Deep Purple – The House Of Blue Light

Excellent news: I’ve finally been reunited with my Shure SE530 headphones! After procrastinating for months I finally sought out and found my sales receipt and mailed them in. Less than a week later, they sent me a brand new pair. Man, I really should have taken care of that sooner! I was expecting 6 to 8 weeks or something ridiculous.

So now it’s time to celebrate with a really good album, something that really makes these guys scream, something that…

Oh, Deep Purple’s The House Of The Blue Light huh? Yeah… that’s cool I guess.

I’ve said it many times, the 1980′s were not kind to music. Deep Purple, in the two albums they made in the 80′s between breakups, reunions, and then breakups again, managed to go from defying the conventions of the 80′s to fully embracing them.

I’m not sure who to blame here, I mean Perfect Strangers, the predecessor to this album, sold remarkably well, and Deep Purple embarked on one of its most successful tours ever where every show sold out, including the ones they had to add last minute. That album didn’t sound much like the 80′s to me, so they recorded The House Of The Blue Light, apparently with the intention in mind of making an 80′s sounding album, and it sold… well not so well. So do I blame the 80′s for sucking or for Deep Purple for falling for it? Either way, this album isn’t actually that bad, considering all the elements that went into it.

For one, it didn’t take very long for the band to realize that this very lucrative get-together was taking a toll on everyone’s patience even faster than the first time (though not as fast as the band’s second reunion, which spawned one terrible album before the “Mark II” lineup was dissolved forever). For this reason, the album took a long time to make, and a lot of parts had to be re-done.

The thing about re-doing parts in the studio forever is that the free-flowing sense of improvisation and “a group effort” is impossible to maintain. This is not the Deep Purple who recorded “Machine Head”, from which the biggest hits were a song that was improvised on the spot and a song that was nothing more than the ridiculous true story of how that album was recorded.

No, instead what we have is a glitzy but chugging album of homogenized rock, every part played to perfection, but miles away from each other. That is, the album doesn’t have the feel of a group of guys playing together and rocking out. It’s a feeling that might be a bit subtle, but over-production has that effect.

Having said all that, there are some excellent bits to this album. There is a song called “Strangeways” that opens with Ian Gillan singing in 4 part harmony (possibly at the same time?) It has a good sense of arrangement about it, sounding kind of mystical, cheesy, and, well, video gamey. I like music that sounds video gamey, and I just realized I wrote that about a song on Perfect Strangers. Man I don’t even want to count the amount of times I’ve repeated myself on this terrible blog.

Anyway, another highlight happens to be my favorite song, though one that I would normally hate. It’s called “Mitzi Dupree” and it’s about Ian meeting a girl on a flight. One of the lines in the song just kills me, because the titular character asks Gillan “What do you do?” and his reply is “I’m a siiiiiinger in a band” which is delivered with his trademark “rocker” voice. I just love to picture that going down exactly like that in an airplane. If I were Ian Gillan I would always introduce myself by screaming out a line like that. The song is a bit dirty in a delightful way, as Mitzi introduces herself as “The Pinball Queen” and later that she’s “an entertainer”, and well read for yourself:

I said “What is this ‘Queen of the Ping Pong’ business?”
She smiled, “What do you think?
It has no connection with China.”
I said “OooOOOoooOOoh! Have another drink!”
Well i knew right away
That I’d seen her act before
In a room behind a kitchen in Bangkok
And three or four times more in Singapore

That’s actually pretty great, and actually it’s not the only naughty song on the set, certainly “Hard Lovin’ Woman” would have made Spinal Tap quite proud. Nearly every line is just a wonderful euphemism for gettin’ it on with a woman who has clearly had a lot of mileage under her belt.

“Dead Or Alive”, which ends the album, is one of the few songs that are what I would consider close to “original” Deep Purple speed. Unfortunately, like with the rest of this album and the previous album, Ian Paice’s monstrous drumming is kind of just there. There are precious few fills to speak of, and back in the day that guy could throw out already amazing drum-lines with fills that just melt your face. There isn’t a day that goes by when I’m not thinking about his performance on the black and white “Live In Denmark ’72″ video, and believe me that’s a lot of time for a red-blooded totally straight man like me to be thinking about another man with no shirt on.

Anyways, there is one unfortunate thing about this album that unfortunately couldn’t have been helped by anything; Ian Gillan’s voice was all but wrecked by this time. Though he can toss out as many high notes as he ever could, the overall tone of his voice was just permanently set to “squeal” mode. Indeed, this wasn’t such a huge problem on this album, honestly he had worse problems (video hint: JUST LOOK AT HIM), but really, singing like he does and doing hundreds of shows per year is just not something a human should do. I really have to admire the guy and his fluffy hair.

So yes, good album, not great, some funny moments, and now I’m off to listen to even more stuff with my majestic headphones. Until then!

Motörhead – Rock N’ Roll

Today is kind of a bum-bums day for me, I almost went to see Motörhead today in Austin, but couldn’t justify the wear on the old car or the fact that it’d be a total 8 hours’ driving in one day when I have to be at work bright and early tomorrow. Hence, I missed out on what I’m sure was an amazing show. Really, talking about one of the band’s absolute best albums is the least I could do:

This is, actually, my second-favorite Motörhead album. It’s more or less impossible to top Ace Of Spades, but it is very easy for Motörhead to climb above their usual and present a remarkably good album, they just don’t do it very often. This is one of those times, and the fact that it pulls a couple of moves that set it above the others kind of makes it a personal favorite of mine.

The title, though seemingly redundant (like that game Beatles Rock Band, like “yeah duh”), is actually quite appropriate. Motörhead, specifically Lemmy, as he’s really the only necessary member, does not like the obvious label that everyone gives them, which is “(adjective) metal”, with the adjective being just about anything violent. He has always insisted that they’re just an especially dirty “Rock N’ Roll” band, and in fact it’s all just Rock N’ Roll. I like this attitude, honestly, because genres create expectations and pretensions, so just call it rock and quite dwelling on it (those sub-sets of indie music that use the suffix “-core” could learn a thing or two from all this and just die).

Either way, “Rock N’ Roll” is what the album’s all about, and in fact, the title track pretty much lays it all out there in Motörhead’s inimitable fashion:

Well here, babe, look at you, and you with someone else,
Turned out like all the others, leave me by myself,
That’s how it works I guess, and you like all the rest
Guess I can handle it, if that’s the way it is

‘Cos I’m in love with rock ‘n’ roll, satisfies my soul
If that’s how it has to be, I won’t get mad
I got rock ‘n’ roll, to save me from the cold
And if that’s all there is, it ain’t so bad
Rock ‘n’ roll!

By the way, I almost never use punctuation when transcribing lyrics, because I simply don’t believe in trying to convey a tune with a question mark or exclamation mark, and if you put a period at the end of a line of music then it’s a sentence fragment, and what the hell. Anyway, Lemmy’s delivery of the final line “Rock N’ Roll!” is one of the rare instances where I will allow for an exclamation point because that’s what he’s singing. Also, if there were any way to add an exclamation mark to a guitar solo, that would be the only adequate way to describe the guitar solo in this song.

Anyway, the second song is something you would know if you took my advice when I wrote about Orgasmatron, because it’s the title track to the film “Eat The Rich”. The song is brilliant, as it postulates that the only problem to solve the political struggle of upper class against lower class is through rampant cannibalism. Karl Marx couldn’t have put it better, to be honest.

“Eat The Rich”, when it was released as a single, was packaged with two other songs that appear as bonus tracks on this album, both of which are these awesome anti-establishment tracks, one of which is the solo-tastic “Just Cos You Got The Power” which has some brilliant lines in it:

You can take my fingers babe
You can take my eyes
You can take my past and future
It won’t make you wise
You can have me thrown in jail
You can steal my booze
You can even read my mail
Step on my blue suede shoes

You bastards must be clever
Got it mapped out in black and white
But don’t forget you’ll never
Get a dog to walk upright
Just ‘cos you got the power
That don’t mean you got the right

Indeed, Lemmy is a poet for the people.

The move that puts this thing over the top, for me, is the addition of Monty Python’s Michael Palin. See, the album was recorded in two different studios, one of which is the awesomely-named “Master Rock Studios”, and the other was “Redwood” in London, which was co-owned by the ex-Python. At one point, Palin was asked to do a rendition of his hilarious preacher character from The Meaning Of Life for the end of the song “Stone Deaf In The U.S.A.”, which he did with aplomb:

Oh Lord, who art on high, who hast made the blades of grass, and the little tiny things that creep therein, that hath made the cricket bats, who has made hankies, who has made… … …all things; Bless thou, these people from Motörhead, that they may so verily endow the people of this planet with pleasure and enjoyment, that yea, they may verily increase four-fold their already large sums of loot, and enable them, here in this life, to purchase maybe one other pair of trousers each. O, Lord, thou who has seen the trouser-less and had compassion, look down upon them, thank you.

I just love that. A touch of Python to Motörhead is exactly what the world needed.

Nearing the end of the album is a great track called “Boogeyman” which opens up with a boogie rock n’ roll line on distorted bass, and the fact that the song gets better from there seems like an impossibility. I think this is probably the only instance of crossing the “boogie/boogey” pun line that I have heard in Rock music, which seems really unlikely. I may actually have to look into that.

Once again, I find it kind of hard to get into the in-depth descriptions of each song, especially musically, but any fan of these guys will know why that is. The differences between any given Motörhead song is subtle at best, at least until the 90′s and beyond, where they switch things up sometimes for reasons unknown to me. Still, despite my penchant for the unusual and abstract, just repeating the same strong formula doesn’t dillute over time when that formula is pure rock. This particular album captures that formula in a way that’s consistent, catchy, and clever, with the addition of some “we refuse to take ourselves too seriously” Python-esque humor provided by a real Python, and some extra little treats like the drum beat to “Blackheart” which, I almost forgot to mention, is totally awesome.

Anyway, all of that might only be worth a “3 out of 5″ to music critics, but holy crap what do you expect from a hard rockin’, hard workin’ band that has no problem putting out an album a year? This is why I hate music criticism, it’s far too critical. Anyway, despite not getting to make that drive to see the band in action, I am sure they’ll roll through town again to promote next year’s album, and I will be right there rockin’ along. Until then!

BONUS: Oh yeah, I have the 2-disc collector’s edition, which features an entire live show on the second disc! Rock N’ Roll!

Warren Zevon – Sentimental Hygiene

Finally! I was able to score the rest of an album I already own in .mp3 format, so now I have been able to listen to the rest of Warren Zevon’s first come-back album, and man was it worth the effort, so let’s hurry up and talk about it before we all die, why don’t we?

After The Envoy, things seemed to be going poorly for Mr. Zevon. His label had dropped him, and for reasons known only to the man and left up to conjecture for the rest of us, he decided to, instead of coming out with any albums or anything, go on a 5 year drinking binge.

Ok, not really. He fell pretty hard into the drink, but fortunately, was able to pull himself together enough to check into rehab, kick the booze, form a band with R.E.M. for a while, and then make his comeback as a cleaned-up, sober, and newly-signed to Virgin Records Warren Zevon, a Warren Zevon that, thankfully, had not scrubbed himself clean of his amazing sardonic wit and ability to portray himself as music’s most beloved bad guy (or is that most-hated good guy?)

One aspect of Sentimental Hygiene that can maybe be taken a cue to other aspects of Warren’s life is that, when he comes back from a time of adversity, he makes no apology about it in the music.  Sure, he’ll subtly reference things that are going on, but in listening to Sentimental Hygiene, you’d never think for a moment that the album was born out of a career nose-dive, nightmare spiral into drugs and alcohol, and an ultimate rebirth of one of music’s greatest music guys. Nope, it just seems to be the next step (a fairly big one though, mind you) in quality and content from The Envoy. The sound, assisted by R.E.M., who are apparently harder to get rid of than… nevermind where I was going with that… is definitively 80′s. I can’t, in all good conscience, knock that at all, by 1987 there were precious few musical acts in existence that didn’t sound like the 80′s.

The first song, Sentimental Hygiene, demonstrates a couple of facets of the new Warren and how his sound would pan out for this, his “middle” period. One facet is that cheesy synthesizers can actually sound good sometimes, at least I’m not finding a problem here with the main melody being played on one of those fake-string Casio things. The other facet is that Warren utilizes guest stars, no matter how super-huge they are, as if they were just session musicians. An example: the guy playing that super-cool guitar solo half-way through this song? Neil Young. It’s not even that long of a solo, it’s just really good and then it just kind of hides in the background somewhere. Yet another facet that this song demonstrates is Warren’s ability to play off 5 years of stasis in a simple, yet subtle way:

Every day I get up in the morning and go to work
And do my job, whatever
I need some Sentimental Hygiene

And that’s it, he’s back to work, only now it’s the 80′s and so things are going to sound a little different. I think it stands, however, as the ultimate testament to Warren’s songwriting ability that, despite this album sounding 80′s, the songs are so good that only an idiot would care about the extra synthesizers and reverb’d stadium drums.

In fact, Warren seemed to cleverly play off these clever textures. In the second song, “Boom Boom Mancini”, written for the famous boxer who holds the distinction of once more-or-less killing a man in the ring, is a rocking, kind of droning song that utilizes one of the heaviest kick drums I’ve heard, so that each beat sounds like being punched through your headphones. The song is fantastic, since it’s a true story of a world championship boxer, and you may or may not pick up on the sense that the song is about a champion who is more or less making a comeback after some very difficult circumstances… quite clever.

The third song is “The Factory”, and this song is crazy for a couple of reasons. For one, it’s really a good song about being a blue collar factory worker trying to feed one’s family, and there’s a line in it about “kicking asbestos”, and who would ever think that one of the only songwriters to actually utilize asbestos in his songwriting would ultimately die from the stuff? I’m getting way ahead of myself here, but I thought I’d mention it. The other interesting thing about this song is that there’s a recognizable plucky harmonica solo in the song, played by… who else? Bob Dylan. This album is bananas!

One of my absolute favorite songs on this album is “Trouble Waiting To Happen”, one of Zevon’s trademark songs about the troubled life he likes to sing about. The opening lines are just gold:

I woke up this morning and fell out of bed
Trouble waiting to happen
Should’ve quit while I was ahead
Trouble waiting to happen

I turned on the news to the Third World War
Opened up the paper to World War IV
Just when I thought it was safe to be bored
Trouble waiting to happen

Brilliant stuff, I especially love the World Wars happening before can get from the television to the paper. Oh, but he’s not done yet:

The mailman brought me the Rolling Stone
Trouble waiting to happen
It said I was living at home alone
Trouble waiting to happen
I read things I didn’t know I’d done
It sounded like a lot of fun
I guess I’ve been bad or something
Trouble waiting to happen

That’s a fairly brilliant piece on its own, but it subtly seems to reference the infamous story of Zevon finding out about being dropped from Asylum Records in an issue of Rolling Stone. Here, of course, he has elevated it to the misunderstandings about his life that seem to go along with the “bad boys” of entertainment, of which he was one of the best.

A minor chord and very 80′s-sounding acoustic guitar open up the first of the “love” songs on the album, “Reconsider Me”, which is kind of a different spin on the usual “love lost” theme that Warren takes on for his albums. In fact, the song is a request for a second shot, and the text of the song seems pretty heart-felt and genuine! What? There’s really not a shot of humor to be found in the song, it’s just a genuine plea, but it’s still really well-written, in fact it’s one of his most popular love songs, if my sources are to be believed. Of course, this song may also be the most obvious-subtle references to the man’s comeback, asking fans to reconsider him, but that’s only here-say.

The album goes right back into rocking with “Detox Mansion”, which has a wonderful beat and some stunning guitar solos all throughout. The song is less about Warren’s actual detox, and more about the way celebrities are perceived, especially in the face of substance abuse and the inevitable rehab trip. So, in a way, just by its existence, it reminds the listener of Warren’s own detox, but you’d never know if all you did was listen to the song, which you should anyway.

“Bad Karma”, featuring R.E.M.’s own Michael Stipe on backup vocals, almost sounds like an R.E.M. song, but I don’t really listen to them so I can’t say for sure. The song’s got a cool sitar sound, which is interesting considering the song doesn’t sound at all like it should have a sitar.

“Even A Dog Can Shake Hands” is a nice scathing commentary on the slick world of record contracts, networking, business, all that disgusting stuff. It’s all put to a nice upbeat tune though, so it’s all good stuff.

We then come upon the second “love lost” song of the album, “The Heartache”, which brings us back down from where “Reconsider Me” had given us hope:

Shadows falling in the noonday sun
Blue feeling to the maximum
Look what happens when you love someone
And they don’t love you
The heartache
The risk you run
The chance you take
When you love someone

Man, I hear ya, dude. This song has a kind of strange keyboard solo in it, but is otherwise kind of standard love song material. This may put you in a mood for ending the album on a kind of bland note, but good luck with that given the next song.

That’s right, Warren Zevon brings us synth-heavy funk, with keyboards provided by Parliament Funkadelic then-keyboardist Amp Fiddler. The song is largely political, with a very “Freedom For Africa” vibe all across. George Clinton himself is on this track, I believe on background vocals, if Wikipedia and this video are to be believed. Wow that’s a ridiculous video, oh well.

So that is Sentimental Hygiene, one of the better “comeback” albums I’ve heard, though the best is still yet to come. I already wrote about Transverse City, so you’re going to have to work on getting over that while I prepare to write about the album after that. Until then, friends, leave my monkey alone!

U2 – The Joshua Tree

I mentioned in yesterday’s entry that some band had the gall to go and do a cover of U2, and that kind of got me to thinking “you know, I could really go for listening to U2 right now”, so one thing led to another and, well, here’s U2′s most infamous album, possibly one of the biggest albums of all time:

Is it my favorite album by U2? Actually not really, but you wouldn’t know that from the first 4 tracks.

One of the things that fascinates me the most about this album is the actual sequence of songs (something I probably pay more than my fair share’s attention to). The songs are arranged in order of “best to worst”, in accordance with the preference of producer Steve Lillywhite’s wife, famed dead person Kirsty MacColl. She was given the task of putting the tracks in order, with the first track, “Where The Streets Have No Name”, and the final track, “Mothers Of The Disappeared”, already set. She accomplished this by putting the tracks in order of her favorites on down. Somehow or another, I think she was right on the money, because listening to The Joshua Tree basically feels like a countdown of tracks before you either get tired of it or get all the way through it. It is entirely possible, of course, to get all the way through it, because it’s an amazing album, but unlike other albums that are amazing, it doesn’t really have any surprise hits waiting at the end, they’re all crammed together in the front.

What a front, though! The opening organ chords (including the majestic organ bass pedals) that start off “Where The Streets Have No Name” really bring the whole thing to fruition gently, and while I have stated before that I enjoy rock albums that kind of drop you into the middle of things, such is not the case for a U2 album, at least not in this era of their recordings. U2 kind of transcend standard rock to become this sort of epic, majestic, Celtic nonsense that you really want to hate but those of us with souls know better. The guitar comes in next, and it’s one of the finest guitar sounds I’ve ever heard, which is why guitarist “The Edge” is a billionaire and the darling of every guitar magazine. It’s a sustain-heavy riff that you could learn how to play in about 5 minutes, but you won’t be able to make billions off of it, because someone beat you to the punch. Sorry!

The vocals in this song, and the next, “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For”, are the whole reason I forgive Bono for being the way he is. Anyone who can belt out “these city walls” like he can deserves to be a pompous egomaniac. Mind you, sometimes he falls short of such exception, particularly in later albums, but as far as The Joshua Tree is concerned, we’re still cool.

Next we have another hit, all in a row, “With Or Without You”. Now, this song is important for two reasons. The first is Adam Clayton, U2′s bassist. As a bassist myself, I have a certain respect and a deep amount of jealousy towards this guy. I actually really love his bass-lines and the fact that he endorses Gibson basses, so that’s where the respect comes in. Where that respect turns into outright envy is the fact that he plays 4 notes on “With Or Without You”, and they are just root notes, that is to say, he plays the absolute most simplistic thing possible, and the guy probably owns a fleet of jets and might be one of the most famous bassists in the world. Perhaps you can see where I’m going with this. The thing that kills me, though, is not the money, the fame, or the basses, I’m used to not having any of those things, but where the respect and envy collide is in the fact that, with very few exceptions, the man wears what seem to be some incredibly comfortable pants. The 80′s were not a decade of comfortable pants, my friends, to be seen in anything not skin-tight or made of vinyl/spandex/leather was a sin, yet this multi-billionaire bassist gets to wear some really nice pants on stage playing 4 root notes on his Gibson basses, and I kind of hate him for that.

The other part of that song is The Edge and his guitar sounds. In this song, he introduced, or at least canonized, a particular guitar that, while used by many guitarists nowadays, remains a distinctly “U2″ thing, and it even has a pretentious name to match: the “Infinite Guitar”. It’s a guitar that can make the sound it makes (which is the sustainey guitar sound on this song) all by itself. All the guitarist has to do is hit the chords. So, given these extraordinarily simple ideas, this song is STILL the 131st best song of all time, according to confused pothead magazine Rolling Stone. Incredible, eh?

Anyway the next song, the coveted “Track 4″ (though, since this album does not follow the typical “pop album” formula, this is just coincidentally a really kickin’ song in the most coveted spot on the album) is none other than “Bullet The Blue Sky”. This song is incredible, and though inferior cover versions do exist, there is nothing quite like hearing The Edge’s gigantic slide guitar sound coming out of your speaker of choice. The album conveys the pain of a war-torn whatever it is they’re talking about quite well, it’s kind of a song where you don’t have to know what it’s about, it’s a shaken hornet’s nest of music, and is one of my favorites in the U2 library.

From here, however, is usually where I drop the album off, but there actually are some great songs here too. “Running To Stand Still” is the first song that doesn’t seem like some gigantic hit, and that’s kind of a relief. It’s piano driven and evokes sounds that the band would explore a few years later with their little 90′s “re-invention”.

“Red Hill Mining Town” is a pretty good song, but is a little too “bumpy” for my taste. The bass never resonates, the beat is really straight-forward, and with the exception of the guitar and the ultra-screechy vocals, not a whole lot of interesting stuff is going on here.

Then we have “In God’s Country” which starts off a real winner because who doesn’t like a 1st and then minor 5th? I am just not wild about the chorus, that and the general feel of the song (with the exception of the sustained guitar) kind of make me think of Sting more than U2, and that’s not someone I want to think about ever.

“Trip Through The Wires” is another 4 chord wonder that really assaults the listener with that harmonica. I like harmonica and all, but not when it’s being blown right in my face in the mix. Bad Bono, bad.

“One Tree Hill”, now that’s more like it. This song is a little slow getting started, but once she gets started, she’ll get you there fine.

“Exit” is such a quiet song, really not bad for a penultimate number. It utilizes something that’s somewhat of a convention with U2, and that’s the “kind of spoken word slow song”. I like these kinds of songs though so no harm, no foul, especially since this one crescendos to a nice chunky distorted tune.

Finally, “Mothers Of The Disappeared” is one of those very important political songs (aren’t they all?) and it has some really cool synthesizers to assist with that. I am actually quite fond of this song, even if I usually forget about it once in a while. That’s the problem with Late Album Slowdown, though, it can sometimes leave some excellent tracks out of reach by casual listening.

Anyway, that’s The Joshua Tree. For at least the first few songs, it’s an epic work of staggering importance, but I feel they have come out with much more consistently rockin’ albums. Still, this album is important so I give it 5 out of 5 things I found in the pantry.