Review: 'Buzz Me In: Inside the Record Plant Studios'

What do Electric Ladyland, There's a Riot Goin' On, Black Sabbath Vol. 4, Innervisions, Rumours, Cheap Trick '77, Parallel Lines, a spiffy 12-track machine, a room-size Moog, a suite of sex-fetish rooms, and 162 tons of cocaine have in common? They're all among the ingredients that made the Record Plant THE Record Plant. 

Founded by engineer Gary Kellgren, the Record Plant was the first successful studio by and for hippies. He decked the place out with high-tech equipment (a board capable of recording twelve tracks...twelve!) and, inspired by the perpetual skinny-dipping party at Peter Tork's house, an atmosphere of sexual and chemical malaise. It's where rock and rollers could escape the sterility of their grampa's recording studios to rock out, experiment, snort, and screw as much as their bodies and labels' budgets could bear.

Review: 'On Record 1978: Images, Interviews & Insights from the Year in Music'

Four decades ago, budding rock journalist G. Brown went to work for The Denver Post. Writing for a major daily paper, he got access to an incredible assortment of talent—everyone from The Who to Peter Tosh to Blondie to Black Sabbath to Talking Heads to The Clash to Parliament. Since he was working for The Denver Post and not, say, Punk or even Rolling Stone, Brown’s assignments also included pieces on Barry Manilow, Anne Murray, Chicago, Chuck Mangione, and the like, and his interview questions were apparently of the “So, can you tell me about your new album?” variety.

G. Brown’s new book On Record 1978: Images, Interviews & Insights from the Year in Music is kind of odd. It consists of utterly neutral, 300-word write ups on 200 of the artists he covered in 1978 peppered with quotations from period interviews and illustrated with a welter of B&W press photos. Consequently, On Record 1978 reads like a compilation of press releases. However, as you move from The Cars to Wings to ELO to Rod Stewart to the Bee Gees to Chaka Khan to Linda Ronstadt to ABBA and so on, the books morphs into a fairly pleasing nostalgia balm that basically manages to capture the spirit of 1978 in a shallow nut shell.  

Review: The Fox's 'For Fox Sake'

Had the breaks been a little better, The Fox might now be spoken of in the same breath as Small Faces, The Creation, The Move, The Action, Traffic, and the other mod and/or psych bands they resemble. Alas, the Brighton quintet only made one album, because as frontman Steve Brayne relates in the liner notes of a vinyl reissue of the For Fox Sake LP, their management “poached” Black Sabbath and decided to put all of its eggs in that gloomy basket. Timing might have something to do with The Fox’s failure since their mid-sixties sound was so out of step the times when they released their one and only LP in 1970.

That The Fox is all but forgotten is a drag, but there’s nothing draggy about For Fox Sake. For lovers of the brand of fresh-faced British rock that the rains of Sabbath and Zeppelin washed away, this album is a revelation. Almost every song is a gem, inviting comparison to the works of more famous artists but offering enough originality to make it essential in its own right. You’d be hard pressed to find a song by a white band that used reggae off beats earlier than “As She Walks Away”, which also resembles Larks’ Tongue-era King Crimson three years ahead of schedule. Had Hendrix experimented with circus music, he may have been able to lay claim to the sound of the epic “Madame Magical”, but since he didn’t, he can’t. Most other tracks don’t strive for such uniqueness, but so who cares when For Fox Sake supplies the best Action (“Secondhand Love”), Creation (“Lovely Day”), and Small Faces (“Man in a Fast Car”) songs of 1970? Only the inchoate jam “Goodtime Music” is not up to snuff.

Sommor Records’ vinyl reissue of For Fox Sake affords this project some belated attention. The very cool album cover art is nicely reproduced. Sound is a bit flat and distorted, though that’s may be more a consequence of the album’s original lo-fi production than the digital mastering. The LP-sized booklet with Brayne’s notes and several band photos is a nice bonus. But great songs by a great band that almost nobody has heard are all the incentive necessary to hunt down For Fox Sake.

366 Days at the Drive-In: Day 64

The Date: December 3

The Movie: Black Sabbath (1963)

What Is It?: Mario Bava saturates his horror portmanteau with comic book color and Boris Karloff’s looming presence. However, it is the Karloff-free “The Drop of Water” that truly terrorizes.

Why Today?: On this day in 1948, Ozzy Osbourne is bourne.

Review: 'So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films Volume One'

Giallo is a contentious genre. Part lurid crime thriller, part gory horror, part sleazo-sex flick, the distinctly Italian film field can be tough to pin down, and each of its hardcore fans probably has his or her own idea what qualifies. Author Troy Howarth (with ample help from guest essayists Ernesto Gastaldi and Roberto Curti) does what he can too pin down what, exactly, a giallo picture is and isn’t over the first 40 pages of his movie guide So Deadly, So Perverse: 50 Years of Italian Giallo Films Volume One. Then we’re in the deep end with a glut of reviews that waste no time courting controversy. Two films in and its The Three Faces of Fear (aka: Black Sabbath), included because the least-celebrated tale of Mario Bava’s horror portmanteau, “The Telephone”, passes the litmus test.

I’m certain Howarth will afford the rest of that film all-due attention when he and co-conspirator Christopher Workman get to the sixties-centric volume of their Tome of Terror horror movie guide series. So Deadly, So Perverse kind of functions as a companion to that series. Its extra space devoted to extended essays aside, it follows the same format as Tome of Terror with its tech specs, astute and lively reviews, detailed histories, above-and-beyond historical and biographical tidbits, and abundant illustrations. It differs from the first volume of Tome of Terror in its across-the-board depth. There are no two or three paragraph write-ups. Howarth examines every inclusion thoroughly, probably because there are fewer instances of lost films when dealing with giallo than 80-year-old horror movies. I personally don’t have as much interest in giallo as I do in 80-year-old horror movies, but I still found it hard not to get caught up in Howarth’s enthusiasm and came away from So Deadly, So Perverse with another dirty-laundry list of nasty movies to see. 

November 17, 2009: What’s My Name? : 20 Great Songs in which the Artists Name-Check Themselves

Since its birth, Rock & Roll has always been about the big boast. “Ooooh, my car is so fast, my dick is so big, my dance moves are so slick, my sounds are so righteous…” and so on and so on. A few artists have actually had the audacity to give themselves props by name—sometimes specifically, sometimes cagily. I can’t explain why, but I love it when singers do this. It gives me the same half-mast thrill as when a film’s title is mentioned in the movie or when a singer mentions an album title in a song that isn’t the title track of the album. Maybe it’s the flash of familiarity that makes these things fun: “Hey… I know who that ‘Bo Diddley’ guy you’re singing about is! It’s you!” So here are 20 little thrills in which the artists name-check themselves in one way or another.

1. “Bo Diddley by Bo Diddley (1955)

When it comes to artists who like to sing about themselves, Bo Diddley is the king. He wrote and sang songs with titles such as “Bo Diddley”, “Hey! Bo Diddley”, “Bo Diddley is a Lover”, “Bo Diddley is an Outlaw”, “Bo Diddley is Loose”, “Bo Diddley is Crazy”, “Bo Diddley Put the Rock in Rock and Roll”, “Bo Diddley Vamp”, “Bo Diddley’s Dog”, “Bo Meets the Monster”, and “Diddley Daddy”. And that’s a mere sampling. Bo Diddley was singing the praises of Bo Diddley as early as his very first single, “Bo Diddley”. Not only is the man’s yen for self-referencing on full display here, but so is the monumental “shave-and-a-haircut” beat he’d recycle as many times as he’d sing his own name.

2. “Pretty Thing” by The Pretty Things (1965)

When Bo Diddley wasn’t singing about Bo Diddley he was giving other artists opportunities to sing about themselves. The Pretty Things pulled the neat trick of naming themselves after an early hit by the Diddley Daddy, then covering that very song for their