Taxman (Take 11). I'm Only Sleeping (Rehearsal Fragment). These appeared on Anthology 2 [1996]. Yellow Submarine (Highlighted Sound Effects) appeared on the CD single for the song Real Love [1996].

Yellow Submarine (Songwriting Work Tape - Part 1)– Until now I thought Yellow Submarine was a ditty written by Paul McCartney for Ringo to sing. To my surprise, there is a home demo of John Lennon singing about the town where he was born that no one cared about. The melody for the finished song came from John. Paul added the Yellow Submarine chorus. This is just as much a Lennon-McCartney creation as A Day in the Life.

Rain – When the Beatles recorded Rain it was played very fast. This version is presented here, which sounds like they were amped on caffeine. They made the right choice is slowing down the recording so that it sounds a bit “murky.”

Eleanor Rigby – Take 2 is presented here. This is the session where the string players make their first attempt at recording George Martin’s score for Paul McCartney’s song. That music had not been heard until this take, at which point the score was still “dots on a page.”  There’s a two-minute discussion between George Martin and the musicians about how the score should be played.

Love You To (Unnumbered Rehearsal) – George Harrison alone with his sitar. For a novice, he was pretty good. The working title was Granny Smith.

I Want To Tell You (Speech And Take 4) – The working title of this was Laxton’s Superb. Apparently George liked apples.

Got To Get You Into My Life (Second Version) - Take 8 – Where the finished song had a horn section and a little guitar at the end, this take has both horns and guitars throughout. I like it - the guitars work – I don’t know why they were cut.

I like this deluxe edition of Revolver. I finally got the mono mixes, and they were every bit as good as other Beatlemaniacs had made them out to be. Rubber Soul could also use the stereo remix treatment given to Revolver. Should that happen, I’ll gladly part with more money, sucker that I am.

Tony's Picks - 2021

It has been a few years since I last wrote of my music picks for a given year. Back then, and the years preceding, I concentrated on new music released by people I like. This year I’m doing something different. Here I will discuss music that is new to me. Most of the folks I’ve listened to for many years haven’t released much new music lately. It was time to look for new stuff [new to me] to listen to, a good deal of which has been in circulation for some time.

Porcupine Tree/Steven Wilson – Before this year I had never heard any songs by either Steven Wilson or his band Porcupine Tree. I knew of him through his remix of the back catalogs of Black Sabbath, Jethro Tull, King Crimson and Yes [just to name a few]. I enjoyed his work on those albums, but I didn’t know where to start on his own music. A month ago I heard a new Porcupine Tree song called Harridan. It’s their first new work since 2009. That was as good a place as any to start, and since then I’ve done my usual obsessive musical deep dive. Wilson has an affinity for records made by progressive rock bands of the 1970s. His music [and that of his band Porcupine Tree] combines the sprawl of Yes and the technical execution and ferocity of Rush or Tool while avoiding the pomposity of Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Unlike Jon Anderson, who writes lyrics for the sole purpose of how the words sound rather than by what they mean, Wilson tells stories.  He’s as literate as Roger Waters, but not obsessive about subject matter like Waters. One hears more than a hint of King Crimson in some places and Pink Floyd in others. Albums that are in current heavy rotation include:

Porcupine Tree

In Absentia [2002]
Fear of a Blank Planet [2007]
The Incident [2009]

Steven Wilson solo

The Raven That Refused to Sing (And Other Stories) [2013]
Hand. Cannot. Erase. [2015]
To the Bone [2017]

Opeth – Opeth hails from Stockholm, Sweden. Singer/guitarist/main songwriter Mikael Åkerfeldt has been the lone constant in the band since their formation in 1989. What started out as a death metal band with the growling vocals that go with it, Opeth has evolved into what critics would label as “progressive metal.” At first a band with two guitars, bass and drums, they added acoustic guitars and keyboards [Mellotron, Hammond organ, piano] to the mix.  Imagine if you will, Metallica [only faster and with a better drummer] adding elements from Robin Trower, Deep Purple, King Crimson, and the folk leanings of Jethro Tull and you get the idea what Opeth have become.

Blackwater Park [2001]
Deliverance [2002] and Damnation [2003] – recorded together, released separately
Ghost Reveries [2005]
Watershed [2008]
Heritage [2011]
Pale Communion [2014]
Sorceress [2016]
In Cauda Venenum [2019]

Mastodon – This metal quartet from Atlanta came to me via my son Mark. He and his girlfriend were taking me to dinner after we put Carol in a memory care facility when I first heard them. I like what I heard. Their album Crack The Skye [2008] was the hook. Then I heard Emperor of Sand [2017] to confirm the offering. I have one complaint. Their drummer [Brann Dailor - one of three guys who sings] sounds too “poppy” for the music. He needs to sing less. However, he’s a fantastic drummer. They don’t consider themselves to be metal, but I beg to differ. There are too many skull-crushing riffs to be considered anything else. Their follow-up to Emperor of Sand is Hushed and Grim, released in October. They’ve worked with Brendan O'Brien,  Nick Raskulinecz, and David Bottrill, so you know they’re going to have great-sounding recordings.

Paul Weller – The Modfather. For as long as I can remember, I have been a sucker for good English pop music. Paul Weller’s music is in that category. He’s a musical chameleon. He produced punk-influenced power pop with The Jam and explored jazz and soul in The Style Council. His early solo work [Wild Wood (1993), Stanley Road (1995), and Heavy Soul (1997)] have that vibe that combines Low Spark of High Heeled Boys-era Traffic, acoustic folk and soul. His middle years were labeled “Dad rock”, whatever the hell that is. For the past ten years or so, his need to experiment has seen him develop what I call “modern psychedelic music”. It has that mid-1960s vibe but created with newer sounds [and some old ones, too].

22 Dreams [2008]
Wake Up the Nation [2010]
Sonik Kicks [2011]
Saturns Pattern [2015]
A Kind Revolution [2017]
On Sunset [2020]
Fat Pop [2021]

Dave Alvin – I saw him with the Blasters when they opened for Eric Clapton at Red Rocks in 1983. He’s not much of a singer [that’s his brother Phil’s department]. He more or less talks through his songs, which is good enough for me.  His guitar playing and songwriting more than make up for his limited vocal abilities [at least they’re in tune]. After he played with X and The Knitters, I lost track of him for a long time. I found two albums on iTunes - Eleven Eleven [2011] and Old Guitar: Rare and Unreleased Recordings [2020]. I was hooked thereafter and like the obsessive I am, I have most of the rest.

Adele – She’s a pretty English girl who sings sad songs, and she does it well. Carol liked Adele. It has been a sad year, so I was more than ready to hear sad songs. Before this year I could name three songs [Rolling in the Deep, Hello, and Skyfall]. Then I heard Easy On Me – I’m in love.

Along the way, I filled in the holes of my collections of Joe Bonamassa, Leslie West, Boz Scaggs, Parliament and Funkadelic, John Prine, Little Feat, John Hiatt, Jimmy Cliff, Johnny Winter, Rory Gallagher, and Gary Moore.