Love Lost (and Found)

I came across some exciting news for fans of Arthur Lee and Love. Sundazed is releasing a previously unissued Love album from 1971:

Sonic archaeology! In a move that defies rational belief, SUNDAZED has unearthed an unissued 1971 album by revered Los Angeles rock band Arthur Lee & Love, languishing in the Columbia Records tape vault.

I assume this is the album that Lee recorded for CBS--tentatively titled Dear You--after his deal with Blue Thumb expired. While I was aware of the existence of this album, I have never heard it, and am not aware of the tapes ever circulating in traders circles (although I am not really up on these things). Either way, this is a major find, and I'm glad this material will finally see the light of day through Sundazed.

But [think of a Ronco infomercial here] that's not all you get! According to Sundazed:

And that's not all! We've also uncovered a marvelous batch of acoustic demos for the ‘71 album, featuring just the magical voice of Arthur Lee and his acoustic guitar. It's a thrilling twin-discovery of ultra-important material that no one knew existed.

As a precursor to the release of this breath-taking Arthur Lee and Love material (to be called Love Lost), we've created a 7” single of two knockout tracks from the demo sides. “Love Jumped Through My Window” is cut from the same fine cloth as every heart-stopping Love track you've ever heard. And the flipside, “Sad Song,” — in alternate take form here — will appear only on seven-inch vinyl. The Love maestro is in superlative voice on both of these exquisite unheard sides.

These two songs eventually appeared on Lee's 1972 solo debut, Vindicator. From the short 30 second clips Sundazed has made available these acoustic demos sound far better than the over-cooked hard rock of Vindicator, so this looks to be a very promising release. The single will be released August 25, and is available for pre-order from Sundazed now.

I don't have any information beyond that this at this point, but I have made an inquiry with Sundazed and will keep you updated as details emerge.

In other Lee/Love news, I noticed that a label called Friday Music has reissued a couple of Lee collectors items. The first is the Arthur Lee album that was first issued by Rhino back in the 80s that I reviewed a while back. The other is an album called Love Live featuring material Lee recorded with Bryan Maclean in 1978 (Rhino originally issued that one as a picture disc).

Galaxie 500 Reissues

Great news for Galaxie 500 fans. damon & naomi's label, 20-20-20, has reissued Galaxie 500's three studio albums on premium vinyl and as digital downloads. These albums have long been unavailable on vinyl, and the original Rough Trade pressings were nothing special to begin with. The band seems to have gone all out to make these LPs sound as good as possible. The vinyl was "remastered by Alan Douches and [original producer] Kramer at West West Side Music, cut by Kevin Gray at AcousTech, pressed to virgin vinyl at RTI, and packaged in old-fashioned tip-on style jackets at Stoughton." You really can't ask for better than that, so I'm very excited to hear these. (As an aside, I can't help but note that while these are being reissued on LP--a format declared dead around the time the albums were originally issued--they are not being re-released on CD. Who's the dead format now?)

The albums are available from Galaxie 500's official online store in a variety of ordering options. MP3s are have been encoded at 320kps, but even better the band has made Apple Lossless files available for download at the same price (a practice I hope more bands and labels will follow). If you only want the vinyl, you can order the LPs directly from 20-20-20 for only $15 a piece. This is a very reasonable price for LPs mastered at AcousTech and pressed at RTI, most labels charge nearly twice that much.

As for the music, I can say without fear of hyperbole that these are three of the best indie-rock albums ever released, as well as some of the best albums released during the 1980s. If you know Galaxie 500 you already know this, if you don't I strongly recommend you download the free MP3 of "Fourth Of July" as well as the video for damon & naomi's "Song to the Siren" (see below).

Happy 4th of July!

R.I.P. - Sky Saxon

Farrah Fawcett wasn't the only person to have their death go less noticed than it should have been because of untimely demise of the "King of Pop." I was very sad to learn of the passing of Sky "Sunlight" Saxon this past Thursday. Saxon was a true rock legend, a man whose life and musical legacy deserve far more attention than they have received.

My friend Peter wrote a very eloquent post about Sky and his music here a couple of years ago, and the single biggest thrill I've gotten from running this blog came when the man himself, Sky "Sunlight" Saxon, posted his thanks in the comments section. I was truly elated to know that a legend like Saxon had stumbled across this humble blog.

My thoughts and prayers go out to Sky's loved ones and friends.

R.I.P. - Michael Jackson

We headed up to New Hampshire for a short vacation starting last Wednesday and on the way up I pulled up the Jam's Sound Affects on my iPod.

Perhaps because I once read a quote from Paul Weller in which he claimed Sound Affects was intended to sound like a cross between The Beatles' Revolver and Michael Jackson's Off The Wall, I started thinking about Jackson. I said to my wife something to the effect of "someday we're going to find out all the weird stuff that has been going on with Jackson the over past 10+ years, and it won't be pretty." I didn't realize it at the time, but I was talking about what would happen when Jackson died, which coincidentally happened the next day.

Because we were staying in a motel, I had access to cable news (no cable at home), and its weird world of wall-to-wall coverage of major and not-so-major events. It was strange hearing the different takes on Jackson. Depending on who you believe, Michael Jackson was either the closest thing the world has ever seen to a perfect human being (a child-like, innocent and kind humanitarian who only thought of others) or history's greatest monster (a master manipulator, with bizarre, twisted and seemingly insatiable appetites). Of all the people I heard voicing their opinion on Jackson on CNN, MSNBC and Fox, no one outside of Deepak Chopra offered anything close to a nuanced opinion on the man and his personal life. (Chopra clearly had great affection for Jackson as a person, but also seemed intensely aware of his flaws.)

Personally, I do not have any special insight into Michael Jackson, other than to fall back on cliches like "the truth probably lies somewhere in between," which, given the wide chasm between the two camps of opinion, hardly seems adequate either. In any case, the world doesn't need my opinion on who Michael Jackson really was, and not only because I honestly have no idea.

Perhaps the most prescient take on Michael Jackson was offered in episode one of the third season of The Simpsons, in which Jackson lent his voice to Leon Kompowsky, a bricklayer from Patterson, NJ and mental patient laboring under the illusion that he is Michael Jackson. Though Bart is initially let down when Homer brings home a "big white guy who thinks he's the little black guy" instead of the real Michael Jackson, Kompowsky still manages to save the day by helping Bart write a song for Lisa's birthday.

In other words, maybe who Michael Jackson really was matters less than who people (his fans and detractors alike) think he was. Michael Jackson's music has brought joy to millions, and no doubt will continue to do so for many, many years. But he is also there for those of us who need monsters to demonize as well.

Saturn V

I wanted to follow up on the Razorcuts post from yesterday with some music from singer/guitarist Gregory Webster's next band, Saturn V (not to be confused with the surf rock band The Saturn V featuring Orbit, as All Music has apparently done).

Saturn V released a nice single on the short-lived Shimmy Disc pop label, Koko Pop, and an album on Vinyl Japan in 1993, then disappeared. It's too bad, because the small amount of music they released was quite good, similar in many respects to the Razorcuts, although perhaps a bit less twee.

Both the single, Dominator, and the album Skycycle are well worth tracking down if you can find them.

Elvis Costello - Secret, Profane & Sugarcane CD vs LP

Here's another comparison of compression levels from a recent CD and LP release, this time the new Elvis Costello album, Secret, Profane & Sugarcane. When I compared tracks on Mr. Declan Patrick MacManus' last album, Momofuku, I noted that the CD appeared to be considerably more compressed than the LP. That is not the case with the new album. True, the CD looks to be slightly louder, but that is probably just due to a stray peak or two on the LP. Overall, these look (and sound I might I add) quite similar. If anything, the CD probably has a bit more dynamic range due to the lower noise floor, which is as it should be.

This is good news, because neither the LP or the CD suffer from over-compression, something that would have really done serious damage to the largely acoustic music on the album. So score one for the good guys in the ongoing loudness wars.

The LP does have a couple of bonus tracks, so it's still the version to get however.

"My All Time Doll" CD Version

"My All Time Doll" LP Version

The Pains of Being Razorcut

My friend Peter recently turned me onto the latest indie-rock hype band, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. If someone had told me before I heard them that they had a retro J&M Chain/C86 vibe to them, I might not have bothered to listen to them. I've heard a few bands recently that harken back to that sound, and inevitably, my reaction has been a cynical "been there done that."

But POBPAH (sorry, but their name demands abbreviation) had a different effect on me. From the first chords of "Contender" I got an instant psychocandy sugar jolt that sent me on a nostalgia trip resulting in me digging through my old records to rediscover POBPAH's antecedents (that is, after I listened to POBPAH twice through).

I had to needledrop my copy of Psychocandy (which itself was thought to be a slavishly imatative album on its original release, but holds up quite nicely on its own terms nearly a quarter century later). I also dug out some of my old british "shoegazer" and C86 albums, including a compilation of music by the Razorcuts called Patterns On The Water: A Retrospective. Patterns has been unavailable for so long it doesn't even show up at Amazon. A more recent compilation R Is For Razorcuts, is also out-of-print and fetching megabucks. (The A Is For Alphabet EP is still available on CD and as a download, so if you dig what you hear pick that up).

Fans of POBPAH will likely enjoy the slightly fey and extremely catchy nature of the Razorcuts' music (although it's not as noisy, for that you need Psychocandy).

So okay, I've been there and done that, but POBPAH is good enough to make me want to go back and do it all over again. They deliver what some of these other neo-shoegaze bands don't: excellent songs that transcend the formula. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some footwear to contemplate.

I Asked For Water (S/he Gave Me Gasoline)

I've noticed more and more formerly out-of-print music has been made officially available for download, even without a reissue on CD or LP. This is a great thing, and something that I have advocated since starting this blog. But it does present a certain dilemma for me in so far as there is increasingly less interesting out-of-print music for me to write about.

But every once in a while, I am shocked to discover a really great album that is unavailable in any format and fetching high prices on the used market. Such is the case with Lucinda Williams' eponymous 1988 album.

It took Lucinda Williams eight long years to follow up her first album of original material, 1980's Happy Woman Blues. Perfection takes time. Williams had grown enormously as a songwriter, singer and performer during the interval between albums. Unfortunately, it would take another ten years for the music buying public to figure out what those of us lucky enough to hear this album (released on Rough Trade a couple of years before it went bankrupt) already knew: Lucinda Williams is a genius.

"Changed the Locks" was released as a single, and is one of the stand-out tracks on an album full of stand-out tracks. The lyrics are at once harrowing yet ambiguous. It's clear that Lucinda's protagonist (or is it just her?) is on the run from a relationship gone very wrong. She's hiding from something so powerful and all-consuming that she's gone so far as to erase her identity and move heaven and earth in order to start over. She never fully articulates why, although she perhaps drops a hint with the line "so you can't knock me off my feet." Does she mean that figuratively, or literally? Or both?

One thing is clear: whoever or whatever she is hiding from in this song has scared the hell out of her, and hearing her sing about it, it scares the hell out me too. Lucinda's deliberate pacing and careful delivery turns a song that in lesser hands could have been the audio equivalent of a Lifetime movie staring Valerie Bertinelli into a masterpiece.

Tom Petty covered "Changed the Locks" on the She's The One Soundtrack. He does a fine job, but this is a case where the change of gender really damages the song on some fundamental level. Having a man sing the song reduces the ambiguous tension at the core of its power. And before anyone objects that "men get trapped in abusive relationships too" (yeah, I know I saw that episode of Montel), cut me a break. I just can't buy this as a guy's song.

"Crescent City" is a beautiful love letter to New Orleans, and just another damn fine song. But every song on the album is a classic.

In 1988 Lucinda Williams sounded fresh and ahead of its time (or perhaps refreshingly behind the times). The passing years have done nothing to diminish that impression; it sounds just as fresh and vibrant today, even after a flood of mediocre alt.country/Americana/No Depression/Whatever releases have created a codified market for this kind of music.

**UPDATE: According to posts on LucindaWilliams.com, it appears there is a long-delayed deluxe edition of this album in the works, possibly due in September.

George Jones - Musicor Years

Great news from Bear Family:

George Jones' classic Musicor recordings have been out of circulation for years while a lawsuit was resolved. Jones' Musicor recordings were never issued systematically or in full until now! Jones' Musicor recordings were never issued in premium sound quality until now! This CD boxed set includes all-time classic George Jones hits, such as 'Love Bug' (revived by George Strait), 'Take Me', 'Four-O-Thirty Three', and 'Walk Through This World With Me'. Includes two complete George Jones sessions with false starts and alternate takes. Be there with George in the studio! The first of two boxes that will eventually include every Musicor recording, except the duets with Gene Pitney (available elsewhere on Bear Family)! -- These were George Jones' truly classic years. After more than a decade as one of country music's top stars, newfound maturity and soulfulness augmented what was already the greatest voice in country music. The six years from 1965 to 1971 that Jones spent on Musicor Records were marked by personal turmoil and unprecedented success, but through it all he kept minting one country standard after another. This is the first part of Bear Family's comprehensive two volume edition of Jones' complete Musicor recordings, covering all sessions from 1965 until mid-1967. Until now, the Musicor sides were randomly packaged and many were unavailable, but the two Bear Family boxes (plus one CD of duets with Gene Pitney available elsewhere on Bear Family) will tell the complete story. Here are the fabulous original albums, including his tributes to Dallas Frazier and the duet albums with Melba Montgomery, plus such all-time George Jones standards as 'Things Have Gone To Pieces', 'Love Bug', 'Take Me', 'I'm A People', 'Four-O-Thirty Three', and one of the greatest ever country classics, 'Walk Through This World With Me'. It's all here in stunningly restored sound together with ten previously unissued recordings, including fabulous early versions of 'Love Bug' and 'Take Me', recorded in Houston. -- In all, this set includes 142 songs on five CDs, plus two complete sessions from Houston with false starts and alternate takes. -- This set includes liner notes by Rich Kienzle and a complete discography by Don Roy, Kittra Moore, and Richard Weize.

I probably have a dozen of George Jones' Musicor LPs, but not anywhere close to all the music he recorded for the label. Also, while the quality of the songs on these albums tends to be quite high, the LPs themselves are another matter. The condition of the LPs is variable (not all of Possums' fans are also audiophiles apparently), and there are many, many tracks that are repeated across LPs. Anytime I buy a Musicor album I didn't already own I get on average three or four new songs because of the high percentage of repeats.

Of course I'm gonna hold on to those LPs, if for no other reason than to keep all those beautiful pictures of George in all his buzz cut, nudie suit splendor. Now how about a complete Starday/Mercury set?

Bob Dylan - Together Through Life

If you're trying to decide if it's worth shelling out for the new Dylan double LP versus the cheaper CD, these pictures might help you decide.

"Beyond Here Lies Nothing" CD Version

"Beyond Here Lies Nothing" LP Version

I've kind of burned out on talking about what these differences mean (see previous posts tagged "loudness wars" for my thoughts on this subject). On average the LP version of this track has about 4 dB more dynamic range than the CD. This despite the fact that technically (as I've mentioned before) CD is capable of around 30 dB more dynamic range than the LP.

The difference between the two versions isn't as dramatic as I remember it being with Modern Times, so perhaps we're seeing some progress. But at around -11 dB average RMS the CD, while not the worst offender in the loudness wars, is still (in my opinion) too loud to sound really good. By comparison, with the peaks normalized to 0 dB, the LP version is around -15 dB average RMS, which allows for a more exciting, dynamic presentation.

The pressing quality of my LP was pretty good with only a few stray clicks and pops. I could quibble with the packaging: shoving two 180 gram LPs into a single, flimsy cover will quickly lead to seam splits. For $26, a gatefold cover would have been nice, but at least the CD is included as a bonus (if you can call it that).

BTW, I'm really loving the music. Dylan just keeps reaching further and further back in time for musical inspiration. But you don't need me to tell you Uncle Bobby is great and that he's on a serious late-career roll.