Review: Vinyl Reissues of U2's 'The Unforgettable Fire' and 'How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb'

The Unforgettable Fire was the last album U2 made before they become the defining megastar Rock band of the eighties, and it is transitional in sound as well as historical purpose. The production and arrangements are generally lean in the spirit of the band’s first three albums, but they upped the level of fist-raised grandeur that would be their default setting in the years to come. With that came the aura of self-importance that Bono-haters find most off putting. Nevertheless, “Pride (In the Name of Love)” (an ode to Martin Luther King, Jr.) is still a pretty rousing anthem, and the beautiful title track (an ode to the victims of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings) is even better. However, The Unforgettable Fire cooks hottest when U2 are ripping out stilettos like “Wire” and “Indian Summer Sky” with the punk intensity that made their debut album so awesome. If The Unforgettable Fire as a whole lacks the focus and consistency of Boy and War, it still delivers a healthy selection of U2 classics and only really loses the plot with the aimless, interminable, and atypically poorly sung “Elvis Presley and America”…and it certainly remains fresher and fiercer than the stardom-making but pretty boring Joshua Tree.

Review: Vinyl Reissues of 4 "Live" Paul McCartney Albums

(This post was updated on  August 2, 2019, to include details about Wings Over America)

Five years after The Beatles broke up—and nine after their final gig— Paul McCartney finally came to terms with his legacy and began performing songs from his Fab days again. The move thrilled audiences who finally got a chance to hear how never-performed favorites such as “Lady Madonna” and “The Long and Winding Road” might sound live. The Wings Over the World tour and its accompanying album (Wings Over America) and film (Rock Show) also made it clear that McCartney had the material, the chops, and the innate showmanship to be one of Rock’s greatest live acts. Sure all of his proto-hair metal “Oh yeahs!!!” were cheesier than the Velveeta factory, but all is forgiven when he starts pounding hell out of “Soily” or “Jet”. 

Universal Music is now reminding us of what a great ticket McCartney has been throughout the years with vinyl versions of four of his live discs. Naturally, Wings Over America leads this campaign, and it’s easily the best record here, collecting three LPs worth of great musicianship and showmanship with an emphasis on tracks from Wings’ two best albums: Band on the Run and Venus and Mars. McCartney’s willingness to share the spotlight with Jimmy McCulloch and Denny Laine, whose rendition of his old Moody Blues hit “Go Now” is as good as anything by the show’s main star, is charming and supports the argument that Wings really was an all-around good band and not just Paulie’s puppets.

As a show of support for the age of glasnost (“openness and transparency”) Gorbachev ushered in, Paul McCartney ensured that his latest album would be released in the Soviet Union. It was a live-in-the-studio recording of rock and roll classics he had already planned to put out in the UK with an album cover inspired by those that adorned rock albums bootlegged for the underground Russian market. He and a pickup band that included Mick Green of original British rockers Johnny Kidd and the Pirates fire through classics made famous by Elvis Presley, Bo Diddley, Eddie Cochran, Fats Domino, Wilbert Harrison, Sam Cooke, and Paul’s idol Little Richard intended as a sort of rock and roll primer, as was Mick Carr’s liner notes explaining the origins of each song. McCartney titled it Choba B CCCP, Russian for Back in the USSR.

 

As a historical document, the album is pretty interesting. The introduction of what could be the greatest artistic product of capitalist society to the communists is a charming project, and at age 46, Paul proved he could still rip it up pretty well…though one hopes the folks who bought this disc were inspired to root out the original versions of its songs. Choba B CCCP is best when not inviting unfavorable comparisons with original versions, as when Paul transforms Duke Ellington’s jazz-pop standard “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” into a chunky New Orleans-style rocker.

Review: 'Do the Right Thing' Blu-ray

It is absurd that as recently as the eighties there was no prominent African-American voice in Hollywood. Just months before that decade ended, Spike Lee finally snatched the megaphone with the film that made him a household name, and it did so without playing nice with the establishment. Lee presented a particularly sweltering day in Bed-Stuy where tempers rise with the mercury and ultimately boil over into murder and a racially charged clash at an Italian-owned pizzeria in a largely black community.

Lee casts himself as Mookie, an employee of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria and the film’s focal point. Lee does a good job in front of the camera, though it is the rest of the outstanding cast (Samuel L. Jackson, Rosie Perez, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, John Turturro, Joie Lee, Richard Edson, Bill Nunn, Frankie Faisson, Robin Harris, Danny Aiello, and the especially electrifying Giancarlo Esposito) that really zaps it to life. Do the Right Thing still belongs to Lee, who not only turns in a provocative script, but also films it with unbridled imagination and energy, his camera zooming and tilting like an untethered falcon, his subjects staring down that camera to confront the audience directly, to muse about hate and love.

Review: 'Jon Savage’s 1965-1968: The High Sixties on 45'

In 2016, Rolling Stone writer Jon Savage began curating double-CD compilations for Ace Records in the UK. Each set was a sort of fantasy mid-sixties pirate radio playlist. His 1965 set mainly featured A-list rock and soul artists such as The Kinks (“See My Friends”), The Who (“Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere”), and The Supremes (“My World Is Empty Without You”), but there was also a sprinkling of more obscure luminaries such as Thee Midniters (“Land of 1,000 Dances Pt. 1”), The Spades (“We Sell Soul”), and Alvin Cash & the Crawlers (“Twine Time”). Each comp devoted to 1966 through 1968 followed a similar format.

To put all of these ace CDs onto vinyl would have required about twelve vinyl discs. Instead, Savage and Ace have opted to boil 192 tracks down to a sampling of 32 for a single, double-LP set. Although some of the big, big artists remain—Donovan with “Hey Gyp”, The Association with “Along Comes Mary”, James Brown with “Tell Me That You Love Me”, Gladys Knight and the Pips with “Take Me in Your Arms and Love Me”, Buffalo Springfield with “Mr. Soul”—Jon Savage’s 1965-1968: The High Sixties on 45 mostly spotlights the artists whose sides are less easy to find on vinyl. So while tracks by The Kinks (“Wonderboy”) and Aretha Franklin (“I Say a Little Prayer”) keep listeners oriented with familiar sounds, we can mostly concentrate on making some new discoveries, such as The Anglos’ infectious soul raver “Incense”, Norma Tanega’s quirky folk popper “Walkin’ My Cat Named Dog”, Ray Sharpe and the King Curtis Orchestra’s dance hall anthem “Help Me (Get the Feeling) Pt. 1”, Freaks of Nature’s garage burner “People! Let’s Freak Out”, and Kak’s psychedelic shaker “Rain”. There are also some relatively obscure numbers by well-known artists, such as The Chiffon’s “Nobody Knows What's Going On (In My Mind but Me)”, The Everly Brothers’ “Lord of the Manor”, and Sly and the Family Stone’s (as “The French Fries”) “Danse a La Musique” (aka: “Dance to the Music” in French).

Yes, some obscurities remain in CD limbo (alas, there wasn’t room for The Birds’ “Leaving Here”, The Blue Things’ “One Hour Cleaners”, Blossom Toes’ “Look at Me I’m You”, Tintern Abbey’s “Vacuum Cleaner”, or Dave Davies’ “Lincoln County”), but if this groovy distillation sells well enough, maybe Ace will some day pull the trigger on that twelve-LP box set we’re really craving.

Review: 'What Goes On: The Beatles, Their Music, and Their Time'

Reading Tim Riley’s Tell Me Why: The Beatles Album by Album, Song by Song, The Sixties and After at the unripe age of 15 quite literally changed my life. It didn’t just teach me that pop songs were worthy of deep analysis and the valuable lesson that even The Beatles’ mighty body of work is not critic-proof. It also set me on the path that led me to indulge in the analytical jibber-jabber I’ve been spouting here on Psychobabble for the past eleven years, as well as in my book The Who FAQ. So I was excited to see that Riley was involved in a new Beatles book.

However, I’m not really the audience for Riley and Walter Everett’s What Goes On: The Beatles, Their Music, and Their Time. In fact, this book is directed at a very specific audience: college students. What Goes On is structured as a chronological Beatles primer, providing a basic look at their musical innovations and cultural influence complete with text-book style study questions (my fave: “How does Lennon’s quip at the Royal Command Performance illustrate the generation gap?” …oh, what would 23-year old Lennon have thought if he’d known his offhand wise assery would one day be studied in university classrooms?!?). More thorough analyses of select songs are very similar to the ones in Tell Me Why.

One aspect of What Goes On that could not have existed in Riley’s 1988 publication are the Internet videos referenced throughout the book that further illustrate the various subtopics, often with musical examples by a young drummer or Everett on bass or guitar (or in one screen-in-screen instance, both). Videos cover such specifically Beatle-focused topics as how Ringo’s drumming style differed from the prevailing styles that preceded him to such general musical theory concepts as an explanation of syncopation. I had a bit of trouble accessing them by typing the provided URL’s into my browser but had no trouble using the direct links provided Oxford University Press’ web site.

Now a middle-aged fart, I’m versed in music theory and Beatledom well enough to not need a book like What Goes On, but I do feel heartened by the idea of a new generation of young people discovering their music and the pleasures of delving deep into it in the kind of class that might employ this book as its main text. Happy studying, kids.

Review: Rolling Stones-'Bridges to Bremen'

Only the most deluded fan would argue that The Rolling Stones’ were at their most vital in 1998, or that their most recent album—Bridges to Babylon—was one for the ages. Still, there’s always something to be said for catching a band of the Stone’s magnitude live, and they certainly put on a polished show. Granted, polished rock isn’t too electrifying, but the band still had their moments even at the end of the fifth leg of their Bridges to Babylon tour. Just when I was ready to nod off while watching the new Bridges to Bremen DVD, the Stones slammed into a vital version of “Paint It Black” that woke me right up.  

Review: 'Retro Fan' Issue #5

Next month will mark the fiftieth anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, and this month marks the first anniversary of Retro Fan magazine. To commemorate both events, Retro Fan is devoting much of its fifth issue to all things spacey. Yes, the pop cultural legacy of the actual Apollo 11 crew gets its own two-page article, but the big draw of issue 5 is undoubtedly its cover boy. Mark Hamill sat down with Glen Greenberg for a 15-page interview—well, maybe interview is the wrong word since Greenberg rarely gets to do much more than slip in the occasional “Right, right” or “[laughs].” Mostly he just steps aside to let the always-delightful Hamill expound on his work and legacy as Luke Skywalker. Before you start drooling for big revelations about Episode IX, be aware that the interview was actually conducted back in the summer of 2017 before The Last Jedi had even been released. Though bits of it were apparently included in an article Greenberg wrote for TIME Magazine for Kids, this is the first time the unabridged interview is being published. Fortunately, it is being published in Retro Fan, which means that a slew of boffo color photos of Hamill-centric memorabilia accompany the interview.

Other spacernalia featured in issue 5 includes a feature on astronaut-toy line Major Matt Mason, an article about the alien-abetted Greatest American Hero and an interview with star William Katt (who was also a frontrunner for the role of Skywalker), and a groovy12-page history of seventies sci-fi series Jason of Star Commander that got a pretty big squeal of “Hey…I totally forgot about that... I used to love that!” from yours truly. You know an issue of Retro Fan is worth its salt when it elicits that reaction.

Review: 'Five Years Ahead of My Time: Garage Rock from the 1950s to the Present'

While solo artists and swinging groups ruled fifties rock radio, bands took over in the sixties. All across America and elsewhere, quartets of pimply kids gathered in basements and garages to bash out two or three chords. This new home grown-rock movement was underway well before The Beatles arrived.

Seth Bovey traces the origin of the garage band phenomenon so crucial to the development of Rock & Roll in his new book Five Years Ahead of My Time: Garage Rock from the 1950s to the Present. His approach is original, eschewing usual suspects such as Chuck Berry and Elvis to argue that the grungy guitars of Link Wray and Duanne Eddy—and factors such as the exposure TV gave such artists, a new wave of cheap guitars imported from Japan, and the general DIY spirit of mid-century America—set the stage for garage bands.

Bovey then traces the genre’s evolution starting with The Fabulous Wailers before touching on everyone from The Kingsmen to Paul Revere and the Raiders to The Sonics to Dick Dale to The Knickerbockers to The Chocolate Watchband to The 13^th Floor Elevators, while also looking beyond the usual American boys to discuss all-female groups such as The Pleasure Seekers and The What Four and international combos such as Los Bravos, Q65, and The Spiders.

As his book’s subtitle indicates, Bovey also strides beyond the garage band golden era of the sixties to see how the movement subsequently remained active with the rise of garage-focused ’zines such as Who Put the Bomp, the Nuggets and Pebbles comps, punk, the much publicized garage revival of the early ’00s that gave us The White Stripes and Strokes, and most importantly, the fact that contemporary bands such as The Black Lips, Thee Oh Sees, and The Incredible Staggers are keeping the garage lights on—though with very little influence in America, where Rock & Roll is dead as Dillinger.

The only trouble with Bovey’s format is that garage rock is a cornerstone of six decades of Rock & Roll, but his book is only 170-pages long. So his storytelling is a bit too fleet footed, and the fact that he skims over several of the quintessential garage bands—particularly Question Mark and the Mysterians, The Seeds, and The Standells (who grace this book’s cover but aren’t even mentioned in its pages!) means that Five Years Ahead of My Time can’t really be called “definitive.” Yet because Bovey is more concerned with following the origins and evolution of garage rock than name-checking important bands, his book remains a satisfying pocket history of a crucial strain of Rock & Roll.

Review: Miles Davis's 'The Complete Birth of Cool' on Vinyl

Two years before releasing his debut LP, Miles Davis participated in the first of three sessions that would ultimately be compiled onto Birth of the Cool in 1957. These sessions were groundbreaking both because they featured Davis at such an early stage of his career and because of the way his nonet (which included such luminaries as Max Roach, Gil Evans, Gerry Mulligan, Lee Konitz, and John Lewis) reimagined bop with the kind of classically-tinged polyphony that would be key to Davis’s work moving forward. A big-band sensibility that would not always be evident in that extremely varied work is also apparent.

The recordings still sound like the product of a fully-realized, completely seasoned, utterly forward thinking artist. Davis’s signature, smoldering sunset sound that would beat in the heart of future projects such as Porgy and Bess and Sketches in Spain is already evident in pieces such as “Moon Dreams” and “Darn That Dream” (featuring vocalist Kenny Hagood). That Davis was just 22 when these sessions began is unimaginable.

Before the 1957 release of the eleven-track Birth of the Cool, eight numbers from the nonet’s sessions were released as 78rpm singles and then on a 10” LP called Classics in Jazz: Miles Davis in 1954. In 1998, Capitol further expanded the 1957 album with thirteen live numbers from a couple of gigs at NYC’s Royal Roost recorded for radio broadcast in September 1948 with primitive audio quality but somewhat hotter playing than the sublimely cool and controlled studio sessions. 21 years later, that double-CD set is making its double-vinyl debut via Universal Music with excellent liner notes and nice sound culled from the original session tapes.

Review: 'Blue Velvet' Blu-ray

Having begun his career as a pure avant gardist with challenging yet emotionally rich films such as The Grandmother and Eraserhead, David Lynch took an unexpected turn into the mainstream when he made the historical melodrama The Elephant Man and the space opera Dune. With his next feature, Lynch found the perfect balance between his most outré ideas and the more traditional storytelling that would make him America’s most popular surrealist. Nevertheless, Blue Velvet still split audiences, with some finding his S&M noir deeply compelling while others finding its extreme scenes of sexual sadism repelling.

As is usually the case with Lynch’s films, plot is secondary to style, world-building, and unfiltered emotion, but Blue Velvet is one of his more traditionally sensible stories despite odd elements such as the severed ear that draws clean cut college boy Jeffery Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan) into the seedy underworld in which repulsive thug Frank Booth (Dennis Hopper) kidnaps the husband and child of nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini) as leverage for forcing her into humiliating and violent sex acts.