"Barnstorm" by JOE WALSH. A Review Of The 2006 Hip-O Select CD Reissue And Remaster.

This review is part of my Series "SOUNDS GOOD: Exceptional CD Remasters 1970s Rock And Pop" Download Book available to buy on Amazon to either your PC or Mac (it will download the Kindle software to read the book for free to your toolbar). Click on the link below to go my Author's Page for this and other related publications:

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"Sets Me Free Without A Warning..." - Barnstorm by JOE WALSH (2006 Hip-O Select CD Remaster)

It's hard for me to be rational about Joe Walsh's "Barnstorm" - I've adored it for over 30 years and this brill-sounding CD reissue has only made matters worse!

First things first though - this HIP-O SELECT re-issue has had a troubled existence. It was first released in January 2006 to howls of derision because someone had used the wrong master tapes (laden with unbearable amounts of hiss) and even left gaps between the songs on Side One where certain tracks segue into each other. Mistakes were admitted, it was withdrawn, and it re-appeared in November 2006. To complicate things further, there are in fact 4 variants of the album on CD, the US 1980s crappy MCA issue which is rubbish, the wonderful silver disc version by Mobile Fidelity in 1990 which is superb but rare and pricey, a 24-bit remaster issued in Japan in December 2004 as a mini-album repro that is now also rare too and extortionately priced. And now this - the Hip-O Select USA November 2006 re-issue. I've got the Mobile CD, the Japanese repro and now this - and to my ears, the HIP-O SELECT version is even better than the Mobile and Japanese issues. Finally, a remaster worthy of the record and - what a peach of a remaster it is!

HISTORY:
Having left THE JAMES GANG behind after 3 great albums, Walsh recruited KENNY PASSARELLI and JOE VITALE to record his solo debut in March of 1972. It was finally released in the USA on Dunhill DSX 50130 in October 1972 with its British counterpart released November 1972 on Probe SPBA 6268 (later reissued in 1974 on ABC). It was afforded the luxury of a gatefold sleeve, which is reproduced on both sides of the gatefold inlay in colour (the inside of the UK sleeve was in black and white). There's no new liner notes though - nor any juicy bonus tracks nor outtakes - which is a damn shame - a missed opportunity there.

SOUND:
The album has been REMASTERED by GAVIN LURSSEN who did such exceptional work on the two STEPHEN BISHOP Hip-O Select titles "Careless" and "Bish" and the stunning 2 CD "Gold" set for Universal by THE CRUSADERS (see separate reviews). Originally produced and engineered by BILL SZYMCZYK, "Barnstorm" was always a `sloppy' album in feel (in stark contrast to say "So What" from 1974) and was always going to be a difficult album to remaster well - but LURSSEN has done a fantastic job. The instruments are live and in your face. There is still hiss on some of the tracks but in the main it's minimal. Some love the rough feel of the recordings; it drives others crazy; personally I find there's charm in them that's missing in the more polished later albums. The production difference for instance when you go from the slightly hissy "Giant Bohemoth" to the all-out riffs of "Mother Says" is marked. MS rocks like a monster now and even in the centre passage where all the instruments crescendo and threaten to get out of hand, this remaster holds it all together - YOU HEAR IT ALL - the drums, the wonderful keyboard flourishes - even the men giggling like loons at the end when it fades out. Superb stuff.

But then comes the gem I've been waiting for - "Birdcall Morning" - I'm lost man - I go to pieces at hearing this. After 30 years it finally sounds a fresh as a new sixpence - a beautiful song now given beautiful sound. I've A/B'd this with the Japanese issue and it's just brighter - fuller somehow - wonderful. "Turn To Stone" is the original version and is just HUGE in sound - a little `too' rough I would say for most tastes. The album ends with the lovely acoustic ditty "Comin' Down" - the strings rattling around the speakers with the harmonica playing it out.

A little know fact about one of the album tracks is worth mentioning. "I'll Tell The World (About You)" was written by ALAN GORDON and ALLAN JACOBS of the obscure American band THE MAGICIANS. They made 4 singles on US Columbia in the mid Sixties (never got an album out). The band featured FELIX CAVALIERI who later went on to be with The Rascals and Mountain - Walsh probably heard the song through him. Sundazed have a wonderful CD out which has this beautiful song on it - well worth checking out. A top-notch cover version done by Walsh - and a truly magical criminally forgotten Sixties original - someone please stick this in an advert somewhere!

To sum up, the remaster on this forgotten 1972 gem is a joy. "Barnstorm" is an album you need to get into your life and this version of it is the best yet.

Joe Walsh once ran for President of The United States of America. On the strength of this album, I could never understand why he didn't he get the job.

"A Load Of Blather". A Review Of The Book Highlighting The Best Of The Witty Posts On "Blather.Net"

"...Team Of Irish Scientists Find "The Clitoris"..." And Other Ball-Breaking Stories!

I’ll openly admit to being biased on this book, as one of the three writers is my younger brother Damien.

Like the British, Irish people have a blinding sense of humour and a healthy knack of taking the piss out of country’s respective lunacies. Set up in Ireland for fun in 1997, Blather.net is an Internet site that does exactly that – it features ballbreakingly funny articles about varying things that get on the tits of Irish people. The Irish Press quickly picked up on it of course – producing several of the better stories – and it snowballed from there. The 140 pages of this book feature 29 of their best posts.

If you find that titles like "Unidentified Feckin' Objects", "Most Of The Internet Is About Bobby Darin" and "Irishwoman Deafened By Ticking Of Her Own Biological Clock" already have you giggling, then you get the general idea. My personal favourites are "IRA Announces Massive Redundancies" in which the Peace Process and market forces (influx of Euro terrorists who’ll do the job cheaper) have left the boys proclaiming, "...we simply can't compete". I almost wet my Shamrock-shaped Y-fronts at "Clontarf-Based Science Team Find "The Clitoris"..." which was (we’re reliably informed) located in the back of a Fiat Punto on Dollymount Beach in Dublin.

What's great of course about so many of these life vignettes is the delicious irreverence of them – especially in the face of so much po-faced political correctness nowadays. You can’t help but feel that the world desperately needs a laugh like this.

If I was to bring up a downside, it's that the posts often came with equally funny visuals and none are reproduced here – hopefully they’ll get that rectified with the next print run.

Irreverent, clever, insightful and very funny – you should treat yourself to this book. In truth, I found myself with it in Soho Square on Kirsty MacColl’s commemorative bench giggling like a loon at lunchtime. And when a very nice lady from Toronto couldn’t resist anymore and asked me what I was chortling at, I had to tell her the awful truth. I’ve a younger brother who’s funnier and smarter than I am.

Fecker!

"Michael Clayton" on BLU RAY. A Review Of The 2007 Movie Starring George Clooney and Tom Wilkinson.

"I Am Shiva! The Goddess Of Death!"

Right the opening frames of "Michael Clayton", you know you're in the presence of a class act.

On the one-millionth floor of a city skyscraper, a trolley chock full of legal papers is being wheeled through the immaculate corridors of a huge US Law firm. As the big wheels of this little cog roll ever forward, a voice on a tape-recording is having a full-on meltdown. The educated tones are that of a man in his late 50's; he's obviously hugely intelligent, yet there's only half-coherence in his lengthy fast-spoken sentences. The voice babbles on and on about morals and death and epiphanies. He talks of searing personal clarity, of monsters, of ordinary people being screwed by the system - he is drowning in a river of shit that he's been swimming in for years and can stand it no more. This man is clearly unhinged. Or is he?

The voice you vaguely recognise is that of the superlative British actor TOM WILKINSON (an inspired piece of casting) and he's paying top lawyer Arthur Edens. Arthur is a man who got into the law for the right reasons when he started out as a young man, but now, in the twilight of his long and acknowledged career, finds that his brilliance is being used. It seems that he has finally been driven mad by 12 long years of evasion and counter tactics in what he knows in his very soul is an indefensible lawsuit.

The case is a class-action suit pending against a huge agro-chemical company called U-North whose 'odourless/tasteless' weed product may/may not have killed a large number of unwitting US farmers despite U-North's glossy `for the people' TV advertisements. Billions of dollars are at stake and the very soul of the law firm itself. And that is of course one of the problems - unlike some of the other lawyers, Arthur still has a soul - and now - maybe even documentary evidence to settle the thing one way or the other.
But the truth - like him - has become a liability - Arthur may need `to be dealt with'...

The opening dialogue is stunning and it should be. "Micheal Clayton" is written and directed by TONY GILROY who penned all three of the "Bourne" scripts, "Dolores Claiborne" and the well-underrated "Proof Of Life". You couple really great material like this with a stunning cast and you get a film that's firing on all sixes. Even the minor roles are a sensation.

As principal lead actor and putting in a performance that is his best, George Clooney plays the firms floating fixer "Michael Clayton" who is dispatched pronto to `get a grip' on the situation and his friend, Arthur. Clayton has no real life other than the job, his wife is with another man and his kids are something he gets visiting rights to rather than actually parenting of. Clayton's previous bad habits include gambling - badly. He also has a restaurant that's failed and he needs $75,000 dollars in a week or people will come to `deal with' him. On top of this half-life, Clayton spends most of his working day for his morally bankrupt law firm fixing the messes made by odious rich people, his every action filed in a drawer marked 'necessary evil'. Clooney's character is of course on his way to becoming Arthur Edens and just doesn't know it yet.

There's a fantastic sequence in an alleyway when Clooney finally catches up with the AWOL Wilkinson, and while the conversation begins with Clooney saying to Wilkinson that he's acting like a madman who doesn't know what he's saying, Wilkinson turns it around and asks, "Who are you Michael?" and Clayton's jaw drops open, because (a) he doesn't know, and (b) he does know, but just can't bring himself to say it, let alone do something about it...either way he's screwed.

Now we throw in the Oscar winning talents of TILDA SWINTON, who is a ruthless corporate player prepared to stoop to any deed to get the job done and it's not difficult to see what will happen to Arthur and his new found enlightenment...

There's also a deliciously ambiguous SYDNEY POLLOCK playing one of law firms Senior Partners who on hearing of Arthur's strip off of all of his clothes in a deposition meeting on camera - part of his meltdown - simply frowns. Immediately you get from his scrunched up eyebrows that Arthur's mental health doesn't really concern Sydney, but the consequences to their law firm and therefore by extension to their rich and comfortable lives...does. The level of writing is like his all the way through - rich, deep and filled out.

I could go on, but it would spoil it for you. "Michael Clayton" is a superb movie and a career best for all the leads. It probably cost real money to acquire a script this good and the quality actors to do it justice, but the pay off was worth it. Hollywood has produced some pap of late; happily "Michael Clayton" gives us hope that they can still deliver the goods. A superlative film I urge you to seek out.

PS: The title of this review is from one of Arthur's rants.