Alabama Shakes: Boys & Girls

ALABAMA SHAKES: BOYS & GIRLS (2012)

1) Hold On; 2) I Found You; 3) Hang Loose; 4) Rise To The Sun; 5) You Ain't Alone; 6) Goin' To The Party; 7) Heartbreaker; 8) Boys & Girls; 9) Be Mine; 10) I Ain't The Same; 11) On Your Way; 12*) Heavy Chevy.

I am not sure of how «band-like» the Alabama Shakes really are. There is no doubting the com­petence (if not virtuosity) of bass player Zac Cockrell, drummer Steve Johnson, and guitarist Heath Fogg, but nobody doubts that the band is primarily the brainchild of Brittany Howard, who writes the songs, sings them, plays rhythm and occasionally lead guitar, and determines just about everything that makes the band worthy of our attention. (Yet another reason here for all the com­parisons with Janis Joplin, who, too, spent the most significant years of her career hiding behind the shoulders of «Big Brother»).

That said, unlike «Big Brother & The Holding Co.», «Alabama Shakes» makes far more sense. «The Shakes», which was the band's original name, obeys the same retro-vibe that, a decade earlier, gave us the Strokes, the Vines, and the Hives, but comes closer to symbolizing the band's musical essence — they are rather shakey, come to think of it; and «Alabama», added later in order to give them some extra differentiation, is even more symbolic. Few places get less hip these days (or any days, for that matter) than the state of Alabama, and this only adds extra spice to the game — blatantly advertising your totally unhip roots in the process of becoming one of the most hip things on the scene.

The actual music written and arranged by the Shakes is no great shakes, pardon the pun. It is the kind of a mix of heavy-handed roots-rock and R&B that you are likely to encounter on dozens, if not hundreds, of albums released in between 1968 and, say, 1972-73 by various «B-level» Ame­rican and, occasionally, British acts that embraced the roots-rock revolution. Individual songs are based on chord sequences and guitar tones that remind one of everybody from the aforemen­tio­ned Big Brother to Van Morrison to Creedence (at one point, I almost took the melody of ʽHold Onʼ to be a decon­structed version of ʽDown On The Cornerʼ) to, say, Stone The Crows, or Affinity, or other such bands fronted by loudmouthed females (or, sometimes, loudmouthed males). Revival of that stylistics in the early 2010s is not at all surprising — considering that just about everything else from the same years has already been revived — but it would take some really strong musical personalities to make it in any way interesting.

Fortunately, Brittany Howard is that personality. Onstage, like the state of Alabama, she looks so decidedly unhip that, through shifting opposites, this makes her hipper than the hipsterest hipster. Slightly clumsy, dressed in grandma's gown, looking like a provincial primary school teacher, she cannot even begin to aspire to any of the «glamor» that is still required, at least in a modest amount, from modern critically loved R&B stars like Adele or the late Amy Winehouse. She al­most looks like she got on that stage through some technical managereal mistake. But I do hereby acknowledge that she is the real thing. Where Amy had her soul focused on decadence and self-destruction, and Adele has hers focused on heaven, this dame is all about «salt of the earth», and goes all the way down to the very tips of those roots.

The lead single, ʽHold Onʼ, is by definition the best song on this relatively short debut album (its shortness, by the way, works very much to its benefit, since the band's sound is ultimately quite monotonous). Brittany's "didn't think I'd make it to 22 years old" line does not ring very true — despite all the comparisons with Janis, she certainly does not share her self-destructive life philo­sophy, and would be a complete idiot if she did — but we probably should not be taking it too literally: the overall message is one of making your life worth the while despite all odds (such as being born and reared in Athens, Alabama?), and it is perfectly symbolized by her drawing out the "hooooooooooold on" chorus in several different inflections, or by the way she belts out "I don't wanna WAIT!" to the power chord crash in the bridge section.

Out of political correctness, perhaps, Brittany's mixed heritage (half-black, half-white) is rarely, if ever, brought up in Alabama Shakes discussions, but it definitely matters, because, curious as it is, she does sound almost exactly midway in between the traditional gospel-soul belter à la Aretha or Tina Turner, from whom she gets the power and «spiritual freedom» aspects, and the more intro­spective, fine-nuanced white singer-songwriter of the Carole King variety. The generalization is a bit rough / broad, perhaps, but it is important to get the idea — Brittany's voice and the way she uses it are special (if they aren't, there's no point in listening to the band in the first place). So the first thing everybody notices on this less-than-model-quality girl is the awesome set of pipes — then, after a while, it also makes sense to notice how she modulates it to convey such a wide va­riety of emotions.

The funny thing is that many of these emotions seem thoroughly antiquated by today's standards — but that's the very charm of it. Naturally, I am not implying that they have not heard of any significant musical and cultural developments in the last forty years in the state of Alabama — that would be taking the stereotypical condescendence a bit too far — yet it is hardly a coinci­dence, after all, that Boys & Girls, an album that does make me feel like no other record that these forty years never really took place, ultimately stems from somewhere near the Muscle Shoals headquarters. (The actual recording sessions, as it turns out, happened somewhere in Nashville... but that ain't too far, and besides, there is nothing even remotely Nashvillian about the album's sound, especially since the band did not rely on session players).

In terms of individual highlights, Boys & Girls is hard to discuss. All of its music is heavily de­rivative, and the band is probably at its least interesting when it falls back on the generic Fifties' progression and Brittany starts channelling the spirit of Otis (ʽYou Ain't Aloneʼ; title track). They are far more exciting when they start to rock out (ʽHang Looseʼ; the ecstatic bonus track ʽHeavy Chevyʼ), or when they establish a happy, life-asserting Motownish groove (ʽRise To The Sunʼ), or when things quiet down to a slow, hushed dialog of a jazzy rhythm guitar with an echoey surf lead (ʽGoin' To A Partyʼ, which sounds nothing like its actual title).

There are, indeed, some curious bits of musical synthesis happening every now and then, and some funny Southern-legacy incidents that one is bound to recognize (for instance, at the climac­tic musical crescendo end of ʽOn Your Wayʼ, when the heated-up lead guitarist breaks into the speed solo of Skynyrd's ʽFreebirdʼ for a few bars). But the biggest musical merit of Boys & Girls is not in individual musical ideas. It works as the promised land for those of us who thought it was no longer technically possible to revive the styles and ideals of roots-rock's Golden Age without slipping into technical boredom or, worse, suffering from utter phoneyniness. Boys & Girls may not be a masterpiece — in fact, even the most enthusiastic supporters of the band should not delude themselves with bright visions of an even grander future for Brittany Howard — but it is definitely not boring and, most importantly, not phoney. How the hell they manage to uphold and promote that vintage old-time «earthiness» without coming across as cheap third-rate imitators, loaded with trivial clichés, is not a question that can be easily answered. And any re­cord that poses questions that cannot be easily answered deserves a thumbs up almost by defini­tion. The songs may not be all that great, but the vibe, man — don't miss that vibe, particularly if you happen to be in your teens and think it way below your dignity to listen to your parents' record collections.

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Barenaked Ladies: Everything To Everyone

BARENAKED LADIES: EVERYTHING TO EVERYONE (2003)

1) Celebrity; 2) Maybe Katie; 3) Another Postcard; 4) Next Time; 5) For You; 6) Shopping; 7) Testing 1, 2, 3; 8) Upside Down; 9) War On Drugs; 10) Aluminum; 11) Unfinished; 12) Second Best; 13) Take It Outside; 14) Have You Seen My Love?

If Stunt established the formula and Maroon consolidated it, then Everything To Everyone re­presents the lo­gical slide into boredom once everything that could actually be said to everyone had already been said. The biggest difference is that the album was recorded in a post-9/11 world, and, apparently, The Barenaked Ladies thought the time had come to become more serious, ma­ture, and responsible. Well, on one hand, it does significantly reduce the number of «him vs. her» psycho-studies that made Maroon seem so repetitive. But on the other hand, I am not sure that I would like to adopt these guys as my spiritual gurus — and pardon them this decreased attention towards hooks, even when compensated with a more profound social perspective.

Not that one could ever guess anything about profundity when presented with the album's lead single: ʽAnother Postcardʼ does feature a rappy vocal that makes it obvious the guys were trying to repeat the formula of ʽOne Weekʼ one more time, but on the whole, it is a repetitive and, I am not afraid to say, somewhat cretinous-sounding tale of... an anonymous admirer sending the pro­tagonist an endless series of postcards of chimpanzees. «Cretinous» does not refer nearly as much to the storyline, though, as it does to the music — the idea may have been to indulge in a little bit of silly whimsy, but it isn't even funny, just repetitive and stupid.

The second single, ʽTesting 1, 2, 3ʼ, is not that much better, but at least it does not set out to irri­tate — being merely a forgettable soft-alt-rock tune; and the third single, ʽFor Youʼ, is an equally forgettable country-pop composition, not much different from millions of similar tunes flooding the airwaves. All of which is incredibly surprising, because neither of these songs even pretends to being «outstanding» in any way: it is almost as if the band was consciously discrediting itself as a singles act (come to think of it, that may have been the truth — I cannot fathom an intelligent human being having just written something like ʽAnother Postcardʼ and going «oh, this is going to be our next hit single, boy are those kids gonna love it! I mean, it's just gotta be a hit if it's about chimpanzees, right? Everybody loves a good song about chimps!»).

Anyway, the highlights section of Everything To Everyone, as far as I am concerned, have nothing to do with these songs. ʽCelebrityʼ has the album's juiciest piano hook, decent fame-con­demning lyrics, and a cute combination of ELO-ish strings and Beatlesque harmonies in the ar­rangement. ʽMaybe Katieʼ is stomping power-pop in classic Weezer / Fountains Of Wayne fa­shion and an unforgettable tagline ("what's so maybe about Katie?" is more of a fun line than "another postcard with chimpanzees", after all).

ʽShoppingʼ sounds like late period Apples In Stereo, combining elements of techno with old-style kiddie pop, and even though it is recorded in an even more openly puerile fashion than ʽAnother Postcardʼ, it clearly presents itself as a light­weight parody, ridiculing both the concept of shopping spree and certain musical trends at the same time, so it is openly funny. Finally, ʽUnfinishedʼ (which, if you listen closely, begins with more than a direct homage to the Beatles' ʽGetting Bet­terʼ) and ʽSecond Bestʼ have a good amount of energy, if not necessarily a barrel-load of hooks, and would have both made better singles than the band's actual choices.

I am not at all sure, though, about the most serious songs on the album — such as ʽWar On Drugsʼ and ʽNext Timeʼ, used as vehicles to express the Ladies' concern with the state of humanity at large. ʽWar On Drugsʼ in particular, expanded to five and a half minutes in a clear bid for the status of the album's magnum opus, hearkens back to the tedious languidness of Born Under A Pirate Ship, and no amount of string quartets, pianos, and bombastic buildups can hide the fact that the song is essentially just a formulaic folk ballad, mostly consisting of attitude, and even the attitude is mediocre (considering the ordinariness of Page's vocals).

Curiously, most of the songs I find emotionally acceptable on here have Kevin Hearn credited as co-writer along with Page and Robertson (or Jim Creeggan, on ʽMaybe Katieʼ), which leads to uncomfortable suggestions that will not be voiced openly. Whatever might have been the case, it seems abundantly clear to me that, once again, The Barenaked Ladies have committed the mis­take of overloading their boat — with stuff they neither know how to handle nor have any serious need of, in the first place. Not a «thumbs down» as such, since the good material manages to out­balance the bad one, but really nothing to get excited about: just another college rock record that is not very likely to make musical history, no matter how arrogantly grandiose its title, or even its front sleeve, have been designed to look.

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Bathory: Under The Sign Of The Black Mark

BATHORY: UNDER THE SIGN OF THE BLACK MARK (1987)

1) Nocturnal Obeisance; 2) Massacre; 3) Woman Of Dark Desires; 4) Call From The Grave; 5) Equimanthorn; 6) Enter The Eternal Fire; 7) Chariots Of Fire; 8) 13 Candles; 9) Of Doom; 10) Outro.

As «good» as their second album was, it is Under The Sign Of The Black Mark that is usually extolled by fans as the absolutely quintessential and mind-blowing Bathory release from Quor­thon's hyper-aggressive youth. Frankly, I do not see much difference except for, once again, slightly improved production (or maybe I am just getting used to it), and... well, let's call it the «gradual getting into character» aspect: third time around, Quorthon feels so confident about im­personating Countess Bathory's loyal henchman that he finds the time for additional flourishes, occasional experiments with tempos, more varied lyrics, and, overall, lets us know that even the Prince of Darkness himself sometimes gets bored with the rigidity of the formula.

Light-speed thrashers do serve as both the lead-in (ʽMassacreʼ) and lead-out (ʽOf Doomʼ, special­ly addressed to the band's growing fanbase and proclaiming how the fans are really one with the band — no free Christian blood offered, though) tracks; musically, they are all but undistingui­shable from ʽChariots Of Fireʼ and ʽEquimanthornʼ — the latter does start out quite promisingly, with a poisonously cool fuzz bassline, but it almost immediately disappears under the usual on­slaught of thrash metal guitar. However, ʽWoman Of Dark Desiresʼ (an anthem to Elizabeth Ba­thory in person) is different, mainly because of the insane jackhammer drumming pattern — they make it sound a little Mötörhead-ish by saving on the beats, and somehow come out with an ab­solute black metal classic (if you disregard Quorthon's attitude towards «singing»).

But about half of the songs do not pay that much importance to the tempo — the album's central point, ʽEnter The Eternal Fireʼ, is played at least twice as slow as usual, and ʽCall From The Graveʼ also prefers to be ominous and threatening in its gradual onslaught rather than all-out psychopathic. Supposedly, these tunes now have more of a historical than any other kind of im­portance — back in 1987, few people were willing to go that far in their theatrical recreations of evil and destruction, and certainly, compared to the hair metal vaudeville of the time, these tunes, with their shitty production that only emphasized the bloody guitar distortion, and with Quor­thon's defiantly anti-musical wild beast roaring on top, could send a genuine shiver or two down yer spine. These days, it is much harder to understand just what all the fuss was about, consi­dering how many people have done the same thing since then with improved production, musi­cianship, lyrics, and vocals. But, as is the usual thing with all such pioneering efforts, the trick is in using your sixth sense to locate the «bravery angle» in this stuff — the excitement of daring to be among the first to go all the way that is somewhere in there.

That said, my opinion on the album is that it represents a bit of a stagnation point: subsequent history shows that Quorthon, unlike many of his colleagues, did worry about being stuck in the jaws of one rigid formula, and it is not by sheer coincidence that his stylistics started to change most seriously, beginning from the next album — he must have sensed, too, that Under The Sign Of The Black Mark did not manage to say much that had not already been said on the self-titled debut. As such, it may be the best-sounding record in the early trilogy (although the use of the word «best» should not offer any false hopes), but it does not even have the best riffs. Well, it may have the best attitude. But that is only if your spirit is properly prepared to tremble before the hellfire bolts of the mighty Quorthon. If — like me — you think black metal at its best is ridi­cu­lous, corny, B-movie-level fun, then attitude alone is not going to carry you through the experi­ence, safe, sound, and happy: there's got to be some plotline substance to be interested in, and the sheer music throughout Black Mark does not quite cut it.

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Barclay James Harvest: Live Tapes

BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST: LIVE TAPES (1978)

1) Child Of The Universe; 2) Rock'n'Roll Star; 3) Poor Man's Moody Blues; 4) Mocking Bird; 5) Hard Hearted Woman; 6) One Night; 7) Taking Me Higher; 8) Suicide; 9) Crazy City; 10) Jonathan; 11) For No One; 12) Polk Street Rag; 13) Hymn.

Only four years separate Barclay James Harvest's second live album from their first — that and the unexpected commercial success of Gone To Earth, which must have been the decisive factor in the appearance of Live Tapes, a record that is just as long as Barclay James Harvest Live and about twice as unnecessary. The actual tracks are a mix of performances recorded on the 1976 and 1977 tours, and the original album title was to be Caught Live until somebody pointed out that, once again, this would only help prolong the «poor man's Moody Blues» curse, as the Moodies already had a Caught Live + Five to their name. The advice was heeded, and the band eventually went along with the genuinely original, groundbreaking, and inspirational name of Live Tapes instead.

This time around, the band has jettisoned its pre-1974 incarnation output almost entirely, retai­ning only a somewhat perfunctory run through ʽMocking Birdʼ as the only link with their «pro­gressive past». The result is that the setlist now consists only of their derivative art-pop songs that leave very little space for improvisation, restructuring, or rearrangement (besides, songs like ʽPoor Man's Moody Bluesʼ were already «restructured» in the first place, so how much further tampering could they stand?). So the only thing that makes the record worth any of our while is that the live setting removes some of the problems with extra-glossy production or too much silky soft­ness in the arrangements on the studio albums.

Concerning the setlist, it is interesting that not a single one of Woolly's tracks is performed — the poor keyboardist is thus completely degraded to the role of session player — and that Lees gets a slight advantage over Holroyd, which is well understandable since it was Lees who was respon­sible for writing most of the band's harder-rocking and anthemic tunes, suitable for an arena-rock setting. As usual, Lees' melodic soloing is practically always the high point of the performances, and he does get at least one of those on each song. But the only track that can be seen as a relative improvement is Holroyd's ʽRock'n'Roll Starʼ: in this setting, it gets a little more meat on its bones and a little less ground to be accused of soft-rock bogginess.

From a certain point of view, Live Tapes may act as a decent shortcut for evaluating the band's entire career in their «silver» period of 1974-77 — most of the highlights are here, and, fortuna­tely, they do not include such thorough lowlights as ʽTitlesʼ, and go easy on Holroyd's exaggera­ted sentimentalism (only ʽTaking Me Higherʼ manages to break through the arena-rock filter). But the live setting may be a turn-off just as well — in particular, the roar of audience approve­ment that Lees gets after announcing ʽPoor Man's Moody Bluesʼ as the next song brings on the usual troubled thought on the elusive nature of good taste... then again, maybe the good gentle­men wre just happy that, with the Moodies no longer around, somebody was able to go on stage and at least offer a credible substitute for all the yearning hearts.

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Bee Gees: This Is Where I Came In

BEE GEES: THIS IS WHERE I CAME IN (2001)

1) This Is Where I Came In; 2) She Keeps On Coming; 3) Sacred Trust; 4) Wedding Day; 5) Man In The Middle; 6) Deja Vu; 7) Technicolor Dreams; 8) Walking On Air; 9) Loose Talk Costs Lives; 10) Embrace; 11) The Extra Mile; 12) Voice In The Wilderness.

Is this really «just another bad album from the Bee Gees», as the All-Music Guide review put it to us, even after considering all the opposite arguments? Not quite, I would say. Indeed, «not quite» to the extent that it almost makes me wonder — was the band on its way to eventual recuperation and recovery of some of the grace of old, stopped dead in its tracks by the death of Maurice, or was this major leap in quality just an accidental fluke, caused by a temporary climate improve­ment at the turn of the millennium? Make no mistake about it: This Is Where I Came In is, in­deed, a bad Bee Gees album, but it is still miles above the faceless, bodiless, and soulless dreck they had been trying to feed us since at least E.S.P. — their best album since at least Living Eyes, and, I would dare say, maybe even since Main Course: it does not have any highlights compa­rable with ʽYou Should Be Dancingʼ or ʽLiving Eyesʼ, but it is, on the whole, more consistent, or, at least, more consistently surprising, than those albums.

There can be no mistake here: the Bee Gees are trying to get out of the nasty rut in which they had sunk when they were still «in the summer of their years» and in which they grew old, bald, tasteless, and irrelevant, only to be occasionally visited on holidays by the likes of Barbra Strei­sand and Celine Dion. That they actually placed a photo of themselves in their younger days on the front sleeve does not have to be interpreted as a desire to put out another Bee Gees 1st, but it is still a hint that is somehow substantiated by the album contents — a good luck charm, if you wish. The relative abundance of styles that they cover, modern and retro ones alike, is also a good sign. No, there was not the slightest chance of an album like this being good — only a complete miracle would have sufficed, considering that these guys had only written, like, maybe two really good songs in two decades. But we are here doing a career overview — and a career overview is impossible without paying homage to the curve — and with This Is Where I Came In, lo and behold, the curve begins to crawl upwards. Where would it end up, had the Gibb twins not lost their lives, ten years apart from each other?..

For the first minute, the Robin / Barry duet on the title track is framed by nothing but sharp-picked acoustic guitars — then, once the harmonies and full backing are in, there are still no signs of the awful production muck that colored their previous five studio efforts — at worst, it shares some alt-rock clichés, but for the Bee Gees, transition from adult contemporary to alt-rock is like promotion of the highest order. This is not to say that the song is great or anything, but the chorus is catchy, and the slight «danger zone» feeling generated by the arrangement marks the first time over a long, long, long period that the brothers managed to reassert their nature as humans rather than «organic robots for middle-aged housewives».

And then there's more. ʽShe Keeps On Comingʼ is a mediocre pop rocker, stuck in somewhere between late Kinks and early Duran Duran — but it is a style that the Bee Gees had never co­vered previously in their whole life; ʽVoice In The Wildernessʼ, despite the glossy production, rolls on at an even faster speed, and serves as the album closer — yes, instead of going out on a pompous balladeering note, these guys go out at the fastest tempo they ever tried. Even if one hates the song (and there is nothing really to hate about it), you can't help admiring them for try­ing; and kudos for letting old friend Alan Kendall strike out with a fiery, flashy wah-wah solo, the hardest he's been allowed to hit since... since...?

Another piece of territory that had never been visited before is Tin Pan Alley: Barry's ʽTechni­color Dreamsʼ, written and arranged in strictly vaudevillian mode, is a harmless piece of fluff, a tribute to Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby that is a little spoiled by oversinging, but works well as a first and last attempt to invade alien territory; even a word like «nostalgia» does not really apply here, since this kind of music had faded away before the Bee Gees were even born — this is just an intentional attempt to try out something that couldn't be more removed from their usual schtick than anything, and again, it begs for respect, if not love. Or maybe somebody was on a Randy Newman kick at the time — a chorus like "I'll give you Panavision pictures, 'cause you give me Technicolor dreams" seems right up Randy's alley.

The rest of the album is nowhere near as «outstanding», and drifts closer to the tried and true, but even there, the production is not quite as excessive — cheap synthesizer sounds are toned down, with more focus on acoustic guitars and hi-tech electronics, and Barry's and Robin's vocals are always clear in the mix (nor does Barry ever resort to full-fledged falsetto, which is a good thing, because his upper range is so shot anyway that the remaining frequencies automatically turn fal­setto into squealing or meawing). The songs are predictably not good: generic saccharine ballads like Robin's ʽWedding Dayʼ, or techno-style saccharine ballads like Robin's ʽEmbraceʼ, or per­functory synth-rockers — like Maurice's two contributions (ʽMan In The Middleʼ and ʽWalking On Airʼ), on which he also subjects his voice to electronic effect treatment, maybe in an effort to give it that extra color it had always lacked, against the background of his two more technically gifted and individualistic brothers. It neither works nor fails... come to think of it, like most of the things Maurice brought to the band. (He did bring in ʽTrafalgarʼ, which was one of the band's best songs, but he also brought in the worst of the three hairstyles, evening things out).

It only remains to say, in conclusion, that you hardly need to hear This Is Where I Came In if you completely gave up on the Bee Gees after Living Eyes — not to mention if you completely gave up on the Bee Gees with their transition to the disco age half a decade before that. But if you did honestly sit through all of their adult contemporary muddle, year after year, decade after de­cade, and wouldn't mind a little bit of an antidote, this album will do. In any case, it is a relief that the Bee Gees ended their creative existence on this note, and not with Still Waters.

In conclusion — it remains only to be said that, no matter how much suave dreck had tainted their later years, both Maurice's death in 2003 and Robin's in 2012 were unjustly premature, and even if, deep down inside, my belief is that the Bee Gees did not have and could not have another Tra­falgar or even Mr. Natural within them, just waiting to be unlocked, I still like to imagine that, had they lived on, they could have capitalized on the minor sprouts of musical sanity displayed in this record, and at least slightly repaired their critical reputation, maybe spurred on by renewed hipster interest in their art-poppy past. Who knows, though, maybe it's all for the better — that their career was cut short with this minor enigma of an album, instead of serving us up further disappointments further on down the line.

The Blues Project: Planned Obsolescence

THE BLUES PROJECT: PLANNED OBSOLESCENCE (1968)

1) If You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebody; 2) Calypso; 3) Frank'n'Curt Incensed; 4) Turtledove; 5) Mojo Hannah; 6) Niartaes Hornpipe; 7) Endless Sleep; 8) She Raised Her Hand; 9) Dakota Recollection; 10*) Gentle Dreams.

Bravely ironic title: not even the Beatles, assembled at Abbey Road Studios for what they all felt was to be their last collective recording session, dared to slap an ill-omened title like that on the final product. Of course, The Blues Project had a very good reason: by 1968, with Kooper, Katz, and Kalb out of the picture, the original lineup was reduced to Kulberg and Blumenfeld. Addition of such new members as Donald Kretmar on sax, John Gregory on guitar, and Richard Greene on violin, meant that the tables had turned completely — yet, on the other hand, the music that this entirely new configuration came up with seems strangely compatible, to a large degree, with The Blues Project of old.

Except that there is nothing seriously bluesy about this music now. The two main directions ac­tively pursued are now country/bluegrass (fueled by the violin of newcomer Greene) and serene folk balladry, with or without a pinch of psychedelia. As the roots-rock revolution was in full swing, so did the revamped Blues Project, too, decide that embracing the good old soil and its vegetative contents was the correct thing to do. As a team of musicians, they had all the proper skills and resources to do it — as composers and artists, they had predictable problems.

The major highlight of the album is probably its opening track, a cover of Rudy Clarke's ʽIf You Gotta Make A Fool Of Somebodyʼ. It is not shorn of inventiveness — opening with a little bit of flamenco before settling into an R&B-with-fiddle groove, later to be complemented with chaotic flute solos and finally building up towards an explosive climax. The problem is that, as a «gro­ove», the track does not have enough power or sharpness, and as a «song», it does not have a memorable musical theme to go along with. And the multiple segments of which it is composed do not quite agree with each other. Why the bold Spanish introduction, if it gives way to a feeble violin lead line? Why the flute soup, if this is fiddle territory? Why the noisy climax and crash-boom-bang at the end if the song was never all that tense to begin with?

Which is all pretty illustrative of the album in general: a bunch of dudes with a bunch of incohe­rent ideas at a crossroads. A lot of stuff is tried out — almost none of it works. Worst of the lot is ʽDakota Recollectionʼ, a twelve-minute attempt to recapture the success of ʽFlute Thingʼ that immediately degenerates into a jazzy jam with competent, but boring flute, violin, fuzz guitar, and drum solos, the likes of which were generated in droves by dozens of artists at the time. Dif­ference from ʽFlute Thingʼ? Lack of a properly resonant main theme, of course: the theme as such is almost indistinguishable from the solos that follow, and everything is played with such a limp attitude that it's a wonder everybody managed to keep awake for all of the twelve minutes it took to draw the track to a complete stop. Then again, if the title makes any sense, what else could one expect from one's recollections of the merry states of Dakota?

Not all of the album is just fiddle-and-flute games. ʽFrank'n'Curt Incensedʼ, ʽMojo Hannahʼ, and ʽEndless Sleepʼ do try to rock out, fuzzy distorted guitars, screechy vocals (mostly courtesy of John Gregory) and all; but there are no cool riffs, and the energy level remains chained to the average pub-rock level expected from your local bar band. In this context, I rather prefer their softest, gentlest numbers, like ʽCalypsoʼ or ʽTurtledoveʼ, where Kulberg's pastoral flute exercises at least find full justification (the ridiculous backward-vocals bit at the end of ʽCalypsoʼ, however, does not, falling victim to the psychedelic atavisms of the time).

True to the title, Planned Obsolescence was the only album recorded by this lineup; out of its ashes, a year later, rose and briefly flourished the short-lived band of Seatrain, more focused and goal-oriented during its peak periods but, in general, also suffering from poor songwriting skills. That said, serious fans and scholars of late-Sixties roots-rock should not ignore the album — lack or presence of «genius» is, after all, a subjective concept, and in objective terms, there are enough unusual tricks and combinations displayed here to attract the attention of somebody who, for in­stance, is deeply curious about the different ways in which it is possible to combine pastoral flute, honky tonk fiddle, and psycho-fuzz guitar on one album. (Even if each and every one of these ways is ultimately boring and pointless — but this is no scholarly talk).

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Bobby Bland: Sad Street

BOBBY BLAND: SAD STREET (1995)

1) Double Trouble; 2) Sad Street; 3) God Bless The Child; 4) Tonight's The Night; 5) My Heart's Been Broken Again; 6) I've Got A Twenty Room House; 7) Mind Your Own Business; 8) I Wanna Tell You About The Blues; 9) I Had A Dream Last Night; 10) Let's Have Some Fun.

And here is the news. First, Bobby covers ʽGod Bless The Childʼ. The song is capable of yielding to the man, yet I wonder just how adequately he could get into it at the moment — Billie Holiday had written it just as she was getting out (tentatively) of financial straits, whereas Bobby's well-being had not generally been called into problem for about thirty years or so. As good as the song is, this reading is completely perfunctory, and I'd rather see Bobby do perfunctory readings of less personal numbers.

For that matter, his other cover choice — of Rod Stewart's bedroom anthem ʽTonight's The Nightʼ — is far more appropriate, even if the old man does feel the need to change the "let me come inside" line to something less provocative ("let your lovelight shine" or something like that, I already forgot), and even if the song is just as gauche here and now as it used to be when Rod The No Longer Mod used it to help solve the demographic problem. But that's Bobby, all right.

Next, it is really all about Bobby Bland and his odd team of late-period songwriters to take the name of an old blues classic about poverty and rejection (ʽDouble Troubleʼ) and apply it to some­thing more morally ambiguous: "I've got double trouble between my woman and my wife / My wife runs my pocketbook and my woman is running my life". It's a decent enough, slow-running, nostalgically recorded piece of blues-de-luxe, but somehow these new-fangled attempts at taking century-old lyrical clichés and reinventing them seem a little corny these days, don't they?

Maybe not quite as corny as the title track, though — the album's attempt at a Significant Social Statement: seven minutes of somewhat uncertain complaining about how "the streets used to be filled with love, but all you hear about now is blood". Considering that Bobby Bland, the trouba­dour of broken hearts and carnal passions, had very rarely taken to heart the problems of society at large, this particular stab at a «grass-was-greener» sermon is a failure, despite some impressive ingredients (such as a grim wah-wah lead line crawling along those sad streets, sometimes threa­tening to erupt in a poisonous solo but never capitalizing on the promise). Somehow I doubt that the streets of Bobby's childhood were filled with that much more love than wherever he was spending his advanced years in 1995 — but then again, who knows. Maybe it's just his way of expressing dissatisfaction on the illegal immigration issue.

Finally, the really odd one out on this album is ʽI Had A Dream Last Nightʼ — from the title, one would never guess that the song is a thoroughly nostalgic disco number, replete with disco strings and disco back vocals à la 1977. The band seems so happy with being able to establish such a perfect facsimile, they forget to switch off the tape when the song is over and just keep on groo­ving for an extra two or three minutes. Nowhere near a great number, of course, but enough to give the reviewer an opportunity to add one more paragraph.

All of which, in the end, amounts to no less than five songs that merit a special mention — making Sad Street a record-breaking album in Bobby Bland's post-1970s career, but still not enough to guide it over the «great for fans, useless for everybody else» threshold.

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Adebisi Shank: This Is The Second Album...

ADEBISI SHANK: THIS IS THE SECOND ALBUM OF A BAND CALLED ADEBISI SHANK (2010)

1) International Dreambeat; 2) Masa; 3) Genki Shank; 4) Micromachines; 5) (-_-); 6) Logdrum; 7) Bones; 8) Frunk; 9) Europa; 10) Century City.

They did not change the principle of (not) naming their albums, but they did change the running length: second time around is almost twice as long as first time around, and this means these guys better had something important to say, or else this would be just another case of somebody tech­nically overstaying their welcome. Fortunately, this is not such a case.

The Second Album, on the whole, is somewhat more quiet, (sometimes) a little slower, and a little more diverse than its predecessor — a rather typical evolution for any sort of rock band: announce your presence with a bang, then realize that you won't get far by repeatedly «banging» your audience and try going somewhere else. The question is, where?

Well, the first track, ʽInternational Dreambeatʼ (not a typo, although there is nothing particularly dreamy about the music), already gives sort of an answer. Opening with electronic bleeps which then quickly organize themselves around a busy loop, it places its trust neither in the excessive complexity of playing nor in the plain blunt energy, but rather in structure and development — alternating quiet electronic pulsation with pompous power chord blasts, and finally ending in a grand quasi-symphonic finale.

This sets the tone for the rest of the album: the compositions seem to have sacrificed much of the original recklessness in favor of a more thoughtful and calculated approach — as if the math in the band's math-rock formula has gone up a step or two, so that now they are doing calculus where it just used to be quadratic equations. But it is not the actual complexity of the individual parts that has increased: rather, it is the sheer number of these parts, as well as the number of the various guitar tones used by pedal god Larry Kaye, and the number of various styles of music that the «Adebisi Shank Robot» is now supposed to assimilate and interpret.

If ʽMasaʼ is still very much in league with the fast, punkish stuff on the first album, then ʽGenki Shankʼ is already memorable for its broken, jagged riff themes rather than the headspinning pre­cision and speed of their previous «rockers». ʽ(-_-)ʼ (named after a Japanese emoticon) is a soft, almost «balladeering» interlude with echoey «surf-folk» guitar; ʽLogdrumʼ puts the guitar in «swooping» psychedelic mode for much of the time; and on ʽBonesʼ, it seems as if Larry is ex­perimenting with slide playing (or at least a «sliding» effect), creating a robot-folk dance pattern that every respectable old Celtic android might find likeable.

In terms of influence, it also seems that the band is now relying a little less on the garage / punk / pop prototypes from the 1960s and 1970s and a little more on the New Wave stylistics of the late 1970s and early 1980s. You find stuff reminiscent of U2, Television, the Heads, Discipline-era King Crimson, etc., although even here the old-fashioned hooliganry sometimes comes through: for instance, although the main theme of ʽCentury Cityʼ is a ringing echoey guitar line that sounds straight out of 1980, the mid-section is still given over to some spluttery garage soloing.

This is, after all, the key to Adebisi Shank's continuing success — «mathematicians» as they are, these guys just can't help being driven by an ultimately rock'n'roll heart, and although I would generally say that totally obsessed calculation and wild rock'n'roll drive are two diametrically opposed things, Adebisi Shank somehow manage to combine the two, even within a moderately softer and «artsier» setting than their debut album. Unquestionably a thumbs up.

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Barenaked Ladies: Maroon

BARENAKED LADIES: MAROON (2000)

1) Too Little Too Late; 2) Never Do Anything; 3) Pinch Me; 4) Go Home; 5) Falling For The First Time; 6) Conven­tioneers; 7) Sell, Sell, Sell; 8) Humor Of The Situation; 9) Baby Seat; 10) Off The Hook; 11) Helicopters; 12) To­night Is The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel.

Maroon is like A Day At The Races to Stunt's A Night At The Opera: a twin companion that makes a point of not offering anything radically new, but is simply there so that the previous re­cord would not feel too lonely — and there have been no countries so far that made it a capital crime to milk the same formula twice, especially since, every now and then, second time around the results may be even stronger (experience and all).

In this particular case, I would not say that Maroon «improves» on Stunt — the two are so simi­lar in style and so consistent in content that it is a matter of some very fine distinctions in taste. The important thing is that the band has lost none of the sharpness and none of the inspiration; also, the proceedings may have been influenced by keyboard player Kevin Hearn's recuperation from leukemia, as this is altogether arguably the merriest, most uplifting record by these guys ever since Gordon established them as the trendiest college clowns on the block. Except that Maroon has no «joke» songs on it whatsoever: «uplifting» does not equal «hilarious».

There is one big unresolved problem that is getting bigger and bigger: as per «the world accor­ding to the Barenaked Ladies» at this moment, it (the world) revolves almost entirely and exclu­sively around the issue of broken relationships and how to fix them. Now this is, most definitive­ly, one of the most important problems for the average college student stumbling through life and learning to learn on his / her mistakes — and is therefore guaranteed to provide fame and admira­tion to whoever tackles it with intelligence and originality, as the Ladies do. But still, the amount of «he vs. she»-themed songs, already huge on Stunt, begins to feel irritating. With a couple of exceptions that aim at more global themes (ʽSell, Sell, Sellʼ — no need to comment; the anti-war lament of ʽHelicoptersʼ), Maroon is all about Mr. Page on the couch and Dr. Robertson in the armchair, or vice versa, and this gives a fairly monotonous coating to all of the songs, no matter how many different tempos, tonalities, styles, or tributes they are based on.

Technically, most of the songs are fine, concentrating once more on the aesthetics of classic po­wer pop, but also with some «alt-rock» elements thrown in every now and then (the jiggly, syn­copated ʽNever Do Anythingʼ could just as easily be done by the likes of Avril Lavigne, even if her version probably could not have contained lines like "let's play tic tac toe, I'll play X, you can be the O"). Those who love the Ladies primarily for their ability to merge old-style electric pop riffs with contemporary sentiments will particularly enjoy ʽToo Little Too Lateʼ with its swirling merry-go-round pattern; ʽGo Homeʼ, reminiscent of the «dance-folk» vibe espoused by some of the Nuggets-era bands; ʽHumor Of The Situationʼ, where the band plays at top volume, aiming for a musical explosion (which, unfortunately, never really comes, due to the innate limitations of their skills as vocalists and arrangers); and the catchy, but somewhat lumbering ʽBaby Seatʼ.

For some reason, none of these songs were chosen for the honor of lead single — the honor went to ʽPinch Meʼ, maybe because they thought it had a more contemporary sound, with the drum loop, a rap in the chorus, and harmonies that suspiciously sound as if they were influenced by boy bands. Similarity with ʽOne Weekʼ is rather glaring, and if the song was deliberately written as a commercial follow-up, this explains where it fundamentally fails where its predecessor funda­mentally succeeded — through happy songwriter accident.

However, I am not going to pretend that Maroon is not a great album simply because it makes such serious concessions to trends and fads. The Barenaked Ladies are much too well aware of their own strengths and weaknesses to understand that «selling out» would be the death of them, anyway — who would they be going to compete with, the Backstreet Boys? Maroon is a very good, but not a great album not because there are too few songs here like ʽToo Little Too Lateʼ, but because there are too many of them: well-done and well-meaning, but not quite hitting the spot, if you know what I mean. Probably just because the music, the lyrics, and the vocals do not find the perfect way to gel — as «shallow» as it is, one ʽI Should Have Known Betterʼ is still worth an entire Maroon to me.

But let me tell you where it does gel a bit. It does gel when, on ʽHelicoptersʼ, they go for a gran­der subject and strengthen the effects with a simple, but powerful theme (doubled on violin and something else, I think). And, amazingly, it does gel at the very end — there is a hidden track here called ʽHidden Sunʼ, written and sung by the miraculously cured Kevin Hearn, and it is a gorgeously atmospheric dream-pop piano ballad that I will take over anything else on this album, since there is nothing about its sweet sentimentality that rubs me the wrong way, and even Hearn's shaky, unassured vocal is more credible than Page's.

That said, we must not forget about the mind, either, and on a purely rational basis, Maroon de­serves its rightful thumbs up — the lyrics are hard to assail, as are the band's musical tastes and creative decisions. And, for that matter, ʽTonight Is The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheelʼ is probably the silliest send-up of those country sounds since the days of the Stones' ʽDear Doctorʼ and ʽFar Away Eyesʼ, and a fine enough conclusion to the main (unhidden) body of the album to wrestle out a positive decision at the end of the day. Anyway, it's all really a matter of owning the key to this particular aesthetics — I seem to have lost mine somewhere along the way, or maybe I never had one in the first place, but you, the reader, are always welcome to try. (But it does se­riously help if you're 19 years old and enrolled in Berkeley or something).

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Bathory: The Return...

THE RETURN... (1985)

1) Revelation Of Doom / Total Destruction; 2) Born For Burning; 3) The Wind Of Mayhem; 4) Bestial Lust; 5) Possessed; 6) The Rite Of Darkness / Reap Of Evil; 7) Son Of The Damned; 8) Sadist; 9) The Return Of The Dark­ness And Evil; 10) Outro.

It would be unwise to expect a sophomore album, titled Return, to be seriously different from its predecessor. There are a few changes, though. First, the production is a little better: Quorthon's guitars no longer sound like the echo of a drilling machine three miles away — they actually sound like real guitars, if still a little farther away from the mike than would be recommendable. Second, as impossible as it sounds, the album is even more «consistent» than its predecessor — everything, apart from the dark-weathered «satanic-ambient» intro, is brutally fast (Bathory, at the very least, slowed down for ʽRaise The Deadʼ).

Unfortunately, the consistency and dedication also means that musically, this is a step down: second time around, it is clear that brutality, «darkness and evil» are far more important for Quorthon than musicality. Most of the riffs are now interchangeable — based on rather standard chord sequences, typical for hardcore and thrash artists. Quorthon's solos are, in fact, more com­mendable than the riffs: he does not indulge in them on every track (an interesting link between Bathory and the hardcore punk attitude here, rather than their metal brethren), but when he does, they are not so much empty technical feats of finger-flashing as a device to heat up the atmos­phere: he plays fast, but (as I suppose) relatively simple flurries of «angry» licks, sometimes with heavy echo effects, that have virtually no dynamics of their own (start in one place, go visit ano­ther, finally end up in a third one or where you started out, that sort of thing), but all rather sound like the musical equivalent of flashing lightning to the rhythm section's roaring thunder.

Quorthon's vocals are also clearer in the mix now, and incorporate more growling than they used to, even if it is still hardly possible to describe them as classic «growling» — more like «hoarse screeching» on the part of the protagonist whose larynx has just been shredded by the lances of all the Four Horsemen, and now Lucifer in person is doing a little tap dance on the bloody bits. Bad news — still not scary at all, Mr. Forsberg. Consistent, though.

Individual songs are hardly worth commenting upon, particularly since I have no favourite riffs on here, and vocal «melodies» are non-existent in the first place. Recurrent listens do show that the album has various influences — for instance, ʽBorn For Burningʼ is based on a very familiar «New Wave of Heavy Metal» kind of pattern, with a riff that would sound perfectly in place on a Judas Priest album. On the other hand, the basic pattern of ʽRite Of Darknessʼ is much more simple and straightforward, and with a slight tonality change most likely would have become a Ramones number. Some reviewers have, in fact, noted that, at the time, Bathory were really much more about the atmosphere than the technical accuracy and complexity normally demanded of metal bands — in fact, the limited time they had for their studio sessions leads to occasional mis­takes on the part of the rhythm section, something that would be unbelievable for a «true» metal band. But, of course, the atmosphere itself, with its carnivalesque Satanism, has nothing to do with the «hardcore» attitudes.

For some Bathory fans, The Return... and its follow-up are the quintessential Bathory albums, and I understand this: the take-no-prisoners, show-no-mercy approach is demonstrated here with 100% efficiency, if that is what you want from your grotesque genre of black metal. A compact, quickly passing thirty-six minutes of speed, thrash, and Dr. Evil riding on the coattails of The Horned One. But, of course, if you are just an innocent by-passer with a bit of curiosity to spare, any one of these songs will do for a brief taster — try the title track, for instance.

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Barclay James Harvest: Gone To Earth

BARCLAY JAMES HARVEST: GONE TO EARTH (1977)

1) Hymn; 2) Love Is Like A Violin; 3) Friend Of Mine; 4) Poor Man's Moody Blues; 5) Hard Hearted Woman; 6) Sea Of Tranquillity; 7) Spirit On The Water; 8) Leper's Song; 9) Taking Me Higher.

Well, this record is certainly memorable. From the «ambitions» point of view, it is a step back from the relative complexity of Octoberon — more songs on the whole, and more simple songs in particular, with «soothing repetitiveness» as one of the key factors that determine memorability. But there are some cool songwriting ideas here, and the soft-rock atmosphere is still resonating with echoes of Sixties' art-pop idealism, and the formula still works.

Ironically, the song that helped make Gone To Earth into «the» BJH album of all time (their big­gest commercial success and the first pick of many a critic in retrospect) is... a joke song. Not only does ʽPoor Man's Moody Bluesʼ truly sound the way it is called, but John Lees actually de­signed it that way, as a slap-in-yer-face in the direction of many a reviewer who had previously derided the band as a cheaper imitation of who-do-you-think. Essentially, it is just one of those silly ideas — like ʽTitlesʼ — to tinker around with the old treasure chest. And, just like ʽTitlesʼ, it fails because it never really lets you know what it wants to be.

I mean, for somebody who has never heard ʽNights In White Satinʼ, ʽPoor Man's Moody Bluesʼ may be a stately, solemn, chivalrous love anthem rather than a senseless deconstruction of the original, subtracting most of its pluses (the inimitable Hayward vocals, the group harmonies, the flute solo, etc.) and offering nothing in return. For those of us who do know the original, this is, at best, a self-ironic statement, something like: «...so you thought we were all a poor man's Moody Blues? well, you couldn't be more wrong, because here is what a true poor man's Moody Blues really sounds like, and nothing that we did before is really that ridiculous!» But if such was the reasoning, it is doubly ironic how the song became a hit for the band, and ended up as a perennial favourite on their live setlist.

The other live highlight from the album is John's ʽHymnʼ, which can be easily mistaken for a loving retelling of the story of Jesus for kindergarten-age children, then correctly reinterpreted (with the aid of John himself, who would always clarify the interpretation in concert) as a war­ning for the simple folks not to use drugs as a means of attaining Godlike status. Then, finally, it becomes a Kansas-style moralization without the Kansas-style musicianship, and the final effect is — too much preachiness and pathos, but just not enough depth. Granted, it is hard to explain why something like ʽHymnʼ feels like pablum where something like George Harrison's ʽIsn't It A Pityʼ, largely designed according to the same rules, is genius — either George uses the more ap­propriate tonalities, or has more soul in his vocals, but the feeling is unmistakable, even if it may not be shared by everyone.

John gets more interesting on ʽLove Is Like A Violinʼ, where folk verses are integrated with upbeat, disco-wise (but not really disco) choruses with an elegant resolution — this time, the fluff manages to be charming; and on ʽLeper's Songʼ, which sounds sort of like Supertramp (in fact, it is not the only song on the album that sounds like Supertramp), but in this context, it is more of a compliment than anything else. (The lyrics are allegedly inspired by reading Joseph Conrad and Graham Greene — well, at least this beats ʽHymnʼ, which must have been inspired by «The New Testament For Preschool Conservatives»).

Holroyd's contributions are a little bouncier this time, and not all of them emphasize the sugar-and-spice, as it was on Octoberon: ʽFriend Of Mineʼ is catchy, if hardly original, Eaglish country-pop, ʽHard Hearted Womanʼ is a dark, mildly brooding, Eaglish country-rocker à la ʽWitchy Womanʼ, and ʽSpirit On The Waterʼ, breaking the tendency, is a clear attempt to emulate the Beach Boys circa Sunflower and Surf's Up — and, if you look past the ugly synthesizer tones, an almost successful one: at least the harmonies are pretty well arranged; although, truth be told, I wouldn't be surprised (and would be very amused) to see the song titled ʽPoor Man's Beach Boysʼ, just to complete the circle.

Meanwhile, Woolly, true to his nature, goes on with the ʽPoor Man's Gustav Mahlerʼ project, this time in the context of a space-age song, about being either lost in space or losing the space race or something like that — ʽSea Of Tranquillityʼ is no better and no worse than ʽRaʼ, a stately project carried out with some dignity, but in a completely predictable fashion, with the usual fanfares in their usual places. The man does know his Mahler and his Strauss — too bad that, cruelly reduced to one contribution per album, Woolly decided to stick exclusively to these pastiches; perhaps he thought that this was the best possible antidote he could offer to the excessive soft-poppiness of his bandmates, but it would certainly have been nice to see him try out other styles as well.

Altogether, the reasons why Gone To Earth has achieved such a «special» status in BJH history, other than the accidental popularity of ʽPoor Man's Moody Bluesʼ — I wonder if the success of that song could have played any part in the Moody Blues themselves reuniting the following year, recognizing how much they were still missed? — those reasons remain a mystery to me, because for those who perceive BJH as an «art» band, Octoberon would be a much better choice, and those who think of them as primarily soft-pop, light-fluff artists, have no reason to worry about album favourites in the first place. With the exception of ʽPoor Man's Moody Bluesʼ, a song that makes me feel very stupid every time I listen to it, Gone To Earth is pleasant, inoffensive, and, as I said, occasionally «hooky» and memorable, so a thumbs up it is, but in retrospect, it is hard­ly a high point for the band, and definitely not up to their classic early standards.

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Bee Gees: One Night Only

BEE GEES: ONE NIGHT ONLY (1998)

1) Intro: You Should Be Dancing / Alone; 2) Massachusets; 3) To Love Somebody; 4) Words; 5) Closer Than Close; 6) Islands In The Stream; 7) Our Love; 8) Night Fever / More Than A Woman; 9) Lonely Days; 10) New York Mining Disaster 1941; 11) I Can't See Nobody; 12) And The Sun Will Shine; 13) Nights On Broadway; 14) How Can You Mend A Broken Heart; 15) Heartbreaker; 16) Guilty; 17) Immortality; 18) Tragedy; 19) I Started A Joke; 20) Grease; 21) Jive Talking; 22) How Deep Is Your Love; 23) Stayin' Alive; 24) You Should Be Dancing; 25*) I've Gotta Get A Message To You; 26*) One; 27*) Still Waters; 28*) Morning Of My Life; 29*) Too Much Heaven; 30*) Run To Me.

According to some sources, One Night Only was supposed to be the Bee Gees' last show (hence the name) — because of Barry Gibb's worsening arthritis problems (turns out he really did love his guitar playing; ironically, in the end he still keeps on playing it as late as the 2010s, while the other Gibb brothers are up in the heavens). And where better to play the last ever Bee Gees show than at the MGM Grand casino in Las Vegas? In 1998, the posh casino ambience was the only one that was still perfectly suitable for the aging Gibbs and their suaveness.

The show was planned as a historical retrospective of the brothers' career — hence the abundance of titles, many of which have been severely cut and medley-fied (a corrupt practice that the band had initiated already in the mid-1970s) in order to fit the bill. Unfortunately, the Bee Gees treat their backlog just the way you'd expect them to treat it: «big commercial hit» = «worth perfor­ming», «great flopped single / obscure, but exciting album track» = «forget it». Oh well, at least you cannot accuse the brothers of a lack of objectivity — and, most probably, they were giving the people assembled at MGM Grand exactly what they wanted to hear.

The only exception to the rule — actually, «modification» rather than «exception» — is that the brothers also perform several songs that they wrote for other artists, such as ʽIslands In The Streamʼ (a hit for Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton), ʽDon't Throw It All Awayʼ (written for Andy Gibb, with some of his vocalizations played back on tape in unison with the live Gibbs), ʽHeart­breakerʼ (a hit for Dionne Warwick), and ʽGuiltyʼ (for Barbra Streisand). As far as I am concer­ned, all of these are very, very, very bad songs, reflecting the Gibbs' final crossover into the bland adult contemporary market, and the crown jewel is the recent hit ʽImmortalityʼ, for which they are actually joined on stage by the culprit — Celine Dion. «MGM Grand» indeed.

Nevertheless, when all the barbs have been spent, and when there is no more strength left to go on with the lashing, the Gibb brothers, even smothered in cheese, sugar, sarcasm, and irony, will be left standing on their own two feet. Because there is neither any denying the greatness of way too many of these other songs, nor, most importantly, any denying the fact that most of them are performed with professionalism, spirit, and even occasional signs of grace. Ironically, it is the falsetto tunes that Barry seems to struggle with on a regular basis: ʽStayin' Aliveʼ, in particular, is exactly what the man is genuinely trying to do after squeezing out these high notes at top speed for such a long time (where twenty years ago it all came rather naturally). (Then again, ʽStayin' Aliveʼ did always lay the heaviest tax on Barry's vocal cords — there must have been very few live performances where he'd live up to the studio version).

But these are also the guys that brought you ʽMassachusetsʼ, ʽHow Can You Mend A Broken Heartʼ, ʽWordsʼ, ʽI Can't See Nobodyʼ, ʽNew York Mining Disasterʼ, ʽTo Love Somebodyʼ, ʽLonely Daysʼ, ʽI Started A Jokeʼ... yes, the list could have been expanded with ʽLemons Never Forgetʼ, ʽYou'll Never See My Face Againʼ, and ʽDogsʼ, but would you really play these songs to a bunch of middle-aged suckers who may have just lost thousands of dollars at a nearby roulette table? Forget it and just savour the lushness, the style, the composure, the fitness of the magni­ficent Gibb brothers and their unbeatable harmonies. And much as I dislike the castration of the individual songs in order to fit them into the medley format (ʽRun To Meʼ in the bonus track pack is particularly pitiable), the idea to make a brief unplugged version of ʽNights On Broadwayʼ in­stead of re-running the old «smooth funk» arrangement is a good one.

In short, hearing the album won't hurt as much as owning it (encountering an album sleeve like that in one's collection might lead to serious problems with the vice squad) — but documentally speaking, this is the last official Bee Gees live album, and it may be instructive to know that, de­spite not having had a decent studio album in almost twenty years, they were still willing and able to cut it on stage without a glitch (discounting some of Barry's fermented falsetto notes). Having gained that knowledge, you are definitely not obliged to give the record another listen. It is, after all, designed for One Night Only — we will respect that.

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The Blues Project: Live At Town Hall

THE BLUES PROJECT: LIVE AT TOWN HALL (1967)

1) Flute Thing; 2) I Can't Keep From Cryin'; 3) Mean Old Southern; 4) No Time Like The Right Time; 5) Love Will Endure; 6) Where There's Smoke, There's Fire; 7) Wake Me, Shake Me.

A fake live album — the last thing that was needed to complete the fall from grace, just as Al Kooper finally decided that the others were tying him down and streamed out into space, in search of the next band that he could quit in less than a couple of years. Actually, it is not totally fake, but only about half of the tracks (admittedly, the longest half) are live, and, according to Kooper's own words, only one of them was truly recorded at Town Hall (NYC's, I presume). The rest are just masked with overdubbed applause, and it is not difficult to spot the masking.

The live tracks are all rather faithful, sometimes extended, versions of songs from Projections — most notably, ʽFlute Thingʼ in all its glory and then some, with extra seances of psychedelic painting, noise bits and dreamy static passages incorporated in the improvised section. Andy Kulberg actually plays an electric flute here, which allows for some extra sonic hooliganry every now and then. Even so, the result never strays in either form or spirit away from the original. Neither does ʽWake Me, Shake Meʼ, whose frenetic R&B crescendos were already a part of the studio design, or ʽI Can't Keep From Cryinʼ, which sounds almost like a note-for-note, punch-for-punch recreation.

At least Live At The Cafe Au Go Go was smart enough not to let itself be preceded by a studio album — that way, the public could not see that the band's stage presence did not seriously boost its chutz­pah; one could turn it the other way, of course, and insist that The Blues Project simply kicked as much ass in the studio as they did on stage, but that wasn't really the way it worked in 1966 — it just means that The Blues Project did not kick much ass, even despite Danny's sharp leads and Steve's ability to pump up the fuzz if the situation called for it.

Nevertheless, there is no reason to complain about the general level of the performances — the band does rock as hard as it is capable of, and the audience must have gotten what it came for, enough to spill over some «fake applause» for the studio additions. Of these, the most recommen­dable is Kooper's garage-art-pop single ʽNo Time Like The Right Timeʼ (which even made it onto the Nuggets collection, and for a good reason) — with a rather silly, but attention-grab­bing tonality change that transforms the romantic ecstasy of the verse into straightforward teenage lust of the chorus. ʽMean Old Southernʼ is a Butterfield Blues Band-style bass-'n'-harmonica-driven blues dance with what is probably Danny Kalb's best moment on the album — a fast, flashy, maddeningly precise country-blues solo. The other two tracks are rather syrupy folk-pop ballads that are rather quickly forgotten, I warrant.

In short, the album has all the signs of a contractual obligation — live tracks mixed in with what must have probably been studio outtakes from the previous sessions — and should be judged as such, rather than a gruesome artistic failure. Strangely, though, it did not close the book on The Blues Project, but merely turned over the most well-read pages of its history.

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Bobby Bland: Years Of Tears

BOBBY BLAND: YEARS OF TEARS (1993)

1) Somewhere Between Right & Wrong; 2) There's A Stranger In My House; 3) Hole In The Wall; 4) Years Of Tears To Go; 5) Hurtin' Time Again; 6) I Just Tripped On A Piece Of Your Broken Heart; 7) Sweet Lady Love; 8) Love Of Mine; 9) I've Got To Have Your Love Tonight; 10) You Put The Hurt On A Hurtin' Man.

It takes serious experience, and a large pot of desire to waste your time and strength on something as strange as that, to track and mark down all the tiny mood fluctuations from one late period Bobby Bland album to another (and with a little less politeness, you could scratch «late period»). Being neither experienced nor desirous, I can only say that I vaguely suspect a relative fall back into the somber and the tragic on the appropriately named Years Of Tears. Whether it is simply an astute artistic move or the whole thing was triggered by something personal, I do not know. The important thing is, there's a lot of hurting to go through on this album, and, as usual, it is not being gone through all that convincingly.

Changes to the old formula involve... nothing — the most «different» thing on the entire album is the little old-school echoey arpeggio that introduces ʽSomewhere Between Right & Wrongʼ, im­mediately to become a nice, but totally ordinary Fifties-progression-based soul number. ʽYears Of Tears To Goʼ and ʽI Just Tripped On A Piece Of Your Broken Heartʼ (gotta love those titles that Bobby's sidemen seem to be generating for him on an algorithmic basis) are two more long, deluxe shows of the spirit, and the rest is more or less evenly split between sentimental ballads and angry 12-bar stuff (of which ʽHole In The Wallʼ, about Bobby's party-loving partner, is pro­bably the tightest and the most lyrically suggestive, but, as usual, that ain't saying much). ʽYou Put The Hurt On A Hurtin' Manʼ has a poppier and, therefore, more memorable chorus but not much of a hurtin' atmosphere, despite repeating the word twice in the same title.

Other than that, the only thing there is to say is that Bobby cuts down on the snorting a little bit — I may be off, not having done the proper calculations and all, but it seems as if, on the whole, those animal noises have been somewhat subdued. Whether this is a sign of increased modesty, or just advanced age, I have no idea.

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