Elton John in the 2000s

Elton John has had a long and successful career, especially considering the quality of his output throughout the eighties and nineties. He has toured frequently and puts on a good show, usually heavy on his seventies hits.

Between Elton John 1970 and Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy 1975, Elton made nine records that were either darn good or great. Then, around 1975-1976, quality dropped off. Rock of the Westies was pretty bad, and Blue Moves could have been a decent single disc, but didn't impress as a double album. I liked it, but even I have had to reexamine my opinion, and it isn't the last great one I once thought it was. But I still love side three.

Between A Single Man 1978 and The Big Picture 1997, Elton made fourteen unsatisfying records. There were almost always one or two keepers, but as albums, it was a very rough period, and it lasted 20 years. A few of them showed potential, and several were just awful.

Then in 2001 came Songs From The West Coast. A stellar return to form, and sounding similar to his seventies greats, it contained a whole bunch of great songs in I Want Love, This Train Don't Stop Here Anymore, Original Sin, Dark Diamond, Birds, Love Her Like Me, and Ballad of the Boy in the Red Shoes. You could listen to the whole thing.

Peachtree Road 2004 came very close to matching Songs From The West Coast, with Weight of the World, Answer In The Sky, All That I'm Allowed, and Turn The Lights Out When You Leave.

The sequel to Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy, The Captain and the Kid 2006 kept the quality high, and remarkably almost matched the original in it's ability to write Bernie Taupin's and Elton John's musical biography.

2010 saw the release of The Union with Leon Russell. The two record set, unfortunately produced by T-Bone Burnett, was light on great songs, and had a thick, overly layered, sound that didn't help. Like so many other two-record affairs, it would have been a really fine single disc.

The Diving Board 2013 saw T-Bone Burnett return to the producer's chair, but instead of the big production and millions of players on The Union, most of the record is recorded by piano, bass and drums trio, with occasional additional keyboards. A Town Called Jubilee, Mexican Vacation, The Ballad of Blind Tom, and Can't Stay Alone Tonight were all good, and so was most of the rest.

Finally, in 2016, Elton gave us Wonderful Crazy Night. Strong songs include In The Name of You, Tambourine, Blue Wonderful, Looking Up, and the title track. T-Bone Burnett stays out of the way for a record featuring the touring band and a bunch of good songs. Again, you can listen to the whole thing without needing to fast forward. Pretty amazing after making records for something like fifty years.

I'll skip the Pnau remix album Good Morning to the Night 2012 (it's remixes, and it sold well), the duets record The Lockdown Sessions 2021 (has anyone made a great duets record?) and Regimental Sgt. Zippo 2021 (recorded in 1967 before even Empty Sky, and never released, for good reason).

Given the dearth of good records for some twenty years, Elton John has made a miraculous recovery in this century. If you liked his early work and wrote him off somewhere in the eighties, you should give him another shot. The last twenty years have been darn good for Elton John, and his fans. 

Bette Midler

She's not the greatest singer ever, but she's a darn good one. She isn't the greatest actress ever, but she's a darn good one. She's not the greatest comedienne either, but she's, again, a darn good one. I'll leave her acting and comedic performances to one with more knowledge of those things. She's not the easiest singer to appreciate, but let's give it a try.

She started so strong that it almost set the stage for mid-career problems. Her first two, The Devine Miss M 1972 and Bette Midler 1973 set up her entire career. Everything was on - her love of female harmonies expressed through the Andrews Sisters and the Ronettes, her heart-on-the-sleeve delivery of a big ballad, and a touch of rock and roll. These were not only her first records, but they were also her best.

The three that followed that fine pair (Songs for the New Depression 1976, Broken Blossom 1977, and Thighs and Whispers 1979) were, for lack of a better word, disappointing. They don't figure prominently on her hits compilations. But her soundtrack to The Rose 1979 held her solid versions of When A Man Loves A Woman and Stay With Me, both of which, along with the title track, would feature in her live performances and compilations. Two uneven live records failed to capture her energetic live shows. Even her awful No Frills 1983, which suffered from everything wrong with the eighties, at least held her solid versions of the Stones' Beast of Burden and Marshall Crenshaw's Favorite Waste of Time, a couple of her better rockers.

Between 1988 and 1993 she did three more soundtracks for movies in which she starred, and of course Beaches 1988 includes her biggest hit Wind Beneath My Wings. Some People's Lives 1990 continued her big ballad period, and is one of her better records. Arif Mardin did an excellent job with a sympathetic production that let Midler shine.

As for big hit records that make a lot of money, her ballads The Wind Beneath My Wings, The Rose, and From A Distance, made her a household name, and she milked that big ballad thing for a while on her album releases. But that didn't really help her work between 1995 and 2000. Bette of Roses 1995 at least had To Deserve You, Bathhouse Betty 1998 has a nice Song of Bernadette, and I Sold My Heart To The Junkman and One Monkey Don't Stop No Show, both classics. Bette 2000 included a decent cover of Kirsty MacColl's In These Shoes and an OK Just My Imagination. 

I forgot to mention Barry Manilow earlier. He was responsible for much/most of Bette's first two records. He was her pianist in her early days, and his work with Midler is his finest contribution to recorded music. Both Bette Midler Sings The Rosemary Clooney Songbook 2003 and Bette Midler Sings The Peggy Lee Songbook 2005 benefit from Manilow's production and arrangement work. Both are solid tributes, and Midler sounds good fronting a big band. 

Cool Yule 2006 is a Christmas record. As those things go, it's fine. 

But then in 2014 Bette released It's The Girls!.  A remarkable record that hearkens back to her earliest work in a super good way. It's all girl groups, but not just from the sixties. There''s Teach Me Tonight (from 1956) and Waterfalls (from 1995) and plenty of sixties in between. It is just about as perfect a record as we could expect from Bette Midler in 2014.

There's a bunch of compilations out there, and surprisingly, they don't all cover the same ground. For a good overview and all the essentials, Experience The Divine: Greatest Hits 1993 is the one, and the single disc Jackpot! The Best of Bette 2008 comes close, but omits a few choice moments. The more recent Memories of You 2010 (standards) and A Gift of Love 2015 (ballads) are more narrowly focused and not really hits collections. 

The first two and It's The Girls! are her best records, and Experience The Divine captures pretty much all the career highlights, including her wonderful One For My Baby (And One More For The Road) that she serenaded Johnny Carson with on his last show.

The Weeklings Raspberry Park 2024, Fantastic Cat Now That's What I Call Fantastic Cat 2024

The Weeklings have paid tribute to the Beatles, but they are so much more than that. Not that they aren't great at it. The band are all veteran musicians with deep and varied backgrounds. This new one finds them doing eight new originals as well as The Beatles' I've Just Seen A Face and She's Leaving Home, Bruce Springsteen's I'm On Fire, and a mash-up of The Buffalo Springfields' Mr. Soul and Satisfaction featuring guest vocalist Peter Noone. The record is non-stop energetic fun. If you love melodic, hook-filled pop/rock, you can't go wrong.

Something of a supergroup with four singer-songwriters hailing from other indie groups, these guys bring the songs, the hooks, the harmonies, and tight musicianship to drive a fine power-pop vehicle. Mixed with some folky Americana touches (but not too much), the record keeps coming with great stuff. Toe tapping will ensue, and the songs are both hook-filled and lyrically smart. If you love melodic, hook-filled pop/rock, you can't go wrong.

Check them both out. Available streaming, YouTube, or of course you can also purchase on CD or vinyl. 

John Mellencamp

I recently finished reading the 2021 biography Mellencamp by Paul Rees. It is a well-written look at the artist's life, and while it shows Mellencamp to be a significantly flawed personality, it also treats his music as on par with the greatest songwriters of our generation. 

That's certainly not how the story started. Mellencamp's first two recordings, Chestnut Street Incident 1976 and The Kid Inside 1977 were both inferior efforts. The Kid Inside was rejected by his record company and not released until 1983 after he'd had a few successful singles under his belt. His second release, A Biography 1978 was only sold in the UK and Australia, where I Need A Lover became a top ten hit. So I Need A Lover was included on his second American record, John Cougar 1979, and was a minor hit in the US. Then came Nothing Matters And What If It Did 1980, which included two quality top thirty singles in Ain't Even Done With The Night and This Time. The record received a luke warm response in the press, but the singles were enough to keep Mellencamp going, and in 1982 he had his first #1 hit record with American Fool, which contained the hits Jack And Diane (#1) and Hurts So Good (#2), and several other good ones, Hand To Hold On To and Weakest Moments.

Finally in 1983 John Cougar Mellencamp (the first use of his real last name on the cover of a record) made Uh-Huh. The first of several critically acclaimed records, Uh-Huh was also his first solid record the whole way through. The singles are front-loaded on side one with Pink Houses, Crumblin' Down and Authority Song, but the whole record is good. From there he moves on to Scarecrow 1985, another killer and where Mellencamp begins to write political songs of the American heartland. Rain On The Scarecrow was an impassioned plea for the American family farm, and became his theme song for thirty years of Farm Aid concerts with Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan. Four singles charted. 

The Lonesome Jubilee 1987 followed, and became one of his most successful records. The record is still rock, but contains country/folk/Americana influences and features violin and accordion to good effect for the first time. Heartland vignettes and more tales of rural America, not to mention another trio of hot singles including the fine Cherry Bomb, make for a very strong outing. Big Daddy 1989 continues in a similar vein, but is a bit darker owing to Mellencamp's second divorce. The singles didn't fare all that well, but the record continued Mellencamp's sales success.

After two Americana styled successes, Mellencamp eschewed the violin and accordion and returned with a back to basics rocking record, 1991's Whenever We Wanted. It's the hardest rocking record of his career, and it's a winner. Get A Leg Up, Now More Than Ever and Again Tonight all cracked the top 5, and the record was top 20 and went platinum. More importantly, it rocks like crazy from start to finish with all killer, no filler material. It is the debut of David Grissom with the band, and his big guitar sound beefs up the record considerably.

Both Human Wheels 1993 and Dance Naked 1994 were well received and included strong singles. Mellencamp sounds a little like he's coasting, but the records are both good. What If I Came Knocking from Human Wheels was his last #1 single. Then in 1996 comes Mr. Happy Go Lucky, and for the first time in a while, it receives mixed-to-negative reviews. With only one top 40 single (his last), and some weaker tracks, it portends Mellencamp's becoming something other than the big rock star filling stadiums. John Mellencamp 1998 goes a long way towards the same end. While Your Life Is Now and I'm Not Running Anymore are strong, the album as a whole is less satisfying. Reviews were better than the previous record, but they weren't stellar. Rough Harvest 1999 contains acoustic versions of some of Mellencamp's back catalog favorites recorded in 1997. It's a contract obligation record, and saw generally middling reviews.

Cuttin' Heads 2001 was well received and again showed Mellencamp mixing some rock with the folky sound that soon would dominate his work. It's got some good ones and some strong political statements. Trouble No More 2003 is a covers record of mostly blues and folk songs. Spare acoustic arrangements feature Mellencamp's voice to good effect, and the song selection is pretty good, at least if you like old country/folk music. 

Words & Music: John Mellencamp's Greatest Hits 2004 is one of the finest "best of" collections anywhere. For 25 years Mellencamp made a mess of great singles, and they are all here, along with two new songs that hold up to the hits just fine. If you're a casual fan, this is all you need. It is nearly flawless, and well curated and sequenced. 

Freedom's Road 2007 is the last sort-of rocking record he will make until 2023. It's a strong outing with a rootsy sound that reminds one of The Lonesome Jubilee. A bunch of good songs, lots of politics and social commentary, and the vocal backing of Little Big Town all add up to a late career winner. The next two, Life, Death, Love and Freedom 2008 and No Better Than This 2010 were both produced by T Bone Burnett, and both were well received in the press. Mellencamp once said that Life, Death, Love and Freedom "is as good as just about any record ever made." It's not, but it's OK. I'm never wild about Burnett's production jobs. No Better Than This was recorded in historic places such as Sun Studios and the First African Baptist Church in Savannah, Georgia and released to critical acclaim that baffles me no end. I've never been much of a lo-fi fan.

In 2010 On the Rural Route 7609 was released. It's an unusual four CD deep dive that mostly avoids the hits for songs Mellencamp feels might have been neglected, along with a few demos and acoustic works in progress. It's really for die hard fans.

From 2014 to 2022 Mellencamp released Plain Spoken 2014, Sad Clowns and Hillbillies featuring Carlene Carter 2017, Other People's Stuff 2018 (a compilation of mostly folky recent cover songs), and Strictly A One-Eyed Jack 2022. All of these records are rooted in folk/country/acoustic sounds with Mellencamp's ragged vocals. Springsteen duets on three on Strictly A One-Eyed Jack. The critics liked most of them, and I suppose you've got to respect the artist that remakes himself into something different instead of trying too hard to be his younger self. 

And finally there's Orpheus Descending 2023. Yes, it's still Americana, but it has more kick than his other recent work. It's lyrically dense and Mellencamp's voice is almost shot, but it is a strong return to form, almost as good as The Lonesome Jubilee, and a late career high water mark.

What does one need from this expansive catalog? Words and Music is great, and probably all that most people really need. The Lonesome Jubilee is very good, and Whenever We Wanted is as good a rocker as anything ever. More recently Freedom's Road and Orpheus Descending are worth hearing. 

There's a great quote in the book from Mellencamp himself. "I know why people don't buy my new albums. It's the same reason I don't buy the new Rolling Stones albums. I've got the good ones already."

Greg Kihn 1949-2024

Greg Kihn was a underrated power pop star that came very close to the big time, and made a whole bunch of excellent music. The Greg Kihn Band albums all contain solid songs and at least one killer single. Between 1976 and 1986 he released 11 fine records, and released his 18th record, Rekihndled, in 2017.

Between 1996 and 2012 he was a San Francisco area disc jockey. He also wrote four horror novels and several other books. 

He continued to perform live until 2019. He had chart hits with the #2 Jeopardy, The Breakup Song (They Don't Write 'Em), and Lucky. All of his records are worth hearing, but his early work really shines. He produced one perfect record, his sophomore effort from 1977, Greg Kihn Again. With covers of Buddy Holly (Love's Made A Fool Of You), Bruce Springsteen (For You), and Kihn's own Real Big Man, Politics, If You Be My Love, and the wonderful Madison Avenue, the record is a pure pop gem. His work is available for streaming, and there's a few YouTube videos. Kihnsolidation 1989 or the even better Greg Kihn Band: The Best of Beserkley '75-'84 2012 are fine compilations of his early work.

Updated Stereo System Again

So the stereo has been updated some since my last update in 2017. The Cambridge Audio Azur 840C got repaired and I decided to sell it while it was working and the Wadia 170i and iPod Classic, which was having some technical issues, left to make way for streaming. So here's what we've got now:

Reference 3A MM de Capo-i speakers 

Granite Audio Aspen 800 power amplifier 

Benchmark DAC3 HGC

Funk Firm Little Super Deck turntable

Hana SL Moving Coil Cartridge 

Vacuum Tube Audio PH-16 phono preamplifier 

Audiolab 6000CDT CD Transport 

Bluesound Node streamer

Qobuz streaming service

SVS SB-12 NSD subwoofer 

So the Audiolab CD Transport (no DAC) replaced the CD function of the Cambridge CD player, the Benchmark DAC3 HGC replaced the DAC from the Cambridge and also the Anthem preamp. The Bluesound Node is a streamer/DAC but I am taking the digital out of the Bluesound and letting the Benchmark DAC do the D to A conversion. The Hana cartridge replaced the Denon 103R but of course the Denon is still around and may return sometime. I hired an electrician to run an ethernet cable from my router to the Bluesound node to avoid the issues of using wifi for streaming high resolution audio.

The Cambridge Audio DAC/preamp is renowned to have very low distortion numbers, and the DAC sounds great, and maybe better than Cambridge did. I must admit that I sometimes miss the Anthem Pre2L preamp with it's lovely tube sound, but I still get that with vinyl through the VTA phono preamp.

Streaming has been an interesting experience. Getting a chance to hear new releases without purchasing them is very nice. There is of course a ton of music available, but certainly not everything.  Artists that recorded for several different labels may not have their entire catalog on Qobuz. And various artists recordings (tribute records, sets of music from a certain era) are rare, since those songs/artists were only licensed for that particular release before streaming started, and usually the artists were under contract to a variety of labels. But often there are user-generated playlists that can serve a similar function. You can certainly get lost in the available material. And sometimes a record you like will disappear from the steaming service altogether. Kind of like when a friend borrowed your LP and never gave it back. I feel so modern.

Dr. Dog Dr. Dog 2024

After only some 15 releases over the last 22 years, Dr. Dog release an eponymous record. And it is a good one.

There are some artists that make one record that stands out from, and above, the rest of their work. Del Amitri's Some Other Sucker's Parade, The Connells Still Life, The Proclaimers Persevere, they all fall into that category for me. And so does Dr. Dog's Shame, Shame. The follow-up, Be The Void comes awfully close, but can't knock Shame, Shame out of the top slot. I've enjoyed much of their other work, including B-Room and Abandoned Mansion. Their early records are a bit too lo-fi for my tastes, but many of the songs are very good, and there are always moments of brilliance. 

This one is one of the better ones, and while it might be an unfair comparison, it's not quite Shame, Shame.

The record features more mid-tempo and slow songs than usual, but they are mostly good ones. Lost Ones slowly builds to a loud mess, What A Night'll Do is a slow piano-heavy ballad that features a nice synth break, and Still Can't Believe is a pretty ballad. Fine White Lies is a slow builder that is reminiscent of Bowie's Five Years as it gradually becomes more dynamic. 

The noisy, stomping rocker Authority starts things off well. The funky beat and pretty melody of Talk Is Cheap rocks. White Dove has a fine guitar break, and the upbeat closer Love Struck has a catchy chorus, nice percussion, and what sounds like a pedal steel guitar. 

A few of their more recent ones (The Psychedelic Swamp, Critical Equation) have disappointed me a bit, so I was happy to hear them return to form with a solid outing. As usual, the drumming of Eric Slick is killer.