A bewitching album of rock, soul, glam, psych and more

Brian Olive’s second album continues to showcase the multi-instrumentalist’s musical breadth. Singing, writing and playing piano, guitar, and woodwinds, his music is based in rock and soul, but stretches out with superb touches of psych, glam, jazz, blues, R&B, exotica and even a hint of the musical stage. As on his debut release, Olive interweaves his influences, evoking an Eastern feel with a guitar and tone generator solo on the funky “Left Side Rocking,” layering brooding woodwinds on the thick drum backing of “Traveling,” threading his flute into the deep bass soul of “Go on Easy,” and evoking Detroit-era Motown with the title track’s melody. The instrumental reprise of “Two of Everything” sounds like something from Edgar Winter’s glam period, and the tone generator on “Strange Attractor” hangs niftily between the backwards riff of the Beatles’ “Baby You’re a Rich Man” and a bagpipe. The lyrics are poetic and image-heavy, but rather than trying to decipher the sentences, listeners will groove on the ease with which the words express the melodies; more extemporaneous thought than composed character and story. Recorded in Cincinnati and Nashville, and co-produced by the Black Key’s Dan Auerbach, this is an album you don’t just listen to, you feel it. [©2011 hyperbolium dot com]

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Eclectic collection of sounds from throughout Richard Barone’s career

Richard Barone was introduced to listeners as the lead vocalist, guitarist and songwriter of the legendary Bongos. Their recording career spanned a handful of singles, two EPs and two albums, but their impact on the Hoboken music scene – and on Hoboken itself – was much larger. Upon the band’s dissolution, Barone developed a solo career that garnered critical notice and fan support, but flew below the radar of the mainstream record buying public. He released an album every few years for a decade, bookended by the live recordings Cool Blue Halo in 1987 and Between Heaven and Cello in 1997, and continued on to produce other artists and collaborate on theater projects. Though he oversaw reissues and compilations of earlier material, this is his first collection of all new solo material since 1993’s Clouds Over Eden.

What makes this album particularly special is Barone’s collaborations with producer Tony Visconti. Barone’s a well-known Bolan-ista, having covered “Mambo Sun” with the Bongos and “The Visit” on his first solo album (and “Girl” here). Tony Visconti was the producer of those seminal T. Rex sides, and had Barone had his way, Visconti would have produced the Bongos 1983 RCA debut. But the label declined, and the pair had to wait another twenty-seven years to collaborate. Surprisingly, for all of Barone’s glam-rock influences and Visconti’s glam-rock bona fides, the cache of vintage instruments they tapped (including E-bow, stylophone, mellotron, moog bass, chamberlain) and sonic references they make (such as the opening of “Candied Babies” borrowed from the Bongos’ “Zebra Club”), the results sound neither nostalgic nor out of time. Instead, the productions combine elements Barone’s explored throughout his career, including slithering glam rock, power-pop chime, cello-lined chamber pop, and punchy dance floor beats.

The lyrics sway from weighty contemplation of middle age to the title track’s celebratory call for shucking off emotional limitations and living freely in the moment. Barone is neither morose in his backward glancing assessments nor blindly exuberant in his forward looking proscriptions, but seems to be discovering original emotional territory in new experience; even the fatalism of “Yet Another Midnight” is expectant rather than downcast. The notions of return and unspoken feelings are threaded through several songs, including a visit to old stomping grounds in “Radio Silence” and the uncertain romantic resurrection of a co-write with Paul Williams, “Silence is Our Song.” The latter production is shorn of Visconti’s ornamentation, pared to guitar, piano and cello for a live performance on Vin Scelsa’s Idiot’s Delight. A second co-write, with Jill Sobule, yields the terrific “Odd Girl Out” and its story of a pre-Stonewall lesbian.

Visconti’s rock productions are ornate and imaginative, though on “Sanctified” the volume interrupts the inviting, quiet groove established with the introduction’s combination of voice, strummed acoustic guitar and mellotron. The album closes with a lush instrumental version of the title track, finishing with a lovely coda of violin and cello. Barone was obviously quite excited to finally work with Visconti, and he sounds energized and vital throughout. His new songs retain the hooks and melodic innovations of his earlier work, and his lyrics have grown concrete in character and concept while remaining poetic in their words. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Bouncy combination of 70s Britpop, country-rock and sunshine psych

Named after one Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks’ songs from the mystique-laden Smile project, this Oregon quintet’s harmonies certainly nod to the brothers Wilson. And despite the Pet Sounds-styled bridge “Instrumental No. 2.,” the group artfully melds too many flavors, including  pop, glam, psych, blue-eyed funk, West Coast country-rock, and even swingy jazz, to call out the Beach Boys as a singular influence. The mix is more upbeat and retro than 2005’s Comes Back to You, motoring along with the summery smile of “Thought/Start” and drifting into space with the South-of-the-Border horn instrumental “Ruby’s Moon Elevator.” The song list artfully mates the hooks of AM singles with the finely crafted segues of FM albums. The band’s mix of British pop (T Rex, Thunderclap Newman, Badfinger, post-Beatles Paul McCartney), country-rock (Byrds, Burrito Brothers, CS&N, Creedence Clearwater Revival) and sunshine psych (Beach Boys, Millennium, Sagittarius) is sure to perk up a cloudy day, whether or not you’re from Portland. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Terrific collection of The Runaways four Mercury albums

With the Runaways biopic getting a major market push, it was a no-brainer for their oft-ignored catalog to get a fresh reissue. Contained in this set are the three studio albums the group recorded for Mercury (The Runaways, Queens of Noise and Waitin’ For the Night), and a live album originally released as an import (Live in Japan). This represents the heart and soul of the Runaways’ catalog, and though a post-Mercury album (And Now… The Runaways), an odds ‘n’ sods collection (Flaming Schoolgirls) and prehistoric demos (Born to Be Bad) can be found, they’re the province of completists. For those new to the group’s repertoire this four-LPs-on-two-CDs set will tell you everything you need to know – if not a bit more – about the group’s recorded legacy.

The Runaways’ self-titled 1976 debut tells most of the story: five girls who are both a legitimate rock group and puppets of their Svengali producer, Kim Fowley. The dynamic of teenage hormones, rock ‘n’ roll dreams and jailbait marketing gave the album both muscle and sexual sizzle. Joan Jett proved herself a songwriter with an uncommon touch for evoking mid-70s Los Angeles teendom, and she and Cherie Currie sang with a conviction that couldn’t be faked. The band’s playing could be plodding and clumsy in spots, but it was still surprisingly powerful. The group’s 1977 follow-up, Queens of Noise, followed the same template, but within it you could hear the group was a year wiser to the perils of rock ‘n’ roll. Abused by their managers and worn down by the road, they were staring at the madness that would cause the band to implode.

The group’s live album, recorded before an enthusiastic audience in Japan, shows how well the act translated to the stage. As on their debut, the playing isn’t particularly refined, but Currie shows herself to be a commanding front-woman, and Sandy West holds down the beat with power and authority. The Runaways’ final studio release for Mercury, Waitin’ For the Night, saw the band reconfigured: Cherie Currie and Jackie Fox were gone, and with them went some of the band’s overt sex appeal. The former’s vocal spotlight fell to Joan Jett, the latter’s bass playing to Vicki Blue, and the focus to the band’s music. Jett seized the opportunity to assert herself as group leader, rising to the challenge of writing most and singing all of the album’s tracks. In the album’s wake Jett proved, at least to listeners, if not to the record industry, that she was a star in the making. Lita Ford’s two metal-tinged originals also pointed to post-Runaways commercial success.

If you’re new to the group and not ready to invest in the anthology, the self-titled debut album is the place to start. If you want to get a feel for their career arc, the short collection 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: The Runaways or the out of print The Best of the Runaways effectively sample their catalog. But if you’re hooked and want to hear it all, there are winners to be found on all three of their studio albums, and the live release fleshes out the picture of rock ‘n’ roll life on the road circa 1977. The Runaways weren’t the greatest rock band of their era, but they were trailblazers whose albums captured a time and a place from a young, female perspective that was, and remains to this day, theirs alone. [©2010 hyperbolium dot com]

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Tuneful mix of rock, glam, psych, soul, jazz and exotica

Brian Olive (as Oliver Henry) explored British Invasion and American garage rock as a member of the Cincinnati-based Greenhornes and Detroit-based Soledad Brothers, playing sax, flute, guitar, piano and organ, as well as singing and writing songs. On his solo debut he expands beyond the gritty hard-rock and reworked blues of Blind Faith and mid-period Stones to include healthy doses of psych, glam, and most surprisingly, soul and exotica. Influences of the New York Dolls, T. Rex and Meddle-era Pink Floyd are easy to spot, but they’re mixed with touches of Stax-style punch, South American rhythms, breezy jet-set vocals and jazz saxophones. It’s intoxicating to hear droning saxophones transform from big band to glammy psychedelia on “High Low,” and the acoustic guitar and drowsy vocals of “Echoing Light” bring to mind the continental air of Pink Floyd’s “St. Tropez.”

This is a rock album steeped in the heavy sounds of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, mixed with the sort of experimental pairings Bill Graham pioneered on bills at the Fillmore. But rather than segueing the jazz, blues, soul and international influences across an evening, Olive invents ways to weave them together within a song, repurposing non-rock sounds in support of guitar, bass and drums. Olive’s voice stretches over his words, ranging from introspective and spent to emotionally propulsive, but the lyrics are difficult to understand, so it’s anyone’s guess what he’s actually singing about. Still, even without a simple storyline or easy sing-a-long, this is musically rich. Perhaps a lyric sheet could accompany the next album? [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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Live album shows just how this 1970s all-girl band could rock

After two albums for Mercury that produced mixed artistic results and few commercial gains, this Los Angeles quintet took their act to Japan and found itself welcomed as stars. Though the tour was reported to be very rough on all five members (and bassist Jackie Fox quit the band before the tour’s final show), this live recording shows just what they were capable of. Freed from the daily abuse of Kim Fowley’s svengali-like machinations and pumped up by adoring Japanese fans, the quintet unleashed their full rock ‘n’ roll spirit. Signature originals, “Queens of Noise,” “California Paradise,” “Neon Angels on the Road to Ruin” and “American Nights” finally became the teen anthems they were written to be, and covers of The Troggs’ “Wild Thing” and Lou Reed’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll” rock harder than their studio counterparts. Originally released in Japan, and subsequently in Canada, this was a collector’s item for nearly thirty years before seeing CD reissue.

As on their studio albums, Sandy West proved herself the motor of the band’s muscular rock. In contrast to their studio recordings, the bass and rhythm guitars push the band with plenty of bottom end, and Lita Ford’s lead guitar is more powerful for its restraint. Cherie Currie and Joan Jett are both in fine voice throughout, with Currie really acquitting herself as a true rock singer – albeit still a theatrical one. Those who saw the original Runaways quintet live know just how they were shortchanged by Fowley’s jailbait marketing and the anemic, sludgy sound of their studio albums. Playing live, even as Currie strutted the stage in her corset and fishnets the group never failed to rock. There are a few bum notes and miscues here and there, but this live album is proof that the Runaways were a lot more rock band than Kim Fowley initially envisioned or ever really wanted to admit. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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Rockin’ sophomore release from legendary all-girl ‘70s group

The Runaways second album is a more solid rock album than their self-titled debut, but it also has a more rushed and thrown-together feeling. The Runaways’ erstwhile lead singer, Cherie Currie, was already sharing microphone time with the group’s musical leader, Joan Jett. The album’s title track went to Jett, and with her songwriting adding muscle to the song list, her fingerprints were all over the album. Currie was a compelling vocalist, able to sing both ballads and up-tempo numbers, but she was more theater than rock, and placing tunes like “I Like Playin’ With Fire” and “California Paradise” back-to-back made the band sound schizophrenic. Currie would exit the band after a tour of Japan, and the seeds of her solo career can be heard in the highly produced vocal pop of “Midnight Music.” It’s a good track, but at odds with its segue from Joan Jett’s “Take It or Leave It.”

Earle Mankey’s produced the album at Brothers’ Studio, but any delicacy the Beach Boys achieved within those walls was quickly discarded. The CD transfer retains the original album’s muddiness, which is how it sounded on vinyl in 1978. This is a sledgehammer recording, with Jett and Ford’s guitars growling alongside the meaty, propulsive drumming of Sandy West. Though Jett later proved herself best suited for pop stardom, West’s time-keeping (which lead guitarist Lita Ford occasionally seemed unable to keep pace with) has always been overlooked as the band’s rock-steady core. The title track continued to capture the milieu of the mid-70s Los Angeles, but “Hollywood” seems forced and only a year into the band’s tenure, their teenage spark was clearly being doused by the poor treatment from the band’s minders.

The album’s only real misstep is the 7-minute blues guitar showcase, “Johnny Guitar,” which was filler then, and remains filler today. Cherry Red’s CD reissue rounds up the original ten tracks without bonuses. The insert unfolds into a poster that includes a fan essay, liner notes by Michael Heatley, a note from label founder Iain McNay, photos and song lyrics. It took Cherry Red many years to gain license to reissue these albums, and they’re just the sort of thing to drop from print without notice, only to turn up on eBay for $50. So if you think you want them, get them while you can! [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

A look back at the teenage diaries of the Runaways

The Runaways were both an actual all-girl rock ‘n’ roll band and a realization of their impresario’s promotional imagination. Their run of four studio albums in the 1970s (The Runaways, Queens of Noise, Waitin’ for the Night, And Now… The Runaways), a live LP (Live in Japan), and a few odds ‘n’ sods collection (Flaming Schoolgirls) yielded some terrific glitter-flavored rock, a great deal of publicity, but only a modicum of commercial success. Though they provided inspiration for bands like the Go-Go’s, Pandoras, and Donnas, and two of the original members (Lita Ford and Joan Jett) went on to international acclaim, the group’s original publicity still casts a shadow over the Runaways’ musical accomplishment. They remain more infamous than famous.

The band’s second bassist, Vicki Blue, developed a post-Runaways career as a producer/director (under the name Victory Tischler Blue), and is the visionary behind this documentary. Blue’s inside connections with the band is both a blessing and a curse, as the group members are candid with her on some subjects but appear to close down on others. She tells the interior story of the band’s interpersonal dynamics, focusing on the shifting friendships and tensions between band members, and the abuse heaped upon the then-teenage girls by management and assorted hired hands. This is more a diary than a history.

Even those familiar with the Runaways public career would have greatly benefited from an explanation of where these girls came from, a brief discourse on the culture of the Sunset Strip and San Fernando Valley, the musical times, and the family lives that allowed teenage girls to tour under the reportedly abusive and non-watchful eyes of Kim Fowley and manager Scott Anderson. Signature events, signings, and concerts are alluded to but never fully highlighted, and the band’s peers and fans are omitted from the picture. The lack of context or third-party perspectives saps some of the power from the first-person interviews. The largest blow of all, however, is the lack of participation by Joan Jett, the band’s heart and soul, and the inability of the filmmaker to license any of the Runaways studio recordings. Live performances of Lou Reed’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll” and the Troggs’ “Wild Thing” give you a taste of their power as a band, but little sense of their original music.

Blue’s interviews with four of the original band members, Cherie Currie, Lita Ford, Jackie Fox and Sandy West, are supplemented by interviews with songwriter Kari Krome, impresario Kim Fowley, latter-day manager Toby Mamis, and inspiration Suzy Quatro. Blue is able to get some startling admissions from her former bandmates, particularly Cherie Currie, and their on-going damage is revealed in the bitterness they harbor and the anger that remains towards one another (they’re each interviewed separately) and for the adults who abused them. Blue doesn’t successfully confront Fowley on the group’s allegations, but interviews with Currie and West’s mothers go a long way to solidifying his dark reputation.

Kim Fowley saw the band’s demise as a product of the members’ lack of friendship, but what’s clear from the interviews is that neither Fowley nor Scott Anderson had an interest in the group’s long term well-being, and used the teenage girls’ immaturity as weapons against them. The band’s demise, after a disastrous album with British producer John Alcock, produced a short-lived solo recording and film career for Cherie Currie, chart success as a pop-metal star for Lita Ford, and a major international music career for Joan Jett. Drummer Sandy West fell into a series of jobs outside the music industry (construction, bartending, veterinary assistance) and rackets (protection for drug dealers) before succumbing to cancer and a brain tumor in 2006. West remained haunted to the end by the Runaways’ breakup, angry at those who manipulated the band and unable to understand why a reunion couldn’t be pulled together.

Blue’s film editing is very busy. The dizzy, hand-held interview footage quickly turns from vérité to distraction, as does the constant presence of music beds, and the jump cuts and video effects. Her choice of sunny outdoor locations for many of the interviews prompts her subjects to wear sunglasses, hiding the expressiveness of their eyes. Blue is to be lauded for getting this film off the ground, dealing with numerous limitations, and sticking with it to completion. Her insider’s perch informs but also colors the story she tells, and without the broader context of the band’s life and times there remains a definitive biography to be made. [©2009 hyperbolium dot com]

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Jobriath’s self-titled 1973 debut received positive notices, but the ensuing publicity hype all but sunk the artist’s critical reputation. He’d delivered the musical goods, but his manager’s hype machine and a failed-to-materialized grand tour of European opera houses hung over this follow-up like a rain cloud. The notoriety that greeted the first openly gay rock star’s debut had turned to scorn and apathy, resulting in little notice of a sophomore album that featured some wonderfully crafted, dramatic glam-rock. It probably didn’t help that Jobriath’s manager stuck his name in the credits as “Jerry Brandt Presents Jobraith in Creatures of the Street,” and suggested the album was a romantic comedy.

Co-producing once more with engineer Eddie Kramer, Jobriath’s second album’s broadens his reach with additional orchestrations and showy production touches. He continues to sing in a high register, retaining a tonal resemblance to Mick Jagger and Mott the Hoople’s Ian Hunter, but here he adds gospel and classical elements to both the vocal arrangements and his piano playing. Despite suggestions that this was a concept album, the concept remains obscure. Still, much of the album sounds as if it were a cast album to a stage musical with rock-opera pretensions. “Street Corner Love” is rendered as mannered show rock, and the stagey “Dietrich/Fondyke” combines a full orchestral arrangement, piano flourishes and a female chorus into a dramatic splash of film nostalgia. The funky “Good Times” sounds as if its tribal-rock vibe was lifted from “Hair” – a period play in which Jobriath had performed a few years earlier.

More inventively, the grittily-titled “Scumbag” is rendered as the sort of music hall country-folk the Kinks recorded in the early 1970s, and Jobriath’s orchestration for “What a Pretty” is impressively threatening. Only a few songs, “Ooh La La” and “Sister Sue,” break free of the theatricality to stand on their own as glam-rock. There are many similarities to Jobriath’s debut here, but the overall result is more fragmented and contains few nods to radio-ready compositions. After promotional fiascos consumed Jobriath’s debut, there seemed to be no interest in commercial pretensions on what would be his swansong. Dropped by both his manager and label, he retreated from the music industry, reappearing a few years later as a lounge singer named “Cole Berlin,” and passing away largely unnoticed in 1983. With the reissue of his two Elektra albums, modern-day listeners can hear his music in place of his hype, and the music – particularly the debut album – is worth hearing. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]

Thirty-five years after its initial release, it’s hard to grasp the critical invective that followed this artist’s solo debut. Taken on its musical merits, this 1973 release is a gem: an inspired album of glam-rock that drank deeply of Bowie’s theatricality, Queen’s grandiosity, Lou Reed’s decadence, and T. Rex’s trashy glamour. Jobriath even personally expanded upon the gender-bending sexuality of the times by outing himself as the first-ever openly gay rock star. Without considering the overblown promotional hype that surrounded this album, it’s hard to imagine its failure, and how the critically ignored follow-up album all but consigned Jobriath to the footnotes of rock ‘n’ roll.

Jobriath’s pop music story began the Los Angeles tribe of the stage musical Hair. He subsequently became lead singer, songwriter, guitarist and keyboardist of the Los Angeles group Pidgeon, combining stagey California vocal-harmony sunshine production pop with baroque and psychedelic influences. The group’s self-titled 1969 release on Decca failed to fly, and Jobriath languished in obscurity for another four years. Fortuitously (or perhaps just legendarily), the rejection of his audition tape by Clive Davis led to a chance encounter with industry veteran Jerry Brandt. Brandt’s promotion of Jobriath met brick walls at A&M and Elektra, and the artist was finally left to produce his own debut with engineer Eddie Kramer. Jobriath scored the sessions (teaching himself orchestration in the process), recorded in London with a full orchestra, and created a surprisingly grand and muscular rock album.

Had the album been allowed to sell itself, things might have been different, but in circling back to Elektra (and becoming label founder Jac Holzman’s last signing), Jobriath and Brandt unleashed a publicity wave of gigantic billboards, hyperbolic press (“Elvis, The Beatles, Jobriath”) and plans for a fantastical stage show that never materialized. Jobriath’s space-oriented fantasies were not unlike Bowie’s, but his theatricality was more finely attuned to American entertainments such as Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood. The nostalgic piano-and-vocal “Movie Queen,” for example, speaks more to Irving Berlin and Cole Porter (whose names Jobriath would combine a few years later for his lounge lizard persona “Cole Berlin”) than to then-contemporary hard-rock influences.

But even with Jobriath’s feints to the past, the album rocks with dramatic, high-register vocals, scorching electric guitars, thundering piano, and a soulful backing chorus. The disc opens with an edgy, obsessive love song, but one that’s more Jim Steinman grand than Lou Reed (i.e., “Venus in Furs”) cold. The low piano notes and backing chorus of “Be Still” give way to more lyrical passages and Jobriath’s fascination with outer space threads its way into the lyrics. Back on Earth, the proto-rock-rap “World Without End” takes on religion, hypocrisy, prophesy and reincarnation, analogizing the latter to looping repeats of vintage films, and “Earthling” essays an alien’s point-of-view.

Bowie’s vocal influence is heard on “Space Clown” amid crashing circus sound effects and calliope themes woven into the background. On “I’m A Man” you can hear the theatrical vocal and arrangement style Ray Davies’ developed for his rock operas, with music hall dynamics instilling grandeur into the productions. Jobriath paints a poetic picture of a rainy day on “Inside,” sketching the chill, splash and soak from the confines of a warm, dry perch, and “Rock of Ages” decorates its salute-to-roots with the squealing electric guitar leads of glam. The album closes with the moody, tortured soul of “Blow Away (A Peaen for P.I.T.).”

When his grandiose tour of European opera houses failed to materialize, the dilettantish claims to rock music’s crown sparked an inevitable backlash. Stateside critics had been generally kind to the album, but UK critics dismissed it amid the surrounding hype. A follow-up album, Creatures of the Street, faired even less well, prompting Jobriath’s retirement and rendering him a rock ‘n’ roll footnote who passed away in 1983. With this reissue, the audience that never found Jobriath can now hear him outside the cloud of controversy. While this isn’t the game-changing album its publicity promised, it is a superb glam-rock album that deserved a broader hearing than it was originally afforded. [©2008 hyperbolium dot com]