AMM 2021 Feature Album Day 4

 

Kahvas Jute were a heavy and loud blues based rock band, who made this one incredible album and then kinda went nowhere. The album is now highly collectable, and I wish I owned it. It was released in early 1971 on Infinity Records through Festival, and never scored a repress, so originals are scarce. It sounds incredible and the remaster on Aztec circa 2006 sounds brilliant. Bassist Bobby Daisley has a field day here, and so does teenage guitarist Tim Gaze. Gaze went on to re-join Tamam Shud after this album (he was in the Shud before he split to form Kahvas Jute) and Daisley went to England and played in Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne in the 80s, among many others since. 

AMM 2021 Feature Album, Day 3

 Courtney Barnett is an incredible and unique songwriter from Melbourne, Australia. She has a unique style of singing, almost half sung and half spoken, but she tells a great story and plays a mean guitar. This live set for MTV Unplugged (who knew that was still a thing, huh?) is relaxed and gives her space to jam and to get some friends in the process. One of whom is Paul Kelly....

AMM 2021 Feature Album Day 2:

 

Richard Clapton is a legend. As a singer songwriter he's as good, if not better than Jackson Browne, and this album, his fourth, is one of his very best. Tracks like "Deep Water", "Goodbye Tiger" and "Down In The Lucky Country" are things of beauty. Also features the guitar stylings of Kirk Lorange (no apostrophe!) 

Australian Music Month (AMM) Feature Album Day 1

 

Skulker were an all-female, four piece Alt.rock band from Sydney. This is their debut album and its exuberance is infectious. 

The title of the album is so named because they were kicked out of a potentially lucrative spot on the entertainment lineup of Club Med in Tahiti for being....

They at least got their vengeance by cheekily naming their debut after such a mortifying incident. 

Australian Music Month (AMM) Feature Album Day 0

 

Every year in November the ABC hosts Australian Music Month, and every year in November I listen to an Australia album every day, and share the picture on our socials. 

Day 0: Kings of the Sun - Full Frontal Attack

Why Day 0? Well I made my career in the IT industry, and IT personnel know that numbers in computing start at zero, and so does our annual countdown.

Kings of the Sun were a band that were in a similar league to the hair metal bands of the LA strip in the 80s, but they were much more streetwise, and nowhere near as gratuitously ridiculous and grandiose as Motley Crue, RATT or Poison. Their first album was produced in America by Eddie Kramer, famous for working with Led Zeppelin among other artists. It had a big polished sound, but none of their singles charted higher than #47 in Australia and their albums sold well, but not well enough to be remembered. 

Full Frontal Attack was produced by William Wittman and did poorly in the marketplace, despite some provocative press advertising. 

As a record, it still stands up, but I still reach for their first album as a preference. This one has a few flat spots in terms of songs, but tracks like "Drop The Gun" are indispensable. 

The Beatles reissue and remix "Let It Be"

For the last few years, The Beatles have been reissuing remixed versions of their most treasured albums: Sgt Pepper, The White Album, Abbey Road, and my original thought has been "why?" I love those albums, but really, the only reason I can think of for remixing them is to do away with the dodgy 60s sounding stereo mixes. The engineers of the time didn't spend too much time on them (they spent all their energies perfecting the mono mix), so the panning of instruments sounds a bit odd to modern ears.  

And so it comes around to Let It Be in 2021. It too received the remix treatment, and again, why? Paul McCartney has already issued "Let It Be: Naked" in 2003. So let's dig into the what's here and why. 

Let It Be was a contentious project from the get go. Morale in the band was at an all time low, and trying to flesh out an idea for a project to re-ignite enthusiasm was difficult. The idea was to work up new material and play live again, but they owed their film company another picture - Yellow Submarine still was a way off yet. 

The Apple Corps project was a way to keep ownership of more of their money and intellectual property, so they formed a label and a publishing company, a recording studio, an electronics R&D centre, and a fashion boutique. Largely, it was a disaster. The Apple Boutique was a haven for shoplifters and lost money hand over foot, Magic Alex, in charge of electronic R&D was a shyster who squandered loads of cash and achieved nothing, and the record label was short lived and only moderately successful. It all went downhill from there. 

Get Back, as the project was originally coined, was designed as a circuit breaker, to get back to basics and work together as a band creating music, as opposed to in isolation as it was for most of the White Album. They also decided to film the creative process, but more on that later. 

Over the course of January 1969 they set about working up material, and also loosely jamming on old songs and vintage favourites. The filming took place on a sound stage at a film studio, but that was fraught with tension too. The live concert idea went through many iterations and ideas and they ended up just jamming on the roof of their offices in Saville Row, London. 

The project was shelved ultimately after no one could agree on a final product. A single was released from the project, "Get Back"/"Don't Bring Me Down" but nothing else surfaced. 

Glyn Johns, an engineer who would soon go on to engineer some of The Who's major triumphs, like "Who's Next" had a crack at making an album of the tapes, but the Beatles shelved his version. The only part that saw the light of day from Johns' mixes was the "Get Back" single. The tapes were handed over to Phil Spector, for him to tamper with, and provide the album we've all loved since 1970. 

Spector's production was notorious, because he added massed choirs, reverb and overblown orchestrations to the mix and to some listeners (and especially Paul McCartney), it killed the music with kindness. That's why Paul remixed and reissued Let It Be in the "Naked" format in 2003 - the way he wanted it to sound. 

This new boxed set was particularly anticipated by me, as I do love the music on this album, but as there has already been a revisionist version previously issued, plus outtakes on the Beatles Anthology and a number of bootlegs of this material, what is there that could be exhumed from the vaults that would be interesting?

As it turns out, this box included the official release of the Glyn Johns mix, although that has been doing the rounds on the internet as a bootleg for years now. The rest of the alternate takes are works in progress, that are reasonably sloppy and don't add much to the picture of the album's creation. There are some demos of songs that would end up on post Beatles solo albums, like Teddy Boy and Gimme Some Truth, and some rehearsals for songs that ended up on Abbey Road, however, a lot of that stuff was also on Anthology 3. 

The real revelations are the jams with Billy Preston, like "Without a Song", and a band rehearsal of "All Things Must Pass" that was rejected as a Beatles song (which is unthinkable knowing what we know now!).

The real money, in my view, is the fact that director Peter Jackson has been through the 50 hours of video footage and is creating a 6-hour documentary from the remaining footage that wasn't issued in the original 1970 film. There promises to be some seriously fascinating things uncovered in that, and for that I cannot wait. 

Review: The Cast, by Michael Waugh

Michael Waugh - “The Cast”  

Michael Waugh has released his new record entitled “The Cast”. I’ve reviewed his previous albums before, and I've said in the past his albums are pretty much a trademark of quality. They’re all beautifully produced and accompanied by Shane Nicholson. The songs are interesting and heart-wrenching. This fourth album is no different. 

This isn’t trying to sound dismissive. Quite the opposite, in fact. However, it would make for a boring review if that was all you could say about the record. The fact is, with each new release, Michael is in fact becoming braver as a storyteller. Each subsequent album has taken bigger and bolder steps in directions other country performers, nay ANY modern performers, fear to tread. 

 What makes “The Cast” so compelling is that this is, quite simply, “dangerous” music. Dangerous to every bloke, simply because it dares to challenge and question the very core of masculinity we all grew up with. The core beliefs that boys from the 1980s and older all carry with them (I know, because I’m one of them). It dares to point out that all the crap we grew up believing we had to be, in order to be a “real man” is exactly that - crap. These are songs that dare to shoot holes in the facade that we’re all guilty of wearing. 

 And what’s more, songs like “He Taught Me” and “The Cast” also are textbook examples of something that us “real men” are terrified of: being vulnerable. Real men can’t be vulnerable. Boys don’t cry, or some shit. Being vulnerable is when the hunter becomes the hunted. It’s where you become less than you hold yourself to be. 

Michael Waugh’s music reminds me that this model of masculinity needs to change - for the good of men everywhere, our partners, our kids, and for society at large. These songs remind me that I have feelings too - as much as I don’t want to admit that I do. And bloody hell, they don't half hit me deeply. 

Speaking of dangerous, the album opener “Swollen” dares to call us fellas all out for being - complacent at best, ignorant at worst, about our battles with food, the struggle to stay healthy as we age, the battle to lose weight and stupid backhanded jokes we throw at each other when we plump up a bit. “You look like you’ve been in a good paddock, mate”. 

While we’re at it, “Dark” looks at alcohol-fueled blokes and the danger they can be for unsuspecting women on a night out. A big topic to be discussed, and one we try hard to avoid, and one we cannot escape now. 

During the writing and recording process of this album, two of Michael’s biggest influences - his mum and dad - both passed away. There are beautiful tributes to them in the form of “He Taught Me” and “Hold On To The Ones You Love”. “Too Many Drawers”, in honour of his late mother, is made all the more poignant because it features Felicity Urquhart, herself a legend in Australian Country circles, and an artist that was a favourite of Michael’s mum. 

This is an album of music with its heart on its sleeve, and blood and guts on its boots. It’s a rare artist who finds new ways to move me to tears with each new album. It’s almost as if he has looked into my soul at my deepest and darkest memories and fears, grabbed half a dozen of them and turned them into songs powerful enough to tear down the rugged macho shell I’ve spent my entire life building around myself. Come album number 5 in a couple of years time, no doubt he’ll do it all again. But for now, “The Cast” has given me cause to stop, pause and reflect on who I am and what needs to change. If a few more of us can do that as a result of listening to this album, Michael will have changed the world. If only a little bit.