Happy New Year, Goodbye Screwed Year

So here we are at the end of another year.

As anybody who follows this blog knows, I usually do these year-end blogs with a scene of the always spectacular fireworks show from our Space Needle here in Seattle (which usually gets this blog a nice year-end spike in hits).

The thing is, no matter how much I try to overlook it, I just don't feel in that much of a celebratory mood as 2008 comes to an end.

This year just doesn't feel like it was all that great to me, truth be told.

On the national front, the economy is in the shitter, and the always volatile situation in the middle east looks to be on the precipice of one of those semi-annual powder kegs that flare up from time to time.

Here in Seattle, we spent the last two weeks of the year snowed in under two feet of snow, and don't look now, but the storm winds are blowing in again tonight as of this writing (minus the snow, praise the Lord).
On the homefront, I lost one job this year and gained another...at least for now. Two weeks ago, I learned my current company is going to be downsizing, and come this time next week I should know whether my own job was spared the axe or not. Bottom line, is I may begin 2009 once again in the unemployment line. At least this time, I should have lots of company.

On the bright side, I certainly have nothing to fear from a job performance standpoint -- my accounts all love me, as I do them.

But on the other side of the coin, I've been in this position so many times over the past decade or so that I've learned to recognize the signs almost instinctually.

Based on past experience, I'm not real optimistic. If you guessed that I've been touching up the resume again, you get a gold star.
As many of you also know, I write mostly about music on this space.

And there was certainly not much reason for optimism there this year. Brian Wilson, Steven Wilson, and the Fleet Foxes aside...it was all I could do to even fill a top ten of 2008's best music this year.

The last time I checked, the music industry was still trying to figure out what the fuck happened and where exactly the bottom fell completely out, even as it continued to prop up the latest crop of disposable pablum like Miley and the Jonas Brothers, and to get one more pound of flesh from the rotting corpse of Britney Spears.

When guys like John Mellencamp have to sell their music for use in Ford truck ads, and even Bruce Springsteen is cutting exclusivity deals with WalMart, you know we're in trouble.

And if you think for one minute, that in an era where the delivery systems of choice come in the form of cellphone speakers and the miniscule bitrates of most MP3's...well, don't count on the next Dark Side Of The Moon, Pet Sounds, or OK Computer coming down the pike anytime soon.

Now, before I lose everyone reading so far... I think there's good reason to believe 2009 should be a better year.

Reason #1: Bush Is Gone, Baby Gone.

I don't know about any of you, but when Obama got elected I felt the same sigh of relief that led people to dance in the streets on election night in cities across the country (and when was the last time any of us living today saw that)?

Whether Obama is the saviour many believe he might be not only remains to be seen, but is in fact highly doubtful given the mess that he is about to inherit come Jan. 20.

But it sure can't be worse than what we've witnessed the past eight years, as the country has been ripped apart along ideological lines like no other period in my lifetime (including the sixties -- where there was at least a healthy opposition).

I can't begin to recount the ways that Bush has completely turned this country on it's ear. But watching this guy compliment "Brownie" on his good job during Katrina after a great American city was destroyed; seeing how good, albeit liberal, Christian people had their faith put in question for not buying into "the program"; and watching the middle class destroyed (is it just me, or does an economy rely as much on the everyday joes who buy the goods and services, as it does the corporations who manufacture them?) all come immediately to mind. Sanctioning torture, and suspending the sort of basic, fundamental concepts of guilt, innocence, and just plain human decency and fairness that make America the great beacon of freedom to the world it once was also come to mind.

Obama's got a big job ahead of him. I don't envy him.

So what do we have to look forward to in 2009? I'm not sure. But this much I know (or at least hope). It can't get much worse. There's also a new Springsteen album (and hopefully, a tour) to look forward to next year. Sorry, couldn't resist...

Whatever happens in 2008, it'll start later tonight.

Me and my good pal Dave will go out. We may or may not watch the Space Needle blow up as is the tradition. We'll probably get together with Dave Dudley, a buddy from high school who I saw for the first time in about 30 years last summer at Dave's cabin (that was another big theme last year...reconnnecting with long lost friends ranging from Kim Murrell and Pat Koory, to Dave Dudley, and in about another three weeks...Pat Levy).

Those names may mean nothing to those reading this, but seeing or hearing from them were some of the very few things about 2008 that made me smile...if even only for a minute.

Hopefully 2009 will bring a few new reasons to smile.

"Life Itself": New Springsteen Clip From Working On A Dream

As everyone in the world knows by now, Springsteen's new album arrives January 27. Here's the third, and by far the most interesting, song that's been leaked out in advance. "Life Itself" is definitely the moodiest of the three tracks, and is also notable for the Byrds-like twelve string chiming in the background.



The previously leaked "My Lucky Day," a decidedly more uptempo rocker characterized by the very E-Street sounding piano of Roy Bittan can also be viewed below. I can't wait for this record. Bruce and The E Street Band on a roll right now.



And here's the title track. Enjoy:



Watch this space for 2009 tour info!

The Rockologist Buys Himself An MP3 MP5 Player For Christmas

So I finally went and did it. I bought myself an MP3 player for Christmas. Actually, make that an MP5 player.

For those who read this column fairly regularly, this may come as bit of a surprise as I've been known to rave on a bit about things like the poor sound quality of MP3s. I've also been known to rail away about how today's delivery systems of choice have helped contribute to the whole concept of the full-length album as a dying art-form.

The instant accessibility of downloadable music has once again turned music more towards a single track based medium, essentially turning back time backwards to the days of the Fifties soda fountain jukebox. Which, at least to me, explains why you don't see as many truly game-changing albums released these days. That's my opinion.

Case in point? Look no further than at how much better Radiohead's In Rainbows sounded once it actually had a proper commercial CD release, as opposed to its original quality when it was a free download.
My views on these things are for the most part unchanged, by the way.

I could go on for days about how I think the "forward-thinking" progress of instantly accessible music is, in reality, a nefarious trojan horse hell bent on destroying music from within. The advent of these palm-sized delivery systems have certainly played a large role in the downturn of the music industry (not that the "industry" itself didn't already have plenty of problems of its own).

When I heard that Porcupine Tree's Steven Wilson included a scene in the trailer for his new album, Insurgentes, where he actually target practices his shooting skills on a bunch of MP3 players, I about did a Tom Cruise back flip off my couch!

The truth is, much as I'm pretty sure my more forward-thinking fellow music scribes at Blogcritics like Mat Brewster have a soft spot for the ol' Rockologist, I've often suspected that it was in more of an "Andy Rooney of rock" kind of way.

And, they may be right. I don't really like cell phones either.

But this Christmas, I finally bit.

And you know what? The damn thing came in kind of handy this Christmas season. For those who haven't heard, up here in Seattle we've been snowed in under as much as about two feet for more than a week. Every time the stuff starts to melt, the temperature freezes down to around the teens, and we then get a fresh new dumping of snow.

That's my house by the way. We're supposed to get another six inches tonight.

Personally, I haven't seen this much white powder since my days in the proper music industry. It's been nearly as long for Seattle as a town. I haven't been to work in a week (and may not have a job anyway come the new year, but that's another story).

So what finally got me to bite the digital music bullet was this kick-ass deal I found on a touch-screen MP5 player, which looks a lot like the one that you should see below. What makes this device so cool is that it not only stores and plays standard MP3 files, but does the same for the better sounding downloadable files like flacs.

It also stores 16GB of data, which just about covers the library I've accumulated over this past year that's been clogging up my hard drive.

It also very neatly makes all of this music readily available, categorized by song, album, and artist. It's all portable, too. Not that I've been able to leave my house or anything like that for the past ten days or so...

But I was able to port the thousand or so songs I have stored on my computer to this device in seconds, and from what I can tell, there's no end in sight yet. And I've gotta admit that in these past few weeks, when the power in the house was a bit shaky, my new MP5 friend was a bit of a life saver. So, the inner gadget geek in me has been awakened. Sort of...

Does this mean I'll soon be taking the equivalent of long, hot showers with my newfound digital friend? Not likely.

Once the weather thaws up around these parts, I'm sure I'll be right back to my old-school Bose speaker system. Hell, if I had my way, I'd probably opt for a cabin up in the woods somewhere with just enough electricity to stock my cold beer and power my turntable.

But in the meantime, Springsteen's 1978 Winterland concert and the latest albums by the Killers and the Black Keys haven't been half-bad on those devil-be-damned thumbnail speakers. Any port in a storm, right?

Merry Christmas everybody!

Are You Freaking Kiddin' Me?

This is my yard. Thats my deck, my lawnchair, and my table. We just got most of the snow off the porch. There was about a foot and a half there, and I couldn't open my door because there was a big drift up against it. They're expecting another three to eight inches on top of that tonight. I haven't been to work in three days. Aint Life Grand?

Why You Won't Find Public Enemy At The Karaoke Bar

Book Review: Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life by Brian Raftery

Go on admit it. You love Karaoke. No? Well okay, but you've at least done it. Everybody has at least once, right?

There is just something inherently irresistible about the opportunity to play rock star for one night in front of a room full of your mostly drunken friends. Can't sing? No problem. As Brian Raftery points out in Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life, his definitive book on Karaoke, one of the rules that makes Karaoke such a beautiful thing is the fact that no one is paying attention to you sing anyway. Instead, they're all sitting on pins and needles waiting for their own turn at the mike.

The thing is, as hilarious and just plain fun to read as most of this book is, I'm not at all sure the humor here is that intentional. You get the impression at times that Raftery takes this whole Karaoke thing quite seriously. Well okay, maybe not that seriously.

In the book, Raftery chronicles his own Karaoke experiences, which take him to Karaoke shitholes and other such places all over the world. He hangs out with a heavy metal Karaoke band. He follows another group looking to win the World Karaoke Championships. And he sings Karaoke ranging from Sinatra to Fleetwood Mac to Fugazi (yes, that Fugazi).

But he also goes into the actual history of the, umm, "art form," as well as tracing the roots of its popularity in this country all the way from that lounge in your neighborhood's local Chinese restaurant to the ultimate manifestation of Karaoke that is American Idol.

What I personally found most thrilling about this book was that he mentioned Dimples. That cemented Raftery's cred as a Karaoke expert for me. Dimples is a Karaoke bar located right across the street from the NBC studios in Burbank where I spent many a drunken night during my two years living in L.A. back in the nineties. A guy who lived in my apartment building tended bar there and used to spiff me lots of free drinks.

What I remember most about Dimples was how seriously they took their Karaoke.

Some nights celebrities would drop by to sing (I once saw actor Treat Williams do a really bad Tony Bennett there). More often though, you'd get the regulars who were pretty much all professional Karaoke types. There was this one Karaoke group who called themselves "the Council" who sang there a lot, that I'm pretty sure consisted of genuine mafia wise guys. The old guy did Sinatra and Al Martino quite well. The younger guy on the other hand would really do a butcher job on Rod Stewart. Yet he always got the biggest applause. Like I said, I'm pretty sure "the Council" were all made guys.

One of the other cool things about Don't Stop Believin': How Karaoke Conquered the World and Changed My Life that I liked was the inclusion of some lists. These include Raftery's "Fifty Songs I'll Never Stop Singing At Karaoke" (his number one choice is Night Ranger's "Sister Christian"). Despite the book's title, the Journey hit doesn't make the cut.

On another list, you'll find his "Thirty Songs I'll Never Find At Karaoke," which includes such non-Karaoke friendly artists as Public Enemy, Funkadelic, The Replacements, and Glenn Danzig. Maybe I should tell him about the Karaoke bar I discovered a few years back that actually had Monster Magnet's "Space Lord" and Radiohead's "Optimistic" on the songlist. Honest to God, I'm not making that up.

I liked this book an awful lot. If you've got an inner-Karaoke guy in you dying to be let loose, chances are you will like it, too. If not, it still makes a great gift for that friend of yours prone to singing badly at parties and other forms of lampshade wearing fun.

Yardbirds Documentary DVD Yields Vintage Live Clapton, Beck, and Page

Music DVD Review: - The Story Of The Yardbirds

Although they never sold as many records or made it quite as big as their friends in the Stones and the Who, the Yardbirds made every bit as lasting an impact on the music world. Even though this band originally made its mark during the Sixties, their influence would last well into the Seventies and beyond. It continues to be felt today. Most notably, the Yardbirds served as the launch pad for the careers of three of the best rock guitarists ever in Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page.

The Story Of The Yardbirds is a one-hour documentary chronicling the band's history in interviews with both lesser-known members like Chris Dreja, Paul Samwell Smith, and Jim McCarty as well as the more famous alumni like Clapton, Beck, and Page.

But what really makes this DVD a must-get are the rarely seen live performances. For starters, the extras include a 1967 German television broadcast (from a show called "Beat Beat Beat") where a young Jimmy Page is seen performing on songs like "Shapes Of Things," "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago," and "Over Under Sideways Down." For the finale of "I'm A Man," Page gives us a preview of the Led Zeppelin to come by whipping out his violin bow. Elsewhere in the film, Page is seen with the bow again on a pre-Zeppelin version of "Dazed And Confused."

Earlier on, there is also plenty of live footage with both Clapton ("I Wish You Would") and Beck ("Still I'm Sad," "Heart Full Of Soul," "Train Kept A Rollin'," and more). The Beck footage is especially fun to watch for everything from the Go-Go dancers behind him to Beck destroying his guitar Pete Townshend style during a scene from the film Blow-up (which Beck himself describes as "crap...we were supposed to be the Who").

The footage from Blow-up is also one of the two rare pieces of film where you get to see the version of the Yardbirds with both Beck and Page on guitar (the other is a version of "Happenings Ten Years Time Ago" from 1966). In an interview, Page describes how he originally joined the Yardbirds to fill the shoes of departing bassist Paul Samwell Smith, but ended up playing guitar anyway. In another interview, Beck explains that sharing the guitarists slot with Page was one of the reasons he ended up leaving ("I wanted to be it," he says).

The rest of the live footage, even though filmed in the grainy sort of black and white of the Sixties, is equally great stuff. In one such scene, lead vocalist Keith Relf looks eerily like Brian Jones while performing "Heart Full Of Soul." Relf would later die in a tragic accident in 1976.

Although most of the Yardbirds story is already well known to music fans, it's still interesting to hear it re-told here from the "birds mouth" so to speak. Band members recall, for example, how Eric Clapton left the band shortly after they released the single "For Your Love," saying that Clapton wanted to do blues covers rather than make hit records. There are also interviews with former producers like Mickie Most, and managers like Peter Grant (who would later famously manage Led Zeppelin). Other interesting tidbits include how Jeff Beck got the guitar to sound like a sitar for "Over Under Sideways Down."

This is great stuff all the way around, but be forewarned. It is probably only for diehard fans of rock history, of the band itself, or of the famous guitarists the Yardbirds produced. The live footage is often stunning, just for the fact that any of it actually survived. But the sound and picture aren't always great simply because they are so dated. Otherwise, The Story Of The Yardbirds comes highly recommended.

My Favorite Albums Of 2008 (Not A Best Of List)

Normally, it would be the custom to do one of those top-ten best-of articles for the year right about now. The thing is, at least if I am being 100-percent honest, I would have a pretty hard time filling such a list this year.

It's not there wasn't any good music out there in 2008 -- because there most certainly was. It's just that unlike say, 2006, when you had a record that really stood out the way that Dylan's Modern Times did, or even 2007, when you had no less than great new albums by Wilco, Springsteen, and Radiohead to consider, there just weren't any new albums that stood head and shoulders above the rest of the pack the way that those did.

Although I will admit that I considered Radiohead for this year's list. My reasoning there being that although In Rainbows was first released in 2007 in its download-only version, the physical release which came out on January 1st of this year simply sounded so much better.

Oh well, I guess I'll leave that for the folks at the Grammys to decide.

Anyway, what I ended up doing was going back through all the articles and reviews I did this year, as well as revisiting a few releases that for whatever reason I never actually ended up writing about. So, this list is not necessarily a best of the year for 2008. It does however represent the music I probably listened to the most this year. It is also in no particular order.

Brian Wilson - That Lucky Old Sun

Brian Wilson's love letter to his beloved California is also one of the most personal, bittersweet sounding pieces of music I have heard by just about any artist in recent memory. While much of the music here recalls the simpler, more innocent vision of what he calls the "Heartbeat Of L.A." (read: vintage surf and sand Beach Boys) -- especially on songs like "Forever My Surfer Girl" -- other songs like "Oxygen To The Brain" and "Midnight's Another Day" provide an open-book, autobiographer's sort of sketch into the artist's often troubled life. The music is sweeping and gorgeous throughout.

Bob Dylan - Tell Tale Signs: Rare And Unreleased 1989 - 2006

The latest entry in Dylan's Bootleg Series of unreleased music from the vaults, actually plays more like a unique new album in its own right than a mere collection of leftovers. Focusing on the period from 1989's Oh Mercy right on up through Dylan's much more recent creative renaissance on the albums Time Out Of Mind, Love & Theft, and 2006's Modern Times, songs like "Someday Baby," "Aint Talkin," and no less than three versions of "Mississippi" are reworked so radically here as to become entirely new and different creations. As such, they provide unique insight into Dylan's ever-evolving songwriting process.

Steven Wilson - Insurgentes

The first ever full length solo album from Porcupine Tree's main man Steven Wilson is every bit the sort of all over the place mix of styles you'd expect from a guy whose projects range from the prog-metal of PT to the ambient-pop of No-Man. The sounds on Insurgentes range from the chiming U2-ish guitars of the opening track "Harmony Komine," to the dense layers of "Salvaging," to the doomy, avant-prog of the King Crimson like ""No Twilight Within The Courts Of The Sun." Wilson originally released this in a limited run of 3000 copies (which quickly sold out), but word is there will be a commercial release early next year.

John Mellencamp - Life Death Love & Freedom

Mellencamp could have easily taken the easy road here by following last year's Freedom's Road, and it's highly visible (thanks to those Ford Truck ads) single "Our Country," with a similarly commercial record of Americana tinged pop tunes. Instead, he got together with producer T-Bone Burnett to produce a stark, stripped down sounding album with folk and blues based arrangements that sound a lot closer to the dust bowl than the arena bowl. The result is some of Mellencamp's darkest sounding music to date, while the lyrics of songs like "Without A Shot" and "Troubled Land" are all about the search for redemption.

Mudcrutch - Mudcrutch

I was a bit of a late bloomer to Tom Petty's revival of his looser, rootsier pre-Heartbreakers band. But when their version of the Byrds' "Lover Of The Bayou" eventually hooked me, I was pretty much all-in. For what's been mostly advertised as something of a one-off, this is actually some of Tom Petty's most arresting, yet completely natural and relaxed-sounding stuff in years. It's also a place I'd personally like to see him revisit a bit more often.

Marillion - Happiness Is The Road

The latest entry from these British prog-rock cult heroes was an ambitious double-CD, divided into two separate parts (Essence and The Hard Shoulder) that all-told contained over two hours of music. And while there was plenty here to keep the band's diehard prog-rock fans happy, the band also stretches out quite a bit musically. The muscular sounding guitar riff of "Thunder Fly" recalls The Beatles' "Paperback Writer," while other songs mine new territory for this band ranging from funk to psychedelia. The common thread is the musicianship, which is absolutely stellar throughout.

Coldplay - Viva La Vida (or Death And All His Friends)

Current plagiarism scandals notwithstanding, this album was Coldplay's attempt to regain some of their original critical mettle following the backlash which arrived at right about the same time they became one of the world's biggest bands. The answer for Chris Martin and company was to recruit producer Brian Eno. Obvious comparisons to U2 albums like Joshua Tree aside, the combination works quite well for the most part. While "Violet Hill" and the title track reclaim this band's common ground of catchy melodies and yes, even that whiny Chris Martin falsetto, songs like "Yes" find the band stretching out with eastern and psychedelic inspired atmospheric sounds. It's not perfect, but it aint' half-bad either.

My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges

It actually took me a while to warm completely up to this one, but I've since found myself coming back to it many times this year. My initial reluctance came mainly from the fact that I wasn't that keen on the whole idea of MMJ resurrecting the spirit of Prince here, as much of the pre-buzz for this album seemed to indicate. And while it is true that songs like "Highly Suspicious" and the title track represented a funkier direction, the live MMJ show I saw this past fall confirmed that this band has lost none of their celebrated improvisational spirit. They just had better songs.

Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes

Everything you've heard with regard to the most buzzed-about band of 2008 is actually true. These shaggy young hippie kids -- from Seattle of all places -- really do summon the mid-sixties folk-rock spirit of groups like the Mamas And the Papas and the Buffalo Springfield as expertly as they say. With their pastoral sounding wash of gorgeous multiple-part harmonies -- take equal parts CSN&Y and Buffalo Springfield, cross-pollinate that with "Good Vibrations"-era Beach Boys, and you've got the idea -- the only thing that remains to be seen is if they can do it all again the next time out. Listening to "Tiger Mountain Peasant Song" or "White Winter Hymnal," I'm betting they can.

Steve Winwood - Nine Lives

Despite a high profile tour with Tom Petty this summer, this album didn't get anywhere near the attention it should have. On Nine Lives, Steve Winwood abandons the slick, glossy soul-pop of his eighties hits like "Back In The High Life," and instead rediscovers his pedigree as the great blues and soul singer he was during his younger years in groups like Traffic and the Spencer Davis Group. The result is a stew of Hammond organ fueled blues, and percolating Latin percussion that also represents his best work in years. Eric Clapton's filthy sounding guitar solo on the track "Dirty City" alone is worth the admission price here.

A Second Ten: Black Keys - Attack & Release; Ryan Adams - Cardinology; The Hold Steady - Stay Positive; AC/DC - Black Ice; Raconteurs - Consolers Of The Lonely; Neil Young - Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968; David Gilmour - Live At Gdansk; Duffy - Rockferry; Metallica - Death Magnetic; No-Man - Schoolyard Ghosts

Best Reissues: Creedence Clearwater Revival - The Fantasy Records Remasters; Cheap Trick - Budokan!; Love - Forever Changes; U2 - Boy

X-Files Movie: What Were They Thinking?

DVD Review: The X-Files - I Want To Believe

Back in the nineties I was just about as big a fan of the X-Files as you were likely to find. Which is why I was as excited as anybody when I heard there was going to be a new X-Files movie last summer.

However, as the reviews about the movie started to roll in, so did the dread. There was also the matter of drumming up any interest among my friends to go see the damn thing.

You see, there have always been two mythologies about the X-Files which made it such a great TV series. One was the whole government conspiratorial Roswell, UFO, New World Order sort of thing, which back in the pre-millenennial nineties had reached something like a fever pitch. The other great sub-plot meanwhile, was the that whole sizzling understory involving the romantic and sexual tension between two of the geekiest, most un-sexy characters you could find anywhere in agents Mulder and Scully.

So here's the thing.

The X-Files: I Want To Believe works very well as a stand alone paranormal thriller. The problem here is that they blew it as far as drawing in the fan-base goes. I mean, honestly what were they thinking?

The mythology about everything from Roswell to Area 51 that drew in fans like me back in the nineties is pretty much completely dropped here. There's no cigarette smoking man, no lone gunmen, and no nefarious government conspiracy to be found anywhere here. And excuse me if I'm wrong here, but wasn't that the whole point of the X-Files in the first place?

In that respect, this movie is like Star Trek without the phasers or the warp drives. What is left is a fairly compelling paranormal thriller about disappearing FBI agents and a pedophile catholic priest with an apparent psychic connection to the crimes. Which I guess is all fine and dandy, except that it's not exactly anything that would make the Art Bell (or excuse me, I guess it's George Norry these days) show.

Ahh yes, but there is that whole "other" X-Files mythology -- the Mulder and Scully thing -- (I even named two of my cats after them).

This movie acknowledges that in one short exchange where Scully reveals to Mulder "why I fell in love with you," and Mulder replies that "is why we can't be together." There is also a funny nod to current politics where the agents see pictures of George W. Bush and J. Edgar Hoover on the wall and roll their eyes appropriately.

As the movie ends, there are also hints that the two might run off together to get away from all of this -- well, you know, whatever it is.

For me, as an X-Files fan, that's just not enough -- even though there's a bit of a payoff when Walter Skinner shows up at the end.

Bad reviews notwithstanding, this is a decent movie. It's just not a good X-Files movie. What I'm hoping is, much like the way they muffed it on the first Star Trek film, they get it right on the second try.

Neil Young's Latest Archives Tease Is An Essential Live Album

Music Review: Neil Young - Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 (CD/DVD)

While his fans continue to patiently wait for Archives -- the massive ten DVD boxed set that Neil Young has been working on and promising to deliver for what seems like forever -- one of the nicer benefits of his long, arduous search through the vaults is that it has yielded live gems like this one.

As was the case with Live At Fillmore East and Live At Massey Hall before it, this latest installment from the Neil Young Archives series captures a legendary performance for the first time in it's entirety. In this particular case, it also comes from a pivotal point in Young's early career, where the artist was in between his gigs with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby Stills Nash & Young, and was just days away from releasing his first album as a solo artist. At this point, the long, extraordinary career that was still to come was something Neil Young himself probably couldn't have even imagined.

Which is just one of many reasons why Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 is such a great record. Here we see Neil Young, alone on his acoustic guitar, performing in a completely relaxed atmosphere that sounds as warm at times as your own living room (thanks in no small part to the DVD audio). When the emcee announces Neil Young, he even expresses surprise at the size of the crowd, saying he didn't expect so many people to show up.

For his part, Neil Young shows a rarely seen humorous side in his often lengthy raps between songs, joking about everything from the length of his hair to his fondness for classic cars. Knowing him as the rock legend that we do now, the effect is a somewhat disarming one that goes far beyond mere intimacy. It's quite frankly a little weird to see an artist of Neil Young's stature connecting with an audience this completely. Which is what makes Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 stand out from any live Neil Young album you will ever hear.

As for the actual performances, you've certainly heard songs like "On The Way Home," "Sugar Mountain," "Mr. Soul" and the rest before. Just never like this. "Broken Arrow," which has always been one of Young's most gorgeous songs anyway, becomes a brand new revelation here. Stripped down to the core of Young's guitar and famously quavering voice, the refrains of "did you see them" and "hello, Broken Arrow" sound almost like a desperate plea compared to the version recorded by Buffalo Springfield. The way Neil's guitar duplicates the piano parts of the studio version is also pretty amazing.

The usually rocking "Mr. Soul" becomes much more dark and foreboding here, stripped to an essential foundation of minor chords -- which Neil really lays into at times -- as Neil sings the famous lines about how "the clown does the trick of disaster" with a quiet intensity that puts the words into much sharper focus. "Expecting To Fly" is likewise a much lonelier sounding song here, with the singer expressing the romantic regret of the song in a quieter, yet stronger way than on the studio version.

Of the three live records released in the Archives series thus far, Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 is by far the most satisfying. Not only does it capture a very young Neil Young in just about as raw an environment as it gets, it also shows the artist connecting with his audience in a way that has rarely, if ever been seen coming from an artist of Neil Young's iconic standing.

The latest word on that Archives box by the way, is that it will be out on February 24. Judging by the trailer film included on the DVD here, it also looks pretty amazing. Still, I'll actually believe when I see it. In the meantime, for Neil Young fans, Sugar Mountain - Live At Canterbury House 1968 is an essential buy.

Steven Wilson's Dark, Atmospheric, Melancholic Masterpiece
Music Review: Steven Wilson - Insurgentes

The official backstory on the first ever full-length solo album from Porcupine Tree's ever-prolific Steven Wilson begins a few weeks back when an announcement went out to fans via both e-mail newsletter and on the artist's official website.

Wilson's solo album Insurgentes was to be made available in a limited run of 3000 copies. The album would include ten new original Wilson songs, recorded in 5.1 surround sound, and would be housed in a deluxe 2 CD/ 1 DVDA package also featuring bonus tracks leftover from the original sessions, an 18 minute film, and a book containing what were said to be gorgeous photographs taken by Wilson at various locations around the world.

A trailer film about Insurgentes also quickly made it's way to YouTube, followed in short order by another one. When I missed the original announcement, and found out the original run had quickly sold out, needless to say I was pissed. But there's good news.

Don't ask me how, (and I'll never tell anyway) but a copy of Insurgentes found its way to my desktop earlier this week. I've listened to it pretty much every day since it arrived on Thanksgiving Day, and while part of me is more pissed at myself than ever for missing that original run, the other, more rational part is now anticipating the album's official wider release in Febuary more than Christmas itself.

Insurgentes is every bit as gorgeous sounding as the tantalizing bits of music on that original trailer hinted it would be. Speaking of which, the music used there (seen below) is from the album's opening track, "Harmony Komine." This song kicks off the album with the sort of chiming guitar that wouldn't be at all out of place on a U2 record, before kicking into a wall of sound highlighted by Wilson's own angelic sounding vocal wails. It's just gorgeous sounding stuff.



From there, the lighter shades of that track are mostly left behind for what are the record's more dominant atmospheres of darkness. For all of Wilson's well-documented tendency to spend a lot of time in the recording studio (by my count, this is the fourth Wilson related project released this year, and one of them was a double CD), you do in fact hear elements of all of Wilson's other "projects" on this record.

The treated drum track and light keyboards of "Abandoner" for example recall his work with No-Man (at least until the blast of noise towards the end). The beginning of "Verona Para Las Hadas" (did I mention there's a Mexican sort of theme to this record I've yet to figure out?), almost fools you into thinking Wilson's gone and remade PT's psychedelic masterpiece "The Sky Moves Sideways." At least until it becomes apparent that the soaring guitars of "Sideways" are replaced here by atmospheric keys and vocals that have more of a -- how do I say this? -- more of a "glide" to them.



The dense, layered guitars and droning minor bass notes of "Salvaging" likewise bring to mind Signify era Porcupine Tree, particularly when the synths kick in. Ditto for the bonus track "Puncture Wound." But there's also this dark, thick kind of heaviness to this record that is almost emotionally draining at times -- even during some of the lighter parts.

At times, this manifests itself as sort of a melancholy dreaminess (as on the aforementioned "Verona"). At others, it takes on the darker avant-prog qualities of someone like King Crimson, like on the doomy sounding "No Twilight Within The Courts Of The Sun." That one even sounds like a title Robert Fripp might come with.

Of all the songs here, "Only Child" and "Get All That You Deserve" probably come the closest to something resembling traditional pop structure. The former could easily fit on a latter day PT album like Fear Of A Blank Planet. The latter sounds at first like a slower, heavier version of Blackfield's "Christenings", before it eventually becomes swallowed in the sort of heavy drone you'd more commonly find on one of Wilson's Bass Communion records.

If you love Steven Wilson and Porcupine Tree, or just like your music played with lots of minor chords (with equal portions of occasionally lighter, but more often slightly off-kilter counterpoint), you'll probably love Insurgentes as much as I do. The latest word is that K-Scope will release the album's original ten songs (without the bonus tracks) on a double disc set including the 5.1 recordings this coming February.

Jeff Beck Puts On A Guitar Clinic...Again

Music Review: Jeff Beck - Performing This Week... Live at Ronnie Scott's

Jeff Beck is one of the two or three greatest guitarists in the world. Period. End of sentence.

The fact that he has never sold anywhere near the amount of records, or achieved the same sort of notoriety as people like Eric Clapton or Jimmy Page (to cite two examples) is immaterial.

Over the course of his amazing career, Jeff Beck's unique imprint has been heard on landmark records ranging from the Yardbirds' "Shapes of Things" to his work with Rod Stewart in the first Jeff Beck Group.

But his most noteworthy recordings remain the jazz-rock fusion albums Blow By Blow and Wired. Working with great musicians like keyboardist Jan Hammer on these albums, Beck completely reshaped and redefined the instrumental rock genre by applying the "less is more" economics of rock guitar to the more improvisational tone of fusion jazz.

Where guys like John McLaughlin, Al DiMeola, or even Carlos Santana could be all over the place on the six string, Beck was always much more about dramatic effect. What Jeff Beck could say in one short staccato blast on the Stratocaster often said more than all of the thousand notes per second scaling of a DiMeola or Santana ever could. Not surprisingly, Beck's legacy lives on today in guys like Joe Satriani and Eric Johnson.

Jeff Beck's new live album, performing this week...live at Ronnie Scott's, captures the best of the "guitar mechanic's" multiple night stand at London's Ronnie Scott's nightclub. Beck himself cherry picked what he considered the best performances from the concerts for this CD, which is also scheduled for a DVD release by Eagle Rock.

As always, Beck surrounds himself with a group of great musicians here, but none stand out more than female bassist extraordinaire Tal Wilkenfeld, whose funky bass popping provides a perfect counterpart to Beck's own frenetic playing.

But man, does Jeff Beck put on a guitar clinic here.

Opening with "Beck's Bolero," -- the track he famously recorded for the album Truth backed by various members of Led Zeppelin and the Who -- Beck stretches the possibilities he first explored there, even further here. Few guitarists on earth can make a guitar simultaneously sing and cry the way that Jeff Beck does. And on this track, Beck lets the listener know immediately that they will be getting everything he has in his considerable arsenal.

I've personally had the pleasure of seeing Jeff Beck perform in concert multiple times -- many of which have been from seats down in front -- and the guy simply never ceases to amaze me. Seriously, I could get lost for days watching this guy's fingering technique.

What he does on the whammy bar here on songs like a particularly "whammified" version of Wired's "Led Boots," can only be described as setting the fretboard on fire. One minute Beck is bending the notes in a thousand different directions, the next he is attacking the strings in thirty to sixty second bursts that say more in that time than a ten minute Yngwie Malmsteen solo ever could.

By the same token, Beck also has a unique gift for making his guitar "sing" in more ways than the best vocalist you could imagine ever could. Nowhere is that more apparent than on this album's takes on Stevie Wonder's "Cause We've Ended As Lovers" and especially the Beatles' "A Day In The Life," where Beck's crying guitar turns the song on it's ear, making it into a plaintive sort of cry.

Beck's guitar sings these songs without the need for lyrics, interpreting them every bit as effectively as a great singer ever could.

On performing this week...live at Ronnie Scott's, Jeff Beck provides ample proof, as if any were further needed, of just why he remains of the world's two or three premier guitarists.

Springsteen's Working On A Dream Due January 27

I don't have to tell anybody who reads this space regularly that I kinda like this Bruce Springsteen guy. I do, okay?

Guilty as charged.

So here's the deal. Bruce has got a new album coming out.

The release of Springsteen’s 24th album, to be titled Working On A Dream continues the prolific – and unusual -- period of activity for the notoriously methodical artist that began on 2002’s album, The Rising.

Once known for taking years between album releases, Springsteen has averaged a new album almost every year ever since reuniting with the E Street Band for The Rising -- the first time he had recorded with them on an album since 1984’s blockbuster Born In The USA.

The title track for Working On A Dream, an uptempo pop tune reminiscent of songs like “Hungry Heart” and “Girls In Their Summer Clothes,” was previewed on NBC’s NFL Sunday telecast in a ninety second clip.

Working On A Dream features twelve new songs penned by Springsteen, as well as two bonus tracks, “A Night With The Jersey Devil” (which was released as a free download on Halloween) and the title track from the Mickey Rourke film The Wrestler.

So the first taste from this new album kicks some pretty major ass in my own, admittedly biased opinion. I particularly like the bells at the end of the song.

To check it out for yourself, go here



Here's the complete tracklist. Think Dream.



1. Outlaw Pete
2. My Lucky Day
3. Working On a Dream
4. Queen of the Supermarket
5. What Love Can Do
6. This Life
7. Good Eye
8. Tomorrow Never Knows
9. Life Itself
10. Kingdom of Days
11. Surprise, Surprise
12. The Last Carnival

Bonus tracks:
The Wrestler
A Night with the Jersey Devil

The Definitive John Lennon Bio Has Arrived

Book Review: John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman

Not before or since has there ever been a musical group -- rock and roll or otherwise -- that the world's media has followed with the same determination that it once did with the Beatles. And while all of the fab four provided journalists, both legitimate and otherwise, with more than enough ammunition to feed their reporting, none of them gave them more salacious material than John Lennon.

Just this week, more than forty years after the fact, Lennon continued to make news as the Catholic Church apparently offered the former Beatle an absolution of sorts for the sin of publicly proclaiming, way back in 1966, that the Beatles were "bigger than Jesus Christ."

In an article for the official Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano published this week, the church has apparently forgiven Lennon, while praising the Beatles music on the 40th anniversary of the release of their White Album. The article called the offending remark the product of "showing off, bragging by a young English working-class musician who had grown up in the age of Elvis Presley and rock and roll and had enjoyed unexpected success".

In his new 800-plus page biography, John Lennon: The Life, the author of what many call the definitive Beatles biography, Shout! The Beatles In Their Generation, retells the story of the "Jesus remark," along with many others. In the book, Lennon's life is retraced from his roots in a broken working class family in England, to his worldwide fame in the Beatles, to his eventual borderline sainthood status as a martyr and an icon of the peace movement.

Many of these stories have been told numerous times before of course, and there really aren't any new earth-shattering revelations. In addition to the firestorm that came in the wake of the Jesus incident -- which was a key factor why the 1966 American tour which followed was the Beatles' last -- Philip Norman recounts most of the well-tread chapters of Lennon's story.

Most of this stuff will be familiar to Beatles fans. There are the bed-in's and nude album covers with Yoko, the love/hate relationship with his fellow Beatles (especially Paul McCartney), and of course the rumors of sexual fantasies and dalliances with everyone from his mother Julia, to his manager Brian Epstein.

Norman treats all of these subjects with the objectivity of a seasoned journalist. Unlike so many others who have tried, Norman neither deifies or demonizes his famous subject, but rather tries to present a balanced picture showing all sides of the very complex personality of John Lennon.

What emerges is a dichotomy of the man himself. Norman pulls no punches when detailing Lennon's penchant at times for sarcasm, cruelty, and drunken, loutish behavior. At the same time, Lennon is also presented as a thoughtful man, who was equally capable of childlike innocence and wonder as he observed the dizzying events going on all around him.

To tell this story, Norman was also granted near unprecedented access to what is left of the Beatles original inner-circle. The author began this project with the blessing of Lennon's widow, Yoko Ono (who later withdrew it, claiming the author's narrative painted Lennon in a cruel light). In addition to Ono, Norman's research also includes extensive interviews with Paul McCartney, George Martin, and for the first time ever, Lennon's son Sean. The Sean Lennon interview makes for a particularly poignant chapter at the end of the book.

With John Lennon: The Life, Philip Norman has attempted to write nothing less than the final, definitive word on the life and times of one of the twentieth century's most iconic figures. As such, this book is an unqualified success in doing precisely that.

An Urgent Plea To Steven Wilson: Don't Make Me Steal Your Album



Steven Wilson, for the uninitiated, is best known as the creative brain-trust behind the British progressive rock group, Porcupine Tree. I can already hear a lot of you scratching your heads and asking "who?" right about now, and in America at least, you'd hardly be alone there.

Porcupine Tree doesn't sell that many records on this side of the pond, and they enjoy what could be best described as a cult following. That said, Steven Wilson and his cohorts in PT have made some pretty amazing music over the past decade and a half or so.

They have also made a buttload of it.

So much so, that after discovering and falling instantly in love with this band roughly a year or so ago, I ended up spending a small fortune going about the process of obtaining their complete recorded catalog. Let me tell you, these guys have made a ton of records, too - especially for a band that by and large remains undiscovered on this side of the world, at least in terms of finding a mass audience anyway.

The records also all sound quite different from one another.

The first PT song which really grabbed me was "Sentimental," from the band's 2007 album Fear Of A Blank Planet. The song uses haunting piano minor chords overlaid with gorgeous sounding acoustic and electric guitars as a backdrop for Wilson's lyrics about youth and alienation (the song, like much of the album, appears to have been inspired by the school shootings at Columbine). An acoustic version of this song, with just Wilson on guitar, can be viewed below:



Elsewhere on the FOABP album you'll find songs like the opus "Anesthetize," which over the course of its eighteen-plus minutes goes from similarly lighter shades to the sort of metallic bludgeon played in weird time signatures you'd normally associate with someone like Tool.

Meanwhile, on a wide assortment of E.P.'s, singles, and full length albums (at least two of which are multiple disc sets), PT's sound runs pretty much the entire table of progressive rock styles - from metal and ambient electronica to atmospheric Floydian space rock (check out the amazing double album The Sky Moves Sideways for the best stuff there). It's a lot to digest, especially for the recently converted neophyte.

The thing is, Porcupine Tree's releases only scratch the surface of Steven Wilson's recorded output. The guy is so prolific in the recording studio you have to wander when he finds time to sleep. In addition to Porcupine Tree, Wilson fronts at least four other "groups," or recurring projects.



Again, each individual project is so stylistically different from the next it's hard to recognize each of them as coming from the same incredibly talented musician.

Blackfield is a quieter, more acoustic based pop group where Wilson is joined by Israeli singer/songwriter Aviv Geffen. With No-Man, Wilson explores sounds ranging from avant-jazz to electronica. Wilson's Bass Communion albums, at least the ones I've heard, are mostly electronically generated ambient soundscapes that move from beautiful washes of synthesized sound to cacophonous noise on a dime.

Just this past week, one of my cohorts here at Blogcritics introduced me to yet another of Wilson's "projects," with a series of recordings labeled as being by "I.E.M." (which stands for Incredible Expanding Mindfuck). The group name is about as descriptive of the music as any I could conjure, as I.E.M.'s largely instrumental music consists of psychedelic improvisational pieces with titles like the ten minute "An Escalator To Christmas." Other I.E.M. tracks run as long as 35 minutes.

So Steven Wilson is a busy guy. He's also a great songwriter, an incredibly talented multi-instrumentalist, and quite possibly the most prolific rock musician alive. What this means, if you are anywhere near the fan that I've become in the past year, is that you've got to keep checking in at his various websites to keep up. Blink, and you could easily miss an album or even two - which is exactly what happened to me this past week.

As it turns out, I hadn't visited SWHQ, which is Wilson's homepage, in about a month. I stopped by there a few days ago. What I learned when I did is that Wilson has a new solo album out. From the information I got at the website, and the tantalizing bits I heard on a trailer for the album, which is called Insurgentes, is that it sounds like it could be one of Steven Wilson's most interesting releases yet.



There's just one problem. The damn thing is already sold out. Insurgentes has left the building. Gone.

Wilson apparently offered a limited run of 3,000 copies for a "deluxe edition" of the release. This run features the album, a picture book, a bonus CD with leftover tracks from the Insurgentes sessions -- hell, there's even an eighteen minute Insurgentes film!

All in all, this deluxe version of Insurgentes appears to be a one of a kind deal. It costs about eighty bucks (or rather, it did while it was available), most of which is due to the shipping costs, as the package it's housed in apparently weighs about ten pounds. There will be a commercial release of Insurgentes early next year.

Much as I want to hear this CD right now, I could wait for that - except, that the commercial release will not be the same. I won't be able to hear the extra tracks. I wont be able to see the film, and I'm particularly excited about the part where Wilson takes a gun and starts shooting a bunch of MP3 players (I knew there was something I loved about this guy!).



This is my urgent plea as a fan to Mr. Steven Wilson of Porcupine Tree, Blackfield, No-Man, Bass Commnunion, Incredible Expanding Mindfuck, and now apparently the first of what I imagine will be countless solo albums.

Please, Steven. Please consider a second run on the deluxe version of Insurgentes.

I don't want to steal it by going to one of those torrent or peer-to-peer sites. I really don't. I want to pay for it - or better yet, get a review copy from you if you are so inclined to send one. But if you don't make another run available, you will leave me with no other choice. You'll have no one to blame but yourself if this happens Steven. You see, I am a desperate man; I simply must have this music.

Please don't make me steal your new solo album.

I'll be checking your website and my e-mail for your answer. Thanks Steven.

The Who Are Good...Just Not Perfect...On Live At Kilburn 1977

Music DVD Review: The Who At Kilburn 1977

The Who At Kilburn 1977 is, for a variety of reasons, a must-see, must-have DVD for Who fans.

It captures the Who at a time when they were arguably the greatest live rock and roll band in the world -- and certainly at a time when they were at their commercial peak. It also shows exactly how and why they earned that well deserved reputation.

That said, this is not the ultimate document of the live Who experience. So color me picky.

For that, you'd have to rewind back a few years to 1970, and the amazing performances captured on both the live Isle of Wight 1970 DVD, and especially The Who Live At Leeds, which is simply one of, if not the best live rock and roll albums ever made. That much goes without saying.

With that in mind, The Who At Kilburn 1977 is still damn great stuff.

The concert, parts of which eventually made way to the documentary film The Kids Are Alright, is shown here in its entirety for the first time on an official release, and also represents one of the final Who shows with drummer Keith Moon just before his untimely death. For that reason alone, The Who At Kilburn 1977 is an essential release for Who Fans.

Like everything else here, the video and 5.1 audio restoration are first rate, particularly when the time period is taken into account. What separates the actual performance from something as jaw-droppingly amazing as the recently remastered Isle Of Wight DVD is the simple fact that by the 1977 time-frame of this show, the Who had become such a polished act in comparison.

What makes the performances from the 1969-70 period captured on Isle of Wight and especially Live At Leeds such a revelation is their sheer, raw and unbridled energy -- even when the Who are trying out the more sophisticated songs from Tommy for the first time. Even though everything ultimately fits together -- from John Entwhistle's intricate bass runs to Moon's over-the-top drumming -- there is still that sense that the train could derail at any moment.

Not so on The Who At Kilburn 1977.

By this time, thanks to the commercial success of albums like Whos Next, The Who had become a well oiled machine in concert. As such, songs like "Won't Get Fooled Again" as performed in concert are letter perfect, close to the record versions. Meanwhile, songs like "My Generation," which formerly served as launchpads for extended improvisational craziness, are likewise played very close to the vest here.

Keith Moon alone maintains that element of unhinged dangerousness here that once made the Who the greatest live rock and roll band in the world. And they are still heads and shoulders above everyone else here. But you can also start to see that where once there was the sort of chaos that would influence a generation of punk rock bands like the Clash, the polish was starting to settle in.

Interestingly, the bonus disc on Kilburn features previously unseen footage from roughly the same 1969 period as Leeds and Isle Of Wight, featuring some of the earliest performances of the Tommy material. Both the sound and video here vary wildly from decent to barely above that of a bad bootleg. Still, the performances here are good and often great. From an fan's archival standpoint, they are also essential.

The Who At Kilburn 1977 isn't perfect, but comes close enough to make this DVD a must for Who fans. It comes out in stores on November 18.