Rock Critics Are More Annoying than the New Radiohead; The Peerless And This Is Maxwell Street; Bitter, Soused Reid Paley; Dexys Runners, Brighter than Life Itself; New Samiam and Jubilee All-Stars
While the blues have arguably been the purest form of music to come out of America, there is no doubt that the musicians, by and large, are the most overlooked, shat-upon group of artists to have ever been exploited in the music industry. Whether it was British rock stars ripping off their songs and styles wholesale, or their audiences themselves being too stupid and/or lazy to seek out the real thing, scores of blues artists have come and gone over the past 80 years with lives lead in either total obscurity or middling success, while their pale, limp-wristed imitations travel in private jets and live in mansions.
Chicago didn't serve so much as the home of the blues as it was the last stop for millions of poor Southern blacks in the 30s and 40s looking for the promise of a better life in the industrialized North. And in Chicago, there was Maxwell Street, a melting pot of a weekend street market, a bit like Beale St. in Memphis, where blacks and whites mixed freely, and music of all sorts was played informally on street corners, literally anywhere a guitar could be plugged in. In the liner notes to And This Is Maxwell Street, blues legend Charlie Musselwhite recalls how it was: "The most I remember getting was $25, I think. It was all nickels and dimes and quarters mostly. We had a big old pile of change... If you went in the door that went out into that back porch, there was a lady's kitchen there and she would let you run an extension cord in there and somebody would give her a few bucks. We would count up the money on her kitchen table."
In 1964, Mike Shea covered the then-thriving Maxwell Street scene in his documentary, And This Is Free. Shortly after Shea died in 1995, his son Patrick approached Ian Talcroft, a producer and recording engineer at Studio IT, with a tape of Johnny Young singing "All I Want for My Breakfast" from the original documentary. It was the first time anyone other than the Sheas had heard the song since 1964. Shea had 69 other tapes?all the audio for the documentary?and these have led to the official release of And This Is Maxwell Street, a three-CD set, featuring two discs of music and one of Michael Bloomfield interviewing the legendary Robert Night Hawk, who figures prominently on both music discs.
Allow me to cut to the chase here and say that And This Is Maxwell Street is a phenomenal collection of live blues that signifies a perfect moment in time, much like James Brown's Live at the Apollo did for soul music. The main difference is that Brown was a bona-fide superstar playing to a paying audience, while the musicians on Maxwell Street were either little-known local heroes or unsung legends busking a weekend crowd for coins dropped in their guitar cases. This doesn't make Brown any less honest; it just points out how criminally neglected the blues have been?shamefully, far more at home than abroad, when music this pure and powerful can so easily be lost in the passing of time.
It's not just the music, but the sound of the crowd: screams punctuating guitar solos, preachers and salesmen bawling out their pitches, shouts of "hell yeah" and "all right," whistles, polite clapping and laughter. One song is simply titled "Back Off Jam"?because Night Hawk had to tell the crowd to "back off" as they got too excited and were crowding the band. When Night Hawk cuts into the brutal slow jams "Annie Lee/Sweet Black Angel" and "The Time Have Come," there is tense silence around the music. You can practically feel the crowd standing in awe. While Maxwell Street is hardly his show alone, his songs do demand special attention and, if anything, serve as a reminder that not every blues genius got a Chess box set; maybe it's more in line with the blues that he gave it all away on Maxwell Street and asked nothing in return.
Elsewhere, Big John Wrencher, aka One Armed John, shines on "Can't Hold on Much Longer," wherein he blows harp into a microphone one-handed, as he had lost the other in an automobile accident. Carey Bell, the only artist still living from the documentary and the most commercially successful, made his first recordings on Maxwell Street; his harp playing on "Carey'n On," where he replicates a train whistle and engine, is astounding. It should be noted that the influence of Night Hawk is unavoidable here, as he plays guitar on nearly every song. The few times he doesn't, the artists tend to either handle more traditional or gospel fare. Arvella Gray, who was blind and without the first two fingers on his left hand, plays a version of the traditional "Corrina, Corinna" on his steel-bodied dobro that stands up to Dylan's and Big Joe Turner's more popular versions.
As much I'd like to tout the other artists, it all comes back to Night Hawk, again and again, as his rhythm guitar is the heart of Maxwell Street. The interview disc starts out promisingly enough with Night Hawk simply jamming away solo before Bloomfield rains on his parade with some rote questions and standard-issue answers. I imagine this disc could interest blues purists, but I could have gone on listening to 40 minutes of Night Hawk simply feeling out rhythms on his guitar and have that impart far more wisdom than any sincere interview. This is not to slight Bloomfield, who was only 21 at the time and went on to well-deserved fame before his untimely death in 1981. Night Hawk would die three years after Maxwell Street at the age of 57 in his hometown of Helena, AR, just west of the Mississippi, another of those mythical crossroads of American music where black and white merged so freely.
Having never been there, I wouldn't know what his tombstone looks like, if he even has one. But after all these years, And This Is Maxwell Street will serve as fitting a legacy as any for a man who never got what he deserved.
William S. Repsher
For this new outing, Paley's beefed things up a bit by adding Robert Lee Oliver on bass and James Murray on trap kit?putting what amounts to a real band behind his flamboyantly brutal guitar. He's also snagged veteran Eric Drew Feldman (Beefheart, Snakefinger, Pere Ubu, P.J. Harvey) to produce and add a few things to the mix himself. The results are louder, fuller, more realized, in a way?but still unmistakable as anything but a Reid Paley record. Paley's basso profundo bark and howl alone guarantee that.
Well, his voice, together with the fact that he's still writing songs about angry drunks and failed relationships?and I've always been a sucker for those, especially when they're this good.
"A Song For You" might sound like a nice weeper when you see it listed on a record cover, but Paley's version doesn't bother itself much with weepiness ("I even wrote this song for you," he boils in the chorus. "Fuck you!"). In another relationship ditty, "This Fucking Town," he sings, "And here it's another September/And I'm drinking my lunch on the train/At long last I see it was lucky for me/I was almost completely insane."
Despite everything?the fact that it's a three-piece outfit, and a good deal of the album's acoustic?Paley remains a difficult one to categorize. He comes from an early punk background. He was unwillingly (and unfairly, I think) chained to the "anti-folk movement" after he went solo acoustic. And he's been plagued by the Tom Waits thing for years, too. On Revival, he distances himself from all those things, landing in a more fundamental category all his own. If you need to hang onto labels or comparisons, think of it almost as if Kurt Weill got really drunk and pissed at Lotte Lenya one night. Maybe even decides to kill her (check out the sledgehammer country rock of "Bang and a Whimper"), then wakes up the next morning feeling a little better, regretful, even, but still just wanting to get away ("Dreamland," perhaps the nicest song Paley's ever recorded).
For my money, though, it's best to dive in blind and take him simply for what he is: raucous, bitter, dirty and soused?and damn proud of it.
Jim Knipfel
"Seen quite a bit in my 23 years," sang Rowland and co-conspirator Kevin "Al" Archer. "I've been manic-depressive and I've shed a few tears. Spat on and shat on, I want my light on. Won't you please tell me when my light turns green?" This was the British Stax, the moment when Van Morrison, the Foundations, Otis Redding and far, far more collided in the basements of Birmingham and became something terribly unique. The band all dressed in donkey jackets and beanie hats like New York dockers, carrying overnight bags and hanging out at Northern soul clubs. They were pictured leaping over train barriers and smoking crafty cigarettes in cafes and under archways.
When Dexys appeared on Top of the Pops to celebrate the ascent of their debut single "Dance Stance," it was like being born again?all the brass flashing, bright and proud, under the camera lights, Kevin staring straight ahead urging his band further on and on. Second single, and their first UK number-one single, "Geno," was a direct shout-out to 60s journeyman soulman Geno Washington: a theme of giving the requisite kudos to old, untrendy, heroes that would be reprised several times. (Most notably on "Jackie Wilson Said," but also with sweaty London soul people like Cliff Bennett and Zoot Money.) The one cover was telling; Chuck Wood's "Seven Days Too Long," an old Northern soul stomper raced through like the band's lives depended on it.
Other tracks on the album showed a quieter, more reflective side to the group?"I'm Just Looking," the declamatory "Love Part One" wherein Kevin decried the hypocrisy of all those around who used love as an excuse for selfish behavior. The interplay between Kevin Rowland's voice and his band?notably, they featured "Big" Jimmy Patterson on trombone?is what makes the music so unique, though. He sometimes sounded like an agitated Bryan Ferry, or perhaps General Johnson from 70s U.S. soul group Chairmen of the Board. They sounded like classic Volt. Rowland sang like a man possessed, totally driven by inner demons and a fire that remains undiminished even today.
Everett True
Here they hook up with producer Tim O'Heir (Sebadoh, Possum Dixon, Folk Implosion) and the match is priceless. Beebout sounds better than ever, still singing and screaming with the same intensity found on the band's '91 masterpiece, Soar. "So blind them with kindness," he begs in the album opener, "Sunshine," "until they are reminded they're lonely and desperate." Relatively new to the band, Johnny Cruz (drums) and Sean Kennerly (bass) sound like they've been playing with these old-timers forever. On "Wisconsin" they complement each other's fine points and display impressive chops in the energetic prologue. "Dull," a guitar-driven burst of adolescence that mentions the breakup of the late, great Canadian power group the Doughboys, takes us back to a time when friendship meant more than meeting for a drink. "The last time I saw everyone we buried our friend and his gun? I think he'd be happy here right now." This is the difference between songs that say something?and the rest of the crap infiltrating our sound waves.
Astray is a continuous outpouring of one smart song after another. The energy is dangerous enough to push Joe Stockbroker out the window he so badly wants to jump from anyway. Then again, if Joe listens close enough he'll realize all Samiam really wants is to help make the drive home a little more interesting.
d. stortion
I would have loved Jubilee Allstars back then, much as I mistrust any band that parades its Irish origins so blatantly. Not only do the three McCormack brothers have a fierce sense of pride in who and what they are?even if the knowledge is continually shifting and changing?but their music is also stripped-back, abrasive, raw. As I like it.
You can almost taste the malevolent backstreets of Dublin within this album's grooves: the river winding its weary way through buildings grown brittle and bulbous with age, the weekend party people looking for the latest dance club, the swagger of girls dancing on restaurant tables. I don't want to eulogize the place, though. Sure, Dublin holds a distinct charm almost caught in another age, but it also has its downsides like any modern city: the smacked-out streets of the north side, for one, where Jubilee Allstars recorded this, their second album, with a garden shed for control room.
"Pray Loud (And with Sorrow)" wails in time-honored tradition, bemoaning the passing of age. The enchanting "Take Good Care" and upbeat "Caught in a Mess," meanwhile, capture the heart and passion of the town's Saturday night crowd, quick to anger and quick to forgive. An organ fleshes out the confessional, almost punk-style storytelling?an organ as meaty and authentically 60s garage as you won't have heard for a long time. The plaintive "Guests of the Nation" berates the dull-minded with a venom and delightful off-key harmony the equal of any of the old-school punks.
Yes, I think Jubilee Allstars would have helped engender a sense of belonging in me. Confusion at your hometown is a universal emotion.
Everett True
All of which is complete nonsense. Actually, I just threw together all that was most ludicrous in Michelle Goldberg's review of Kid A on Salon. Christ, can you believe somebody wrote those words with a straight face? And those are just the highlights of a 500-word review. I didn't even have to cheat that much. The "beguiling," "diaphanous," "submerged," "robotically," "icy bleakness," and "unforgiving" all appear in just one sentence. Same goes for "ravishing," "slurred," "devastated," "looped" and "render creeping unease and desolation incandescent." And this was all written under the heading of "Genius or pretense?" Someone didn't get the joke.
Anyway, Kid A is a pretty good record if you think pop radio needs to sound more like Can and Pink Floyd. Nobody's actually heard Can in a long time, but we all remember that Pink Floyd had some cool songs on The Wall. Did you ever see the movie? The guy from the Boomtown Rats shaves off his eyebrows. Supposedly, he got an insurance policy that would have paid him lots of money if the eyebrows didn't grow back. I've seen recent pictures, though, and his current eyebrows appear to be real.
J.R. Taylor