Wire: The Drill

Artist: Wire
Title: The Drill
Acquired: Late 1990s, Best Buy cutout bin
Rating: 2/10

"This collection of recordings represent an exploration of 'DUGGA' - i.e. monophonic monorhythmic repetition."

Some things are best left unexplored. What we have here is not so much an exploration of "monophonic monorhythmic repetition" as it is nine recordings of the same song. Specifically, "Drill," which had originally appeared on Wire's Snakedrill EP some five years earlier. What we also have here is an unfortunate, but fortunately rare, instance of Wire looking back instead of ahead.

Things open promisingly enough, with In Every City?, an imaginative, varied take on Drill good enough to stand on its own merits. It's all downhill from there, and not in the good way. Of the remaining eight tracks, only Do You Drive? (Turn Your Coat) holds any lasting interest for me, thanks mostly to the line "What's your quote? / Do you vote? / Do you turn, or does your coat?," which I find amusing (I should probably point out that the lyrics for Drill and its various decendants consist mostly of a series of questions, left unanswered).

Tracks 2-4 and 9 are vaguely interesting for the first listen or so. Tracks 6-8 are music to fall asleep to, although track 7 could have a future as background music for a commercial in which Sam Neill, resplendent in an expensive, well-tailored suit, looks directly into the camera and talks about the internet or blade servers or something like that. I should be on Madison Avenue.

I was curious to see how the Wire A List voters collectively ranked songs from this disc. Here's how they ranked them:

22 In Every City (track 1)
46 What's Your Desire? (track 2)
49 A Chicago Drill (track 9)
58 A Berlin Drill (track 4)
60 Turn Your Coat (track 5)
62 Arriving/Staying (track 3)
68 Did You Dugga? (track 7)
71 Where are You Now? (track 8)
74 Jumping Mint (track 6)

I would place Turn Your Coat no worse than third, but other than that I think they did a pretty good job. Anyway, if you haven't figured it out already, this is probably Wire's least essential album - buy anything else by them before you buy this. One point for In Every City and one point for everything else combined gives this effort a 2/10.

Yes: Yesstory

Artist: Yes
Title: Yesstory
Acquired: Early 1990s at the Exclusive Company on Madison's west side
Rating: 6/10

I figure if you were looking to get beaten to a pulp in 1977, all you would have had to do was head to the Roxy in London just as a Pistols gig was letting out, and loudly wax enthusiastic about the world music portion of "Ritual - Nous Sommes Du Soleil" from "Tales of Topographic Oceans" by Yes.

As a child in the early 1980s, I heard "Roundabout" on the radio and loved it. I hadn't heard rock music like this before - so many different sections, woven together into a cohesive structure. Also, it rocked pretty good. And it was so long - like a rock symphony or concerto or something, not merely a rock song. I was fascinated.

I didn't find out for a good ten years or so which group had done that song, though portions of the tune stuck in my memory. When I did find out, I immediately rushed out to buy a CD that contained it. I settled on Yesstory, a two disc career overview of Yes (budget constraints preventing me from purchasing Yesyears, the four disc treatment).

I'm not generally big on "Greatest Hits" type compilations, although they do serve their purpose. I guess that makes me more of an "album guy" than a "singles guy". Especially for a pretentious prog-rock group such as Yes, something is stolen from the tunes when they're removed from whichever grandiose concept album they previously occupied. Context matters. That said, there can be good compilation albums, and bad compilation albums.

My main problem with this particular compilation album is that I suspect the average fan would be just as well off buying "The Yes Album" and "Fragile" as buying this compilation, assuming that two regular Yes albums cost the same as one two-disc compilation Yes album. Six consecutive songs (of 20 total songs) on Yesstory are from those two albums, and for me they constitute the strongest portion of the compilation by far. Leading up to these six songs the only particular highlight is "Survival", and nothing after them is as good (though it's a pretty high standard to meet). Actually, at one point towards the end, the whole thing threatens to careen off a cliff, as we're treated to the Yes-does-disco embarrassment of "Don't Kill The Whale," from the horribly-named album "Tormato" [sic]. It's a wonder they ever recorded again after that travesty.

As for the aforementioned six consecutive quality cuts, my favorite remains "Roundabout," which is still a great song and an extremely excellent performance. The other two tracks from "Fragile" are also very well-played and -composed. I have no doubt it's the best album of Yes' career, even though I haven't heard the other songs on it. Its immediate predecessor, "The Yes Album," suffers only in comparison to "Fragile" - "Yours Is No Disgrace" being the highlight there, although "I've Seen All Good People" is more immediately recognizeable.

After the tracks from those two albums is the 19-minute "Close To The Edge," which is pretty good but not as wonderfully-performed, followed by the 21-minute "Ritual - Nous Sommes Du Soleil," which is about as pretentious and overblown as it sounds. Listening to disc 2, you may feel despair start to creep in when you realise that more than 46 minutes of your life have passed, and you're only four songs in. From there the songs mercifully get shorter, but not particularly good, other than the unusual slide-guitar-drenched "Going For The One" and the huge 1983 hit "Owner Of A Lonely Heart."

All in all this is a pretty descent compilation, but as mentioned I think I would prefer to own "The Yes Album" and "Fragile," and go from there. I wouldn't miss most of the rest of this stuff. 6/10.

The James Gang: Yer' Album

Artist: The James Gang
Title: Yer' Album
Acquired: 2007-ish, Amazon.com
Rating: 6/10

You can thank Alice Cooper for introducing me to the James Gang. I was driving somewhere late at night when Alice played "Lost Woman" on his radio show. I cranked up the volume and soon was hooked on the song. I bought this CD soon after.

Yer' Album is the first album from both the James Gang and Joe Walsh, and it has a definite first album vibe to it - palpable enthusiasm and excitement mixed with a smidgen of clueless inexperience. There are some great moments here - particularly noteworthy are "Take a Look Around", "Collage", and the aforementioned "Lost Woman". There are some half-baked songs - here I would offer "Funk #48" and "I Don't Have the Time". Then there are the items that fall somewhere in the middle - "Stop" has a decent groove but overstays its welcome, and "Fred" is ambitiously arranged, complete with jazz waltz interlude, but has little lasting impact (witness the apparently arbitrary title). There are plenty of mistakes and miscalculations, but the overall venture is redeemed by spontaneity and Walsh's excellent guitar playing. An enjoyable, spirited, uneven album. I dropped the rating from 7/10 to 6/10 while composing this review, but hit skip on your CD player a couple times and you've got an 8/10.

Paul McCartney: Unplugged (The Official Bootleg)

Artist: Paul McCartney
Title: Unplugged (The Official Bootleg)
Acquired: 1990s, used CD store
Rating: 7/10

Paul McCartney was the most naturally gifted musician in the Beatles, and that has always been simultaneously a great strength and weakness. Able to make music-making look effortless, he has succumbed too often in his career to a lack of effort. A natural showoff who clearly loves to perform, but seemingly unable or unwilling to bury his worst ideas, for every "Maybe I'm Amazed" or "Jet" there are about ten "Mary Had a Little Lamb"s or "Bip Bop"s. He clearly enjoys doing what he does, but caveat emptor, it will be left up to you, dear listener, to sort the wheat from the chaff.

So, allow me to step in as your proxy here, and fill you in on Macca's 1991 CD "Unplugged (The Official Bootleg)." This is actually not so bad. Originating from a time when the show was still quite fresh (it had premiered a little more than a year earlier), the CD benefits from the seeming informality of not only the performances, but importantly, the setlist itself - there is a complete absence of "And now here's another one from our latest album" moments. In fact, the newest song here is a cover of the 1971 tune "Ain't no Sunshine."

There are actually a number of things that make this a fairly unique Paul McCartney live album, the least of which is the incidental fact that the performance is "unplugged." Of the seventeen tracks here, there are only six Beatles songs, and McCartney somehow resists the temptation to play "Yesterday," "Let it Be," "The Long and Winding Road," "Hey Jude," or any number of other songs that at some point became considered mandatory at Paul McCartney concerts. The only number here that feels a bit too obvious for an "Unplugged" show is "Blackbird," which we can forgive, because of course it's a great song. Also of note is the intimacy of the performance - the audience seems so quiet and attentive during the show that McCartney actually betrays a bit of fairly understandable nervousness at one point, flubbing the opening line to "We Can Work it Out" and stopping to try to get some additional crowd noise going - this was not the kind of ambience he was so well accustomed to by that time.

If I had to name some highlights from the disk, I would point out covers of "San Francisco Bay Blues" and a spirited "Hi-Heel Sneakers," a rearranged version of "She's a Woman" that drops it a fourth and replaces the stilted backing of the original with a more laid-back approach, and a rendition of "Every Night" that is good enough to overcome a slight case of overarrangement.

But really, the main highlight here is the relative lack of lowlights. I can only really single out the should-have-remained-unheard would-be-charmer "I Lost My Little Girl," and since the performance here is barely over a minute long, it's more of a venial than mortal sin. I can't say there are any truly great moments, and this was surely far more awesome in person than it is on a CD, but the overall vibe here of the excitement of watching a living legend playing songs for the pure fun of it, rather than going through the same rote motions for the umpteen-hundredth time, is quite infectious. You really get the feeling that Paul McCartney could play six more shows of equally high quality to finish out the week without having to repeat a single number. Which gets us back to that whole "effortless" thing I was talking about earlier. This CD is the good kind of effortless Paul. 7/10.