A scorpion is an arthropod with eight legs. I sometimes find them in my garage (I live in Phoenix), and if they sting you it kicks your butt.
Scorpions are a hard rock band from Germany who have been kicking butt in the music world since 1972, with anthems like "Rock You Like A Hurricane" and "No One Like You." They have sold over 70 million records in their career. Contrary to common usage, the band's name is "Scorpions," not "The Scorpions." Make a note of that. And while you're taking notes, you may want to jot down that the new Scorpions album is a five-star release.
Scorpions' 2007 album is called Humanity Hour 1.
Like the aforementioned eight-legged critter, this CD stings hard and will kick your butt. Sometimes all the pieces fall neatly into place, and with this record, after a few not-so-spectacular albums, Scorpions got it all in the right place at the right time.
Helping out on songwriting detail are Eric Bazillian (of The Hooters fame), Russ Irwin and Billy Corgan, and it pays off-not since the Savage Amusement album has a Scorpions record had so many songs of such high quality.
Produced by the legendary Desmond Child (Bon Jovi, Meat Loaf among many others), this album delivers. I did not have high expectations because their last few had been middle-of-the-road. Solid, but unspectacular.
This effort mixes their old-school AOR melodies with a bit of a modern edge and still rolls it into a classic eighties commercial style that manages to sound fresh. Child proves once again that he has the ability to bring out the best in a band with an updated guitar sound and masterful production for a sound only a master behind the board could achieve.
Sometimes a band just nails it, and this is one of those times. Run out and buy it, or you just may find a scorpion in your garage.
Frontiers Record’s marketing for Norwegian vocalist Issa plays up the whole 'sex-kitten'
angle that really does not suit her, or her new album, The Storm..
The lady is an AOR talent, but comparing her in a press release to Celine Dion and Avril Lavigne is somewhat misleading.
Issa is a powerful female lead vocalist with a solid band behind her, performing memorable melodic hard rock with a modern edge to the album in the guitar tone and production, and Issa’s very likable, melodic vocals.
The selection of songs features compositions from the label’s gang of usual suspects, and there are some great songs on here, but I’d rather see Issa contribute more than the three tracks cowritten with husband James Martin, two of which are album highlights.
Issa’s debut album was very impressive and The Storm follows a very similar path.
This follow-up features great production with a similar energy, the same powerful vocals and a good dose of melodic hard rock. The production has some modern tweaks, with a little more contemporary sound than the debut.
The songs are good, and stand outs include the super catchy and hook filled “Looking For Love,” the monster power ballad “Invincible” and another ballad, “Too Late For Love. “
It is a crime against the cosmos that Warner Brothers deleted Nearly Human, Todd Rundgren's 1989 masterpeice, from it's catalogue.
You heard me right. The album that Rolling Stone hailed as "the best album of classy white-brat R&B since 1973′s Abandoned Luncheonette" has been deleted for more than a decade.
Nearly Human may be Todd's most underheard and overlooked album, and in my opinion it is his best; an extraordinary return to form, a soulful exercise recorded live in the studio with the usual top notch production.
This album stands as the only masterwork in the later stages of Todd's career. The first four original songs alone ("The Want Of A Nail," The Waiting Game," "Parallel Lines," and "Can't Stop Running") give you your money's worth and would qualify as a work of genius for most other rock musicians.
Other highlights include "Hawking," one of Todd's most personal and haunting composotions and still a live staple, his version of the Tubes/Rundgren composition "Feel It," and "Fidelity," a beautiful melody even if I don't agree with its' morality. The album closes with the gospel-infused "I Love My Life," and leaves you wanting more.
"Three Little Hitlers," the Elvis Costello cover that sits at track four did not even appear on the original vinyl version, and was a CD bonus track that would have made a better running order if it had been placed at the end of the program.
That is pretty much the only negative thing that I can say about this release.
Any Todd fan who ever liked any of his "Philly-soul" influenced material will absolutly love this release, recorded digitally and live in the studio. The tour which followed this release featured many of the same singers and musicians, was universally acclaimed as being briliant, and live documents on CD and DVD are still available at Amazon.
Anyone who remembers all of the song lists we did last year know that this CD is on my desert island list, and that the song Parallel Lines made my top love songs list (not to mention being the soundtrack for one of the most important relationships in my life).
This is an essential release for any serious music fan, and you better snap it up when you see it because they're asking $70 for a new copy on Amazon!
Here's a reprint of David Fricke’s review from the June 29, 1989 issue of Rolling Stone (#555).
Patti Smith once said Todd Rundgren had “the ability to devour and juggle the best of what has passed and shoot it into future perfect.” In fact, she said it in these very pages, back in 1971, in a review of his second solo LP, The Ballad of Todd Rundgren.
It would be another year before the young studio savant issued his magnum pop opus, the four-sided Something/Anything, generally acknowledged to be the consummate early-Seventies ear-candy album. But even then, Smith, no minor judge of what constitutes the art of rock, recognized in Ballad‘s beguiling songs of love and loss the imprint of a gifted craftsman with the intellect and imagination to make tomorrow’s pop today and the chops to do it with one hand tied behind his back.
Nearly Human, Rundgren’s first solo release of new material since his 1985 look-Ma-no-instruments album A Capella, actually produces the opposite effect – technique plus brains plus vision equals vintage Seventies Todd pop.
Ever since Something/Anything, Rundgren has diligently made records according to his own rebellious aesthetic and utopian spirituality, only intermittently exercising his ability to create lush, loving ballads and bright sing-along singles.
Admittedly, he’s made more than enough of those to fill Rhino’s new almost-two-hour-long compilation, Anthology (1968-1985). (There’s another volume dedicated to his work with the band Utopia.)
Still, Nearly Human is as deliciously retro as Rundgren has ever been, not only begging comparison to the bumper crop of radio-ready jewels on records like Something/Anything and 1978′s Hermit of Mink Hollow but harking back even further to his deep roots in sophisto-Philly soul.
Simply put, Nearly Human is the best album of classy white-brat R&B since 1973′s Abandoned Luncheonette, by Rundgren’s old homeboys Hall and Oates.
Cut au naturel in the studio with a veritable philharmonic of strings, brass and background singers (sort of Rundgren conducts the Love Unlimited Orchestra), it’s a colorful evocation of Motown dance frenzy, the light gauzy cool of Aja-period Steely Dan and the silken grandeur of Philadelphia International’s greatest hits.
It’s also dosed with an almost garage brashness in Rundgren’s distinctive vocal style, a seductive amalgam of choirboy polish, shivering shy-boy croon and strained suburban-punk testifying. Rundgren doesn’t pretend to make textbook soul; he only wants to rev up his own kind of quiet storm the old-fashioned way.
The album’s boisterous opener, “The Want of a Nail,” boasts truly righteous roots – the O’Jays or Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes could have done a real torch job on this one back in ’75. As it is, guest singer Bobby Womack pours on his own soul kerosene while Rundgren turns his white wail loose in this rousing parable about horses, shoes and the importance of details (“For the want of a nail/The world was lost”). He shows equal chutzpah when he takes on a twenty-two-voice chorale in the album’s hallelujah finale “I Love My Life,” although the “Reverend Todd” shtick in the middle drags on to minimal effect. He may be A Wizard/A True Star, but he’s no Jesse Jackson.
That’s okay, because the ballads are the real heart of the record. “Hawking” is a pensive, hesitant ode to a Higher Love in the image of the slow, meditative beauty “The Verb ‘to Love’,” on Faithful. “Feel It,” co-written by keyboardist Vince Welnick of the Tubes, is a kind of Rundgrenesque take on Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” with whispery female vocals and a come-hither chorus. And even at his most accessible, Rundgren never lapses into the predictable; he throws a couple of neat vocal-harmony curves in “The Waiting Game” and “Parallel Lines” that are as captivating as his simple, addictive melodies.
Indeed, the most extraordinary thing about Todd Rundgren’s talent for making compelling if eccentric pop is that he has no solo platinum to show for it.
THE WANT OF A NAIL
THE WAITING GAME
PARALLEL LINES
PARALLEL LINES (live with band)
PARALLEL LINES (from UP AGAINST IT soundtrack)
PARALLEL LINES (alternate live version)
(do ya get it-I love this song. and if EM happens upon this blog-it still reminds me of you!)
19 albums into his career, John Wesley Harding delivers The Sound of His Own Voice.
Now that he’s living a double life as a musician and a novelist (having published 3 books under his given name, Wesley Stace), Harding leaves his serious side on the printed page. While his tenth studio album, shows he still has a point of view and no shyness about expressing it, from a musical standpoint, this is one of his most engaging pieces of pop songcraft since he burst onto the scene with Here Comes The Groom way back in 1989.
Recorded at the Type Foundry in Portland, Oregon, the album was produced by Harding and Scott McCaughey (The Minus Five, R.E.M., Young Fresh Fellows) and mixed by Tucker Martine (My Morning Jacket, The Decemberists, Spoon).
It features the all-star King Charles Trio, whose lineup includes John Moen, Chris Funk, Jenny Conlee and Nate Query, all members of The Decemberists, Peter Buck of R.E.M. and McCaughey. Rosanne Cash, Laura Veirs and John Roderick (The Long Winters) also lend their vocal talents to the record.
The results are beautifully crafted and entertainingly eclectic, encompassing jaunty folk-rock and nervy rock & roll with R&B underpinnings. It's fitting that the album is bookended by tributes to songwriting and music, as clear that Harding is having the time of his life writing and playing on this collection. The production and arrangements are expansive without being overbearing.
Sharp words and bright and poppy music abound, his clever wordplay appearing honed by his recent literary efforts. Songs like "There's a Starbucks (Where the Starbucks Used To Be)," are irresistable, and rarely do you see a songwriter embrace vocabulary with lines like: "They're as sharp as Occam's razor/as subtle as Aquinas/They define us and refine us with their beta-query-minus."
Harding seems to have gotten better at making records now that he’s doing it as a sideline. This album is stronger in every respect than the last, and may be one of the most satisfying albums of his career.
THERE'S A STARBUCK'S (WHERE THE STARBUCK'S USED TO BE)
Etta James was hailed as the “greatest of all modern blues singers”, in the words of Atlantic Records founder Jerry Wexler. Outside the studio, James has had a turbulent life, fraught with drug addiction, bad relationships, and jail sentences.
Now 73 and dogged by illness, James says she's hanging up the mike after a career of more than 50 years.
You might expect her farewell album, The Dreamer, to demonstrate the ailing singer’s railty and weariness, a soul singer’s trip down the darkening lane that Johnny Cash trod in his later recordings.
This batch mostly of vintage R&B classics (recorded in 2008) is a raw, emotional reminder of why James endured for so long, covering most of the bases touched by her magnificence over the past 50 years.
James's voice is slightly diminished but not so much as to still not be the real deal on this chugging ensemble dominated by guitars and horns. Sometimes stately, seldom subtle, the singer remains a vivacious and strong-willed presence throughout the album.
James puts her soul stamp on everything from the simmering Cigarettes & Coffee (Otis Redding) to the hard-rocking Welcome to the Jungle (Guns N' Roses). The works of Ray Charles, Bobby "Blue" Bland, Johnny "Guitar" Watson and others get similar treatment, assuring that James won't bow out quietly
Outstanding songs include Dorothy Moore's "Misty Blue" and Bobby Bland's "Dreamer". Another highlight is a worldly, seductive take on Otis Redding’s “Cigarettes and Coffee,” as good a note as any on which to exit.
Cut to Etta James leaving a smoky blues club as dawn breaks
Moogy Klingman, a musical associate of Todd Rundgren, passed away last night after a difficult battle with cancer.
Mark "Moogy" Klingman (born 7 September 1950, in New York City, New York, USA), was a founding member of Todd Rundgren's musical team Utopia and later became a solo recording artist and songwriter.
Klingman's association with Todd Rundgren commenced in 1969. Moogy was the original keyboardist for Todd Rundgren and Utopia. In his Manhattan loft, he and Rundgren constructed the "Secret Sound" recording studio where Rundgren produced his A Wizard, A True Star, Todd, and other albums. He played on 10 Todd Rundgren albums, as well as several Utopia albums.
Klingman played live for Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Buzzy Linhart, the Allman Brothers/Gov't Mule and a summer tour with blues legend, Bo Diddley. Klingman is the co-founder of the band The Peaceniks, along with Barry Gruber.
Klingman recorded solo albums for Capitol and EMI records, as well as on his own label. Klingman has released several solo albums containing songs that went on to be recorded by people like Johnny Winter, Eric Clapton, Barry Manilow, Bette Midler, Todd Rundgren and others. He wrote the song "Dust in the Wind" (not to be confused with the hit song of the same name by Kansas), which Todd Rundgren recorded on his Something/Anything? album and Guns N' Roses have occasionally performed live in concert.
Klingman collaborated with William "Buzzy" Linhart on the authorship and composition of the selection (You Got To Have) Friends, which soon became Bette Midler's de facto theme song. He produced and played keyboards for Midler on her Songs for the New Depression.
Klingman has played, recorded and/or had his songs covered by many rock legends, including Jimi Hendrix, Chuck Berry, Luther Vandross, Bob Dylan, Bo Diddley, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Allan Woody and Warren Haynes from the Allman Brothers & Gov't Mule. Klingman has also worked with great female rockers like Carly Simon, Cindy Lauper, Shawn Colvin, Irene Cara, and Thelma Houston.
A recent benefit concert (Feb 2011) for Klingman's medical expenses due to cancer saw the original Todd Rundgren's Utopia, featuring Ralph Schuckett, Kevin Ellman, John Siegler and Klingman, reunite on stage for the first time in well over thirty years.
Unlike the iconic Ft. Wayne NJ garden store (featured in a couple of Sopranos episodes) that inspired its name, Fountains of Wayne are still very much open for business.
In fact, on their new album Sky Full of Holes, powerhouse songwriting duo Chris Collingwood and Adam Schlesinger continue their reign as pop music masters while exploring new frontiers within their unique respective songwriting aesthetics. Since 1996 they have been writing finely observed, neatly rhymed character studies set to sleekly produced pop-rock.
The album title comes from a line imagining how a 21-gun salute leaves a ''sky full of holes'' at a military funeral, in a kindly song called ''Cemetery Guns,'' a march accented by snare-drum rolls. They can still turn a pop phrase, as evidenced by a couplet like ''Let's get your phone reconnected/Let's get this room disinfected,''
FOW's music has its heart in the 1970's, a decade where the Eagles, Stealers Wheel and Nick Lowe strummed acoustic and electric guitars, repeated octaves on the piano and sang wordless vocal-harmony choruses.
Ranging from high-energy power pop to intimate, acoustic-driven ballads, Sky Full of Holes showcases the band's renowned storytelling abilities and flair for creating memorable characters in what may be FOW's most successful distillation of their musical maxims to date.
And while that sounds impressive (coming from me, anyway) and cerebral, said differently, this album is a whole lot of fun.
Twenty years ago, rock was changed forever when a little called song 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' hit radio airwaves.
This song sheared the hair off the hair bands and knocked the King of Pop off his throne.
Although this was their second album, Nevermind was their major-label debut, so Nirvana was viewed as an overnight sensation.
Issued to celebrate the platinum anniversary of it's original release, the Deluxe Edition of Nevermind is quite a comprehensive collection of songs from this era of the band.
I won't go into the songs very deeply, as everyone knows the album by now. I did not preview the whole package, since no one sent me a preview copy (ya hear that, Universal?), but I found tracks in lossless format of (ahem) questionable origin online and listened to them.
While I often do not hear the differences in remasters, I do here. The album's sound has been carefully remastered, not overdone, but sounding fresher and crisper than before. For die-hards worried about whether or not 'Endless, Nameless', the famous hidden track on the original album is present, it is, only the dead-space silence has been cut.
After the orginal album, disc one presents the B-sides tracks from each of the four singles released from the album, including live tracks. If you have the Singles box set, you already have all these, although they too have been remastered.
Disc two starts with the Smart Sessions, showcasing the band rehearsing such powerhouse songs like 'In Bloom'. The With The Lights Out box set already had released 'Pay To Play' and 'Here She Comes Now,' but completists will want the other tracks.
The disc continues with "The Boombox Rehearsals," sounding rough around the edges, but an interesting lsten into the orgins of these soon-to-be classics. The last two tracks were recorded at the BBC, including 'Something In The Way' performed electric.
So, with all that said, is it worth it?
I was not a huge fan of the band, but if you found yourself holding a vigil after Kurt Cobain died, and you don't have either the Singles or With the Lights Out box sets, I'd think you'd want to spring for this not only for the extra tracks but for the improved sound.
There is also a Super-Deluxe five-disc box set for the hard-core fans, with a DVD and extra audio discs featuring alternate album mixes, more BBC recordings, music videos and a hard-cover book. It wouldn't surprise me if there was a scratch-and-sniff Courtney Love centerfold in there!
Useless Trivia Time!
Three-month-old Spencer Elden was the little tyke showing his junk while reaching for a dollar bill on the album cover.
Elden's parents were paid just $200 for allowing him to be photographed back in 1991, and were the album released today, it would be considered kiddie porn. Add in the dollar bill, it's probably kiddie prostitution!
Elden told reporters that being the Nirvana baby has its perks. He references it when trying to pick up ladies, and was once invited to swim in a rather wealthy woman's pool.
Following is a list of the top ten selling albums of all time.
A couple surprises for me here, the first and foremost being that I thought Frampton Comes Alive would be on this list.
It's not even in the top fifty. But Britney Spears and Backstreet Boys appear in the top fifty more than once each, as do the Spice Girls and Janet Jackson.
I'm pretty sure those are signs that the Mayans are right about 2012.
Without further ado, here are the top ten...
1 Michael Jackson, Thriller (100+)
2 AC/DC, Back in Black (45+)
3 Meat Loaf, Bat Out Of Hell (43+)
4 Eagles, Their Greatest Hits (42+)
5 Dirty Dancing Soundtrack (42+)
6 The Bodyguard Soundtrack (42+)
7 The Phantom of the Opera (40+)
8 Backstreet Boys, Millennium (40+)
9 Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack (40+)
10 Fleetwood Mac, Rumours (40+)
No Beatles? No Rolling Stones?
The Bodyguard was a surprise to me, but mainly because it was released so recently that I figured the 60's and 70's icons would have too much of a head start.
The Backstreet Boys?
At least The Beatles and Led Zeppelin make the top twenty, and Bruce Springsteen has one at number 21.
Todd Rundgren did not make it-no surprise there. But he got a boatload of royalties from producing the number three album of all time, and he lives on the beach in Hawaii, so there!
Neal Morse shocked the progressive rock world by announcing his departure from the band he started, Spock’s Beard, immediately following the release of their sixth album Snow.
Neal felt a calling to make his personal faith more prominent in his recorded output and felt that this would not be possible or appropriate in a band context. And you have to give him credit for sticking to his inspiration when the band was just reaching commercial success.
In 2003, Neal Morse released his Testimony album, an epic, introspective composition which features Kerry Livgren of Kansas and Mike Portnoy of Dream Theater.
With the sequel, Testimony Two, Morse goes even deeper into unchartered musical and lyrical territory.
Legendary drummer Mike Portnoy returns, and with the help of excellent bassist, Randy George, Morse’s breathtaking follow-up is a prog epic that dazzles with melodies and lyrics that reach into the soul.
Morse gives listeners another glimpse of his personal and spiritual journey on Testimony Two, beautifully capturing the conflict he felt as he toured in a rock band by night while undergoing a spiritual transformation by day.
The conflict in the lyrics show a man who is truly struggling not only with his faith, but with his own identity, and this directness is what makes the album compelling.
This straightforward approach makes Testimony Two an album that will serve as inspiration for fans of Morse’s post-spiritual awakening work, and provide a document of his life after leaving Spock’s Beard.
By the time he recorded the eponymous Todd in 1973, Todd Rundgren had charted with such evergreen hits as “Hello It's Me," “I Saw the Light" and “We Gotta Get You a Woman," and had also been dubbed “Rock's Renaissance Man" by Rolling Stone after releasing studio masterpieces Something/Anything? and A Wizard, A True Star. Todd was a departure; the iconoclastic artist included pop ballads alongside medleys, anthems, and prog rock. The album is universally heralded as one of Rundgren's best, often compared to Electric Ladyland and Pet Sounds.
In 2010, 37 years after its original release—Rundgren performed Todd live in its entirety for the first time ever, as part a special limited six-date sold-out tour (the Healing album was also performed, which will be a subsequent stand-alone live DVD/CD release).
The September 14 date at Philadelphia's Keswick Theater, in Rundgren's hometown, was videotaped and is being released as both a live DVD by S'More Entertainment and a live audio CD by sibling RockBeat Records.
Joining him onstage were Utopia's Kasim Sulton (bass), The Cars' Greg Hawkes (keyboards), The Tubes' Prairie Prince (drums), Guitar Player Magazine's editor Jesse Gress (guitar), Bobby Strickland (sax) and a full choir. Both the DVD and CD will hit retail on February 14, 2012.
In addition to the musical performance, multiple Emmy Award-winning television personality and sportscaster Roy Firestone, whose knowledge of Rundgren's work is encyclopedic, was enlisted to conduct an extensive in-depth conversation with Rundgren onstage, which will also be packaged with the DVD.
From pop classic “A Dream Goes on Forever" to rocker “Heavy Metal Kids," from the anthemic “Sons of 1984" to the explosive Blue Eyed Soul of “The Last Ride," from the industry satire “An Elpee's Worth of Toons" to the Gilbert & Sullivan homage “The Lord Chancellor's Nightmare Song," Todd is a masterful example of Rundgren's broad musical palette.
A Wizard, A True Star, the title of Todd Rundgren's 1973 solo album, aptly sums up the contributions of this multi-faceted artist to state-of-the-art music. As a songwriter, video pioneer, producer, recording artist, computer software developer, conceptualist, and, most recently, interactive artist (re-designated TR-i), Rundgren has made a lasting impact on both the form and content of popular music.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Rundgren began playing guitar as a teenager, going on to found and front The Nazz before pursuing a solo career, and forming Utopia, combining technical virtuosity and creative passion to create music that, for millions, defined the term “progressive rock."
Rundgren's myriad production projects include albums by Patti Smith, Cheap Trick, Psychedelic Furs, Meatloaf, XTC, Grand Funk Railroad, and Hall and Oates. Rounding out his reputation as rock's Renaissance Man, Rundgren composed all the music and lyrics for Joe Papp's 1989 Off-Broadway production of Joe Orton's Up Against It (the screenplay commissioned by the Beatles for what was meant to have been their third motion picture). He also composed the score for several features including Dumb & Dumber as well as for a number of television series, including Pee-wee's Playhouse and Crime Story.
Early last year Rundgren performed his iconic 1973 album A Wizard, A True Star in concert in its entirety for the first time ever, and recently did the same with a double bill: Todd and Healing. His latest two studio albums are Todd Rundgren's Johnson, a collection of classic Robert Johnson songs, and reProduction, covers of songs Todd has produced for other artists.
S'more Entertainment, Inc. are proud purveyors of classic TV, cult films, long-form music and unique special interest programming, and Rockbeat Records is a new audio label dedicated to the release of enhanced CDs and vinyl and the creation of reissues and compilations on a variety of music genres.
Most people first heard Jill Sobule through the novelty hit "I Kissed A Girl," not the Katy Perry single, but the 1995 single about a lesbian flirtation between two suburban girlfriends which became an unlikely success thanks to a comedic video featuring beefcake male model Fabio.
In my opinion, Things Here Are Different, her debut, is still her high water mark, and not just because it was produced by a certain Rundgren fellow.
This disc is loaded with simple songs sung in an pure insightful yet childlike voice, finding a perfect foil in Todd's usually heavy-handed production style. Where he often made anyone he brought into a studio sound like a Utopia side-project, in this case he framed Jill almost perfectly.
Jill's folk-inflected compositions alternate between ironic, story-driven character studies and emotive ballads. The central themes of her lyrics are characterized on her site as "love found, love lost, love wished for and love taken away."
Songs like "Too Cool To Fall In Love," a lite piece of desire/heartache that got modest radio play at the time, are among Todd's finest moments as a producer.
Sadly, the album was not successful and Jill was dropped by MCA, but her songwriting excellence was apparent on tracks like "Living Color," "Pilar (Things Here Are Different)" and "Evian."
My personal favorite song is "Life Goes On Without You," although the whole album was excellent-everything in its place.
Jill would find some success with "I Kissed A Girl" on the self-titled follow-up from 1995, as part of the wave of female singer-songwriters signed in the mid-90's (that included Lisa Loeb, Juliana Hatfield and Alanis Morissette), but that success would be short-lived.
This one is usually pretty easy to find used (and cheap), but is well worth picking up.
