Re: 1978 Meine Sch Nsten Lieder Spr Che Rar
Anfos Sin
Eines meiner Hobbys ist das Whlen in LP- und CD-Grabbelkisten, wobei es dabei schon das eine oder andere Juwel zu entdecken gab - und meistens war es auch noch schn billig! Von The Association bin ich dermaen begeistert, dass ich die CD hier unbedingt prsentieren muss - allerdinx passt die Platte weder richtig zur Kategorie "frisch ausgepackt", noch kann man von einem endlich auf CD wieder verffentlichten Vinylschtzchen ("lost and found") sprechen.
(04.04.2005)
Originally released in 1977, the second live album from these funky, soulful southerners was reissued in 1999 with five extra cuts, adding a whopping 30 minutes to the original vinyl record's limited playing time. With a completely different track listing than 1973's excellent Drippin' Wet, Left Coast Live captures all that was memorable about Wet Willie. They tear through soul standards, like Jimmy Reed's "Shame, Shame, Shame," Little Milton's "Grits Ain't Groceries," and a shimmering 13 minute slow blues version of Billy Eckstein's "Jelly Jelly" (featuring guest guitarist Toy Caldwell on loan from the Marshall Tucker Band), with obvious passion for not only the songs, but for performing them in front of an enthusiastic audience like the one fortunate to be at this 1976 second set at L.A.'s Roxy club. Lead vocal, sax, and harmonica man Jimmy Hall is in solid form as he hoots, hollers, shouts, moans, and blows like the soul men he obviously idolizes and the band, now tightened through almost a decade of playing one night stands, chugs along like a fine tuned engine pumped with high octane gas. Pianist Mike Duke pounds the ivories with religious fervor and guitarist Ricky Hersh plays with barely controlled passion throughout. Featuring touches of gospel on "Ring You Up," Sly Stone styled funk with "Baby Fat," and southern fried R&B on their show stopping 12 minute version of "Lucy Was in Trouble," it's evident how overlooked this group was as one of the most eclectic, soulful, and talented bands to emerge from the glutted '70s southern rock circuit. Oddly the album's least impressive moment is a rote rendition of their biggest hit, "Keep on Smiling," played without the energy injected into the rest of the show. Wet Willie lost the majority of its original members and direction after this final, contract fulfilling Capricorn release, but Left Coast Live remains a compelling and often exhilarating document of a gifted band in their prime.
This classic recording by the sibling of Livingston and James Taylor offers valuable insight for fans of Carole King's landmark album, Tapestry, but Sister Kate is also a great work in its own right. Peter Asher of Peter & Gordon was the guiding hand behind James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt, and to have his vision of Carole King's "Where You Lead" and "Home Again" from Tapestry with the musicians who helped King paint her masterpiece is a major treat. (Lou Adler's perspective on these tunes was what helped reshape music in the '70s, and to have another successful producer issuing the same music at the exact moment in time is essential study for Musicology 101.) "Where You Lead" has a totally different flavor from both King's classic album track and Barbara Streisand's hit. Vocally, Kate Taylor isn't Chi Coltrane or Jessi Colter, but she's very musical just the same. It's interesting that she would do versions of two songs Rod Stewart covered. Stewart got some serious airplay with "Handbags and Gladrags," but he didn't have Carole King, Linda Ronstadt, Merry Clayton, and most of the Tapestry players on his version of the Mike D'Abo tune -- Kate Taylor gets that honor. She also does a fine rendition of the Elton John/Bernie Taupin track which Stewart got FM album airplay with, "Country Comforts," and takes it a step further by covering "Ballad of a Well Known Gun" from the John/Taupin catalog as well. Beverly Martyn's "Sweet Honesty" plays like Donovan's "Season of the Witch," and it works well for this place in time, but the real knockout tunes here are, coincidentally, Taylor's rendition of Livingston Taylor's "Be That Way," and her takes on James Taylor's "Lo and Behold" and "You Can Close Your Eyes." These three go right out of the park, so you can draw your own conclusions as to how well-schooled she was on the music being made by her brothers. The addition of "Jesus Is Just All Right" somewhat mars "Lo and Behold"; the two form a medley, with "Lo and Behold's chorus pressing up against the "Jesus Is Just All Right" melody, but once again, the choice of what would become a '70s standard for the Doobie Brothers two years later shows the intuitive nature of this project. Mort Shuman and Jerry Ragavoy got attention the year before when Janis Joplin's Pearl contained her dynamic version of their "Get It While You Can." Kate Taylor is better suited to their "Look at Granny Run, Run," and she does a fine job with it here. This is the album that got away, and all serious fans of pop, '70s rock, and good music in general owe it to themselves to seek Sister Kate out. It's a very impressive work of art. Collapse
Pale Saints appeared on some micro-indie compilations in 1988 and early 1989, but it was a demo that enticed the 4AD label's Ivo Watts-Russell, who without haste caught a gig and consequently signed the band (along with support act Lush). Watts-Russell was particularly taken with "Sight of You," and in a few months, a remixed/retouched version of the drifting ballad led Pale Saints' debut EP. Almost sickly sweet and seemingly innocent until Ian Masters' chorister-like voice lets slip a covetous blood-soaked fantasy -- the escalation from "bad"/"sad" to "red/"dead" is easy to miss -- "Sight of You" went over well, landed on BBC DJ John Peel's listener-driven Festive 50 for 1989, and was covered by Ride. The following February, coincidentally between the recording and broadcast of Ride's take for a Peel session, "Sight of You" was placed in a new context on The Comforts of Madness. Perhaps seen as too significant to be left off, and downplayed so as to not overstress its signature status, "Sight of You" was tucked deep into the LP's second side, thereby emphasizing the many other colors of frayed-nerve dream pop -- as filtered through avant-folk, West Coast psychedelia, the Paisley Underground, power pop, and C-86 -- the trio had to offer. The album creates a kind of whiplash effect by starting with a violent existential tantrum, recharging with a swirling assault that gathers steam (concluding with "I'll destroy you," or something else suggesting emotional rupture), and halting with a chilling and diaphanous ballad cast in a soft shimmer (line one: "You're body's cold"). The rest of the sequence moves from one extreme to another, from the resemblance of a sugared-up Dream Syndicate in a wind tunnel to sighing and strumming through plaintive material ripe for This Mortal Coil picking. All the turbulence is mitigated by Masters' singular tenor, and further eased from song to song with Bad Moon Rising-style noise segues and subtle crossfading. These first steps still delight, startle, and chill.
On the eve of a post-Thatcherite Britain, the Pale Saints, alongside the likes of Lush, Ride and Slowdive, were ushering in a new wave of British indie. And in 4AD, they found a perfect home for their music - an exciting & undeniable meld of noise and dream-pop.
Their 1990 debut album, The Comforts of Madness, didn't disappoint, now standing as one of the best of its era. Pitchfork placed it in their recent piece on The Best 50 Shoegaze Albums Of All Time saying, There's a restless urgency, particularly when the volume swells and the rhythms intensify. That energy not only keeps (it) vital, it emphasizes Pale Saints' inventiveness, how they channelled softness and rage into something distinctive.
Loving & Free has masterful production by Elton John and Clive Franks, and if anything, it is as lovingly produced as it is performed. One of four strong Kiki Dee originals is the title track, which opens up this soulful album, reflected so beautifully in the cover photo of young Dee on a bicycle with flowers in a field. It's reminiscent of Lesley Duncan's "Love Song," and lo and behold, Duncan shows up on backing vocals on the very next song, "If It Rains." Elton John plays keyboards on seven of the ten tracks, including the short gospel piece "If It Rains," written by Dee, and the Bernie Taupin/Elton John number "Lonnie and Josie." Both these tracks could be outtakes from Tumbleweed Connection, and with covers of Jackson Browne and Stealers Wheel's Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty, you know the direction here is not going to be the all-out assault which landed in the Top 15 the very next year, "I Got the Music in Me." Dee, performing the band Free's "Travellin' in Style," adds blues/pop to the disc, the tune moving harder than most of the tracks on side one. Egan and Rafferty's "You Put Something Better Inside Me" plays with more heart than what Stealers Wheel did on their own, and fits this country-flavored pop record just perfectly. Another Elton John/Bernie Taupin composition opens side two, and "Supercool" gets the nod as the hardest-rocking track on this otherwise low-key and beautifully mellow disc. It isn't as raucous as "I Got the Music in Me," but it still feels a little out of place on this set; still, how can one resist any contribution from John and Taupin? "Rest My Head" is the singer showing she can write, and like many of the tracks on Loving & Free, performed with members of Elton John's band from this era behind her. "Amoureuse," written by Vronique Sanson and Gary Osborne, is unique in that it brings one of John's other songwriting partners into the mix. Jackson Browne's "Song for Adam" and the song which Elton John performed and put on the flip of one of his singles, "Sugar on the Floor," conclude this album and make the sequel to Tumbleweed Connection so valid. That was one of Elton John's most heartfelt and non-commercial discs, and he gets to reprise it here. Loving & Free is an underrated, under-valued, ambitious, and completely forgotten work which shows Kiki Dee to be an extremely valuable artist who deserved all the support she got from her friends in the industry. It is too bad the public didn't embrace such important music, which got the sincere blessing of Elton John.
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