Stay Hungry’s “Horror-Teria” is actually two songs crowded into one funhouse. “Captain Howdy” is a sudsy sludge propelled by the towering menace of Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider, who would resuscitate the title malevolent, prick his body with various metals and tattoos, slide into his skin, and terrorize a celluloid suburbia in the 1998 motion picture Strangeland. “Street Justice” rides the neighborhood outrage generated by its predecessor’s unrepentant carnage, building on the tense guitars of Jay Jay French and Eddie “Fingers” Ojeda and bursting in the cathartic chorus’ fist-pump call-to-arms. Howdy’s fate at the hands of vigilantes is left open-ended, but since Snider’s been hard at work preparing Strangeland II for production, it’s safe to assume the captain’s reach remains considerable.
It was hard (so tough) to be a Beach Boy in the early 1970s. Shunned by the cognoscenti as musical Methuselahs, the greatest beards in all of rock watched their albums languish in stores. The members themselves felt stifled by the business and that warm California sun, so in the summer of 1972 they relocated to Amsterdam hoping to find inspiration as they recorded their next LP. They were joined by Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar of The Flames, and band Svengali Brian Wilson, who arrived after only three attempts to coax him onto a plane. This act of creative cleansing turned into an eight-month ordeal, capped by then-label Warner Bros.’ dismissal of the finished release as weak. In retrospect, perhaps that’s a tad harsh. The aspects may not have been right, but as “Funky Pretty” proves, there were gems amid Holland’s gloomy murk.
Unknown forces blessed this man, late of Screaming Trees, with a low, seductive timbre soaked in a woodsy mesquite that lurked in twilights deep and wide. All of his works are worth seeking out, but to hear him coil that delivery around the words of another man (see also: his double-team with Greg Dulli on a version of Massive Attack’s “Come Live With Me”), as he did on ’99’s covers slab I’ll Take Care Of You is worth the numbing quivers. His take on The Leaving Trains’ “Creeping Coastline Of Lights” bears a title tailor-made for a Lanegan interpretation, complete with woozy guitars drowning in the carefully nursed amber of a lonely glass and vibes dripping blood in an ethereal dream.
By the time they recorded this Norman Whitfield track, The Jackson 5’s longtime association with Motown was slowly coming to an end. The brothers were bristling under Berry Gordy’s bubblegum thumb, eager to explore the kind of epic funk exemplified here, but on their own terms. (When the boys implore, “Play it, Tito!” it’s not Tito who responds.) Two years later, with the exception of Jermaine, they jumped to CBS, where they became captains of their own success rather than the cherubic front for armies of songwriters and session musicians. Little Michael, rest his soul, topped them all by becoming a worldwide institution, an icon for all time. Some 40 years after their debut—breathless trails of headlines aside—the lasting essence of the Jackson legacy is the ability to evolve past childhood novelty into an independent creative force. We didn’t have to just dance and hum along.
A powderkeg year like 1994 (O.J. Simpson, the ascendant Republican party, the deadly return of the gangsta lean, the rawness of race relations) required a powderkeg statement, which arrived in the form of Public Enemy’s Muse Sick-N-Hour Mess Age, the band’s first state of the union in almost three years. Unfortunately, the popular landscape had changed in their absence: no one was in the mood for a Chuck D lecture anymore, or the rubber-necked antics of Flavor Flav. Their big-picture sociological rap seemed antiquated in a time of Snoop and Dre. Consumers sniffed; even critics wondered if P.E. were testifying past their sell-by date, spitting doomsday in an empty wind. This ignorance was a damn shame. Today, Muse Sick deftly reflects its turbulent times, capturing America in all of its wondrous ugliness. We may not have listened then, but it would serve us well to listen now.
Eddie Van Halen turns 55 today, and the first song that comes to mind is the one that insists on being heard. Picture a suburban bedroom in 1978, as an unsuspecting listener slips Van Halen’s eponymous debut from its shrink-wrap and drops it on the turntable. The needle falls, then braces itself for shred. “Eruption” remains by far one of the most confident statements for any young band. Not a word is spoken, but Eddie’s voice on guitar is loud, strong, and clear. It’s the sound of confidence, of youth, of new beginnings, of freedom unchained. The song’s less than two minutes long, but, really, what more needs to be said? Nearly 32 years later, if “Eruption” doesn’t blow you into the next room, give my compliments to the craftsmen who reinforced your walls.
In 1982, Ric Ocasek stepped away from The Cars to further indulge the space-age voodoo at which his more hit-oriented band could only hint. The result was the eerie Beatitude, an aural feast that left many fans reaching for their jackets to prowl its Arctic soundscapes. The cadaverous frontman was free to expound on an apocalyptic universe of “night screams and rainbows” to his electronic heart’s content. It all builds up to “Time Bomb,” a slow accumulation of synthesized shivers and sustained tension that crashes into a boiling six-string explosion punctuating the lamentations of a soul whose torment can’t be soothed by man or machine.
Easily the ugliest bruiser on the ambitious Use Your Illusion set (two discs, each long-boxed separately), “Get In The Ring” captures the mental state of one William Axl Rose, rock-star supergod, circa 1991. The besieged young singer was taking a beating in the music press for his increasingly petulant behavior—splitting in tizzies mid-concert, turning gob-smacked throngs into destructive mobs; and challenging detractors to onstage fisticuffs and debates before an admittedly one-sided congregation. Simmering under the scrutiny, Axl resolved to strap on the gloves and return fire. With an assist from bandmates Duff McKagan and Slash, the hothead beneath the bandana leapt into invective-laced battle with “Get In The Ring.” Scores were settled, names were named, and the arena became a gladiatorial venue for rock ’n’ roll bloodsport.
Despite their moniker’s obvious allure and an impressive battery of hits, by the early 1970s the original Temptations were slowly coming apart. David Ruffin had packed his bark and split in 1968, followed three years later by a partner who swung so sweetly for the stars: Eddie Kendricks, with tones on loan from Heaven. The feather-light “Eddie’s Love” floated down the otherwise heavy stream of Kendricks’ sophomore solo sojourn, People…Hold On (1972), which found the ex-Tempt fretting over Vietnam and social unrest, among other topical subjects. But once he warmed that falsetto over a pep-in-the-step groove and sang of the simplicity of he and she, all the world was sun and moon. When Eddie was on, Eddie was it.
Today’s track is a world premiere on Damn Fine Day!
Morphine were a musical anomaly in the ’90s, both for what they possessed (a saxophonist) and for what they lacked (a guitarist, although frontman Mark Sandman could make a six-string snarl when necessary). Their name matched their sound: a sweet narcotic numb that enveloped then consumed. Dana Colley’s snakeskin sax seemed to slink from an opium-den noir, and Sandman’s two-string bass blurred the line between beat-keeping and malice. His voice beckoned from an irresistible darkness. Morphine released five albums in their lifetime—one sadly cut short by Sandman’s ’99 death—but left behind an amazing body of work, some of which remains unheard. At Your Service rectifies that with two discs of 35 rarities, including the previously unreleased “5:09.” Its vintage is unknown, though it’d fit right nice on 1997’s Like Swimming, snuggled against “Empty Box.” Mr. Sandman, bring us a dream, one preferably bathed in shadows.
In a Little Spanish Town (T’was On a Night Like This) Yusef Lateef
Label: Atlantic
Released: 1976
Scribes went ape when Moby released Play, his landmark ’99 fusion of early-20th-century field recordings and modern electronic currents. But he wasn’t the first to join old and new: Yusef Lateef had him beat by some 20 years on 1976’s The Doctor Is In . . . And Out, when the saxophonist accompanied a 1927 City Service Quartet version of “In A Little Spanish Town (T’was On A Night Like This).” His smooth alto contrasts with its companion’s graveyard harmonies, as if soothing the restless dead to slumber. When these voices rise from beyond to sigh, “Many moons have passed away and she’s still in my heart,” every painful month is felt, transforming youth’s lost love into permanent, debilitating regret. Between the five decades that separate “Spanish Town’s” polished Prohibition-era croon from its loose Bicentennial wail brews a longing more powerful than perhaps even the song’s authors intended.
There was something wonderfully decadent about Spacehog’s opulent bombast, like Cheeto stains on a Queen Anne Wingback. Their glam-goosed sound swelled with a porcine ambition amplified to perfection by Royston Langdon’s supernova lungs and motel-velvet tongue. The group debuted in 1995 with Resident Alien and its immediate hit, “In The Meantime,” a song so aggressive in its ecstasy that if goosebumps form they leave lifelong scars. Sadly, however, it lacked enough stardust to generate much interest in a follow-up three years later, the brutally tart The Chinese Album. Oh, well—that leaves more glittery goops of sleaze for the rest of us, like “Mungo City,” the hand-o’er-heart anthem for a zonked metropolis. Slam your steins together and make your overblown brethren proud.
It’s hard to believe that Michael’s gone. My fingers still hesitate to type those words. Despite the long, tawdry trail of headlines, controversies, schoolyard digs, surgeries, and eccentricities that dogged his every post-Thriller move, the man’s talents should not be overshadowed or denied. He escaped youth’s cruel novelty, maturing from the pint-sized frontman of a talented young band of Gary, Indiana, brothers into a successful solo artist, producer, and self-proclaimed King of Pop. In all incarnations he was nothing less than a cultural force. But in 1974 the 16-year-old was still just getting started. “What You Don’t Know” finds him far beyond pipsqueak bleats of playground love; here he restlessly obsesses over the heartbreaker who walked away. The discotheque scruff, with its brotherly streams of “no” and “know,” fits the desperation perfectly, and Michael pleads his dance-floor case with an ease that will be missed.
The Wacky World of Rapid Transit Del Tha Funkee Homosapien
Label: Elektra
Released: 1991
Listeners familiar with the canned-humanity commute (what we bus vets call life on the MTA) will find much to appreciate in this whimsical trip from Del’s 1991 debut, I Wish My Brother George Was Here. The young rapper—Ice Cube’s cousin, incidentally, though he’s nothing like Cube at all—captures the anxieties and characters present on long-distance excursions, from the interminable bench wait with the other slaves to a bus line’s erratic schedule, to the 15-block backtrack after a missed stop. Amid the clamor of teenage bravado, wolf-whistle hotties (a knowing wink at “Transit’s” sample, Donald Byrd’s “Street Lady”), and that dude who won’t stop bragging about his cash flow is an interesting social observation on a generation of youth naturally gravitating toward the back of the bus some 30 years after Rosa Parks’ struggles toward the front. Food for thought as the city rolls past.
Psychedelic leviathan “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” was two years and three LPs back by the time Iron Butterfly released Metamorphosis, their first foray into a new decade. The band was a little new as well, having shed both its flower-power threads and wunderkind guitarist Erik Braunn. Indeed, the 1970 album was credited to the Butterfly trio (keyboardist/vocalist Doug Ingle, drummer Ron Bushy, and bassist Lee Dorman) and two recent additions, Mike Pinera and Larry “Rhino” Reinhardt, whose dual six-string prowess helped shape a thicker, darker sound. “Soldier In Our Town,” however, is the intimate nucleus of Ingle and Bushy (that’s engineer Bill Cooper on bass) in a contemplative mood. The former later described the track as “about the female side trying to get us to look at the options and a lady trying to steer us clear of violent resolution.” A commendable message, to be sure, but there’s nothing peaceful in Ingle’s anguished roar.
Freedy’s yarns often twirl on thorny twists. For instance, the surface of “This Perfect World” appears to be a delicate love song, but past the melodic spine lurks a creepy current of madness and homicide. “Western Sky” frolics in the yonder blue, thanks to Dave Schramm’s lap-steel wingspan, but from a safe, melancholy distance. The protagonist of “Sky” is an earthbound pilot’s son haunted by his father’s death, who’s fearful of a similar fate. When he’s forced to move his family West, his wife flies out as he cautiously hits the road for the loneliest, most uncertain journey of his life.
Critics have described Black Love as the soundtrack to an epic film of betrayal and doom. If that’s the case, then closer “Faded” is redemption after all the blood’s been spilled, a cleansing eight-plus minutes that absolve all sin. Greg Dulli kneels in the candlelit cathedral, confessing his fears, licking his wounds. “Lord, lift me out of the night,” the good boy/bad boy pleads. “Come on uptown and see the mess I’m in tonight.” Salvation finally arrives in an explosion of wah-wah hooks and instrumental fury that leaves only the falling remnants of brittle ivory to finish the tale. The Whigs often closed shows with “Faded”—its brutal finality is hard to follow.
“It’s not time for me to go,” pouts Tanya Donelly in the waning twilight of “Stay,” the last track on Belly’s first LP, Star. Oh, how it wants so desperately to stick around. Its tempo is a languid, wistful guitar sway, almost like a countdown, that just wants to say, like, one last thing before heading out. It welcomes the listener with the warmest of arms, and Donelly herself couldn’t be more inviting or enticing, assuring that after the fade fills your room with silence, you’ll be back again and again—and soon.
Van Halen’s ride began on what’s considered one of the most impressive fully formed debuts of all time. The slab eponymous boasts live perennials “Runnin’ With The Devil,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ’Bout Love,” “Jamie’s Cryin’,” and the four-alarm arpeggios of “Eruption,” Eddie Van Halen’s bold statement of intent that mind-blown shredders are still sorting out. But one of its best tracks is “Little Dreamer”—or Van Halen after dark, when all the other hits have gone to bed. Eddie’s devil-lip riff coats the night in storm clouds, his solo tone-perfect, with just enough showoff gusto to please the techs. David Lee Roth expounds on good times gone bad: “Now no one’s talkin’ ’bout those crazy days gone by,” he warns ominously, as Michael Anthony howls against the moonlit chorus. Brrr.
In 1995 bassist Matt Sharp briefly clocked out of Weezer (he retired three years later) and formed this apparently one-off project with five bespectacled mates and two Moogs, the vital backbone of The Rentals’ effervescent retro nerd-rock whoosh, as were the harmony bleats of violinist Petra Haden and Cherielynn Westrich, resident ghosts in the machine-o (to borrow a Rentals term). Their formula was best realized in the joyful, breezy “Friends Of P.,” a #7 Modern Rock hit. The Rentals and their fluid lineup—maestro Sharp always at the controls—returned for real in 1999 with Seven More Minutes and issued an EP, The Last Little Life, last summer.
Harrumphing open with kettledrum pomp atop Phil Lynott’s street-thug bass, “Do Anything You Want To Do” is vintage Lizzy at a time when the band’s vitality was all but sapped. Part of its appeal is, of course, the twin Irish lead guitars, here essayed by interim flogger and longtime Lynott pal Gary Moore (dig his sustain toward the end). “Do Anything” led what would prove to be the last consistently great Thin Lizzy joint, Black Rose: A Rock Legend, chock fulla rockers like “Toughest Street In Town,” “Waiting For An Alibi,” “Róisín Dubh (Black Rose),” and Lynott’s chillingly autobiographical “Got To Give It Up.” Sadly, the band would seldom sound this alive again.
Thanks to the success of Nevermind, eager-beaver major labels swept through the Pacific Northwest in the early ’90s, contracts in hand, advances at the ready. Among their more interesting procurements was Nirvana’s Aberdeen, Washington, neighbors (and Kurt Cobain fave), the Melvins, a trio who gorged on Black Sabbath sludge, buzzsaw punk, and acid flashbacks. Lucky Atlantic! The band recorded three albums on that deep-pocket dime, each more abrasive than the last (their final disc, Stag, was a defiant statement so jaw-droppingly weird that the arrangement was doomed); Stoner Witch is their hevvy (heavy’s for pikers) peak, highlighted by the stripped-brake van rock of “Revolve.” Buzz Osborne’s menacing riffs rattle mountains, Dale Crover’s skin-taps stab holes in the Earth—you’d better get your ears checked after they’re done with you.
By 1997 the novelty gunk of “Push Th’ Little Daisies” had washed clean, and those who had yet to convert to Boognish began noticing the exemplary craftsmen behind Ween’s cheeky tongue. Their previous record, 12 Golden Country Greats, was an actual country & western effort (among its participants: The Jordanaires and Charlie McCoy) that inspired many toothless imitators, many of whom didn’t realize the regard the band had for the genre. Ween went underwater on 1997’s The Mollusk, a nautically centered collection (“Ocean Man,” “The Golden Eel,” the title track) with an almost mythic folk-tale tang. It ends with the faux Richard Thompson “She Wanted To Leave,” a wistful shanty floating toward a bittersweet horizon, propelled by gusts of sunny AM-radio guitar and dusk-summoning orchestral regret.
It opens with an ice-capped tip to Mike Oldfield’s “Tubular Bells,” but guitarist Criss Oliva’s stallion lurch transforms “Edge” into a grandiose statement approaching metallic majesty —a Savatage trademark. By 1993, Criss’ brother/bandleader Jon had surrendered the mic to new recruit Zachary Stevens, whose lordly boom complemented Savatage’s stately lyrical bent. From his epic pipes the chorus, “I have seen you on the edge of dawn/felt you here before you were born,” becomes royal decree. Sadly, Criss died not long after Edge Of Thorns’ release, making the album, and its title-track anthem, that much more profound.
