People, taking me for a ride (Guess Who)

Burton Cummings has a great rock and roll voice.

I picked up a mint copy of The Guess Who's  Artificial Paradise album (1973) from New Plymouth's Vinyl Countdown on the weekend. Only cost me $3 which was a bargain.

The album does crop up a lot in remainder bins which is a bit of a mystery. Although not really - I liked the band in the seventies but it's taken me 40 years to own this album. Gotta be a reason for that huh.

I'm listening to it as I write; it's a good (not great) Guess Who album with a naff cover (to my eyes). It attempts to present itself like a envelope from a mail order company so it looks fairly cheap and nasty but I'm not sure that's what the music required.

During the early 1970s the band were at a series of crossroads with the departure of Randy Bachman and a subsequent period of revolving door musicians. Amid all this the band did manage to peak on the sublime Live At The Paramount album.

Stylistically the Artificial Paradise album is all over the shop. There are hard driving rock and roll songs (Bye Bye Babe is a great opening track), ballads (Lost and Found Town), the quirky Follow Your Daughter Home, the downright weird (Hamba Gahle-Usalang Gahle) and the nifty pop single Orly (a non hit at the time bizarrely).

No thematic cohesion, dodgy packaging but the sound is great. The band were certainly a cohesive unit and the recording is spot on.

And there is always Burton's voice. He can do it all - of course the ballads but he is a much better rock singer than he is given credit for. Try Orly again and remind yourself of his immense talent and ability to sell a song.

I was only seventeen, I fell in love with a gypsy queen (Uriah Heep)

I am back in the Abbey Road Two studio/record collection room in Otane for a bit. It's so great to reactivate the blogs on blogger. I've really missed writing about music while we've been in China and I LOVE blogger.

The good thing is I haven't had to pay a fortune to transport CDs back to Nu Zild but the bad news is I've had to go to the dark side and download music from itunes.

I've written about that on my other blog site so I won't labour the point.

We stayed on Waiheke for a few days and that gave me a chance to visit Real Groovy in Auckland.

It was great to find the expansion of the vinyl for sale has continued. There would be roughly twice as much vinyl as there are CDs and that can only be a good thing.

I picked up a few things including Uriah Heep Live in 1973. I used to have it many years ago but it was sold in one of my periodic purges.

Uriah Heep was one of the bands that sound tracked my teenage years. ...Very 'Eavy ...Very 'Umble was their debut album and one of my earliest possessions. For a time it was a permanent fixture on my Garrard SP 25 Mk III turntable.

I added Demons and Wizards (Easy Livin' - the single - sold me on the album) and the double Live album to my collection but, somewhat bizarrely, nothing else by them.

Listening to the album again after all these years was weird. It was both familiar, like the stage announcements - Fridee nite in Birmingham! and fresh.

I couldn't thinking how much they remind me of Grand Funk, with the same wall of sludge blues/ hard rock that has become retroactively so appealing.

Best moment for me is Gypsy (the standout from that debut album too). It's suitably rocky, proggy and there is noodling going on!! All my favourite components.

The band is still going too.

Mick Box, the guitarist, has been the only constant feature. Sadly David Byron, the singer in the classic early seventies line up, died in 1985 (heart attack and liver disease). While in similar died young tragic circumstances, New Zealander Gary Thain died from a drug overdose shortly after being fired from the band in 1975.

The current version of the band is light years away from the early seventies Uriah Heep which will always have a special place in the collection.

Dear friends and whanau and readers from the blogosphere in general,

As you know I am in China for a while and unfortunately my access to blogger, even with a vpn, is hit and miss. More miss than hit. So I will continue to post about our adventures in Wuxi, musical things and such on another blogsite that I can access. Please go to http://wnpurdy.blog.com from now until further notice for all the juicy bits that are fit to print.

 

Love and peace - Wozza

Would you let it ride? (BTO)

Another Keegan compilation CD didn't rate with him unfortunately. It was my Heavy Metal/Rock CD.

Here's the track listing of the CD I called the...

The Heavy Rock one

Waste your tears – The Answer

Let it ride – Bachman-Turner Overdrive

Easy peasy – Black Spiders

White trash millionaire – Black Stone Cherry

Burnin' for you – Blue Oyster Cult

Fever – Bullet For My Valentine

Soap on a rope – Chickenfoot

The book of heavy metal – Dream Evil

Save us – Dream Evil

Heavy metal in the night – Dream Evil

Oh well – Fleetwood Mac

Iced Earth – Iced Earth

One more time – James LaBrie (from Dream Theater)

Curl of the burl – Mastodon

Spectrelight – Mastodon

Blood and thunder – Mastodon

 

Trampled underhoof – Mastodon

The profusion of Mastodon tracks is because Keegan requested a sample of their work. The Dream Evils are there cos I love their stuff.

I have noticed that Randy Bachman and Fred Turner are still touring together!! Amazing.

I loved the stuff they did as Bachman-Turner Overdrive. I didn't pick You ain't seen nuthin' yet, not because I don't love it, but Keegan would surely know it (who doesn't?) and they did other great songs worthy of inclusion.

When Randy Bachman left The (mighty) Guess Who he started out again with a band called Brave Belt. This eventually morphed into Bachman-Turner Overdrive and included at one time THREE Bachman brothers - main man Randy, drummer Robin (a.k.a. Robbie) and second guitarist Tim. C.F. 'Fred' Turner was on bass and vocals. 

Let it Ride, a Bachman/Turner composition) was a single off the second BTO album, with vocals from Fred.

For me, their sound transports me back to the seventies - riding around in my mum's Chevette - with the stereo blasting. Turn this one up!


 

You're amazing, just the way you are (Bruno Mars)

I put a Bruno Mars song on a pop compilation for Keegan that seems to have raised some eyebrows amongst my whanau.

Here's the track listing:

Down by the river – Albert Hammond

September Gurls – Big Star

Levi Stubb's tears – Billy Bragg

You're my home – Billy Joel

Grenade – Bruno Mars

Bitter sweet memories – Bullet For My Valentine

Yellow river – Christie

Boogie wonderland – Earth Wing & Fire

Fooled around and fell in love – Elvin Bishop Band

I loved you – The Exponents

Teenage head – The Flamin' Groovies

It's the same old song – The Four Tops

Is she really going out with him? – Joe Jackson

Sex on fire – Kings of Leon

(I want to fly like) Superman – The Kinks

A new England – Kirsty MacColl

Baggy Trousers – Madness

Echo beach – Martha and the Muffins

All I need is a miracle – Mike and the Mechanics

My kids are amazed that I actually like Bruno; enough that I bought his album on the strength of Grenade.

Their reaction was quite interesting. If I'd said I quite liked Slayer, Opeth, Rammstein, Anthrax or something along those lines they would not even have blinked but Bruno Mars gets the, 'What the firetruck? You like Bruno Mars?' reaction. 

It was a bit of a fluke actually. I was watching TV one day and he was doing an acoustic live version of the song on The Graham Norton Show. Hang on - let me see if it's on youtube...



Wow - there it is - the interview and performance of Grenade. While I was searching for it I came across this (superior) version from a BBC session.


   

This song is catchy as all get out. I bet you end up singing it all day long! It's a great pop song.

That's the way it always comes around (Evermore)

My Roctober 22 post focused on being in the mood to buy CDs.

This post is Mood part 2.

As George Costanza says to Jerry Seinfeld (when Jerry won't give details of sleeping with Elaine cos he's not 'in the mood'):

I don't have a job, I have no place to go, you're not in the mood? Well you get in the mood!!

ZZ Top helped get me in the mood: repeated listens to I gotsta get paid sealed the deal after those videos from my Oct 22 post piqued interest.

In the end I bought three of the four CDs mentioned in that post (the only one yet to be purchased is the Diana Krall one).

The verdicts:

La Futura is awesome. The quality hinted at by the single, I gotsta get paid, is maintained throughout. Billy Gibbons sounds like he's channelling Howlin' Wolf and Muddy Waters at times. He's raw, he's ready, he's a funky gibbon!



There are plenty of early standouts, I've picked second track, Chartreuse, as being representative of the great sound the Three Tops can put out. The sonic quality is huge on the album. I listened to a few tracks on my p-pod from Afterburner (an album I love) before switching to the new one and La Futura is a much, much better sound.

The Datsuns' album is also a welcome relief after their last few outings have failed in inspire me. Dolf's yell, razor sharp guitars, boogie till you puke rifferamas!! What's not to like? It's a triumphant return to their signature sound and, this time out, it's a much meatier sounding sonic attack from the harmonic generators from Cambridge, NZ.



Evermore have returned to a sound that is closer to their second, much loved, album. The brothers from Feilding, NZ, know how to write hook laden pop songs, that's fer sure.

If I have a criticism it is that this is, at times, too much like their sound on album number 2 - Real Life and they are in danger of becoming too formulaic. I loved that album and it sounds churlish to say because pop music by definition is formulaic, but they could do with being a little bit more adventurous. The new one (Follow The Sun) could be Real Life Volume 2.

Hmmmm - maybe I'm being too tough. There are big songs on both albums and it will be on high rotate in the coming months. And it least they didn't do another naff concept album!

That's the way is a song that could, and maybe should, be a pointer to future directions. It's got some variety and drive and pop sensibilities but without the keening Embrace vocals they love so much (and are maybe overdoing).

Cryin' and pleadin' won't do no good (Billy Boy Arnold)

I made a compilation of blues songs for Keegan recently and it occurred to me that I write a lot about pop and rock genres and jazz from time to time but seldom about the blues. And when I do venture into the blues it's usually from a white perspective: Alvin Lee; Rory Gallagher; Eric Clapton; Paul Jones, Hot Tuna and so on.

I am not sure why I haven't written more about blues favourites such as Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon, Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee and Muddy Waters. I love their stuff and I love the blues!

Here's the track listing on my CD blues primer for Keegan:

Evil Gal blues – Albinia Jones

Chicago breakdown – Big Maceo

I wish you would – Billy Boy Arnold

Shake your moneymaker – Elmore James

Dust my blues – Elmore James

You don't have to go – Jimmy Reed

Sittin' here thinkin' – John Lee Hooker

Mannish Boy – Junior Wells/ Muddy Waters

Young man blues – Mose Allison

Rollin' stone – Muddy Waters

Got my mojo working – Muddy Waters

That's alright – Jimmy Rodgers

Milk cow blues – Sleepy John Estes

I'm a king bee – Slim Harpo

Good morning little schoolgirl – Sonny Boy Williamson

Whoopin' the blues – Sonny Terry

Good morning blues – Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee

The midnight special - Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee

Smokestack lightning – The Yardbirds

How many more years – Howlin' Wolf

Moanin' at midnight – Howlin' Wolf

I'm ready – Muddy Waters

I was trying to cover as many bases as I could in roughly an hour and I think I got the balance pretty right - Chicago blues, boogie woogie, harp and guitar, white (Yardbirds and Allison), folk blues, shouters, women blues singers,  dirty blues, slow blues, country blues, electric, urban blues.

It's not supposed to be comprehensive at all (I figured Keegan had heard Robert Johnson for instance) and, of course, there are many omissions and it does show my bias towards Waters/Wolf/Sonny and Brownie.

My love of the blues began properly after I watched Sonny and Brownie playing at the Nambassa music festival (late seventies I think). I remember the moment well because I was standing about ten feet from the stage with not many other people around me.

Someone led Sonny on to the stage, they settled down on their seats and Brownie started playing his guitar and tapping his foot. I watched in awe. 

It was one of those epiphanies I have had from time to time as I listened and watched and grooved.

Obviously I am not alone in letting the blues strike it's chord in my soul. For some reason I never tire of the form, or get depressed when I hear it. In fact I find the tales inherent in the blues very life affirming in a Grapes Of Wrath kind of way. Hardships are overcome and have been sung about in a cathartic way since the genre began in the American south's slave plantations.

It's true that I came to many of these songs from white blues inspired acts like Hot Tuna.

Billy Boy Arnold's I Wish You Would is a case in point.

I first heard it on Hot Tuna's Hoppkov album and then they did a stonking live version on their live double - Double Dose.

I hadn't heard of Billy Boy Arnold until that point. I'm sure Jorma and Jack from Hot Tuna would be thrilled to know that they made Arnold's version accessible via their own, very different treatment.