Review: The Eyes' 'My Degeneration'

The Eyes are often lumped in with the freaky British mod groups like The Who, The Creation, and Small Faces, and their best-known tracks do sort of crib the riff from "I Can't Explain" and Townshend's pickup-flicking from "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere". But with their sneering R&B vibe, The Eyes owe as much to the The Pretty Things. Tracks like the "I Can't Explain"-cribbing "I'm Rowed Out", the "Anyway, Anyhow"-cribbing "When the Night Falls", the "My Generation"-cribbing "My Degeneration", and "The Immediate Pleasure", which just might not crib anything at all, have the echoey, mysteriously seedy vibe of the Pretties during their "Can't Stand the Pain"/"£.S.D." heyday. The Eyes certainly sounded much tougher than their uniforms of stripey shirts affixed with pics of their own faces in eye-shaped fields might have suggested. I guess they would have to.

Review: 'The Everly Brothers-The Cadence Recordings'

The two albums The Everly Brothers made for their first label, Cadence, aren’t necessarily their two most essential (that honor goes to their first two Warner Bros. LPs), but The Everly Brothers and Songs Our Daddy Taught Us do contain a few unquestionably essential numbers. These include “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie” on the former and “That Silver Haired Daddy of Mine” on the latter. Mostly, the first two Everly Brothers albums spotlight the duo’s two sides in an extreme fashion that would be more organically blended on their next albums.

Review: 'Roy Orbison: The Ultimate Collection'

Roy Orbison was one of the few truly great artists to make an impact between Rock & Roll’s first wave and the British Invasion. That doesn’t mean he didn’t make worthwhile records before and after that brief window of roughly five years. In the fifties he wrote hyper swingers like “Ooby Dooby” and “Claudette”, a hit for The Everly Brothers, while with Sun Records before maturing into the more dramatic, near-operatic style that made him pop’s King of Tears. After having the final big hit of his key phase, “Pretty Woman”, which married the hard rhythms of his earliest records with the more melodic and complex riffing of the burgeoning Mersey sound, Orbison never stopped making records, and enjoyed a major resurgence in the late eighties when he joined Jeff Lynne’s stable as a Traveling Wilbury and solo artist.

Sony Legacy’s new collection, The Ultimate Roy Orbison, boasts of being the first compilation to incorporate tracks from all of the artist’s phases, though this isn’t true since Legacy’s four-disc Soul of Rock and Roll box set from 2008 had already done that. The big difference here, besides the fact that Ultimate distills Orbison’s career down to a single disc of 26-tracks, is that it jumbles the chronology. I generally prefer this approach to boring old chronological order, though the eras represented on this set are so vastly separated that it makes for a bit of a jarring listen when, say, the rockabilly “Ooby Dooby” gets sandwiched between the peak-era gut punch “It’s Over” and the Lynne-era “Heartbreak Radio”. With all due irony, it points out how the slick eighties stuff now sounds a bit dated while the fifties and sixties tracks remain as fresh and timeless as ever.

Still, unlike a lot of classic artists who attempted comebacks in the eighties, Roy Orbison never embarrassed himself. “You Got It” may not be as indescribably essential as “Dream Baby” or “Crying”, it’s still a damn good song, and this collection does do a fine job of highlighting the man’s consistent quality control. Plus, even though The Ultimate Collection covers an expansive period, the only missing track that really hurts is the luxurious non-hit “Shahdaroba”. Of course, Roy Orbison would not deserve to be called The King of Tears if he didn’t make us feel a little pain.

Review: 'The Everly Brothers: Harmonies from Heaven'

There’s a great story behind every great Rock & Roll act. The Everly Brothers were one of the greatest, certainly among the very best half-dozen artists of the genre’s first era. The brotherly discord behind their beautiful music began a tradition that would continue with the similarly combative kin in The Beach Boys, Kinks, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and many family acts to follow. However, George Scott’s recent BBC documentary The Everly Brothers: Harmonies from Heaven is really mainly concerned with that beautiful music.

A clutch of talking heads that include rock writers, music executives, and artists such as Keith Richards, Graham Nash, and Art Garfunkel spend most of the film’s hour analyzing the duo’s unique harmonies, Don Everly’s aggressive guitar rhythms, their songs and arrangements. Don is on hand to give new firsthand details on his music, while his late brother Phil appears in relatively recent footage from 2010. Even in a music-focused film, it would be dishonest, and frankly, kind of boring to only discuss the music, and the brothers’ fall out is addressed, Don basically chalking it up to his being a democrat and Phil being a republican.

It is not Scott’s OK documentary that makes Eagle Vision’s new blu-ray of the film a must own. It is the bonus DVD containing a live performance from Sydney, Australia, in 1968. Those talking heads can talk about how great The Everlys are all they want to, but there is no better proof than that club date in which the guys not only showed off their unimpeachable harmonies and rocked with total abandon with the assistance of a sharp blues trio called The Tabernacle Three, but also flaunted their significant comedic gifts. This is as much of a stand-up gig as it is a Rock & Roll one with Don delivering really funny shtick between songs while Phil plays the silent straight man. This is one of the most thoroughly entertaining performances I’ve ever seen, and the roughness of the footage isn’t much of an issue except in one small stretch with several missing frames. Unfortunately, this means we lose a few beats from “Wake Up, Little Susie” and Don’s comedy riff on smoking banana peels.

Review: The Everly Brothers’ 'Complete US & UK Singles As & Bs & EPs: 1956-1962'

The great, good, and otherwise Rock & Roll records of the fifties have all fallen into the British public domain in recent years, which means there’s been a flood of budget reissues from sources of all reputes. Acrobat Music has gotten into the act by putting out triple-disc comps collecting all of the U.S. and U.K. single and EP sides of artists such as Duanne Eddy, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Burnette, and most recently, The Everly Brothers. So for under £12 ($20 American) you can horde a walloping wealth of PD tracks from some of the best artists of Rock & Roll’s inaugural decade. In the case of The Everly Brothers’ Complete US & UK Singles As & Bs & EPs: 1956-1962, that is 75 cuts, which amounts to about sixteen pence per song. And man oh man, you are getting some great songs for that pocket change. As you should already know, The Everly Brothers became a hit-spewing duo by marrying R&R and C&W with authenticity only rivaled by Johnny Cash’s marriage of those distinct genres. The hits might deliver thigh-whacking fun (“Bird Dog”, “Wake Up, Little Susie”, “Claudette”) or gut-gripping poignancy (“Let It Be Me”, “Devoted to You”, “Crying in the Rain”) or something in between (“Bye Bye Love”, “Cathy’s Clown”), but the quality was always high as the sun.

One would be unreasonable to expect the quality of the budget Complete US & UK Singles As & Bs & EPs to rise to that level, but this is still a very nice collection for the price. The mastering is more than acceptable, neither overly bright nor overly loud, which is how a lot of budget CDs overcompensate for the poor quality sources they use. Disc One of Complete US & UK Singles As & Bs & EPs generally utilizes good sources (a shrill “Oh, What a Feeling” and a slightly noisy “Always with You” are the most noteworthy exceptions), which is key since it’s the disc with most of the biggest hits, as well as their consistently excellent flip sides. Dodgy sources are more plentiful on the second disc, and some of its most essential tracks— such as the terrific hit “Walk Right Back” and the manically clattering “Muskrat”—are left sounding like low-kbps MP3s. This issue evaporates on disc three, which basically sounds good all the way through. A track or two, including “Love Hurts”, is a tad fuzzy but far from unlistenable.

The material beyond the most well known tracks on all three discs set is strong, and since the group’s first four LPs comprised cuts from their 45s and EPs exclusively, Complete US & UK Singles is also an LP collection of sorts... though one that jumbles the order of those albums beyond recognition. The packaging is refreshingly thoughtful as well, containing a thick booklet with historical liner notes and a good discography. Manage your expectations slightly and you’ll find Complete US & UK Singles As & Bs & EPs: 1956-1962 is a terrific value for twelve quid or twenty bucks. 

Psychobabble’s 10 Greatest Singles of 1960!

1960 is generally regarded as a rough time for Rock & Roll. Although it was the year Elvis Presley’s Army stint ended, the new recordings he made that year were not his most dynamic. Chuck Berry was beset with legal problems because of his dirty-old-man peccadilloes. Buddy Holly had died the previous year. Little Richard was in the midst of a serious Jesus addiction.

These are the clichés often trotted out to dismiss that dry period between the ‘50s’ end and the start of the British Invasion. The fact is that with the exception of Elvis, none of these hard Rockers ever dominated the charts. Featherweight jokers like Pat Boone, Debbie Reynolds, and Paul Anka were scoring massive hits during Rock & Roll’s late-‘50s golden age. That the biggest hits of 1960 were novelties like “Running Bear” and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”, pop fluff like “Teen Angel” and Everybody’s Somebody’s Fool”, and saccharine pap like “Theme from ‘A Summer Place’” wasn’t much different from the previous decade’s situation. And it sure doesn’t change the fact that some great records slipped out in ‘60ar. Here are ten of them…


10. “Chick A’ Roo” by Rick Wayne and the Flee-Rakkers

Like Phil Spector, producer Joe Meek— not the singers and groups he chose to record— was the star of his recordings. Unlike Spector, Meek displayed remarkably poor taste when it came to choosing singers (supposedly, many of his choices were driven by his desire to have sex with cute guys rather than a yen for genuine vocal talent). Yet Meek’s records are great because he draped them with such startling otherworldly effects that he could have made Mickey Mouse sound like Elvis. Rick Wayne was a particularly lousy singer, but “Chick A’ Roo” is a killer chunk of vinyl because of its charmingly goofy hipster lyric and some hard-driving backing from The Flee-Rakkers, who also released a couple of excellent, Meek-produced instrumentals that year, including a surf update of “Green Sleeves” called “Green Jeans”.

9. “Bye Bye Johnny” by Chuck Berry

As mentioned above, Chuck Berry was not having a great year in 1960, but that didn’t stop him from cutting a handful of very good records. None of them matched the power of his ‘50s recordings (though his mojo would return the following year with stellar stuff like “I’m Talking About You” and “Come On”). Of course, sub-par Chuck Berry still smokes most of contemporaries. “Bye Bye Johnny” is the