Animator Jess Cope beautifully evokes the sadness in Steven Wilson’s story of loss, denial and eventual acceptance.
Video of the Week: Steven Wilson–“Routine”
30 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in Video of the Week Tags: routine, steven wilson
Recommended Albums #65
27 Oct 2015 1 Comment
in Recommended Albums Tags: alice cooper, welcome to my nightmare
Alice Cooper: Welcome to My Nightmare (1975)
Welcome to My Nightmare is so many things.
This is the album that ushered in Alice’s solo career after the Alice Cooper band’s half-decade of success with hits such as “I’m Eighteen”, “No More Mr. Nice Guy” and “School’s Out”.
This is Alice’s only top ten album as a solo artist (it peaked at #5). He never again equaled its success or its excellence.
This is a concept album and the template for several other conceptual records Alice would release over the years–but Nightmare is by far the best in terms of execution.
Speaking of execution, Nightmare was tied in with a new live show that essentially brought Halloween and Rock music together onstage and culminated with the protagonist’s grisly nightly demise, a concert format that continues to this day.
Welcome to My Nightmare exchanged the musical gut punch of the Alice Cooper band for a more polished, fully-orchestrated Bob Ezrin-produced sound. The strings, horns and harmonies gave the album a broader palette and a deeper resonance; the creepy bits were creepier and the weepy bits weepier. Listen to a sample of Ezrin’s orchestration from “Steven” and note its similarity in feel to “Beth” by Kiss, released the following year and also co-written and produced by Ezrin:
“Devil’s Food” features a cameo by horror legend Vincent Price, who lends just the right element of creepy camp to the proceedings.
“Some Folks” takes things into cabaret territory, adding one more flavor to a record more diverse than anything the Alice Cooper band had done.
“Only Women”, with its acoustic guitars and muted horn charts reaches an emotional crescendo Alice had never before been able to achieve with his old band. The #12 hit added a new dimension to Alice’s career as a singles artist, that of credible balladeer; his next three albums would feature a love song as a hit single (“I Never Cry”, “You and Me” and “How You Gonna See Me Now”).
“Cold Ethyl” is just your everyday run-of-the-mill paean to, um, necrophilia.
But it’s with “Years Ago”, “Steven” and “The Awakening” that things get really dark. The overarching concept of the album is the ongoing nightmare of Alice’s protagonist character, but here on what used to be the vinyl album’s side two (as it happens) Alice delves into a world of schizoid delusion. Terrificly horrific stuff, well conceived and arranged. Where “Cold Ethyl” is a comic lark, these songs are truly chilling.
Producer/co-writer Bob Ezrin and guitarist/co-writer Dick Wagner are the unsung heroes of this album, the greatest of Alice Cooper’s long solo career. Without them this record wouldn’t be what it is: a true classic.
Listen to: “Devil’s Food/The Black Widow”
Listen to: “Some Folks”
Listen to: “Only Women Bleed”
Listen to: “Cold Ethyl”
Listen to: “Years Ago/Steven”
Listen to: “The Awakening”
Video of the Week: 80-Year-Old Bob Wood Shreds it Up
27 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in Video of the Week Tags: bob wood
Tower Records: Where the Good Stuff Was
27 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: record stores, tower records
(via purple clover)
by Charles Paikert
I’m not usually big on nostalgia, but record stores?
Oh, baby.
My first was Walt’s Record Shop on South Salina in downtown Syracuse. I was in grammar school, and that was before malls, when people still went shopping downtown. Walt’s wasn’t even a great record store, but it had a better selection of LPs and 45s than Woolworths or Grants.
If you liked rock and roll, a record store was a gateway drug. Everything was there! You could hold albums and singles in your hands, look at the covers, read liner notes, smell the vinyl. Records were real, tactile objects, which you brought home, put on a record player, heard the pop and hiss of the needle as it hit the disc’s revolving grooves on the turntable and then—bam! loud rock music filled the room before your parents told you to turn it down…
Read more: http://www.purpleclover.com/entertainment/5515-where-good-stuff-was/
Recommended Albums #64
25 Oct 2015 Leave a comment
in Recommended Albums Tags: arlo guthrie, last of the brooklyn cowboys
Arlo Guthrie: Last of the Brooklyn Cowboys (1973)
Arlo Guthrie’s follow-up to 1972’s Hobo’s Lullaby didn’t produce a hit single to follow his sole top 20 “City of New Orleans” but it’s as fine a collection of covers and originals as he ever released.
Fortunately his somewhat fluky 1972 hit didn’t convince Arlo to steer his career toward a more contemporary and chart-friendly style, or even the prevailing James Taylor singer-songwriter sound of the time. Woody Guthrie’s son was far too steeped in authentic folk, cowboy ballads and old time Country & Western music.
If the late 60’s/early 70’s British folk movement of Pentangle, Steeleye Span and Fairport Convention revived centuries-old folk songs and murder ballads and introduced them to another generation, Arlo’s work in this era did the same for American folk chestnuts of decades past.
But his great talent was to make these tunes his own. Just as Steve Goodman’s original version of “City of New Orleans” disappoints after hearing Arlo’s masterful cover, so Guthrie’s versions of songs previously recorded by Ernest Tubb (“This Troubled Mind of Mine”) and Hank Williams (“Lovesick Blues”) sound definitive–more so to my ears in fact than the original versions.
And speaking of originals, Arlo sprinkles in his own compositions here too (“Last Train”, “Uncle Jeff”) and they blend seamlessly with the standards to form the tapestry of one of the 70’s strongest folk albums.
Incidentally, do you think Arlo’s “Uncle Jeff” may have inspired a certain John Denver hit of two years later?
Listen to: “This Troubled Mind of Mind”
Listen to: “Lovesick Blues”
Listen to: “Last Train”
Listen to: “Uncle Jeff”
See also: https://edcyphers.com/2013/11/13/songs-you-may-have-missed-502/
