Noise, Noise, Noise

There have been times while going through this alphabetical project when I've gotten hung up on a particular record or CD. In the case of yesterday, it was two distinctly different recordings. First up, was First Take by Roberta Flack. I'm listening to it for the third time in two days as I write this entry. Roberta was already in her thirties (I think) and was a veteran of the night club circuit with a vast repertoire of tunes when she recorded this record (in 1969). I'm not certain if the variety of the songs on the album reflect her night club act or the record company's desire to have her appeal to the cocktail hour set (the draggy, string-laden "All the Sad Young Men" being the most glaring example). Anyway, I dig it, from the opening, swinging "Compared to What" to Donny Hathaway's "Tryin' Times" to the traditional gospel moan "I Told Jesus" to Leonard Cohen's "That's No Way to Say Goodbye" to the eventual hit "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"--which became a hit three years after the fact due to Clint Eastwood using it in Play Misty for Me! I gotta check out more Flack.

Also on the vinyl "F" front: I finished up Ella Fitzgerald with a live 1977 date from Montreux accompanied by the "Poet of the Piano," Tommy Flanagan. By this time, Ella's voice has a little more wear on it, but it's interesting to hear her live inventions--the growls, squeaks, and percussion impersonations on "One Note Samba." It's just this side of obnoxious--the wanky guitar solo of vocalizing, if you will. Still, you gotta give her points for pushing the creative envelope at her age (around sixty at that point).

My other repeat listen from the past couple of days has been the CD reissue of Machine Gun Etiquette by The Damned. Imagine me, confronting the onset of middle age, becoming a late-blooming Damned fan. Is it immature and tasteless of me to admit that when we went through the recent pope turnover, I kept singing the group's "Anti-Pope" to myself? Yes, I'm a super late-blooming phoney-baloney punk rocker! A charge levelled at The Damned themselves! God forbid, they had fun and fooled around back when all the original punk bands were super serious. By God, they couldn't help themselves, they had a real pop streak to them--probably closer to The Ramones than the other British punk bands, in that sense. I love MGE. My favorite reissue of the year (if you wanna nitpick, it came out late last year), although I don't feel that the ten bonus tracks add much. Their take on The Sweet's "Ballroom Blitz" is good for a larf.

I also played the CD version of The Damned's debut, Damned, Damned, Damned. Sheer entertainment. A great rock and roll record, no matter what genre you care to put it in. In the reissue liner notes, Rat Scabies, Captain Sensible, and Brian James make the point that they went for broke because they never thought they'd never make another record. Nick Lowe produced it in a straight up manner with none of the gloss of the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks.

Also recently played on CD, The Drag 'em Off the Interstate, Sock It to 'em Hits of Dick Curless. The cigarette and whiskeyed baritone of Dick Curless is arguably the greatest thing to come out of Maine. A master of the trucker song ("A Tombstone Every Mile" and many others), a gifted mimic (listen to him do Merle Haggard on "All of Me Belongs to Me"), tapped deeply into misery/tragedy ("Bury the Bottle with Me"), and a more than fair Dixieland/jazzish singer ("I Ain't Got Nobody"). Some entertaining novelty tunes ("Loser's Cocktail"; the gotta- be- heard-to-be-believed "Chick Inspector"). Get the comp on the Razor & Tie label, if you can find it.

Finally, cleansed our CD souls with Culture's Two Sevens Clash. Led by Joseph Hill, this trio of Rasta singers modelled after Burning Spear, and beloved of English punks, put their finger on the political, cultural, and spiritual crises the world over in the mid-seventies. Has anything changed all that much? A classic collection of vocal roots reggae. I love the stuff.