Music

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The Rolling Stones: Let It Bleed

Let It BleedThe magnificent triumph that was Beggars Banquet had redefined the Stones as a serious rock band, as distinguished from their earlier incarnations when they were unsure whether they were rock, blues, soul, or psychedelic. The followup album, 1969’s Let It Bleed, extrapolated the themes from “Sympathy For The Devil,” “Street Fighting Man” and “Stray Cat Blues” and further clarified the band’s identity. Sinister, druggy, decadent, licentious…these are now well-established views of the Stones, but at that time it was a revelation.

At a time when the Beatles were exhorting everyone to come together, and the Youngbloods were advising us all to smile on our brother, the Stones emerged with a more realistic and darkly visionary look at the Sixties. The Stones had briefly bought into the psychedelic movement with all of its silly hippie nostrums, but it never suited them. Let It Bleed was the antithesis of the hippie movement. “Everybody get together/Try to love one another/Right now,” sang Jesse Colin Young in one of 1969’s biggest hits. The Stones countered with “Rape and murder/It’s just a shot away.”

If music can truly be described as sinister, it is the music that opens the leadoff track, “Gimme Shelter”: the lightly picked guitar, the scratched percussion, and those oh-so-haunting “ooohs” that sound like beautiful demons enticing you into their lair. “A storm is threatening,” sings Jagger in one of the best vocals of his career. “War is just a shot away,” and over the course of four and a half minutes the listener experiences nothing less than the soundtrack to the apocalypse. From the fire sweeping down the streets like a red coal carpet, to the image of a mad bull that has lost its way, to the life-threatening floods, “Gimme Shelter” paints a picture that is downright terrifying. Add in the chorus and Merry Clayton’s brilliant vocal about rape and murder, and the effect is both beautiful and brutal. All is not lost, though, as Jagger reminds us that “love is just a kiss away.” The music matches the lyrics, grinding and vicious. Other leadoff tracks on other albums may be as good, but the opening salvo on Let It Bleed has never been surpassed.

Perhaps trying to mimic the pace of Beggars Banquet, “Gimme Shelter” is followed by the acoustic/slide blues of Robert Johnson’s “Love In Vain.” With fantastic mandolin from Ry Cooder, the song is one of the best Stones blues covers, with Charlie Watts laying down a solid slow shuffle beat.

“Country Honk” follows and it’s a misstep. The third song is a country pastiche, again following the pace of Beggars Banquet. Where “Dear Doctor” worked on every level, the countrified version of the earlier single “Honky Tonk Women” doesn’t quite succeed. It’s not a total failure, and it’s certainly listenable, but it’s an embarrassment compared to the magnificent single which was inexplicably left off the album. Supposedly influenced by Gram Parsons, who had befriended Keith Richards, “Country Honk” lies lazily on the turntable. The lyrics were tweaked slightly, and the music is entirely different from the single: a light acoustic strumming and a down home country fiddle from Byron Berline give the main punch of the song, which is otherwise notable for one reason only: it is the first appearance of Mick Taylor on record with the Stones. Brian Jones, by this time, was dead though he turns up (barely) on two songs from Let It Bleed, and his replacement had not yet been fully cast when the album was recorded.

Side one continues with a fierce bass line played by Keith Richards. “Live With Me” is the “Stray Cat Blues” of Let It Bleed. Blessed with riches and success beyond their wildest dreams, Jagger proves that he’s still the decadent guttersnipe he always claimed to be. The song is an invitation to a woman who Jagger seems both to want to employ as a nanny for a “score of harebrained children” and also take to his bed. “You’d look good pram pushing/Down the high street,” Jagger sings. “Don’t you wanna live with me?” Jagger’s home needs “a woman’s touch” and comes across as an X-rated version of Upstairs, Downstairs. The cook is “a whore” who is apparently making it with the butler in the pantry and stripping to the delight of the footman. The Lord of the Manor, meanwhile, has “filthy habits” and a friend who shoots rats and feeds the carcasses to the geese on his property. It’s quite an invitation. In many ways, this is part two of “Sympathy For The Devil.” It’s the same character, different scenario.

Musically, “Live With Me” is a tough rocker, with Keith’s bass leading the way through the verses with stabs of guitar from Keith and Taylor and piano from Nicky Hopkins and a rock steady beat from Charlie who rarely deviates except to punctuate with brief fills in the chorus. This song is also notable for being the first time the Stones recorded with Bobby Keys, who plays the great saxophone solo.

The title track, “Let It Bleed” closes out the first side. It’s considered a classic Stones song, and rightly so. The lyrical themes of drugs and decadence are solidly in place, with Jagger slurring his tale of junkie friendship. Or perhaps it’s more subtle than that: Jagger is not singing to or about another person, he is singing about drugs, and how they begin as a friendship, and end badly. The drug dealer says “You can lean on me” and appears in the form of a beautiful woman. “My breasts will always be open/Baby, you can rest your weary head right on me/And there will always be a space in my parking lot/When you need a little coke and sympathy.” But the drugs have a dark side: “You knifed me in that dirty filthy basement/With that jaded, faded, junkie nurse/Oh, what pleasant company!” The lyric changes from the friendly “we all need someone we can lean on” to the considerably darker “we all need someone we can feed on.”

Keith plays a tasteful slide guitar throughout, and Ian Stewart plays great boogie-woogie piano while once again it is the acoustic guitar that provides the steady rhythm. “Let It Bleed” may go on a little long, and it lacks the visceral punch the lyrics deserve, but it’s still an extraordinary song of drugs and dissolution.

From drugs to murder, side two opens with “Midnight Rambler,” inspired by the tale of the alleged serial killer Albert DeSalvo, aka The Boston Strangler. In the song, the killer is nearly a supernatural presence, more akin to Candyman than the Boston Strangler. Jagger’s harmonica provides the musical hook, and while Keith’s main guitar riff and slide guitar are top flight, the song doesn’t really work in this setting. “Midnight Rambler” is considered one of the great Stones songs, a true classic, but for most listeners the definitive take is the live version from Get Yer Ya-Ya’s Out! The studio version is too long and not particularly interesting. Charlie rides his usual steady beat, but the song never really achieves liftoff, unlike the transcendent live version that was released the following year.

What follows is one of the best Keith Richards performances on record. “You Got The Silver” is one of the three best Keith vocals ever recorded (for what it’s worth, the others are “Happy” and “Before They Make Me Run”). It is the first time he sings lead on an entire track, and his vocal simply shreds Jagger’s heavily bootlegged version. “You Got The Silver” is a modern country blues, the likes of which the Stones started crafting on Beggars Banquet. The great slide and country-fueled rhythm acoustic meet with Nicky Hopkins’ stately piano and Charlie’s simple, sparse, and elegant drums to make one of the Stones’ finest ballads, with Keith’s weathered vocals providing the icing on the cake.

Bill Wyman leads off “Monkey Man” on the vibes, before the rest of the band comes crashing in, with Keith’s raunchy guitar taking the pole position and using the same sinister tone he used on “Gimme Shelter.” The lyric is a bit of nonsense, more druggy decadent myth-making from Jagger, but the music is astonishing. Charlie rolls around the drums, and Nicky Hopkins once again proves himself the best session keyboardist of his time, his duet with Wyman’s vibes underpinning a Keith slide riff that starts tentatively and then suddenly shoots into orbit.

The album concludes as it began, with a seminal statement on the times. Released very late in 1969, “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” should be written on the tombstone of the Sixties. Opening with the London Bach Choir singing the first verse a capella before giving way to Keith’s strummed acoustic guitar and a lyrical French horn solo from rock’s own Forrest Gump, Al Kooper. When Jagger enters, backed only by the acoustic guitar, he seems to be standing before the crowd unclothed until he is lightly joined by Rocky Dijon’s percussion. Al Kooper’s descending piano runs herald the entrance of the band when, like a kick to the solar plexus, producer Jimmy Miller comes roaring in on the drums (Watts couldn’t get the piece, so Miller jumped in the drummer’s chair). Suddenly it’s all there: Keith’s stinging lead guitar lines sliding in and around the other musicians, with Kooper doubling on piano and organ, and Bill Wyman providing a rollicking bass line. Jagger surveys the Sixties and finds them wanting. In turn he looks at love, politics, and drugs and reaches the same conclusion about all of them: the Sixties dream was just a dream. Much more realistic than many of his musical peers, Jagger and Richards reach the conclusion that it’s not necessarily a bad thing not to get what you want, because you’ll get what you need.

Of the five album run that started with Beggars Banquet (four studio, one live), Let It Bleed is the weakest link. That says much more about the merits of the albums that surround it, however, and very little about any discernible lack of quality here. Let It Bleed is a flawed masterpiece, providing the jaded riposte to the way the Beatles ended the decade with “The love you take/Is equal to the love you make.” Flaws and all, it is essential listening.

Grade: A

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The Listening Post: January 2010

A new year, and new (to me) tunes:

  • Whiskey For The Holy Ghost—Mark Lanegan. The solo albums of Mark Lanegan make for great winter listening. After last month’s rehab album, Scraps At Midnight, this month I turned to his full-scale addiction album. Whiskey For The Holy Ghost is, like the rest of Lanegan’s solo oeuvre, a dark and scary listen. When your sound is as identifiable as Lanegan’s, your success depends entirely on the quality of the songs and this is where Whiskey resonates. There are several moments of absolute brilliance on this album: “The River Rise” with it’s haunting vocals and acoustic guitar, the brutal hard rock of “Borracho,” “Carnival,” which sounds like a Hell-bound version of the Fisherman’s Blues-era Waterboys, the gorgeous “House A Home” and “Sunrise,” the elegiac “Judas Touch.” Only “Riding The Nightingale” and “Beggar’s Blues” fail to rise to the top. They are both dirges, and long dirges at that. They aren’t awful, and sound of a piece with the rest of the album, but don’t match the exceedingly high levels of quality that Lanegan has for the rest of the disc. Grade: A
  • I Am The Cosmos—Chris Bell. There’s a tendency to think of this album, compiled posthumously by the singer’s brother, as being some type of great, lost Big Star album. Bell was the founder and guiding spirit behind that great, great band, but dropped out of the lineup after one album. While this is not a great, lost Big Star album it is clear that all of the elements are there for what might have been. Many of the recordings are rough, some sounding like no more than demos, and as a result there’s a certain low-fidelity to the album as a whole and some of the songs sound unfinished. What’s here is largely great. The title track (released as a single in 1978) and “You And Your Sister” are stunning, as good as the best work of Big Star. “Get Away,” “There Was A Light” and “I Don’t Know” also could easily have been standout tracks on #1 Record. Unlike the first Big Star album, there are tracks on here that don’t really go anywhere. “Make A Scene” is a decent little rocker, but never quite crosses the finish line. “Speed Of Sound” has a lovely sound, but is wrapped in inertia. “Fight At The Table” is a by-the-numbers rocker. While there’s nothing that’s actually bad on the album, these songs prevent the album from reaching the levels of brilliance that Bell manifested with Big Star. Having said that, the bulk of the material that is good is very good, and much of it is great. That makes for a fine album. For Big Star fans and lovers of prime power pop, this is essential listening. Grade: B+
  • Five Leaves Left—Nick Drake. The English folk singer Nick Drake is one of those music legends that many people have heard of, but few have actually heard. Kind of like an English folk version of the Velvet Underground. Like the Velvets, he is now a cult figure and that’s no surprise. Good looking, melancholy, talented, and died young…all the elements of a cult figure in the making. His debut album, Five Leaves Later, is impressive but I’m not entirely sure I get it. The album kicks off with the beautiful gem “Time Has Told Me,” but the rest of the album never quite hits that level. There is much on this album that is very good. For starters, the playing throughout is absolutely exquisite with jaw-dropping bass from Danny Thompson on much of the album. Richard Thompson, another English folk legend/cult figure also appears on “Time Has Told Me.” There are also some nice string sections created for a few of the songs, and the acoustic guitar playing is excellent throughout. Drake’s got a magnificent voice and is a very good guitar player, but after hearing so much about the man I expected much more than a somewhat dour version of Donovan. The problem with rating the album is that the individual songs are quite good but listening to the album makes me feel lethargic. Much of this sounds like a good Richard Thompson album, but falls short of sounding like a great Richard Thompson album, while “Day Is Done” is vaguely reminiscent of the softer, acoustic sections Jethro Tull’s “We Used To Know” (at least, that’s the song that pops into my head whenever “Day Is Done” comes on). It’s a good album for a quiet night, I suppose, but it fell short of expectations. Grade: B
  • thickfreakness—The Black Keys. You gotta love these guys. More traditional than the White Stripes, the Black Keys mine the same territory as a bluesy guitar/drums duo. The advantage they have over the Stripes is a better drummer, but they lack the brilliant vision of Jack White. The Keys play their blues pretty straight throughout, but it’s a nasty, distorted blues. There are none of the clean single note solos of an Eric Clapton, nor do they have the volcanic intensity of a Stevie Ray Vaughan. Instead there is a thick, fuzzy tone that wouldn’t sound out of place on an early ZZ Top album. The Keys, like the Stripes, are minimalists, preferring thick chords, short soloing, and letting the songs speak for themselves. From the opening note of “Thickfreakness” through the staccato distortion of “Hard Row” to the heavy fuzz of “Have Love, Will Travel,” the Keys know how to make the blues sound fresh. Only “Everywhere I Go” falls flat, while “No Trust” and “If You See Me” are too static. Otherwise, this is an album full of rough diamonds. Along with the Stripes, the Black Keys are doing an invaluable service of updating the blues while keeping the spirit alive. Grade: A
  • Libertad—Velvet Revolver. The sophomore effort from the Guns ‘N Roses/Nine Inch Nails/Stone Temple Pilots “supergroup” is a nicely organic “band” effort. Despite the fact that they imploded in a maelstrom of egos and addictions shortly after the album was released, Velvet Revolver sounds more like an actual band than Audioslave ever did, or Blind Faith for that matter. Much of that is due to the fact that the lead guitarist (Slash) and rhythm section (Duff McKagan and Matt Sorum) do have a long history as a band, but they were smart enough to let singer Scott Weiland’s unerring sense of melody run on top of the riffs. There are great things on this album, like the bruising opener, “Let It Roll,” the ballad “The Last Fight” and even the cover version of the Electric Light Orchestra’s “Can’t Get It Out Of My Head.” There are also a couple of lumpen riff rockers like “Get Out The Door,” but overall this is a solid collection of hard rock songs that combine the best elements of Guns (the scorching lead guitar) and Stone Temple Pilots (Weiland’s formidable voice and melodies). There’s nothing really to rival the absolute best of either Guns or the Pilots, but much of what here stands alongside what those bands did on a good day. Grade: B+
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The Listening Post: April 2010

April enters like a lamb, bringing warm weather and fresh music:

  • Diamonds In The Rough—Ian Person. From the guitar player of Sweden’s best band, The Soundtrack Of Our Lives, comes this solo project. It has a lot in common with Soundtrack, especially the love of classic rock songs and structures. The influences on Person are clearly evident throughout the album: “Spiders” is sunny, ’60s pop, the title track is mid-70s Stones, “Fool’s Parade” sounds like a first pass at The Who’s “Overture” while also borrowing liberally from Ravel’s “Bolero,” “Summer Song” and “Make You Mine” nick the guitar tone from Big Star’s “Watch The Sunrise,” “The Delivery” is flamenco, etc. The big touchstone seems to be Tommy-era Who. If this criticism makes it sound like Person is just rehashing better songs by better bands, the truth is the opposite. These songs borrow the tone of their classic forebears, but are not copies of earlier songs. Diamonds In The Rough is an aptly-named gem of an album that pulls off the neat trick of sounding classic and fresh at the same time. The vocals are confident and relaxed, the guitar playing is superb. Person manages to make the album sound like a band project even though he is the main musician throughout, which is also no small feat. There are too many instrumentals for my tastes (five—and while a couple of them are truly excellent and none of them are bad, this is where the album stumbles). Overall, it’s a great achievement for Person to make an album that ranks alongside the best of his more well-known band efforts. More, please. Grade: B+
  • Stink (Deluxe Edition)—The Replacements. The sophomore effort from The Replacements was the 1982 EP bearing the all-time classic title Stink. It was not as much fun as their magnificent debut with the equally all-time classic title Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash, mainly because the humor was more obvious. Where the humor of the first album seemed natural, the humor on the followup seems forced (although hats off to “Dope Smoking Moron”). Paul Westerberg was not, at this point, a great songwriter, but he was at least a fun songwriter with an enormous amount of potential. But with the shining exception of “Kids Don’t Follow,” the songs on Stink are even more primitive than the ones on their debut. If you don’t think it’s possible to get more primitive than “I Hate Music,” just give a listen to “God Damn Job.” True, “Go” is a break in the Stink ethos of loud, hard, and unbelievably fast, and sounds more like the type of songs Westerberg would start to write on the next full-length album, Hootenanny. But while the lyrics on Stink sound like they were written twenty minutes after the song was recorded, the music is pure adrenalin: Westerberg, the Stinson brothers, and Chris Mars simply pummel the listener into submission, but since the original EP is 8 songs and only 14 minutes long, the effect is cathartic, not overwhelming. The deluxe edition features four additional songs and every one of them is a winner. “Staples In Her Stomach” is a prime example of early Replacements, as good as anything on the first three albums, and deliriously fractured versions of “Hey Good Looking” and “Rock Around The Clock” show that there was a depth of musical knowledge underneath the party-til-you-puke image the band projected. The fourth bonus cut is a home demo of a magnificent Westerberg song called “You’re Getting Married” that slows the tempo and clearly indicates that Westerberg was already starting to move past what he would later call “noisy, fake hardcore.” While Stink sounds like a bit of a rush job copy of the debut album, it’s still a whole lot of fun, and the bonus tracks make it even better. Grade: B+
  • Teargarden By Kaleidyscope, Vol. 1: Songs For A Sailor—Smashing Pumpkins. I’ll leave it to the hard core geeks to determine whether this is really the “Smashing Pumpkins” or just a Billy Corgan solo project under a more famous name. True, Corgan is the sole remaining Pumpkin, but then the Pumpkins were always the Billy Corgan Show. The guy played almost all of the instruments except drums, wrote almost all the songs, and sang everything. In the history of the Smashing Pumpkins, bassist D’Arcy Wretzky and guitarist James Iha were little more than coat hangers for Corgan and drummer Jimmy Chamberlain. Corgan was the Pumpkins and if he wants to hire a bunch of people to replace Iha, D’Arcy, and Chamberlain…well, sure. What do I care? The last effort by the Pumpkins was their “reunion” album Zeitgeist which came and went without a trace, buried under a mountain of sludgy guitars. While there were some good moments on that album, the overall effect was like being beaten to death by jackhammers…loud, and unpleasant. What was missing from Zeitgeist were actual songs. The Pumpkins were always at their best mixing brutally hard rock (“Cherub Rock,” “I Am One”) with psychedelic dream pop (“Disarm,” “1979”). Pumpkins or not, this is what Corgan has returned to on this EP, the first of 11 projected EPs to be released under the catch-all title of Teargarden By Kaleidyscope. These four songs represent the best stuff Corgan has turned out since Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness, and seem to indicate that Billy’s had his iPod set to a Led Zeppelin playlist. “A Song For A Son” revels in its Zeppelin IV-isms, and features scorching guitar work from Corgan, while “Widow Wake My Mind” combines a 1970s summertime breeze pop with Houses Of The Holy crunch. “A Stitch In Time” has a breezy acoustic/psychedelic feel. The final song, “Astral Planes” is the weak link. Musically it’s not at all bad but there’s only about five words in the song, repeated endlessly. If you’re going to write lyrics, make an effort. Otherwise, just leave it as an instrumental. Just for the record, I don’t really miss Iha or D’Arcy, but while the new drummer is excellent, replacing Jimmy Chamberlain is all but impossible. All songs are available as free downloads from Smashingpumpkins.com, and the actual EP will be released at the end of May. Grade: A.
  • The White Stripes—The White Stripes. This blast of blues from Jack and Meg White is so primeval that if you listen closely you can actually hear the sound of red, white, and black dinosaurs off in the distance. Call it “Peppermintsaurus.” From the opening drum kick that starts “Jimmy The Exploder” to the squall that is “I Fought Piranhas” the debut album contains all the elements that would make the White Stripes one of the most exciting acts to come along since “Smells Like Teen Spirit” blew out of radio speakers. But just because all the elements are there, doesn’t mean they’re all in place. The White Stripes is defiantly primitive and the bluesiest of all their albums, and at times it reaches greatness: the covers of Robert Johnson’s “Stop Breaking Down,” Bob Dylan’s “One More Cup Of Coffee,” and the traditional “St. James Infirmary Blues,” are standouts. They are also all cover versions. The only original that rises to their level is the brooding “Do,” though several others are nearly as good, especially the furious “Screwdriver” and the molten metal Detroit blues, “The Big Three Killed My Baby.” But like the product put out by the Big Three, there are also clunkers: “When I Hear My Name,” “Little People,” “Slicker Dips” “Wasting My Time” and “Cannon” are riffs in search of a song (though “Cannon” has a welcome shout out to Son House by incorporating a couple of verses from “John the Revelator”). But this album also marks the first, welcome appearance of “Suzy Lee” (who would show up later on “We Are Going To Be Friends” from White Blood Cells), the excellent acoustic blues of “Sugar Never Tasted So Good,” and the twisted dance of “Astro,” which features a closing guitar solo that hits you like a taser. Jack and Meg would do better, but this is a fine album. Grade: B
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The Listening Post: March 2010

Spring and more tunes are in the air:

  • Seconds Of Pleasure—Rockpile. Not quite a forgotten classic, this is still an excellent album of old fashioned, 1950’s-style rock ‘n’ roll. Dave Edmunds and Nick Lowe have always been rock and roll traditionalists, playing a brand of music that has clearly visible roots in rockabilly, Chuck Berry, and blues without sounding like they’re copying the style (a la The Stray Cats). The album opener “Teacher Teacher,” which was all over the airwaves when I was in high school, is the best moment on the album but there are gems aplenty, from “Heart” and “Play That Fast Thing (One More Time)” to “Wrong Again (Let’s Face It)” and “You Ain’t Nothin’ But Fine.” This is an album that may sound somewhat anachronistic today, but would still be a hit at any party. Not essential listening, but great fun from start to finish. Grade: B
  • Heaven Tonight—Cheap Trick. The thing about Cheap Trick is that they’re a frustrating band. Blessed with talent, and capable of writing incredibly hooky power pop, they were also very inconsistent. Heaven Tonight is considered by many to be their best studio album and if that’s the case, it’s too bad. It’s not that the album isn’t good. In fact, overall it’s very good. But that’s only because the good material on it is great. There’s some not-so-hot material on the album, like the sub-“Kashmir” riffing of the title track, or the “Peter Gunn”-esque “On Top Of The World,” or the arena-ready posturing of “Auf Wiedersehen” or the annoying call-and-response vocals that mar the otherwise very good “On The Radio.” But this mediocre material (and it’s mediocre, not awful) is saved by the sheer brilliance of “Stiff Competition,” the cover of The Move’s “California Man” (complete with the sly incorporation of another Move song, “Brontosaurus”), the bouncy “How Are You?” and, most of all, by “Surrender,” one of the greatest of all 1970s rock songs. Grade: B
  • The Sound Is In You—The Grip Weeds. Any band that names itself after John Lennon’s character in How I Won The War has got my attention. That’s way too cool a joke to ignore. But even without the name, 1998’s The Sound Is In You is a worthy listen. It’s a stellar album, filled with great musicianship and very strong songs. There is a very clear debt to the rock music of the 1960s, especially The Byrds and The Who. Much of this album sounds like a cross between those two bands. “Strange Bird” especially sounds like it was lifted completely off one of the first couple of Byrds albums. But from the real start of the album (not including a minute long “Intro”), “Every Minute,” to the fantastic closer “Inca,” there isn’t a disappointing note on the album. The band’s influences shine brightly throughout. In many ways you can play “Spot The Influence” on almost every track, from the blatantly obvious (“Strange Bird,” and their great take on the Buffalo Springfield rarity “Down To The Wire”) to the less obvious (the furious acoustic strumming that opens “What’s In Your Mind” harkens back to the Moody Blues’s “Question”, “Games” name checks the first Flying Burrito Brothers album), but the Grip Weeds manage to synthesize these influences and come out with a nicely updated take on 1960s garage rock. In that sense, they’re the garage rock equivalent to the more classic rock-oriented The Soundtrack Of Our Lives. The album rocks hard, but is never less than insanely tuneful and catchy. Fans of hard guitar rock, furious drumming, great harmony vocals, and hooks you could catch a whale with are well-advised to check this out. Grade: A
  • Bleach (Deluxe Edition)—Nirvana. There’s really no escaping the fact that Bleach is an album that many people want to be great, but which simply isn’t all that fantastic. After the towering Nevermind and the blistering In Utero, many Nirvana fans sought out Bleach expecting an unheard classic. The inclusion of the brilliant “About A Girl” on MTV Unplugged only helped whet the appetite. But Bleach gives new meaning to the term “spotty.” About half of the album is great or at least very, very good. “Blew,” “School,” “Love Buzz,” “Negative Creep,” “Swap Meet,” “Scoff,” “Mr. Moustache,” and “Downer” are all prime slabs of early grunge music. As songs, they are somewhat lacking but they more than pass the audition based on sheer power and conviction. Here was a young band full of sound and fury and even at this early stage Kurt Cobain’s razor-ripped throat was enough to make a believer out of anyone. Best of all was “About A Girl,” one of the very few songs that could have easily fit on the later Nirvana albums, a true masterpiece that showed Kurt’s devotion to the Beatles. The rest of the album? Strictly mediocre riff-fests like “Floyd The Barber,” “Big Cheese,” “Paper Cuts,” and “Sifting” show a band that still hadn’t quite settled into a songwriting groove. But now the album has been re-released with a 12-track live concert from 1990 attached and it’s a stunner. The live show is recorded better than the actual album, and includes most of the highlights from Bleach as well as more well-known later tracks such as “Dive,” “Sappy,” “Molly’s Lips” and “Been A Son.” The performance is never less than ferocious. Sure, it’s a sloppy live show. Nirvana was a pretty sloppy live band, and while Chad Channing does a great job he’s no Dave Grohl. But for a band like Nirvana, sloppiness could be an asset. Because the performance is so frenetic and furious, it never sounds choreographed. The very realness of it leaks from every note, including the missed notes. The live show is not on a par with their recently released performance from the Reading festival, and it’s not as good as the bootlegged 1991 show from Halloween, but it still gives a great opportunity to hear the young band before they knocked the music world off its axis. Grade: B for the original album. Grade: A for the live tracks.
  • Sin & Tonic—Mono Men. Lost in the Nirvana/Pearl Jam/Soundgarden/Alice In Chains tsunami that ushered alternative rock into the mainstream were Seattle’s Mono Men, who brought a more garage rock aesthetic to the punk/grunge movement. There’s no mistaking this album for any of the albums by Seattle’s first tier, but it’s a standout from the second tier, on a par with Flop’s Flop & The Fall Of The Mopsqueezer. Where Flop wrote power pop songs that placed equal emphasis on both the pop and the power, Mono Men dispense with the pop side of the equation and substitute a more roots-rock sound, even delving into quasi-surf instrumentals (“Monster”) and Blasters-meet-The-Clash rockabilly (“Waste O’ Time”). While there are only a few real standout tracks (“Mystery Girl,” “Hexed,” “Waste O’ Time”), the balance of the album is consistent in its excellence. Only the boring “Afterglow,” “Scotch,” and “No Way” drag the album down a bit and, of those three songs, only “No Way” goes nowhere. Grade: B+
  • Clairvoyance—Screaming Trees. One of the best bands from the Seattle “grunge” explosion was also one of the most overlooked. Sure, people knew “Nearly Lost You” because it was on the Singles soundtrack, but Screaming Trees had been a recording outfit since the mid-1980s and several of their albums, especially their later albums like Sweet Oblivion and Dust, were as great as anything that came out of the Northwest alt-rock scene. Clairvoyance is their debut album from 1986, and it only hints at how great the band would later become. The sound of the band was closer to the Los Angeles “Paisley Underground” sound than it was to Seattle grungers like Green River, and a very Doors-y keyboard is at least as prominent as the raging guitars. It’s also hard to believe that it’s Mark Lanegan on vocals…his voice on these early songs is very different than the whiskey-and-cigarettes vocals he would later use to such great effect. The highlights include “Orange Airplane,” “You Tell Me All These Things,” “Forever,” “Lonely Girl,” “The Turning,” and the title track. Unfortunately, none of these highlights are great, and much of the rest is very mediocre. The band had not yet figured out who they were at this point, and many of the songs are heavy on feel and light on actual songwriting. Tracks like “Standing On The Edge” and “Strange Out Here” sink like anchors, and while the remaining tracks are listenable they’re not particularly memorable. There’s promise here, but the Trees would do much, much better. Grade: B-
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Alex Chilton, RIP

Word is out today that Alex Chilton, the former lead singer of the Box Tops, and one of the guiding forces behind the awesome Big Star has passed away.

Chilton first became prominent as the voice behind “The Letter,” the great Box Tops song from 1967 with which Joe Cocker later had a big hit. Despite the hits with the Box Tops (“The Letter,” “Cry Like A Baby,” “Neon Rainbow”), it was his tenure in Big Star, and the pop perfection that they released, that immortalized Chilton. Despite the fact that Big Star never became even moderately well-known, their influence as one of the original, seminal power pop bands of the 1970s stretches wide and far. Much like the Velvet Underground, the reverberations created by Big Star are still being heard today. R.E.M. and Wilco owe a huge debt to Big Star, and Chilton acolytes run the gamut from their #1 fanboy Paul Westerberg (who wrote the great Replacements song “Alex Chilton“) to Brendan Benson. In fact, the entire school of power pop owes a debt of thanks to Big Star.

Alex Chilton, dead at 59. RIP