Boz Scaggs My Time: A Boz Scaggs Anthology 1969-1997

Boz Scaggs has had an interesting history in contemporary music, and has made many excellent records in several styles. Always a consummately smooth and tasteful R&B singer, and a gifted songwriter, much of his best work has been criminally neglected.

His debut solo record from 1969, Boz Scaggs was a mix of blues, country blues, and the sweet ballads he delivers so well. While not a great album, it contains the classic Loan Me A Dime, featuring Duane Allman on slide guitar. (It's not really his debut. He recorded a record in 1965, called Boz, which may have been released only in Europe, and he played and sang on the first two Steve Miller Band records.)

His early seventies records were excellent. Moments 1971, Boz Scaggs And Band 1971, My Time 1972, and Slow Dancer 1974, were all solid records. Carefully arranged, well-written R&B with a horn section and female backup singers and Boz's fine singing, they are still good today, even if they sound a little dated. They all contain moments of driving R&B, heartfelt ballads, and wonderful mid-tempo rock with horns.

In 1976 Silk Degrees was Boz's biggest hit record and contained the single most people remember him for, Lowdown. Recorded with the musicians who would become Toto, and others, it made it's way to the Disco dance floor. Follow-ups Down Two Then Left 1977 and Middle Man 1980 attempted to repeat the Silk Dgrees formula, and Middle Man came close.

After an eight year hiatus, Scaggs returned with Other Roads 1988, a disappointing foray into the burgeoning Adult Contemporary market. In 1994, Boz reappeared with Some Change, an interesting record and mostly a return to form. Some Change is a little heavy on the ballads that suit Scagg's voice so well, but it's a good record. 1996 saw Scaggs deliver Fade Into Light, released only in Japan until 2005, the record contains some re-recordings of a few earlier songs mixed with new material. It good, but it's very mellow.

In 1997, the year of the Anthology I'm ostensibly reviewing, Boz released Come On Home. Hearkening back to his earlier blues roots, this mix of straight blues and R&B is a killer record. If you have any interest in Boz Scaggs, this one is indispensable. His singing is great, the material is excellent, and the cast of musicians is stellar. In fact, if you're at all into the blues, you should hear this record.

The Anthology serves up two CDs of Boz, and it's very good. There's too much focus on the his slick hit period from 1976-80, but that's what most people know him for, and they are good songs. There's a good introduction to his early seventies output that will surprise a few listeners, and of course Loan Me A Dime is there, all 13 minutes of it. The later years include some soundtrack songs and one-offs that are only so-so, but most of it holds up. I would have put together a different collection, but this one is darn good. Only one song from Come On Home is disappointing, but it's such a good record you need to own every song anyway.

More recently, Boz Scaggs has delivered two fine albums of jazz standards. But Beautiful 2003 and Speak Low 2008 are both excellent late-night, laid back jazz records with fine players, and Scaggs' glorious voice and subtle phrasing do justice to the great American songbook.

More and more recent Boz Scaggs here.

Vampire Weekend Contra 2010

What does a band need to be good? I've thought about this from time to time, and there's three things that every good pop/rock band needs. First, you need a good singer. For many listeners, this person does not have to actually have a good voice as long as they have attitude. I prefer those singers that are actually good singers, but I like some of those attitude guys, too. Next you need good songwriting. It's a big plus if you have at least two songwriters, since any one writer has maybe 5-6 rock songs in them, and if you only have one writer, then you have to repeat ideas just to finish one record. Third, you need a drummer. The drummer needs to keep time well at a minimum, and they also need to add interesting touches or unusual rhythms. That's all you really need.

Plenty of bands have gotten by with no more than the above essential elements. I hope I haven't offended bass players, since my brother is a bass player. You really don't need a great guitar player (think Grand Funk). Mostly any skilled keyboard player will do, unless the band is keyboard based (Bruce Hornsby, Ben Folds, Elton John). My point is that the above three ingredients are essential for any good band, and these ingredients are the only truly essential elements.

Vampire Weekend is an excellent example of this theory. They have a delightful, high tenor in singer Ezra Koenig. The songwriting is credited to all four band members, and it certainly sounds to me like at least two of them write melodies. The lyrics are fairly cryptic most of the time (at least I don't usually know what they're about), but they work well within the music and Koenig's phrasing helps them work. Christopher Tomson is a fine drummer. The band uses African and Reggae derived rhythms quite a bit, and this adds a significant level of interest to their music. If everything was basic rock rhythms, this record would be just another decent pop record. With Tomson on the kit, the songs sound fresh and different, especially since these rhythms are being put to use in what are otherwise modern pop songs, which is unusual. Chris Baio is fine on bass, and Rostam Batmanglij is the keyboard/multi-instrumentalist that makes the vast majority of the music heard here.

Horchata opens with one of those African rhythms, and there's that staccato plucked guitar/marimba sound so common to Nigerian music. White Sky follows in a similar vein and is accented with excellent percussion and a wordless chorus that is great fun. Holiday is a fast ska/reggae rhythm with a cool keyboard part and driving guitar, all with fun vacation lyrics. California English is another quick-paced ditty that uses that African plucked guitar sound and big backup vocals on the chorus. Taxi Cab, Run, Cousins, and Giving Up The Gun are all strong songs with interesting instrumental and rhythmic touches, and good lyrics and vocals.

Diplomat's Son milks it's Reggae light thing a bit too long, and I Think Ur A Contra ends the record on a low note, a slow ballad that features Koenig's vocals and adds a string section that can't save the song from it's own inertia.

That's ten songs, and the first eight are very good to excellent. This should be the soundtrack to the coming summer. It's fun, poppy, and clean pop/rock with interesting songwriting, solid singing, and a great drummer. Batmanglij adds plenty of interesting little sounds to the mix, and is a creative keyboard player as well as a good guitarist. It's not deep or heavy or particularly important. And that spells great pop in my book.

Can Tago Mago 1971

I recently got asked to provide a Can intro to a friend and it sent me back to their records. I came very late to Can, only discovering them in the last 10 years. Their music isn't really the type of music I'm drawn to, but their remarkable skill and extreme strangeness, especially considering that they were making this music in 1971, is compelling.

Can began with Monster Movie in 1969 and followed with Soundtracks in 1970. In 1971 Tago Mago, a two-record set, was released. I haven't heard all of their records, but of the five or six I've heard, Tago Mago is the pinnacle of their work. Ege Bamyasi followed in 1972 and was another strong work. 1974's Future Days saw Can practically invent electronic ambient music, and later records such as Soon Over Babaluma 1975 and Saw Delight 1977 always contained several good songs.

Tago Mago is about as weird as anything called rock music gets. Paperhouse rocks a deep grove, sounding like Funkadelic crossed with Kraftwerk. (Just reading that sentence, I'm thinking of someone reading this and wondering what on earth could sound like those two bands jammed together.) Mushroom is another trance groove, broken up by screaming choruses. Oh Yeah starts with a driving rock beat and morphs into a killer break that puts Michael Karoli's guitar skills on display for all to see. On the eighteen-minute Halleluhwah, the entire band turns the twisted drum groove into a hypnotic freakout of epic proportions. Halleluhwah is a great song, pushing the deep groove aesthetic of James Brown to strange new places. Germany isn't normally known for it's funk, but the way these guys mine a groove...

Aumgn is a seventeen-minute strangeness without the groove of Halleluhwah, and it's harder to cozy up to, but if you've penetrated Zappa or Beefheart, you might be ready for it. Peking O is also a bit strange and overbearing, with more than a bit of noise, and it's the hardest thing to listen to here. The record ends with Bring Me Coffee Or Tea, a welcome return to something like melody, even if it is a spacey one.

The first half- Paperhouse through Halleluhwah- is quite near perfection. The second half is a little too close to cacophony, but overall it's quite amazing. The band has very talented guitar and keyboard players in Michael Karoli and Irmin Schmidt. The rhythm section of Holger Czukay, bass, and especially Jaki Liebezeit, drums, is stellar. When Liebezeit and Czukay lock into a groove, look out. That's what makes Halleluhwah, Paperhouse and Oh Yeah such a gas. I haven't yet mentioned vocalist Damo Suzuki, who does sometimes use words you can distinguish, and sometimes sounds as though he's speaking in tongues, but rarely seems to make any sense. And yet you can barely imagine the band without this particular "singer".

Strange music for sure, but you'll never hear anything quite like it, at least not anything this good.

Elton John The Captain And The Kid 2006

I was always a sucker for Elton John, and I have grown to love all of his output from 1970-1976. He's also recently made some monumental comeback records like Songs From The West Coast 2001, Peachtree Road 2004, and this most recent one. The Captain And The Kid attempts to pick up where Captain Fantastic And The Brown Dirt Cowboy 1975 left off, and remarkably, it mostly succeeds.

I know it's hard to believe, but Elton's currently on a tear. And this one is remarkable in it's continuation of the original 1975 song cycle. Postcards From Richard Nixon and Just Like Noah's Ark are solid mid-tempo rockers, Wouldn't Have It Any Other Way is a love ballad to NYC, Tinderbox recalls Someone Saved My Life Tonight (with a completely different rhythm), And The House Fell Down, I Must Have Heard It On The Wind, and Old 67 are all solid rockers and Elton sounds great. He's clearly inspired by Bernie Taupin's excellent lyrics, and the team sounds as great as ever.

The Blues Never Fade Away is a perfect Elton ballad, with an easy to take personal message, and a hook-heavy chorus. The record closes with The Captain and The Kid, a remarkably twisted rewrite of Captain Fantastic that you can only get away with if you wrote the original.

It's almost as good as the original that inspired it. It's considerably better than anything Elton did during the twenty years between 1978 and 1997, and with the two before it, an amazing return to form from one of the better songwriting duos in rock and roll. If you liked him in the mid seventies, one of these new ones deserves your attention.

Grateful Dead (Skeleton Live) 1971

                        

I always liked this particular live record by the Dead. Stripped down to a five piece with one drummer, bass, two guitars, and Pigpen's occasional keyboards, they sound terrific. I actually should be talking about only half the record. The last time I listened to side two (a pretty good The Other One, as I recall) and side four (Wharf Rat, Not Fade Away, Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad) was a while back, and I didn't even do the responsible thing and listen to them for this entry.

Anyway, sides one and three are well worth the price of admission, and whatever you spend to buy this music. Bertha opens the record on a high note, a grand Dead rocker with a twisted hook in the chorus that's rhythmically difficult, even for these guys. Mama Tried follows and they do a wonderful arrangement of Merle's classic. The oft recorded Playing In The Band is presented in a nice, relatively concise version.

Side three is the Dead at their best. Me And My Uncle is a tale of familial deceit that is both gruesome and hilarious. Big Boss Man is the definitive version of this blues classic. Me & Bobby McGee, with Bob Weir giving one of his best vocal leads- the song is perfect for him- is almost as good as Janis' original, albeit in a totally different stylistic interpretation. The Dead were a really good covers band most of the time. A rocking (real rocking, not just Dead rocking) Johnny B. Good finishes things off in grand style.

The original vinyl is wonderful sounding, and probably has more bass content than is actually needed. It's warm and casual, and it sounds excellent. I've never heard the CD, but it's probably similar (let's hope).

I'm not a Deadhead by any stretch, and their good studio albums are few, but when they're on, they're good. Nowhere else is a more simple and direct explanation of what was great about this band to be found than right on this record. Flashback to right now.

Brahms Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat Rudolph Serkin 1962

I don't really know that much about classical music, but I know what I like, and the piano concerto form has been an interest of mine for several years. I attended the entire five-year program of all of Mozart's piano concertos by Mitsuko Uchida and the Cleveland Orchestra, and that was huge fun.

In January we saw the Cleveland Orchestra perform Brahms' 2nd Symphony, and I enjoyed it a great deal. I borrowed some CDs from a friend and fell in love with this piece, Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2.

So then I went to the Stereophile web site and searched the site for this piece. See, when they review equipment, they often mention favorite recordings of various pieces of music. Plus they have an annual feature in the magazine called Records To Die For, where their staff choose great music that is also well recorded. At their web site I found a rave review of this performance of the concerto, and since I live in Cleveland and even saw George Szell as a child, well, why not.

So I hopped on over to the GEMM site to see if I could find it on vinyl, and sure enough, there it was. For about $14 (including shipping), I had a clean used vinyl copy of Rudolf Sekin with George Szell leading the Cleveland Orchestra in this fine piece of music.

The version that my friend loaned me was by Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Vienna Philharmonic, and I loved it. I don't know if the Sekin I bought is any better or worse, but it sounds great. I can definitely tell it's a different performance, although I gave my friend's copy back before I got this one, so I can't tell you the difference.

The liner notes say that this was a very different and unique composition for Brahms, and I have no way to argue the point, or to tell you jack about it, except it is a super piece of music. The piano is awe-inspiring, the orchestra sounds great. If you like classical music, I'm sure you'd enjoy it in any format*.

*Any format except mp3, that is. Music has no business on mp3. I consider mp3 to be the equivalent of those extra slow tape recorder speeds that were used for spoken word only, and not music. You could put books out on mp3. Music, not so much.

XTC English Settlement 1982

XTC was always an up and down band, with great records followed by pretty lousy ones from time to time. They began in 1978 as a punk-ska-art-pop band formed around two singer-songwriters, Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding. Four records in, they added Dave Gregory on guitar and headed for a slightly more accessible, more standard rock sound, although nothing about the band has ever been standard. In the art-punk category, they were England's Talking Heads. By the time they made Oranges And Lemons, their 1989 masterstroke, they had become the new Beatles (circa Magical Mystery Tour). In between they made some awful records (1984's Big Express, 1986's Skylarking, not only XTC's mistake, but also Todd Rundgren's), and some classics. 1980's Black Sea, the first featuring Gregory, was a huge hit with Generals And Majors, Sgt. Rock, Living Through Another Cuba, and Respectable Street all great songs. And in 1982, English Settlement, the brainiac grown-up art punk answer to the Clash's London Calling. It's that good.

The record opened with Runaways, a rhythmic, echo-y opener that sets an ominous tone. A plea to return home from the abusive parents, it's a scary number. Ball And Chain is a stomper that decries the wrecking ball of progress. The syncopated Senses Working Overtime has an edgy lyric to accompany the quirky song structure, hook-filled chorus at no extra charge. Side One ends with Jason And The Argonaouts, another twisted rhythm, and a beat and guitar figure reminiscent of the Police.

Side Two opens with No Thugs In Our House, a classic tale of parental denial with a psychotic twist and a punky sound that hearkens back to their early hits. Yacht Dance is an English folk song dragged into the future. All Of The Sudden (It's Too Late) is a mid-tempo ballad of suburban despair, "life's like a jigsaw, you get the straight bits, but there's something missing in the middle". And that's just the first half.

Melt The Guns kicks off Side Three in fine form. A cross between the Police and Talking Heads, you can almost dance to it, and the message is delivered in spades. Then comes Leisure, a lyrical highlight of the record with a crazy chorus that somehow works. I can't describe it really, but it's gloriously funny. It's Nearly Africa (dance now) and Knuckle Down both rock hard with twisted beats and great ensemble playing.

Fly On The Wall that starts the last side is another ode to paranoia with a solid chorus. Down In The Cockpit is a fun, sprightly look at the battle of the sexes, English Roundabout rocks with that Police/Talking Heads syncopation, and Snowman ends the record on an angry lyrical note dripping with venom, "why oh why, does she treat me like a snowman". There isn't a really weak one in the bunch.

I can't really describe their sound as well as I would hope. It's English quirky pop with great lyrics, interesting rhythms, solid playing and great songwriting. Partridge writes twice as many songs as Moulding, and their styles are different enough to keep things far more interesting than bands with only one songwriter. Nothing they've done quite compares to this one. Nothing any other band has done sounds like it either. It's a classic of the post-punk early eighties, without a synthesizer in sight.