Jimi Hendrix - Stone Free

Someone told me I don't like Classic Rock the other day.  I think that's not exactly true.  I think I don't like modern Classic Rock radio.  I think I don't like it because when I listen to music, I don't just listen to a ten or twelve year time span.  I also think that some music is of a time, and it belongs to that time, and it should stay in that time.  Think about it - what fifteen year old kid these days needs to know that Styx or Bad Co. even existed?  Hey, you can give me a hard time about Grand Funk or BTO, but I'm not asking anyone to play their songs three times a day anymore.  Plus, a lot of what I think of as a classic is often just something overlooked, or forgotten.  I was the generation that coined the term "classic," and we weren't referring to Styx or Boston.  We were genuinely happy to hear an old Yardbirds song, or something by Jimi Hendrix.  These musicians made music we felt shouldn't ever be forgotten.

So that's how I end up thinking about this oddball Jimi album that came out in 1980.  It's a UK budget series and I'll bet it still cost me top dollar since it's an import.  Now, I'm not the biggest Jimi fan.  All my Jimi records are some kind collection, and none of them are his original albums.  Some day, I might fix that, but it's been okay for me for a long time, so things may never change.  I was a senior in high school when I got this.  I think it was at a really cool old place that used to be in Parma.  They carried a lot of imports back then and I'm pretty sure this is where I'd have bought it.  I know I bought it for two reasons:  Stone Free is my favorite Jimi song by a long shot, and I just absolutely love the cover.  What got me thinking about it was that back in April for Record Store Day they made a big deal about releasing a 45 with Stone Free on it, and the big selling point is that it's in mono.  BFD.  I've had the mono version of Stone Free since 1980, because that's what they chose to put on here.  It sounds great, so I can see unearthing it, but I'm good with this album.

I'm mostly good with this album because for some reason it sounds really great!  I love the way this record sounds.  Considering the source material probably isn't original masters or anything like that, this record just has a really black background and a nice, balanced attack that lends itself well to letting the neighbors in on your fun.  They'll appreciate you, because this record is also a bunch of well chosen songs that someone actually thought about how they would work together.  I've always thought that the flow of the songs on an album can make a good album a great one when they work together and sound like they all belong with each other, and Stone Free just really works for me.  I mean, it's got Castles Made of Sand, Crosstown Traffic, Ezy Rider and two Bob Dylan songs - All Along the Watchtower (you know it's the best version, even if you're a big Bob fan) and The Drifter's Escape (which I don't know where that came from, but it's cool).  But every song is a keeper, including a blistering version of Johnny B. Goode that's live from somewhere.  I'm sure you can look it up on the internets.  I'll tell ya, the guy that put this together must have actually talked to me at some point, and he took notes and made my record!

There used to be a stereo store in my town and I think I had just taken my Dual turntable in to get a new cartridge that was better than the 12 dollar Audio Technica that was there when I bought it.  I think that's when I figured out that this record sounded better than a lot of my other ones, and I think this album is one of the records I took to Audio Craft in 1982 when I bought my first really decent stereo.  Unlike today, there was no internet where people with no stereo at all made fun of your "entry level" stereo even though they had never heard it.  But I liked the guy that ran the little stereo store in town.  He didn't last long, and he even sold records, but he showed me how to mount a cartridge and was the first person that proved to me that a better one was worthwhile.  This record really benefited from that better cartridge.  It sounds like a brand new record even almost 35 years later.  I think it's really good.  You should get it if you come across it.

*A little edit - some of the songs are a little less awesome in sound quality, but most of this record always gets me to to go, "man, this sounds great!"

Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story

Ya know, Rod Stewart had a real, real good run going in the beginning of the 70’s.  I know he became the butt of some crude jokes when he “went Disco” and he never really recovered from that stuff with the cool kids.  Maybe it was because he was just this close to being mentioned in the same breaths as The Stones, Beatles and Dylan, and he just started kind of losing direction shortly after, and then instead of just losing direction the dude jumped off a cliff into a mountain of money.

I’m trying to think of when I first got this album.  I think it was the late 80’s, on cd.  I had friends that had this, and I had some other Rod Stewart albums, but it’s not like they didn’t play damn near the whole thing on Cleveland’s radio stations.  I think I found my vinyl copy of this in the 90’s at a flea market or a used record store that’s long gone.  I remember just grabbing it because it was cheap, and then one day putting it on the old B&O and wondering what the hell happened between the vinyl version and the cd.  The vinyl I have is a red label Mercury on Energy Crisis weight vinyl, but man, does it sound great!

I’m a sucker for a great, dry drum sound.  I like it when drums sound just like they do if you’re in someone’s basement and they’re banging away right in front of you.  Mickey Waller is a shambling mess that sounds like he’s gonna lose the beat at any second, but he never quite does and he gives Rod and the band a terrific, wobbly foundation that reminds me of a getting a good drunk on and being a little unsteady, but happy and more in control that people suspect.  A tricky balancing act indeed, but everything just works perfectly here.

What I find interesting is that the best songs here are written or co written by Stewart, but most of the songs are Stewart’s interpretations of songs other people wrote.  It seems kind of strange, especially coming from an era where it was really expected of people to write their own songs.  Maybe Rod didn’t have much in his tank, but three of his songs here are three of his all time best.  Sure, if you’re my age you can live without hearing Maggie May again, but the way it jumps off the record makes it sound as fresh as it did coming out of mom’s AM radio in her ’65 Valiant (sure, it sounded like crap but I was 8 and it was good enough for me!).  Then there’s the “wow, that’s (high school) deep” of Mandolin Wind and the “man, that sounds like a (college aged) great trip” of the title track.  That’s three songs that have held up for over forty years and they still, even after all these years, sound like they were recorded just yesterday.  That’s craftsmanship, and maybe Rod couldn’t do it prolifically, but when he was good he made it count.  Rod’s true claim to fame may be that he can be a brilliant interpreter, but at least here the three very best songs were his.

As far as the record goes, I wish the cover weren’t perforated.  Mine is still attached, but barely.  It’s still in good enough shape and I’m not looking for another one, but still…The record itself is almost as flexible as a Dynaflex disc, but it sounds terrific.  The blend of the acoustic guitars and drums with electric bass and guitars has such an open quality that it’s like you can reach out and touch the space between the instruments.  The whole thing sounds like the band is in the room with you, with a beautiful stereo separation that presents a soundstage producers don’t seem interested in presenting anymore.  Maybe it’s because everyone listens to music with earbuds or near field in front of their computers, but when I hear something like this I have to think that we aren’t exactly hearing recorded music as well as it can be done these days, and I’m not bitching about compression and loudness.

Usually when I decide to give something an Audiophile Alert I check online afterwards to see if I’m alone in this opinion.  It turns out that there are a lot of people that prefer the red label Mercury pressings to Mobile Fidelity vinyl and gold cd’s.  So you should be able to find the best sounding copies of this album easily for less than ten bucks!

Keith Richards - Talk is Cheap

So I finally get to a Stones related post!  You may have thought I was full of it when I said I was a Stones fan and got this far without talking about one of their records, but I'm going to start here, just outside The Rolling Stones, but also kind of right at the heart of the band.  I'm also going to add a new label, Audiophile Alert because there are some records that people just wouldn't expect to sound as phenomenal as they do. I won't put a Steely Dan album in that category, because everyone knows they sound great, even if you don't like the music, but a record like this one can just slip by and never quite get its due.

So in 1988 I was pretty hard into my fascination with The Stones, which had started about 1982.  I was working in a printing factory and by this time I was probably solidly on third shift, putting covers on books on a machine that confounded damn near everybody but just seemed to make sense to me.  The guy I spent most of my night next to ran the part of the machine that put labels on books, and we talked music non stop all night, until lunch, when we listened to music and burned one at lunch, then we'd come back in and talk music until morning when it was time to go home.  There was no Internet per se back then, so The Stones' Dirty Work album wasn't as despised as the Internet makes it out to be.  It wasn't great, but it wasn't awful (and I still say that).  So Keith Richards' first solo album was something I was looking forward to, partly because I knew Keith would blow away Mick's She's the Boss album, and partly because I knew Keith wouldn't have those shitty sounding drums that were on Dirty Work on his solo album.

There used to be a store called Maximum Compact that I bought cd's at back then.  It had a selection only beat out by My Generation, but when it came to Rock, they were the same.  I went in the day this album came out and bought it, and the distro guy had just walked out the door after dropping off a big stack of Keith Richards promo posters for this.  I managed to get one when I bought the album, and the owner said he was gonna give them away to anyone that bought the album until the guy came back and picked them up. It's really cool, and I still have it.  I took it home and made a cassette of it on my first listen to take into work that night.  I loved it.  I mean, I really loved it - like a Stones album kind of love.

Keith's backing band was the cream of the crop of American studio guys.  Steve Jordan helped write the songs, and Waddy Wachtel picked up all the right parts when Keith tries to play with no hands.  These guys sounded like they recorded the record live, and they sounded like they'd done this together forever.  The music has Keith's timeless style, in that it sounds like it could have been written and recorded today, or forty years ago.  The songs are among Keith's best of his later career and he sings much better than I think people expected.  The song that was supposedly a slap to Mick's face is You Don't Move Me, and if it is, it's not terribly cruel, it's more like he's disappointed in his friend (I mean, Mick foisted Primitive Cool on the world, so Keith could have been a real dick).  The rest of it is really just a bunch of loose, fun Keefchords with lyrics about girls and relationships for the most part.  I Could Have Stood You Up certainly doesn't break any new ground, but in 1988 no one could pull off a 50's rocker like Keith.

I suppose one of the only things I don't like about this is that Mick might have been able to really come up with some magic vocals on a few of these songs, like Take it So Hard, which coulda been a contender in the Stones' canon, and it's great here, but maybe with The Stones' touch it would have been even more.  Then again, without The Stones being in the state of disarray they were in, maybe these songs never would have happened.  The album ends really nicely, with a terrific ballad, Locked Away, which seems to be the kind of song Keith seems suited to sing in his dotage.  But after the mellowness of that song fades, the guitar rumbles, the snare drum strainer shakes under the power and then the drums and bass kick in on It Means a Lot and Keith leaves with a forceful statement.

It Means a Lot is one of those Keith songs that begs to be cranked up, pump your fist to and just get your ass rockin'.  Did I say Locked Away sounded like a good way for Keith to spend his dotage?  Well, it's pretty apparent he's nowhere near that on this album.  In fact, he's rocking as hard as ever, with a monster, big, fat riff that when Waddy Wachtel got to play it washed away all his memories of getting a softie on for Linda Ronstadt (who this blog loves, by the way), Stevie Nicks and James Taylor.  Here, the whole band just gets to rip it up on a loose, riff based groove that just kills it.

So if I'm talking about this cd, what's the Audiophile Alert for?  You've got to hear this on vinyl.  You can hear the snare drum strainer vibrating when the drums aren't being played, you can really close your eyes and "see" the soundstage in a way that just doesn't happen on the cd.  Songs like Struggle and Whip it Up just jump off the record and it's really something.  I talked to someone about a year or two after I had owned this on cd, and they were telling me it was one of the records they were taking with them to audition a new pair of speakers with.  I told them they could borrow my cd, and they said, "I've got the cd, but the record is a big improvement."  I was kind of a slow convert to the cd anyway, but I'm no Luddite and I want to have the best sound for my favorite guitar player ever, so I started scouring the bins.  It took a long time, but I found one that looked like it had been opened and played maybe once.  It was probably in the 90's by the time I found it.

Had I found this in 1988, I may have almost skipped the entire cd era.  Yeah, it's THAT GOOD.  The wax is flat and super quiet and the soundstage is spectacular.  Maybe it's because Keith is such a veteran of the analog days, and maybe it's because the vinyl companies were trying to come up with what they may have perceived as one of the last of an era, and they made sure to do everything right.  Whatever it was, if you find a nice copy of this on vinyl, I wholeheartedly recommend grabbing it.  The music is great and the sound is spectacular!