Month: December 2006

Bootleg Country: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – Las Vegas, NV (10/28/06)

Originally written in December of 2006. Sadly we’ve since lost Petty which only makes this article sadder.

In his 30-year career, Tom Petty has sold more than 50 million albums, received three Grammy awards, a Golden Note award, the Gershwin Award For Lifetime Musical Achievement, and been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So why doesn’t he seem to get more respect?

To me, it stems from his ability to continually knock out solid albums in a steady fashion for all those years. Every couple of years, Petty puts out an album full of solidly good, if not great material. There are usually a couple of standout hits in each, but no album really rises above the rest. Think about it. Is there one Petty album that you would consider to be an absolute classic? What is his Revolver? Or Dark Side of the Moon? Or Blonde on Blonde? No, in my ever so humble opinion, none of his albums quite make it to that genius level.

Petty’s career has remained relatively stable over the last three decades as well. He continues to put out solid albums, record hit songs, and take his band on the road. There haven’t been any giant breakdowns or burnouts. He hasn’t even faded away. No, there has always been a Tom Petty making good songs and churning out classic rock. Where almost all of your great rock bands have all died by one means or another, Petty has remained one of the few rockers to keep truckin’.

I think by continually putting out good, not great albums so steadily it is easy for the casual fan to overlook Petty’s achievement. Without one brilliant album to cling to, his dozen really good ones get overlooked. By never leaving our presence, it’s easy to sort of forget about how remarkable his career really is.

10/28/06
Double Down Stage
Vegoose Music Festival
Las Vegas, NV

You can grab the show here.

One of the great things about Tom Petty’s long career is that he can play a different set list almost every night and still sprinkle it heavily with hit songs. For this performance, he performs half a dozen of his hit singles while mixing in songs from his newest album, Highway Companion, slightly obscure older songs, and a few BB King covers.

The Heartbreakers never veer far from the original versions of the songs, but perform with the vibrant energy only found at live concerts. Occasionally there is an extended guitar solo, but it never wanders far from the song’s melody and always ends way too quickly for these ears. Mike Campbell proves over and over that while he may never make it to any top lists of greatest guitarist lists, he is more than capable of producing sweet licks and charbroiled sounds.

This is a pretty decent audience recording, and as such there is a good blend of the band playing and the audience enjoying the show. The band mixes are a little muddled, so this is nothing to put on your A-list shelf, but the audience is so exuberant and excited in their response and sing-along that I find myself getting swept away in it all. When the light is just right, I close my eyes and almost feel like I’m right there.

Tom Petty may never find the diehard fanship of The Beatles, Dylan, or The Dead, but by continually writing good songs and putting on shows like this, he’s proven to be one of the most steady and long-lasting performers in rock and roll. Not a bad epitaph to have in the end.

Frankenstein Meets The Wolfman (1943)

frankenstein meets the wolfman poster

I’d like to say that I grew up going to the Midnight Movies and staying up to watch the old Universal horror movies on television. I’d like to say that, but I can’t because, well, because it simply isn’t true. I grew up watching movies from my generation, the 80’s, and that means the Goonies, Gremlins, Ghoulies, and others that don’t start with the letter “G.’ It has only been recently that I have dipped into the classics of horror and began watching them.

There has been a recent spat of high-quality DVD releases of the mainstays of the franchise – Dracula, Frankenstein, and the Wolfman – and I’ve filled my till with the magic, the brilliance that is those films. So, it was with pleasure that I recently found a VHS copy of Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman.

To say this is a great movie would be missing the point and make me think you were delusional. It’s far from anything anyone ought to call great, but it’s still a pretty fun bit of horror history.

The title is a little misleading – well not technically so since Frankenstein does in fact meet the Wolfman – but a picture like this makes one think they will either be locked in mortal combat for the entirety of the picture or team up to destroy some other force, like Dracula for instance.

More to the point it is something of a character study for the Wolfman as he is awakened from his grave and has to come to terms with his moonlight alter-ego. It is late in the film when he manages to come across Frankenstein’s castle and a frozen monster inside. The monster is awakened and wreaks havoc before coming to a not all too engrossing close.

The film has a good atmosphere and the sets are marvelous, but it never gets fully off the ground. There just doesn’t seem to be enough plot to keep the story moving, as it often plunges into a dulldrom.

Definitely worth checking out for classic horror fans, but not the first place to stop.

Rabid (1977)

rabid movie poster

Going to the video store with my wife is an interesting endeavor, as we have rather divergent tastes in movies. I have recently developed a devout love for all things Japanese and Italian horror, while my wife prefers obscure French cinema. This usually means that we spend way too much time wandering around the store looking for something we both can agree on until one of us gives up, and the other gets what they want.

I recently won out and settled on the 1977 Canadian horror picture, Rabid, starring adult film icon Marilyn Chambers and directed by David Cronenberg.

The second part of our video renting dilemma is actually watching the films we choose. My wife always complains that I never let her watch the videos she gets from the library (which is true for she gets rather dull-looking French films and horrible BBC series adapted from weepy women’s literature.) And I complain that she never lets me watch my gory, bloody zombie flicks (which is also true, because she doesn’t let me watch them.)

When we actually manage to find something we can agree on (usually classic American films) we make a cozy evening of it, otherwise we have to wait until the other one is either at work or back at the computer engulfed in something else.

Luck struck me twice and I was able to watch the aforementioned Cronenberg flick while the wife worked on her dissertation.

It is one of Cronenberg’s first pictures made strictly for the cinema and a rather low-budget affair but not without its merit.

The film begins with Rose (Marilyn Chambers) and Hart (Frank Moore) taking off on a motorcycle trip only to have a serious collision with a stalled van out on the highway. The two are taken to a plastic surgery clinic due to them being miles away from the nearest hospital in Montreal. Hart is merely banged up, but Rose is in serious condition.

Dr. Keloid (Howard Ryshpan) decides to perform an experimental skin graph on Rose and the surgery seems to go well, but Rose is left in a coma for many weeks. When she finally comes out of it, she feels very strange, and very cold and has what has to be the oddest placed film mutations ever – a small, Alien-esque spike that sprouts out of a very vagina-looking hole in her arm pit.

Rose then begins going around hugging her victims in order that the underarm-spike thing can stab them and suck their blood. These victims then mutate themselves into rabid zombies biting and infecting others until they slip into a coma and die.

It’s all fairly silly, but Cronenberg proves himself very capable of turning it into a pretty thrilling, if not particularly cinematic, piece of film. It is definitely a Cronenberg film too as it all moves fairly slowly, is filled with some very deliberate camera work, and makes a few social observations about plastic surgery amongst all the blood and death making.

Marilyn Chambers proves a very capable actress coming into her first non-porn role. Though after this she slipped right back into porn. Even here, though she has to do some actual acting, there is an abundance of boob shots. I swore I would never complain about naked boobies, and I shan’t here even though they are as bountiful as they are gratuitous and cause continuity problems galore.

The rabid zombies plague Montreal until martial law is declared and poor Hart realizes that Rose is the cause of it all leading to a not-so-happy ending.

This isn’t Shakespeare, nor even a big-budgeted Michael Bay picture, but Cronenberg manages to create something interesting and well made despite his obvious budget limitations. It is obviously influenced by Night of the Living Dead and an influence on films such as 28 Days Later. Certainly, a picture to see by Cronenberg fans and horror-philes alike.

Lucinda Williams – Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, Deluxe Edition

car wheels on a gravel road

I’ve mentioned before that Lucinda William’s Car Wheels On A Gravel Road is one of my all-time favorite albums. It stands to be mentioned again.

Car Wheels On A Gravel Road is one of my all-time favorite albums.

It’s a nearly perfect record. It’s full of sadness and heartache, and longing and lust In my review of the alternate version of Car Wheels I mentioned that I once included “Jackson” onto a mix tape I made for my wife long before she was anything but a friend. What I failed to mention was that I long contemplated putting “Right In Time” on there instead.

“Right In Time,” you see, is all about the singer missing her lover deeply, so much so that she turns off the lights, lies down, and does things that I was ultimately not so sure would turn my friend into the sort of girl I was interested in. Oh sure maybe she’d dig it and get the picture and moan awhile with me, but more than likely she’d take such an overt statement of lust into offensiveness and I’d be left all alone, on my own to moan.

Wisdom got the better of me and I chose the sad song instead of the sex song and years later I’m still happily married to that woman.

It is an album full of love, broken lovers, longing, and lust. From the opening song’s lustful longing to the tragic tale of a woman moving on in “Jackson,” it is an album full of dusty back roads, run-down juke joints, and the untold stories of America.

The good people at Lost Highway have seen fit to release Car Wheels in a two-disk Deluxe Edition full of all sorts of bells and whistles. The whole thing has been re-mastered and it sounds full and crisp and beautiful.

They’ve also included three additional songs to the first disk to add to your enjoyment. “Down the Big Road Blues” is a classic blues number and Lucinda sings it like a pro. She hasn’t belted out this kind of hard-core blues since her first album. “Out of Touch” is a full-on weeper that was later included on her follow-up album, Essence. Also included is an alternate version of “Still I Long For Your Kiss,” which you might recognize from the film Horse Whisperer.

For fans, the real treat is the second disk which includes a full live performance for the WXPN World Café radio show. It’s a spirited performance featuring most of the Car Wheels album, plus a handful of older tracks.

For those unacquainted with Lucinda, this is the perfect place to start – you get her finest album in pristine form and some live tracks to round out her older material. For fans, not only do you get a fresh re-master of Car Wheels, plus a few bonus songs but a full disk of unreleased live material.

Lucinda Williams – Alternative Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

Put me on a desert island, make me create a top 10 list, ask me what I’m going to grab while leaping from a fire and you’ll come up with the same answer: Car Wheels On A Gravel Road. It’s right up there in my favorite, all-time anything. Heck, it practically caused my wife to fall in love with me.

Back before my wife was my wife before she was my girlfriend even, we were pals with a predilection for long-distance flirting. I decided to make her a mix tape (for what girl doesn’t love a mix tape?) and included the song “Jackson” from this very Lucinda album we’re discussing. That may seem an odd choice of songs to make a girl like a person, what with the lyrics about not missing the listener when she’s gone, and I suppose it is a little odd. The thing was, there was quite a bit of distance between us at the time and plenty of travel, and anyone can tell that, though the lyrics tell otherwise, the singer is full of nothing but heartbreaking longing.

That mix tape turned out to be the first nudge of the girl who would become my girlfriend who would then become my wife towards becoming all those things. From that one song, she went off and bought other Lucinda Williams albums and has been a fan ever since.

I suspect Car Wheels is an album with a million stories just like that.

The story of the album goes that the record that actually hit the shelves as Car Wheels On A Gravel Road was, in fact, the second version of the album made. It seems, ever the perfectionist, Lucinda recorded the album with Gurf Morlix, but after a few listens scrapped the whole thing and started completely over. Luckily the master tapes for those original sessions were kept and have been making rounds through bootleg circles ever since.

With the re-release of the final version of Car Wheels on a Gravel Road in a two-disk expansion set, I thought I’d visit the original sessions. (And sorry, dear readers, I do not have a copy of this bootleg available to download right now).

While I still have to claim the official album as my favorite version, what landed on the cutting room floor is pretty dang good. I’m really quite surprised she scrapped it in the first place. I’ve paid good money for albums that didn’t sound half this good.

It’s not, in actuality, all that different from what did find its way to the record store shelves. The basic outline for all the songs is here in the original version. The melodies and lyrics are almost identical. The main differences lie in the instrumentation and Lucinda’s vocal delivery.

Where the original version relied heavily on the acoustic guitar, the official version replaces the softer acoustic with the bluesier electric guitar. Lucinda’s vocals are much softer here as well. She sings more straightforwardly, without tons of emotion. It’s a good performance but carries little of the sweat-drenched heartache of the final version.

This is no more apparent than on “Jackson.” The final version is stark in its simplicity and is completely heartbreaking. She sings with such longing that it’s difficult to not fall on your knees weeping after hearing it. Yet in its original form, it’s a much lighter number filled with a fiddle and a two-stepping backbeat. It’s still a beautiful, lovely thing, but completely different in its emotional effect.

“Joy” is the only song that manages to take a completely different turn. Instead of soft acoustics and honky-tonk it throws a curve ball and manages to come out more like snarling funk. It starts with a rolling snake groove and builds into a growl. At just over seven minutes in length, it is the loosest song she’s ever recorded and contains one of the strongest grooves.

There are two additional songs here that didn’t make the final cut on the official version: “Out of Touch,” a Lucinda Williams weeper that found its final resting place in her follow-up album Essence, and “Down the Big Road Blues,” a classic cover song performed like an old Delta bluesman.

It really is a wonderful album in its own right, and though I have to agree with her final decision to recut the entire album, I’m still kind of amazed at what didn’t make it. It’s an incredibly interesting slice of history and some dang fine music for your ears.

The Beatles – Love

the beatles love

Originally written on December 05, 2006

Sir George Martin, working in conjunction with the Cirque de Soleil has recently released Love, a sort of remix Beatles cover album for the famed theatrical group. It has the full support of the surviving Beatles and the estates of John Lennon and George Harrison.

It’s a bit like any cover album in that it is full of both the old and new and comes out as both brilliant and redundant. The old and the redundant come out of it being the Beatles songs with the Beatle’s voices and mainly the Beatle’s own playing. The new and brilliant are all in the arrangement and mix.

It’s all the same songs except that some of them have been slowed down a bit, and Sir George has taken various snippets and moments and slipped them into other songs brilliantly. He’s also added a little bit of his own orchestration to smooth it all out.

It is completely enjoyable to listen to, and quite a treat to hear how it all pieces together. But after a couple of listens, it all seems a little unnecessary. I keep saying to myself, ‘I have these songs already,’ and it seems rather pointless to have yet another grouping of them. To my ears, the novelty runs off pretty quickly and expect I’ll find myself reaching more for the originals more than I’ll ever be listening to this over and over.