Greatest Live Albums, as selected by The Sound and the Fury

Just this morning I read yet another article going on about the greatest or most essential live albums.

This list again got me thinking about my favourite live albums. As is usually my taste, most of what critics say are the greatest albums of all time are not ones that I particularly rate. The Allman Brothers' "Live at the Fillmore East" is always touted as a classic, but I find it overlong and bloated. Ditto "Kiss Alive!". I love Kiss, but the poor recording quality and thin production always puts me off.

Putting on my thinking cap, I've come up with six live albums that, in my view, should be regarded as must have albums but generally don't rate a mention.


Pacifier Live

The only double live album from New Zealand-via-Melbourne hard rock band Shihad (aka Pacifier, post 9/11). This is an album that runs through key album tracks and radio hits with fierce-some power panache, and the pace rarely drops across the entire two LPs. The live version of "My Mind's Sedate" is worth the price of the album alone. Also issued on double vinyl in a limited run of 500 with an amazing looking gatefold sleeve.




Bruce Springsteen - Live 1975/85

Bruce is renowned for his epic live shows, sometimes lasting up to four hours in duration. About the only way to emulate that on a record is to release a multi-disc boxed set. While pretty much every record on this list is at least two discs long (on vinyl at least), "Live 1975-85" is a whopping five LPs long (three CDs and three cassettes back in the day) and over three and a half hours long. It includes songs that he never released on a record himself, as well as a few covers of other people's songs, band versions of tracks from his solo album "Nebraska" and a stunning piano-led version of "Thunder Road" that is one of the greatest things he ever committed to vinyl. Absolutely Essential.




Wings - Wings Over America

In 1976 Paul McCartney and his first post-Beatles band Wings traipsed across the States on an epic tour that broke records for ticket sales. It was years before he toured so widely again. This album is a beautifully recorded triple vinyl souvenir of that tour with any highlights including the opening medley, a gorgeous version of Paul Simon's "Richard Cory", and great song previously unreleased called "Soily".




The Tea Party - Live in Australia

The Tea Party are an amazing live band, and one that care deeply for their fans, by travelling off the beaten track to play small shows in regional clubs and pubs as well as larger venues in capital cities. A Canadian band, they combine middle eastern influences with a few sub-continental influences, with a hard rock punch. A live CD is never going to replicate the experience perfectly, but this is as close as we'll ever get. The music is superb and well worth a listen. This crowd-funded album was also pressed in a limited edition on double vinyl.




Paco de Lucia, John McLaughlin and Al DiMiola - Friday Night In San Francisco

Jazz fans are spoilt for choice when it comes to great live albums, so choosing one was a hard choice. This one is a guitar players' dream come true. Flamenco master Paco De Lucia meets fusion greats John McLaughlin and Al DiMiola for a fun album full of tight playing and camaraderie. At only five tracks long and just over 40 minutes, it was not originally issued as a double vinyl in 1981. It has recently been reissued on a double audiophile-grade vinyl LP cut at 45 RPM.




Ramones - It's Alive!

Take it Dee Dee...
1! 2! 3! 4!
...so goes pretty much every song on this record - all 28 of 'em. They all rip through in under an hour (54 minutes to be precise. Do the math - it's less than 2 minutes per song on average). It's a full-throttle rip through the highlights of the first four Ramones albums. When taken in one sitting it is utterly exhausting listening, but it's definitely worthwhile.



So what are your favourites? Let us know in the comments below. Cheers.

Bruce and the Saints

It's almost common knowledge now, but as usual I'm a little slow on the uptake.

However, Bruce Springsteen is including a cover of "Just Like Fire Would", a classic by Brisbane punks The Saints on his new album, which is released in January next year.

The Saints really have battled to be respected by the music industry for years, despite the initial flourish of success in the late 70s in England. To get the nod from a musician the likes of Bruce Springsteen is an awesome achievement, but it's been too long coming, in my view.

The band had to leave Australia to even get any kind of exposure in the first place. Brisbane in 1976 was so uber-conservative that anyone playing music like theirs would be harassed by the police. Johnny Rotten may have described the British Monarchy as "the fascist regime" but that was poetic license. Sir Joh's 1970s Brisbane was two steps away from the real thing.

Here is the original of "Just Like Fire Would", for your listening pleasure.

Enjoy!

Spin The Black Circle #1: Ross Clelland

"Spin The Black Circle" is a new column where I ask well known people of note to select the soundtrack of their lives.

My inaugural guest is music writer Mr Ross Clelland. Ross has spent the better part of the last three decades writing for Juke magazine, Rolling Stone, Sydney street press Drum Media and TheMusic.com.au. He was also the editor of Smash Hits magazine for a time, as well as a music critic for the Sunday Telegraph in the 1980s. His long-running Singles review column in Drum Media has always been riveting reading: his reviews ranging from the glowing through to vitriolic, but, in the case of the latter, only when absolutely necessary of course! He's been a music fan for years and his passion for music is evident in his writing.

During my recent chat with Ross, I asked him to pick 10 songs that he'd would absolutely had to have on an iPod when stuck in outer space somewhere. These are his choices:

1. Bruce Springsteen, Thunder Road

Ross: "[I] Must have been about 13 when i first heard this. So, it was exactly the right time to hear something which is still a just about perfect distillation of what a rock and roll song should be - escape, cars, the girl, an army of guitars. Just saw him 20-something years after first seeing him a few months ago, and it can still make grown men weep. Me being one of them."



2. You Am I, If We Can't Get It Together

Ross: "[I] Just did a group interview with them as they've got these Hifi Way/Hourly Daily recital shows coming up. Still just love them. All my critical faculties turn to shit when i see them. Just become fanboy. They make me happy, make me sad, make me dance like a mad thing. This song isn't one of the hits, but is Rogers just telling a complete Inner-West domestic story in three minutes something. Breaks your heart, coz you know these people."



3. Wilco, I'm The Man That Loves You

Ross: "I've just watched this band become (musical unit-wise) probably the best in the world over the course of this century. This song was on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, where they first became something more than a great alt.country band, but i'd probably take the version from Kick Television, as that's the lineup now - Nels Cline! I'm not a guitar hero geek, but that man is special."



4. The Saints, Ghost Ships

Ross: "I hate the whole Bailey v Kuepper non argument. You are allowed to love them both. This was Bailey at about 26-27 writing about getting older, and it actually resonates more the years that pass. Extraordinary thing. Certainly not punk, brass arrangement and classic song construction. Its weary, and alive all at once. its an anthem, it's a hymn."



5. Died Pretty, Everybody Moves

Ross: "On their night, I would have them against any band in the world. They could be phenomenal. And they could be shit. I called them the missing link between Radio Birdman and REM somewhere, and I'll stand by that. Again, its in the mix of the music - Brett Myers' spiraling guitar, John Hoey's keyboards, and Ron Peno's keening voice and words. Don't think they ever got it absolutely right on any record, but this was close."



6. The Triffids, Trick Of The Light.

Ross: "We had a game at the Drum one day working out what band you would be. I probably *wanted*to be Crowded House - all perfectly emotional and constructed, but am more likely The Triffids - with all those feelings, and sometimes over-reaching just a bit, but just being so sincere in the effort. They could be beautiful, like here. and 'You remind me very much, of someone that I used to know/we used to take turns at crying all night/but oh that was so long ago' absolutely speaks to me. Magnificent thing."



7. Hoodoo Gurus, 1000 Miles Away

Ross: "Faulkner is probably the most underrated singer and songwriter in the country. This a is a glory. And what a rock and roll band - Brad Shepherd's just a great player, and Mark Kingsmill still a world class drummer. And they can wind it down like on this, and be subtle and lovely as well being able to crank it up. You're just in the airport lounge with him on this, and wanting to be somewhere else."



8. The National, Afraid Of Everyone

Ross: "I got on the bandwagon late for them. But the atmospheres they build they've become one of my favourite things of the last couple of years. This one, with its wheezing opening and the quiet desperation, they somehow have bits of Springsteen, Joy Division, and other things in them. Live, they were like a religious experience while looking like office workers having too many scotches after business hours."



9. The Drones, Luck In Odd Numbers

Ross: "Absolutely Australian, sometimes oppressively so. Liddiard's voice is rusty corrugated iron. But the words, the stories. So dense, so much detail. He'd be a 19th century ballad poet if he didn't have such a grindingly good electric band with him. I particularly love this one, there's obscure kelly gang references, opium, and such word pictures like 'mineshafts lit like synagogues'. Anotehr one that just carries you somewhere else."



10. Crowded House, Fall At Your Feet

Ross: "[I could have picked] any one of a number of Crowded House tunes - Yeah, its a cheat, but Finn just writes the most extraordinary songs. I could have picked from Distant Sun, World Where You Live, Into Temptation, because they're all the wondrously put together things, both music and words. They're the songs they'll be playing in 50 years as showing the way pop songs should be made."



My thanks and gratitude go out to Ross for his contributions to this post. Check out his work in Drum Media magazine in Sydney and online at TheMusic.com.au

March 2013 Playlist

It's that time again, where The Sound and the Fury Podcast presents the monthly playlist.

This month we have a selection from all the albums we've listened to privately, as well as selections from the albums and artists we have featured here on the blog.

What you can expect to find on here includes:

• New tracks from Billy Bragg, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, Iron Reagan, Melbourne Ska Orchestra, Nick Moran, Walk off The Earth, Vance Joy and Nightmare Air
• Classics from Van Halen, White Stripes, Young Rascals, The Who, The Stone Roses, Split Enz, Pulp, Promises and Motorhead
• Great Aussie tunes from Neon, Something for Kate, Chad Morgan, Paul Kelly, The Porkers, Powderfinger, Sticky Fingers, Effigy, Rogerthat, and Tamam Shud
• A new track from Dave Grohl's Sound City project featuring Australian ex-pat Rick Springfield
• Avant Garde weirdness from Painkiller, Michael Finnissy, Marco Capelli, and Apocalyptica

and heaps more.

Put it on random, turn it up and ENJOY!

Remake/Remodel #1: Manfred Mann does Springsteen

This is the first of a new ongoing series of posts about covers - remakes, or remodels of songs first written and/or performed by other artists.

First off the bat is South-African born keyboard player Manfred Mann.

Manfred Mann started making a name for himself in the London Jazz scene in the early 1960s, but he formed a pop group and was swept up in the whole British Invasion of the 1960s.

That was all good except, as a jazz performer, he was more used to improvising, or spontaneously creating his music, not actually consciously composing it. The Beatles changed the game and wrote their own hits. Other groups were soon expected to do the same.

Manfred's band did a lot of covers. They were probably most famous for doing Bob Dylan covers, and over the last 50 years of music recordings, he's recorded stacks of Dylan songs. Indeed, Mr Dylan himself has said (in the 1960s sometime) that of all the bands that have recorded his songs, he likes Manfred Mann's the best.

The original pop band went through two incarnations before folding in late 1968. He then formed an avant garde jazz rock band called Manfred Mann Chapter Three for two low selling LPs of original material, before reincarnating once again in a more streamlined Jazz/Progressive Rock quartet called Manfred Mann's Earth Band in 1971. Earth Band is arguably Manfred's most successful incarnation and musically the most satisfying, in my view. They again recorded many Dylan tunes, scattered throughout their voluminous discography.

However, in 1976 they raised the ire of Springsteen fans when they had a hit with "Blinded By The Light". Bruce Springsteen had had a major hit the year before with "Born To Run", but there were a number of fans who were there from the get-go, with some treasuring the first Springsteen album with almost God-like renown. Those who love the "Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J." album hated Earth Band's cover with a passion.

It would probably disturb them to know that the Earth Band actually recorded three of the nine tracks on Bruce's debut. Only "Blinded By The Light" was a hit, and it was a radical recasting of the original to the point where the two versions hardly resemble each other.

The other tracks they attempted were "Spirits in the Night", which they did twice with two different vocalists (the first version with Mick Rogers singing was better) and "For You". The two versions of "Spirits" are identical except for the vocal track and they are very similar to the original. However, it was more rhythmically regimented and lacked the boozy swing of the original.

"For You", on the other hand, slows down the tempo and tightens the arrangement significantly, making more powerful and forceful than the original. Bruce's version, to my ears, sounds like a band playing too fast for its own abilities and that they are falling over themselves trying to keep up. Earth Band's version focuses on the power of the lyric and backs it up with a crunching rhythm that is goose-bump-inducing.

See for yourself and tell me which one you prefer. Here below is the original of "For You" by Bruce Springsteen, and the Earth Band remake.

For me, as much as I liked the original, the remake is my favourite.

Who the hell is Mary?

So just who is this "Mary" person who Bruce Springsteen is always singing about?

One thing that has always fascinated me about Bruce Springsteen, more than music, was his fascination with this mystery girl. There's always something quite interesting about the stories he weaves and the emotions he conjures up in his music.

It's not like he doesn't sing about other girls. After all there's Sandy, Candy, Rosalita, Linda, Crazy Janey, Cynthia, Gloria, Maria and Sherry among others.

Some years ago, an uncle of mine was raving about Bruce and he mentioned Bruce's fixation with a girl named "Mary". For some reason, that conversation has stayed with me and I keep hearing this "Mary" character mentioned more and more when I listen to Bruce's work.

So who is she? In certain songs, such as "Jesus Was An Only Son", "Terry's Song", and "Linda, Let Me Be The One" the name "Mary" is used as a religious image, that of St Mary, mother of Jesus. However the same reasoning cannot be applied to a song like "Thunder Road", surely!

In various interviews, Mary has been labelled a traditional rock and roll name and others don't seem to think the reference is anything too big a deal.

Given the fact that the name turns up as the protagonists girlfriend in a number of songs, from "Thunder Road" to "The River" to "The Rising" it makes me think there is more to it than meets the eye.

I think that maybe "Mary" isn't a real person at all. I think she is a character sketch, a fictitious entity, a muse. An intangible, non-existent woman for the purposes of fictitious writings. She would most likely be a composite character, someone who's experiences and behaviours and other details would be borrowed from real people and ascribed to this fictitious entity for the purposes of the song. Plus the fact that the name is easy to say - it just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? Considering it turns up quite a lot in his work, I think the topic is worth more than an inconspicuous footnote in Bruce's biography...

Indeed, the man himself has been quoted, from VH1 Storytellers no less, as saying something to the effect of "Mary can be many people. A mother Mary, Jesus' Mary, a fictional Mary... pretty much... whomever you want her to be."

Here is a celebration of Springsteen's "Mary" below.

Includes:

"Mary's Place"

"Thunder Road"

"Mary, Queen of Arkansas"

"The Rising"

"The River"

"Gypsy Biker"

"Bring On The Night"

"Car Wash"

Enjoy!

Oh, and R.I.P Mr Clarence Clemons.