"Mountain Music" by Alabama (1982)

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Filed between:  Aerosmith and The Allman Brothers.

Key Tracks:
Mountain Music, Close Enough to Perfect, Take Me Down

Obvious Filler & Swings-and-Misses:
Green River is the definition of filler.  It's a note-for-note cover of an already well known song delivered like bad karaoke by someone who's not even the band's primary singer.  It feels like everybody gets a go at their own special song on "Mountain Music" and it never works.  Which leads us to Never Be One.  That thing has so many abysmal lines that I thought I was going to scratch the record because I kept lifting the needle mid-song.  Unfortunately, it still plays fine.  You Turn Me On doesn't turn me on.  Gonna Have a Party is a swing-and-a-miss.  it wants to be a good-time sing-a-long, but it never makes it there.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Above average (2.5/4 stars).  It's really feast or famine with the tracks - their either pretty good to great or they're REALLY bad.  There is no middle ground here.

Steamers from Never Be One:
-"We sang you to sleep with the birthday song."  Probably actually happened.  Don't care.
-"You'll never be one again.  The two's are tumbling in."  Runaway two's!!!  Tumbling toward us at twelve o' clock!!!
-"Kermie the frog sits watching it all."  Gotta watch that copyright infringement.
-"Soon your legs will grow and make the tricycle go and take you away from us all."  By the way, that line immediately follows the quote above it in the song.
- [Spoken.] "Goodnight, Daddy."  How you gonna be sayin' that if you only one year old?

Finally, we break away from the world of rock for some "back-home, come-on music" as Randy Owen puts it on the title track.

Or do we?

(Here's a hint: I've already mentioned the CCR cover.)

Alabama is about as country as Garth Brooks.  With Tracks Like Close Enough to Perfect and Take Me Down, "Mountain Music" skews closer to adult contemporary than anything else.  The actual song Mountain Music is the only time they even pretend to be country - and they don't pretend that hard.

Other tracks draw from movements like prog (Words at Twenty Paces) and disco (Take Me Down).  To be fair, the country-disco barrier (yes, I really did just write that phrase) had already been broken a few years earlier with Exile's Kiss You All Over.  Conveniently, J.P. Pennington co-wrote both songs.  I often wonder how huge Exile might have been if he had kept all his songs for his own band.  Instead, it ended up as just a footnote in an Adam Sandler movie and playing free shows on the courthouse steps of small towns.

But back to Alabama.  The guitar solo in Close Enough to Perfect is a spot-on Skynyrd impersonation.  Lovin' You Is Killin' Me also borrows to the point of stealing - it appropriates Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting's riff almost verbatim.  Several tracks are Eagles wannabes.

Basically, "Mountain Music" leans heavily on popular music from the mid-seventies.  That should be odd for an LP released in 1982, but that is the way of country music.  Nashville has always looked five to ten years into the past for whatever it determines is "the new sound" of country.  Apparently, that's how long it takes good, salt-of-the-earth country folk to accept things they were patently opposed to before, as long as it's repackaged with twang and fiddles - or so Music City would have us believe.

So, is it an album? 
No.  It come close, despite all its issues, but it ends up trying to be too many things.

Up next, "Growing Up in Public" by Lou Reed.  I've never heard anything off of this record before, so I can't make any predictions whatsoever - especially considering the artist.  Ah, the joy of discovery... I hope.  Actually, I just hope it's not another "Metal Machine Music" or "Lulu."

"The Doors" by The Doors (1967)

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Fun Fact: Val Kilmer can kiss my ass.

Filed between: Donovan and Dave Dudley.

Key Tracks Track Listing:
Break on Through, Soul Kitchen, The Crystal Ship, Twentieth Century Fox, Alabama Song (Whiskey Bar), Light My Fire, Back Door Man, I Looked at You, End of the Night, Take It as It Comes, The End

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
REQUIRED LISTENING (4/4 stars.)  Seriously, if you haven't heard every song on this record, you owe it to yourself to check them out.

"Can you picture what will be - so limitless and free?"

This time around, I’m gonna be that guy.  We all know that guy – the unapologetic, diehardcore superfan who is so into a band that he drives you crazy – and we all hate him.  Granted, I’m not as much of a that guy as some people I have met.  I don’t hold a séance on Jim’s birthday every Halloween to try and raise his spirit.  (That’s not even his real birthday anyway.)  I don’t use the word “shaman” every time I mention Morrison.  And I don’t buy into all that “doors of perception” malarkey.  But I do love this band deeply.  Me and this band go way back.

Our town had three radio stations when I was a kid – classic country, pop and oldies.  My dad always kept it dialed in to the oldies, so I’ve been listening to The Doors since before I can remember.

Then (as a surefire way to get anyone into something), I was warned away from The Doors.  Our pastor delivered a sermon once about the perils of rock and roll in which he lambasted Hello, I Love You for its free love implications.  I find it laughable now that he singled out one of the band’s most innocuous songs.  If he had dug a little deeper, he would have discovered Morrison’s penchant for provocative subject matter that ranged from oral sex to Oedipal fetishism to his own genetalia.

And then my cousin burned me a copy of the greatest hits.  I heard long, weird, crazy songs that dwelled in dark cellar corners – out of the sunlight of radio.  I played that thing to death.  So much so, that whenever I hear Break on Through on the radio I expect Light My Fire to immediately follow and then the rest of disc one to play in its entirety.  But it never does because it is a sad, sad world in which we live.

And as that guy, let me just say…

First of all - yeah, I bought his book of poems - both of 'em.  Piss off.

Secondly, kudos to Elektra for never pushing I Looked at You or Take It as It Comes as singles.  They’re both good songs, but they’re very un-Doors-like and they’re exactly the surfer-stoner-hippy tripe that was dominating the airwaves at the time.

Thirdly, it takes great stones (and also speaks volumes about the band) to cover songs written by both Bertolt Brecht (Alabama Song) and Big Willie Dixon (Back Door Man) on a debut album – not to mention appropriating a line from William Blake and lifting the band name from Aldous Huxley.  And The Doors were all about stones.  In fact, they seem like the band The Stones wanted to be in 1967 – top-40 driven with a distinct underscore of legitimate danger.  But where The Stones sometimes felt like they were pushing the look-how-real-we-are mentality, The Doors seemed to slide on that grittiness like a well-worn glove.

Lastly, I want to expressly state that I have never tried hallucinogens or psychedelic drugs, but from what I’ve heard it sounds exactly like the experience I have every time I lose my self in any Doors’ record.  I used to believe in Emerson’s transcendental current absolutely.  Sometimes, I wish I still did.  But I do still catch murky reflections of it in certain music.  And it always happens during The End.  That song is pure transcendence.   You can’t listen to it shuffled on your iPod.  You can’t listen to it on the radio.  You have to listen to it like it was allegedly recorded – in a dark, quiet place with a single candle burning.  It may take a few tries.  It may take a LOT of tries.  But it’s worth it, I swear.  Once you are able release yourself to that, do the same with the whole LP.

Although I am that guy, I am a self-aware that guy.  I know that there’s nothing I can say or do to bring around the myriad masses who either don’t love or actively hate the Doors.  I’ve tried.  Like a crazy streetcorner prophet I’ve tried.  But to no avail.  And that makes me honestly sad for those folks because they’re missing out on beautiful, dark magic.

So, is it an album?  Yes.  The weirdness of it all is the glue that keeps it together.  That, and Robby Krieger.

Up next, a radical paradigm shift with "Mountain Music" by Alabama.

"High Voltage" by AC/DC (1976)

Okay, I need to address ground rule number one - "No musical genre is off limits."  Let me be clear, rock and roll is the coolest thing ever.  Rock and roll is that really interesting, really sweet, really HOT girl in the Cameron Crowe movie who's willing to give a shlub like me a chance for no apparent reason.

I love rock.  I love heavy metal and hard rock and punk and prog and psychedelic and new wave and alternative.  But I also love country and folk and bluegrass and Americana.  I love R&B and soul and funk and rap.  I love pop in any incarnation - even disco.  I like standards and showtunes and classical and some jazz.  I think pure blues may be the greatest art form in the history of the world.  Basically, if there's a guitar involved, I'm there.

But the random number generator is a cruel mistress.  It kicked of my journey with some R&B from the seventies, and never looked back.  Since then, it has crawled into the bowels of our local classic rock station's heavy rotation pile and refuses to come out.  At this point, U2 and Dokken are probably the closest things to deviation we've had.  It's not even the end of February and I've already revisited Styx, George Thorogood, Ted Nugent, Bruce Springsteen and Van Halen (twice).  Although I love it so, I grow weary of the classic rock and need some kind of palate cleanser.  That being said, it's AC/DC day.  So, I'm gonna have a few too many beers and listen to this record again.

Filed between: Accept and Aerosmith.  (Okay, maybe it's not ENTIRELY the random number generator's fault.)

Key Tracks:
It's a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock 'n' Roll).  Pump your fist, put the pedal down and rock out to them bagpipes!  The Jack is the blues rock of equivalent of Tom T. Hall's Deal.  Daddy like.  Somebody (an adult) actually asked me what this song was about one time.  If you don't know, I can't help you.  Live Wire is another great blues rock tune featuring Bon at his rawest with a very Skynyrd-y vibe to boot.  T.N.T.  Oy!  Need I say more?

Obvious Filler and Swings-and-Misses:
Oddly, the title track doesn't really do anything but sit there.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
HIGHLY Recommended (3.5/4 stars)

Pearls of Wisdom:
 - "You can stick your gazillion rules and all the other shit they can teach your kids in school."
 - "If I'd have know what she was dealing out, I'd have dealt it back."
 - "Send you to heaven, take you to hell."
 - "Out for all that I can get, if you know what I mean."
 - "Can I sit next to you... legally?"
 - "It kills me when I saw that wet patch on your seat.  Is it Coca-Cola?"  Nice product placement.

"High Voltage" is stitched together with exactly two things - the blues and energy.  Seriously, how can they pack this much punch into thirty-three and a third revolutions per minute?  Songs like Live Wire and T.N.T. are pure angst.  Listening to them, I can see why AC/DC got lumped in with punk instead of metal when they first hit in England.  Can I Sit Next to You Girl would sound like a Sex Pistols song if the Sex Pistols actually had musical talent.  And the solo in it wails.  Little Lover, on the other hand, is straight-up blues and a stupid concept like She's Got Balls even turns out okay due to its bluesiness. 

So, is it an album?  Yes.  It's a big slab o' raunchy, bluesy, punky awesomeness.  It's AC/DC.

Up next, the random number generator offers no quarter as we revisit the self-titled debut of The Doors.

"I Love Rock 'n Roll' by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts (1981)

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Fun Fact:
Tommy James said he wrote Crimson and Clover about his two favorite colors.

Filed Between:
"Jesus Christ Superstar" and Billy Joel.

Key Tracks:
I Love Rock 'n Roll. Like I said about Bad to the Bone, songs get overplayed for a reason.  Let me just go ahead and throw this out there - I Love Rock 'n Roll by Joan Jett may well be the best cover song of all time.  (We would have also accepted Higher Ground by the Red Hot Chili Peppers or maybe Smooth Criminal by Alien Ant Farm.)  Crimson and Clover is another great cover.  That song gets downright sexy when a woman covers it - especially when that woman is a badass clad in leather wailing on a low-slung electric guitar.  Originals You're Too Possessive and Woe Is Me end the LP in a great way.

Obvious Filler and Swings-and-Misses:
Be Straight doesn't do ANYTHING.  Even worse, it name checks one of Jett's best songs, Bad Reputation - seemingly only to remind you of just how bad Be Straight is.  Nag and Victim of Circumstances are swings-and-misses.  They exemplify all JJ's very diverse influences mashed together in the worst possible way.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Above Average (2.5/4 stars)  This rating is absolutely bolstered by the key tracks.

It's always disappointing when an LP doesn't live up to the promise set by a single.  Of course, in this case, that is a virtually untenable feat.  Like I said, I Love Rock 'n Roll is on my short list for best cover song ever. The production of that track is pitch perfect with it's dual raunchy, sweat-soaked guitars and strychnine-laced vocals.  I Love Rock 'n Roll sets the bar so high that no one could hope to catch that lightning in a bottle for two whole sides.

And Jett never tries to.  By the second track, she has settled in to a slightly-heavier-than-the-Go-Go's sound.  That's a shame and it carries on through most of the LP.  It's not automatically a bad thing.  I can imagine Miley Cyrus making a hit out of either (I'm Gonna) Run Away or Love Is Pain.  (That's a compliment, by the way.)  But neither comes close to the snarl achieved on the opener.  "Safety" is the key word for too many songs by an artist who's clearly trying to be dangerous.  And the "I'm dangerous" approach careens in the opposite direction and ends up being far too heavy-handed on tracks like Nag and Be Straight.

On "I Love Rock 'n Roll," Jett always come across best when she is interpreting somebody else's song.  She sounds looser and way more comfortable (and usually way more angry) when she's not trying to justify her own tunes.  I Love Rock 'n Roll and Crimson and Clover are hands-down the best tracks on the LP and are both incredible reimaginings of the source material.  Bits and Pieces is good, but that's where it falls short - it doesn't come close to the Dave Clark Five's original version.


So, is it an album?  No.  Joan Jett knows who she WANTS to be on this effort, but she only fully commits to it in fits and spells.  I didn't realize just how off-the-rails the B-side gets until Ithe last two songs kick in and she tries to vindicate it all and pull off the world's greatest course-correct.  Those two songs are both really good and really "Joan Jett," but it's just too little too late.


Up next, Bon Scott!  It's "High Voltage" by AC/DC.

"Whitney Houston" by Whitney Houston (1985)

"I decided long ago never to walk in anyone's shadow."

I am often prone to hyperbole and superlatives, but I don't think it's hyperbole at all to say that Whitney Houston was the most influential vocalist to come around in the last thirty years.  I also don't think it's hyperbole to say that she permanently changed the face of popular music in a way that continues to be felt and heard today.

Before Whitney, pop and soul vocals were two separate entities.  Sure, pop artists could sing soulfully and soul artists could have pop hits, but they were still different realms - you were always in one camp or the other.  In her debut, songs like Nobody Loves Me like You Do, Saving All My Love for You and The Greatest Love of All closed that rift forever.  The tracks were one hundred percent, knock-you-in-the-gut vocals paired with great eighties pop sensabilities.  The idea of someone trying to marry such intense deliveries over synthy keyboards seems laughable.  But Whitney made them more than you could have ever imagined. 

I have to wonder if it had to do with her young age at the time.  She was still in her teens when she recorded her first record and it showed in the best way on her delivery - that voice, that Hope Diamond voice, was always counterbalanced by a conscious grounding in the here and now.  Whitney had a timeless voice that was always of the time.  And it made her an absolute visionary in 1985.

And it just kept progressing with 1987's "Whitney" until it had been imitated and approprated so much that it was the status quo of the pop world by 1990.  But never Whitney.  Her songs were always swimming in the thin air above.  Whenever she put out new music, it seemed to reset the bar for everything around it and reinvigorate popular music.  She was never following any trends, she was always setting them.

Over the past few days I have heard many Whitney Houston songs and seen many Whitney Houston videos.  I never tired of them - not once - because every time I hear that voice I get lost in a joyful place - and that's what music is all about.

"Tunnel of Love" by Bruce Springsteen (1987)

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Key Tracks:
Ain't Got You is a great throwback salute to early rock and roll.  Cautious Man is Springsteen doing what he does best - an examination of how heavy emptiness can be.  Brilliant Disguise is just a great song.  Go check it out.  The continuation of its theme on One Step Up is almost as good.

Obvious Filler and Swings-and-Misses:
No Filler.  Walk Like a Man, Tunnel of Love and Valentine's Day all aspire to be much more than they are.  Sadly, they also seem to believe they've reached those aspirations.

My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately:
Recommended Listening (3/4 stars)

"God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of," Springsteen croons on Brilliant Disguise.  That sentiment pretty much sums up all of "Tunnel of Love."  After the monumental success of "Born in the U.S.A.," The Boss found himself in the thin air of pop-superstardom among the likes of Michael Jackson and Prince.  He didn't seem to really know what to do with that or where to go next.  As a result, on "Tunnel of Love," Bruce Springsteen sounds like a willful caricature of himself.

It's almost like there's a checklist.  Excessive whooping?  Check, first song in.  Faked ruralism?  Check, over-reaching twang second song in and a pic of The Boss in a pair of bibbed overalls with one strap undone on the record sleeve.  The line specifically addressing you as "Mister" and/or "Brother"?  Check.  Three of 'em.  Americana?  Oh yeah, you know there's Americana.  The self-parody runs so deep that songs like Spare Parts sound as if they're chasing John Cougar Mellencamp.  Ironic, since Mellencamp built his career off blatently chasing Springsteen.

Each Boss era - except for "Born in the U.S.A." - is dutifully represented here like a Springsteen buffet line (presumably so you can take what you want and move on).  One Step Up and Valentine's Day are seventies-era, I've-got-street-cred Bruce.  Cautious Man is unmistakably "Nebraska."  All That Heaven Will Allow sounds like it was left behind on the ship when all the "Darkness on the Edge of Town" songs left in the lifeboat.  And the whole LP feels like a pared down swing at the scope and thematic elements of "The River."

So, is it an album?  No.  Go listen to it and try to argue that it is.  Due to the insular nature of most of his songs, even the best Springsteen outings tend to jump wildly from one song to the next.  Here, it's all over the place with everything from rockabilly to folk songs to pandering eighties radio-bait.  The B-side does settle into organ pop love songs.  But then, it sounds nothing like anything on the A-side, and nothing on the A-side sounds like anything on it.

Up next, "I Love Rock 'n Roll" by Joan Jett & the Blackhearts.

"Van Halen" by Van Halen (1978)

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My Overall Rating of the Tracks Separately: REQUIRED LISTENING (4/4 stars) 
Seriously, if you haven't heard every song on this record, you owe it to yourself to check them out.

When I reviewed "Van Halen II," it was with heavy twinges of disappointment.  Truth is, it's not a bad record, it's just soooooo NOT "Van Halen."  As mentioned above, I consider this required listening and most of the songs are still in heavy rotation on classic rock radio, so I'm going to do something a little different this time around - in no particular order, I'm going to talk about things I noticed on this listen that I hadn't picked up on before.

Jamie's Cryin'
This has always been one of my all-time favorite VH songs.  Yet, it somehow took me years before I realized those cool drum and guitar hooks in Ton Loc's Wild Thing were sampled from it.  Go figure.

Heavy LyricsThere are some really heavy lyrics on this LP, especially from a band known for their good-time, partyboy lyrics.  Here are a couple of examples: "If you want it, got to bleed for it" - Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love and "I am the ruler of these nether worlds" - Atomic Punk.

Favorite MomentsThe songs are spectacular, but there are certain moments within certain songs on "Van Halen" that are glorious and give me chills whenever I hear them - the instrumental building intro to Runnin' with the Devil, the super-phaser solo in Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love, the a cappella harmony breakdown on Feel Your Love Tonight, that moment in Ice Cream Man when it kicks into electric and the drum fill builds.  Yeah.

Eruption
Just like Jimi Hendrix wasn't the first to use a wah pedal, Eddie Van Halen was by no means the first to fingertap a fretboard.  However, just like Voodoo Chile (Slight Return), Eruption changed electric guitar playing forever.  And even as the sustain is dying out on Eddie's coming-out party, the power chords of the next track rip in.  It kicks like a mule in a great way - so much so that I hadn't noticed until today the next song after Eruption is a cover of one of the seminal distortion (and thus hard rock) songs ever (You Really Got Me, originally by The Kinks).  After instantly establishing himself as a guitar god, Eddie doffs his cap to how he got there.

Driving Music"Van Halen" is one of the all-time great driving records.  If you're in a car, you can't help but put the hammer down.  If you're not, you can't help but dance around and wish you were driving.  Even the mid-tempo tracks are propulsive.  The uptempo tracks are a speeding ticket waiting to happen.

Oh...
And that green electric flame spewing out of Michael Anthony's bass on the cover is just cool.

So, (in case you couldn't tell already) is it an album?  Yes.  Yes.  Yes.

Up next, Bruce Springsteen's follow-up to one of the most ubiquitous albums of the eighties with "Tunnel of Love."