Van Halen: Van Halen

Artist: Van Halen
Title: Van Halen
Acquired: Purchased, mid 2000s from Amazon.com
Rating: 10/10

Here is a CD that shows up, does exactly what it intends to do, and gets out. This thing sounds great for being thirty years old, although I'm not sure if virtuoso tap guitar solos are still considered fresh in 2008. This is one of only two Van Halen CDs in my collection, so I'm not able to really put this within the context of their larger body of work. Everything I've heard and read indicates that the music here is fairly typical of their first six albums, in that this is a collection of surprisingly short songs (more on this later) played as hard rock, yet with excellent pop craftsmanship.

Closer to the hard rock end of things, we kick off with "Runnin' with the Devil," which quickly establishes the template for the Van Halen sound - this is not a quiet-sounding band. This thing sounds like it was recorded in an arena, and even some of the people in the cheap seats would have surely had blood squirting out their ears. Credit producer Ted Templeman for somehow adding the requisite amounts of echo to the recording without turning the whole thing into mud.

Meanwhile, singer David Lee Roth, who is perhaps second only to Liberace in the number of times he has been referred to as "flamboyant," simultaneously exudes vast amounts of ego and charisma, making that first track sound more like an invitation to a keg party than to Satan-worshipping. Which is good, because the song isn't really about Satan-worshipping at all. This isn't that kind of band.

Actually, from the presentation to the lyrics, "we've got erections, and we aren't afraid to use them" is the theme that keeps popping up (sorry) here, whether it's exhortations to "show your love" on "I'm the One," the gasps and squeals that punctuate their arrangement of "You Really Got Me," or the leering cover of John Brim's "Ice Cream Man." Even the instrumental is called "Eruption." Not that I hold this singular focus against them, even if things tend a perhaps a little too much towards the sophomoric at times - few bands could objectify women with this much style.

Also, do not think at this point that any of this diminishes the accomplishment this album represents. These guys may seem on the surface to be gregarious troglodytes, but the well-constructed songs betray them - at least one person here is putting a lot of thought into these songs. Witness the arpeggiated chord progressions on "Eruption," the straight-faced doo-wop break on "I'm the One," and perhaps most improbably, the pop fingerprints smeared all over "Feel Your Love Tonight" (complete with Beatlesque falsetto "oohs"). There are few missteps here - the forgettable "Atomic Punk" and the weak fade-out ending to "On Fire" being the only two I even remotely feel like nitpicking.

Now, as for why I find the songs "surprisingly" short - it must have been tempting for someone with Eddie Van Halen's chops to bloat the guitar solos out to interminable lengths. That he resists this urge earns him bonus points from me and a 10/10 review.

Elvis Costello: My Aim is True

Artist: Elvis Costello
Title: My Aim is True
Acquired: Purchased, mid 1990s from BMG Direct
Rating: 7/10

This CD is notable for having one of the most gratuitous disclaimers I've ever seen:

"To ensure your listening pleasure a short silence separates each of the extended play sections."

I suppose that's preferable to a scream of agony separating each track, but really, what else would you expect?

Before I get to the actual content of this CD, a brief digression: What is punk? I always found it kind of strange that Elvis Costello was regarded as part of the punk rock movement early in his career. Listening to this CD, it's not the kind of music that comes to mind when I think of "punk rock". The songs are sung, not snarled or screamed, any distortion on the guitars (including pedal steel!) is minimal, and the music itself sounds downright old-fashioned. So what are we left with that's punk? Well, the lyrics do mostly stick to the narrow continuum of human emotion that ranges from anger to bitterness. And it was 1977 London, after all - if you were an artist just having his commercial breakthrough in that particular time and place, you must have darned well been punk. Plus, the album was released by the Stiff label - you know, the label that had the Damned (but also had Nick Lowe, who was about as punk as, um, Elvis Costello).

I guess the argument comes down to comparing the Elvis Costello sound to what was big on the radio at the time. Let's look at the Billboard top ten for 1977:

1) Rod Stewart - Tonight's the Night
2) Andy Gibb - I Just Want to be Your Everything
3) Emotions - Best of my Love
4) Barbra Streisand - Evergreen (Love Theme from A Star is Born)
5) Hot - Angel in Your Arms
6) Kenny Nolan - I Like Dreamin'
7) Thelma Houston - Don't Leave Me This Way
8) Rita Coolidge - (Your Love Has Lifted Me) Higher and Higher
9) Alan O'Day - Undercover Angel
10) Mary MacGregor - Torn Between Two Lovers

Now, granted this is the U.S. top ten, but that's just what I happened to have handy. Anyway, the argument could definitely be made that Elvis Costello sounds more like the Sex Pistols than any of the artists above. Ergo, Elvis Costello is punk.

No. I still don't buy it. It was a marketing device.

Anyway, on to the music itself. I can already imagine outraged Elvis Costello fans noticing that I only gave this CD 7 out of 10. How could I possibly give such a low score relative to the raves that are found elsewhere (per Wikipedia, 5/5 from Allmusic, Rolling Stone, and Sputnikmusic, and a 9.8/10.0 from Pitchfork Media)?

Well, having not read those reviews yet, I'm not sure why this work garnered such high ratings. I think it is a very good album, but I can very quickly think of at least five Elvis Costello albums that I prefer. If I were to give this album, say, a 10/10, that would leave me with having to give those other albums an 11, and that would be far too obvious a ripoff of This is Spinal Tap. I need to leave myself some wiggle room.

I suspect that many reviewers fell into the "first good album from a great artist" trap - the tendency is to give the breakthrough moment the highest rating, even if even greater triumphs were still to come. Anyway, I am not here today to review the reviewers, but to review My Aim is True. So, let's get on to it already.

What is good here? Well, we start out with "Welcome to the Working Week," a great opener at 1:22, at that's even with a slow introduction included. More evidence of Elvis' punkiness! Okay, I'll stop that. We also have the still-renowned "Alison" and "Watching the Detectives" (which was not on the original British release, but is on this version of the CD (and probably all versions of the CD). We also have the humorous "Mystery Dance", ironic "I'm Not Angry", and the memorable "Red Shoes". But as you progress from one number to the next number, a number of the numbers start to sound like that number you heard a couple numbers ago. And that is where the problem lies for me - at times this sounds more like a particularly outstanding demo tape than an actual commercial product - which is certainly part of its charm, but also prevents it from hitting the kind of heights that would later be hit by one Declan MacManus.

Perhaps ironically, two of the most produced and "finished" songs on here, "Radio Sweetheart" and "Stranger in the House", are not on the album proper, but in the "Extended Play" section of B-sides and demos (you know, the section with the pleasurable silences). But again, this was 1977 London, and placing these country-flavored songs onto your debut album would perhaps not have been the best possible career move.

However, it would have been a very punky thing to do.

Adam & the Ants: The Peel Sessions

So, I've got this huge CD collection, and this blog, so I decided to make my way through the collection and blog my reviews.

Artist: Adam & the Ants
Title: The Peel Sessions
Acquired: Purchased, early 1990s at the Exclusive Company on Madison's west side
Rating: 3/10

I couldn't decide which CD I wanted to review first, so I decided to grab the first CD from my alphabetically-arranged CD collection (yes, this does mean that there will be no ABBA reviews appearing on this blog).

Back in the early 1990s, the concept of a CD being "reissued" with "bonus tracks" was either not yet invented, or at least not yet prevalent. Recording artists basically had two buckets of recorded music: that which was good enough to release, and that which was not. A fan wanting to hear things from the second bucket generally had to find a place where he or she could purchase "bootleg" CDs in order to quench their completist thirst - there was no internet music trading, no youtube, and the only songs that inhabited a sort of musical gray area were non-album track B sides on singles - legitimately available, but not widely heard if, like me, you were the sort of person who bought full length albums almost exclusively.

Thus it was pretty exciting to find a CD of the Peel Sessions for Adam & the Ants for this antperson, containing not one, not two, not three, but four entire songs otherwise unavailble on CD or LP, interspersed with six other songs that had previously appeared on Dirk Wears White Sox or Kings of the Wild Frontier.

The first song, Lou, opens up pretty nice-sounding. This is music that would sound pretty good on a talk radio program coming back in from a commercial before the host starts ranting about politics or sports or whatever. Imagine how my teenage face must have fallen when the vocals kick in. This is not Adam Ant at all, but some person named "Jordan" screaming - er, make that screeching - at the top of their lungs. Pretty much ruins the song.

A little wikipedia research reveals that "Jordan" served as "a highly visible icon of the London punk subculture," in addition to briefly dating and managing Adam Ant. Nowadays, she's a veterinary nurse. What she is not, and was not, however, is a singer. And this is not coming from someone completely averse to unusual vocal techniques - but there is good screaming, and there is bad screaming. This is bad screaming.

Fortunately, the other nine tracks are sung by Adam. The recording dates predate Dirk Wears White Sox, so this is the "Jubilee"-era, black leather-clad, Adam Ant, not the pirate garb, pounding tribal drums Adam Ant. The less-interesting and -entertaining Adam Ant, in short.

Of the "unreleased" songs that show up here, we have It Doesn't Matter and Friends, which would later show up on the B Side Babies CD, and Ligotage, which to my knowledge has not shown up elsewhere. I prefer the version of It Doesn't Matter that is offered here to the version that is on B Side Babies, because the lyrics here make more sense, although they do still suck. Picking a favorite version of It Doesn't Matter, it should be noted, is akin to choosing whether one prefers elephant dung deep-fried or boiled.

I also prefer this version of Friends to the B Side Babies version. I think it benefits from the simpler arrangement presented here.

We also have songs that predate their finished state, such as Zerox (sic) without the middle section, and You're So Physical without the second verse (in its place the first verse is repeated). Compared to Dirk Wears White Sox, Zerox is slower, while Animals & Men is given a faster runthrough. All songs have many fewer overdubbed parts compared to the Dirk recordings.

Assessing the CD in whole, what you get here that's worth hearing (for only diehard Adam Ant fans) is the first few seconds of Lou, the mediocre unreleased number Ligotage, the fast version of Animals & Men, and versions of It Doesn't Matter and Friends that are arguably better than on B Side Babies. In other words, not much.