Open/Close: A selection of great albums that start as well as they finish

Purchase: Goat's Head Soup, Highway to Hell, Purple Rain, Who's Next

It's been a while since I've posted on SMM. No excuses--just the unpredictable rhythms of life that sometimes stir a current that takes you in strange directions. Riding the waves hasn't gotten me too far, a few thousand words deep into other projects, but not closer to anyplace special. Missing having a place to talk music with like minded obsessives, and with the permission of the venerable KKafa, who answered the door when I knocked, I'm back. 

SMM is a place I always find the kind of unique connection that good writing and great music can make in a life. And I really missed that.

So, hello. Again.

Our theme is “Open/Close.” I looked through my library for songs about openings and closings, and when I came across the 1998 hit, "Closing Time", by Seminsonic, and felt the familiar, shuddery revulsion that ubiquitous, somehow pseudo-anthem always brings up, and used that as impetus to get a little creative on the theme.

I decided to look at great opening and closing tracks from albums. How important is the first introductory burst of sound from the opening of an album, the signal of what is to come? If it's weak, a song you really don't like, the album as a whole might be doomed. It's a great song, an epic introduction, you'll never forget that perfect sensation of hearing it for the first time. Example: REM's "Radio Song", from 1991's Out of Time, was such a grave sonic let down for me that it kind of ruined the band, once my near beatific favorite, for me permanently. Whereas, "Up The Beach", from Jane's Addiction's explosive Nothing's Shocking, was akin to perhaps seeing the Red Sea part under the hand of Moses. Or something similarly miraculous. Oddly, both albums, while wildly different in so many ways it seems silly to compare them, could have been vastly different, even better, had they been tracked differently. Out of Time really should have opened with "Losing My Religion", that strident, minor key pop mediation on anger, played on a very non-top 40 mandolin; Nothing's Shocking would have been even more epic had it opened with "Coming Down the Mountain", an pure avalanche of a song.

The opening, then, is of the utmost importance. As is the ending. And how many albums end as memorably as they started? It's surprisingly few. But, then, that is my opinion and comes from my lament at the seemingly lost art of the full length album, and the collection of songs as a celebration, not just the single. Growing up, the 45, then the cassingle, was always secondary to the whole LP. The best bands put out the single, and the B-side was the 'unreleased' material. Kind of essential to the rest of the album, a completion of the experience as a whole.  But, B sides that are better than the A is another topic entirely. 

I scrolled through my Spotify feed (Sadly, I don't have a single CD, LP, or cassette in my possession right now), and found what I thought might be a good start to, and by no means exhaustive or exclusive, list of a handful of the greatest pairings of opening and closing tracks to feature on an album.

In no specific order, I posit the following opening and closing tracks to be the GOAT

The Rolling Stones, Goat's Head Soup: Side A, track 1: "Dancing With Mr. D"; Side B, Track 5: "Star, Star".  Wicked, naughty, steeped in dark arts,  these two songs provide the caps to my favorite Stone’s album ever. 1973's Goat's Head Soup, is a druggy, boogie down trip. There’s a strangely sinister vibe to the whole collection. "Mr. D" concerns death, and possibly meeting the devil  to discuss matters related to how the narrator might exit this world for another. "Star, Star" is...well, if you haven't heard it, you've heard about it.  It's classic Jagger bravado, and might be the response to Carly Simon's mysterious "You're So Vain."  It doesn't really ever make itself clear on that, but it is a celebration of the activity that culminates in the ‘little death’...to draw a connection. If there's a reason people thought rock n roll might be the devil's music, Goat's Head Soup makes for pretty compelling evidence.

AC/DC, Highway to Hell: Side A, track 1: "Highway to Hell:; Side B, Track 5: "Night Prowler" This classic opens with one of rock’s greatest travelogues, an invitation to travel straight to rock n roll hell, set to an instantly iconic guitar riff. The whole album is amazing, but starting with such a striding opening salvo, you are along for the ride, no matter where it takes you--I said it was hell, right? AC/DC proceeds to walk you along the same dark, dirty path as the Stones did, and they distinguish themselves as the only band that makes the Devil seem like a cool guy you want to hang out...The album closes out with the dark, blues dirge  "Night Prowler", a sinister soliloquy of a serial killer, delivered by Bon Scott in his signature howl. The song generated a lot of controversy, so it's best just to dig it as AC/DC's unique take on the blues.  On a strange note, the last words ever recorded by Bon Scott, as the song and the album fade out are "Shazbot nanu nanu", the famous catchphrase of one Mork, from a place called Ork...it was meant to be funny, but it is perfectly sinister here.

Prince and the Revolution, Purple Rain: Side A, Track 1: "Let's Go Crazy" is about as close to church as one can get. The man in the pulpit is calling the faithful to the ceremony, and it's impossible not to heed the call. Side B, track 4, "Purple Rain" is epically beautiful, achingly sad, and elegiac.  And it was somehow transcendent when it was new, a gospel tune over a rock orchestra, and a searing guitar solo to end. The song has never lost that sense of mournful beauty. It's poignant now, more than ever, as Prince's going home hymn. When I get to heaven, I too, hope to hear "Purple Rain" playing me in.  

The Who, Who's Next--not a question so much as dare to step up to a fight. Side A, track 1: "Baba O'Riley" is arguably the greatest, most imitated, most triumphant rock anthem. Ever. If you like rock n roll, have ever been moved by the power of simple chords, pumped at high volumes, chances are, "Baba O'Riley" set you down the road to glorious ruin and riot. The name is still a misnomer, even to people who love the song. The lyrics are strange and a bit more like a medieval pastoral than a stadium sing along. But, when Townshend sets the windmill going, and you're invited to scream the words that so aptly sum up so much of our collective youthful glory ("Teenage wasteland!"), you have to believe in the power of three chords and the truth. Side B, Track 4 is "Won't Get Fooled Again", which contains so much legendary greatness it is hard to call it just a song. It's a call to arms and poetic in its anger. The song gives eloquence voice to rail against  your frustrations and limits, and is a license to break the rules that keep you tied down. It crescendos with the greatest scream ever recorded in modern music. It's the song Whitman might have recorded, had he been born 100 years later. And, in the end it's the greatest 'eff you' ever recorded.

Who's Next, one of rock's great albums, starting and ending with two of the most powerful songs ever recorded , is one the greatest rides you can ever take in the grooves of a vinyl record, and the greatest fulfillment of rock music's transformative promise. And, my obvious vote for greatest opening/closing set in rock history.

HORSE/S: PAUSE FOR A HOARSE HORSE/HOME

Country music has always had a chequered history over here in the UK, there being an understandable suspicion of the more rhinestones and bouffant hair variety that, for so many years, gave even the genre a bad name outside its immediate milieu. Personally it was always the 'and western' that put me off, only many years coming to know and love quite what that might mean, as in western swing. But country-rock, or perhaps as we now should call it, americana, that's a whole different plate of beans. Us brits have taken to that in a big way, both in terms of growing our own and offering a sometimes more sympathetic audience to visitors as they get at home. Todays piece is decidedly too old for americana, being from the early 70s, when bands like Cochise and Starry Eyed and Laughing were adding influences culled from The Byrds and the Burritos.  The pre-punk of pub-rock, the early backlash to the some of the preposterousnesses of prog, saw also a lot of country tropes mixed into the pot, alongside soul and straight ahead rock'n'roll. Brinsley Schwarz, an early home for Nick Lowe, and Chilli Willi and the Red Hot Peppers were frontrunners, influentially if not necessarily in sales. Nowadays there are as many gritty blue collar banjo and steel bands over here as, well, in a short Nashville street. So a few, my favourites being Camden's Rockingbirds. Plus several festivals devoted to the genre.

Home had only a brief window. Resolutely 3rd tier in terms of attainment and success, famous as much for where the members went next as in their own right. The track above comes from their 1971 debut, the sleeve illustration giving a fair idea of where they were hailing from and striving at. I actually bought this at the time, it various surviving culls on my collection, as history re-decided my earlier tastes. However there was clearly a hint of something, the twin guitars of Laurie Wiseman and Mick Stubbs soaring higher than the journeyman songs and vocals, mainly provided by Stubbs.  Bass was provided by one Cliff Williams, yes, that one, and was more adventurous, say, than his later job, with drums and background keys courtesy Mick Cook and Clive John.

A second record followed, the eponymous 'Home', by which time they had ditched John and ploughed, generally, a yet more earnest west coast vibe, if more Outlaws than Eagles, winning over fans from the bands they played support to. But those fans weren't putting their hands in their pockets, and the moment called for a prog-rock concept album, echoing similar bands in similar circumstances, Camel and Wishbone Ash, last gasps of the longhairs before punk blew down the doors. (Of course, history also reminds us that the longhairs never actually went away, just having shorter hair and shorter songs, most continuing to this day.) The Alchemist was the 3rd and last album put together by Home. Stylistically different, it isn't all bad, if desperately dated.

Stubbs left and the remainder of the band toured as Al Stewart's backing band, before going their separate ways. Wisefield joined, arguably appropriately, his guitar style being eminently suitable, the above mentioned Wishbone Ash, Cook joined the Groundhogs and, earlier keyboards man, John was by now with Man. Stubbs, surprisingly, as the songsmith and singer, or possibly because of that, struggled the most, largely disappearing from view. The big ticket fell to Williams, filling the AC/DC bassist role for the next 39 years. A waste of his talent, IMHO, but what do I know, as his accountant might remind me.

Pause.

The early 70s were a bumper time for would be jobbing musicians, record companies falling over each other to give multi-disc contracts to barely out of school buskers, allowing them to build up their skills, hone any talents and, eventually, or so the labels hoped, repay the investment. Bands like Home were everywhere, chock full of musicians often later making a greater inroads elsewhere. Often with back catalogues mostly forgotten, I enjoy looking back and remembering. This piece began musing on country and english. Funny how it seems to have ended elsewhere.

AUSTRALIA(N): GEORGE YOUNG

No brainer this one, the opportunity to showcase this fairly recently deceased legend of oz rock, George Young. Who he? Shame on you, but you know his work, even if, latterly, you know his brothers better. But here's a thing, by quirk of fate, chance or whatever, George Young just happens also to be the same name as mine, albeit if translated into the english.

Like many famous australians, see also the brothers Gibb and the fella from Men at Work, Young was born in the UK, but it was in his adopted home that he became famous. First came The Easybeats, with him teaming up with Harry Vanda, another scion of an immigrant family. Even if they/he were remembered for but one song, the timeless 'Friday On My Mind', that would be more than enough to celebrate, a massive worldwide hit in 1967. They actually then relocated to the UK in attempt to consolidate on this, breaking up a couple of years later.

Young thereafter returned home, along with Vanda, becoming hired guns for any aussie band seeking a writing/production team. Whilst they never achieved quite the same success, his younger brothers, Angus and Malcolm, were growing up, were also seeking to make a name in the music business. Big bro George was conveniently on hand to light that fuse, the duo producing their first few records, with Young initially playing the bass guitar as well. That band went on to make quite a name for themselves. You may have heard of them......

I have to freely confess AC/DC were and are my worst nightmare, a generic 'rawk' thrash of limited merit, but many beg to differ. I was much happier when the Vanda/Young team returned to their own projects, notably with another worldwide one hit wonder, 'Waiting on a Train', in 1982, by the curiously named Flash and the Pan. (I am uncertain which was which.) F&tP actually had a number of recordings but this was the prime cut, demonstrating that, on the right day, the pair had an undoubted knack with smithing a song. Grace Jones' 1981 'Walking in the Rain', was a cover of one of their songs. Earlier 1977 ear worm, 'Love is in the Air', taken to the heights of charts all over, was also one of theirs, albeit ahead of F&tP. (John Paul Young was unrelated.)

George Young died in 2017.
Friday.
Flash.

Blood: Bloodbuzz, Ohio

Purchase: The National, High Violet

This month, I was going to write about Pearl Jam’s Blood, but then I had to remind myself: this isn’t a blog about my personal favorites. Modern music is a galaxy without limits, and studying it is like attending an endless history class (and a scientific and sociological and anthropological class, too.) One of the great things about researching for these entries are the discoveries I make looking for appropriate tunes to fit our theme. Some tunes I know, but I get the chance to discover a little more. Like, did you know Bon Scott was a bagpipe player (AC/DC’s  If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It)? Or that Ryan Adams' Bad Blood is way better than Taylor Swift’s? Well, that’s probably not something I needed to research to know…

One of the most interesting thing that I’ve come across is a write up about a song I knew well, yet obviously hadn’t listened to as closely as I should. Rolling Stone’s Rob Sheffield makes the case that The National’s Bloodbuzz, Ohio, from 2010’s High Violet, is a literal and exact copy of INXS’ brilliant and timeless Don’t Change. Listen to Bloodbuzz right now—you won’t be able to unhear it…But, you can’t really blame The National, or take points off their paper for plagiarism. Sheffield quotes the dearly departed Michael Hutchence as saying: “ ‘...You couldn't make a bad record copying ‘Don't Change.’”

So, we can forgive The National for working within that nebulous world of inspired by, or in tribute to. When it comes to rock songs sounding too similar to a predecessor, it’s hard to assign blame. I think loving imitations make some of the best work we encounter.  The National do little wrong in their music—moody and smoldering yet driven with an intensity of sulk and smoky atmospherics that is hard to define, even harder to imitate. Accusing them of plagiarism comes across as jealousy more than anything else. But, wait: their lead single of 2013’s Trouble Will Find Me was titled Sea Of Love. To the Principal’s office!  The parentage of a rock song is a nebulous thing. Pete Townshend, one of our founding fathers, once said he’d never really written anything original. Rather, he just took songs he liked, reworked them until he had something new, and that was that. I think there’s a lot of wisdom there. The paternal song in this equation—INXS’—is as pop-perfect as it gets, with the driving guitar line and the warp-speed keys. When you listen to The National’s Bloodbuzz, those same ethereal elements are there—just as they are in song after song we end up loving.  The pedigree of a rock song is always going to spring from opaque origins. The similarities shouldn’t surprise us: the originality of turning an old phrase into a new one should, and usually does. Which is why, if you are a proper student of rock and roll, you’ve got more favorite songs and albums than makes sense.

Professor of rockology Tom Petty has the final say on plagiarism in rock, in response to the accusation that The Red Hot Chili Peppers ripped off Mary Jane’s Last Dance when they recorded Dani California : “I seriously doubt that there is any negative intent there. And a lot of rock ‘n’ roll songs sound alike. Ask Chuck Berry. The Strokes took ‘American Girl’ [for their song ‘Last Nite’], and I saw an interview with them where they actually admitted it. That made me laugh out loud. I was like, ‘OK, good for you’ … If someone took my song note for note and stole it maliciously, then maybe [I’d sue]. But I don’t believe in lawsuits much. I think there are enough frivolous law suits in this country without people fighting over pop songs.”

It's Elemental--A Mixtape of Sorts

What is most elemental about summer? For me, it’s getting out on the road and being gone gone gone.

Like one of our other bloggers, I make my life as an expat teacher, so travel is a pretty...well, elemental part of life. and I'm gone as much as can be.

Which doesn’t leave a lot of time for writing—at least for me. I’m a creature of habit when it comes to getting the words down, and I often lament that I’m not taking advantage of new environments to inspire my work into new directions. Great writers would scoff at that notion--that it's hard to write when you're on the road. Maybe I spend too much time seeking out and imbibing the local booze...

  

When I do travel, though, I love listening to music, especially music inspired by the places I am. When I went to Philadelphia a few years back for a ball game and a night of boozing it up at one of my favorite bars, 12 Steps Down  I listened to Marah’s brilliant rock epic Kids In Philly the entire weekend, and the music made more sense when backed up by the visual vibe of the streets it spoke about.

 (an aside: Marah? One of the greatest f@#king bands you've never heard--The LAST Rock 'n Roll band!)

Meeting your music this way—viscerally, tactically, by-hand—is the best way to hear what it means.

Same goes for this batch of tunes I’ve picked out for our theme this month: elements. Each of these are songs I’ve dug into deeply in their proper places, by inspiration, by the fact that the song was written in or is about the place I heard it, or…just because it made sense to associate the place with the song. And speaking of, that is another great way to connect to a tune: loving it because of the time and place you first heard it, and forever associating it with the place. For example, I can not hear OutKast’s “Hey Ya!”  without going back to Spoleto, Italy 2003, when I was falling in love with the Umbrian hills and “Hey Ya!” was coming out of every radio I passed. It was the soundtrack to a great time. Always will be. And even if I don't particualrly like the song, the association has the magical, unnameable resonance forever attached to it, so, I will always listen when it comes on the radio.

That being said, here is a small selection, culled from a much longer list, from the strange soundtrack of my life with a brief explanation of how each song came to achieve its own unique significance.  (Making sure I could satisfy the ‘elements’ requirement made this all the more interesting…)

Iron Man by Black Sabbath—The Pawnshop, Woodbridge, Virginia.

There was a pawnshop right next to the Music and Arts Center where I first took guitar lessons. I was in 7^th grade at the time, and while the guitar lessons were great, the pawn shop was it’s own wonderful treasure chest. Among the usual pawnshop fare—guns, jewelry, power tools—the place had a huge section of vinyl for sale. This is where I bought AC/DC’s Backin Black and Dirty Deeds; LedZeppelin Four; and Black Sabbath’s Paranoid, which featured Iron Man, a strange little exercise in sci-fi headbanging. And the main riff , the one everyone knows, was pretty much the first thing any nascent guitar student learned. When I hear Iron Man, I always think back to rushing headlong across Rt.1 with my pocket full of saved up quarters, wondering musical gem I was about to find.

 Mercury by Counting Crows—Outerbanks, North Carolina

This gem from Recovering the Satellites is a ghost walking in a blues funeral suit. Recovering the Satellites was my constant soundtrack after graduating from college. Released in October of 1996, this disc was a perfect accompaniment to a quiet winter of near-total solitude when I lived in Nag’s Head, North Carolina, trying to figure out what to do with my life. The album, soaring and contemplative, full of affirmation and dark, whispery sadness, was the perfect turbulent collection of songs I needed to get from one ending to a new beginning. It was also a different, sometimes harder and much more complex sound than their debut, August And Everything After. And where that album spun gold out a feeling of nostalgia for American solitude and Van Morrison-esque lyricism, Recovering nearly roared to life at moments, and for this listener, cemented Counting Crows’ reputation as one of America’s finest bands. Mercury , one of the quieter tracks on Recovering, is a song about a girl who is unstable, and whose changes of mind and heart put the speaker through that special hell known as ‘love’, and though she changes like mercury, ‘she’s alright with me…’ Multilayered slide and whisper guitars and a rhythm like a creaking ship on the water, Mercury showed the band was capable of brilliant musical chameleonism, and they made a brilliant career out of exploring and expanding rock n roll soundscapes. And Mercury will forever remind me of sitting on a cold, windy beach at night, with my guitar, trying to capture not only that sound, but also a clue.

Silver and Gold, U2—Cape Town, SA

Another bluesy stomp, with the politically charged lyrics that are now almost an afterthought when it comes to the definition of U2’s sound and themes. Originally released on a compilation called Artists United Against Apartheid, with Keith Richards and Ron Wood, the better-known version appeared on Rattle and Hum. Both versions smoke—but it is Bono’s lyrical reaction to apartheid politics, the boom drop drums and the Edge’s lightning sweep guitars make this a loud and strident statement. When I was in South Africa, I kept hearing Bono’s famous refrain, “Am I bugging you? I don’t mean to bug you—OK, Edge, play the blues!” After listing a imagistic litany of grievances and abuses that dwelled in black and white on subjects like rich versus poor and freedom versus slavery, Bono’s question to the listener is hard to ignore. The song is literally on fire, taking about fevers burning white hot, and doing its best to explain to those who might not understand, why it is the oppressed is ready to take up arms against an oppressor.

One doesn’t need to study too long to know that sad tale that is modern South African history. The sense of wrong doing is palpable when you go there and

It’s hard not to shake your head in terrible wonder at what happened in South Africa for so long. Ghost stories about troubled times that seem like they might never really go away—but Bono’s take—that money and greed will always trump good will and morality—rings particularly true and rang in my head the entire trip.

Iron Lion Zion- Bob Marley—St. Anne’s Parish, Jamaica

Honestly, I never paid attention to Marley until I went to Jamaica and stayed off-reservation, so to speak. Bob Marley’s Legend was a prerequisite requirement for college admissions and honestly, every tool I knew that wore frat letters could sing Redemption Song by heart, and thought Get Up, Stand Up was all they needed to know to get a poli-sci degree. Marley was realpolitik to most of the kids I partied with and I thought I might crack if I had to dance another slow groove with some girl to Waiting In Vain. So, I never listened. Ever. Unless I was at…oh, any party ever.  Fast forward a few years later, my misspent college days far behind me, I got the opportunity to in a private seaside mansion in a pretty remote part of Jamaica, on the shore in Saint Anne’s Parish, where Marley was born. It was a pretty amazing trip—far away from the resorts and the pale, never- smoked-a-jay-tourists lounging it up in Montego Bay and really, just kind of out there. No Internet, no phone—just the vibe of solitude and the sound of the surf. Honestly, with what I know about the place now, I probably would never stay that far away from any kind of security, but at the time, it was pretty cool just to be in the middle of the island, walking to the villages, snorkeling in the open water and fishing for our dinner every night. Someone in our group was a big Marley fan, well beyond the greatest hits, and when I said I didn’t dig the music, he told me to put Rastaman Vibration, “dig into the stuff that doesn’t get played all the time.” By the end of the week, I’d gone deep, devoured all the LPs, and heard the songs that never got played on the college radio station.  By pure stroke of luck, he’d brought all his CDs with him—this was pre-ipod and mp3 days. So, in fitting with our theme, I pick Iron, Lion Zion as my representation of this time and the amazing memories I have of Jamaica. The track comes from the Songs of Freedom box set, which is where anyone not interested in hearing Legend for the billionth time needs to start. And the song itself is a good primer for the complicated political and religious belief system that mark so much of Marley’s music. Rastaman Vibration remains my favorite album by Marley, and even though, I don’t listen to Legend on principal no matter what song happens to come up by the man, I will always be reminded of good times on a strange, quiet part of the island of Jamaica.

...As I write this, I am waiting to get on a plane to head back to America. While I’m excited to see home, see my family, drink amazing IPAs and eat Mexican, I wonder excitedly at what new music I will discover on this trip and hope to find yet another perfect song that will define this summer and all the strange places I will be…

(Hint—I’ve been digging hard on the Dead this summer, so….and the new Wilco…hmmm….? What's next?)

Jukebox: (You Can Still) Rock in America

Night Ranger--(You Can Still) Rock in America 
Purchase: Midnight Madness 

NightRanger—I’m not going to claim I know much about them, save for a little trivia (their guitarist, Brad Gillis, was one of OzzyOsborne’s ever-changing stable of guitar heroes; singer Jack Blades went on to form Damn Yankees with Ted Nugent, which made for a large part of the soundtrack that haunted all the frat parties I went to freshman year down in Carolina—Damn Yankees were huge in NC in the early ‘90s and I don’t have much else to say about that). Most importantly, they wrote Sister Christian, one of the 80s greatest rock epics. It was their most popular song, and Sister Christian went on to reclaim its greatness as the haunting musical stage dressing to one of the greatest scenes in modern cinema (Boogie Nights), and no one who’s seen the film can forget the epic drums that so perfectly suited the spring-coiled violence about to unfold.

I can't overstate this: Sister Christian—it was their greatest song. It has worked it’s earnest way to becoming one of your favorite rock songs. And it was such a strange anthem, sad and yearning, set to a rumbling take off engine thrum, and like the greatest of rock songs, can fuel not only nostalgia, but oddly slide it’s way in as an identifying soundtrack to a lot of ‘moments’, be it a first kiss, a drunken sing along, or a violent shootout/robbery gone terribly awry.You choose, but, you know I'm telling the truth...

NightRanger? Am I really talking about Night Ranger? The name doesn’t even make sense, but on second thought, my original thesis—that Night Ranger is one of those bands that it's better to not know much about—I guess I’m proving that wrong already, and we’re barely out of the introductory paragraph.

As I write this, I’ve got a Night Ranger playlist going on the youtubes…and though I started this piece with one line repeating in my head, I realize, as always, I should let the music speak for itself. If you're so inclined to recall the 80s, and the buzzsaw guitar and strident keyboard marches that made rock music so infectious, Night Ranger isn’t so bad. And trying to assign a scientific or aesthetic principal to what makes music good, what makes a particular band or song worth the cost of nostalgia, well…maybe that doesn’t need a thesis or an explanation. As always, let the music speak for itself and prove its own point.

 When I saw the theme for this month’s theme of jukebox there was one line that came to mind immediately—the opening line of Night Ranger’s “You Can Still Rock in America” from their 1983 breakout album, Midnight Madness: “Little sister by the record machine...” 

“You Can Still Rock in America” satisfies all the check boxes a band would need to achieve an ‘anthem’, especially for the 80s: diddley-do keyboards, cowbell and gong driven drum march,  fuzzed out, metal guitar riffs and acrobatic soloing. And, don’t forget the audience-participation-ready drum and vocal breakdown. This was formula driven rock, arena ready before the tour even hit the road, but it was brilliant right out of the gate. It might have fit into a formula then, but as I sit and listen to it now, there is an earnestness, a driving kind of beauty to the music that, if I can look at it from my 43 year old perspective, reminds me of all that was good—No, divine—in what made me fall in love with rock music, which is a relationship I’ve had in my life that has truly made all the difference.

I remember when I was 7^th and 8^th grade, discovering good music for the first time, these guys rocked, despite what I was learning in my own, older-brother’s-record-collection-Master-Class (which, of course was the Beatles and the Stones). I had access to good music early, and my parents were very cool about buying me ‘boom boxes’ and ceding over to me their turntable. My bedroom and my pawn store bought-and-borrowed record collection was my original sanctuary, my real classroom. When I think back to my childhood, I am lucky to have an endless amount of great memories, but my best ones are of learning to love music to the LPs playing on my scratchy, one-speaker turntable. And for a long while, there was good music playing. Sadly, Night Ranger, which in my final assessment right now I will say was a great band, gave way to Hair Metal, and the overdone silliness of the LA rock scene—for a while I thought Cinderella, Bon Jovi and Dokken were the pinnacle of rock greatness…What can I say: I followed trends. The late 80s were a bad time for popular music, and my allegiance to great bands, to great music, wouldn’t be that tight until later in life. I was over eager, and perhaps I let slip a few times...bad decisions...what excuse can I plead-I abandoned the turntable for cassettes, and started listening to what everyone else was listening to. I’m not proud of a lot of what I can pull out of my old collection… 

But, hang on a minute: the more I dig into what I was listening to at the time,  the more I think maybe I can give myself a small break: I snatched up the Van Halen catalog in 1984 and it got regular rotation in my concert hall bedroom, as did AC/DC’s Back in Black, so…I have no real excuse for delving into bad music...I just like music. And that's where Night Ranger comes in: a bridge between the silly and the not-so bad...so I ask myself now, because back then there was no question: I could definitely rock, but now can you still...?

Maybe,  “You Can Still Rock in America”? 

Give it a shot. It’s cheesy, of course, in the way 80’s ‘metal’ can be, but it’s a jukebox song, and while it might be a lesser entry into the endless and everlasting fuck the rules, break down the walls, go nuts escapism anthem blast creed that tattoos the glorious history of this beautiful thing we call rock ‘n roll, it still works damn well. It’s exuberant the way rock music should be: it drives; it puts a foot to the floor, it has girls and fast cars, it's vaguely rebellious about something vaguely troubling, maybe being young, maybe too many rules. Who cares. Since when has rock ‘n roll needed something specific to rebel against, so long as you’ve got wailing guitars and a good solid beat pushing you into doing your very worst?

It’s rock n roll. It might be a little silly, and sometimes I think we need to feel guilty for loving something that might come across as dated, or too much of an era, or just to silly and earnest in what is—in this case, Night Ranger was a great rock band, full of radio friendly hooks, sugar-sweet anthems and fist in the air, foot to the floor rock. Sometimes you need a little Night Ranger, lest you start taking this whole rock thing a little too seriously. Rock music is supposed to be mindless and it should make you go a little nuts, but it should also remind you of who you used to be, before you got too old to still rock (in America…).

The Naughty Bits: Big Balls

AC/DC: Big Balls [purchase]

As far as sexual humour goes, there's little more British (or, indeed, Australian) than the good, old-fashioned double entendre, and there are few better purveyors of 'phnarr-phnarr' snickers than AC/DC.  The late Bon Scott was a particular reprobate, of course, and this song is a case in point.  The 'balls' of which he sings so lustily are parties, of course - why, to what else do you think he could be referring? Really?  Well, I'm shocked, shocked I tell you, that your mind should be so mired in the gutter! 

Anyway, this isn't the heaviest Angus and co have ever sounded, but they're evidently having a great deal of fun.  And you just know that the audible gleam in Bon's eye was there because he was telling not one word of a lie.  They really were that big...

Body Parts: Up To My Neck In You

Mark Kozelek: Up To My Neck In You

[purchase]

AC/DC: Up To My Neck In You

[purchase]

Though I'm a coverblogger at home, I tend to favor originals here on Star Maker Machine - after all, it is the popular starpower of the original which so often drives coverage. In this case, though, Mark Kozelek's dreamy, melodic deconstruction of what had been a pretty typical guitar-driven AC/DC B-side screamer deserves first billing, if only for reclaiming the power of the lyric from the less-than-subtle 1978 original. For more of the same, Kozelek's full album of slow, acoustic Bon Scott-era AC/DC covers comes highly recommended.