WARREN ZEVON - "On Track...Every Album, Every Song" by PETER GALLAGHER - A Review by Mark Barry of the April 2022 SonicBond Publishing Paperback Book...

 

WARREN ZEVON 

"On Track...Every Album, Every Song" by PETER GALLAGHER

 

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"...Desperadoes Falling Out Of The Eaves..."

Like most fans of this brilliant, eclectic and unpredictable musical troubadour, I picked up on Chicago's Warren Zevon through the "Excitable Boy" album of January 1978 (the "Werewolves Of London" LP on Asylum Records) and have been a devotee ever since. But as with all the greats (and cults for that matter) - the journey has been a series of super highs and difficult lows (I saw him live in a solo show in Dublin and it was easily one of the worst shows I've ever seen where the audience nearly came to blows and were screaming for their money back). To the matter in hand... 

 

I've been digging these "On Track..." paperbacks from SonicBond Publishing now for a while and have reviewed The Hollies, Status Quo, Led Zeppelin, Electric Light Orchestra and a tome for "1967: The Psychedelic Year". The premise is the same in each case - about 125 to 145 paperback pages with a central slew of relevant photos (repro sleeves, live snaps, memorabilia etc) – all of it discussing their chosen artist where they live - the albums - song by song. 

 

While this might glibly sound like an easy-peasy writing project, the truth is, you have to dig in and know your subject matter with true depth to pull off serious fan-based analysis like that. So when I saw "On Track...Every Album, Every Song" for WARREN ZEVON slotted into their UK-release schedules for 29 April 2022 (June 2022 in the USA) - I got a tad excited. And I'm thrilled to say that Peter Gallagher's book of 128-pages and 16-colour plates is the best I've read so far. 

 

Why is WZ so fascinating? Take a band like the mighty Quo - every song is riff riff, riff riff etc. Let's go out girl on a Saturday night and put our collective long hairdos to the boogie grindstone. And I'm down with that. But WZ is so much wider than such a narrow themed-straightjacket. Take Zevon's song titles for starters - few artists I know write tunes with names like "The Hula Hula Boys", "Even A Dog Can Shake Hands", "Desperadoes Under The Eaves", "Boom Boom Mancini", "Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School", "Lawyers, Guns And Money", "I Was In The House When The House Burned Down", "Quite Ugly One Morning", "Roland The Headless Thompson Gunner", "Nobody's In Love This Year" and of course the 'be careful of him, he'll rip your lungs out Jim' riffing classic "Werewolves Of London" – a No. 21 hit single on the American Billboard charts in January 1978 (his only one to chart). 

 

As you can imagine, you're not dealing with the average lyricist here trotting out themes you've heard rehashed a thousand times before. Zevon could be angry and vicious and whimsical all in the same tune - "Ain't That Pretty At All" and sweeping leaves with Liza at "Detox Mansion" hammers home the itchy Hell of addiction and efforts at getting clean - "Porcelain Monkey" discusses Elvis Presley's last days and his obsession with onyx and porcelain trinkets in the TV room at Graceland - while "Reconsider Me" is a song plea rejected by his ex-wife Crystal who had suffered too long and too much at the hands of his alcohol and drugs consumption. 

 

"Reconsider Me" is in fact a microcosm of Zevon and his life in many ways. Not only is it written about a woman 'he' asked to do a no-holes barred autobiography on him (she called it "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead: The Dirty Life And Times Of Warren Zevon") - it contained brave and brutally honest subject matter – and a huge raft of famous contributors into the bargain. Tom Petty's principal axeman Mike Campbell (and now a star in his own right with two tremendous solo albums) plays guitar, Tony Levin of Peter Gabriel's band plays Bass and Don Henley of the Eagles lays on his fantastic Harmony Vocals. The song was given originally to Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac who did a version for her 1985 "Rock A Little" album, but it was rejected and later turned up as an outtake on the "Enchanted" Box Set. "Reconsider Me" - a genuinely lovely ballad - got covered by other revered/hero types too - The Pretenders and Steve Earle amongst them. 

 

Zevon was like this - huge players loved him, hovered around him, paid tribute via covers. Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen were more than big fans - "Janey Needs A Shooter" was a co-write with the Boss and he recently/finally put out his official version on the excellent "Letter To You" album of 2020 - while JB was there from the Asylum Records start - getting the brilliant and hugely underrated "Warren Zevon" debut LP (for Asylum that is) up and running. That 'should have been huge' LP with tunes like "Hasten Down The Wind" (Linda Ronstadt named a whole album after it), "Poor Poor Pitiful Me" (she also covered this) and he brilliantly wistful "Mohammad's Radio" also featured a slew of contributions - Jackson Browne (Production, Playing, Backing Vocals), Waddy Wachtel and David Lindley, John David Souther, Phil Everly, Ned Doheny, Bonnie Raitt and Rosemary Butler, Bobby Keys (of Rolling Stones fame), Don Henley and Glenn Frey of Eagles, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac. 

 

The 1987 comeback set on Virgin "Sentimental Hygiene" featured R.E.M. for God's sake as the backing band with slots from Neil Young, Brian Setzer and Jennifer Warnes. Hell even George Clinton of Funkadelic and Parliament fame arranged "Leave My Monkey Alone". Speaking of Funk, I have been putting the so-Talking Heads groove of "Nighttime In The Switching Yard" on FUNK-ROCK CDR compilations for years (its on the stunning "Excitable Boy" album abutting loveliness like "Tenderness On The Block"- another co-write with Jackson Browne). 

 

The point is that with such rich material and thorough research (he namechecks many sources on the final credits page) - Gallagher has dug out the backdrop/background - and each song reads like a mini opera of drama, wit and yes - excess to the mess. But what I also loved - and all the greats have this - Zevon could pen a ballad, a love song, that often floored you. Gallagher is unfairly dismissive I think of "The Envoy" LP's big ballad moment, "Let Nothing Come Between You" - but I can firmly state that as young twenty-something in Dublin in 1982 with the LP on my trusty Garrard SP25 - I played this hopeful ditty to death. And then his research goes on to the so-sad yet utterly beautiful "Keep Me In Your Heart" from August 2003's swansong album "The Wind" (Zevon would die from cancer only two weeks after its release in early September 2004 living only just to see his return to the charts after 25 years). 

 

All the famous albums are here - the wildly underrated kick-ass live set "Stand In The Fire: Live At The Roxy" - the Hindu Love Gods project with R.E.M. - forgotten troubled-few-charts sets like "Transverse City" on Virgin in 1989, "Mr. Bad Example" and "Mutineer" on Giant in 1991 and 1995. The album analysis goes up to the brilliant and comprehensive 1996 Rhino 2CD Anthology "I'll Sleep When I'm Dead", stretches back to the late 60ts days when he was paired up with Violet Santangelo and they were calling themselves the double-act of Lyme and Cybelle (The Turtles put his "Like The Seasons" on the B-side of their million-seller "Happy Together" 45-single on White Whale Records) and includes honourable mentions of David Letterman who championed the guy for decades. Gallagher quite rightly also touches on the tribute album project "Enjoy Every Sandwich" of October 2004 with covers by Dylan, Springsteen, Jackson Browne, Don Henley, The Pixies, Jill Sobule, The Wallflowers and his son Jordan (with others). The author has even managed to find a business card for Lee Ho Fook – the Chinese Restaurant literally mentioned in his most famous song "Werewolves Of London" (big dish of beef chow mein).

 

Zevon was complicated, funny as Robin Williams, edgy as Dave Chappelle, maddening and no doubt an absolute nightmare to live with in real life let alone market. But like other giants I can think of - John Martyn or Patti Smith or Chrissie Hynde or Elvis Costello or The Boss - he danced to his own song and has held a torch in my musical heart the whole of my life for exactly that. 

 

I loved "On Track..." for WARREN ZEVON and I can't recommend it enough. And to give it the best compliment of all, I rushed back to the albums and fell in love with the music of Warren William all over again. 

 

As Gallagher remarks in his take on "Keep Me In Your Heart" and a man he saw as a musical hero - Zevon (who knew he was not long for this world) said goodbye with style, grace and genuine heart-breaking pathos - like another one of our heroes - Bowie. I miss him...

"Baby Scratch My Back" by SLIM HARPO – September 1966 US Second Album on Excello Records in Mono – Inside "Buzzin' The Blues: The Complete Slim Harpo" fearturing Rudolph Richard, James Johnson and Al Foreman on Guitars, Lazy Lester on Percussion and Jay Miller Productions (March 2015 GERMAN Bear Family LP-Sized 5CD Box Set of Remasters) - A Review by Mark Barry...

 

"...Good Man Gone..."

 

Slim Harpo's Second Album from September 1966 

Inside "Buzzin' The Blues: The Complete Slim Harpo" 

March 2015 GERMAN Bear Family 5CD Box Set of Remasters)

 

 

Like so many Blues and Rhythm and Blues albums in the early to mid Sixties – the second platter "Baby Scratch My Back" from our hero SLIM HARPO (issued September 1966 on Excello Records in Mono) wasn't a conceptual LP of free standing at all - but six singles and their equally marketable flip-sides strung together in one place for ease of punter access. "Baby Scratch My Back" was a compilation in short – but a bloody good one at that.

 

Championed by The Rolling Stones as far back as their April 1964 British debut album "Rolling Stones No. 1" LP on Decca where they had covered the slick and sexy Harmonica brilliance of Slim Harpo's "I'm A King Bee" from 1961 - they would return to Slim on their sprawling yet utterly brilliant double-album "Exile On Main St." in 1972 where their Side 1 cover version of his 1966 classic "Shake Your Hips" made him famous all over again. 

 

And that song brings us to the album containing it - "Baby Scratch My Back" – and the best place to contain it (and frankly everything else by him) in exceptional remastered audio. Neither a single 'Best Of' nor Bear's own 'Rocks' CD compilations can offer the full LP – so I splashed out the requisite wheelbarrow of cash for Bear Family's magnificent "Buzzin' The Blues: The Complete Slim Harpo" 5CD Box Set. To the details and the scratchy bits...

 

Released March 2015 in Germany on Bear Family BCD 17339 (Barcode 5397102 173394) – "Buzzin' The Blues: The Complete Slim Harpo" by SLIM HARPO quickly became an industry Blues Reissue of the Year winner. It is housed in an LP-Sized Box Set with 106-Page Album-Sized Hardback Book and 142 Remastered Tracks stretching from his March 1957 sessions in Jay Miller's Studios in Louisiana up to home demo in January 1970.

 

CD1: 86:42 minutes (33 Tracks)

CD2: 84:42 minutes (28 Tracks)

CD3: 70:46 minutes (27 Tracks)

CD4: 80:30 minutes (30 Tracks)

CD5: 87:34 minutes (24 Tracks)

 

And if you want to sequence James Moore's second LP "Baby Scratch My Back" from that Box Set, use CDs 1 and 4 as follows (30/1 = Track 30 on CD1, 14/4 = Track 14 on CD4 etc)...

 

Side 1:

1. Shake Your Hips (30/1)

2. Midnight Blues (31/1)

3. Harpo's Blues (26/1)

4. Buzzin' (19/1)

5. My Little Queen Bee (14/4)

6. I Love The Life (I'm Livin') (18/1)

 

Side 2:

1. Baby, Scratch My Back (28/1)

2. I'm Gonna Miss You (Like The Devil) (29/1)

3. Rainin' In My Heart (2/4)  

4. Wonderin' Blues [as "Sittin' Here Wondering" on 45-single] (25/1)

5. We're Two Of A Kind (22/1)

6. I Need Money (21/1)

The "Baby Scratch My Back" by SLIM HARPO was released September 1966 in the USA on Excello LP 8005 in MONO. 

 

There was an Electronically Reprocessed Stereo variant of the LP put out in fake Stereo in 1968 on LPS-8005 using the same artwork as the Mono 1966 LP - but Bear have had the good taste to leave such audio horrors alone. And as was the norm for R 'n' B LPs of the period – 11 of the 12-tracks on "Baby Scratch My Back" were made up of US 7" single sides tried and tested between 1963 and 1965 nestled alongside a new Alternate cut of his oldest and most popular hit "Rainin' In My Heart" (see NOTE)...

 

45s on the "Baby Scratch My Back" Mono LP:

Shake Your Hips [30/1] b/w Midnight Blues [31/1]

June 1966, Excello 45-2278 A & B-sides

 

Harpo's Blues [26/1]

February 1965, Excello 45-2265, A-side

 

I Love The Life (I'm Livin') [18/1] b/w Buzzin' [19/1]

October 1963, Excello 2239, A & B-sides

 

Baby Scratch My Back [28/1] b/w I'm Gonna Miss You (Like The Devil) [29/1]

December 1965, Excello 45-2273, A & B-sides

 

Sittin' Here Wondering (as Wonderin' Blues on the LP) [25/1]

November 1964, Excello 2261, A-side

 

We're Two Of A Kind [22/1] (July 1964, Excello 2253, B-side of "Still Rainin' In My Heart")

 

I Need Money [as "I Need Money (Keep Your Alibis)"] [21/1] (March 1964, Excello 45-2246, A-side)

 

NOTE: The version of "Rainin' In My Heart" on Side 2 of the "Baby Scratch My Back" album (Track 2, CD4) is a very different Alternate Version to the 1961 original. The original is Track 12 on Disc 1 in this Box set.

 

Mastered to perfection by MARCUS HEUMANN from original master tapes, I cannot stress enough how good and alive the audio is on this set – thrilling and present – song after song. To the album and its chunes... 

 

His Harmonica backed up by Lazy Lester's percussive taps comes sailing out of your speakers with stunning clarity as he launches into the Bo Diddley magic groove-type-thang of "Shake Your Hips". That's followed by its bopping flipside "Midnight Blues" – a Rhythm and Blues shuffler with startling Harmonica clarity laid down at Jay Miller's Studios in Louisiana in January 1965. Al Foreman provides the zippy-licks guitar opening for "Harpo's Blues" (from September 1963 sessions) – Slim glad to be back home and away from some other gal's evil ways (good choice mate). "Buzzin'" is a guitar-dominated instrumental shuffler stabbed throughout with his trademark Harmonica warbles – very cool indeed. Side 1 ends with a mixture of two paces – the bopping "My Little Queen Bee" and the none-too-convincing shuffler "I Love The Life (I'm Livin')" where he sings/talks his way through some terribly sappy lyrics.

 

Side 2 opens with a proper winner, the snakelike wiggle of the title track – James Johnson playing lead guitar for "Baby Scratch My Back" – a baby get too it plea for our man out on a chicken limb. Definitely one the LPs better cuts, "I'm Gonna Miss You (Like The Devil)" is a hip-swaying mama – the kind of song you might hear in a bar and rush to the jukebox to find out what/who it is. The LP's non-45 odd-man-out is an Alternate of "Rainin' In My Heart" done as far back as November/December 1959 sessions at Jay Millers Studios which appears to be finally making its CD appearance in this Box set. 

 

Both Rudolph Richard (Lead) and James Johnson (Rhythm) play superb guitar moments on "Wondering Blues" – Lazy Lester backing them up on Drums and Percussion. The final two are echo-shufflers where Slim drops up and down on the vocals for "Two Of A Kind" – his baby arguing when he starts in on the loving - again with superb lead guitar from Richard Rudolph and gorgeous audio. It ends on a manic Harmonica and Drums shuffler "I Need Money (Keep Your Alibis)" that you suspect was placed at the end of Side 2 because it's the poorest recording on the album – great atmosphere – but slightly muzzled on the Production front.

 

Born in Lobdell - Louisiana's James Moore passed 31 January 1970 aged only 46 - with the last song on this box set called "There's Nothing As Sweet As Making Up" apparently recorded only a week before he succumbed to a heart attack.

 

In a typically respectful gesture to an artist and his co-musicians BF clearly admire - someone who subliminally influenced so many that followed in his swamp-cat footsteps - Bear Family have given his large Memorial Plaque a full-page photograph on Page 104 so you can read all of its details.

 

I suppose buying Bear Family's gorgeous 5CD mega-work is hardly a budget-conscious way to acquire one obscure 1966 R&B album - but Slim Harpo's wonderful catalogue is genuinely worth splashing out the cash for.

 

So much to love and so much to savour (ask Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones) - just hide the receipt from your queen bee...

"Gaslit" TV Series (2022 STARZ Production) starring Sean Penn, Julia Roberts, Dan Stevens, Betty Gilpin, Shea Whigham, Alison Tolman, Chris Messina and more - A Review by Mark Barry...

 

"...The Year Of The Rat..." 

 

GASLIT TV Series 

 

Brilliant, Funny and Crammed with Emmy Winners

 

I've been glued to all eight episodes of the TV Show "Gaslit" and I love it - easily the best thing on telly that is inexplicably not getting the serious crave-rave credits it so richly deserves.

 

Whatever you may have thought of Julia Roberts as an actress before this (token Glamourpuss in the Ocean movies) - she is Emmy brilliant in "Gaslit" as the boozed-up/pilled-popping addicted-to-the-spotlight Martha Mitchell - the Republican wife-stroke-motormouth who sent Nixon's administration into near meltdown during the Watergate break-in scandals of 1972 and 1973 and the Commander-In-Chief's impending impeachment in 1974 - the first sitting President to be disgraced as such.

 

Returned with a historical landslide electoral victory in 1972, Republican President Richard Milhous Nixon (nicknamed Tricky Dicky) was riding high despite the calamitous Vietnam War. But after his trashing at the hands of a young and handsome JFK in the early Sixties - his deeply rooted paranoia towards failure meant his win would be very short-lived (he didn't need to do any of it but simply couldn't help himself). So despite genuine political achievements in China and elsewhere, Richard N is now forever remembered as that trickster in the late Seventies Frost/Nixon interviews - a liar hustling for public redemption via TV and crocodile tears (you never actually get to see any actor play Dicky, but he festers in the background like a malignant disease).

 

Martha Mitchell and her story is shocking at times – her treatment at the hands of unscrupulous men both repulsive and desperately sad – her own junkie-need for fame being a part of it. In getting this descent across - Roberts has at last found her perfect partner/foil in Sean Penn who is virtually unrecognizable via jowl make-up similar to Gary Oldman in "Darkest Hour". Their sparring bouts of devotion and hatred are unbelievably good – a fantastic chemistry that works even with all the prosthetics – a simpatico similar in fact to Steve Carell and Jennifer Aniston in the brilliant first season of "The Morning Show". Penn plays her snakelike politically wily and ruthless husband Bob Mitchell who along with John Erlichmann and John Deane was all knee-deep in wanton public lies, campaign office bugging of the Democrats and constitutional abuse of power on a massive scale.

 

But while the big-name stars Penn and Roberts are never anything other than electrifying when on screen - they are both given a good run for their professional money by Dan Stevens and the gorgeous Betty Gilpin (of Glee fame) playing another husband/wife power couple of the day - John and Maureen Deane. At last our Dan gets to shed the shackles of his goodie-two-shoes Downton Abbey character and get all creep, skin crawl and morally slippery - both he and Gilpin digging into real acting meat and going for it.

 

Deane quickly twigged that the ship was going down fast and you either drown or push into the lifeboats no matter what it takes. Worse, his small-beer inner-sanctum position in the quagmire of illegal Nixon activities starts to get used by the Whitehouse as an 'obstruction of justice' scapegoat. Deane is literally surrounded by cigar-chomping Chivas Regal-swilling white men desperate to point the finger of blame somewhere else and knowing just how to do it. The scenes in an out-of-the-way Camp David (the President's private getaway ranch) where their characters feel like invited diners at a banquet with political Gods are brilliant and so naivety believable (Washington has shockingly not been entirely honest with them – Tricky Dicky included). Like the two more famous leads - both Stevens and Gilpin should be nominated for outstanding performances.

 

Other notables are Chris Bauer as the nervous and clumsy break-in oaf James McCord, Brian Geraghty as a heavy-handed handy-with-a-syringe CIA agent, Allison Tolman as Martha's sceptical but admiring biographer, Darby Camp as Martha and John's frazzled but opinionated daughter, Hamish Linklater as a Whitehouse shapeshifter and Chris Messina (of The Newsroom fame and the movie The Giant Mechanical Man) with Carlos Valdes as diligent cops trying to make a difference. And of course there's stunning writing from Robbie Pickering, Sam Esmail and Leon Neyfakh who based this 2022 TV Show on an Apple Podcast from November 2017 called Slow Burn by Slate Plus.

 

But they may all be nosed at the Emmy Kentucky Derby race posts by a truly scene-stealing tour-de-force performance from "Boardwalk Empire" and "Perry Mason" sidekick - Shea Whigham. Whigham (who you've seen in so many movies, you may not know his name, but you'll know his face) is what I call the Denholm Elliott factor in a film or a TV Series. Whigham classes things up in his understated every-man kind of way. His persona/range has you root for a character no matter what he says or does or how odious the little cretin becomes as he burrows into the muck.

 

But in "Gaslit" - our Shea gets to go out on a total actor's limb. Whigham plays the (real life) butt-tight cropped-moustache-loon that is G. Gordon Liddy – an Adolf devotee who spouts Ayrian master-race psychobabble to all and sundry dumb enough to listen - including his equally devoted/misguided wife and bamboozled kids. The thing is that the Republicans knew of his violent and volatile rep, but still brought him in. It was Liddy who had headed up the crew of useless break-in types (that included Cubans who were considered to be disposable), who, of course, did the one thing you mustn't do when screwing your political opponents - get caught.

 

Soon everything that's ruthless and nasty in Washington starts to unravel - the press-hounds begin to close in and sniff out bigger game, while righteously incensed judges in open court proceedings dole out jail sentences that aren't measured in weeks but example-setting decades. And on it goes to Liddy (Whigham) literally doing battle with a rat and his delightful deposits...

 

Season 6 of "Better Call Saul" has been brilliant, as has Season 2 of "Gentleman Jack" - masterclasses in filming, acting, presentation, storytelling and all the sexy points in-between. But spare a thought for the Seventies when genuinely corrupted no-conscience-whatsoever types roamed the corridors of power thinking they would always get away it because their Congressional overlords contained (within their ranks) even bigger bottom-feeders than them.

 

"Gaslit" is brilliant stuff and if it ever turns up on BLU RAY - I'll wiretap 10 Downing St. to get a copy...