Bo Diddley: Go Bo Diddley

BO DIDDLEY: GO BO DIDDLEY (1959)

1) Crackin' Up; 2) I'm Sorry; 3) Bo's Guitar; 4) Willie And Lillie; 5) You Don't Love Me (You Don't Care); 6) Say Man; 7) The Great Grandfather; 8) Oh Yeah; 9) Don't Let It Go; 10) Little Girl; 11) Dearest Darling; 12) The Clock Strikes Twelve.

There was literally no way that any second, or third, or fourth LP of Bo's could have the same impact or be as consistent as the first. Go Bo Diddley isn't exactly «scraping the barrels»: its bulk consists of new singles that the man released in late 1958 / 1959, and it actually shows him trying out some new styles and directions. But not all of these new ones should have been tried, and some of the old ones should have been left on the shelf as well.

Bad news first. ʽI'm Sorryʼ transparently proves that doo-wop, of all things, is completely incom­patible with Bo's style of doing stuff — awfully produced, with almost parodic back vocals rising out of coal pits, and Bo himself sounding completely out of his pattern. Elvis, perhaps, could be slick enough to sing doo-wop; Bo Diddley trying to be «The Cardinals» is more like the Sex Pis­tols trying to be «Van Der Graaf Generator». ʽLittle Girlʼ seems to intrude on the turf of New Orleanian barroom bluesmen like Professor Longhair, and Bo doesn't quite master the sort of nonchalant drunken swagger that it takes to make these things loveable (just go for the real thing instead — the Professor has a great knack for getting you all sauced up without a single physical drop of the stuff). Then there's the rehashing: ʽOh Yeahʼ is a response to Muddy's ʽMannish Boyʼ which was a response to Bo's ʽI'm A Manʼ which was a response to Muddy's ʽHoochie Coochie Manʼ... well, you get the point.

The most oddball selection is ʽThe Clock Strikes Twelveʼ, which starts out as one more variation on the same subject, completely instrumental this time, with Bo playing the violin — original as hell, but it's safe to say that Jascha Heifetz probably wouldn't be impressed. Still, for a few mo­ments out there, I am ashamed — or thrilled? — to say, I couldn't actually understand if it really was a violin, or if it was a particularly inventive part blown by Little Walter on his harmonica. I am not sure if this counts as a positive recommendation, it's just the way it is.

But in between the clear-cut failures and the odd, controversial moments there are still plenty of unassailable highlights. ʽCrackin' Upʼ, later «informally» covered by the Stones and formally by Paul McCartney in 1988, is the man's finest Latin-groove-based number, with an incredibly cat­chy guitar loop firmly ensuring that misogyny will live forever (actually, the lyrics aren't strictly misogynist — «frustrated husband»-ist would be more accurate). ʽYou Don't Love Meʼ is the ever-on-the-watchout Bo stealing the carpet from under the feet of Slim Harpo — it's a variation on ʽGot Love If You Want Itʼ that, in terms of sharpness, energy, and professionalism, destroys the original completely, although it did not help Bo expropriate the original: British bands like the Kinks and the Yardbirds still got stuck covering Slim Harpo. And ʽSay Manʼ, with Bo and his maracas shaker Jerome Green trading off stupid jokes and friendly mutual insults to a samba beat, is yet another first — a mixture of time-honored «Afro-American comedy» and new-fangled R&B that all the white kids around the world must have been really thrilled to hear. (That said, the jokes themselves are really, really dumb. They probably should have hired some of Louis Jordan's songwriters instead).

Much less known — and lacking on most of the short compilations — are such clever little nug­gets as the instrumental ʽBo's Guitarʼ, which combines a distant variation on the «Diddley beat» with shards of surfing-style melodies (Bo the Omnivorous must have been intensely listening to Duane Eddy's earliest recordings), and ʽThe Great Grandfatherʼ, Bo's take on something really archaic — ye olde Negro working song, a style he tackles with much more convincing force and spirit than doo-wop. Maybe his moans and groans that bookend the verses aren't nearly as authen­tic as, say, Leadbelly's, but «authentic» is a relative term; for a hard-working black guy on the 1950s Chicago scene, you couldn't expect any better.

For some reason, they also reissued ʽDearest Darlingʼ from Bo Diddley — by mistake, perhaps — but in the end, Go Bo Diddley does not have even a single clear example of the «Diddley beat», even if ʽBo's Guitarʼ and ʽSay Manʼ come somewhat close. Instead, we get a smatter of diversity that, in sheer objective terms, might even beat the debut, with the subjective exception that not everything works so well this time. Most things do, though, confirming Diddley's reputa­tion as «the man who wanted to do everything» and somehow got pigeonholed into one single, simple formula anyway. Well, that is why we are here to try and remedy this with a single, simple thumbs up.

British Sea Power: Open Season

BRITISH SEA POWER: OPEN SEASON (2005)

1) It Ended On An Oily Stage; 2) Be Gone; 3) How Will I Ever Find My Way Home?; 4) Like A Honeycomb; 5) Please Stand Up; 6) North Hanging Rock; 7) To Get To Sleep; 8) Victorian Ice; 9) Oh Larsen B; 10) The Land Be­yond; 11) True Adventures.

EPIC alert! Maybe, this time around, fueled by the critical success of Arcade Fire, British Sea Power hit it loud, proud, and hyper-arch-pretentious, and never let go for even one second. «Sea power» indeed — Pathos, with a capital P, roars and thrashes here with ferocious wave amplitude. If it weren't for Yan's «anthemic loudest whisper in the world», I'd say they were trying to outdo U2 and The Cure rolled together on most of these tracks, but since the man is so obviously «vo­cally challenged» (yet tries to turn it to his advantage), the comparison would be somewhat off.

Surprisingly, the songs are good! I will admit that I totally hated this upon first listen — the stubborn hooks had no intention of climbing out from under all the walls of sound, and the monotonousness of it all weighed heavy on the soul. As in, if you want to make something that loud, that romantic, that pathetic, make it short and sweet: ten songs in a row based on the same approach and groping in the same limited bag of tricks (simple 4/4 beats, droning electric or strumming acoustic rhythms, atmospheric keyboard / female vocal background) get annoying very quickly if each one is slap­ped with the seal of «Hello, I am The Artist, and I am here to help you Get Inspired».

Eventually, though, it clicks. No, they are still nowhere near Arcade Fire: Yan and Hamilton's imagination suffers from a serious lack of vitamins compared to Win and Regine's. (On the other hand, Yan's obscure, intricate lyrics might easily make them intellectual darlings compared to Ar­cade Fire's more transparently «populist» approach). But it would be slanderous to say that the music here is just a vehicle for Yan's incomprehensible, yet still overblown ego. With Hamilton and Noble, they are honestly trying to come up with simple, but distinct and, hopefully, memo­rable guitar hooks for each song. Listen to how ʽIt Ended On An Oily Stageʼ begins — with a massive electric riff riding on a crest of unchanging rhythm chords, and then one more riff is tracing and echoing Yan's vocals in the chorus. It's hardly genius, I'd say, but it's an attempt to make some damn good music, and, with a little patience, it gets through.

Still more of these simple, but meaningful electric phrases can be found on ʽBe Goneʼ (power­ful, but plaintive, which is probably supposed to agree with obscure references to the French Revo­lution in the lyrics), ʽPlease Stand Upʼ (this song could easily come out as generic alt-rock, but there is something subtly non-generic in the way its guitar wailings mesh with Yan's «gray-eyed soul»), and ʽOh Larsen Bʼ (referring to the collapse of an Antarctic ice shelf and not to a close Norwegian friend of Yan's, as could be suggested).

But the best of the lot is arguably ʽHow Will I Ever Find My Way Home?ʼ, which begins like a fast, quintessentially cozy Brit-pop number, then drops the coziness for a totally dandy two-note guitar solo (a real tasty bit of 21st century power-pop aggressiveness here), then races towards a proverbial ecstatic climax. Again, maybe it won't make the annals, but it's a brilliantly executed piece of work all the same — and its main emotions, «cautious tenderness» and «restrained ma­lice», are absolutely not what you'd usually expect with that kind of title (something à la Bee Gees? James Taylor, maybe?).

Again, they try their luck on the last number — ʽTrue Adventuresʼ loses the punch, the speed, the energy, and, for much of its duration, even the rhythm, and tends to woo you over with atmosphe­ric trills, frills, and spills. It certainly ties in with the roaring oceanic feel of the rest of the album, but really, guitar-based atmospherics is so passé now, guys: what do you want, bring back shoe­gazing? At least if y'all were a bunch of Robert Fripps... but perish the thought.

Altogether, I am still torn. Open Season is most definitively a grower, and there is definitively something of a «real thing» about Yan and his buddies — even now, when they go for a much more streamlined, less experimental, more «rock-oriented», less intellectualized (apart from the lyrics) approach than on their debut. But it's hard to get away from the feeling that the album is inadequate, and that these guys could use some subtlety — all these Herculean efforts to «make yourself look big», in the end, are like a bunch of Springsteen bastards that only managed to im­prove on their father by reading a few extra books.

If it weren't for their surprising ability to punch out these nice guitar melodic bits, there would be very little to recommend about the re­cord. Any way you look at it, it is a post-Decline decline; but it still gets a thumbs up. In fact, ʽHow Will I Ever Find My Way Home?ʼ would probably deserve a spot on a top 50 list of «best songs of the 2000s» or something like that.

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Autechre: LP5

AUTECHRE: LP5 (1998)

1) Acroyear2; 2) 777; 3) Rae; 4) Melve; 5) Vose In; 6) Fold4, Wrap5; 7) Under BOAC; 8) Corc; 9) Caliper Remote; 10) Arch Carrier; 11) Drane2.

If you do not greet the next Autechre album with the question «So, what's new?», let me know your microchip family name so that I can address you with the correct title — yes, people who listen to Autechre because they enjoy their music emotionally freak me out that much. (Fortuna­tely, I have yet to meet one in person). But if, like me, you have successfully rerouted your brain wires for the «surprise-processing» center whenever you listen to Autechre, LP5 is probably going to be a blast after the bleak mopiness of Chiastic Slide.

At this point, it feels like these guys are almost ready to leave the very concept of a «musical note» behind them, and concentrate on the amazing diversity of thumping, clomping, stomping, exploding, hissing, boiling, and bubbling patterns that illustrate the average day in the life of an electronic entity. They are not quite there yet — total percussion nirvana wouldn't arrive until Confield — but they are getting extremely close. At the very least, it would take quite a serious amount of substances to be able to dance one's head off to the merry sounds of The Electronic Shaman emanating from ʽ777ʼ or the busy quarks playing table tennis with each other throughout ʽUnder BOACʼ.

On the other hand, the faint little shades of «melody» that still remain can be more evocative than the fuller sound of Chiastic Slide — ʽRaeʼ, for instance, has a melancholic, dungeon-like attitude, as if the sad, drawn out synth notes were luckless prisoners held inside the force field of the pul­sating percussion beats, hopelessly pleading to get out. And on ʽDrane2ʼ, the notes twinkle, roll over, and fizzle out spasmodically as if some sort of semi-intelligent robot were trying to imitate elements of an Indian droning raga, without much success but with quite a bit of persistence.

That said, I cannot help but feel that all of this is not quite as breathtaking as it is implied to be. The tracks have cautiously been trimmed down to reasonable length, are dutifully provided with individual identities, and officially represent a «step forward», no doubt. But the record still does not quite live up to the first two tracks: ʽAcroyear2ʼ and ʽ777ʼ push this percussion-heavy thing almost to its limits, almost as if the idea were to make you feel stuck in the middle of the Hadron Collider, and then the intensity recedes and everything else feels sort of anticlimactic. Say what you will, but at least ʽVose Inʼ and ʽFold4ʼ can qualify as «filler», and probably other tracks as well. Not every idea of the Booth and Brown brothers is supposed to work, you know.

One interesting idea I have encountered several times is that albums like LP5 may be supposed to make the listener feel pity for the machines — actually, this is quite close to the feeling I got my­self when listening to ʽRaeʼ. I am not sure if Booth and Brown themselves go that far; I do not think they have any strong personal philosophy attached to their fingers when they are pushing the but­tons. But they certainly are inventors of a machine-centered sonic language, which they may not quite well understand themselves, and if so, the first two tracks and a few others on LP5 are like the perfect introductory units in that language's textbook for beginners. As silly as that analogy might be, at least it earns the album a thumbs up, and never mind the filler. Since each Autechre album, on average, runs for about seventy minutes, you can easily subtract thirty mi­nutes of whatever you think fillerish from each — and that'll be just enough, since who can take in seventy minutes of Autechre without interruption, anyway? Nobody here but us, slaves of the mercyless record reviewing industry.

PS: The real question, of course, is this: did the Malevich family have to sue the creative duo for copy­right infringement? The album cover comes in black or white, for that matter, depending on the edition.

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The B-52's: With The Wild Crowd: Live In Athens, GA

THE B-52'S: WITH THE WILD CROWD: LIVE IN ATHENS, GA (2011)

1) Pump; 2) Private Idaho; 3) Mesopotamia; 4) Ultraviolet; 5) Give Me Back My Man; 6) Funplex; 7) Whammy; 8) Roam; 9) 52 Girls; 10) Party Out Of Bounds; 11) Love In The Year 3000; 12) Cosmic Thing; 13) Hot Corner; 14) Band Intros; 15) Love Shack; 16) Wig; 17) Planet Claire; 18) Rock Lobster.

«Classic era» B-52's never put out a live album, which does not mean they couldn't put on a great live show: most likely, they saw no real need for this, since they allowed themselves so much freedom of action on their studio albums already — and the concerts were more remarkable in terms of show-biz flashiness and visuals (aw, those wigs!!!) than music, which mainly just strived to reproduce the whirlwind hooliganry and extravagance.

If so, why put out a live album when you're old and gray? Well, for one thing, it somehow seems easier to put things out in our modern era of overproducing everything. For another thing, this live CD is technically just an appendage to the live DVD — recording an entire show that the band did for their 34th anniversary at the Classic Center in Athens, GA. Hence, it does not really make much sense to hunt for the audio separate from the video, even if the level of energy and the sheer ratio of crazy things done onstage is predictably nowhere near the stuff one can see in the band's early, sketchy, skimpy camera relics.

But, with all the necessary age-related corrections introduced, the band still looks and sounds great. Somehow, Kate and Cindy manage not to come across as freaky grandmas, and it has far less to do with the wonders of plastic surgery than with the amazing fact that their vocal powers have remained practically intact. Well, almost — it is a fact that they can no longer hit the high­est notes on the "wigs on fire, fire, fire, fire" bit, but the scale is still scaled to an impressive height all the same. And Fred... well, Fred will always be Fred, even after they freeze him out of the storage locker in ten billion years' time.

The «anniversary setlist» is a little disappointing — you'd expect it to be a more representative career overview, but instead, they focus too closely on Funplex material, as if, three years into its release, there'd still be people around needing to be convinced to buy it. Five out of eleven songs is definitely a bit of an overkill. Although, granted, the live performance of these numbers scrapes away some of the stuffy production polish — ʽLove In The Year 3000ʼ, in particular, benefits heavily from a little less electronics and a bit more liveliness from the rhythm section.

The «oldies», meanwhile, are quite predictable: most of the big hits are here, with just a few no­table exceptions like ʽDeadbeat Clubʼ, and the only album that gets completely snuffed is Good Stuff — probably not because it is their worst offering, but because it lacked Cindy's input, and she might have been unwilling to add her parts to the likes of ʽHot Pants Explosionʼ (and I can so totally understand it). The only unexpected, and much welcome, inclusion is ʽ52 Girlsʼ from the debut album; elsewhere, you just know that the setlist has to end with ʽLove Shackʼ (for all the young hedonists), ʽPlanet Claireʼ, and ʽRock Lobsterʼ (for the certified veterans).

What else is there to say? The sound quality is expectedly perfect, the stage banter is limi­ted (even the entire band introduction, what with all the extra players, is performed in a matter of about fourty seconds), and the professionalism is undeniable — they still put on an energetic, funny, and intelligent live show, and all it takes is about thirty seconds' worth of ʽPrivate Idahoʼ to understand this (you try reproducing all these woo-hoo-hoos without erring as you hit sixty). If With The Wild Crowd is destined to become the last bit of semi-original product from The B-52's — although they might easily have another Funplex-level album somewhere deep inside their systems — it's a nice, well-rounded swan song. And am I really glad they did not forget about ʽMesopotamiaʼ: this live version is a real atmospheric super-killer even compared to the studio version, which was no slouch either. Thumbs up.

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Badfinger: Badfinger

BADFINGER: BADFINGER (1974)

1) I Miss You; 2) Shine On; 3) Love Is Easy; 4) Song For A Lost Friend; 5) Why Don't We Talk?; 6) Island; 7) Mat­ted Spam; 8) Where Do We Go From Here?; 9) My Heart Goes Out; 10) Lonely You; 11) Give It Up; 12) Andy Nor­ris.

Badfinger's move to Warner Bros. was hardly «smooth». The new label would poke its nose into the band's results just as frequently as the old one did, and for a short while, it seemed completely unclear what exactly the record people were to expect from this band, and what exactly this band would want to turn out for the record people — being so 1969 in spirit, when the body was al­ready dragged into early 1974.

A nasty problem of this self-titled album is that the producer, Chris Thomas, actually did a hor­rendous suckjob. For some reason, he must have thought that, since these guys are such mediocre singers, things will work better if they all sing from under the bed, with a mike stuck under the pillow. Except Ham, that is, who is the only one regularly allowed a «clean» sound. Similar mud­diness, extra echo, bland guitar tones, etc. mar the instrumental work as well. And when this sloppy production style is overlaid on songs that are melodically decent, not spectacular — well, you can see real well why Badfinger never wooed the critics upon release.

Sadly, sadly, the record starts out tremendously strong, with two terrific Ham contributions that might set you up for a masterpiece. ʽI Miss Youʼ is a heart-on-sleeve piano-and-organ ballad that might be the most subtly chivalrous piece Pete ever wrung out of himself; and the interlocking keyboard parts, half McCartney, half «baroque pop», with no guitar presence whatsoever, are one of the most unusual arrangements these guys ever did. And then the Ham/Evans collaboration ʽShine Onʼ flips the switch to catchy, rousing, energetic folk-pop, flawlessly conceived and at­tractively executed. Nice, optimistic, energizing, toe-tappy, whatever.

These two openers really set up the impression of a bright new beginning — now that the band's troubled Apple days are over, and Pete Ham is back in the saddle as the leading creative force, they might finally combine their musicality and maturity in perfectionist bliss. But the impression is blown away before it can solidify: little, if anything, on the record manages to approach the one-two punch of ʽI Miss Youʼ and ʽShine Onʼ.

Funny thing is, there were quite a few things that Badfinger could do right. They could make ex­cellent «retro» pop songs (it only took lighting a candle to George or Paul), or they could fit in well with the soft-rock / folk-pop spirit of early 1970s mainstream American market. They knew how to rock out — in a very «clean» way compared to the hard rock standards of the day, but they did have a small stock of the rock'n'roll bug inside them. With a bit of focus, they could have made an album with no bad songs on it that would be anything but monotonous. Instead, they continued delving into genres, styles, and moods where they had no advantage whatsoever even over second-tier competition.

Pete himself is not exempt from this problem — his ʽMatted Spamʼ (and what a title!) is a white­bread funk-rocker, intelligently conceived but completely unfit for his singing style. Throw in a flexible bass player, a James Brown-caliber vocalist, and a bunch of hot female back vocalists, and you might have something there... but Badfinger, a funk outfit? No way.

Meanwhile, Joey Molland is trying to convert his love for rock'n'roll into something that sounds more «contemporary» — his mutual understanding with Chris Thomas is that «contemporary» means «thick», «muddy», and «lumpy», like ʽIslandʼ, all grayishly distorted power chords, thra­shing drums and cavernous echoes, or ʽLove Is Easyʼ, a wannabe-boogie whose boogie power is only thwarted by ponderous lead balls attached to each chord. Instead of simply letting go — the way they did on ʽLove Me Doʼ, for instance — they are tying weights to their feet. On ʽGive It Upʼ, it looks like Joey was trying to create something to match the tempestuous effects of Ham's ʽTimelessʼ, but the build-up to the climax is a relative failure, and the climax itself is not so much tempestuous as simply messy in comparison.

Overall, the only other song here that strikes a chord without overdoing or underdoing it is Evans' ʽWhere Do We Go From Here?ʼ — soulful vocal hooks, solid electric piano backing, nice tempo, intelligent atmosphere, admission is free; if not for the all-pervasive echo and the unnecessary «calypso» sounds eventually breaking in to clutter the arrangement, this, too, could be perfect in its own humble way. But that arrangement is still less cluttered and generic than, for instance, the one given to Ham's ʽLonely Youʼ and ʽSong For A Lost Friendʼ, both of which just float by me without leaving much of a trace.

In short, Badfinger is inadequate — it simply does not hold enough authentic «Badfinger» for my tastes. Rather, it is Goodfinger — an attempt to trade off some of the things the band held dear in order to appeal to the radiowaves of 1974, and the attempt played a hideous trick on them: none of these songs charted even remotely. Not that, with such stupid decisions, they ever had a chance: instead of doing it right and putting out ʽShine Onʼ as the lead single, they went with ʽLove Is Easyʼ. Who the heck is going to buy a single where the lead singer sounds as if he is whining through a bagpipe while trying to play «kick-ass» rock'n'roll? Ridiculous.

That said, I still have a tiny soft spot for the record: it was my original introduction to Badfinger, and Ham's two-song introduction quickly ensured that I would never regard this band as just a laughable wannabe-Beatles outfit (as some do), so I could never bring myself to giving it a nega­tive rating. It does cast off some colorful shades of life every now and then — as the follow-up would show, the band simply did not have the time or strength to focus while recording it.

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Arthur Brown: Brown, Black & Blue

ARTHUR BROWN: BROWN, BLACK & BLUE (1991)

1) Fever; 2) Monkey Walk; 3) Unchain My Heart; 4) Got My Mojo Working; 5) Smokestack Lightnin'; 6) Hound Dog; 7) Help Me; 8) The Right Time; 9) Stand By Me; 10) The Lord Is My Friend.

After the release of Requiem, Arthur Brown disappeared from the public eye — figuratively speaking, of course, since, for the most part of his career, he was about the size of an elementary particle relative to the public eye — for about a whole decade. Maybe he was unable to find even the tiniest, God-forsaken record label to take care of him, or perhaps he thought he'd said it all with Requiem and finally earned the right to retire (and I'd certainly understand that).

However, in the late 1980s, bitten by the nostalgia bug, perhaps, he started making occasional TV appearances and hanging out with Jimmy Carl Black, the original drummer, vocalist, and Zappa's part-time creative partner in The Mothers of Invention. One thing led to another, and one of these «anothers» ended up as a joint recording by the two — a limited-issue album of ten R&B com­positions, mostly golden oldies, but also featuring a re-recording of ʽMonkey Walkʼ from Chis­holm In My Bosom, just to break up the predictability.

Unfortunately, at best the record is little more than just a souvenir of two old pals having a friend­ly get-together. The arrangements are tasteful, especially in the context of the late Eighties / early Nineties — real live playing, guitars, old-fashioned key­boards, brass section, harmonicas, the works — but never interesting, and Jimmy's input could just as well be replicated by any seasoned pro on the drums: he may be explicitly mentioned as an equal partner and have his name as part of the pun in the album title, but he is never really in the spotlight. And Brown — certainly Brown is not qualified to pull this off alone, particularly after his ten-year layoff.

He does seem to understand that merely covering the classics makes little sense, but the only «im­provement» on his mind is changing the songs' lyrics seemingly at random, and, occasionally, supplementing the regular vocal melodies with long tangential rants of either a humorous (ʽGot My Mojo Workingʼ) or metaphysical-intellectual (ʽThe Lord Is My Friendʼ) nature. Sort of a piti­ful decision — I, for one, do not generally need being told about how all the great religious figu­res of the past are really one by a guy who has just wasted thirty minutes of my time.

All I can say is that Brown's vocal skills are still there, and that ten years have done little to quell his theatrical manners or arrogance. So if you think that his classic cover of ʽI Put A Spell On Youʼ is one of the greatest wonders of the universe, you will want to have these ten tracks as res­pectable shadows of the past. But I've always thought that song was just an excellent example of the Brown/Crane collaboration. Unfortunately, Crane was not involved in the making of this al­bum for the valid excuse of being dead, and nobody of the same caliber replaced him — none of the musicians here seem to give much of a damn about «expressivity».

Strictly for hardcore fans, historians, or big admirers of classic R&B and electric blues who just love these songs so much, they have to try to appreciate them in as many incarnations as possible. Of course, these are all good songs, and they are all done justice, but writing about them in more detail would only make sense if Brown, Black & Blue had been a conscious attempt to steal them away from Ray, Muddy, Elvis, and Howlin' Wolf. It wasn't; in fact, it couldn't. From that point of view, it's all strictly thumbs down, and no amount of inventive ad-libbing is going to affect that judgement. Like I said, only for completists or those with nothing else to do.

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The Beau Brummels: Live!

THE BEAU BRUMMELS: LIVE! (1974; 2000)

1) Nine Pound Hammer; 2) You Tell Me Why; 3) Turn Around / Singing Cowboy; 4) Gate Of Hearts; 5) Lonely People; 6) Music Speaks Louder; 7) Lisa; 8) Tennessee Walker; 9) Don't Talk To Strangers; 10) Laugh, Laugh; 11) Lonesome Town; 12) Free; 13) Man And Woman Kind; 14) Restless Soul; 15) Her Dream Alley; 16) City Girl; 17) Paper Plane; 18) Just A Little; 19) Love Can Fall.

For a band as «historically insignificant» as the Beau Brummels, they do seem to have a rather disproportionate amount of archival releases honoring their legacy — including a monumental 3-CD collection of demos, outtakes and rarities (San Fran Sessions) that is not easily available, and, anyway, the perspective of sitting through 60 samples of «second-rate» material by one of America's classic «second-rate» band may not look all that appealing even to an obsessive com­pletist: a gross excess of the allocated quota if there ever was one.

In its place, it is more useful and pleasant to mention this, much shorter, archival release of a live show that the reunited Brummels played in February '74 in some little-known pub near Sacra­mento. For some reason, the show happened to be professionally recorded — with no less than excellent sound quality — only to surface officially twenty-five years later, licensed by the small Dig Music label based in Sacramento.

There are two reasons to be happy about it. First, this is the only Beau Brummels live album in existence, and what is a rock band without a live album, even a bad one? Second, the time of the show caught the Brummels in a highly creative mode — Ron Elliott was writing like crazy for the 1975 reunion album, and most of that writing went through a live testing period; 13 out of 19 songs are newly-penned, and, what is most interesting, only three of them actually ended up on The Beau Brummels, so there is a swarm of previously unavailable material here, and not in «raw demo» form, either: these are fully fleshed out compositions that the reformed band was not afraid to offer for their limited, but rowdy audience.

As a live unit, the reformed Brummels sounded predictably professional and predictably not all that exciting compared to the studio recordings. The vocal harmonies are not too good, particular­ly when it comes to stretching out on the high notes — the "babe, babe, babe" chorus on ʽDon't Talk To Strangersʼ goes painfully on the ears, and Sal's «macho bleating» (I'm all out of words, goddammit) on ʽMan And Woman Kindʼ is another seriously stressful moment. But in general, when they are not trying too hard, the outcome matches the quality of the original recordings just fine — ʽNine Pound Hammerʼ and ʽTurn Aroundʼ are the major highlights, and the melancholic harmonica of ʽLaugh, Laughʼ has not lost a drop of the original melancholia.

But generally, the album is really worth it for several of the new songs that did not make it onto the 1975 record (they might, perhaps, have made it onto subsequent recordings, had the reformed band persevered for a couple extra seasons). ʽMusic Speaks Louderʼ is a lively, friendly pub romp very much in the spirit of the Lovin' Spoonful, and it's funny how its wah-wah-driven guitar parts unexpec­tedly contrast with the overall soft folksy melody. Bassist Declan Mulligan's ʽLisaʼ is a moderately heavy rocker with idiot lyrics, but a nice muscular drive that would be so sorely lack­ing on The Beau Brummels. So is Elliott's ʽRestless Soulʼ; and ʽFreeʼ is one of the band's pretti­est anthemic ballads (although, once again, it loses momentum whenever Valentino starts stretch­ing out — alas, Frank Sinatra this guy is not).

Overall, it is very good that the show does not go too heavy on the «classics» and leaves such a huge space for new material, even if this prevents it from becoming a well-rounded, conclusive «live retrospective». Altogether, there is more energy, passion, and interest here than the band demonstrated in the studio — maybe because by the time they did get around to the studio, dis­illusionment had already started seeping in. As it is, Beau Brummels Live! may not deserve its exclamation point, but it may at least be a better example of the reformed band at its brief inspirational peak, so one more final thumbs up is not out of the question.

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Bo Diddley: Bo Diddley

BO DIDDLEY: BO DIDDLEY (1958)

1) Bo Diddley; 2) I'm A Man; 3) Bring It To Jerome; 4) Before You Accuse Me; 5) Hey Bo Diddley; 6) Dearest Darling; 7) Hush Your Mouth; 8) Say Boss Man; 9) Diddley Daddy; 10) Diddy Wah Diddy; 11) Who Do You Love; 12) Pretty Thing.

I must  say that I have never been a huge fan of the «Bo Diddley beat». When it comes to rocking the very foundations of my existence, Chuck Berry's riffs, Jerry Lee Lewis' piano assassinations, and Scottie Moore's rockabilly backing of Elvis' legend have always taken precedence over this somewhat rigid formula — essentially just an electrified rendering of a traditional Juba dance. At first, of course, it was a magnificent invention: ʽBo Diddleyʼ (the song), recorded in 1955, soun­ded like nothing else at the time. The numerous variations that followed, though, rarely, if ever, improved upon the original impression — so that even most of the British fans of Bo Diddley were usually quite content with covering just one of them (the Stones only did ʽMonaʼ; the Ani­mals only did ʽPretty Thingʼ, and then wrote ʽThe Story Of Bo Diddleyʼ as a joke response).

What is much harder to realize — not until you decide to seriously immerse yourself in the man's creativity — is that there is much, much more to Bo Diddley than the proverbial, and occasional­ly tiresome «Diddley beat». For instance, this here «debut album», which is not really a proper al­bum but rather just a collection of several of his A- and B-sides from 1955 to 1958, only has three out of twelve tunes following the D.b.: ʽBo Diddleyʼ, ʽHush Your Mouthʼ, and ʽPretty Thingʼ. Of the others, some could have had the D.b. (ʽHey Bo Diddleyʼ, for instance, predictably sung to the same vocal melody as ʽBo Diddleyʼ), but don't. Others are altogether quite removed from the for­mula, and follow different paths of inspiration — many of them, in my own view, far more inspi­rational than the D.b.

Like Chuck Berry, Bo was somewhat of an anomaly for Chicago's Chess Records, specializing in less explicitly dance-oriented electric bluesmen, from Muddy to Wolf to Little Walter to Buddy Guy. But they hooked onto him pretty hard all the same: rock'n'roll was becoming a household name, and these astute Chicago businessmen needed their own rock stars to stand the competition. Not that Bo couldn't or wouldn't do straightahead blues. There is at least one example on this re­cord — ʽBefore You Accuse Meʼ, although even here Bo could not resist speeding up the tempo so that the final result looks like a cross between old-fashioned blues and new-fashioned boogie. (The 1970 cover version by Creedence is appropriately more sharp and polished, but the song still firmly belongs in 1957).

But Bo's biggest blues-based hit was anything but straightahead — ʽI'm A Manʼ takes Muddy's ʽHoochie Coochie Manʼ and basically just deconstructs it; it's as if Bo heard the song and said, "that first bar, man, that's the shit, do we really need anything else here?" As dumb as the deci­sion sounds, in its own context it's a fine example of brutal genius, right out there vying for first place with ʽLouie Louieʼ and the like. The Who were the perfect band to cover this symbol of mythic-status virility; the Yardbirds, slight less so; too bad it was too slow for Mötörhead. Muddy actually retorted with his own ʽMannish Boyʼ, which was essentially the same song with slightly different lyrics — and maybe Muddy made a finer job with that one, because his singing captured the spirit better than Bo's, but Bo was there first — «The Originator» strikes again.

What else is there? Well, the idea of stringing the entire song on one chord, for instance, which, since we already mentioned Mötörhead, is the genuine precursor to the «jackhammer» method of headbanging. ʽHey Bo Diddleyʼ is done that way, but the more fabulous instance is ʽWho Do You Loveʼ, with its aggressive lead lines scattered along the road — and those beautiful lyrics: "I walk 47 miles of barbed wire, I use a cobra snake for a necktie... I got a brand new chimney made on top, made out of human skull..." Not a lot of black lyricists used that sort of voodooistic ima­gery as lightly as old Bo. But the gamble paid off — even The Doors covered the song during their live shows. (How does one get Jim Morrison inside a telephone booth? Write "cobra snake" and "human skull" on the walls).

And that still ain't all. There's ʽDiddley Daddyʼ, opening with one of the simplest, yet most ele­gant guitar figures of the decade — one which Billy Boy Arnold, present at the session, nixed from Bo and quickly inserted in his own ʽI Wish You Wouldʼ, and that is how all of us British Invasion fans know it (from the Yardbirds cover; ʽDiddley Daddyʼ itself evaded hit status in the UK, although the Stones and others did play it live). There's ʽDiddy Wah Diddyʼ, which takes a «dance-blues» pattern of Muddy's, adds a playful, poppy melody resolution, and makes for a great single that's bluesy, funny, catchy, and weird at the same time — an ideal fit for a young, teeth-cutting Captain Beefheart in 1966. And there is ʽSay Boss Manʼ, a lesser known tune that shows Bo perfectly at home with ʽJim Dandyʼ-style danceable R'n'B.

In short, Bo Diddley, like Jimmy Reed, was a sacrilegious blues renegade, which is why we love them both — except that Jimmy Reed was perfectly happy to find one basic formula and stick to it like glue until his last teeth fell out, whereas Bo, as this album shows, was a restless seeker: and in three years' time, he had found more than many bluesmen of the highest caliber had found in several decades. The Diddley beat was just one of these finds, and, as the first one and the one that made him a star, it was bound to become a repetitive trademark; but there is very little that is repetitive, monotonous, or just plain boring about Bo Diddley, an album where I myself knew most of the songs before hearing it. Thumbs up, totally.

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British Sea Power: The Decline Of British Sea Power

BRITISH SEA POWER: THE DECLINE OF BRITISH SEA POWER (2003)

1) Men Together Today; 2) Apologies To Insect Life; 3) Favours In The Beetroot Fields; 4) Something Wicked; 5) Re­member Me; 6) Fear Of Drowning; 7) The Lonely; 8) Carrion; 9) Blackout; 10) Lately; 11) A Wooden Horse; 12*) Childhood Memories; 13*) Heavenly Waters.

That a band hailing from Brighton, East Sussex, would want to be known as «British Sea Power» is probably not very surprising. That it would choose The Decline Of British Sea Power as the title of its debut album is also nothing to write home about — after all, British sea power has be­en in re­lative decline over the past century, as every self-respecting Somalian pirate will tell you. That the topics, moods, and melodies of the album will, for the most part, have nothing whatso­ever to do with British sea power, and, frankly speaking, not much to do with Britain itself, is a bit more remarkable. But not before you start thinking about it. Come on now, do you really ex­pect a group called British Sea Power to sing about British sea power? What is this — Admiral Nelson's Lonely Hearts Club Band?

As a matter of fact, there are times — quite a few times, to be sure — when British Sea Power sound so much like Arcade Fire that the temptation to brand them as a bunch of second-tier rip-off con artists grows sky-high. Except the glitch is that British Sea Power actually were there first: The Decline came out one year prior to Funeral, and it is almost certain that both bands were de­veloping and polishing their personae completely unaware of each other's existence. The fact that it happened that way simply reflects a «convergence» pattern — apparently, there was an intuiti­vely felt demand for this kind of music on both sides of the ocean, and someone, somewhere, somehow simply had to oblige the spirit of the times.

Basically, British Sea Power play this big, arena-esque, pathos-soaked, heaven-bound type of art-rock where you need loud, but simple riffs, lots of echo, some blue-eyed soul in your occasionally off-key singing, and a post-post-modern attitude where dense, heavily intellectualized lyrics are delivered with an air of the utmost emotional sincerity. If you can believe that a song may begin with lines like "Oh Fyodor you are the most attractive man I know / Your Russian heart is strong and has been bleeding for too long" and reflect strong, unsimulated feeling from the bottom of one's (British) heart, read on. If you cannot, this band is not for you.

Of course, this does not mean that you will never understand what British Sea Power is all about if you haven't read a single line of Dostoyevsky. Unlike Arcade Fire, British Sea Power take very good care to make most of their lyrics more nebulous than the proverbial Brighton fog. Nothing here is about the lyrics as much as it is about attitude: The Decline Of British Sea Power is a ponderous, pretentious lament on the state of things as they are — old ways and lifestyles crum­bling, and new ones not being satisfactory. All the complex words and ambiguous imagery are only there to showcase the band's intelligence: if you want to earn the right to complain about the fates of the world, you have to prove your knowledge of the world. In particular, they may have read some Dostoyevsky. It's always useful to read some Dostoyevsky if you want to learn the proper art of complaining about things, anyway.

But no amount of complaining is going to be acceptable if it is stored in faulty song containers, of course. And from a sheer melodic point of view, none of these songs are particularly interesting. There are some fast punk-influenced rockers (one of which, ʽFlavours In The Beetroot Fieldsʼ, clocks in at a hardcore-honoring 1:18), some traditional drone-based shuffles, and some basic Britpop creations with a pretty Kinks stamp on them. If any of the riffs, courtesy of resident gui­tarists Neil Hamilton Wilkinson and Martin Noble, turn out to be memorable, it is mostly because you have heard them all — or their immediate prototypes — before.

This leaves the band's leader and principal songwriter, Scott Wilkinson, better known as «Yan», as our major hope. And he is appropriately suitable: very far from a great singer, in many ways, in fact, uncannily similar to Arcade Fire's Win Butler (same tendency to either «whisper» or «screech» in the exact same range), but quite expressive — British Sea Power's main modes of action are «dreaminess» and «despair», so the bandleader whispers when he is being dreamy and screeches when he is being desperate: what could be wrong with that? Furthermore, his vocal me­lodies often succeed where the instrumental ones do not, being transformed into atmospheric in­strumental accompaniment.

Thus, ʽFear Of Drowningʼ, the band's first single, is mostly memorable for its slow crescendo, reflected mainly in the vocals — culminating in the chorus ("...we'll swim from these island shores til there's a little fear of drowning, a little fear of drowning..."). It's a nice enough projection of one's own insecurity onto a simple musical canvas, and the lyrical metaphor is fresh and engaging, if not particularly flattering for good old England. The second single, ʽRemember Meʼ, is the al­bum's loudest and angriest rocker, on which Yan exorcises his Sussex demons in a voice that pre­cisely ave­rages David Bowie and Bruce Springsteen (if you thought the theatrical aristocratism of the former and the theatrical working-class straightforwardness of the latter could never be mat­ched, this song transparently proves the opposite).

As the album progresses, it moves ever farther away from loud distorted guitar rock and into the realm of loud folk- and Britpop-based 21st century art-rock: ʽThe Lonelyʼ and ʽCarrionʼ, also re­leased as singles, exemplify this «softer», but no less «epic» streak of the band's creativity, and both are decent, but not exactly heartbreaking anthems for pre-specified market shares of their ge­nerations (well, they could be heartbreaking, I guess, for all those youngsters who never gave themselves the trouble of listening to the band's major influences).

They do take a serious risk on ʽLatelyʼ, a track that runs for 14 minutes and, in structure only, re­veals yet another influence — Neil Young: starting out as a slow, pompous, and, frankly, rather boring rock-grinder, it then allows itself to be taken into uncharted waters, then return back to shore, share the plunder, and go back into uncharted waters again. As stoner rock / neo-psychede­lic jammers, these guys would probably get something like a «B-» from me — competence with­out excitement — but the gesture can be appreciated for boldness' sake, if not exactly understood. Although there is a fun moment of self-irony somewhere in there, when after a particularly bawdy passage, Yan, distorting his voice, starts asking questions like "do you like my megalithic Rock? do you like my prehistoric Rock? do you like my Teutonic Rock? do you like my hygienic Rock?» Well, I'm not sure if I like it, Yan, but I do like all those nice words you're using. Thanks for asking the question, anyway.

All in all, I do like this album, and maybe, in the absence of Arcade Fire, it could have become a favorite from the last decade; the way things are, The Decline Of British Sea Power is more of a trans-Atlantic precursor for things to come. But it does have its own troubles and its own sorrows that could not be shared by our Canadian friends, so it's not like the emergence of Funeral makes these here songs completely redundant. In short, a tepid, but mildly respectful thumbs up with growth potential. But be warned — the album really sounds nothing like its title would suggest. No sea shanties for you, and no trendy, haughty, foul-mouthed Britpop, either.

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Autechre: Chiastic Slide

AUTECHRE: CHIASTIC SLIDE (1997)

1) Cipater; 2) Rettic AC; 3) Tewe; 4) Cichli; 5) Hub; 6) Calibruc; 7) Recury; 8) Pule; 9) Nuane.

If you think about it, a «chiastic slide» cannot really be a true slide, because anything chiastic in nature would have to revert to its original position in the end. If you slide down, you have to slide back up by means of a counterforce. That's an odd idea, to be sure, but what exactly does it have to do with Autechre's fourth LP? Unfortunately, nothing. It all makes about as much sense as the track titles which, by now, have completely lost connection with linguistic reality.

Critical opinion tends to veer towards disappointment for this one, probably for a simple reason: Chiastic Slide offers no advances over Tri Repetae, and, in some ways, sounds like a slightly less inspired copy of its predecessor, sometimes even seemingly retreating — parts of it are con­ventionally more «ambient-melodic», so that it cannot be considered a true sequel to «One Day In The Life Of A Curious Microchip». Worse, the long tracks sometimes sound disturbingly repeti­tive — something like ʽRecuryʼ goes on for ages without any tiny fluctuating subtleties that made the band's earlier attention-probers full of intrigue.

Of course, it is very much up to your imagination how forgiving you will be in the end. For in­stance, having listened to some of the tracks from both albums back-to-back, I was sort of set on imagining that Tri Repetae was all about a perfectly balanced world of friendly elementary par­ticles, whereas Chiastic Slide is about perfect patterns being broken down and severely jostled into a state of partial disfunctionality. As evidenced most transparently on the static hiss blasts in ʽRettic ACʼ, the crazy percussion rhythms on ʽCichliʼ, the crackles and sparking off of dead equipment on ʽHubʼ, and the mini-explosions on ʽCalibrucʼ.

But then this scheme totally breaks down on tracks like ʽCipaterʼ, where the cogs grind in good harmony and the faraway melancholic synthesizers beep and bleep in solemn dirge mode, or ʽPuleʼ, where the percussion dissipates completely and all that is left is a large cloud of foggy chimes interlocking with each other at predictable intervals. Here the personal concept for which you have wrecked your brain for so long explodes, and you are left with the sad truth: Chiastic Slide is just a random collection of «some more of our shit». Not much better and not much worse — but with Tri Repetae, Autechre effectively locked themselves into «The Innovator's Trap»: every new album of theirs is expected to break new ground, and when it doesn't, your friendly synthesizer dies from a broken heart.

In the end, I feel like joining with those critics that gave the album a thumbs down, rather than those hardcore fans who seek religious epiphanies in each hiss and crackle ever hissed and crackled by Booth and Brown. None of the individual tracks honestly stand out — nor does the entire album cling well together as a single concentrated assault on the senses. And almost each of these tracks could be twice as short without losing its point. And are those three minutes of pure static at the end of ʽNuaneʼ really necessary?..

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The B-52's: Funplex

THE B-52'S: FUNPLEX (2008)

1) Pump; 2) Hot Corner; 3) Ultraviolet; 4) Juliet Of The Spirits; 5) Funplex; 6) Eyes Wide Open; 7) Love In The Year 3000; 8) Deviant Ingredient; 9) Too Much To Think About; 10) Dancing Now; 11) Keep This Party Going.

So here is the question. Is it at all possible for the once greatest nerd-party band of all time to still put out something even vaguely credible once its members are all pushing past fifty? (Kate Pier­son, the eldest of the lot, actually turned 60 in 2008). Yes, in the past two decades we have all learned to cope with the «too old to rock'n'roll, too young to die» mentality, and some of us have even been able to come to terms with Grandpa Mick still wiggling his bellybutton with an oxygen tank waiting backstage. But the B-52's — well, there is something different here. Despite Meso­potamia and David Byrne, despite Ricky Wilson's tragic experience, despite all of the ups and downs and changing fashions, they never really managed to grow out of the «college party sound­track» genre — they just reshaped its angles from time to time.

And now, here is one more record from the B-52's — more than fifteen years after the success of Cosmic Thing and Good Stuff gave them enough moolah to finally have the guts to call it a day and retire... for a while. Well, actually, they did not retire as such: they just banned themselves from the studio (only recording a couple new tracks for the 1998 Time Capsule anthology) and cut down on live appearances, but still regularly appeared on public every now and then. Until, it is said, Keith Strickland heard New Order's Get Ready and decided that here was just the kind of sound that the band could turn to their advantage in the 21st century. So they grabbed New Or­der's producer and went into the studio. And?...

Well... I like it. It is advisable to forget about the age problem, or else the vision of a 60-year old Kate Pierson (or is that Cindy? I still have some occasional trouble telling one from the other, not that it seriously matters) opening the show with "I look at you and I'm ready to pump" might be a gross turn­off (unless you're into cougarism, that is). But reality is such that, even after all these years, both Kate and Cindy sound almost exactly the same way they sounded in 1979 — more experienced, perhaps, more professional, disciplined, and taking a little extra care so as not to over-exert themselves, but essentially just ringing out with the same clarity and youthful audacity as they always did. So does Schneider, although this is less of a surprise: his «nerdy-talky» vocal style obviously takes less effort to preserve through the years. Let's take a look at him when he's pushing ninety, and then start expressing admiration.

Also, this new sound works very well. An excellent balance between some new-fangled electro­nics and old-school guitar rock, masterminded by Strickland — everything sounds modern and trendy, yet, at the same time, is quite consistent with the basic legacy of the B-52's. The melodies themselves are not particularly memorable or original, since the main effort, as always, is inves­ted in the pop choruses, but they sound swell: the guitars either pack a good deal of distorted crunch or play funny funky riffs, and the synthesizers throw on a huge variety of tones and modes, imitating organs, electric pianos, strings, jumping from sci-fi to techno to ambient colors with each next number. Yes, everything is way too polished and calculated to hope to match the old glories, but nothing else could be expected anyway ever since Cosmic Thing convinced the band that «polish» is one of the major keys to success. Besides, being reckless and chaotic is fun for the young ones. As you grow older, it is quite natural to calculate your fun in advance.

And these «calculated» songs are all excellent samples of the calculated approach. The first three songs are all fast-paced variations on the same single topic, but they are all exciting variations, and I have no idea which one I like better — "pump it up, give it up, turn up the track!", "shake it to the last round, shimmy in a Lurex gown!", or "lovin' it, lovin' it... ultraviolet!" Maybe the se­cond one, with its echoes of 1960s dance-pop. You might prefer the much more modern ʽUltra­violetʼ. Who cares? "Keep doin' what you're doin' cause you're doin' it right", Schneider says in ʽUltravioletʼ, and that's the ticket indeed.

They actually break away — just a little bit — from the formula only once, on the (still danceable) neo-disco ballad ʽJuliet Of The Spiritsʼ, a surprisingly adequate adaptation of the subject of a Fellini movie (mid-aged matron daring to open up and discover the «sensual world») to the cur­rent B-52's aesthetics (mid-aged perennial nerds still justifying their own seclusion in that same world). The arrangement is a little dumb, especially considering that, while still in their prime, the B-52's normally shunned disco (also in its prime), but the catchy vocal hooks and the reasonable sentiments are still attractive. (And if the song urges somebody to go see Juliet Of The Spirits — well, it ain't one of Fellini's best, for my money, but a little enlightenment never hurt anybody).

After that, the «party» formula reasserts itself in dictatorial mode. "It's a shallow existence, but oh yeah... I need it, I want it, I got to have it" — these words, spoken in breathy, sensual mode (ʽDe­viant Ingredientʼ) pretty much say it all, as usual: superficial shallowness, seriously deepened by some acid irony, which might go unnoticed by those listeners who only saw the B-52's as «party animals», without paying attention to the «nerdy» part of the formula. But even without the irony, these songs have a fine rock sound, lively, pulsating grooves and brilliantly worked out vocal hooks, so what's not to like?

Once it all ends with the aptly titled «message» song ʽKeep This Party Goingʼ ("we've gotta be part of the universe, keep this party going all night long"), you would expect to be tired and worn out from the monotousness — just how many mid-to-fast-tempo party-pop-rockers can one's organism stand without overdosing? — but I never felt any tiredness, certainly not with these sharp brain-needles (like the girls' frenzied "things are getting dirty down in Washing-TOON!...") strategically inserted at all the right spots.

In the end, although, overall, this is a «typically late-period» B-52's record, I'd say that it knocks down Good Stuff with a vengeance, and that it is slightly less embarrassing than Cosmic Thing — and more consistent, too: there are no particular high points here, but this is only because it is hard to imagine how any of these songs, all based upon the same winning formula, could be much better than others. The very fact that the album managed to reach #11 on the US charts — after fifteen years of silence, coming from a band of old nerdy farts, and on a fiercely competitive mar­ket at that — shows how much seductive power this Funplex has, and my own experience does not deny that power, so a thumbs up by all means. Plus, check out their videos from circa around 2008 — hard to believe, yes, but they still look cool (or hot, whichever you prefer).

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Badfinger: Ass

BADFINGER: ASS (1973)

1) Apple Of My Eye; 2) Get Away; 3) Icicles; 4) The Winner; 5) Blind Owl; 6) Constitution; 7) When I Say; 8) Cow­boy; 9) I Can Love You; 10) Timeless; 11*) Do You Mind.

Badfinger's last album for Apple Records is usually considered their «heaviest» record — which automatically generates a premature bias: «Badfinger? Heavy? Is that a contradiction or a contra­diction?» Well, not so much a contradiction as a slight exaggeration. The trick is, for some rea­son Pete Ham took a relatively small part in the songwriting process this time — he only contributes the first and last track, while the majority of tunes on Ass belong to Joey Molland, and Joey Mol­land was, indeed, the «resident rocker» of the band, its one and only member who had a genuine penchant for boogie, and was always tempted to create it, not just play it.

This does not mean, however, that Badfinger tried to go «heavy metal» or anything like that. In fact, there is only one genuinely «heavy» rocker, with deep metallic bass, dark riffage, and scor­ching wah-wah solos — ʽConstitutionʼ, an amusing attempt on Joey's part to sing about how he chooses to «be like everybody else» against a musical arrangement that sounds like nothing else Badfinger had ever done before. The tune is completely generic, but saved in the nick of time by Ham — he didn't write it, but he plays terrific wah-wah throughout, once again proving how se­riously underrated he has always been as a lead player, learning a little from everyone but directly imitating no one.

In the meantime, Molland's biggest problem is that, unexpectedly faced with the reality of beco­ming the band's main songwriter, he does not live up to the task, and frequently falls back upon clichés or, as I suspect, subconscious rip-offs from whomever he happened to be listening to at the time. The oddest Frankenstein here is ʽThe Winnerʼ, which takes its vocal hook ("you can drive a car, be a movie star...") from Ringo's ʽIt Don't Come Easyʼ, its closing vocal harmonies from the Beatles' ʽThe Wordʼ or suchlike, and its bridge riff from Deep Purple's ʽSpace Truckinʼ (not quite sure about the chronology: ʽThe Winnerʼ is one of two songs that the band recorded while still under the supervision of Todd Rundgren, in early 1972, but ʽSpace Truckinʼ did come out in March — coincidence?).

ʽGet Awayʼ is faceless (but still not very heavy) roots-a-boogie as well, leaving the ballads ʽIci­c­lesʼ and ʽI Can Love Youʼ as Joey's finest contributions to the record — which is not to say they are very good: ʽIciclesʼ is a bit too flat, pathetic, and moralistic, and ʽI Can Love Youʼ tries to establish a cunning hook in the chorus, but fails, I think. Overall, both are just sort of stuck in inoffensive, evenly flowing mid-tempo without generating much excitement. Big difference be­tween both of them and Pete's only ballad on the album — ʽApple Of My Eyeʼ, not too subtly commenting on the band's severing of relationships with the label. It may not be a huge improve­ment on Joey's standards in terms of melody, but Pete was always the better «artist», and his ly­rics, vocal modulation, and phrasing convey the atmosphere of bittersweetness to a tee — making the song into one of the most gallantly and chivalrously delivered «fuck yous» in the business.

Evans' and Gibbins' contributions are not particularly memorable or respectable (Gibbins' ʽCow­boyʼ might, in fact, be one of the most oddly misguided Badfinger efforts ever, along with ʽWat­ford Johnʼ: har­monica, fiddle, and steel guitar-driven coun­try-western? Silliest moment: "...now I know you well enough to say ʽyeahʼ... YEAAAAH!"), which leaves us with a very weak Side B, and the most difficult question here is what to do about Ham's eight-minute epic ʽTimelessʼ, an attempt to suck up to the «pretentious art-rock» movement, but still following the guidance of the Beatles rather than Yes or King Crimson — the structure, the mood, the duration, the chords, the lengthy coda sprayed with blasts of white noise, all of this brings on obvious associations with ʽI Want You (She's So Heavy)ʼ, although in strict factual terms the song is, of course, quite an ori­ginal creation. Does it work or doesn't it?

It does for me, to some extent. First, everyone is entitled to a little bit of metaphysical panic from time to time, and Pete Ham is as qualified as anybody to ask the question «are we timeless?». Se­cond, it is his first attempt to write something oddly shaped, decidedly removed from the stan­dards of a potential pop hit — the instrumental melody seems cobbled from unpredictable chord sequences, and the vocal melody is more akin to a Shakesperian monolog than a sym­metric pop construction. Third, the coda is very well made, with another of those stirring, aggressive solos of Pete's that are just so goddamn believable.

In the end, Ass is an album riddled with problems — starting with its very title (and the illumi­native picture of a donkey on the front cover does not really help out) and ending with the unfor­tunate story of its creation (Apple once again rejected the original version, and ended up releasing the final product something like a year too late, clashing with the band's new first album for Warner Bros.). It is not a complete disaster, and there is nothing wrong about including one or two heavy rockers as long as Joey Molland remains a rocker deep in his heart and Pete Ham can easily slip into rock'n'roll mode on the strength of his natural gift. But it is a «middle-of-the-road» effort, as it downplays the presence of the band's finest songwriter and, on occasion, slips into embarrassment mode (really, ʽCowboyʼ is something I'd think they should have left behind in their early Iveys days). Ham's contributions are still strong enough to guarantee a shaky thumbs up, but, overall, the album is one of those «transitional» efforts that give more food for thought for band historians than cause for joy for regular fans.

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