London's The Attack had gone through quite a few personel changes by the time they started work on what was to be their first album, the subtly titled Roman God of War. By this point they'd lost Davy O'List to The Nice and the insufferable camp of "Created by Clive" and buckled down to power out psychedelic heavy rock in the vein of The Yardbirds and Pretty Things.
By the time they made their third album in 2002, Leicester's freakbeaters Bronco Bullfrog had relocated to London where they had access to a number of pro-studios, but they were a little light on material. So Andy Morten broke his monopoly a bit to allow bandmates Louis Wiggett and Mike Poulson to get more involved in the songwriting. The results were somewhat mixed. Although the album was very consistent with the group's deliberately retro vibe, that retro-ness was wearing thin for the band's leader, who felt that too many of the songs were derivative. When you hear how the Beatlesque "Barnaby Slade" and "I'm Not Getting Through" both recycled offbeat "Taxman" guitar accents and "Last Chance to Smile" begins with a "Pictures of Lily" descending chord figure before finishing with a substitute "Substitute" lick, you'll agree he has a point.
You know rock and roll has lost its bite when it becomes the subject of a big picture book for tiny little tots. What hand-wringing dads and moms once considered hymns of Satan is now fit for toddlers in Luis Demano and Susana Monteagudo's Illustrated History of Rock.
This year the studio behind such watershed pictures as The Jazz Singer, Gold Diggers of 1933, Casablanca, White Heat, Bonnie and Clyde, A Clockwork Orange, Superman, and Malcolm X turns 100. Mark A. Vieira marks the event with an illustrated history of the studio called Warner Bros.: 100 Years of Storytelling.
Legal obligations have resulted in such memorable albums as Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear and (allegedly) Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music. They're sometimes bitter, like the former, or unlistenable, like the latter (or in the case of Van Morrison's oft-reissued "contractual obligations sessions" for Bang records, both).
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