The Unth!nkables Untitled (Doublethink) February 28, 2009

Certainly the names of Roger Grierson and Phil Judd are two you would tend never to have expected to see in the same place and the same time, though both men first came to prominence in the mid (for Judd) to late (for Grierson) 1970s, as members of Split Enz and the Thought Criminals respectively. Judd’s best-known moment is The Swingers’ ‘Counting the beat’, and Grierson doesn’t have one, though his career as a musician, manager, record company exec, music publisher, CEO and everything else is diverse and by certain gauges you could blame him for the careers of Tex Perkins and Caligula (the band), none of which, Thought Criminals included, should or would make anyone want to listen to music he was producing in 2009. In fact, ditto Phil Judd who has been exceptionally quiet in the last 20 years – you hear more about Phil Judd in songs Tim Finn writes about him than you do from Phil Judd himself.

Whatever the genesis of the Unth!nkables is, and whatever made Roger and Phil get together, the short album that has resulted is actually pretty good fun, in the vein of Stinky Fire Engine or Merle Morris. There are almost no songs exactly – ‘Kiss the dream goodbye’, the opener, does at least have vocals – and most of the record is a series of blends of music and spoken word which sounds like it came from films but probably didn’t, since there are no credits for samples, or perhaps it’s all just obscure and/or public domain stuff. The music is pretty good value, only occasionally dipping into the generic, and the words are usually pretty funny.

I listened to this in the company of the Starstruck soundtrack (which Judd wrote a lot of) and Godley and Creme’s 1975 triple LP set Consequences (which I have been trying to ‘get’). It strikes me that Untitled belongs to an earlier time – no, that’s wrong, but it belongs with things from an earlier time. Concept albums’ heyday was before the advent of video, and people who used to buy concept albums presumably sat around and listened to them words ‘n’ all like they had stories in them, which in some ways they often did. And when you went to a record store in the 70s not only could you perhaps buy a concept album or two, you could also buy bootleg albums of entire film soundtracks – I’m not kidding – classic movies like Marx Brothers films. And this was part of the culture and/or counterculture. People who bought that stuff then, now buy complete DVD collections, and talking books to listen to in the car.

The connection really is not that this is a concept (unless the concept is: we shall evoke western culture in various forms for you) but that it is not something you can put on in the background. You have to listen to it. That feels weird. But not unrewarding.

Todd Rundgren, Arena (Cooking Vinyl) February 13, 2009

You may recall the absurd joke a journalist for The Australian played on… who? … a few years ago by sending extracts from Patrick White books to publishers who (a) did not recognise them as White and (b) rejected the work in various ways. What this was supposed to prove is anyone’s guess – like a lot of literary hoaxes, there was some kind of underlying assumption that no-one actually holds if they think about it for more than a minute.

Nonetheless as per the Systematics, I have to wonder about context. Is Todd Rundgren helped or hampered by his legacy? Economically, it undoubtedly helps: ‘Hi my name’s Todd I’m 61 this is my first album, I’m wearing leather shorts on the cover, I play all the instruments myself and…’ hmm, well, it might work (it’s more likely to work in 2009 than any other time, I suspect) but you know really it wouldn’t. On the other hand, if you were wanderin’ into JB one afternoon, having never heard any Todd Rundgren and hoping to sample some (and being part of that very rare breed of people, once quite common, who (i) wants to expand musical horizons (ii) does so alone (iii) does so by purchasing things on spec rather than downloading or looking at stuff on YouTube, etc, would you buy the guy’s latest record or one of his alleged classics? You’d be a very strange person if you bought the new album. (Perhaps songs from this record are getting airplay somewhere and people are actually seeking it out on that basis, but it doesn’t seem likely). And this suggests to me that really Todd – having alienated most of his core audience more than most great artists who rose to prominence in the 70s – is being heard only by a very select few, who can put his work in context, and who are willing to follow him up hill and down dale on his many bizarre forays possibly just because they like the idea of An Eccentric Genius.

What I miss about old Todd that doesn’t show up too much on New Todd records – unless you count bizarre notions like the cover of Liars or the concept of the New Cars – is the humour that used to be evident in old Todd. I’m thinking of the spoken discussion, with illustrations, of recording technology on Something/Anything, or ‘An Elpee’s Worth of Toons’, etc. It was a kind of intelligent goofiness that stopped Todd from coming across like a poncing progger, or rather, allowed him to be a poncing progger whenever he wanted to be because he could be anything: a wizard, a true star and/or your unemployed elder brother with a good record collection in the granny flat.

OK for all that, and despite the fact that the least palatable tracks come first, Arena is on balance a great album. Presumably coming from Rundgren’s response to the 2007 tours by the New Cars (did they fill arenas? Their website has them playing a lot of State Fairs) The humour has arguably given way instead to a fine line in pastiche – ‘Strike’, f’rinstance, is AC/DC and ‘Mountaintop’ is glam rock (very good glam rock, actually). I’m not sure what ‘Manup’ is – not familiar enough with the genre – but it’s not that pleasant, stylistically. Elsewhere, Rundgren is furious and vibrant, though more into parody/exercises than building in any sensitive way on his considerable legacy. The exceptions come midway through, and they are startling and fine: ‘Courage’ would have fitted nicely into Hermit of Mink Hollow, and you know that’s got to be good. ‘Weakness’ is perhaps Todd-era Todd, and that’s pretty strong stuff; could be the best song here, could even be one of Todd’s best overall. It’s a soulful rock ballad which has a beautifully strident and crooked guitar figure woven throughout, and enough musical ideas for three songs (at least). (And whatever the strengths of ‘Strike’, it’s a shame it interposes straight afterwards: you feel like you’ve met someone really great at a party and then the bass player in your wife’s band starts yelling in your other ear about bullshit).

On balance then a strange melange but screw it – it IS Todd. And it’s good Todd, too, in the main. I recommend. (Note: I have struggled over this review for two weeks now – that’s a reason, not an excuse!)

Buffalo Reissues (Aztec) October 16, 2008

Louder than what?

I totally thought that ‘Volcano Rock’ was released first, ‘Only Want You For Your Body’ second and ‘Dead Forever’ third, but problems with accepting this as the actual release order arose when I looked on the sleeve of Volcano Rock and I saw the directive ‘Play This Album Even Louder!’ and I was like huh? But there’s nothing to compare itself with! Then on the third and final album ‘Dead Forever’, the band demands ‘Play this Album Loud!’ and I’m thinking gee, these guys are screwy.

 

Eventually I worked out that album orders aren’t always going to be in the same order that the label reissues them (for the record and the sake of consistency: the third and final album ‘Only Want Your For Your Body’ says ‘Now Blow Your Speakers Out!’). Anyway, here’s the order in its factual glory:

 

Dead Forever, 1972

Volcano Rock, 1973

Only Want You For Your Body, 1974

 

When the committee for assembling the hard rock pantheon of excellent greats is set-up, they would be ill-considered and sneered at if they overlooked the considerable power of Oz rockers Buffalo. Fronted by the always grinning, baby-faced Dave Tice (whose blinding white teeth could have well-served a Colgate ad) Buffalo hammered out three hard-hitting albums before calling it a day.

 

Not his God, not her God, not your God, but My God!, ‘Volcano Rock’ is really hot and really solid. I think the sucker goes off. “Cock Rock that thuds on the hard floor like a heavy bag of cement, hardening. Totally hardened it can be an effective wrecking instrument.” I wrote that down the first time I heard ‘Volcano Rock’, by far the hardest metal these doggone ears ‘ave ‘eard aroun’ ‘ese parts. I couldn’t believe my ears, frankly it was too loud to.

 

Next I heard ‘Only Want You For Your Body’ and it wasn’t very good, or at least I thought it wasn’t, but I was wrong. Don’t be put off by the most heinous album cover art that you will ever see because I probably was and thus paid dearly for it. The cover art is the second-best reason not to get it on vinyl and the first reason is the songs have been so acutely remastered by Aztec that the best versions that exist are now these ones.

 

What bites if you choose the newies is you can’t see the Vertigo disc spinning around hypnotically on your turntable anymore. As far as I know, Buffalo were the only Australian act signed to Vertigo, the UK label who peddled the crunch back in the day when things started to get really weird. In addition to having all the really heavy stoner rock like Black Sabbath and May Blitz they had black and white vertigo vinyl. But at least the folks at Aztec have restored this neat feature on the reissues. Look at the plastic and you’ll see what I’m getting at.

 

The critic in me wants to say ‘Volcano Rock’ was a refreshing move away from blues rock to Sabbath changes, but it’s not correct. Buffalo were fully formed from the first detonation of John (Should be a Household Name, Should have Had a Funny Nickname) Baxter’s thunder chords, the heavyweight behind the sound, while Dave Tice did the lyrics.

 

‘Intro: Pound of Flesh’ proves that Dave was a funny fucker. You’re probably asking yourself why this is and now I’m going to tell you. It was no album intro, it was the 5^th song! Funny. I’m always putting this cut on mix-CDs and I really need to stop because people are starting to get it more than once and that’s not only lame it’s kind of senile. If the cookie monster could belt it out and hold a note and was also a woman, he would sound something like Dave. Dave is offered insurance on Sunset Strip. A crucial ingredient in heavy rock is the (pardon me while I steal a catchphrase from America’s Next Top Model) fierce bottom-end and these guys are amphibious (they swam through the muck with élan). ‘Freedom’ was a hard rock epic on a hard rock warm-up mix that the Jicks used a few years ago and one in which I pried from the hands of their drummer after bamboozling him after one of their shows. I think one of the Matador guys had given it to him, it was full of a whole lotta stuff I never ‘eard before: Amon Dull II, Pink Faeries, Taste, Woods Band, Hairy Chapter among others.  

 

‘Only Want you For Your Body’s’ cover art is so revolting I’m not even going to discuss it anymore, except to say that Spinal Tap’s ‘Smell the Glove’ doesn’t even come close. Buffalo obviously spent a lot of time on their cover art but I think that it’s one of the least interesting aspects of the group. These bovine beasts sometimes needed to be bowdlerised.

 

I heard ‘Dead Forever’, their debut, most recently. ‘Leader’ starts things off and in its epic way alludes to everything the band will get up to in the next few years. Bill Palbi’s drums are amazing and kinda damp, they’re lubed-up with some kind of treatment, or drumming aide, it’s kind of fresh (Bill would soon be replaced). ‘Pay My Dues’ is Baxter’s ‘Eruption’ – followed by the ten and a half minute ‘I’m a Mover’ which is proto-Van Halen tenfold, Tice at times shrieking like David Lee Roth or Jack Black. At the seven minute mark upon reaching the climax of another big Baxter freestyle, someone pipes up: ‘very tasty.’

 

Clueless and rich scamps Wolfmother should have had a knowledge of Buffalo before they embarked on their unsatisfying banshee music. Calling the band Son of Buffalo, or even Son of Buffalomother (son of Bisonmother probably rings the best without undermining the integrity of the salutary context) I reckon would have enhanced their image. 

 

There’s a lot of talk about why Baxter left the band. He thinks it’s because he played too loud and Dave couldn’t hear himself think, let alone bellow his stentorian pipes, but apparently it was a record company push to stretch the band’s market. Gagworthy to the extreme why some bands frigging do this.

 

 

 

Peter Escott, Slowcoach (No label) Randy Newman, Harps and Angels (Nonesuch) September 6, 2008

 Men playing pianos in pop/rock have to deal with the fact that the piano is never, in anyone’s language or conception, a cock rock instrument. (They may like this aspect of it, but they still have to deal with it). The man playing the piano cannot pretend, in the way that one hundred billion (at last count) young men and women can pretend that they are casually picking at a large phallus that happens to have replaced their conscious mind and leads them on to sonic and perhaps just general, social status, glory. I am in mind particularly of those people who dance around on stage apparently led by their own guitar necks as pulled along by their own little hands. Pianists are people sitting at a big instrument and prodding its many keys to get a response: they are like typistes or telephone operators, and aren’t being led anywhere.

Often – I’m thinking, as always, of Paul Hewson or Don Walker – the pianist hangs to one side as the band plays his songs, and he is inwardly declaring, of course, ‘dance puppet dance, play out your roles in my elaborate imaginative charade’. But in the case of Escott and Newman, two men who just good old play piano and sing songs, the charade is all within the song itself and the simultaneously sad and happy facts that it’s all the product of the piano playing man’s imagination. 

Newman and Escott could learn from each other, if either knew the other existed. Newman could learn how fine it can be to sometimes just let the words sung do the talking, rather than this constant push towards musical theatre and/or animated cartoonery in a Leslie Carbaga kind of fashion (once we might have wondered how Randy managed to simultaneously write very boisterous yet schmaltzy tunes for the closing credits of Pixar films, and also write his more sardonic numbers; he put this wondering to bed by just starting to bung his pixaresque tunes – probably rejects from movies – onto his albums, which he might as well regard as ads for his latest product usable in advertising and blockbusters, since, like the Labor party he knows his core audience will let him get away with all kinds of shit as long as the competition’s appeal is so lacking: ‘Losing you’ channels ‘I’ve never been to me’, a shit song). So Newman’s cartoonery comes forth in songs like ‘A few words in defense of our country’; he’s been writing this kind of stuff since cocky was an egg, wherein he places himself as some kind of soapbox logician becoming undone by his own ill-thought out argument. Don’t get me wrong: nobody does it better, at this point, but it would be nice if someone tried, as Randy needs to be persuaded into formulating a new schtick or two.

Randy Newman could listen to songs like Escott’s ‘Morning in the meadows’ and recall what once made Randy Newman so extraordinary (not that he’s not still incredible, but I mean extraordinary as in, a new experience). This is a narrator with an out-of-body experience, a short story in song, lyrics that speak as much if not more in what they don’t say as what they do. You can’t go past songs like this. He could also glean from ‘Clear the room’, for instance, that you can still write a great new tune out of the old components without going self-consciously weird. ‘Clear the room’ is as roomy and rich with possibility as the songs Newman was writing in the sixties for whoever, Harper’s Bizarre, or Dusty Springfield, as baroque and yet as fertile. Randy, Peter’s got something to tell you. ‘I hate to be your alibi, but you’ve got deadlines to meet’.

By the same token, Escott could learn from Newman a little. His album is unadorned (apart from a little tape manipulation and abient noise) in much the same way early Randy projects like the self-titled one and Sail Away were. But the Randy Newman of Harps and Angels summons up every kind of incredibly lush orchestration possible and even (oh, he’s done it before – he did it on his last real album, Bad Love, in 1999) has a go at his backing singers (it’s still funny no matter how many times he does it, partly because Randy’s voice is the voice of someone agitated and comic but also because he takes such a commanding narrative lead in everything he does, whether he does it as RANDY NEWMAN IS SINGING THIS SONG or RANDY NEWMAN IS PRETENDING TO BE SOMEONE ELSE IN THIS SONG). I would love to hear Escott with extras, as much as Slowcoach is a very beautifully recorded piano-and-voice album (it sounds better than those old Newman records from the early 70s, because I suppose there was not confusion about whether these were comedy or poetry or songs with an instrument, and the piano sounds full and pushy). The image Randy brings forth is the man at the piano who can simply whip up a massed violin flourish by scooping it from the air; it’s delectable, and I can see things like the aforementioned ‘Clear the room’ being exploited and enriched to its very limit by such treatment. He wouldn’t have to tell his backing singers off.

While I intend to listen to the Newman album many more times and acknowledge this may be revised as an opinion, I would have to say that Harps and Angels isn’t a patch on Bad Love, which was probably one of his best along with Good Old Boys (1974) and Born Again (1979). There are, at early familiarity stage, only two really great songs: the title track, in which Newman comes back from a brush with death and gets good advice about continuing to live, and the second last song ‘Potholes’ about having a good if average life and forgetting it; this is a great tune, well arranged and played, and lyrically it hilariously meanders in irresistible ways. A third song, ‘Korean parents’, embarrasses itself with faux-chinoiserie (perhaps intended to be faux-hangookerie) which just doesn’t belong on a record in 2008; it was embarrassing in ‘Turning Japanese’ by the Vapours in nineteen-eighty-whenever. But the rest of the song, incidentally, and the main part of the verse, is hot in a Gilbert-and-Sullivan-as-filtered-through-the-first-track-off-Born-Again kind of way.

If Newman’s best work is behind him, which it might not be, though if it is, he has given us more than enough to be getting on with, yet I am certainly excited by the prospect that all things going well, Escott’s is ahead of him. Slowcoach is a masterpiece which stands up to constant and repeated listening, and I urge you to find a copy however you might.  

(A complete live version of Harps and Angels with some cool intersong banter is streamed here).