Have you all heard the first single, “Chinese Democracy”? It’s pretty good in my opinion, but also with me knowing full well that this is not gonna affect me the way the Appetite for Destruction did when it came out when I was a senior in high school. Jesus, do you know how many times I listened to that album drinking beer and smoking pot at Louie Robinson’s house on a Tuesday night? Well I won’t tell you so that I can still run for President one day! But these guys came along when I had just about had it with the metal scene turning into a bunch of pussies.
Rolling Stone has heard the album (I think Axl listened to it with the reviewer and then after the review had been writ, Axl destroyed him)…and they gave the album 4 stars out of 5. Good, says I! I hope that it will be great and don’t want to hate it. But I do know that I would love it 10 times more if the original band played on it. Shit, I’d just take Slash…although many think it was Izzy that gave them their true rock edge. He is very Richards-esque. Anyhoo (did I just say anyhoo?), go check out the review over here. It looks like it will be a very financially-lucrative holiday season for Mr. W. Axl Rose. Now release another album at this time next year, corn row boy!
On the same day that the phrase “Yes We Can” became the United States’ official new governing philosophy, the premier progressive rock band of all time, Yes, kicked off their In The Present 40th Anniversary tour…with at least one big but. Due to some respiratory health problems that have plagued long-time Yes singer and spiritual leader, Jon Anderson, the band has replaced him for this tour with Canadian Yes tribute band singer, Benoit David. And the smaller but is that keyboardist, Rick Wakeman, who has always been a little flighty anyway, has been replaced by his son, Oliver. The band is rounded out by Yes mainstays Steve Howe (guitar), Chris Squire (bass) and Alan White (drums). Replacing Anderson has been more than controversial to Yes die-hards (including this writer) and even to Anderson himself, but reports from early In The Present gigs are very positive and Benoit David really does nail Anderson’s vocals perfectly (perhaps too perfectly). Even so, many fans still won’t be rushing out to buy Yes concert tickets until Anderson is back in the band. And to bide time until that happens, those skeptics can turn to Yes – The New Director’s Cut from MVD Visual.
Recorded during Yes’ 35th Anniversary tour in 2003, Yes – The New Director’s Cut, features two full length concert performances from the classic line-up of Yes (Anderson, Wakeman, Howe, Squire, White) from the N.I.A. Birmingham and Glastonbury Festival. This DVD edition sets out to appease fans who were a little less than pleased with the editing, narration, and interview clips (during songs) of the original tour document, Yesspeak. And it succeeds greatly. There is a great venue vibe contrast from show to show, as the first DVD is indoors and the second is outdoors, at the Glastonbury. And although the set lists are very similar, fans will love the two equally amazing takes of the 15-minute plus masterpiece epic, “Awaken”, from 1977’s Going For The One album…the highlight for this Yes fan.
Evident from these performances, these guys are some of the best players in the business and are all still on top of their game. It seems like Yes really shines its brightest (and the fans the most satisfied) when playing the deeper cuts like “Don’t Kill The Whale”, “South Side of the Sky”, “To Be Over” and the aforementioned “Awaken”. They are most certainly the highlights of Yes – The New Director’s Cut. The only times the shows sag a bit are during the Yes super-hits which the band sometimes seem to sleepwalk through. Maybe we’ll get to see a ‘Yes – Deep Cuts’ tour where Yes abandons the usual must-play hits and provides the fans with more of the magical surprise songs when Anderson returns for their 41st year (you reading this, Yes?). But until then, dig into the excellent 4 hours-plus footage of Yes – The New Director’s Cut and send out your good vibes to Jon Anderson’s health.
From the outer worlds of rock & roll, jazz and funk, today I have a couple 70’s-era fusion gems to tell you about that German label, Most Promising Sound has once again made available to the ears of all of us musical adventurers. One is a 1972 Don “Sugar Cane” Harris album called Sugar Cane’s Got The Blues and the other is a 1974 Pork Pie album called Transitory.
Some of you might know Don “Sugar Cane” Harris from his electric violin performances on Frank Zappa & The Mothers albums Hot Rats, Burnt Weeny Sandwich, and Weasels Ripped My Flesh. One of the most notable of his Zappa album performances is his lead vocal and blues violin solo on the Little Richard cover, “Directly From My Heart To You”. Seek it out if you haven’t heard it! Unfortunately, Harris passed away almost ten years ago in 1999, but Most Promising Sound has done us the favor of reviving some of the best music that Harris ever recorded, in the smokin’ live document, Sugar Cane’s Got The Blues. Harris’ band displays some serious talent and includes ex-Soft Machine drummer, Robert Wyatt and the amazing German jazz fusion pianist, Wolfgang Dauner. The band starts cooking with steam from the get-go and jam with fantastically-controlled frenzy over the next nine minutes of “Liz Pineapple Wonderful”. The next three tracks slow the pace a bit and is capped off with a smokin’ blues tune (“Where’s My Sunshine”), displaying the depth and beauty of Sugar Cane’s playing, and furthering the case that ‘Jimi Hendrix of violin’ was a pretty accurate moniker for Don “Sugar Cane” Harris…and I’m sure Jimi would’ve been flattered.
The other fantastic fusion release, Transitory, is by Jasper van’t Hof’s band, Pork Pie. Van’t Hof is a Dutch jazz pianist and keyboard player, and is one of the most active jazz players on the European jazz scene. In 1974, Van’t Hof assembled an amazing collective of musicians including guitarist Philip Catherine (who was named ‘Young Django’ by Charlie Mingus), saxophonist Charlie Mariano (who’s also played with Mingus as well as Embryo), and drummer Aldo Romano and bassist Jean-Francois Jenny Clark (who provided Don Cherry’s rhythm section early in their careers). The sheer talent and musicianship of these players is evident and, like the Sugar Cane album, the band wastes no time ripping into a serious groove with the first song, “Epoch”. The album continues on to break down the barriers between rock, electronic, psychedelia, and free jazz elements, and never relents. This may all sound like it may make it a difficult listen, but it is far from it. Pork Pie manages to combine all of these far out elements with a repeat listenability.
In fact, both of these excellent 70’s fusion re-releases manage to pull off that difficult task. And the sound on these remasters is perfect. Most Promising Sound’s motto is “to make music lovers happy’ and they have done just that to this music lover. I will be sure to keep an eye on the interesting material that they choose to release next…it’s sure to be ‘most promising’!
As the major record companies are dying off, unable to adapt to the changing times, we just may be seeing the rise again of music that is more real, as bands and smaller labels have less to lose. There’s a couple albums that you really should here that may just be great signs of the times! Check ‘em out…
First I’ll give you a tried and true band (or solo artist with a band name, at least) who has made their (her) best album perhaps since Learning To Crawl! It’s the Pretenders. The album’s called Break Up The Concrete and it is super raw rock & roll which was recorded in just 10 days! Chrissie is still the shit and her voice sounds better than ever and her songwriting is top-notch. If you need more convincing to pick up this album, then watch and listen…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0Y0JyKdsgA]
And the second album I need to tell you about that’s out today on Tee Pee Records (a fantastic rock label) is by a new heavy psych-rock trio called Earthless. Think Sabbath meets Hawkwind meets Blue Cheer. The album is Live at Roadburn and it obviously was recorded live at the annual Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Holland.
The story’s pretty amazing that Earthless wound up on the main stage at the festival in front of 2,000 psych-rock fans when the headlining band did not use their two hour time slot. The festival organizers scrambled to find a replacement and Earthless stepped right in and just straight-up jammed for the next hour and a half. Their songs have names but there are no vocals and you should probably stay clear of this album unless you really dig space-rock type jams…like I do! If you do, get it now, and be proud to hear that such a band can exist in today’s musical landscape of actual signed bands!
Here’s a great sample of their song “Godspeed”: [audio http://teepeerecords.com/media/Earthless_-_Godspeed.mp3]
And here’s a great vid of the band, but not from Roadburn…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCEACSH8YBE]
I just recently saw a great live show at NYC’s Cake Shop on the Lower East Side. The headliner was San Francisco’s amazing throwback Detroit-style rockers, Apache, and playing before them was New York’s Electric Shadows, who were equally rockin’ and who are currently working on a full-length debut album. But the opener that played before them both was Brooklyn’s The Weight, whose album, Are Men, has made me regret grabbing that second pre-show pitcher at Katz’s and rolling in after they wrapped up.
The Weight are very different than the bands that they shared the stage with that night, and they are very different from the other music scenes that they are used to sharing stages with in Brooklyn. Their new album, Are Men, is a fantastic display of dive-bar country tunes interspersed with rockin’ psych guitar rave-ups. They probably share the closest likeness in style with Gram Parsons-era Byrds and pre-Wilco band Uncle Tupelo, and I’m hearing some of the grit of good ole’ original country boys like Merle and Waylon. The band has dropped some of the ‘alt’ in the alt-country style more present on 2004’s 10 Mile Grace and really plays a looser, more fun version of country-rock. Not really what you think of when you hear “Brooklyn indie-band,” huh?
The album starts strong with “Like Me Better” which introduces the hillbilly singer who sounds like he is playing his first song of the night to a sparsely-attended dive bar. The rock presence picks up though just two and a half minutes in when the electric guitar forces its way in and hangs around for a good minute. I know, it’s unheard of, an extended guitar solo on a modern rock album! God bless ‘em for it. “Had It Made” follows and it makes it very clear that there is plenty of rocking to be done. Over the next few songs you get steel guitar, country wit and wisdom, a great harmonica solo, and a stellar guitar rave-up closes out the song “Talkin”. The epic 7-minute “Sunday Driver” is like The Weight’s “Tuesday’s Gone”.
The Weight’s Are Men is sheer rocky-tonk music that should be in every dive-bar jukebox in the country. I love this quote from the The Colonel Records’ one-sheet for the album…”for the similarly post-jaded kids and honest fans of Americana, Are Men sounds like the record you actually enjoy listening to.” It’s so true. The next time me and the boys are drinking an 18-pack of Bud at my place, I’ll certainly be spinning this album.
Sample some songs over here.
What a great show last night at the Ballroom, where the sound is always perfect! We got there towards the end of the opener, Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter, and were pleasantly surprised to hear a top-notch folk-psych outfit who could be Steeleye Span folky one minute and the next, launch into some scorching jams led by electric guitar maestro, Phil Wandscher. Jesse’s voice is beautiful and hauntingly mesmerizing, and completely set apart from the vocal style that a lot of ‘alternative’-ish female singers are latching onto these days. Dig their songs on MySpace!
And then it was on to the main event, Black Mountain, who started strong and never let up. Here’s the setlist…
…and that’s about the best picture I got, since the band likes to keep the stage nice and dark. They are named Black Mountain, after all! These guys pound you with heavy riff-filled sound that you can’t help but bang your head to…kinda like Black Sabbath, but more trippily-psychedelic, and with killer proggy keyboards. They have a female singer with a ‘bleating vibrato’ (a la Roger Chapman…anyone?) and the guitarist also sings. And the band is at their best when the two are singing together, like in the third song of the night, “Wucan”, a song that puts me in a willing trance every time I hear it. Check out their video for the song…
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8upxRhff7cE&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1]
…is that not amazing? And it was 11 times the badassedness live at Bowery Ballroom last night. There was nary a dull moment. Other highlights for me besides “Wucan” were “Druganaut” and “Stormy High”. Check this band out if they come to your town!
I love that there are now bands like this out there playing to indie-rock audiences and reminding them how good a guitar solo can sound. It seems like the guitar had become just an instrument to make cutesy little jangly sounds on for so many indie-rock bands, as it somehow became unhip to have songs with guitar solos. Why is this? Did all the sensitive guys think of a guitar solo as an extension of their penis, which of course they would never want to admit to having? Or maybe their lyrics were so deep that a guitar solo would only water down their dire message to the world. Well, I’m happy to say that I’d rather wallow in the guitar-centric new pool of talented psych-rock bands such as Black Mountain, Dungen, Howlin Rain, Wooden Shjips, Earthless, and Jesse Sykes and the Sweet Hereafter.
Check out Black Mountain music on MySpace and, if you dig ‘em, pick up In The Future, an album that I nominated for one of the best albums of 2008 at mid-year.
ROIR Records has just re-released some excellent live and historic Skatalites music on CD, LP, and digital download, which was previously only available on cassette. Stretching Out, from 1983, is historically significant because it is from the year when the band had just reconciled the differences that had driven their 2-year career apart in 1965. Peter Tosh’s manager, Herbie Miller tracked them all down to play at the 1983 Jamaica Sunplash. Prior to the big gig, the band got together for some rehearsal nightclub gigs at Miller’s Blue Monk Jazz Gallery in Kingston before a crowd of local fans, friends, and fellow musicians. There were no restrictions on the length of their sets, no barriers on soloing, and no boundaries in general…which led to a stretched out, spontaneously joyful Ska reunion.
You can feel the small-room vibe of the club in the recordings and you can almost smell the ganja smoke and feel the heat and the sweat created by those in attendance, who were most likely moved by the endless backbeat skank to dance the night away. The Skatalites are a large group of players (9 of them, with 3 guests) whose playing is as smooth as cocoa butter over the 2 hours. There never seems to be any confusion as to who is soloing and when the band comes back in; this is a group of musicians who fully support each other. And the results make it all sound so easy, as the best musicians do. The band cooks its way through classics like “Guns of Navarone”, “Confucius”, and “Lee Harvey Oswald” and flow like melting moonlight over stretched out numbers like “Black Sunday” and “Ska Ba”.
The Skatalites horn blowers are stunning throughout. They were clearly inspired by the bebop players (like John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker) and the musical freedom and boundary-bursting those players pioneered. And the Skatalites, in turn, helped pioneer the sound that would later morph into rock steady and reggae. Unfortunately, all but one (Lester Sterling-alto sax, who still blows with the band) of that original horn section has joined that big band in the sky, with the passing of Johnny “Dizzy” Moore in August of this year. But the music certainly lives on and the live music on Stretching Out is just about as lively as it gets!
And be sure to check out this review published on Blog Critics and leave me some nice comments there
“Don’t take no shit from anybody” announced Billy Joel to a mid-80’s concert audience in Cincinnati that included my now-estranged father. My dad recited the Joel quote to me the day after the show and thought it was just the coolest thing ever spoken; obviously he (and Billy Joel) felt like they were taking too much shit from people. Billy Joel speaks to the blue collar working man in a very musically-sophisticated way, and perhaps Joel’s biggest, most profound statement ever was his 1977 album, The Stranger. Sony Legacy Records has just put together an amazing 30th Anniversary box set edition of The Stranger, and it has me floored.
In my early teens, I don’t think I understood what my father liked about Billy Joel, but I always have memories of hearing it in his car on the way to the movies or the drive-thru pony keg (a Cincinnati thing). But my appreciation for Billy Joel’s music has grown exponentially in the past 10 years, accelerated by such life-changing events as falling in love, moving to New York, getting married, and becoming the ‘grown-up’ that I am now (though some might argue that). I grew up hearing Joel’s unique songs, not really ‘getting it’, but knowing that there was something special going on there.
My wife and I have been immersed in the Sony Legacy 30th Anniversary box set of The Stranger for the last couple weeks, and it has been very pleasing. First of all, what a great package! It contains a remastered version of the original album, another CD featuring a live Carnegie Hall show from the summer of 1977 just after the album’s release, a DVD with an 11-song performance recorded for the BBC’s The Old Grey Whistle Test, two live promo videos, and a 30-minute ‘making of’ documentary with new interviews with Billy Joel and Phil Ramone. But wait! There’s more: a foldout poster for the sold-out Carnegie Hall shows, a replica of Joel’s songwriting notebook for the album complete with food stains and scratched out lyrics, and a book with tons of photos and great liner notes from Rolling Stone’s best music writer/lover, David Fricke.
Something really struck me as I skimmed through the songwriting notebook where Joel lists all the diverse acts that he has opened for up to 1977…Bill Withers, J. Geils Band, Yes, Taj Mahal, Linda Ronstadt, the Eagles, Kinky Friedman, Jeff Beck, John Sebastian, Janis Ian, Seals & Crofts, Anne Murray, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Stevie Wonder, and Olivia Newton-John, to name quite a few. It really had me thinking about just how different an artist Billy Joel is…not quite cut out for classic rock radio (Joel’s music is a classic rock radio no-no), not quite the classic crooner (like Franky and Deano), not really the typical singer/songwriter of the era (James Taylor, Dan Fogleberg), and not quite flamboyant showtunes-man (a la Manilow), yet all these things are somehow wrapped up in his own unique style. It’s almost like he created his own genre.
I’ve never really stopped to think about what our friends across the pond think about our New York-centric Steely duo, but it comes to mind now that I’m checking out the UK release of the new Walter Becker joint, Circus Money, on Sonic 360. Perhaps they didn’t grow up sneaking their parents’ Steely Dan records like I did, giving them spins in between Iron Maiden and Def Leppard albums, and becoming addicted to the sheer sonic quality and unique songwriting of Becker and Fagen. There was always something special to the quality of Steely Dan music; it walked the musical tightrope between jazz and rock, but sneering at you before you are able to dare lump it into the same pile of other fusion garbage that came from the mid-70’s. There was some really good stuff that came out of that fusion era and there was a lot of bad…and then there were the innovators like Steely Dan.
With Walter Becker’s new Circus Money album, only his second solo album overall and his first in 14 years, you shouldn’t be surprised to get the kind of high-gloss production that we’ve been used to from the Steely brothers, at least ever since 1980’s Gaucho or perhaps, arguably, Aja (from 1977). Yes, the production is very sleek and maybe some fans yearn for the grittier (yet still super-smooth) style of the Dan’s first 5 albums leading up to Aja…but we know better than to expect that from any post-70’s Steely productions. All that said, Circus Money is certainly up to par with the high-level of quality that we’ve always known we could expect in any era of Steely Dan.
Circus Money has a decidedly reggae flavor throughout, a style that we’ve seen crop up on a few Steely tracks over the years… The Royal Scam’s ”Haitian Divorce” comes to mind. Becker told Rolling Stone he has long been a fan of…“ska, Rock Steady reggae, rockers, steppers, all these different variations on the patterns as the drumming changed a little bit and the tempos changed. A lot of Lee Perry stuff, the stuff that the rhythm section from the Wailers played on — Style Scott, Sly & Robbie, Flabba Holt.” And Becker’s band pulls off the skanking in a most delicious way…just listen to the deep-bass dub groove on “Bob Is Not Your Uncle Anymore”, probably the standout track for me.
The usual clever Steely wit is here in full-force (“Selfish Gene”), the songwriting is top-notch (“Paging Audrey”), the players are fantastic, the production is crisp, and the only thing you might find yourself missing is that classic Dylan-meets-Manhattan-R&B-jazzbo vocal of Donald Fagen. These two are always at their absolute best when they work together, but since it’s been five years since their last combined offering, Everything Must Go, the next best thing is grabbing the two superb solo works that these guys have done during that time off from Steely Dan recording…Fagen’s 2006 album Morph The Cat and Becker’s just released Circus Money. You can’t go wrong.
Check out this original post on Blog Critics Magazine…and leave me some comments over there!
This comment about the new AC/DC album (that still isn’t out for another couple months) from music industry ‘guy’, Bob Lefsetz really grabbed me…
The groove to “Decibel”… Like you’ve just stripped naked and are sauntering to the bed to stick your rod into a woman who’s BEYOND FANTASY! Wow, this is too much, PURE SEX!
Wow! The song better be amazing to legitimize using such a porny and corny word as ‘rod’. Reminiscent of Penthouse Forum letters, no? Cheers to ya though, Bob! You’re writing is always quite captivating. Check out the whole review of Black Ice. It looks like we can look forward to a gem from the Aussie boys this October! Subscribe to the Lefzsetz Letter here.
This piece was published on Blog Critics Magazine a few weeks ago, and I figured I’d post it here too, so you can take a look into what an ex-Can man is up to these days and so you can scope the trippy-nudey cover art. Go check out the piece on Blog Critics too and leave me some comments.
Mute Records has a 30-year history of releasing the finest in electronic, experimental, post-punk, art rock, avant-garde, and alternative music, and this new album by Irmin Schmidt & Kumo is another prime example of the quality and ever-progressive direction of the label’s offerings. Irmin Schmidt was founder member and keyboardist for the legendary German avant-garde rock group Can and Kumo (aka Jono Podmore) is a breakbeat pioneer and producer. Sound like an interesting combination? Well, it is.
You might gather from the album’s cover art, a powder-white naked man and woman whose red veins are visible through their skin and who have Mexican salamander heads, that this is not going to be a mainstream pop affair. Axolotl Eyes is filled with music that beautifully contrasts synthetic and ‘real’ instrumentation. Kumo’s scintillating beats, shimmering grooves, and sonorous bass perfectly envelope Schmidt’s meandering piano excursions. Several tracks also feature Paul J Fredericks on vocals, Ian Dixon on trumpet and throughout Schmidt and Kumo keep it interesting blending together theremin, slide guitar, keyboards, and violin with the crackling synthetic beats and atmospheres. This is a big departure from Schmidt’s Can days, but I think any Can fan would know that the one thing you can expect from the ex-Can men is experimentation and pushing the boundaries of sound.
The set also comes with a bonus 5.1 surround sound DVD of the sound installation Flies, Guys and Choirs, created by Kumo, Sandra Podmore, and Kate Shipp. The film was first conceived for Londonís Barbican Centre in 2001 and also screened at the Sonar festival, Barcelona and Les Chants Mechaniques festival in Lille. It’s certainly trippy with its psychedelically-effected close-ups of insects, fish, and other natural things, accompanied by quietly forceful environmental music.
The album is out now on Mute Records in the U.S. (Spoon Records in the U.K.) and is another excellent chapter in Irmin Schmidt’s long and adventurous recording career.
You can preview tracks at Irmin Schmidt & Kumo’s MySpace page.
You might remember that I wrote a piece about the Welsh band, MAN, a few months ago when I was still a newbie to their music. Since then I have received some mind-blowing MAN albums, bursting with their eclectic blend of West Coast psychedelia, hard rock, blues, progressive rock, funk, Beatlesy harmonies, and top notch jamming. These albums have been beautifully remastered with excellent bonus material and packaging and new liner notes from one of the MAN legends himself, guitarist/singer/songwriter, Deke Leonard. The most recent reissues include the three albums, Back Into The Future, Slow Motion and Maximum Darkness.
I’ve got to say that these MAN reissues have been in very heavy rotation in my iTunes and iPod for the last couple months. I have gone from a complete ignorance of this band, not even having heard of them before 2008, to being converted to an unmitigated MAN fan by mid-2008. Why is MAN such a horribly overlooked band, you might ask? I’m really not sure, but my guesses are a) perhaps mismanagement (a la Moby Grape) and b) lack of radio hits. At least the Grateful Dead had “Truckin’” and “Casey Jones” But this isn’t necessarily mainstream music here either. This is music for music’s sake. Here’s my completely-biased account of the most recent set of MAN albums that have just been re-released on England’s Esoteric Recordings this summer.
Click on through for the juicy details…
So here’s my review of a UFO Best-Of album that I did for Blog Critics magazine. Keep in mind, I only do positive reviews so if the album sucked, you wouldn’t see it here! It was fun to write about UFO since I missed out on them back in my budding hard rock days, which were filled with the sounds of AC/DC, Def Leppard, Iron Maiden, Motley Crue, etc. Dig…
Okay, is it cool to like 80′s Metal again? With the hugely triumphant return of David Lee Roth-era Van Halen to the old hair metal guys even having their very own 4-day Bonnaroo-like camping festival, Rocklahoma, in July, it seems like the scene is set for the 80′s Metal Gods to rise again. So you’ll definitely see a hasty repackaging of catalogs and best-ofs from bands like Ratt and Poison and Motley Crue and Dokken, and even new albums from some of these guys. Some will be be great and make us wonder why we ever stopped listening to them and some will be quite the opposite… as with any genre of music.
Then if you’re really searching, you’ll find a brilliant compilation of songs from a band whose music informed that whole genre; a band who actually had little to no success in the 80s, but whose sound you could find all over the popular hard rock music of the decade. The band is UFO and the new compilation is Chrysalis Records’ The Best of UFO (1974-1983).
Now, as the band was coming to the end of their powers in 1983, I was turning 11-years old and beginning to be turned on to hard rock and metal. So I had definitely heard the name Michael Schenker since the Scorpions were just starting to see huge success in the States, as I was eating up their Animal Magnetism, Blackout and Love At First Sting albums, and knew that Scorps guitarist Rudy Schenker had a brother who was once in the Scorpions in the 70s and currently had his own creatively-named Michael Schenker Group. But I had not properly been introduced to the work of Michael Schenker in UFO until the last couple years. That’s pretty damn late for a band that formed in 1969 and who started hitting their creative stride in 1974, when I was 2-years old!
Over the past year, I’ve slowly been acquiring classic UFO albums and digging further into their catalog and just now, somewhat serendipitously, I was called upon to review the new Best Of UFO (1974-1983) collection, as it saw its April 2008 release.
I was happy to hear a great sequencing of songs when I first popped on the album, and a pristine remastering job! The comp kicks off with the 6 1/2-minute scorcher, “Rock Bottom”, from the time when the band lost their trippy space rock sound of old (another era of UFO I like a lot for different reasons) and picked up the aforementioned German guitar guru, Michael Schenker who gave them a more straight-ahead rock sound for their 1974 Shenker-debut album, Phenomenon. If this song doesn’t hook you, then you may want to check your pulse, for perhaps you’ve expired!
