The Album Considered
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BOB DYLAN/GRATEFUL DEAD: DYLAN AND THE DEAD, CONSIDERED (1989): He's got a lotta nerve . . .
31 Aug 2020 | 4 min read | 1
By critical and popular consensus, when Bob Dylan teamed up with the Grateful Dead for a tour in the late Eighties it was a terrible mismatch and out of it came the live album Dylan and the Dead, widely considered among the worst – if not the worst – album of Dylan's career. Given their collective memories of music from before rock'n'roll (country, bluegrass and so on) and a... > Read more
JOHN MAYALL: THE TURNING POINT, CONSIDERED (1969): Blues powered down
24 Aug 2020 | 3 min read | 1
One afternoon in late '69, while walking in central London, I saw a striking album cover in the window of a record shop across the road. It looked to me like Brian Jones blowing a harmonica, and for a moment I hoped it might be a posthumous blues album by the founder of the Rolling Stones. Still looks like that to me today, more than half a century on. Hard to shake first impressions.... > Read more
BILLY CHILDISH: ARCHIVE FROM 1959, CONSIDERED (2009): His rowdy and rough wayward ways . . .
21 Aug 2020 | 4 min read | 2
While it's feasible to live a happy and productive life never having heard a note of Britain's Billy Childish (b. Steven Hamper, 1954), the question is, “Why would you?” Perhaps the most off-putting reason would be, “But where would I start?" And that's fair enough because Childish has released – under his own name and that of his many bands –... > Read more
STEVE REICH: DIFFERENT TRAINS/ELECTRIC COUNTERPOINT, CONSIDERED (1989): Repeat as required
10 Aug 2020 | 3 min read
The 1965 recording It's Gonna Rain by the New York composer Steve Reich was one of the most interesting, innovative and important pieces of its era. At least for Reich. In San Francisco, Reich had heard a streetcorner preacher Brother Walter in apocalyptic mode warning of another Great Flood to wipe out sinners, and Reich recorded him. As with Dylan's Hard Rain's Gonna Fall, Reich... > Read more
TOMASZ STANKO: LONTANO, CONSIDERED (2006): Emotion from a distance
31 Jul 2020 | 3 min read
Rock audiences have a forgivable problem with jazz groups: the membership of jazz outfits can just keep changing. If you like the Arctic Monkeys chances are you can expect the line-up not to change much over the years. Rock bands -- for the most part -- have an enviable stability which they guard jealously. Consider how long it took for Rolling Stone Ron Wood to be accepted as fully-fledged... > Read more
THE ESCORTS: 3 DOWN 4 TO GO, CONSIDERED (1974): Souls on ice
27 Jul 2020 | 2 min read
It's unlikely you would confuse this group with the Merseybeat-era moptop band of the same name. The seven soul brothers here – who tap the great James Brown, Temptations, Smokey and the Miracles and a bit of the Stylistics and Floaters -- had done, or were serving time, at Rahway prison in New Jersey and the album title refers to the countdown on a sentence. The liner notes say... > Read more
YOKO ONO: THE REMIX ALBUMS, CONSIDERED (1996 – 2016): Offering her art to others
24 Jul 2020 | 5 min read
Given the sexist, racist and hurtful personal comments she received when she arrived in popular culture at the side of John Lennon, Yoko Ono was certainly entitled to release an album under the title Yes I'm a Witch. The wonder is that it took her so long. Yes I'm A Witch arrived in 2007 and Ono told Mojo's Mark Paytress she was happy with that title. “When people kept calling... > Read more
Rising (Thurston Moore remix, 1996)
BLACK UHURU: RED, CONSIDERED (1981): Reggae on the forefront
16 Jul 2020 | 4 min read | 1
After the death of Bob Marley in May 1981, it seemed the biggest Jamaican reggae band in contention as his successor could be Black Uhuru. There was certainly a lot of their fine and sometimes fiery music about. The previous years had seen release of a self-titled collection of early singles which included new songs alongside some of their 45rpm classics: the broody Guess Who's Coming... > Read more
THE DURUTTI COLUMN: THE GUITAR AND OTHER INSTRUMENTS, CONSIDERED (1987): Man and machine music
3 Jul 2020 | 3 min read
Manchester's Vini Reilly -- who steered Durutti Column through scores of studio albums and many side-projects from the late Seventies until fairly recently -- probably only ever earned enough to pay the mortgage . . . and never enough to pay it off. Respected, nervous, anorexic and almost popular sometimes, he was always his own man. Reilly – in his mid Sixties at... > Read more
EDIE BRICKELL AND THE NEW BOHEMIANS, SHOOTING RUBBERBANDS AT THE STARS, CONSIDERED (1988): What she was and what she is . . .
28 Jun 2020 | 4 min read
Texas-born and based Edie Brickell was 22 in '88 when – on a Saturday Night Live session in New York to promote this debut album with the New Bohemians – she first saw Paul Simon. He was more than twice her age and enjoying global success (and some controversy) with the Graceland album . . . but troubling over a follow-up. He was taken with Brickell's performance and... > Read more
JOHN SINCLAIR: MOHAWK, CONSIDERED (2014): They gave him 10 for two . . .
25 May 2020 | 2 min read
In popular and political culture John Sinclair is best known for a small handful of things in the Sixties and early Seventies. He founded the White Panther Party, managed Michigan's MC5 and steered them into being a megaphone for radical politics (“We wanted to kick ass and raise consciousness,"), was one of the producers of the Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festivals (although seems... > Read more
THE UNFORGIVEN: THE UNFORGIVEN, CONSIDERED (1986): The band that died with its boots on
16 May 2020 | 2 min read | 2
Some time in the early Nineties I met up with two of the guys from Cracker at a bar in New York, and towards the end of our conversation the talk turned to what they had done before their alt.rock incarnation. John Hickman said he'd been in another band . . . and after a long pause said he'd been in a band called the Unforgiven, but that I wouldn't have heard if them. Not heard of them?... > Read more
All is Quiet on the Western Front
RICKIE LEE JONES: PIRATES, CONSIDERED (1981): Heartbreak, heroin and hope
13 May 2020 | 5 min read | 2
Taken together with Tom Waits' Blue Valentine, Rickie Lee Jones' huge selling self-titled debut album of '79 – which sprung her top five hit Chuck E's in Love – recorded their love affair at it poetic peak. Waits sang her favourite song Somewhere from West Side Story on his for her. But the relationship dissolved quickly thereafter and, for her at least, painfully. Her... > Read more
JIMMY CLIFF: SPECIAL, CONSIDERED (1982): The harder they come the longer they run
11 May 2020 | 4 min read
Jimmy Cliff – arguably the most globally recognised Jamaican singer after Bob Marley – has been many things in his lifetime. Even before he broke through as the singer/star in Perry Henzell's exceptional 1972 film The Harder They Come, he had enjoyed success at the World's Fair in New York in '64 (with Derrick Morgan and Prince Buster). There he met Island Records' headman Chris... > Read more
CATE BROTHERS: IN ONE EYE AND OUT THE OTHER, CONSIDERED (1976): Southern soul brothers
7 May 2020 | 2 min read | 1
You rarely find twins Ernie and Earl Cate, originally from Arkansas, in any recent rock or soul encyclopedias and reference books. In fact, when Elsewhere went looking on our deeply bowed shelves they only appeared as a brief mention in an NME book from '78 between Cat Mother and the All Night Newsboys (debut album produced by Jimi) and Harry Chapin. Fair enough, just four albums... > Read more
MILES DAVIS: ESP, CONSIDERED (1965): Old ways going in a new direction
3 May 2020 | 3 min read
The woman staring out of the cover of Miles Davis' 1965 album ESP was his wife Frances. It's an unusual cover: the photo by Bob Cato looks like a casual and informal snapshot with Miles on a recliner staring up at Frances almost quizzically and she engaging the observer/camera with a look of quiet surprise and a hint of fear. In his autobiography Davis says “[it] was taken in our... > Read more
TOMMY JAMES: MY HEAD, MY BED & MY RED GUITAR, CONSIDERED (1971): A walk in the spiritual country
29 Apr 2020 | 3 min read
Leaving aside the Mob connection for the moment, let's just acknowledge that Tommy James and the Shondells out of Michigan delivered a wedge of great danceable, pop-rock singles in the early Sixties (Hanky Panky, I Think We're Alone Now, Mony Mony) and some psychedelic pop in the latter part of that decade (Crimson and Clover, Crystal Blue Persuasion). Their story is confusing because... > Read more
TONTON MACOUTE: THEIR SELF-TITLED DEBUT, CONSIDERED (1971): The jazz-rock classical connection
25 Apr 2020 | 3 min read
It's likely the most familiar name on the 1971 debut album by British jazz-rockers Tonton Macoute isn't that of any band member or even engineer Martin Rushent (who went on to produce the Buzzcocks, Stranglers and Dr Feelgood among many others). It was that of the sleeve designer. Keef – photographer/designer Keith McMillan – is known for his work for the Vertigo label, and... > Read more
COUNTRY JOE AND THE FISH: ELECTRIC MUSIC FOR THE MIND AND BODY, CONSIDERED (1967): Psychedelic politico-pop
13 Apr 2020 | 4 min read
Vanguard Records out of New York was one of those courageous independent record labels where the owners – brothers Seymour and Maynard Solomon – recorded what they wanted and liked. In the Fifties and early Sixties that meant classical, blues and folk artists. On their roster were Joan Baez, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Mimi and Richard Farina from the folk end, and great blues... > Read more
NILS LOFGREN: THE EARLY CAREER, CONSIDERED (1975/1976): Head over heels for Nils
24 Feb 2020 | 6 min read
It's likely that most people who know Nils Lofgren for his brief periods with Neil Young (After the Goldrush, Tonight's the Night, Trans) and his long tenure in Springsteen's E Street Band would also be aware of his parallel solo career. But many might not be familiar with this talented singer, songwriter, guitarist and trampolinist and some excellent albums under his own name in the... > Read more