Rock Around the World

J. J. Cale Mercury. NR
Anyway The Wind Blows: The Anthology

Sometimes you just can't write until The Wind Blows. I've had to stop & wait at times for the words to come to me so that I could write about particular Artists when I caught myself writing without feeling, numbed &...churning out pabulum.

J.J. Cale knows about The Wind that blows on all writers: The Breath Of The Muse. Seems to me that Cale's been in the good graces of The Muse for many, many years. So far, I'm just talking about this man's writing skill, which is profoundly natural and easy for people like Mark Knopfler, Eric Clapton and Lynyrd Skynard to phrase to.

Above all, I really appreciate Cale's voice, one which brings to bear the full weight of the great big, Oh!klahoma sky Cale lives under.

Check this out: A/B Cale's Any Way The Wind Blows with Clapton's Lay Down Sally and you'll hear just how heavily Cale influenced Clapton in the 70's.


Internet Listening Pleasure: Call Me The Breeze, After Midnight, Any Way The Wind Blows, Crying, Cocaine, Ride Me High, I'll Make Love To You Anytime.

Another Girl RCA. NA
In The Galaxy

Sounds like Julianna Hatfield, P.J. Harvey, and Jennifer Trynin are in the same room having Incense & Tea together.

Dig Sometimes.

Kudos to Lynne Kellman for doing all this shit by herself, mostly.


Internet Listening Pleasure: Anything For You, Sometimes, Favorite.

Finn Castle Mill Unsigned. NA
Senseless Acts Of Beauty

Dig the Joni Mitchell cover. This is great music for calmer moments when you don't want to be all revved up.


Internet Listening Pleasure: Urge For Going, Do The Walls Come Down, Dimming Of The Day, Irish Heartbeat.

Blink 182 Cargo Music/MCA. NA
Dude Ranch

Enjoy Blink 182's Dude Ranch...
Enjoy Blink 182 at The Warped Tour '97...
Enjoy the music...
Get the Joke...

Thanks, Kira...


Internet Listening Pleasure: Dammit, Dick Lips, Untitled, Josie.

Robin Trower EMI/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. PR
Bridge Of Sighs

Tonight and tomorrow Robin Trower's playing at the House Of Blues and I'm not there...

I'm here listening to this fine, fine, reissue by Mobile Fidelity: Robin Trower's Bridge Of Sighs.

For years, I listened in rapt amazement to this outrageous guitar playing coming across the Long Island Sound from New Haven's 99.1, WPLR. It must have been about 1980 before the DJ finally said that I was listening to Too Rolling Stoned and that the guitarist was Robin Trower!

When the digital age came a couple years later, I held back from buying this happening album, hoping that Mobile Fidelity would someday reissue this splendid album.

Now my hopes have become reality, since Mobile Fidelity has come out with an Original Master Recording, featuring MFSL's proprietary Greater Ambient Information Network or GAIN System.

Of special note is Geoff Emerick's extraordinary engineering. Listen...try to isolate Reg Isidore's drumming as he chimes the bell on the ride cymbal. The GAIN system truly lets the cymbals chime the way the engineer intended them to be heard. Incidentally, Geoff Emerick was selected to engineer most of the daunting Beatles Anthologies that came out a couple years back.

Kudos must also go to Matthew Fisher for producing this gem. The tandem of Fisher and Emerick NAILED this album, a fact recognised by Trower himself, who thanks the duo "for making it sound so good..."

The bass and vocals of James Dewar are well reproduced on this reissue, revealing Dewar's diposition toward B.B. King's diaphragm-driven tremolo vocal attack that made this album so memorable.

Oh, and the guitar...I don't think that Trower sounds like Hendrix or Clapton at all. Definitely not Clapton, since Eric's in the Mid Range and Robin's tone leans on the bottom end, thicker strung, for sure.

Clapton's got woman tone, and Trower's got motherfucker tone. Robin Trower's got my highest respect because he is the first to admit that his generation of guitarists was obliterated by the advent of Jimi Hendrix, the master of Electric Lady tone. Hendrix was the absolute, technologically unabated eclipse of all guitarists. Robin Trower was one of the first to deal with this fact, exploring the soul of Hendrix' work while retaining his own tone to this day.

Mobile Fidelity's Original Master Recording of Robin Trower's Bridge Of Sighs is unquestionably the definitive sonic reference point whereby we audibly see this guitar legend in the clearest light.

Oh, and you don't need a Dynaco amp or Jamo speakers to hear Trower at his best. Just get a copy of the Mobile Fidelity disc at your local record store and the sonics will come shining through with whatever equipment you have.


Internet Listening Pleasure: Day Of The Eagle, Bridge Of Sighs, The Fool And Me, Too Rolling Stoned.

Peter Frampton A&M/Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab. PR
Frampton Comes Alive!

Here is the album that changed the Music business forever: Frampton Comes Alive!

Mobile Fidelity has taken a good sounding, historically important album and made it sound great. MoFi's proprietary mastering technique, a time consuming effort the majors mimic at a mass produced level, results in MoFi's consistantly great sounding Original Master Recordings. Mobile Fidelity's proprietary mastering process is called the Greater Ambient Information Network, or GAIN system. The quality of MoFi's process is driven home with this reissue of Frampton Comes Alive!. The Ambience of this stellar recording is evident throughout this two CD set, capturing the intangible, electric intimacy that occurs between Artist and audience on special occasions. This recording was one special occasion! There is an unbelievable amount of crowd response and spontaneity, an event where the audience sounded as good as the performers on stage!

Within a year of its release, Frampton Comes Alive! sold 8 Million units, no doubt, part of the reason for such remarkable success lies in the captured performances on this album which everyone everywhere could hear, relate to, and want to be a part of. Listen for Peter's "extra top" tone, as he calls it, revealed here in the clearest context on songs like Something's Happening, Doobie Wah and Lines On My Face. The resonance coming out of Peter's acoustic guitar on songs like All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side) and Wind Of Change shimmers with the metal in the six strings. Listen for the firecracker 55 seconds into the latter song and you'll know for sure that MoFi Nailed the ambiance!

Vocally, Peter's legendary voice is reproduced as clearly as the engineers intended Peter's voice to be heard. Kudos to Ray Thompson, Chris Kimsey, and Eddie Kramer for capturing this album in a live setting. Kudos also to Peter Frampton for producing this remarkable gem.

John Siomos' drums sound great, especially his snare, high-hat and ride cymbal. Siomos' snare has the right cack and once again, the cymbals chime and the high-hat squeezes with beautiful brassiness.

Bob Mayo's Fender Rhodes Piano solo on Do You Feel Like We Do is a lesson in nuances. Stanley Sheldon held down the bottom in concert with Siomos' crafty control drumming. Sheldon's bass has got a richness to it MoFi's mastering reveals.

Essentially, this iteration of Frampton Comes Alive! is the definitive version of the historic live album that changed the face of the Music Industry.


Internet Listening Pleasure: Something's Happening, Show Me The Way, All I Want To Be (Is By Your Side), Wind Of Change; Baby, I Love Your Way, Penny For Your Thoughts, Shine On, Lines On My Face, Do You Feel Like We Do.

Timothy Leary Mouth Almighty/Mercury. NR
Beyond Life With Timothy Leary

The man who turned on, tuned in, and dropped out an entire generation, left us recently with a mantra to experience death by.

...Turn me on, dead man.


Internet Listening Pleasure: Afterlife, Star Light, Legend Of A Mind, A Tale Of The Tribe, Lion's Mouth.

Allen Ginsberg Mouth Almighty/Mercury. PR
The Lion For Real

The President of Mercury regards Allen Ginsberg as the Beatles of poetry".

So dig, man. Ginsburg was BEAT extraordinaire. Possessor of profusive, rapid fire thoughts that collectively comprised the impetus for a generation of people that would kick out the jams in the 60's. One of the recognized thought-masters of the counterrevolution that was the 60's.



Internet Listening Pleasure: To Aunt Rosie, The Lion For Real, Refrain, Stanzas: Written At Night In Radio City, Hum Bom!, Kral Majales.

Dread Motif Unsigned. NA
Love Songs From The Abyss

Dread Motif comes up with an interesting swinger on this five song demo CD. The song I dig is All The Dogs Learn To Read.


Internet Listening Pleasure: All The Dogs Learn To Read, Nothing Is Forever.

Sugar Ray Lava/Atlantic. NA
Floored

Some of this stuff reminds me of Korn on a good day, but Sugar Ray has much more on the melodic side that I dig, with less gloom.

Fly with Super Cat is the spinner here and I'd be surprised if it didn't make rotation on a lot of radio stations. This is Summer Radio friendly.


Internet Listening Pleasure: RPM, Fly (Featuring Super Cat), High Anxiety, Invisible, Fly.

Rush Mercury. PR
Retrospective 2

Mercury follows up last month's release of Retrospective 1 with Retrospective 2 , a collection of Rush's best work between 1981 and 1987.

See my Rush review in May and follow the same advice I gave you there.


Internet Listening Pleasure: Red Barchetta, Time Stand Still, The Body Electric, Limelight, New World Man, Tom Sawyer, Force Ten.

AlcoholicA Unsigned. NA
Danzando En El Fuego

Proof that Music can cross all boundaries, this band out of Argentina is the best Heavy Metal sent to me, ever, from an unsigned band, so far as I can tell. The point here is that I don't speak neutral Spanish, let alone comprehend the dialect in Argentina, but I understand this music as presented by AlcoholicA.

Now, if I can get them to sing in English...

The music takes a lot of inspiration from bands like Motley Crue, and one of their guitarists is named Mars, so it's fitting that the band sounds like Vintage Crue.


Internet Listening Pleasure: Descansa En Paz, Mirate Al Espejo,En Mi Hora Mas Oscura,Tatuado.

Coolbone Hollywood. NA
Brass-Hop

The new sound of New Orleans, Coolbone has got the richness of French Quarter coffee, the brassiness of the Tremet District, and drumming in the tradition of Earl Plamer and Zigaboo Modeliste with the laid back feel of Sugarfoot Moffat.

I once had the honor of hanging out with Kerry Brown on my last night in Nawlins back in 1993. I don't think I slept until I got on the plane to L.A. the following afternoon.

We hung out in the Tremet, eating black beans and rice, moving from club to club in the absolute epicenter of Jazz. In the morning, we went to a Jazz Funeral for Herlin Riley's grandfather, the man who brought drums into the church, essentially inflecting Gospel with the Rhythm of the Saints.

So when I hear a band like Coolbone, doing some nifty new things like using the Tuba in place of Electric Bass to hold down the Bottom, I'm diggin' it immediately!

Combining hip-hop and Brass Band Jazz, Coolbone Johnson states the flavor: "We take one of America's oldest indigenous art forms and carry it forward into the 21st century."

I think now I'll drop down to the Farmers Market here in L.A. and visit the Gumbo Pot. Coolbone's sound makes my heart grow heavy for Nawlins and its Big-Easy livin'.

Dig Coolbone's cover of Bill Withers' Use Me.



Internet Listening Pleasure: Brass-Hop, Float Like A Butterfly, Nothin' But Strife, Use Me, The Saints.

The Nixons MCA. NR
The Nixons

The Nixons reminds me of Theolonius Monk, at times...Cool guitar noodles...Dig the power chords in Screaming Yellow.


Internet Listening Pleasure: Sad, Sad Me; Screaming Yellow, ...At The Sun, Leave.

Grateful Dead Grateful Dead/Arista. NR
Fallout From The Phil Zone

Some stunning classics and some new treasures every Dead Head will devour like a big fatty.

These songs were chosen from among Phil Lesh's personal favorites amassed over the years from shows that didn't make it to the vault series. Raise your freak flag high.


Internet Listening Pleasure: Viola Lee Blues, Mason's Children, Hard To Handle, Jack-A-Roe, In The Midnight Hour, Visons Of Johanna, Box Of Rain.

The Geraldine Fibbers Virgin. NR
Butch

The Geraldine Fibbers are a hybrid of Syd Straw and X having dark conversations with The Velvet Underground.

Groovy, out there stuff. I love Carla Bozulich's caterwaul.


Internet Listening Pleasure: California Tuffy, Trashman In Furs, Swim Back To Me, Claudine, Folks Like Me.

Jimi Hendrix Experience Hendrix/MCA. NR
Experience Hendrix Re-Masters

There are certain people in this society that think if I use the word, "man", or use words like "dose" or "shit" like that, I'm an addict on some sort of drug.

You can draw my blood or scan my piss- I don't care- you won't find what I think you're looking for.

I shuttle between 4 different worlds...I guess that's why I truly dig Jimi Hendrix so deeply, because he was more misunderstood than I. I can talk Ken & Barbie Doll prepschool-tightass, neutral WASP. I can also talk in the language of the street, the boardroom, and the bar.

I guess there'll come a time where I'll never be able to shut down for 5 minutes and be myself with someone, before they draw the conclusion from my prolificly eloquent slang, I'm a sort of dope hound or whatever their limited imagination can muster. That's their problem, I can't clear up their clouded vision.

Oh well. "Dig: I've got my own world to live in, and I AINT GONNA COPY YOU...White-collar conservative, flashing down the street, pointing their plastic finger at me. They all would soon my kind would drop and die, but I'm gonna waive my freak-flag high. High!...Fall mountains, just don't fall on me...Go'in on, Mr.Businessman, you Can't dress like me." from IF 6 Was 9, JMH, Axis Bold As Love

It's okay for me to talk their uncomfortably limited & restrictive lingo, but ask them to reach down to pick up the coin of the realm I'm at and ohhh!, do they get upset. "Emery, don't use that kind of language around us ever again"...

Oh...I'm sorry m'am, I'll be back in one minute, "Excuse me, while I kiss the sky."from Purple Haze, JMH, Are You Experienced?

Okay, I'm back now- Who's having the cucumber sandwiches? Buffy's done such a fabulous job with the hors d'oeuvres. Oh no, I'm afraid I can only hit backhands today, my forehand's a bit off from the golf, you see. Let's set up mixed doubles with Ken & Barbie for next week, Sandy. AND SO ON.

What some of you tightass accountant types don't realize is that there was ONE man, who happened to be a visionary, wearing the garb of a businessman (so he could get past all you lemmings) that WAS really KOOL and would understand the way I talk. This man signed and defended his decision, weathering Frank Sinatra's daunting protestations. This man had the clothes of a businesman, but had the heart and ears of a musician. This man was singled out by Jerry Wexler to run Warner Brothers Records.

The man I speak of is MO OSTIN. Thank you MO, for the chutspah it took to get Jimi Hendrix on Reprise. "That's what I'm Talking about!"from Fire, JMH, Are You Experienced?"

So it was, that Jimi Hendrix came to be a recording artist for Reprise Records, Frank Sinatra's label with Warner Brothers. I think I'll dust of my Summer-weight Brooks Brothers suit and go down to the Whiskey A Go Go tonight. Talk about camouflage.

I've had these albums for almost five months, waiting for the proper impetus to write about a messenger: "A musician, if he's a messenger, is like a child who's mind hasn't been handled by man too many times." from the liner notes of Jimi Hendrix Live at Winterland, RykcoDisc, JMH.

In light of the way these orignal masters have been handled, I took my time drinking in the sonics, bathing my ears and my brain with sounds so freshly revealed here, for the first time, they can be construed as new...In one instance, First Rays Of The New Rising Sun is really a posthumous final album produced the way Jimi may have intended it, had he lived to tell us what time it is. Let's begin there and work our way back to the beginning.

First Rays Of The New Rising Sun contains material from albums that were released after Jimi moved on. The sequencing of this album is the way it was intended to attack your ears in the listening experience. Get ready, because the Wind is going to blow on you.

Some interesting things to note. Billy Cox played all the bass parts on this album, save for My Friend. In all fairness to Noel Redding, I think Jimi was looking for another feeling from the bass that would elicit other colors for the sonic landscape Jimi was painting at the time. Billy Cox is a road warrior from the R&B Chitlin circuit Jimi travelled as a sideman for any number of notables like Little Richard and The Isley Brothers. Billy's touch on bass was like an energy Jimi could tap into. I think Mitch Mitchell and Buddy Miles dug Billy's bottom syling as well, since this album, taken as a whole, really jumps out at you.

Electric Ladyland was probably one of the greatest sonic treats I ever had growing up. I used to play with the counterweight on the tone arm to see if I could get any extra sound out of the vinyl, because I knew there was more there that wasn't coming through the needle. Some things to note...This album explodes with the feeling of newfound freedom Jimi had producing his own stuff, instead of going through an interpreter. Jimi had the gift of prohecy as he predicted his rebirth in 1983...(A Merman I Should Turn To Be) A skinny Texan burst onto the scene in 1983..."not to die, but to be reborn, away from the land so tattered and torn...forever." from Electric Ladyland, JMH That guy was Stevie Ray Vaughan. Ask anybody who knows both guitarists and you'll get some interesting feedback. SRV and Jimi Hendrix were spirits in the material world.

Axis: Bold As Love: I can hear Hendrix wanting to move on from Chas Chandler, but also loving Chas for everything he'd done to propel Jimi to the limelight. So this was a pivotal album for Hendrix. I think Jimi was out to prove he was deeper than a three minute hit.

Are You Experienced. When I got a hold of this album, I kept playing May This Be Love to hear the engineer say something like, "Go ahead, Jimi". I had so much respect for Cameron Crowe when he picked this song to go on the Singles Soundtrack. Hendrix's intimacy with the instrument is such that he talked to it like another being, "...cry on guitar..." from Manic Depression, JMH, Are You Experienced

It's taken me so long to write about this Artist, because I had to save up enough of me to give back to Jimi, if you can dig at all what it is I'm saying.

I've got one thing to ask of the ->prick<- who called me a drug addict: Are YOU experienced? Not necessarily STONED, but beautiful..." from Are You Experienced?. JMH, Are You Experienced

Answer the question, ASSHOLE!

Emery Columna


Internet Listening Pleasure: Freedom, Izabella, Angel, Dolly Dagger, Ezy Ryder, In From The Storm, Voodoo Chile, Come On; Rainy Day, Dream Away; Still Raining, Still Dreaming; All Along The Watchtower, Voodo Child (Slight Return), Up from The Skies, Spanish Castle Magic, Little Wing, If 6 Was 9, Castles Made Of Sand, One Rainy Wish, Bold As Love, Manic Depression, Love Or Confusion, May This Be Love, The Wind Cries Mary, 3rd Stone From The Sun, Are You Experienced?, 51st Anniversary, Remember, Red House.

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