Dr Feelgood's Live Multiverse

 DR FEELGOOD’S LIVE MULTIVERSE 

 

I’ve recently watched videos of Dr Feelgood’s live performances in four different iterations of the band: the original quartet in 1975, the post-Wilko band with Gypie Mayo on guitar in 1980, the band where only Lee Brilleaux is an original member in 1990 and the totally superfluous current version of Dr Feelgood, with band members who have no historical connection with the brand,  in 2022.

 

I became a committed fan when I heard the then otherworldly sounding “Back In The Night” for the first time on the radio and remained interested after Wilko Johnsons left the band and Gypie Mayo replaced him, as this version of the band had the momentum of the breakthrough years that kept it on an upward, creatively fertile trajectory that peaked with A Case of the Shakes (1980) a bit of a resurgence after the turgid and uninspiring preceding Let It Roll (1979) was a sign of things to come.

 

A Case of the Shakes was, and still is, the last Feelgoods album I bought though I kept up with the news of the band, such as Mayo departing, then Sparko and the Big Figure, Lee Brilleaux’s death and the continuation of the band as a cash grab commercial enterprise with no founding members.

 

The YouTube clips from mostly 1975, from the Geordie Scene television show, some shows in France and a concert at the Kursaal in Southend, feature the band that took the pub rock scene in London by storm with its energy, dangerous looks, the distinctive sharp, choppy guitar sound of Wilko Johnson and his brilliant songs.

 

Dr Feelgood looked and sounded like no-one else and these performances still hold up after all the years. I can see where this iteration of the band could influence the nascent punk rock scene in London.  Dr Feelgood transcended the R & B influences from whence it came, like the Rolling Stones before them, by infusing their original music with the legacy sounds but not simply playing cover versions.

 

By Sneaking Suspicion (1977) the band had run out of steam and personal differences ripped the heart out of it. The remaining trio never really recovered regardless of who joined as guitarist. The band couldn’t replicate their original sound but, worst of all, couldn’t write the kind of quirky, catchy R & B tunes Wilko writes.

 

The 1980 performance in Germany for the Rock Palast show, is by a band that’s been around the block, has seen great success, critically and commercially, for a brief period,  and has now become a professional, proficient “name” band with nothing of the magical spark of their struggle years. 

 

For this particular show, Mayo plays a Stratocaster with a shrill, trebly, tinny sound that’s probably intended to fit in with the New Wave sounds of the time but lacks power and does a disservice to the hard rocking tunes. Brilleaux no longer sings as much as shouts, barks and growls and if he seems as committe4 to the performance as he was 5 years before, he’s toned down the manic aspects of the performance and now comes across as fully professional rather than passionate.

 

The post-Wilko songs aren’t bad, for the most part, especially the ones off A Case of the Shakes but there’s little real excitement about  the performance, even if Gypie Mayo tries his best to throw guitar hero shapes and Brilleaux retains a smidgen of his earlier confrontational self. 

 

By 1990 Dr Feelgood is Lee Brilleaux with backup musicians, though some of the bandmembers stayed with the band for a very long time, and if the sound is tougher, louder and punchier than in 1980, the performances still sound perfunctory and simply professional with zero enthusiasm or passion. The band sounds as if they just want to get the gig done asap, get paid and go home. By this time Brilleaux dresses like a crooner but truly has no voice left and he doesn’t elevate the journeyman-like newer tunes or even the classics. With Wilko and Gypie, Dr Feelgood at least sounded somewhat different to the competition  and had unique elements.  

 

In 1990  Dr Feelgood has become a generic blues rock band relying on well-known brand name for its commercial success but where it might once have been on the cusp of massive success and true greatness, if the original four could’ve kept it together and management was less greedy and shortsighted, Dr Feelgood became an unchallenging, unengaging day job where most concert attendees probably wanted to hear only the Wilko era tunes, of which there is a smattering of dutiful, tedious versions. Dr Feelgood sounds like a cover band of its own tunes.

 

Somehow, 50 years after the first breakthrough, there’s still a band called Dr Feelgood that tours, releases new material and obviously sounds nothing like the Dr Feelgood I came to know and love. There’s clearly no tribute band type intention of replicating the original sound of Dr Feelgood, as if it’s still a creatively innovative band intending to carve out its own path.  That’s all very well, and good luck to them, but if the 1990 iteration sounded generic, this current group sounds generic and mediocre.  The vocalist has limited vocal range and no stage presence and the guitarist, however proficient and experienced he might be, is merely a master of blues rock cliché.  The new tunes are undistinguished and rely on production values and technically proficient musicianship to generate any kind of mild interest.

 

The musicians look to be senior citizens who’d been eking out a living in semi-pro pub bands for most of their lives until this, presumably, plum job came up, to play in a third-tier blues rock band with name recognition with the possibility of making a fairly decent living if you don’t mind the grind of constant touring.

 

Dr Feelgood has returned to being a pub rock band; that’s the level of music they play now. 

 

It’s amazing that Wilko, Lee, Sparko and Big Figure laid the foundations for a. brand name that’s still recognised and can still provide a livelihood for jobbing musicians. There’s absolutely no reason other than commercial exploitation why Dr Feelgood should still exist and I can’t see how the current lot can win new fans. On the other hand, a 25-year-old today will have no sense of the grand  history of the band or of the impact Dr Feelgood made in the mid-Seventies.

 

I still listen to the first four Feelgoods albums with a good deal of pleasure and the opening notes of “I Can Tell” (Malpractice) still thrills as much as ever. Back in the day I bought all the Gypie Mayo era records, up to A Case of the Shakes, of which I’m quite fond, but thereafter I didn’t waste my money. Having listened to all those later period albums on Apple Music, my contemporary opinion of what those albums would sound like, has been confirmed.  Wilko period Dr Feelgood was unique and brilliant. After he left, the band went into a long, slow decline to becoming just another blues rock band among many without any Unique Selling Proposition. I don’t even understand how this version of the band still draws an audience.

 

Of course, it’s an example of still listening to the music that caught my attention as teenager but I’d argue, in this case, that the Dr Feelgood of 50 years ago IS far superior to any subsequent version of it.

 

 

Lab grown; not the real deal., Hackney Diamonds. The Rolling Stones

 Hackney Diamonds (2023)  

The Rolling Stones

 

A very young Mick Jagger, just starting out on his musical career, once told an interviewer that he couldn’t see himself doing “this” (a pop music career) after the age of 30. In mid-2024, with Jagger and Keith Richards both way past 30 and the only surviving founder members of the band (Ronnie Wood is the only other official Stone but he’s been in the band only for about 48 or 49 years), the Stones are touring behind their latest studio record, Hackney Diamonds, the first such release since the blues standards album Blue & Lonesome in 2016 and the first with original songs since A Bigger Bang (2005.)

 

The band has regularly toured over the past 19 years but the creative impulse to write songs and the motivation and drive to record and release them must be sorely lacking. Younger musicians have a fire and a drive to pursue their career, and often contractual obligations, but by the time they turn, say, 40, the fount of basic raw, inspired creativity is replaced by professional ability and craft.  As Neil Young once explained, he writes songs only when he’s obliged to release a record. This might be a simplification of the process but one can imagine, by the time Young said this, his life was so full of matters other than only his career in music, that he wouldn’t have had the time or luxury to sit around all day writing songs. When he does buckle down to it, he, and many other musicians, may well come up with far more material than the upcoming release may require. The artist records many demos and even does proper recordings of many more tunes than will make it to the track listing of the official release.

 

Bob Dylan has a whole Bootleg series of such previously unreleased songs, and so does Neil Young.

 

With the Rolling Stones there was the odds ‘n sods release Metamorphosis and Tattoo You (1981) was famously cobbled together for old outtakes or half-finished tracks. Their BBC recordings are available now and there have been many bootlegs over the years too, mostly liver recordings but also some studio outtakes. Lately I’ve been seeing advertisements for several box sets of multiple records and CDs relating to albums like Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers and even (why, I don’t get) Emotional Rescue.  Of course, these records were released 40 years or longer ago and at the time Jagger and Richards may still have been quite prolific songwriters and the band willing to spend more time in the studio.

 

Obviously, the Rolling Stones are no longer bound by a recording contract that compels them to release an album a year, such as still seems to be the case with Neil Young, unless he just wants to record and release as often and as much as possible (and it’s odd that the older some artists get, the more they want to clue us in on  what they did in their younger lives and refused to let us hear then), and so there’s no pressure on Jagger or Richards to write songs or to book studio time.

 

I don’t know whether the Stones have recorded enough material since, say 1989, to be able to release more records than they have or whether there just isn’t that much and the stuff that’s seen official release, is the by far the best of the bunch.  I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens after the official demise of the Stones.

 

This brings one to the question: why did the Stones feel that they needed or wanted to release a new studio record?  Was it a contractual obligation? Was there a sudden flare up of creativity and the energy to make something of it? Were these songs written over a period of years until the momentum to record them became irresistible? Is it simply one last studio blast before it’s really too late?

 

Now, I’m not the kind of music fan who follows an act for their entire career or buys every release for the sake of completion or because I think everyone is a work of genius because I love the artist.

 

For example: I don’t care for David Bowie’s music after Diamond Dogs, for Aerosmith’s after Night in the Ruts, Dr Feelgood’s after A Case of the Shakes, Blue Oyster Cult’s after Fire of Unknown Origin, Iggy Pop’s after the Stooges and so son.

 

Regarding the Rolling Stones, leaving Blue & Lonesome out of it, my appreciation of their records ends with Some Girls (1978) and I don’t even much like earlier albums like Goats Head Soup (1973) and Black and Blue(1976.)  The canon comprises of the early records, mostly the singles though, and the run from Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) to Exile on Main Street (1972), plus It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (1974) and Some Girls.  I bought some of the later records and have listened to all of them and not one has had anything remotely close to the appeal of the earlier stuff.

 

It's down to the songwriting, recording and production of the records. It feels as if Jagger and Richards were more inspired and interesting as lyricists and tunesmiths; the lyrics are engaging.  The loose, funky and rocking, blues-based rock ‘n roll style of playing is more to my taste too and the ‘60s and ‘70s production style suits my ears.  Everything sounds organic and relatively simple with the emphasis on good songs, musical proficiency without being precious about it and non-intrusive production. 

 

I generally dislike the typical, fashionable, over-polished ‘80s production style that so badly dates many records from that era, and especially on the records of ‘60’s and ‘70s acts trying to update their sound to stay current and commercial.

 

This is exactly what happened to the Stones albums after Tattoo You. The production values are high, the records are busy and loud yet the playing sounds like highly proficient studio musicians who just can’t reproduced the loose, funky swing of, say, Exile on Main Street. Granted, the Stones probably no longer wanted to sound like that but what they achieved was just extremely well produced, tedious music that has the Stones trademark licks but not anything of the original visceral excitement. Even worse, Jager and Richards now sound like professional songwriters who craft lyrics like mathematicians instead of inspired poets. Lastly, Jagger’s mannered singing style, which gained traction in the early ‘70s and became steadily more entrenched, just sounds fake and irritating. The artless, relaxed, naturalism of Blue & Lonesome echoes what Jagger used to sound like in his glory days. Now, he and the band, absolutely sound like the showbiz Rolling Stones. They’re no longer simply a band playing massive gigs but a core trio with MOR backing musicians performing vaudeville renditions of their well-worn hits, with the same core set list show after show. Most of those songs are from that purple period hey day I prefer and if that doesn’t convince you of the value of the rest of the catalogue, nothing will.

 

Okay, so 18 years after A Bigger Bang, we’ve been blessed, so to speak, with Hackney Diamonds. 

 

The following are selected extracts from the Apple Music hype piece about the record: 

“Hackney Diamonds is the band’s most energetic, effortless, and tightest record since 1981’s Tattoo You. Just play “Bite My Head Off”, a rowdy kiss-off where Mick Jagger tells off a bitter lover, complete with a fuzz-bass breakdown by... Paul  McCartney. “At the end of it, I just said, ‘Well, that's just like the old days,’” Richards tells Apple Music of that recording session.

Hackney Diamonds was indeed made like the old days—live, with no click tracks or glossy production tricks—yet still manages to sound fresh. 

 

After years of stalled sessions, and the death of their legendary drummer Charlie Watts in 
2021, Jagger and Richards decided on a fresh start, travelling to Jamaica for a series of writing sessions. Based on a recommendation from McCartney, Jagger hired producer Andrew Watt, who’d also worked with Miley Cyrus, Dua Lipa, Ozzy Osbourne, Post Malone and more, to help them finish the tracks. 

 

“He kicked us up the ass,” Jagger tells Apple Music. 

With Steve Jordan on drums, Watt kept it simple, bringing in vintage microphones and highlighting the interwoven guitars of Richards and Ronnie Wood. “The whole point is the band being very close, eyeball to eyeball, and looking at each other and feeding off of each other,” says Richards. In the spirit of 1978’s genre-spanning Some Girls, the album comprises sweeping riff-heavy anthems (“Angry”, “Driving Me Too Hard”), tortured relationship ballads (“Depending on You”), country-tinged stompers (“Dreamy Skies”) and even dance-floor grooves (“Mess it Up”, featuring a classic Jagger falsetto).

The capstone of the album is “Sweet Sounds of Heaven”, a stirring seven-minute gospel epic featuring Lady Gaga. Halfway through, the song goes quiet, Gaga laughs and Stevie Wonder starts playing the Rhodes keyboard, and then Gaga and Jagger start improvising vocals together; it’s a spontaneous moment that’s perfectly imperfect, reminiscent of the loose Exile on Main St. sessions. “Playing with Stevie is always mind-blowing, and I thought that Lady Gaga did an incredible job, man,” says Richards. “She snaked her way in there and took it over and gave as good as she got with Mick, and it was great fun.”

Richards didn’t expect to make an album this good as he approaches his 80th birthday. But he’s using it as a moment to take stock of his career with the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world. “The fact that our music has managed to become part of the fabric of life everywhere, I feel pretty proud about that, more than any one particular thing or one particular song,” he says. “It is nice to be accepted into this legendary piece of bullshit.”

 

 

First off, Charlie Watts’ drumming is sorely missed. Technically gifted as Steve Jordan may be, he doesn’t have the lightness of touch, the nous and the simple groove that Watts brought to the Stones’ music.

 

Secondly, referencing Some Girls as somehow informing the production, sound and tunes of Hackney Diamonds is absolutely misguided. Never mind that contemporary production techniques and values are vastly different; Some Girls sounds fresh and innovative compared to the albums it followed, and preceded, where Hackney Diamonds is of a piece with the Stones’ ‘90s output where loud, hard music is supposed to create an energetic momentum yet leaves one unfulfilled.  You can’t fault the band for effort but they just don’t deliver  memorable music. Just about the only factor that links the music to the classic Stones, sound is Jagger’s voice. The music is just mainstream rock with very little, if any, spark of magic and the musicians don’t sound particularly invested beyond just the professional pride of still being able to do it after all these years.

  

I guess no rock writer in the mainstream, “legacy” media would be so bold as to say anything negative about this record, a kind of monument to, if nothing else, longevity and the power of professionalism of musicians who’ve been plying their trade for such a very long time. The thing is, like Bob Dylan’s recent studio release Rough & Rowdy Ways, Hackney Diamonds is a testament to professional craft and not to creative inspiration. Jagger and Richards know how to write songs and are pretty proficient at utilising whatever the latest studio technology is but none of it, and this has been the case for more than 40 years, comes across as anything but hard graft and journeymen’s craft.  Hackney Diamonds has high production values and probably sounds awesome when you push the volume button to 11 but the songs aren’t any thing other than perfunctory exercises in tunesmithing; they aren’t inspired or inspiring and I can’t see any of them ever making the list of “Stones classics.” 

 

Lots of people waxed lyrical about this album when it was first released and apparently had it on almost endless repeat. I bet there will be a considerable amount of reconsideration in due course and Hackney Diamonds will be recognised as the novelty it really is and I can foresee that those people who obsess about rating albums will place it firmly in the lower half of the pyramid of Stones albums, a companion to Voodoo Lounge and Bridges to Babylon.

 

 

RIP David Johansen

 RIP DAVID JOHANSEN

(9 January 1950 - 28 February 2025)

 

My introduction to the New York Dolls was an article in Hit Parader magazine from August 1974 in which the writer, either Lisa or Richard Robinson, discussed the then nascent New York pun scene and referenced the Dolls as one of the forerunners of the current scene. By this time, Johnny Thunders had left the band and was fronting the Heartbreakers while, if  I’m correct, David Johansen still led a version of the Dolls, managed by Malcom McLaren.

 

The takeaway from this article was that the young Johansen was a kind of Mick Jagger lookalike and that the Dolls played raucous, Stonesy rock & roll while dressed in women’s clothes and high heels, not because they were cross dressers but because they wanted to outrage the establishment. Mind you, this was well before glam rock became a thing in the UK.

 

Of course, at the time, I had no idea what the New York Dolls music sounded like. My local music store didn’t stock either of their two albums and the radio didn’t play any of their songs. If the Dolls were obscure in the USA, other than in their New York scene, they might as well not have existed for South African purposes.

 

Fast forward a couple of years and by mid-1977 I was a regular reader of the NME, usually about 3 months after time because the rock weekly came to South Africa by mailboat, right at the time when it’s focus was on all things punk. NME writers regularly referenced the Dolls, The Stooges and the MC5 as influences on the UK punk scene and it was in the pages of the NME that I was educated about these three, and other, then defunct bands hailed as proto-punk.

 

Between 1977 and late 1981 I acquired the first two Stooges albums and the first two MC5 albums but still never saw any New York Dolls records in the record stores I frequented.

 

I was still buying Hit Parader and they were still championing Johansen  as solo artist, in features and record reviews and those, combined with NME’s recommendations, in that 1977 to 1081 period,  I did buy David Johansen (1978) and In Style (1979) and, in probably 1983 or ’84, Here Comes the Night (1982). 

 

I preferred the first two albums over the third one because they were light-hearted rock and roll fun, straddling the line between what I imagined the Dolls had sounded like and the influences of punk and New Wave. The production of the third record made it sound as if had been recorded with session musicians and was aimed at a mainstream, AOR rock audience and was therefore a far more serious attempt at crafting a radio friendly, commercially successful record than might’ve been the case with the first albums.

 

After that I lost interest in Johansen’s music.  I saw him in the movie Scrooged and took note of his Buster Pointdexter alter ego and thought that he’d given up the struggle to be independent and idiosyncratic and had surrendered to the lures of filthy lucre in a mainstream showbiz career.

 

I was mildly surprised to come across the album Shaker (2002) by Johansen and the Harry Smiths probably about 10 years after its release, at a flea market stall. The well-known blues songs on the track listing convinced me to buy the CD at its discounted price and when I played it, I was smitten by this, to me, really weird deviation in Johansen’s musical direction. I saw the Buster Pointdexter persona as a joke that somehow became commercially successful and hardly thought of Johansen, given the oeuvre I knew, as aspiring to being a bluesman.  Whatever, I liked the record and then sought out the earlier album, just called David Johansen & the Harry Smiths (2000), which was as satisfying as Shaker. 

 

The only New York Dolls track I’d been familiar with, since the late ‘90s, was “Trash” from a compilation of tracks from bands that had influenced UK punk and this fast paced, insouciant and exhilarating song seemed to be the perfect realisation of what I’d thought of as the Dolls sound, based on what the Hit Parader and NME had to say, as a rollicking update on old-school rock and roll with a fresh edge  yet not the same harsh edge that punk often had though “Trash” shared the same sense of melody. And song structure, unlike the hard core or straight edge punk that emerged in the USA after UK punk had finally made its way to the US.

 

It was only after I joined Apple Music sometime after 2015 that I had access to New York Dolls (1973) and Too Much Too Soon (1874).  By this time, I hardly found them life changing but they were fun and hugely pleasurable to listen to and I saw these records as forerunners, not so much to punk, but to other pre-punk bands like The Dictators 9especially their debut album)  and the early Cheap Trick where power, melody and humour were pre-eminent.

 

The difficulty with looking back at bands that were praised by rock critics when they started out,  not being part of any scene, the band was involved in and hearing their music not only years later but also after being exposed to the bands they influenced, is that the discovery is not mind blowing and one doesn’t always get why the band might have been so highly regarded in the first place.  I’ve read the history of the Dolls and it must’ve been a blast being at the Mercer Arts Center in New York when the Dolls played there in the early ‘70s partly because of the way the guys dressed and partly because the music was at odds with the prevailing fashion of heavy metal and prog rock, but, frankly, now, the music isn’t particularly original or impactful. I still prefer the Stooges’ Fun House (1970) and the MC5’s Back in the USA (1970) as records, even well after their original release dates, that had a genuine impact on me but maybe it was also because I was in my late teens at the time.

 

Regardless, I enjoy the Dolls’ albums and I’m really fond of  David Johansen, In Style and Shaker.  With the latter he really got my respect for not being just some New York rocker dilettante dabbling in all manner of activities that would earn him a buck.

 

One odd thing about Johansen though, on a purely personal level, is how badly he aged from the fresh faced, Jagger  wanna be pretty boy to a guy with a ravaged, jowly, deeply lined face that contrasted starkly and incongruously with his youthful, no doubt tinted, locks, in which he still resembled a Jagger wanna be who couldn’t do much about how his face aged but would be damned if he were going to allow his hair to age in the same way.. Interestingly, he was less than 10 years younger than Jagger.

 

Anyhow, Johansen was a large presence, I guess, on the New York scene, at least amongst his peers who experienced and celebrated the same scene though he was hardly a giant in the rock field. I suppose the New York Dolls will always be fondly thought of  and be  noted as precursors and harbingers of a musical genre that briefly turned the rock world on its head in the late ‘70s without themselves ever achieving that level of contemporaneous popularity.  They’ll probably continued to be lumped in with the Velvet Underground, MC5 and Stooges as prophets that were barely honoured in their own time yet whose influence spread like pebbles cast into a calm lake.

 

That is a substantial legacy and David Johansen helped created the legacy and then had a second act, a third act and even a fourth act and during the course of his career created an intriguing selection of music that is, and will always be, part of my record collection.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Revisiting classic records for the modern audience

 REVISITING CLASSIC RECORDS FOR THE MODERN AUDIENCE

 

Over the past few months, I’ve come across and watched several episodes of a YouTube channel called Vinyl Mondays, presented by one Abigail (Abby) Devoe who’s 25. I don’t subscribe to her channel; it just popped up on my YouTube timelines and most of the discussions I’ve checked out have been posted a year ago.  She’s still going though.

 

In her discussion of Layla and Oher Assorted Love Songs (1970) by Derek & The Dominos, an album she credits with changing her life, Abby, who admits to being 23 then, tells us that some guy gave her a literal truckload of records when she was 19 and I suppose this original motherlode represents the core of her collection though she’s obviously bought more since that momentous day, like multiple copies of Layla.

 

The cache of records mostly, if not exclusively, represent the ‘60s and ‘70s, if the various Vinyl Mondays are an accurate reflection and were therefore released way before Abby was born. I don’t know whether she buys contemporary vinyl releases too; I haven’t seen her discuss anything outside the “classic rock” genre.  I suppose the roots of her channel might lie in her desire to tell us about her record collection and that there are so many that she doesn’t have the capacity to go beyond that collection, given that she can discuss roughly 52 albums a year.

 

It's obviously intriguing that a Gen Z person has taken it on herself to discuss records that have not only been released well before her lifetime but that have also received their fair share of acclaim or criticism in appraisals that have become canon set in stone. There is probably a general tendency to re-appraise records after enough time has passed for critical viewpoints to shift according to contemporary understanding of artistic standards.  Some, once derided records have been re-evaluated as better than originally perceived, possibly masterpieces; for example, Don’t Stand Me Down (1985) by Dexys Midnight Runners, which was panned on release and was a commercial failure.  I can’t think of any record, hailed as a work of genius on first release that’s been downgraded, as such opinions tend to become received wisdom and are hardly challenged but there might be some and, as far as I’m concerned, there should be a wholesale reconsideration of many previously highly rated albums that, on sober reflection, aren’t anywhere as good as the first critics claimed.   

 

A contemporary record that might be a case in point, is The Rollings Stones’ latest studio effort Hackney Diamonds (2024) that sems to have received high praise from critics and fans alike but is, to me, just another pedestrian, turgid Stones album with high productions values where most of the praise is rooted in the fact that a bunch of old guys, who might not be able to do for much longer, wrote and recorded it.  I hardly think it’s going to stand the test of time.

 

Now, I don’t know whether Abby has listened to these records critically ear and with an open approach uncontaminated by received opinion and that she genuinely agrees with how these records have been rated, but it seems to me that her show is a tad pointless and gutless, not to mention ultimately uninteresting, because she seems to perpetuate the standard accepted reception of the records she discusses.

 

Abby is simply, even for a younger audience, repeating what we already know about the classic records she presents with little or no new or original critical insights. She does a lot of research on the subjects of each Vinyl Monday and is a fount of well-known and lesser-known facts and anecdotes, again, very informative for anyone around her age who’s never listened to the records but not so great for someone like me (and I can’t be alone), who knows the records and the histories already.

 

Even after listening to her chat about Layla, I still don’t really know why it changed her life (”there’s life before Layla and life after Layla”) and, except for a few references to lyrics and some microcosmic snippets of songs that enthral her, she doesn’t have much of value to say about the music and the musicians. 

 

Abby doesn’t offer any original insights regarding her records and that might be because she genuinely agrees with the canon and, as I’ve said, perhaps the concept and motivation is to expose her fellow Gen Z citizens to music they might otherwise not have known about but there seems to be hardly any point in regurgitating accepted evaluations of well-worn, classic albums that are integrally woven into the fabric of our popular cultural history. If you want to discuss those records, listen to them with fresh ears and offer a new perspective that doesn’t simply offer obeisance to that vanguard of rock critics from the late ‘60s and ‘70s who reviewed and rated the albums back in the day and whose opinions have not really been challenged since then.

 

I doubt that I’m the target audience and I doubt that I’ll spend much more time on Abby’s views of old records.  More power to her, though. I was also passionate about music and was collecting records when I was 23 but there was no way that I was as articulate as she is about music at that time of my life. YouTube wasn’t available then, neither did the Internet exist, and I only started writing about music, for my own pleasure and to pass the time, when I was 37 and began publishing my thoughts only much later (probably 10 years later) when I started this blog.

 

Alost all of my posts have also been about “classic rock” artists from my record collection but there’s also a bunch of reviews of contemporary release by those artists and by some South African artists. I know just about all the records Abby Devoe has discussed and have my own views of them, not always consistent with the accepted view about, for example, the genius of the Beatles as a group or of the individuals in their solo careers. I also don’t much care for most of the records Bob Dylan, Neil Young and the Rolling Stones have released over the past 45 years, not to mention most of the acts who rose to fame and/or notoriety in the ‘60s and ‘70s and who managed to keep their career going over the decades. I very much subscribe to the belief that most musicians in the popular music field produce their best, most original work in the first 10 years of their careers when they’re young and think outside of the box.  After that they become professional, proficient craftsman or -women and lose the spark that engaged one in the first instance. Records are recorded and released for contractual reasons and not because the artist really has anything interesting to say anymore.

 

So, by all means concentrate on the imperial period of “classic rock” and the artists who reigned supreme then but there’s not much need to bother about their work after 1980. For that period, and onwards, look at and consider newer artists but also have a cut-off date of, say not more than 20 years, and then move on again.

 

The important thing though is always to listen to records with fresh, unbiased ears, uninfluenced by clichéd opinion. For example, Sgt Pepper might have been ground-breaking and enormously innovative in its day but when I listen to it now, and this goes for most Beatles albums, there is too much filler in there for it to be 10/10 a work of genius. There are many highly regarded albums that make me wonder what the fuss was, or is, all about yet I’m probably alone in my valuation. For me, Sgt Pepper is very much an example of “the Emperor’s new clothes” but to date nobody has called out the Beatles on it.  Hackney Diamonds is case of the same thing.

 

If there is one thing I’ve learnt about the study of history, is that it’s takes a long time, often hundreds of years, before one has a proper perspective of any event and that new information regularly appears that forces one to reconsider and re-evaluate one’s view on events. The same should apply to music. Don’t just accept a contemporary view of a record from, say 1870, as gospel.  Don’t just repeat the views of contemporary rock writers.

 

Listen critically and form your own view.

 

YouTube channels like Abby Devoe’s Vinyl Mondays are useful, informative and entertaining to a point, especially for the uninformed. Back in the day I used to have to buy books on the history of rock music, album ratings or biographies of individual artists for information; today, it’s all online and there’s probably a lot more than used to be available in print. Today, Abby Devoe will enlighten you at no cost to you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Rolling Stones reconsidered, again.

 ROLLING STONES RECONSIDERED, AGAIN

 

In mid-2024 the Rolling Stones, with octogenarians Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the not much younger Ron Wood and supporting musicians, are touring again, in support of Hackney Diamonds (2023). 

 

Many have hailed the latter as some kind of masterpiece; the strongest Stones album in years, well, it’s the first Stones album of original material since A Bigger Bang (2005.)  I don’t care for Hackney Diamonds.  The best I can say about it, is that it sounds sonically immense. Otherwise, the riffing is just rote, the songs are tuneless arrangements and the lyrics are from “professional songwriting craft” and, like basically all Stones songs since the late ‘70s, do not sound if thy come from inspiration or imagination and have no emotional resonance. Hackney Diamonds is no masterpiece and the likelihood is that most of those who acclaim it, do it simply because the guys who made it are so old that it’s likely there won’t be many more, especially if the gaps between studio albums remain as lengthy as they have been over the last 30 years.

 

In the meantime, the Stones remain a huge live draw (better see them now before it’s too late) and seem to be as energetic on stage as ever, despite their advanced years.  Presumably, they do perform a couple of tracks off the latest album but the reality is that the set list hasn’t changed materially over the past 40 years. The audience aren’t there for tunes off albums released since 1980 (although, of course “Start Me Up” is mandatory); they want to hear the classic canon of Stones music, the songs that made the Stones and the songs we automatically think of when we think Rolling Stones, like “The Last Time,” “satisfaction,”  “Jumping Jack Flash,” “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Angie,”  “It’s Only Rock and Roll,” “Miss You”  and any of  the other songs that appear on all the compilations. The Stones have  a vast catalogue and the best of it, the memorable tunes that have become part of the cultural landscape of rock, were released before the end of the ‘70s, “Start Me Up” excepted. 

 

I’ve recently watched a thing on YouTube, which is called a review of the Rollings Stones over the period 1973 (Goats Head Soup) to 1983 (Undercover.). The participants are mostly music journalist talking heads and none of the Stones participate except for some brief clips from Keith Richards.

 

The accepted view is that Sticky Fingers (1971) and Exile on Main Street (1972) are the last really good Stones albums, and the final instalments of the purple patch that started with Beggars Banquet (1968) and that after Exile, the ‘70s weren’t a good decade for Stones albums except for the brief phoenix of Some Girls(1978), though some people in the aforementioned review are very kind to Black and Blue (1976) as a brave, innovative musical change in direction for the band.

 

At some point in the late ‘70s or early ‘80s, a writer for the NME made the point that the Stones hadn’t made a properly, full on good album for years.  Each record might have a few good songs on it but there are no albums with, say, 12 top quality songs anymore. As Barney Hoskyns said in the review show, if you cherry pick the ‘70s albums after Exile you can put together a very good compilation and will have no need to listen to the parent albums again.

 

I think Exile is truly excellent and incomparable but don’t quite have the same feeling about Sticky Fingers.

 

Of the rest, I have a very soft spot for It’s Only Rock and Roll (1974), probably because it was the first Stones album I bought that wasn’t a compilation and definitely because the “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” was my radio song of 1974, with the title track just behind, and ahead of J Geils Band’s  “I Must of Got Lost.”

 

At first, I liked only the fast rock songs on It’s Only Rock and Roll and it took repeated plays and becoming older and marginally more mature before I got into the longer, slower tracks “ ’Till the Next Goodbye,”  “Time Waits for No-One” and “If You Really Want to be my Friend” but once I was hooked on them, some of the faster tracks, like “Dance Little Sister” and “If You Can’t Rock Me” paled.

 

“Angie” off Goats Head Soup was a monster hit and almost the only track of that album I like.  For the rest the record just seems too slow, ballad-y, slick and mature, unlike the apparently rough and ready, organic rock and blues of Exile, which seems to come from inspiration, probably because of lengthy jamming, whereas Goat Head Soup seems more calculated, sophisticated and carefully constructed.

 

With Black and Blue, the change in direction, which some see as brave, irked me because these songs, other than “Memory Motel” and “Fool to Cry” just sounded like lightweight throwaways and from this point on, the songwriting really started to sound contrived and professional rather than inspired.  Of course, the band is hot and proficient but still sounded overproduced.

 

I also bought Some Girls (1978) when it came out and, like It’s Only Rock and Roll, it took some time for me to really appreciate and love the record.   Where “Miss You” is genius and viscerally exciting, each time, “Far Away Eyes” is the weakest link on the record and grates but for the rest, the music sounds tough, urgent and vital and if the lyrics still seem to be the product of hard works rather than inspiration, the combination of music and lyrics appeal a lot more than the lyrics would on their own.  Some Girls  is the last Stones album, other the blues record Blue and Lonesome (2016) that I unequivocally like and still play often.

 

Emotional Rescue (1979) is just so poor, weak and silly.   The Stones want to do disco (title track and “Dance, Pt 1”) and  twee power pop, all of the rest other than “Indian Girl” and “Down in the Hole” (the sole worthwhile rock tune), and released a nothing of an album. By the time you get to the end of side two, you barely remember any of the previous songs and, though the title track and “Down in the Hole” have merit, this is the least essential Stones album to date, and perhaps of all time.   It’s a piss poor farewell to the ‘70s. 

 

I would’ve liked to be fonder of Tattoo You (1981) than I am and I don’t care for Undercover (1983) at all, even if  the title track and “Too Much Blood” (in a remixed, club version) received lots of airplay on South African rock radio.  

 

Tattoo You’s fast songs lacked power and the slow songs suffer from early ‘80s production. Undercover’s peak ‘80s production and rock funk style simply grates.   If Emotional Rescue sounds like a contractual obligation, the following albums don’t do much better, especially if you consider that Tattoo You is essentially a compilation of older, uncompleted tracks and Undiscover sounds like a band trying too hard to be contemporary, in a scene they don’t really resonate with, instead of just being the Rolling Stones.

 

Anyway, Steel Wheels (1989) was the first Stones album I bought after Emotional Rescue because the other ‘80s records didn’t seem worthwhile, and still really don’t, and after that the only studio albums I bought were Voodoo Lounge (1994) (I belonged to a record club at the time), A Bigger Bang (the positive reviews motivated me) and Blue & Lonesome (because it seemed that the Stones had returned to their roots) and only the latter is an album that I value and play regularly.  The other  studio records are simply well-produced works of professional craft on which the band rocks out with, paradoxically, no visceral excitement.  The albums are far too long and nothing stands out.  

 

Hackney Diamonds is just one more of the same; a good record for a bunch of old guys but no more than that. It may be revisionist but the Stones would’ve been better served to return to their looser, jamming, blues inspired late ‘60s and very early ‘70s  approach than to try to remain relevant and contemporary in a musical climate where they’ve had no relevance other than as a nostalgic live act with some truly stupendous classic songs.

 

Neil Young dreams of chrome

 Chrome Dreams (2023) 

 

Neil Young

 

 

Neil Young deemed the tracks on Chrome Dreams unfit for release in the mid-’70s when they were recorded for an album of this name, but any Neil Young fan knows them all anyway, as they are available on various other albums, albeit presumably re-recorded to Young’s standards.

 

Young has an extensive program of archival releases of previously unreleased studio tracks and live shows recorded throughout his career and I suppose it’s manna from heaven for the Young completists who want to hear every recorded track ever, with false starts, outtakes, alternative mixes, whatever.

 

Bob Dylan has a similar expansive programme of bringing  archival material to market.

 

I suppose there is something to be said for gaining new insight into an artist’s creative thoughts and processes and to hear stuff that just wasn’t deemed fit for release, or wouldn’t fit on a record, way back in the past. Sometimes,  an unheard gem pops up and you marvel at the quality of output that would designate this track to the vault because it was deemed surplus to requirements.

 

This version of “Sedan Delivery,” the weakest tune on Rust Never Sleeps,  is more deliberate and in keeping with the mid-‘70s Young sound, and it’s interesting to hear a different take on the song but I could’ve lived without it.

 

On the other hand, “Powderfinger” is one of my favourites off Rust Never Sleeps (along with “Thrasher”) and this introspective, acoustic, almost demo, version of a central rocker off Rust, is lovely but not as tough as “Thrasher”  and not essential other than as an example of a song sketch that came to life with an electric band.

 

The other acoustic based tracks are also no more than pleasant listening. 

 

My thoughts on Neil Young’s releases over the last couple of decades is that he’s just running on reputation and recording and releasing music because he has a need to write and record and  his record company allows him to do so, and not because there is any truly creative spark left in him.  He should be putting out music once every three or four years, not annually.

 

Chrome Dreams is redundant and is superfluous to requirements. The tracks aren’t radically or interestingly different  to the hitherto “official” versions and it’s one of those albus one listens to once out of curiosity and then shelves for ever. 

 

If Neil Young is making any money from this kind of releases, it’s just a cash grab. The product has been in vault for years and you don’t need to incur much material expenses, other than the pressing of records or compact discs, to get the product out to the market place. 

 

 

 

Taj Farrant

 I’d seen various short videos on Taj Farrant, at the time a 9-year-old guitar prodigy from Australia over the last few years. He was a small, dreadlocked, blonde boy with a big, flat-brimmed black hat and some serious guitars and equipment, showing off his astonishing guitar skills. I thought his father was the person behind the camera and was intent on making his son a social media sensation, which seems to be the contemporary route to fame and riches.  Oddly, though, it wasn’t very interesting once one got beyond the initial fascination with the facility with which this kind played guitar.  On the one hand he must have a freakish talent and on the other hand he must practice a lot.

 

Now I’ve come across a video on YouTube of  the older Taj Farrant, and his drum playing sister Jazel, on stage at Th. e Meteor Guitar Gallery, Bentonville, Arizona where he did a three-night stand in March 2023.  Taj is backed by a second guitarist, bassist and drummer and plays two sets of covers of mostly guitar songs by the likes of Gary Moore (the blues Moore), Stevie Ray Vaughan (Farrant is obviously quite partial to these two), Jeff Healey and Jimi Hendrix, but Farrant also does some of his own songs and touts his CD with, presumably, more original songs.

 

Farrant is excitable, chatty and unselfconsciously engaging and he sure can play the guitar well. From this set one doesn’t know whether he writes his own songs or whether his talent is purely and simply the ability to render note perfect copies of the well-known songs he performs, i.e., he is no more than a human jukebox.

 

There is a market for this kind of thing. There are numerous tribute bands plying their trade all over the world and bands who can regurgitate popular hits, whether oldies but goodies or contemporary hits, can always get a gig.  I don’t get it. Most cover bands or artists either do mediocre versions of the classics or they do such note perfect versions that it’s scary. Either way, it’s redundant for me. I’d rather listen to a band, any band, playing their own stuff. If I feel like a bit of, for example, ZZ Top, I’ll spin their records and not seek out a band of bearded individuals who not only try their best to look like Billy, Gibbons, Dusty Hill and Frank Beard but do their best imitations of the speech and  playing of those individuals.  Ersatz can never beat the real thing.

 

Farrant plays a Fender Strat, a Gibson Les Paul and a Gibson Flying V for the band numbers and  also an acoustic guitar for a couple of tunes.

 

The first set ends with a blues rock version or Hendrix’s “Red House,” which irks me, because I prefer the more sensitive, proper blues version of the tune as performed by Hendrix and because Farrant’s version is just so generic.

 

The second set opens with Farrant toting an acoustic guitar and playing Soundgarden’s “Black Hole Sun” (at least a different take on the tune) and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man,” where the acoustic take is quite effective though he just doesn’t have Ronnie van Zant’s voice to carry off the song with conviction.

 

From here Farrant switched to an electric guitar and performs his own composition, “Crossroads” (not Robert Johnson’s tune), a reflection on the myth of selling your soul to the Devil in exchange for success.

 

When the band set resumes, Jazel is on drums for one song, and it’s back to the guitar song covers with a Jeff Healy tune, yet a detour to his own rocker, “Hit the Ground,” which is fun but not a work of genius.

 

The second guitarist gets his own feature turn, singing and playing solos, on “Pride and Joy” and he and Farrant do some guitar duelling for good measure. I can’t tell whether either of them is any better than the other.

 

The first set opener was a jazzy Stevie Ray Vaughan instrumental and, fittingly, the second set closer is a rocking Gary Moore instrumental on which Farrant audaciously plays his guitar behind his back, the first and only bit of showmanship of the night.

 

There’s no doubting that Taj Farrant plays a guitar exceedingly well and if it’s your pleasure to attend a gig where the band performs beloved blues rock guitar tunes just about as good as the original artists, nut in your home town, than he’s your guy. Presumably, he now plays mostly cover versions to draw in the crowd, slipping in just enough original numbers to showcase his songwriting without alienating a crowd who came for the cover versions, but in due course, as he tours more and becomes better known, the originals will outnumber the cover versions.

 

Farrant can probably have a good, financially rewarding career playing Gary Moore and Stevie Ray Vaughan songs, for which there will always be an audience, but the real test will be when he focuses on his own material. 

 

Joe Bonamassa was also a child guitar prodigy and has since become a major force in the  blues rock field with his own songs. His muscular, verging on rock, take on guitar blues doesn’t appeal to me, partly because he seems to be more technically fixated than on deep blues emotion. Perhaps it’s because it seems that guitar technique just come easily to him, though I’m sure he practices hard to make it seem easy. Taj Farrant is probably as talented and works as hard and will, all things being equal, go as far in his musical career, and I hope he can do it with this own music.