Yeah, yeah

I'm a total slacker and will not have the Soc D review up today as I haven't even started on it.  This week is kind of busy, so may not have it up by Thursday.  Will try not to make a habit of this.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced

Every so often I actually forget just how much I love Hendrix. I don't listen to commercial radio any more, so there's no constant exposure to the regular classic rock staples that formed my musical tastes; it also doesn't help that commercial radio doesn't really play any of them any more. Because of this, whenever I get the urge to go and listen to The Experience, it's always a treat to get reacquainted with Jimi's brilliance.

Hendrix first made it big in the UK in 1966. Ex-Animals bassist Chas Chandler brought Hendrix over after seeing him perform in Greenwich Village, NYC, with the intent of managing and producing the guitarist as part of a new act. Teamed with drummer Mitch Mitchell and guitarist-turned bassist Noel Redding, the Jimi Hendrix Experience recorded and released their first single, "Hey Joe" in December. As the single hit the charts in January 1967, others followed and the band began cutting their debut album.

Are You Experienced US Cover

Released on May 12 of that magical year of 1967 among the bold new experimentation of established bands like the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and amidst the first steps of future giants like the Pink Floyd, Are You Experienced might easily have been lost in the psychedelic swirl of that year's competing new music. Rather, this sonic reinvention of blues-based rock, along with the band's memorable live performances, served to cement the group's--and more specifically Hendrix's--place in the pantheon of rock legends.

As we delve into the album, I'm afraid I must make a confession, first. I do not particularly like the first track off the US edition of this album, "Purple Haze." I know, shocking, right? Probably the single most well-known of Hendrix's songs and I'm not a fan of it, and I really don't know why. Musically and thematically it's not really any different from the rest of the album. Maybe it's the overexposure or the fact that it focuses a little too much on the guitar tricks and not what the Experience could do as a trio. Or maybe it's that goddamn mondegreen, which despite the fact that Hendrix used to use it in concert himself, stopped being funny circa 1975. Regardless, every time I hear it I just want to move on to the good stuff.

Which we immediately get on the following track. "Manic Depression" is a prime example of just how tight this outfit could be. Noel Redding's bass line anchors the song with Hendrix's guitar nearly indistinguishable from it at first, and Mitch Mitchell beating around it, both of them building up to more free-form playing as the song goes on. This is kind of the core method for the group; Redding, as a the time keeper for Hendrix's more experimental guitar and Mitchel''s free-form, almost jazz-based drumming. While this relationship eventually led to Redding's disillusionment and departure from the band, it really did work and work fantastically.

The other notable element of this song is Jimi's vocal tempo. He has a unique, soulful delivery rooted in his blues background that, while melodic, occasionally has a very odd delivery to it. Lyrics split in half into sung and spoken sections, some even as an after thought. His pacing is also reminiscent of Dylan's, breaks between words and syllables that you just don't get from anyone else. It's part of the Hendrix package, which borrows from many different sources and spins it all together into something unique.

We see the another major component of his delivery style in "Hey Joe," the aforementioned first single from the Experience, one of the album's slower, bluesier tracks. Featuring the "question and answer" format, Hendrix comes off conversational on the song, at times quite bemused. His sense of humor was well-known and often quite evident in his music.

But Hendrix also shows a deeply sensitive and often spiritual side in his lyrics. Despite the copious amounts of mood-altering drugs and alcohol he was known for consuming, I'm personally of the opinion that it was not necessarily a major component of creating the music itself. Already gifted with talent and imagination, Hendrix often cited his dreams rather than any drug experience for his inspiration. And often his lyrics are a quite sobering introspection. The slow, moody "May This Be Love" with its beautiful slow rolling drums from Mitchell, speaks of love giving personal strength. The existential "I Don't Live Today," contains what may be Hendrix's most eeirly prophetic lyric in "Will I live tomorrow? Well I just can't say," considering the fact he was dead at 27.

Probably the most beautiful song on the album follows these two. "The Wind Cries Mary," is 3:21 of pure emotional bliss. It's amazingly restrained compared to the rest of the album but it finds its strength in not being a wailing, feedback-laden heavy rock track. The lyrics are magnificent in their Dylan-esque imagery. I could almost expect them to have come straight off Highway 61 Revisited. Coupled with the equally magnificent "Little Wing" off Axis: Bold As Love, this is my favorite look into Jimi's more soulful side.

We punch it up again with Redding's bass thumping its way through the tongue-in-cheek "Fire," featuring more of Jimi's energetic solo guitar, before moving on to the jazz-influenced jam session of "3rd Stone From the Sun." Probably the most free-form song on the album, it's a precursor to some of the longer works on the Experience's final album Electric Ladyland. But as free-form as the song is, the band still operates as a unit, once more with Noel Redding's solid bass time-keeping giving Hendrix and Mitchel something to work around until the song's feedback-laden conclusion.

"Foxy Lady" is, much like "Purple Haze," one of the band's song's I'm not too enamored with. In this case I think it's more the start-stop chord work that Hendrix uses, as well as the over exposure of the song. It is notable, however, for its use of feedback in the beginning and toward the end of the song. It is a well-used, well-controlled feedback and not a straight-up ear-splitting screech, showing just what he could use a guitar for beyond its traditional sound.

Likewise, the final track on the US version is in itself a journey in sonic experimentation. Artists had used back masking, that is reverse tape effects, prior to this point but primarily for vocals and a few instrumentals (as on the Beatles Revolver) but not nearly to the extent as seen in "Are You Experienced?" The entire song, asking one to step beyond their comfort zone, alternates between forward and backward guitar and drums with Redding's bass anchor seemingly the only constant. It's distinctive and makes for one of the most unmistakable intros ever in music.

Later editions of the album, possible through the advent of the Compact Disc, include those tracks from the UK edition that were not present on the US pressing, usually in the form of bonus tracks. These include the rollicking "Stone Free," and the delta blues-based "Red House."

Rarely will you find such an Earth-shattering debut as Are You Experienced. Taking a little of what had been done before, Jimi and the Experience redefined what music was and could be. The band's influence was felt as early as the end of 1967, for instance, with the release of the Eric Clapton-Jack Bruce-Ginger Baker supergroup Cream's second album, Disraeli Gears. Helping to pioneer the power-trio format in rock, their initial work was more traditional British interpretation of American rhythm and blues. But after the release of Are You Experienced, Cream, whom Hendrix had jammed with in fall of '66, took a definitely more psychedelic and experimental bent. The Jimi Hendrix Experience had arrived, and nothing would ever be the same again.

Next time, we set the Way Back Machine for 1990, and SoCal punk outfit Social Distortion's self-titled major label debut.

Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die

John Barleycorn Must Die represents a second coming for Traffic. Disbanded a few months after the second departure of guitarist Dave Mason in 1969, the group may not have come back together were it not for the collapse of the Steve Winwood-Eric Clapton supergroup, Blind Faith. Subsequently, Winwood laid down a few tracks for a prospective solo project, produced by the eventually legendary Guy Stevens and titled Mad Shadows. Winwood, wishing to work with more like-minded musicians, parted company with Steven and invited drummer Jim Capaldi and wind instrumentalist Chris Wood to join him in the studio. Thus was Traffic reborn.

The album resembles in many ways the tracks on the group's eponymous second album that were written without the involvement of Dave Mason, reflecting Winwood, Capaldi, and Wood's interest in mixing more traditional jazz with rock, rather than the bluesier and more psychedelic rock of Mason's direction. In fact, the album is quite remarkable due to an utter lack of guitar for the first three tracks. Propelled by the piano and Hammond organ of the multi-instrumentalist Winwood, John Barleycorn opens with the instrumental track "Glad." Immediately, each member of the group gets to establish themselves and their roles in the group clearly and in a most spirited manner.

There's a lot of overdubbing on John Barleycorn, a necessity considering Winwood's playing sometimes as many as three instruments on a track, plus providing vocals. His lyrics are serviceable but not particularly memorable, but Winwood's voice definitely is. Coming from the British R&B scene, which he joined at an early age as the vocalist for the Spencer Davis group, Winwood's voice is melodic and soulful, skillfully woven through the jazz-inspired noodlings of much of the album.

Despite the almost free-form jamming of the first three tracks of the album, it rarely loses focus. Winwood and Wood often play their melodies around each other, but it's Capaldi's steady, perky percussion that gives them an anchor. These are clearly three musicians who are comfortable working with each other and know what each is capable of; perhaps this is the reason why Winwood decided to turn his solo foray into a full-blown Traffic project.

Remember I said there's no guitar on the first three tracks of the album? Well, it finally returns at the midpoint of the album, but even here it's still nowhere near as prevalent as one might expect on what is ostensibly a rock album from 1970. On "Stranger to Himself," the only one of the Guy Stevens-produced songs on the original album, the guitar serves mostly as a counterpoint to Winwood's piano. It's a similar sound on the album closer, "Every Mother's Son," though it is stronger at points. The longer song's much more instrumentally complex, with the return of the Hammond. It dominates the middle of the album, with the guitar and piano blended seemlessly in the background. Oddly, Chris Wood is entirely absent from this track as his sax or flute is prominent on most of the rest of the album. Even so, it fits musically with most of John Barleycorn, save the preceding track.

"John Barleycorn" is as much of a departure from the rest of the album as the album itself is from the psychedelia-influenced days of Mr. Fantasy, the band's first album. It's a striking arrangement of a traditional English folk song. Often, because of it, John Barleycorn Must Die is categorized as a folk-rock album, something I take issue with because it's not a folk rock album. It's a jazz-fusion progressive rock album that just happens to feature a folk song. But it's such a prominent song in Traffic's category, and with good reason.

A personification of the barley crop, the song tells of how the titular John Barleycorn suffers indignity and death, yet in doing so provides both a necessary staple and luxury for medieval English life. A few versions cite the cruel treatment as revenge for being laid low by drink created from barley, but in the arrangement used by Traffic, it is John Barleycorn who has his revenge upon those who had tortured and killed him, as he "proved the strongest man at last."

I'll admit, I bought the album primarily for this song, as "John Barleycorn" has long been one of my favorite Traffic songs. As much as I love the musical complexity of the rest of the album, I can't get over how starkly different this track is in its minimalism. Probably the most complex thing on it is Winwood and Capaldi's harmony; the acoustic guitar is not overly complex, the only percussion is Capaldi's tambourine, and Winwood's otherwise omnipresent piano now fulfills the same counterpoint to the guitar that the it had been served by on other songs. Accentuating this is Wood's trilling flute. You can almost see the three of them sitting around a fire out in the English countryside performing this for the very farmers and millers about to subject John Barleycorn to his indignities. I hesitate to use the word "haunting," but it really is to a degree, almost performed as a funeral dirge. By comparison, the folk-rock outfit Fairport Convention does it as a much more upbeat drinking song, Jethro Tull does it well as, well, a Jethro Tull song. Traffic's version is certainly one of the better known.

My copy of the album is the 2001 US re-release that includes two additional tracks, "I Just Want You to Know" and "Sittin' Here Thinkin' of My Love," the only track from the Mad Shadows sessions to not be released on the original album. Both fit thematically and musically with the rest of the album. Unfortunately, the US re-release got shorted a few live tracks recorded in November of 1970 at the Filmore East.

And here we come to the end of another review. Join me next time as I stay in the days of crushed velvet jackets, frilly shirts, and bell-bottom trousers as I take a look at the earth-shattering debut of The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Are You Experienced.

The Pogues - Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash

For our first review, we're going to look at The Pogues' seminal 1985 release Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash. Produced by none other than Elvis Costello, Rum Sodomy put The Pogues on the map as the pioneering band of the Irish punk-folk movement.

Géricault's Raft of the Medusa featuring The Pogues

I've known about The Pogues for a few years; listening to bands like Flogging Molly it's almost impossible not to at least hear about the band that first fused Irish traditional music with a punk mentality. Somehow, I'd never managed to actually give them a full listen until just this year when I finally crossed Rum Sodomy off my "why don't I own this yet" list. Truth to tell, I wasn't exactly certain what to expect. So I was a little surprised when to hear a more traditional-inspired album than a three chord angry punk album with some pipes and a fiddle overlaid.

Surprised, but not unpleasantly so. I found an album much more grounded in traditional Irish music--though some traditional Irish folk musicians of the time, such as the titular subject of "Planxty Noel Hill" from the Poguetry in Motion EP, felt what the band was doing was an affront to "pure" Irish folk. It's largely an acoustic album, driven by Jem Finer's banjo and James Fearnly's sometimes mournful accordion. Spider Stacey's pipes provide lively counterpoint, with the rhythm section of Cait O'Riordan (who provides haunting vocals on "I'm a Man You Don't Meet Every Day," one of the album's three traditional covers) and Andrew Rankin keeping them grounded.

Leading the pack, of course, is Shane MacGowan. Long known for his self-destructive behavior, MacGowan tears through the vocals on Rum Sodomy with a voice that could grind glass, much in the tradition of the late Ronnie Drew of the Dubliners, whom The Pogues would later collaborate with in a few television appearances and recorded singles. His delivery is a frenetic staccato that he manages to slow down into a powerful, solemn delivery in several songs whose brutal, sobering lyrics require that sobering tone.  He even manages a hilarious falsetto on "The Gentleman Soldier."

MacGowan is the primary lyricist on Rum Sodomy, writing all five of the non-instrumental original songs on the album. This would change over the next few albums he did with the group, but for now it's his gutter prose that dominates. Listening, one might think that he's preoccupied with drinking. No surprise given the stories about the binges the band went on while recording the album. But the real theme that's consistent throughout the entire album is death. Yes, from the drunken star of "The Sick Bed of Culchulainn," who literally drinks himself to death (though he leaps out of his coffin at the end demanding further libation) to the lost and battered soul of "The Old Main Drag," who has given up everything to the seedy underside of London and longs for release. From where the narrator of "A Pair of Brown Eyes" first sees them amidst the death and destruction around him to the whimsical end of Billy in "Billy's Bones," death surrounds on the album.

Even the traditional arrangements and the covers deal with death and dying, dead and buried workers in "Navigator," the raucous, country-influenced "Jesse James," and the soberly delivered "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda," Eric Bogle's scathing critique of war and its aftermath. MacGowan is at his mournful best on this song in particular, singing with enough real bitterness that you'd almost believe he was narrating from personal experience. This, along with "The Old Main Drag" are the most sobering and brutal of all the songs on the album; tales of wasted life and lost youth. The realism is a welcome change from much of the other music of the time, equally depressing but without the "I'm so sad, so so sad, so please pity me" attitude of much of the alterno-pop of the day.

But it's not all bleak. Despite the heavy subject matter much of the album is very upbeat in tempo, and the arrangement of the tracks usually gives you little time to dwell on the sorrow, the band's dragging you off on another drunken adventure. Much like the history of Ireland itself, the pain and sorrow and brutal reality are part of a greater tapestry giving a rich musical experience.

Curiously, despite the extent to which the album is rooted in traditional Irish music, there's not a whole lot of actual subject matter dealing with Ireland or the Irish experience. Even the traditional and cover songs deal very little with Irish identity, something that's touched upon to a much greater extent in The Pogues' 1988 release, If I should Fall From Grace With God, a somewhat more musically diverse album. Not that this is a drawback for Rum Sodomy, as it shows that Irish-influenced music doesn't need to rely specifically on national identity, or the notion of the "Paddy" persona.

It's hard to determine if Rum Sodomy is my favorite Pogues album--that honor might have to go to the aforementioned Grace With God. But Rum Sodomy was my first real exposure to The Pogues and an even deeper connection to what can be done with Irish music and a punk attitude. I once said to a friend, half in jest, that discovering The Pogues was like finding religion. But the more I think about it, it's probably pretty close to the truth.

Just a few final notes. This version of the album is the 2004 re-release which includes a few bonus tracks and the entirety of the Poguetry in Motion EP that was released in 1986. Among the notable tracks are "A Pistol for Paddy Garcia," which sounds like an Ennio Morricone spaghetti western track by way of Dublin, and "Body of an American," which actually does speak in part to the Irish-American experience, and has been featured in a number of episodes of HBO's The Wire.

Well, that's number one down. Not sure if I know what I'm doing yet but what the hell. Next up, I dip back into my progressive past for Traffic's fourth effort, John Barleycorn Must Die.

Is this thing on?

Hi there, and welcome to the first post on "Half a Page of Scribbled Lines."  You can tell a review blog is off to a great start when the blogger can't think of how to phrase the reason for this thing's existance.  Put it simply, I'm challenging myself to put up at least one album review a week.  Subjects will be chosen more or less at random from my personal collection; I may take requests but only if I happen to have that album in my collection or the requester is willing to provide me with a copy.  I also reserve the right to refuse reviewing anything I personally would not listen to.

I'll also try and provide some trivia and background about the artist and the album, and perhaps some personal anecdotes regarding the same.  I think this could be a fun little exercise and hope to keep at it.  First up on the review block will be The Pogues' seminal album Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash, the album that sent me on a binge of Irish punk and folk-punk this year.  This should hopefully be up no later than next Wednesday.  See you in seven!