“When I’m on stage, I’m trying to do one thing: bring people joy. Just like church does. People don’t go to church to find trouble, they go there to lose it.”
– James Brown
“Our whole thing was based on James Brown. We listened to Live at the Apollo endlessly on acid. We would listen to that in the van in the early days of 8-tracks on the way to the gigs to get us up for the gig. If you played in a band in Detroit in the days before The MC5, everybody did ‘Please, Please, Please’ and ‘I Go Crazy.’ These were standards. We modeled The MC5’s performance on those records. Everything we did was on a gut level about sweat and energy. It was anti-refinement. That’s what we were consciously going for.”
– Wayne Cramer, MC5
Recorded
October 24, 1962
Genre
R&B, soul
Length
31:31 (Original LP), 40:47 (CD reissue)
Label
King, Solid Smoke, Polydor
Producer
James Brown (original), Harry Weinger (Polydor reissues)
One of the best live albums in music history, James Brown – Live at the Apollo was recorded on this day 50 years ago.
My favourite moment: The whole horn infused “Think” that borrows heavily from jazz legend Charlie Parker in the way Brown scats over the band with the crowd participating enthusiastically. Not remotely like the studioversions and terribly good!
Gene Clark (1944-1991) was one of the founding members of the legendary The Byrds, and this is what he is known for among the majority. This is too bad…In 1974 he made a solo album “No Other”. It was released on David Geffen’s Asylum Records. Apparently, after spending more than 100 000 $ to record the album (with an all-star cast of musicians, singers, and Thomas Jeffereson Kaye at the helm producing), the album was named “uncommercial” , it was considered the “Heavens Gate” of records.
When it finally came out it was not appreciated by his contemporaries and sold very poorly. Before 1976 it was out of distribution.
Today, most critics will agree that this is a so-called “Lost Masterpiece” or “Burried Treasure”. They are certainly right about that.
I had heard and read about the album for nearly 20 years, before I finally bought it after having heard it in passing in a local record store.
“I volunteered for the Army on my birthday They draft the white trash , ´round here anyway I done two tours of duty in Vietnam And I came home with a brand new plan…”
“”This record is definitely going to keep me off the Grand Ole Opry. I think we’ve made a real rock ‘n roll album. People that only know me from Guitar Town might be freaked out a bit, although anyone who also followed Exit O and the live thing won’t be taken aback at all. Sonically, the rhythm section’s a lot tougher.” – Steve Earle (to Spectator)
Copperhead Road is an American alternative country/country rock album released in 1988 by Steve Earle. Often referred to as Earle’s first “rock record”, Earle himself calls it the world’s first blend ofheavy metal and bluegrass, while in their January 26, 1989 review of the album Rolling Stone suggested the style be known as “power twang”. (read more at Wikipedia)
Released
October 17, 1988
April 29, 2008 (Deluxe)
Genre
Heartland rock, Alt-Country, Country rock, Americana
Length
43:36
Label
Uni Records (USA/Canada)
MCA
Producer
Steve Earle, Tony Brown
Official video for the song Copperhead Road
The songs on the album are a mix of personal/love songs and political/story-songs. The title track is about a road used for drug/alcohol traffic through generations, the song “Snake Oil” compares then president Ronald Reagan to a traveling con man. The title track and “Johnny Come Lately” ( with The Pogues) both describe the experiences of returning veterans.
Steve Earle and Pogues recording Johnny Come Lately:
Well, but you see, Columbia’s never offered to do that. They have done that with The Basement Tapes and the Budokan album. But they’ve never offered to put that out as a historical album or whatever. And believe me, if they wanted to do it, they could.
~Bob Dylan to Kurt Loder in 1984
“I still can’t believe they’ve finally put it out. I just keep staring at my copy.”
~Andy Kershaw (BBC Radio 1 DJ)
14 years ago today… they finally put it out, this surely calls for a celebration!
Baby, Let Me Follow You Down:
From Wikipedia:
Released
October 13, 1998
Recorded
May 17, 1966
Genre
Rock, folk rock, blues rock
Length
95:18
Label
Columbia
Producer
Jeff Rosen
Live 1966: The “Royal Albert Hall” Concert is a two-disc live album by Bob Dylan, released in 1998. Recorded at Manchester’s Free Trade Hall. It is from Dylan’s famous world tour in 1966, having been extensively bootlegged for decades, and is an important document in the development of popular music during the 1960s.
The setlist consisted of two parts, with the first half of the concert being Dylan alone on stage performing an entirely acoustic set of songs, while the second half of the concert has Dylan playing an “electric” set of songs alongside his band The Hawks. The first half of the concert was greeted warmly by the audience, while the second half was highly criticized, with heckling going on before and after each song.
Here are two (of many..) “real” bootleg covers of this concert:
“On his right hand Billy tattooed the word love and on his left hand was the word fear. And in which hand he held his fate was never clear”
I think Darkness on the edge of town is Springsteen’s best album, but I think Tunnel of Love is his most overlooked record. This is a quiet, often acoustic country-tinged album that has become more important to me the older I get.
It might sound less than Springsteen than his earlier albums, and he really goes a long way towards country music, but that’s ok, I really like it. He released it while still touring with the E Street Band, but its sound signified a marked departure from the driving rock of his earlier albums.
“God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of.”
It’s a mix of Nebraska and Darkness with strong melodies and more melancholy. The Songs are about lost opportunities, misplaced love and regrets. It is a very sad album, maybe that is why Springsteen rarely play these songs in concert. He should play them, they are among his best.
The sleeve notes to the record Springsteen writes “Thanks Julie”.
Bruce Springsteen comes off as a tired man, is it his break-up record, his divorce album? It certainly sound like it. Great art sometimes comes from pain, and this album contains great art.
Brilliant Disguise:
His marriages are falling to pieces, both to his wife and to his band. He records this album at home, it is a true solo effort even if some E-Streeters dropped by to lend backing vocals or keyboard parts to certain tracks.
It is also a “what’s the meaning of love?” record.
Lyrically, Tunnel of Love showed us some of Springsteen’s sharpest writing to date.The songs have been covered a lot and these tunes prove especially attractive to musicians in the folk, country and singer-songwriter genre. You’ll be baffeled by the number of country artists who took a crack at “Tougher than the Rest.” As I said it has songs about lost love and regrets and what’s more country than that?
“Would they ever look so happy again the handsome groom and his bride?” Springsteen sings in Walk like a man.
Bruce and Julie filed for divorce less than a year after the release of the album.
As a teenager thirsting to escape your hometown and fantasising about meeting the girl of your dreams, the urgency and optimism of Born to Run, the murky realism of Darkness on the Edge of Town, heartland rock of The River and Born in The USA will probably appeal more to you than Tunnel of Love. I know they did to me.
What a difference growing up make: today Tunnel of Love rings just as true to me as the albums mentioned above does.
My Favourite song on the album is Tougher than the rest.
Rolling Stone magazine said it best:
Initially, in fact, Tunnel of Love sounds not only modest but also playful, giddy and lightweight. “Ain’t Got You” is a funny, partially a cappella Bo Diddley-style rocker that jokes about Springsteen’s wealth (“I got a pound of caviar sitting home on ice/I got a fancy foreign car that rides like paradise”) but expresses yearning for the one thing money can’t buy (i.e., “you”). In the next two songs, “Tougher Than the Rest” and “All That Heaven Will Allow,” Springsteen is head over heels in love, convinced that the sun will shine as long as he’s got the right woman by his side. Those three songs are a light, romantic, lovely beginning, and then it all comes crashing down.
Bobby said he’d pull out Bobby stayed in/Janey had a baby it wasn’t any sin/They were set to marry on a summer day/Bobby got scared and he ran away.
The song, “Spare Parts,” is a road-house rocker reminiscent of Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited”; the sound is abrasive and harsh; the story is bleak; and the moral is hard: “Spare parts/And broken hearts/Keep the world turnin’ around.”
From that point on, times are tough. In “Cautious Man,” the main character has love tattooed on one hand, fear on the other (Springsteen’s lift from the film The Night of the Hunter, in which Robert Mitchum played a preacher with love and hate tattooed on his knuckles). The relationships in “Two Faces,” “Brilliant Disguise” and “One Step Up” (“and two steps back”) are crumbling as trust gives way to betrayal and recrimination: “Another fight and I slam the door on/Another battle in our dirty little war.” In the title song, Springsteen voices a fear that underlies the entire album: “It’s easy for two people to lose each other in/This tunnel of love.”
