Albert King: Live Wire/Blues Power

ALBERT KING: LIVE WIRE/BLUES POWER (1968)

1) Watermelon Man; 2) Blues Power; 3) Night Stomp; 4) Blues At Sunrise; 5) Please Love Me; 6) Look Out.

"A permanent member of the Fillmore family, a great guitarist — this is Mr. Albert King!" His­tory buffs should pay particular attention to the word 'permanent' on behalf of the announcer: it shows that flower power kids, contrary to rumours, were not bred with the specific purpose of being compatible with trippy jams of the Jefferson Airplane and the like, but, on the contrary, were quite susceptible to all kinds of music, including grandfather-oriented stuff like Albert King, who could be electric for all he liked, but who, after all, just played straightforward old blues.

On the other hand, maybe it is simply all due to King's personal charisma which he lays down on the audience much thicker than the actual licks he plays. If anything, Live Wire gives a great image of him as a showman, never forgetting that interacting with the audience is the most vital part of his show. All through the songs, particularly 'Blues Power', he keeps talking to the people, telling them little bits of stories, asking them questions, getting them on their feet, teasing them with bits of silence followed by musical explosions, and despite the fact that his arsenal of guitar tricks is limited and they start repeating themselves heavily after a while, he makes the audience love this game so much that the applause is just as heavy on the last numbers as on the first ones — even though, to tell the truth, there isn't all that much, musically, to distinguish the last numbers from the first.

It is also obvious just how intent he is on keeping his cool. Big man, big guitar, big sound, standing calm and collected, playing it slow and meticulous, every now and then letting out a lightning bolt of notes, but also every now and then just keeping it down, self-assured and content about just knowing that he can do whatever he wants on that instrument — he just won't, if he doesn't want to. He is no flamboyant eccentric like Jimi Hendrix, way above playing with his teeth; but every once in a while he just lets out this bit of insane laughter — "ha ha!" — translated into layman speak as: «yes brother, pretty simple for me, could be pretty simple for you, too, but no dice, brother, it's me on that stage, and you in that audience». Then he lets rip, and everyone is plugged back in his seat, mouth open, ears ringing.

Of course, «letting rip» is as relative as you would expect. Predictably, while playing live, King goes for lengthier solos, and he is neither as inventive nor as technically efficient as the white Bri­tish guy with the slow hand that spent a lot of time ripping him off. There are two types of solos here: the fast one and the slow one, and that is all you need to know. But it is not the solos themselves that are important: it's the Pre­sence. They should be taken together with the stage patter, with the ha-ha's, with the aahs and oohs, and particularly with the long rant at the start of 'Blues Power': "Everybody understands the blues...". Is that really true? Perhaps the whole essence of the blues is also in the Presence. And, boring or not in purely musical terms, this album con­veys blues Presence better than any other recording from 1968.

Not that the heart has managed to convince the brain of it — the latter is not supposed to rationally understand things like «presence» — but at least it has managed to let the brain stay out of the way for a bit, allowing Live Wire to receive a solid thumbs up for capturing a great showman at the top of his show powers.

Check "Live Wire / Blues Power" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Live Wire / Blues Power" (MP3) on Amazon

Alicia Keys: Songs In A Minor

ALICIA KEYS: SONGS IN A MINOR (2001)

1) Piano & I (intro); 2) Girlfriend; 3) How Come You Don't Call Me; 4) Fallin'; 5) Troubles; 6) Rock Wit U; 7) A Woman's Worth; 8) Jane Doe; 9) Goodbye; 10) The Life; 11) Mr. Man (duet with Jimmy Cozier); 12) Never Felt This Way (Interlude); 13) Butterflyz; 14) Why Do I Feel So Sad; 15) Caged Bird (outro); 16) Lovin' U [unlisted track].

Artists who write their own material deserve respect. Before engaging in a predictable trashing of young, aspiring, sexy, thoughtful Alicia Keys' debut album, ask yourself the question: what have you actually written? Have you ever recorded a sixty-minute long album of your own songs, not to mention sung and played piano on it? If no, shut up and listen; if yes, you should probably know how hard it is in the first place.

If you keep repeating this mantra over and over again while listening to Songs In A Minor, chan­ces are you'll approach it with an unbiased mind and spot the few drops of goodness that are contained therein. That Alicia Keys wasn't just a nobody who turned up in a recording studio by chance, to me, is obvious. Even disregarding her delightfully marketable appearance, she, like fellow soulster Mariah Carey, was selling much more than the body (not that there's anything wrong with the body): she can sing, she can play, and she can write songs, and she probably does all three better than your average Joe from the next corner, so why not make a record?

The bad news: "better" does not equal "really well". Armies of MTV divas have this kind of pipe set; her piano playing is efficient but she's not even on an Elton John level and she probably knows it; and writing songs? well, it doesn't take a tremendous lot of talent to write generic R'n'B tunes, especially with a little help from one's friends in the studio. So the only hope here is to get by on a combination of all three, which is truly not something that is frequently encountered in the world of contemporary R'n'B.

Alas, although mainstream critics predictably fell over this combination, and although the very sound of it doesn't drive me bonkers, Songs In A Minor falls victim to the commonest crime in the world: it is very, very boring. Dull, easy grooves; dull, unconvincing hooks (if any); dull, cheap sentiments; dull everything. Maybe this is, in large part, due to the fact that R'n'B in the last decade has been even deader than rock, and that the stinky, stagnating chains of its conventions chew through every ounce of talent. But it is more likely still that Alicia just doesn't have the right quantity of ounces, if you know what I mean.

Two songs that give me pleasure come right after each other in the middle: they are 'Rock Wit U', an excellent tribute to 70s R'n'B right down to all the syncopation tricks and wah-wah guitars (unfortunately, it only makes me yearn for going back to 70s R'n'B instead), and 'A Woman's Worth', where, once you discard the lecturing feminist lyrics, the chorus comes through as dense, tense, and deliciously neurotic (and catchy).

No other songs give me pleasure, with the possible — and frightening! — exception of the elec­tric piano-and-vocal album closer 'Caged Bird', which should scare people away (teenage girls usually sing stuff like that auditioning for American Idol) but, in my case at least, skilfully tugs at some particularly misplaced nerve and makes me emotional. (Please don't tell me that 'she's so rare and beautiful' is in the least autobiographical, please).

The big hit single was 'Fallin'; it didn't register with me at all, but I do remember that the vocals were overdubbed in an interesting way. (Connections with 'It's A Man's Man's Man's World' have been spotted by knowledgeable people as well; not sure it's a good thing). On the "hidden" track 'Lovin' U', she (kinda sorta) tries to be like 60s-era Aretha Franklin, but the only reason you have to listen to her being Aretha Frank­lin is if you think Aretha Franklin is only worth listening to when she's young and available for auto­graphs next door. Me, I have no problem putting on some old album from 1970 instead, because, let's face it, Alicia's decibels just don't register on Aretha's scale.

So turn this over to Mr. Brain, who refuses to recognize "artistic integrity" in all this shenanigan (and actually threatens to sue on account of bad taste and banal "artistic" decisions, like kicking things off with a reference to 'Moonlight Sonata', of all things! where's Beethoven and where's Alicia Keys?), and then to Mr. Heart, who has just recovered from a nice nap in the corner, as both of them give the record a crunchy thumbs down. There might have been some semi-good reason to listen to this in 2001; today, any such reason has to be recovered from deep down the drain.

Check "Songs In A Minor" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Songs In A Minor" (MP3) on Amazon

Aaliyah: One In A Million

AALIYAH: ONE IN A MILLION (1996)

1) Beats 4 Da Streets (Intro); 2) Hot Like Fire; 3) One In A Million; 4) A Girl Like You; 5) If Your Girl Only Knew; 6) Choosey Lover; 7) Got To Give It Up; 8) 4 Page Letter; 9) Everything's Gonna Be Alright; 10) Giving You More; 11) I Gotcha Back; 12) Never Givin' Up; 13) Heartbroken; 14) Never Comin' Back; 15) Ladies In Da House; 16) The One I Gave My Heart To; 17) Came To Give Love (Outro).

Like so many albums around it, One In A Million suffers from ceedeetis: it pastes its limited amount of attractions over such a vast surface that, by the end of it, I feel a strange sort of satis­faction, as if having just returned from the task of gathering the remains of a shipwreck scattered all over the beaches of a desert island.

But if you do gather the best tracks together and trim them down to, say, half their length (actual­ly, length of the individual songs is not a problem per se; they usually do not seriously run over four minutes, with the exception of 'Choosey Lover', which is really two songs in one), anyway, if you do this, it becomes easier to appreciate One In A Million as a high-class R'n'B album whose creators were sincerely interested in developing a new kind of groove sound rather than merely making an extra pile of bucks on the existing trends.

I say 'creators' because, again, it is unclear just how much Aaliyah herself was involved in all this except for just building up the required feeling. Some of the songs, in fact, are completely domi­nated by Timbaland's production, e. g. 'Hot Like Fire', where he straightjackets Aaliyah into a futuristic-robotic vocal part complementing his tricky choice of synth tones — I'm not complai­ning, because the effect is clever and inspiring, but whether Aaliyah's presence is necessary here, I have no idea about that. Could just as well be Margaret Thatcher.

Likewise, 'If Your Girl Only Knew' is mostly memorable for its hypnotic "post-disco" bassline, lovingly wrapped in a web of funky guitar and even electric organ (!). However, on the softer, balladeering stuff Timbaland does allow to let the girl loose, and if you are fond of her singing style, 'Heartbroken', '4 Page Letter', and the title track can all be lovely; singalong choruses and moderately tasteful arrangements don't hurt, either.

The best news is that there is not a single track on the record that feels really strained or 'image-carving': the forced street vibe of 'Throw Your Hands Up' has been purged completely, and pretty much every single track gives you a sentimental, fragile Aaliyah — very soft, very smooth (she used to be a big Sade fan, and it shows), ultimately, boring, but true to the soul, at least.

The non-Timbaland tracks are generally weaker, because there's no experiment (many of them just sound like standard Whitney Houston fare), but, odd enough, the one song that stands above everything else is a V. H. Herbert production: a terrific cover of Marvin Gaye's 'Got To Give It Up'. When Marvin recorded it in 1979, he sang it in falsetto, for understandable reasons; Aaliyah gives a very faithful rendition, down to the individual intonations of the syllables, but she sings it in her natural voice, and the effect is even more believable and seductive than on the original (one could do without the extraneous rap sections, though). They also slow down the tempo just a bit, and enhance the power of the rhythm section, so it doesn't at all sound like a retro-disco sound, but, on the contrary, looks appropriately modern.

Things don't work so well on the 'Old School/New School' version of the Isleys' 'Choosey Lover', because, frankly speaking, the 'old school' part, graced with hair-metal guitar, sounds very much like mainstream Eighties school (bad, bad, bad!), and the 'new school' part was not produced by Timbaland and is therefore rather generic. The only saving grace of this and every other so-so track on here is the singing. It's hard not to like the singing.

One In A Million has received tremendous critical praise, with people calling it one of the most epoch-defining R'n'B albums of the time and suchlike. I wouldn't know, and I wouldn't care much if it really had the kind of historical influence as is sometimes assigned to it — whether that would be a good thing is debatable. But it deserves to be heard, at least the better half of it, for combining some exciting approaches to the genre with the talents of one of the best singers in the genre, so my heart feels fine about it, surreptitiously giving the record a fast thumbs up while the brain is still collecting itself, trying to come up with some nasty cynical statement. We'll hastily leave it in this state and move on to the next one.

Accept: I'm A Rebel

I'M A REBEL (1980)

1) I'm A Rebel; 2) Save Us; 3) No Time To Lose; 4) Thunder And Lightning; 5) China Lady; 6) I Wanna Be No Hero; 7) The King; 8) Do It.

Udo Dirkschneider doesn't like this album very much, because of "unsuccessful experiments", as he himself said. Well, I can understand, except that it's not so much experimentation as an odd will to conform to standards that mars the record. They set an excellent standard with the title track, a number formerly written by Australian guitarist Alex Young for his brothers in AC/DC (they say AC/DC even recorded it back in the day) — that's why it's got a bit of a drunken party sound to it, which is unusual for Accept who have always sounded stone cold sober, but still, it's an AC/DC-worthy song, and any song like that can be handled well by Accept.

Unfortunately, right after that the album starts shaking. There is only one other number that is truly solid from head to toe: 'China Lady', built upon an unforgettable riff and an equally unfor­gettable banshee wailing part from Udo. A couple more rockers are so-so, and then there's the cringeworthy stuff: power ballads that match simplistic melodies against pathos, the kind of stuff that, at the same time, was eating away the Scorpions' intestines ('No Time To Lose' may be my least favourite Accept song of that entire period), and then we're watching the unwatchable as Accept do disco ('I Wanna Be No Hero'), something that they are so poorly adjusted for they can't even help imitating Kiss (if the 'I can give you nothing but love babe' line does not, for you, im­me­diately bring to mind 'I was born for loving you baby', you must be the unassociative type).

Disco motives even show up in the album's third best song, 'Save Us', which starts out strong and spiteful but then turns to silliness in the middle-eight, including "choral" singing that should be banned from Accept records once and for all; if the only member in your band who can sing well is Udo, what's your problem? Bass guy Peter Baltes knows how to stay on key, for sure, but what's the use of staying on key if you're staying on key on songs like 'No Time To Lose'?

The good news about all this is that 'I'm A Rebel' (the song) did become a hit for the band, and this must have helped them to get by and gather their forces for a full-fledged return to form. But nevertheless, my heart is also a rebel, and it rebels all the way against disco-metal and rotten power balladry, and, ripping the two side-openers off the album, proceeds to reward it with a hearty thumbs down, while the brain is, of course, still sleeping on this one.

PS. As irrelevant as it is to the review, I can't help but publish the idea for the greatest of all non-existent Weird Al Yankovic parodies: the heavy metal anthem 'I'm A Rabbi' ('I'm a rabbi, I'm a rabbi, don't you just know it?'), dangerously bordering on the sacrilegious but all the more fun for all the titillation. Where can I patent this?

Check "I'm A Rebel" (CD) on Amazon

10cc: Sheet Music

10CC: SHEET MUSIC (1974)

1) Wall Street Shuffle; 2) The Worst Band In The World; 3) Hotel; 4) Old Wild Men; 5) Clockwork Creep; 6) Silly Love; 7) Somewhere In Hollywood; 8) Baron Samedi; 9) The Sacro-Liliac; 10) Oh Effendi; 11) Waterfall.

The jump from 10cc's first album to their second one is, in all fairness, enormous. 10cc was basically a set of weird pop songs. Sheet Music is, on the contrary, a set of pop-tinged weirdnes­ses. Not that it's atonal or anything — it is easily their most melodic album ever, simply because there's an average total of five or six different melodies per song... sometimes per twenty seconds of it, too. "Never A Dull Moment" — what is this title doing on a Rod Stewart record?

I have heard criticism that tended to basically just write off 10cc from this moment as a pack of goofballs. However, if anything, Sheet Music is even more lyrically focused and biting than 10cc. No matter how "goofy" the actual songs might be, most of them carry a message: tearing apart the capitalist world on 'Wall Street Shuffle', acidly self-ironizing on 'The Worst Band In The World', ridiculing lyrical cliches of popular music on 'Silly Love', butt-kicking oil-pumping sheiks on 'Oh Effendi', and even stopping on the way to take the time for a tender lovin' tribute to the silver screen — 'Somewhere In Hollywood' is almost like a more sophisticated response to the Kinks' 'Celluloid Heroes', released two years earlier. All of this makes perfect sense, regardless of the oddness of the form it has been presented in.

Predictably, my own favourites are those where the melodies go on just a little bit longer, or at least have a memorable central theme to them. For instance, the wall-rattling opening riff on 'Wall Street Shuffle' that is even more of a threat to Wall Street than the lyrics themselves ('Bet you'd sell your mother/You can buy another') — this is instantly classic. So is the mock-metallic thump of 'Silly Love' that, of course, dissolves fairly quickly into attractive pop fare ('hey toots, you put the life into living, you brought the sigh out of sight') and ends up formulating the band's main principle: 'take up your own time, make up your own rhyme, don't rely on mine — 'cause it's SILLY!'

These two songs that bookmark Side A are the obvious highlights, but the whole record brims with such boundless, boiling energy that it never lets go even when it doesn't let you memorize it too easily. Only once do they take a short breather, on the Gizmo-dominated soft ballad 'Old Wild Men', but it turns out to be the album's lowlight, because their incessant shuffle of patterns really only works when it's backed up with plenty of adrenaline; otherwise, it's just boring.

Of course, it goes without saying that the amount of genre territory covered is quite spectacular. Completely dropping their penchant for doo-wop, they instead proceed to deconstruct calypso ('Hotel'), Haitian tribal-voodoo stuff ('Baron Samedi'), prog rock ('Somewhere In Hollywood'), folk balladry ('Waterfall') and... uh, what­ever 'Sacro-Liliac' is supposed to deconstruct. And if these songs won't struck you as magnifi­cently planned compositions, most of them are at least guaranteed to give you a good laugh (ex­cept 'Waterfall', which seems to take itself rather seri­ously — but I don't mind, given how pretty the guitar and the singing are).

Not only that, but they really master all these genres: the pompous, ominous introduction to 'Somewhere In Hollywood' could easily fit on any second generation prog band record, and the percussion on 'Baron Samedi' could make you swear Kevin Godley must have spent his child­hood drifting around the Caribbean instead of around the boroughs of Great Manchester. It's only when they start combining the uncombinable — for instance, bringing in a lumbering hard rock middle eight for 'Baron Samedi' — that you feel you're living in a post-authentic world after all.

Needless to say, the brain wins the race here with a solid gold thumbs up, praising the record for its phenomenal inventiveness. But it should be known that, after several listens, the heart is well on the way to catch up with the brain, and if you haven't grooved along to 'Silly Love' at least once in your life, you've all but missed out on the art of intellectual headbanging, and I feel great overwhelming pity for you.

Check "Sheet Music" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Sheet Music" (MP3) on Amazon

Al Green: Green Is Blues

AL GREEN: GREEN IS BLUES (1969)

1) One Woman; 2) Talk To Me; 3) My Girl; 4) The Letter; 5) I Stand Accused; 6) Gotta Find A New World; 7) What Am I Gonna Do With Myself; 8) Tomorrow's Dream; 9) Get Back Baby; 10) Get Back; 11) Summertime; *12) I Want To Hold Your Hand.

The "proper" start of Al's career: a new producer (Willie Mitchell), a new label (Hi Records), a new backing band (the Hi Rhythm Section), and... well, no, on this album the new determination to finally find his own unique style is nowhere yet to be seen. Green Is Blues, for some reason, drops the "Rhythm" stem before the "Blues" one, but one listen is enough to understand that in 1969, Al was still trying to market himself (or, rather, Al's producer was trying to market Al) as a cool swingin' cat, whippin' his audiences into a groove that didn't include smoothness, suaveness, and silkiness into its list of ingredients.

For one thing, Green is still singing with a certain degree of harshness in his voice; the lush velvet of his phonation was still waiting for a chance to unravel. (We only get a very little glimpse here on the rather so-so composition 'What Am I Gonna Do With Myself'). For another, there are very few straightforward ballads on the album — in fact, maybe just the opener, 'One Woman', which cleverly grows from quiet/tender to all-out operatic, and a cover of 'My Girl', and that's that. All of the other songs will at least have you tap your foot — including Green's lone original, 'Get Back Baby', where he tries to ride James Brown's funky train by relying on chicken-scratch guitars and very Brown-like grunting. Unconvincingly.

The entire album smells of foot-in-the-water, as would probably any album that covers both 'Summertime' and 'Get Back', not to mention the already mentioned 'My Girl'. The take on 'Get Back' is at least curious, along the lines of Otis Redding's take on 'A Hard Day's Night' — it's always fun to see the black groove masters adapt the Beatles to their own sense of rhythm and musical vision — but whether we really need one more version of 'Summertime' is certainly up to discussion. Green's vocals are perhaps most impressive on his version of the Box Tops' 'The Letter', since he actually sings all the way through rather than grunt or recite, and essays almost every trick in his vocal repertoire.

A major highlight that few people usually mention is Doc Oliver and Carl Smith's 'Gotta Find A New World' — actually, one of Al's most passionate socially-tinged songs, a little 'Gimme Shel­ter'-ish in mood, with its tense bass line, female backup harmonies and Green driving himself into frenzied desperation. A song almost criminally underarranged, though: with a little more work it could have become a timeless epic rather than just a forgotten track on one of Green's lesser records.

A decent start overall, but for some reason, whenever I call upon my heart and brain for judge­ment, both happen to be out for lunch, no matter what time of day it is. Meaning that the judge­ment has to be suspended, and the music lover should proceed at his own risk. There is a CD edition with lots of bonus tracks, I hear, but the only one on mine is an early single version of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand', which is... well, it's not difficult to imagine what an Al Green version of 'I Want To Hold Your Hand' could sound like.

Check "Green Is Blues" (CD) on Amazon

13th Floor Elevators: Easter Everywhere

13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS: EASTER EVERYWHERE (1967)

1) Slip Inside This House; 2) Slide Machine; 3) She Lives (In A Time Of Her Own); 4) Nobody To Love; 5) Baby Blue; 6) Earthquake; 7) Dust; 8) I've Got Levitation; 9) I Had To Tell You; 10) Postures (Leave Your Body Behind).

Where can you go from the blues-folk-garage-psycho insanity of the Elevators' debut? The choi­ces aren't particularly overwhelming, but there is still some room left for manoeuvring, enough so that the band's fans seem to be almost equally split in two over preferring this or that as their favourite first choice for the band.

On Easter Everywhere, the Elevators are no longer a garage band. Nothing on here even tries to recapture the primal punk power of 'You're Gonna Miss Me', and only a few songs go for the psy­chedelic fury of 'Reverberation' and the like: most notably, the faster-moving 'Earthquake' and 'I've Got Levitation', two tracks that break up the druggy monotonousness of the album and fully justify their titles — 'Earthquake' is as threatening as a real earthquake should be (well, at least around five points on the Richter scale), and 'I've Got Levitation' for a brief moment could con­vince you that you have got it indeed.

Elsewhere, this is strictly slow to mid-tempo psycho-folk, more Byrds and Jefferson Airplane in nature than Sonics, with the incessant electric jug providing first extra trippiness and then extra aggravation. The good news is that almost each of the songs — and they're as much songs as they're sermons, replete with Roky's acid admonitions — has a hook; the bad news is that too many of them drive this hook home merely by repeating it over and over, as is particularly the case with the album opener, the "epic" 'Slip Inside This House'. "Epic" because of its eight-minute length more than anything else.

One forgotten, completely overlooked little gem on here is guitarist Stacy Sutherland's 'Nobody To Love', a beautiful pop rocker very much in the vein of the Byrds (even with similar dreamy vocal arrangements), but also based on a scorching lead guitar line that is at once hard-rocking and, shall we say, impressionistic? Visionary? Since it does not have Roky's demented stamp on it, people usually pass it by, but here's hoping history will slowly recognize that Sutherland was as important to this band as Roky was, and sometimes more so.

Enigmatic remains the issue of why the band also decided to include a cover of Dylan's 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue'. It is given a haunting, beautiful arrangement, with echo-laden electric guitar notes dripping all over you like stalactites in a cave, but that doesn't solve the question. Maybe Roky saw something in the lyrics that fit in particularly well with his inner chaos. Or may­be they just thought they could do it better than the Byrds.

Easter Everywhere is certainly not recommendable for those who mostly dug the debut for its sheer rocking power. But for those who'd rather prefer a solid helping of mushrooms along with the musical experience, it delivers the goods with even more efficiency. Me being more of a ro­cker at heart than a lunatic, I prefer the brain to get the upper hand and condescendingly offer this a thumbs up for a few really good songs, general innovative value and historical importance. The heart, however, prefers to keep silent unless it is pumped into action by 'I've Got Levitation' or driven to tears by 'Nobody To Love'.

Check "Easter Everywhere" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Easter Everywhere" (MP3) on Amazon

Albert King: Born Under A Bad Sign

ALBERT KING: BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN (1967)

1) Born Under A Bad Sign; 2) Crosscut Saw; 3) Kansas City; 4) Oh, Pretty Woman; 5) Down Don't Bother Me; 6) The Hunter; 7) I Almost Lost My Mind; 8) Personal Manager; 9) Laundromat Blues; 10) As The Years Go Passing By; 11) The Very Thought Of You.

The only serious difference between this classic album and King's previous recordings is that Born Under A Bad Sign — technically, just a singles' collection from his early years on Stax — has Booker T. and the MGs on all or most of the tracks. But what a difference. For instance, Donald «Duck» Dunn is one of those few session players who have, early on, realized that if a bass guitar can sound menacing and dangerous, then it should sound menacing and dangerous. There's also The Memphis Horns, one of the tightest ever brass sections, to add extra sharpness to the proceedings. And King himself must have understood that he had to rise to the challenge, if he was not to get lost against such a monstruously professional background.

So the title track is, arguably, one of the most famous blues tunes ever recorded — a brilliant com­bination of a simple, but devastatingly memorable riff that just exemplifies the word «threa­tening», and a lyrical twist that deserves to be carved in stone on the tombs of miriads of losers around the world: "If it wasn't for bad luck, I wouldn't have no luck at all". A year later, Cream did the song justice, but they never beat it — not least because they just could not identify so well with the feeling as the performer. At least they had the good taste of omitting the verse about how "I can't read, I don't know how to write, my whole life has been one big fight".

These fat, blistering, arrogant tunes that, for a short time at least, breathed new life into generic blues, recapturing the old fire and brimstone of Muddy and Wolf but setting it within an entirely modern (for 1967) context, just keep coming: 'Crosscut Saw' (whose guitar licks Clapton shame­lessly, but skillfully, appropriated for 'Strange Brew'), 'Oh Pretty Woman' (where the bass borders on early metal), 'The Hunter', 'Personal Manager' — forget about the countless imitators who have not a single excuse for putting their product on the market, this is the real thing.

In between, Albert sandwiches a few tender blues ballads that are also inventive — the tender flute on 'I Almost Lost My Mind', the brass-piano interplay on the longing, complaintive 'As The Years Go Passing By', the light jazz tinge of 'The Very Thought Of You' (which, for personal reasons, reminds me of all those lounge-style Keith Richards' album closers on late period Stones' albums), it all makes up for a diverse experience. Nothing better confirms King's profound inspiration at the time than the fact that each of these songs has its own personal identity — quite unlike The Big Blues, where half of the songs at least sounded like carbon copies of each other. (Of course, a large percentage of the thanks goes to the Stax army.)

Arguably, Born Under A Bad Sign is the last great — and I mean great, in terms of both defining its epoch and influencing the epochs to come — blues album recorded by a pre-rock'n'roll era artist, and at the same time beautiful proof that Fifties' artists, with a little extra wit and a little outside help, had every chance of not only surviving in the changing times, but even ruling them. It belongs in every music lover's collection, and if you are that particular music lover who idolizes and fetishizes hate for «generic blues», my advice is to simply forget that generic blues exists and just treasure this one record.

To commemorate this event, heart and brain shake hands (do brains have hands?) in this debate, and both hurry to the podium at the same rate to provide a mighty thumbs up. Even despite the rather useless inclusion of 'Kansas City', a tune better left to Little Richard.

Check "Born Under A Bad Sign" (CD) on Amazon

Adele: 19

ADELE: 19 (2008)

1) Daydreamer; 2) Best For Last; 3) Chasing Pavements; 4) Cold Shoulder; 5) Crazy For You; 6) Melt My Heart To Stone; 7) First Love; 8) Right As Rain; 9) Make You Feel My Love; 10) My Same; 11) Tired; 12) Hometown Glory.

As of 2009, Adele Laurie Blue Adkins is one of the freshest arrivals in an interminable series of young, gifted girls living in prosperous Western society and suffering from acute psychic im­balance that forces them into a life of songwriting. Nine times out of ten, there is no middle ground with these ladies: one portion of the population, large or small, falls madly in love with them, and the other one just hates them for being boring, pretentious, and basically expendable, thinking — not without reason — that the world has been oversaturated with their "soulfulness" to such a degree that the very word "soul" has become completely devalued.

Another reason for cool people to hate Adele is her commercial success. Which, and it is a stone cold fact, was almost mathematically calculated: the album's singles, 'Chasing Pavements' and 'Cold Shoulder', are just the kind of relatively simple, but catchy adult pop that UK charts seem to have developed a particular attraction for. (Arguably, it's these two particular songs that also sound the closest to Amy Winehouse, to whom people keep comparing Adele — generally unjustly, as she's got a much more folksy vibe to her than Amy). Of course, UK charts these days are somewhat more tolerant about decent music than US ones, but still, soulful female singer-songwriters that sell lots of records are by definition a suspicious lot.

I do not find the slightest reason to believe that this dame, or her music, is a fake, though. Her weak points are the lyrics, which she probably thinks original and some probably find inspira­tional — but it's just that there's a point at which trying to express the same old same old feelings in new "deep" ways becomes a cliché in itself. Today, whenever I hear a song begin with lines like 'Daydreamer, sitting on the sea, soaking up the sun, he is a real lover, of making up the past and feeling up his girl like he's never felt her figure before', I can't help asking myself: 'Say, what happened to the old 'when I feel that something, I wanna hold your hand' routine?' Lyrically, she doesn't have anything to say that you don't already know, unless you belong to the younger gene­ration that refuses to trust anyone over 30, much less over 64 like Paul McCartney.

But in terms of pure meaningless (or, at least, verbal meaning-less) sound, she's a different matter. She's got a great voice — strong, just a tad raspy, stuck somewhere in between folk and jazz style — and an excellent sense of phrasing. And she doesn't merely rely on it, but makes it an integral part of her musical world, which is truly a musical world, not just some sensitive hack banging away at a grand piano (the Soft stereotype) or slashing out the same old grunge chords on a cheap electric guitar (the Hard stereotype). She writes interesting vocal, and occasionally instrumental, melodies, and arranges them in miriads of ways: starting out on solo acoustic, then shifting to retro-jazzier territory, then going all-out modern pop on the hit singles, then leaving out all but a set of chimes... the piano really arrives only on the last track, 'Hometown Glory', but, to tell the truth, the song could use any kind of arrangement as long as the vocal hooks stay.

So I find myself in an odd position. I honestly, sincerely do not care for Adele's inner torment. I do not care for it one instant because for a girl who is only 19 — and who insists on your knowing it — this kind of inner torment is gruesomely inadequate. 19-year old girls should, at best, be singing 'come on babe, come see about me', just like 19-year old boys should be singing about wanting to hold your hand. Maybe I've grown insensitive, but blame it on the legions of Adeles, all of which strive to achieve Shakespeare-tragedy level on their debut album because these days, you've got to be "mature" to be taken seriously.

Yet I cannot not acknowledge the talent — the hit singles, 'Hometown Glory', 'Tired', 'Crazy For You' and some other tunes have made an impression on me, and if the heaviness of their lyrics and the self-importance were cut back to match the delightful airiness and inventiveness of their melodies, I might have warmed up to the record immediately rather than after a handful of listens it took me to go beyond the initial "oh no, not that whiny 2000-teenager crap again". So here's hoping this girl, like Benjamin Button, will be growing backwards on her next albums — because otherwise, failing to become the next Joni Mitchell, she faces the imminent threat of becoming the next, ugh, Vanessa Carlton.

And so, in the heart vs. brain thing, the sympathetic heart tells the indignant brain to shut off for a minute and wins the battle with a solid, if not overwhelming, thumbs up. Will the brain eventual­ly have the upper hand? Let’s wait for the next record.

Check "19" (CD) on Amazon
Check "19" (MP3) on Amazon

Aaliyah: Age Ain't Nothing But A Number

AALIYAH: AGE AIN'T NOTHING BUT A NUMBER (1994)

1) Intro; 2) Throw Your Hands Up; 3) Back And Forth; 4) Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number; 5) Down With The Clique; 6) At Your Best (You Are Love); 7) No One Knows How To Love Me Quite Like You Do; 8) I’m So Into You; 9) Street Thing; 10) Young Nation; 11) Old School; 12) I’m Down; 13) Back And Forth (Mr. Lee And R Kelly Mix).

Bland, effortless R'n'B was certainly not invented by Aaliyah, but she did have the unlucky fate of being born right into the midst of it. I do not know how much creative control she had in the studio when recording her three albums — not much, apparently, since she never wrote or arran­ged anything herself — but it is hardly indecent to state that her legend was, at all times, mostly in the hands of her "seconds", in this particular case, producer/songwriter R. Kelly's, and therefore, these records do not so much tell the story of Aaliyah The Artist as they tell you what was "hot" and what was "not" about R'n'B in the mid- to late Nineties.

The title of the album is a thinly veiled hint at Aaliyah's (14 at the time the songs were recorded) flirt (and even a short-lived marriage) with R. Kelly himself, and, while I might somewhat cautiously agree with the statement in general — and so might pedophiles all over the world, for that matter — in the case of Aaliyah, her age was definitely more than just a number: it meant that she, an obviously gifted vocalist, would be exactly whatever her mentors would want her to be. And they didn't want much: they just wanted her to rap like Mary J. Blige and to sing sweet sappy ballads like Whitney Houston.

Now I'm not much of a Whitney Houston fan, but let me tell you this: Aaliyah is much more convincing as a balladeer than when she is practicing these street-wise funky grooves. Maybe it's because she never really had as much "street culture" inside of her as they sometimes try to make it seem — she was, after all, strictly middle-class, and "tough" numbers like 'Throw Your Hands Up' just don't cut the mustard. R. Kelly must have known that, since after that particularly dumb album opener, he mostly keeps the "tough" stuff to himself, on a few numbers playing the hip-hop counterpart to Aaliyah's 'sensitive' personality. Most of the time it sounds very stupid, but at least his parts help break up the monotonousness of the balladry.

The "music" on here is best left in peace — if you've heard one generic mid-90's R'n'B album, you've heard them all — but some of the vocal choruses are pleasant and catchy, and amazingly, the record's best asset, after all, IS Aaliyah's singing: seductive, but not cooing, making use of melisma but not going overboard with it, and, in general, coming off very naturally as if she really meant all these things. As it often happens, the best tracks are not the album's main singles ('Back And Forth', a so-so dance groove, and a sugary cover of the Isley Brothers' 'You Are Love'), but rather the shadowy, ambiguous title track; the Stevie Wonder-ish (R. Kelly must have had stolen Stevie's chromatic harmonica some time in the past) 'Street Thing'; and 'Young Nation', the closest thing to an anthemic track but still a pleasantly subdued one. Kudos to R. Kelly, by the way, for at least realizing this girl should have been reared in the Sade mold rather than the Madonna one.

So what's the resolution? This is an album strictly for the heart, not for the brain (unless you want to spend some time pondering what lines like 'young nation under a groove, keeping it smooth with a jazz attitude' really mean), but even the heart orders a general thumbs down — for incon­sistency, occasional phoniness, and propagating sex with minors (okay, maybe not). Nevertheless, she does have a very, very lovely voice.

Check "Age Ain't Nothing But A Number" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Age Ain't Nothing But A Number" (MP3) on Amazon

Accept: Accept

ACCEPT: ACCEPT (1979)

1) Lady Lou; 2) Tired Of Me; 3) Seawinds; 4) Take Him In My Heart; 5) Sounds Of War; 6) Free Me Now; 7) Glad To Be Alone; 8) That's Rock'n'Roll; 9) Helldriver; 10) Street Fighter.

For the casual metalhead, Accept usually begin with Restless & Wild (1983), culminate with Balls To The Wall (1984), and shoot their final load on Metal Heart (1985); at least, this is the picture one usually gets from standard run-of-the-mill guides to music. This is, however, a seri­ously flawed picture, confusing "notability" and "commercial success" with the simple pleasures of listening to good music. I, for one, prefer the more complicated view that says Accept were great from the very start — maybe in slightly smaller doses, though.

On their first album, much like on every other album they put out, Accept have firmly stated that they don't do nothing much except just play rock'n'roll. Well, such usually is the case if one of the songs on your record is titled — drumroll — 'That's Rock'n'Roll'. They never were quite as hard-headed about it as, say, AC/DC, allowing themselves space for a power ballad or two, and their guitarists, placing heavy accent on melodicity, could occasionally dip into classical sources, but overall, this is basic, brutal headbanging music for headbangers. And in terms of headbanging power, Accept delivers the goods in fine German style almost every bit as well as the records from the band's "classic" period.

Of course, they're modeling their sound — crunchy, ultra-precise riffs, fluid melodic soloing, and on-key screeching from a mad vocalist — on the already popular Scorpions model. But there can be no problem with that if they're writing songs that are every bit as good, and sometimes better, than the ones circulated around by their predecessors. 'Tired Of Me', 'Sounds Of War', 'That's Rock'n'Roll', 'Helldriver' — all solid hard rock with catchy choruses, and the band's professiona­lism along with lead singer Udo Dirkschneider's charisma prevent it from sounding as dumb as the titles might suggest. Quite frequently, they also seem to be catching the punk virus, as tracks like 'Street Fighter' ('hate you hate you, leave us alone man') demonstrate, and the reckless speed of 'That's Rock'n'Roll' — maybe not proverbial "trash", but close enough — brings Mötorhead to mind. In short, there's some food for thought, a big achievement for a basic hard rock record.

The album's centerpiece, however, and the most complex track, is 'Glad To Be Alone', one of the most bombastic pieces the band ever made. It alternates between slow, power-ballad parts (al­though it is a bit of a stretch to call them "ballad"-like, what with Udo's hateful raving at the world being their main attraction) and much faster, "art-metal" choruses. It's not a masterpiece, but they still pull it off, thanks mainly to Udo and the fact that the lead guitarist doesn't just run up and down the scale but bothers to squeeze the obligatory arpeggios into honestly emotional and memorable solos. It doesn't work nearly as well on the album's one true power ballad, 'Sea­winds', but that particular track was destined to be a misfire because Accept's whole schtick really only works as long as they're angry — in fact, the simple rule is that the angrier they are, the coo­ler the results. Udo Dirkschneider waxing lyrical over some trifling matter is no one's idea of a real cool time, though.

The heart against brain struggle is hardly relevant here, since records like these all but require you to shut the latter down, but the heart does find comfort in its power grooves, and release in its righteous anger. So, thumbs up from the heart, if a bit mildly, since, after all, the later records would beat this in terms of consistency.

Check "Accept" (CD) on Amazon

10cc: 10cc

10CC: 10CC (1973)

1) Rubber Bullets; 2) Johnny Don't Do It; 3) Sand In My Face; 4) Donna; 5) The Dean And I; 6) Headline Hustler; 7) Speed Kills; 8) The Hospital Song; 9) Ships Don't Disappear In The Night; 10) Fresh Air For My Mama.

An album so utterly brilliant and well-balanced that it comes off as no surprise that so few people actually know about it or remember it these days. You'd expect that when a skilled, experienced popmeister (Graham Gouldman) teams up with an inventive and innovative guitar player (Eric Stewart) and a couple of brilliant freakout weirdos (Lol Creme and Kevin Godley), the results should blow the roof off the public conscience. But no ­— public tastes are much too differen­tiated these days, and while the bold adventurous mind will want to shrug this stuff off as way too commercial, the unpretentious pop-loving spirit will shy away from it as way too odd. Those are the ways of the world, in which Captain Beefheart and Karen Carpenter will never shake hands.

This is pop music, very much so ­— in fact, this is inarguably the original 10cc's most accessible record — but thoroughly irradiated with Satire and Unpredictability. Listing all of its musical ingredients would take a sleepless night of research, but ones that are recognizable off the cuff include [a] the Beach Boys and surf stuff in general ('Rubber Bullets'), [b] doo-wop and its tribu­taries ('Johnny Don't Do It', 'Donna'), [c] psychedelic pop-rock (splattered almost everywhere), and more, much more. You keep recognizing the oddest touches in the oddest places. Why does the buildup to the chorus on 'Headline Hustler' sound so much like solo George Harrison, with its weeping slide guitar and pleading vocals? No idea. Just cool, without any easy logic to it.

No single melody overstays its welcome, indeed, most understay it: after a little while, you aban­don all hope of discerning between verse, bridge, and chorus, and simply begin treating every composition, including the shortest ones, as little independent mini-operas (although this is still way too timid compared to the band's even more radical approach on the sophomore album, Sheet Music). Normally, there's always a chance such mini-operas will devolve into unmemo­rable pretentious chaos, or will treasure the "story" far above the music, but not with Gouldman always steering the band into the "hook" direction: cleverly combining time honoured melodic phrasing with unexpected twists makes much of this unforgettable.

Besides, what's wrong with the stories? "Rubber Bullets" is about suffering for trying to amelio­rate your cell block conditions ('...is it really such a crime for a guy to spend his time at the local hop at the local county jail?' — indeed!). "Johnny Don't Do It" is about a wannabe biker with way too few braking experience. "Sand In My Face" is about getting your girlfriend back from the local beach bully ("dynamic tension make a man out of you!"). "The Dean And I" is about, oh well, the extreme forms of college romance ("it was no infatuation, but a gradual graduation"). And that's just the first side, and I haven't even mentioned "Donna", probably the sweetest, tende­rest parody on doo-wop ever made — Frank Zappa (who, by the way, is unquestionably one of the godfathers of 10cc-style music), for all his doo-wop affection, only wishes he could approach the same effect on his own tribute albums like Cruising With Ruben & The Jets.

Less you did think, though, that it's all about the stories and that the music comes in as an afterthought, there is also a special near-instrumental ("Speed Kills") which gives the band ample opportunity to showcase its playing skills and dexterity. It rocks with a vengeance, and, the title notwithstanding, would certainly sound cool even today blasting from one's car windows on the highway. The curious "synthesized guitar" riffage on it, produced by a special device that Godley and Creme called the "Gizmo", is a little outdated today, but since they play music with it rather than merely fart around, it doesn't really matter all that much.

Finally, one shouldn't forget about the immense diversity of ways they use to arrange and present this content. Vocal arrangements alone draw on almost the entire experience accumulated in that respect over the past several decades — solo crooning, group harmony, echoey Floydish back­ground, highest falsetto, deepest bass, opera, theatre, it's all in there (all of the group members happened to be vocally endowed, a rare blessing even for "supergroups"). Instruments range from basic guitars and pianos to just about everything I've still got to learn a name for. The only thing they don't bring in is the "wall of sound" à la Phil Spector, but I'm just mentioning it for the sakes of ending a paragraph with a negative, always the cool thing for a reviewer to keep in stock.

In the heart against brain battle, both sides come out equally satisfied — a rare feat indeed, as the heart just can't stop digging all the catchy melodies and singing along, either to "hum-drum days and a-hum-drum ways, hum-drum days and a-hum-drum ways" or to "he was an angel, such an angel", whereas the brain is simply left dumbfounded by how many wonderfully creative musical and lyrical ideas one can fit in per record inch, provided "one" means "four scruffy-looking guys from early 70s England" — then again, there also used to be those four scruffy-looking guys from early 60s England that did pretty much the same thing. A tendency at work? Hearty thumbs up, from both departments.

Check "10cc" (CD) on Amazon
Check "10cc" (MP3) on Amazon

Al Green: Back Up Train

AL GREEN: BACK UP TRAIN (1967)

1) Back Up Train; 2) Hot Wire; 3) Stop And Check Myself; 4) Let Me Help You; 5) I'm Reachin' Out; 6) Don't Hurt Me No More; 7) Don't Leave Me; 8) I'll Be Good To You; 9) Guilty; 10) That's All It Takes (Lady); 11) Get Yourself Together; 12) What's It All About; 13) A Lover's Hideaway.

Not everyone is even aware that this record exists: it is credited to Al Greene, it came out almost three years before his "proper" debut, and it bears only a remote resemblance to the classic Al Green style. Nevertheless, it is certainly not an album to be ashamed of; in fact, in terms of consistency and general enjoyability, it is arguably more solid than the "proper debut" itself (Green Is Blues). It is simply different, more suitable to the tastes of those who dig good old classic R'n'B than those who are looking for soft silky sexy sounds to make out to.

Being utterly unoriginal, the record is best described as the sum of its influences: a little hoppin' and boppin' from James Brown, a touch of soul from Otis Redding, and plenty of white-suited spirituality from the Impressions. Oh, and Marvin Gaye? He's somewhere in here too, maybe contributing to the idea that there should be actual hooks in the songs. I wish I could claim that all these influences fall together into something completely idiosyncratic, but they don't. The only independent aspect here is Green(e)'s voice, already capable of seducing the audience — although he's sparing the highest notes for just a few spine-tingling choruses (do not miss his glorious 'I've been cheated...' on 'Don't Hurt Me No More').

Still, in most respects this is a very solid album — the songwriting is professional, the musician­ship first-rate, and the arrangements tasteful and making the best use of mid-Sixties technology; particularly impressive is 'I'll Be Good To You' which, in its limited two minutes, manages to throw in some 'Taxman'-style choppy rhythm guitar, a complex early-funk rhythm section, a brash brass opening, echoey vocal harmonies, and an almost psychedelic strings section (or is that Mellotron? In any case, someone in the studio must have been a big 'Strawberry Fields Forever' fan). This may be an extreme, but many other songs have little cool vocal or instrumental tricks as well, warranting repeated listening.

For the record, Green(e) himself is only credited for one song, 'Stop And Check Myself', which is, as you might expect, a little more personal and a little less lyrically trivial than the rest of the stuff (credited mostly to Palmer James and Curtis Rodgers, the album's producers), but hardly any more interesting from a purely musical side. That's just for the record.

Predictably, in the heart against brain struggle heart wins with a thumbs up, especially if the heart in question belongs to someone who insists good R'n'B shouldn't be just about dancing and "soul-feeding" but must be well-composed, too. The brain, meanwhile, is off looking for more groundbreaking (but, alas, frequently much less melodic) monuments to/in this genre.

Check "Back Up Train" (CD) on Amazon
Check "Back Up Train" (MP3) on Amazon

13th Floor Elevators: The Psychedelic Sounds Of...

THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS: THE PSYCHEDELIC SOUNDS OF THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS (1966)

1) You're Gonna Miss Me; 2) Roller Coaster; 3) Splash 1 (Now I'm Home); 4) Reverberation; 5) Don't Fall Down; 6) Fire Engine; 7) Thru The Rhythm; 8) You Don't Know; 9) Kingdom Of Heaven; 10) Monkey Island; 11) Tried To Hide.

Pseudo-cool people like to hunt for insanity on record, as if there weren't already enough insanity in life. So all the pseudo-cool people should be tremendously pseudo-happy at the news that here, certified and approved, is one of the first completely insane records ever made. Obscure, for a long time well-studied only by rock connoisseurs, for a long time only available on CD in a truly horrendous, glutinous mix where you couldn't decide where exactly it was that the electric guitar ended and the electric jug started, today it finally emerges as one of the top revolutionary albums of 1966 — no mean feat for a year like that.

When Roky Erickson and his pals went into the studio, "psychedelia" as an established style or attitude didn't yet exist. Of course, people were already getting influenced by LSD and Indian music and esoteric teachings and nose rubbings, but all of this was rather spontaneous and lacked structure and pretense. The 13th Floor Elevators, despite spending most of their time in mush­room-like state, simply exuded pretense, however. They knew what they were doing, all right. Just listen to this (quoted directly from the original liner notes): "Recently, it has become possible for man to chemically alter his mental state and thus alter his point of view... he can then restructure his thinking and change his language so that his thoughts bear more relation to his life and his problems, therefore approaching them more sanely...". Now think about this. Think hard. You're only sane when you have chemically altered your mental state. Before that — you're insane. God I miss the Sixties.

There is no true way of knowing if the actual songs had been written or recorded while the band members were "chemically altering their mental states". Probably not — it remains to be proven that good music can emerge out of a stoned rather than simply stone-oriented mind. What is undeniable is that this music is... kind of kinky (and not in a Davies brothers way, either). A couple of ringing guitars combine elements of folk, blues, and boogie; a crazyass "electric jug" reserved for a separate band member (Tommy Hall), buzzing around every single melody like an obstinate bumble-bee that just won't go away; and, fresh from the paleolithic caverns, a wild young lead vocalist — Roky Erickson in person — whose style ranges from incomprehensible babbling to wild tribeman screaming, so high-pitched and piercing that the conquistadors wouldn't have stood a chance with it. Nothing grows on bare soil, and you can easily see the Stones' and, especially, the Byrds' influence on these guys, but in no way are they consciously trying to sound like either. They're just the sons of their times, but at the same time they try to be fathers of the times to come.

The big original highlight is the single, 'You're Gonna Miss Me', compatible enough with the band's garage roots to have been included on the Nuggets compilation, but maybe not truly repre­sentative of their quintessential style. It's a little simpler musically than the rest of it, a little faster, a little more accessible, but also proverbially wild, with Roky's buildup towards the "wild cat in heat"-style chorus as the main attraction. It's also a complete fuckin' classic.

But nothing else on the record rocks with the same power, and the overall emphasis is certainly on "mind altering" rather than "head banging". One mysterious, occasionally creepy dirge follows another, as Roky tries to firmly keep one foot within the 'marketable pop rock' department and the other one in the land of spiritual enlightenment — the former meaning you can at least hope for catchy choruses, the latter signifying a happy mariage between propaganda of acid and the wonders of the electric jug. (Speaking of the electric jug, it gets annoying much faster than propaganda of acid, because acid can at least be propagated in a number of curious ways, whereas the only thing the electric jug can do is constantly get on your nerves by producing a silly bubbling noise. Can you even tune an electric jug? Do you have to boil water in it for that purpose?)

Nevertheless, this mixture of crummy novelty with memorable pop choruses works admirably once you get used to it. 'Splash 1 (Now I'm Home)' is a pretty Byrds-like ballad (let's all write letters to Roger McGuinn begging to produce a cover version); its chorus of 'and now I'm ho-o-o-o-o-me to stay' ranks along with the tenderest refrains the Byrds themselves ever created. In sharp contrast, the immediately following 'Reverberation' is sharp, echoey, and mean; its buildup evokes visions of an acid-fuelled apocalypse that sounds as grand and breathtaking on record as it would have been catastrophic had Roky Erickson managed to draw the rest of the world into his own shattered reality. But it's the music that counts — the song's nasty blues riff is far more impressive than its deranged lyrics.

The record does not offer much in the way of stylistic diversity, mainly because all the different influences are synthesized into the same admirable, if monotonous type of sound, and sometimes, once you're almost ready to tell one song from another, the crucial moment is spoiled by the electric jug that, in the end, covers all, just like sodium glutamate. Hence, the heart against brain resolution states that this is a tremendously important (in historical terms) record with some great melodies to boot, yet it would probably help if one sat through it with a good helping of chemical substances. Me being a strict no-sayer, the brain wins with a thumbs up, although the heart does occasionally remind (especially when 'Reverberation' is on) that it is quite possible to dig in to this music with an unaltered mind — even if I'm sure Roky himself would disagree.

Check "The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators" (CD) on Amazon
Check "The Psychedelic Sounds Of The 13th Floor Elevators" (MP3) on Amazon

Albert King: The Big Blues

ALBERT KING: THE BIG BLUES (1962)

1) Let's Have A Natural Ball; 2) What Can I Do To Change Your Mind?; 3) I Get Evil; 4) Had You Told It Like It Was (It Wouldn't Be Like It Is); 5) This Morning; 6) I Walked All Night Long; 7) Don't Throw Your Love On Me Too Strong; 8) Travelin' To California; 9) I've Made Nights By Myself; 10) This Funny Feeling; 11) Ooh-Ee Baby; 12) Dyna Flow.

King's first LP is one of those — quite numerous — records that, today, will not make a big impression on anyone but the finest blues connoisseur. Twelve sides, rather evenly divided into slow blues and fast blues, with a minor touch of rumba here and there to spice up the proceedings, all wedged deeply into the existing formulae of the day. The «fatness» of the sound, achieved by throwing in brass sections, sax solos, and female back-up vocalists, certainly contrasts with, for instance, the more restricted approach of Muddy Waters, but still, by 1962 this kind of «blues-soul» sound was the word of the day, with everyone from Otis Rush to Ray Charles to Freddie King contributing to it with as much as they had to say.

Considering that, as a singer or blueswailer, King is just about as competent as they are (and I will timidly suggest that he has got a lot less vocal versatility than his king-brother Freddie), just about the only thing of interest on the album is his guitar playing. But even here you will have to judge it by the standards of 1962 rather than those of today, when these licks are, like, all printed out on the first page of every beginner's blues course. Back then, however, King's playing was sharp, clean, and precise, much more polished than the classic Fifties sound of guys like Elmore James or Otis Rush. To some people, this sort of blues-de-luxe, with clean, unerring licks and bends backed up with slick production and horns, might have been anticlimactic — exactly the same way that some people today continue to find B. «B. for Burger» King anticlimactic. But then it's all just different angles of show-biz, ain't it?

The common highlight is the successful single 'Don't Throw Your Love On Me Too Strong': three minutes of utterly generic slow blues played by an utterly awesome master of the trade. The only thing that makes it more notable than the other three-minute pieces on here is that it happened to be released as a single and those others did not. (Tough luck.) Eye-catching tunes include the nifty fast opener 'Let's Have A Natural Ball', a brass-driven piece of jump blues where Albert tries to be Big Joe Turner around 1940, but still ends up wooing you with his guitar rather than his singing ability; the morose retro 'Had You Told It Like It Was'; and 'I Get Evil', which is lyrically the same song as Chuck Berry's 'Don't Lie To Me', but musically anticipates the notorious shuffle of 'Cross-Cut Saw' five years later. Anticlimactic moments are few (the happy pop song 'Funny Feeling', all vocal harmonies and no guitar at all, should rather have been done by the likes of the Shirelles, I think), but if you jumped at this with high expectations, the whole experience can be anticlimactic.

To sum up, in the heart vs. brain debate, the latter appeals to historical importance and respect for pro­fes­sionalism, yet the former is way too strictly bored with the monotonousness of it all to yield to these demands. Heart wins with a decisive thumbs down — brain is off to collect more supplies.

Check "Big Blues" (CD) on Amazon
Check "The Big Blues" (MP3) on Amazon