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.

Robin Trower - Bridge of Sighs

I made the trip to Warner Robins last week to do yet another software test. One of the guys I was working with (he’s in his 30s) asked me if I listen to anything whenever make the drive up here from Florida. I told him that sometimes I listen only to podcasts (to save my hearing), sometimes I listen to music. I told him this time I had Alice in Chains on blast for most of the trip. He voiced his approval. I told him when I tired of Alice then I played Robin Trower’s Bridge of Sighs. He said he wasn't familiar with that because it's a little before his time. I told him “it's a little before mine too, because the album came out fifty years ago.” From that exchange a blog entry is born.

The 1970s had its share of great guitarists – Jeff Beck. Jimmy Page, Rory Gallagher, Ritchie Blackmore, Michael Schenker, Dickey Betts, David Gilmour – just to name a few. One guitarist who usually isn’t mentioned as often as these guys is Robin Trower. People first heard of him as the guitarist for Procol Harum. The only problem with being the guitarist in that band is that it was very keyboard centric. There’s not much room for a guitarist in a band with a piano AND a Hammond organ. But somehow, he managed some ‘look at me!” moments:

• Repent Walpurgis [Procol Harum, 1967]
• Cerdes (Outside the Gates Of) [Procol Harum, 1967]
• The Devil Came From Kansas [A Salty Dog, 1969]
• Long Gone Geek [B-side of A Salty Dog, 1969]
• Crucifiction Land [A Salty Dog, 1969]
• Whisky Train [Home, 1970]
• Whaling Stories [Home, 1970]
• Simple Sister [Broken Barricades, 1971]
• Memorial Drive [Broken Barricades, 1971]
• Song For A Dreamer [Broken Barricades, 1971] – Robin Trower’s tribute to Jimi Hendrix. The Hendrix/Trower comparisons start here.
• Poor Mohammed [Broken Barricades, 1971].

By the time of Broken Barricades [1971], Trower had more ideas than could fit on a Procol Harum album, so he went solo. At first he had a group named Jude, but nothing ever became of it. However, the bass player was a Scot named Jimmy Dewar who, not only was he pretty good on the bass, could sing like Paul Rodgers. Having Jimmy Dewar as his singer was a masterstroke. Trower sang a few songs with Procol Harum. As a vocalist, Trower is an excellent guitarist. With the addition of drummer Reg Isidore, a power trio was born. They released their debut album, Twice Removed From Yesterday, in 1973. It didn’t sell much, but it did provide the blueprint for what was to come next. First, he cracked the code of the Hendrix sound. Second, the power trio format was going to work for him. He got as far from Procol Harum’s sound as he could. He had a career. He was no longer somebody's sideman.

Trower cited Scottie Moore, Albert King, B.B. King and Jimi Hendrix as his primary influences, but he especially felt a connection with Jimi Hendrix. He saw one of Hendrix’s last shows in 1970 and was transfixed by what he saw. After Hendrix’s death Trower wrote Song for a Dreamer, which appeared on Broken Barricades (1971). Trower fell in love with the Fender Stratocaster after he played one of Martin Barre’s Strats during a soundcheck. Armed with a Strat, a Univibe pedal and a wah-wah, Trower had the tools to get a close approximation of Hendrix’s sound.

Day of the Eagle has Trower and company storming out the gate. This high-energy opener bears a striking resemblance to Hendrix’s Crosstown Traffic (from Electric Ladyland). It's not a carbon copy of the Hendrix song, but if you do a side-by-side comparison the resemblance is unmistakable.

Next is the title track. Bridge of Sighs put Trower on the proverbial map, and for good reason. Opeth did an excellent cover of the song on their album Watershed (2008). This shows how one can capture the spirit of Hendrix without slavishly copying him. Opening with some spaced-out chimes that signal to the listener that a cosmic trip is about to begin, the echo-drenched riff is trance-inducing and gloomy. This is psychedelic blues in all its glory. The riff is relentless, giving way to a solo that even I could play it. Sometimes it’s the most simple of things that works the best. As Trower solos, a “cold wind blowing” is added, which serves to link to the next song, In This Place, without breaking the mood. In This Place is a slow blues like the Bridge of Sighs, just as moody, twangy, slightly jazzy, and slightly psychedelic. Both songs are of a piece, such that I usually can't hear one without the other.

Of the eight songs on Bridge of Sighs, I like seven of them. To these ears, the only clunker of the bunch is The Fool and Me, which closes Side One (if you're listening to vinyl). While it quickens the pace after the two songs that preceded it, I don't think it works. Others can and will disagree, but this song just doesn't do it for me. Here Trower grabbed an idea for a solo and ran it into the ground. He just wouldn't let go, and the sound is just plain irritating. Maybe if Trower played a different solo I could like it, but alas he didn't.

Kicking off Side Two is Too Rolling Stoned. Here is proof that white English people can be funky. A relentless tour de force (which still remains in Trower’s setlists to this day), Trower gives the wah-wah quite a workout. Halfway through, the song comes almost to a halt and changes tempo and gives us an extended instrumental fadeout. It sounds like two songs are smashed together, but that’s ok – it works. Trower said he had the crew in the studio to clap along, giving the song a party atmosphere (like Hendrix’s Voodoo Chile).

About to Begin is another slow one. Like the title track, Trower demonstrates that sometimes “less is more.” The guitar is delicate and tasteful. A waltz, the song is both haunting and dreamy, like a lullaby. Producer Matthew Fisher, like Trower an alum of Procol Harum (the organ on A Whiter Shade of Pale is his), adds a celestial bit of Hammond to the song.

Lady Love is the most commercial sounding song on the album (complete with a little cowbell). It's also the shortest. Little Bit of Sympathy closes the album just as strongly as Day of the Eagle opened it.

A couple of months ago, Chrysalis released a Bridge of Sighs 50th anniversary package. It includes a remaster of the album (which is a slight improvement on the 2007 remaster), another disc with extended versions of the original, instrumental versions of all the songs, outtakes and alternate takes, and a 10-song set recorded live in May 1974 at the Record Plant in Sausalito. There were no extra songs lying “in the can.” These are nice to have if you're a Robin Trower obsessive, but not essential. The treasure lies in the fourth disc, which is the album mixed in Dolby Atmos, DTS 5.1, and LCPM 24-bit stereo. These mixes sound better than the remaster. 

I hope next year Chrysalis gives Bridge of Sighs’ follow-up, For Earth Below, the same treatment as was done here. Not quite as good as Bridge of Sighs, For Earth Below is almost a carbon copy, and that's not a bad thing.

Tony's Picks - Westerns

I like movies. I like them a lot. I especially like war movies, film noir, and Westerns. If I was to list every Western that I like I would never be able to finish this. These are the Western movies that immediately come to mind as “must see.” Ask me in a month and the list might change [slightly]...

The Wild Bunch [1969] – This is Sam Peckinpah’s masterpiece. Up until the making of this film, no Western had ever been this violent or this bloody. Peckinpah’s vision was to have his audience feel what it was like to be shot. Until then, people got shot, people fell down, and they didn’t bleed very much. One didn’t see many bullet holes in people. Peckinpah’s use of slow motion amplified the effect of what bullets can do to “soft pudgies” once they made impact with human flesh. This is the story of Pike Bishop [William Holden] and his gang of aging outlaws [Ernest Borgnine, Warren Oates, Ben Johnson] looking to make one last big score because they are all looking at the “end of the line.” Deke Thornton [Robert Ryan] is a former member of Bishop’s gang who is “hired” by a railroad boss [under the threat of going back to prison] to kill Pike and his gang. You know that when Bishop utters the line “if they move, kill ‘em”, that it’s “game on.” This movie features several Oscar winners [past and future] – William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Edmund O’Brien, and Ben Johnson. Warren Oates and Robert Ryan weren’t too shabby either. The Wild Bunch is my favorite Western.

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [1969] – Unlike The Wild Bunch, this movie with Paul Newman and Robert Redford is a more light-hearted affair, but it’s just as serious. The theme is similar – two aging outlaws are facing an uncertain future in fast-changing times. Like Pike Bishop and his gang, they too are staring the end of the line dead in the face. After robbing one train too many, Butch and Sundance [together with Katherine Ross] are pursued all the way to Bolivia by a dream team of lawmen [hired by a railroad boss – sound familiar?], whose only mission is to catch and kill Butch and Sundance. This is one of those movies that if I’m channel surfing and come upon this movie, the surfing stops, no matter how many times I’ve seen it. “Who are those guys?”

The Searchers [1956] – John Wayne didn’t think much of Clint Eastwood’s anti-hero Western characters, and yet Ethan Edwards is as big an anti-hero as any portrayed by Eastwood. This is by far [it isn’t even close] the Duke’s best performance. John Ford once remarked “I didn’t know the sonofabitch could act.” Ethan Edwards is a Civil War vet [a Confederate] for whom the war never ended. He would never swear loyalty to the Union. He liked fighting so much that he went to Mexico to fight the French. A racist, unreconstructed rebel, he also thinks the only good Indian is a dead Indian. When Edward’s brother, his sister-in-law and nephew are killed and their daughters Lucy and Debbie are kidnapped by Comanches, Edwards [with his nephew Martin Hawley (Jeffrey Hunter)] goes in search of his nieces. The search takes five years, during which time Lucy is found by dead [and presumably raped by said Comanches], further enraging Edwards. Edwards mutilates the Comanche corpses he finds, gouging out their eyes so their spirits would wander forever in the afterlife. Edwards and Hawley catch up to Debbie [a sixteen-year-old Natalie Wood], who insisted she wanted to remain with her Comanche captors. Edwards thought “better dead than red” and tried to kill Debbie. But ultimately, Edwards and Hawley bring her “home.” The last scene is a poignant one. There seems to be an unspoken agreement between Edwards and all the other characters that although his dirty job is done, he has no place in a world of domesticity. A door literally closes while Edwards walks away.

Unforgiven [1992] – As great Westerns go, this movie deserves every bit of praise showered upon it. Clint Eastwood had the script of this movie in his stack of stuff for years, but he waited until he was old enough to play Will Munny. Character development is deep in this film. The Munny character is a sober, repentant widower with two small children and a drunken, violent outlaw past. Gene Hackman’s sheriff Little Bill Daggett is especially loathsome after he refuses to jail a cowboy who slashed a prostitute’s face. Richard Harris’s “English Bob” is a braggart who wastes no opportunity to trash America and has the conceit to travel with his own biographer. One does not feel sorry for English Bob when Little Bill beats the shit out of him for not surrendering his firearms. The movie’s payoff comes when Munny, after hearing that his partner Ned Logan [Morgan Freeman] is killed by Little Bill, starts to drink. Once he takes that first sip, there’s an “oh shit!” moment and you know that Munny is about to flip a switch.

High Plains Drifter [1973] – Carol and I always referred to this movie as the “Paint the Town Red” movie. There is a bit of the supernatural at play when a stranger with no name enters the mining town of Lago. He’s able to gun down three gunfighters without getting as much as a scratch. He manages to avoid getting shot when a prostitute tries to kill him while he’s taking a bath. He has dreams of the local sheriff and the night he was whipped to death by outlaws while the townspeople of Lago did nothing and watched it happen. Is the stranger the ghost of the dead sheriff? It’s never said, but it’s implied. When the outlaws who killed the town sheriff  are released from prison and return to Lago [by which time all the buildings are painted red] to settle old scores, they kill several of the townspeople, and take the rest to the saloon. The town [which, unknown to everyone, the stranger renamed “Hell”] is set on fire. One by one, the outlaws end up dead. It seemed as if he was both nowhere and everywhere at the same time. The next day, a tombstone with the dead sheriff’s name is placed at his hitherto unmarked grave. The dwarf who made it says he never caught the stranger’s name, but the stranger tells him he already knows it. He rides off into the shimmering desert heat and vanishes. Clint Eastwood made a similar movie [Pale Rider] in 1985. Only in this movie, the stranger is a preacher, but he’s really one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse [Death].

The Outlaw Josey Wales [1976] – Josey Wales [Clint Eastwood] is a Missouri farmer whose home is attacked by pro-Union Kansas militia. They kill his wife and son and burn his house down. Wales joins a Confederate guerilla band. When the Civil War ends, Wales’ band of guerillas are offered amnesty if they surrender and swear loyalty to the Union. Wales refuses. When his band surrenders, they’re quickly massacred, while Wales escapes and becomes a fugitive. Wales is hunted by the Kansas militiamen men and bounty hunters alike. His mission is to kill those who killed his family before they can kill him. When confronted by a bounty hunter we hear the best line of the movie – “Dyin’ ain’t much of a livin’, boy.” When he’s identified by a snake oil salesman [“my God, it’s Josey Wales!”], Wales wastes little time in killing a group of Union soldiers who are dumbstruck by the sight of him [“Are you gonna pull those pistols or whistle Dixie?”]. There’s a predictable but satisfying climax when Wales and the militia commander finally meet. Chief Dan George provides the necessary comic relief to keep things from getting too serious.

Bad Day at Black Rock [1955] – Five Academy Award winners – Spencer Tracy, Ernest Borgnine, Dean Jagger, Walter Brennan, and Lee Marvin. Robert Ryan brings his usual intensity to a cast that [with the exception of Spencer Tracy] has a very dark secret to hide. This film is essentially a crime drama but is considered a neo-Western. Set in a California desert town after the end of World War II, one-armed Spencer Tracy travels to the town of Black Rock, where a train hadn’t stopped in over four years. The townspeople are suspicious of the stranger in their midst and act accordingly. Tracy’s mission – to give a medal awarded to the son of a man named Komoko, but Komoko is dead [the “very dark secret”]. One year before The Searchers, racism is addressed head on.

No Country for Old Men [2007] – Joel and Ethan Coen make a lot of off-the-wall movies, but this neo-Western [their first] isn’t one of them. Set in West Texas, this is a story about what NOT to do if you see a drug deal gone bad. Leave the investigating to the professionals. If you don’t, a psychopathic hitman with a birth control haircut will come after you and probably kill you for inconveniencing him. This psychopath will be like Robocop. If he gets hurt, he’ll shake it off like a minor inconvenience and keep coming for you. He’ll kill you, he’ll kill your wife, and he’ll kill anybody who tries to help you. Running away to Mexico won’t help you. If you’re a county sheriff and this happens in your jurisdiction, take one look at this carnage and ride off into the sunset of retirement.

Hell or High Water [2016] – Like No Country for Old Men, this is another neo-Western set in West Texas. The film is an advertisement for avoiding reverse mortgages. A family is about to lose its ranch due to foreclosure. Toby Howard [Chris Pine] and his ex-con brother Tanner [Ben Foster] have other ideas. To save their ranch, they rob banks all over West Texas. They launder their stolen money through an Indian casino in Oklahoma. They have the casino convert their winnings into a check made out to the bank that has the reverse mortgage on the ranch, making the money untraceable. Marcus Hamilton [Jeff Bridges] and Alberto Parker [Gil Birmingham] are the two Texas Rangers who are after the Howard brothers. Hamilton, who is constantly making Indian jokes at Parker’s expense, is close to retirement. But he and Parker figure out how Howards’ methods and their next target. Margaret Bowman steals the show with her portrayal as a very salty waitress in a restaurant that serves only T-bone steaks. Parker doesn’t survive the movie, nor does Tanner Howard. Toby Howard pays off the reverse mortgage and puts the ranch into a trust for his two sons. The ranch has oil under it, and it makes the trust a fortune. Ironically, Toby uses the same bank that tried to screw his mother out of the ranch to administer the trust, and the huge monthly checks that are deposited into it. Afraid to lose Toby’s business, the bank doesn’t cooperate with law enforcement to solve the Howards’ crimes, so they get away with it.

Hud [1963] – If a honey badger took human form, it would be Paul Newman’s Hud. He didn’t give a shit about anybody except himself. In his mind, rules that he doesn’t like don’t apply to him. He’ll screw anything that walks or crawls, especially if they’re already married. The Bannons have a housekeeper named Alma [Patricia Neal]. Hud’s nephew Lonnie also lives at the Bannon house. He practically worships his uncle Hud. Hud’s father Homer Bannon [Melvin Douglas] doesn’t like him very much. He blames Hud for his older brother’s death. Hud is highly annoyed with his father. Hud wants to lease parts of the ranch to oilmen to bring some much-needed cashflow into the ranch, but Homer wants nothing to do with oil. It’s a constant struggle between a man’s disappointment with his son, and a son’s constant anger at his father because Homer hates him. Things come to a head when their entire cattle herd has to be slaughtered because some of the cattle purchased by Homer have foot-in-mouth disease. A drunken Hud tries to rape Alma [saved by Lonnie]. Homer dies shortly thereafter, Alma leaves the Bannons for parts unknown, and Lonnie gets over his Hud hero worship. Lonnie leaves the Bannon ranch. One assumes Hud leases the ranch to the oilmen but that is never revealed.

The Long Riders [1980] – Four sets of brother actors [David, Keith and Robert Carradine, James and Stacy Keach, Dennis and Randy Quaid, Christopher and Nicholas Guest] star in this excellent movie from director Walter Hill that tells the story of the James-Younger Gang. You get the sense of the close-knit community of family, neighbors, and strangers who just hate banks that will go the extra mile to protect their local folk heroes. The outlaws are presented as family men. Jesse James has a moral code, booting Ed Miller from the gang after he kills a bank teller in a robbery. Before their last job, he got his nose out of joint because the rest of his gang were entertained at a brothel while he stayed at home with his wife. The Pinkertons who are trying to apprehend them were depicted as trigger-happy incompetents. The real Belle Starr was an outlaw, but Hill turns her into a prostitute. There’s a great knife fight between Cole Younger and Cherokee Sam Starr.[Younger wins]. The climax is an ambush scene in Northfield, Minnesota that pays homage to Sam Peckinpah. He would be proud. The post-Northfield downward spiral is completed after Bob Ford shoots Jesse James in the back. Frank James surrenders to the Pinkertons to bury his brother. Fade to black…As a bonus, Ry Cooder created a superb soundtrack which I highly recommend.

The Shootist [1976] – I have a soft spot for this one because it’s John Wayne’s last movie, and it’s a good one. It’s not great, but it’s good. J.B. Books is an ageing gunfighter who has many kills to his credit. He lives by a simple creed - “I won’t be wronged, I won’t be insulted, I won’t be laid-a-hand on. I don’t do these things to other people and I require the same of them.” It’s the beginning of the twentieth century [January 1901]. He’s dying and wants to see a doctor he knows [James Stewart]  in Carson City, Nevada for a second opinion. The doctor confirms Books’ original diagnosis. He gives him six weeks, maybe two months left to live, and that it will be painful at the very end. Knowing this, Books plans ahead for his own death. He doesn’t want to die a bedridden, agonizing death – he wants to go out in a blaze of glory. Until that time comes, he rents a room from Bond Rogers [Lauren Bacall]. Her impressionable son Gillom [Ron Howard] takes a liking to Books, who teaches him how to shoot. Meanwhile, two crooks try to kill him so they could gain notoriety for being the guys who killed J.B. Books [he kills them instead]. An old flame tries to marry Books, only for him to find out she wants stories of his exploits so she can “be somebody.” After ordering his own tombstone from the local undertaker [John Carradine], he invites three men to have a drink with him at the local saloon on January 29th, his birthday. One man [Richard Boone] has a longtime grudge against him. The other two [Hugh O’Brian and Bill McKinney] are eager to earn fame by killing the famous gunfighter. In the end, Books and his guests have their shootout. Books’ “guests” all die, Books is shot in the back by the bartender and subsequently dies, and Gillom kills the bartender. Given that John Wayne died of cancer three years after this movie, one can’t help but think this film is art imitating real life. The Duke wasn’t dying yet, but The Shootist is a very poignant elegy.

Trilogies

Fort Apache [1948] / She Wore a Yellow Ribbon [1949] / Rio Grande [1950] - John Ford’s Cavalry Trilogy. If you don’t like these, you’re unAmerican.

A Fistful of Dollars [1964] / For a Few Dollars More [1965] / The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly [1966] – What is understood need not be discussed. Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Western trilogy that made Clint Eastwood a star. Any questions?

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.

The Beatles - Tony's Top 25

It’s all my sister’s fault. She gave me my first records. They were all Beatles records. When I was a little kid I listened to them all the time - Rubber Soul, A Hard Day’s Night, Meet the Beatles, Beatles ’65, and Yesterday and Today. She also gave me a 45 [more on that later]. All of that music was from their “mop top” era. I remember when the Beatles were still together. On the night we got our first dog way back in 1966, Help! was on TV. I don’t remember what it was about, I didn’t watch it [I wanted to play with the dog]. I just remember it being on TV and my sister watching it. I didn’t find out until many years later that George was her favorite. When I was old enough to buy my own records with my own money, I realized I was a “John” guy. His songs were the weird ones. They were the most interesting songs and they sounded cool on headphones. He was the sarcastic one with the acerbic wit. It wasn’t until many years later that he was also a bit of an asshole. Despite all of his foibles, I’m still a “John” guy. I remember where I was at 1030pm on December 8, 1980. It was a very bad day. The next day wasn’t any better. On the flipside, when Dana Carvey was on Saturday Night Live he used to do impressions of Paul McCartney. He often repeated the phrase [in his best Liverpudlian accent] “Inka Dinka Doo.” It doesn’t mean a damn thing, but it conveyed the feeling that Paul was a bit of a lightweight. He was the guy who wrote all the “silly love songs.” He always came across as a teacher’s pet. He was a bit too cutesy, which meant he was a bit annoying. But he got better… He’s still annoying, but he did write Back in the USSR and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, so he’s got something going for him. Ringo was, well, Ringo. He was the most likeable one [he still is].

Ok, here’s my Top 25 [25+ 1 honorable mention]

Honorable Mention - I Want You [She's So Heavy] [Abbey Road, 1969]

25. A Hard Day’s Night [A Hard Day’s Night, 1964] - the Big Bang - Beatlemania starts here

24. All My Loving [With the Beatles, 1963] - The first song from February 9, 1964 [Ed Sullivan]. If I can play John's rhythm part, I'll die happy

23. I Saw Her Standing There [B-side, 1963]

22. Hey Bulldog [Yellow Submarine, 1969]

21. Old Brown Shoe [B-side, 1969]

20. Let It Be [Single, 1970] - this one and Get Back are a bit repetitive, but I like them anyway

19. Get Back [Single, 1969]

18. Back in the USSR [The Beatles, 1968]

17. I’ve Got a Feeling [Let It Be, 1970] - this one is from the Apple rooftop live

16. Yer Blues [The Beatles, 1968]

15. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) [Rubber Soul, 1965]

14. Taxman [Revolver, 1966]

13. Rain [B-side, 1966]

12. Tomorrow Never Knows [Revolver, 1966]

11. Revolution [B-side, 1968]

10. While My Guitar Gently Weeps [The Beatles, 1968]

9. Come Together [Abbey Road, 1969]

8. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band/With a Little Help From My Friends [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967] - I can never hear one without the other, so I count these as one song...

7. Nowhere Man [Rubber Soul, 1965]

6. Dear Prudence [The Beatles, 1968] - the best song on the White Album

5. Here Comes the Sun [Abbey Road, 1969]

4. A Day in the Life [Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, 1967]

3. Strawberry Fields Forever [Magical Mystery Tour, 1967]

2. I Am the Walrus [Magical Mystery Tour, 1967]

1. Help! [Help!, 1965] – This is the aforementioned first 45. This was my favorite song the first time I heard it over 50 years ago. It still is…

 

R.E.M. - An appreciation...

I didn’t get R.E.M. in the Eighties. Their music was something you heard on college radio, and I never listened to college radio. College radio program directors and I didn’t remotely have the same musical tastes. I was into classic rock, hard rock, heavy metal, and I began a love affair with the blues. I liked The Police, Pretenders, U2, and Peter Gabriel. I liked the Clash, and I liked English pop [there were quite a few one-hit wonders therein]. R.E.M. was one of those bands that was “political” with a small “p.” They weren’t partisan per se, but whatever political cause there was [environmentalism, what is now called “social justice,” gun control, abortion rights, Tibet, etc], you could count on R.E.M. [and singer Michael Stipe specifically] to lend their voices to the chorus. I wasn’t interested. I wanted to kill Communists. R.E.M. were critical darlings. Rolling Stone loved them. That fact alone made them suspect in my eyes. But the passage of forty years has a way of changing things. R.E.M. is but a memory, Rolling Stone discredited themselves with false rape story, and the Evil Empire is long gone. The issues R.E.M. were concerned with are still around, but they aren’t around to rub your face in them. Their music, which I avoided then, sounds a lot better today. Their music has endured, which is as it should be. I like it now.

Here it is thirteen years since the band called it a day, and only now can I appreciate the music. When Carol was in her final illness I became [and still am] ever more nostalgic for that time when we were the happiest – the 1980s. Given the sorry state of music these days, R.E.M.’s music sounds pretty damn good. What was the music’s charm? Spin Magazine described them as a cross between the Velvet Underground and the Byrds. Guitarist Peter Buck was a guitar anti-hero who eschewed guitar solos. His jangly Rickenbacker sound was the hook. Bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry were a rock-solid rhythm section. Singer Michael Stipe was the wildcard. One never knew quite what he was singing about. Perhaps he didn’t either. Maybe the hardcore faithful knew, but I grew up on I Am the Walrus and other John Lennon songs about nothing. What do I know? Stipe’s lyrics were oftentimes more than a bit obtuse. To compound that problem, he couldn’t enunciate to save his life. But somehow it worked. They had three distinctive phases – the college rock radio days when they were on an indie label [I.R.S. 1983-87], alt-rock superstardom after they moved to Warner Brothers [1988-96], and their final “three-legged dog” phase [Michael Stipe’s description] after Bill Berry retired from music [1997-2011].

Their fifteen studio albums can be neatly broken into each of the band’s phases [five each]. I know they didn’t plan it that way, that’s just how things worked out. Although the band were ubiquitous during their alt-rock superstardom [thank you, MTV], I find that my favorite R.E.M. came from their college radio days. It’s a cliché to like a band’s music before they move to a major label and hit the big time, but in this case it happens to ring true. I can skip their first two albums – Murmur [1983] and Reckoning [1984]. The songs were ok – the production was a bit thin. They hit musical paydirt with their next three albums – Fables of the Reconstruction [1985], Lifes Rich Pageant [1986], and Document [1987]. Fables sounds a bit hazy [as if that was a bad thing – it’s not], but Lifes Rich Pageant and Document are clear and punchy. One glance at my playlist below and you’ll know these are my favorite R.E.M. albums.

After Document, they signed with Warner Brothers. Green [1988] didn’t do anything for me – it still doesn’t. It hasn’t aged well. But the two albums that came next have aged very well. While U2, a band to whom R.E.M. was often compared, decided to become loud, detached rock stars with Achtung Baby, R.E.M. went the other way. After being on the road to support Green, they unplugged and made two rustic, mostly acoustic albums [Out of Time (1991) and Automatic for the People (1992)]. Where there were once loud guitars and drums, there were acoustic guitars, mandolins, pianos, and bouzoukis. They didn’t tour to support them. They didn’t need to. MTV was in full flight, still showing music videos, of which R.E.M.’s were in heavy rotation. These albums sold by the boatload. After five years of being off the road, the band decided to plug in again. This band was a different animal than the one that last toured five years previously. The Rickenbackers were out, to be replaced with Gibsons and Fenders, all solid-body guitars. There were some good songs [which I like very much] from Monster [1994] and New Adventures in Hi-Fi [1996], but their jangly calling card was missing. It was as if they were trying too hard to justify the megabucks they were making at Warner Brothers. Or maybe they were trying something different for the sake of being different, and maybe that was the point. I guess if you want to grow artistically you have to try different things.

Peter Buck used to tell interviewers that his vision of the band ending was to play a show on New Year’s Eve 1999, and when the clock struck midnight the band would break up. I confess that sounds like a cool way to end a band. However, it didn’t turn out that way. Bill Berry had a brain aneurysm on stage in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1995. He made a complete recovery, but it made him rethink his priorities. In 1997 he decided he didn’t want to be in the music business anymore. There were other things in life he wanted to do. He showed up to the band’s very first session for their next album [Up, 1998], gave them the bad news, and left. The remaining three guys didn’t want to stop, but soon they realized the extent of the hole created by Berry’s absence. He wasn’t just “the drummer.” He was a songwriter, and his lack of songwriting going forward upset the balance. It showed in the music. Exit Bill Berry, enter the drum machines, tape loops and synthesizers. These elements might work for some, but not for R.E.M. Electronic music was not their thing. Up showed they could do it, but it doesn’t work for an entire album. Three good songs an album doesn’t make. Reveal [2001] upped the electronic quotient with uninspiring results. There were no catchy hooks and most of the songs sounded the same. It was pretty dull. There are maybe four good songs, but that’s it. Even worse was Around the Sun [2004]. There’s one good song – Final Straw. Why? It’s an acoustic song with the electronics kept to a minimum.

I found a very good article about the last third of R.E.M.’s career by freelance author Brady Gerber. Here he writes:

“R.E.M.’s final chapter is the story of how a family publicly tried to carry on after losing one of its own. In that sense, these last albums loosely and unintentionally play out as different stages of real-life grief. The coldness of Up is the sound of shock and denial, with drum machines replacing the human Berry. Reveal, touted as the “happy” record upon its release, is full of aimless and muted anger, but in that Brian Wilson way of feeling helpless and bitter on a beautiful day. Around the Sun, having nothing to say, awkwardly tries to bargain with new ideas…”

Damn, I wish I could write that well. Despite the doom of the first three albums post-Berry, the R.E.M. story has a happy ending. The fourth album of the period, Accelerate [2008] is a damn good album. It’s the album that Monster and New Adventures in Hi-Fi should have been. The synths were gone, the guitars were back, and they were loud. Michael Stipe enunciated! There’s an energy that was missing from Up, Reveal, and Around the Sun. This quality carried over to Collapse Into Now [2011]. The band found their mojo again, and having done so, they thought it was a good time to put R.E.M. to bed. One has to admire a band for working through a rough patch, rediscovering why they became beloved by many, and having the sense to quit while they were ahead. Not only did retire somewhat gracefully, they’re still friends today.

Tony’s R.E.M. playlist
Fall On Me [Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986]
The One I Love [Document, 1987]
Cuyahoga [Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986]
Swan Swan H [Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986]
Driver 8 [Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985]
Feeling Gravitys Pull [Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985]
Maps and Legends [Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985]
Old Man Kensey [Fables of the Reconstruction, 1985]
Begin the Begin [Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986]
King of Birds [Document, 1987]
Oddfellows Local 151 [Document, 1987]
The Flowers of Guatemala [Lifes Rich Pageant, 1986]
Welcome to the Occupation [Document, 1987]
Disturbance At the Heron House [Document, 1987]
Fireplace [Document, 1987]
Bad Day [Document, 1987]
Man on the Moon [Automatic for the People, 1992]
The Great Beyond [Man on the Moon (Music from the Motion Picture), 1999]
Losing My Religion [Out of Time, 1991]
Drive [Automatic for the People, 1992]
Low [Out of Time, 1991]
Try Not to Breathe [Automatic for the People, 1992]
Half a World Away [Out of Time, 1991]
Monty Got a Raw Deal [Automatic for the People, 1992]
Fretless [Out of Time, 1991]
Crush With Eyeliner [Monster, 1994]
Bang and Blame [Monster, 1994]
I Don’t Sleep, I Dream [Monster, 1994]
You [Monster, 1994]
New Test Leper [New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996]
Undertow [New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996]
Bittersweet Me [New Adventures in Hi-Fi, 1996]
Suspicion [Up, 1998]
Diminished / I'm Not Over You [Up, 1998]
The Lifting [Reveal, 2001]
Imitation Of Life [Reveal, 2001]
Final Straw [Around the Sun, 2004]
Houston [Accelerate, 2008]
Until the Day Is Done [Accelerate, 2008]
Living Well Is the Best Revenge [Accelerate, 2008]
Supernatural Superserious [Accelerate, 2008]
Horse to Water [Accelerate, 2008]
Discoverer [Collapse Into Now, 2011]
Me, Marlon Brando, Marlon Brando and I [Collapse Into Now, 2011]
All the Best [Collapse Into Now, 2011]

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].