100 LPs Shortlist #30: Guns n' Roses - "Use Your Illusion 1 & 2"

...continued from previous:

In September 1991 the new Gunner's album was released.  In fact, it was not one album, but two.  A double album? Ahh, no.  Two separate albums.  Both of them titled Use Your Illusion. 1 and 2, for good measure.

Herein lies the issue.  These were apparently never designed to be a double album.  But, the band created so much music that it felt it had to be released.  To confuse the issue further, they were named the same, and had the same artwork on the cover, albeit colour shaded differently to highlight the difference.  Another spanner in the works came from the fact that, while on CD both albums were single discs, on vinyl (the format this writer purchased them on) they were both two vinyl records each!

Steven Thomas Erlwhine, in the AllMusic Guide writes (rather accurately in this writer's opinion):

"The "difficult second album" is one of the perennial rock & roll clichés, but few second albums ever were as difficult as Use Your Illusion. Not really conceived as a double album but impossible to separate as individual works, Use Your Illusion is a shining example of a suddenly successful band getting it all wrong and letting its ambitions run wild."

And here's the funny thing.  On the previous release, "G'n'R Lies", singer Axl Rose had made a notorious name for himself as a homophobic xenophobe on the scurrilous song "One in a Million".  And yet, his ambitions led him to think he could create music based on the grandeur of Queen or "Yellow Brick Road"-era Elton John.  While there are moments here where the band sound as raw and as dangerous as The Clash, then on the next song they churn out an epic not unlike Elton's "Madman Across The Water".  It was all conflicted, confused and contradictory.  Clearly the band threw everything they had at this project and emerged with one hell of a mess.

The three songs that most people had heard prior to the release of the albums were all on Use Your Illusion 11 , so although both records technically topped the charts simultaneously, II sold more initially, and therefore was printed as the chart topper for the week.  However Use Your Illusion 1 stayed on the charts much much longer.

To say that the band got their ambitions mixed up with their capabilities is an understatement.  However, this writer does not begrudge them of it.  They tried hard, and while parts of it are now quite embarrassing, there is a lot of value in here.  30 songs in over 150 minutes is a lot to digest in one sitting, and with no less than 6 tracks clocking in at over 7 minutes, it can feel like tough going.  But there's plenty of chunky guitar riffs, complex arrangements and, of course, great songs.  Let's pick the highlights:

If you want to bang your head and mosh, try "Right Next Door To Hell", "Perfect Crime", "Garden of Eden", "Don't Damn Me", "Shotgun Blues", "Pretty Tied Up", "Locomotive" and "You Could Be Mine"

If you want introspection, play "Estranged", "Yesterdays", "14 Years", "Dead Horse",

If you want dark and moody, you want "The Garden", "So Fine", "Bad Obsession", "Double Talking Jive"

If you want tearjerkers, "Don't Cry (Original), "November Rain", "Knocking on Heaven's Door".

If you want epic, take "Coma", and "Civil War" for a start.

Use Your Illusion 1 starts off formidably with a thumping rocker.  Indeed, the faster, heavier numbers are largely constrained to this album, with only two massive epics padding it out - the psychotic 10-minute "Coma" and the epic ballad "November Rain", which clocks out just shy of 9 minutes.  Slash is all over these two albums with his heavy crunching riffs and wild solos, but his flamenco outro on "Double Talkin' Jive" rates a special mention.

The band get's even grander and stranger on Use Your Illusion II.  They overextends themselves on "Breakdown" - it's a muddy concept for a song that makes little sense and drags on for a full 7 minutes.  Dylan's once subtle and humble meeting with the grim reaper "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" becomes a terrace chant (and not for the better, either).  "Get In The Ring" is inexcusable, naming, shaming and threatening journalists because they wrote bad reviews or tabloid stories about the band.  "Civil War" is confused - the song is about war in general, not a civil war as such.  "Don't Cry" is a gorgeous song, in it's original form.  Maybe they were running out of material by the end of side 4 of Use Your Illusion II , because they included another version of the song with alternate lyrics - they really didn't need to.

To this day, this writer still doesn't know what the hell "My World" is all about.  It feels like a concrete example of just how far Axl has disappeared up his own arsehole.  Thank goodness it only lasts for 80 seconds.

The band milked this album for all it was worth, and then some.  They toured behind it for almost two years, released and re-released singles from it until 1994 - all 10 of them.  I still rate both these albums quite highly and I still enjoy them, but they are symptomatic of the excess of the era.  If you really need a reason as to why we needed the Grunge explosion of 1992, look no further than Use Your Illusion.

Enjoy.

Guns 'n' Roses Use their Illusion Pt. 1

Guns 'n' Roses have never been a band to do things by halves...well, at least that's been their intention.  They always wanted to be bigger, better and badder than the rest, and for a period they'd achieved that.  When they released their first LP in 1987, "Appetite For Destruction", it sold slowly at first, and then it sold more than any other rock act well into 1988.  Then, they drank more, took more drugs and were more debauched than any other band around at the time.  Pretty soon they were every mother's worst nightmare.

The follow-up to that LP was barely an album.  "G'n'R Lies" was more like a double EP.  It was a reissue of their first (fake) live EP "Live @#$% Like a Suicide" with 4 bonus acoustic tracks.  This was designed as a stop-gap before the real new album was released.

It wasn't much of a stop-gap - the gap blew out to four years, and that was a ridiculous timeframe between albums in the 1990s.  That should have been enough to kill the momentum of their career, but a strange and curious phenomenon happened...at least in my sphere of influence.

Two opposing tribes - the Westies, who listened to hard rock and metal and wore jeans and flannel shirts, and the Weeds: the surfies who listened to Midnight Oil and INXS - started to associate more positively for a change.  Once, they'd beat the crap out of each other.  But soon, the weeds were listening to Metallica, Sepultura, Iron Maiden and, of course, Guns n' Roses.  They'd devoured all of the back catalogs of these bands, so when Metallica released their self-titled LP in 1991, it went straight to number one.  It was almost dead certain that this new Gunners record would do the same, in whatever shape it would take.

And no one really knew what to expect.  There were little bits of information being leaked to the press as to what was happening, but no release date.  There were stories of 12 minute ballads called "November Rain", experiments with Sitars and Banjos, 8-minute epic anti-war songs, as well as talk of a Bob Dylan cover version.  It was even suggested it may be a double album!

To add fuel to the fire, they released their version of Dylan's "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" in 1990, on the "Days of Thunder" soundtrack.  They issued another song, launched simultaneously with the film it was featured in: Terminator 2: Judgement Day.  The song was released as a single ahead of the album: "You Could Be Mine" backed with "Civil War", the aforementioned anti-war epic.

In September 1991, the new Gunner's record finally landed...

...To be continued.

The Double Album

Are double, or multiple disc, albums a necessary artistic endeavour? Or an exercise in self indulgence?

We're not talking about compilation albums or live albums here. We're talking albums of all new material from working musicians.

Some of popular music's most highly regarded albums were double albums in their original configurations: Bob Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde", The Clash's "London Calling", Frank Zappa's "Freak Out", Jimi Hendrix's "Electric Ladyland", The Beatles' "White Album" et al. But did they all really need to be doubles? Was every song that great that it needed to be released then and there?

Sure, some albums could really use some judicious editing. I've always felt that Dylan's "Blonde on Blonde" had at least three songs that should have been cut in half. Or if not, side 4 was too short at only one song, 11 minutes long. They could have added some recent non-LP singles to fill up the rest...

Some of these albums achieve greatness through their epic sprawl. The Beatles' 1968 self titled album (otherwise known as "The White Album") probably didn't need to be a double. George Martin begged them to drop some songs from the album. The band were at each other's throats in disagreement during recording. and about the only thing they agreed on was not to edit the album.

Jimi Hendrix's 1968 epic "Electric Ladyland" was the result was an ever creative, ever restless soul who was overflowing with new music. Cream's "Wheels of Fire" LP was also released the same year. It was half studio album, half live album. This would have been great had the live tracks not been so long and tedious.

George Harrison's first post-Beatles solo album was a triple LP entitled "All Things Must Pass" and it was a clearing house full of great songs that he didn't get to record in his day job. There were four sides of great songs but then he goes and spoils it with two further sides of pointless instrumental blues jams. This is one example where a triple album would make a great double.

The Clash were the first punk band to try their hand at the double album with "London Calling". Over the course of 19 songs, not all of them are great, but it's better than their next effort, the triple album "Sandinista!". Only around half the album is worth keeping. It makes up a decent extended length single or even double LP if one was to edit it. Indeed, it was released as a double LP in some locations, but I feel that was because of the manufacturing costs of pressing 3 LPs, and the fact that CBS would have had to have cut their profit on the record in order to release it at a price that people could actually afford.

This was also a problem with Chicago, a larger than life jazz rock band who liked long jams and complex extended suites on their LPs (before they sold out and became a dodgy AM radio pop band). Their first three albums were both doubles, and the band agreed to a royalty cut in order to avoid editing them down to single LPs.

Due to the limitations of the original LP format, multiple discs were necessary as the most you could get on an LP was around 45 minutes. If you wanted more, you could squeeze it out to around 53 minutes, or you could make a double LP. This practice was quite common in Classical and Jazz circles, but then fans of this music were often older and more affluent people who could afford the extra money for the extra packaging. However, it was less common in rock circles as record labels though that Rock was only purchased in small quantities on LP and large volumes on singles.

In the age of the CD, it made it easier to make longer albums without having to include a second CD. The original length for a CD was 74 minutes, although this has been revised and now it is 79:57. This meant that many older double albums could now comfortably fit on one CD (although some were still placed on two CDs for the sake of continuity if they are too long, or at least for the purpose of raking in extra cash). This also meant that many bands took to the longer running time by inflating their albums, in some cases unnecessarily.

The Red Hot Chili Peppers among the first to start the trend in 1991 with "Blood Sugar Sex Magik", a 73-minute album on 1 CD and 2 LPs. Each subsequent LP has been a single CD of no less than 55 minutes, but a double LP in each case. Their 2006 LP "Stadium Arcadium" was a 2CD/4LP set, clocking in at 28 tracks. But it could have easily been an excellent 12 or 13 song single LP with some editing...

It's interesting that certain record labels have made double vinyl LPs out of albums that could have been singles: The first two Oasis LPs were pressed on double vinyl, despite the fact that the longest of them is only 52 minutes. Probably in the interests of preserving audio fidelity, they were pressed up in this fashion, and there was a bonus track on each thrown in for good measure.

The curious phenomenon within this is when a band releases two albums either simultaneously, or in quick succession, that were never intended to be a double/triple album, but are conceptually and graphically linked to each other. Metallica intended for "Load" and "Reload" to be a double album, but the two discs were released 12 months apart. Guns 'n' Roses' "Use Your Illusions I & II" were never intended to be a double album, but are so intertwined with their sound, style and artwork that it is impossible to evaluate (or even listen to) one without the other. Green Day's latest three volume work "Uno! Dos! Tre!" was never intended to be a triple album, but again, each album was released two months apart from each other with similar artwork linking them.

In most of these cases, it is my view that a lot of them could be edited to make them more succinct. Some of them achieve their greatness through their epic sprawl. Although it's hard to imagine The Who's "Quadrophenia" or "The Wall" by Pink Floyd as a single record.

Of course they all could be streamlined into single albums, but then that wouldn't be any fun now, would it? It's easy to go back and revise history, but then it's sometimes better to take the good with the bad. Sometimes ambition outweighs ability resulting in some spectacular disasters, but it's still fun to watch.

Further reading:

"The Indulgent Theoretical Double-album-as-single Fantasy List" by Bonzoboots on Rateyourmusic.com

"The Double Album Diet Plan" by user:Finulanu on Rateyourmusic.com

100 LPs Shortlist #29b: Easy Star All-Stars "Sgt Pepper..."

What would you think if Sgt Pepper went Dub Reggae?

Think about that for a moment. The Beatles a la reggae. In theory, that should be dreadful (no pun intended). In the hands of the Easy Star All-stars, it's anything but.

Easy Star All-Stars had previously made a name for themselves with other Dub Reggae interpretations of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" and Radiohead's "Ok Computer". "Dark Side of the Moon" Easy-Star style was done brilliantly. I was less enamoured with "Radiodread", their interpretation of "Ok Computer", and I held some trepidation as they released a version of "Sgt Pepper". I shouldn't have worried - they treat the music with the respect it deserves and bring out the flavour and groove of reggae at the same time. The whole experience for some reason, feels so natural...

...well, for me at least. In some respects, this album is the culmination of something I had always wanted to do. You see, around the time I was 16, the reggae bug bit. Like the Funk bug that caught me at age 18, it bit hard. For a few months, everything I played on my guitar had that "skank" rhythm to it. Whether it was the hymns in music class at school, or Beatles songs, I played them all with that staccato, clipped, choppy, on-the-off-beat rhythm. I had even worked out my own reggae arrangements of "Day Tripper" and "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band". I played them once for my then-girlfriend's father (the Kinks fan in 100 LPs #24) - he thought I was being sacriligious.

However, Easy Star have worked out something that I felt all along - that not only are the rhythms of reggae incredibly infectious, and also that The Beatles' songs were so well written that you can apply a reggae arrangment, or almost any arrangement, to them and they still sound good. Master songwriters can only achieve that.

So here for your listening pleasure is Easy Star All-stars doing the complete album of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, eloquently renamed "Easy Star's Lonely Hearts Dub Band":

Enjoy!

Sunday Sessions: Outline and Concrete Blonde

Thanks to my old mate Kirsty at My Home Truths I've decided to do the Sunday Sessions linkup. I mean, why not? It could be fun!

Outline - "The Cicada that ate Five Dock"

This is a hilarious, although fictional, story about a lazy Sunday in the inner west suburbs of Sydney, but the serenity is broken when, quite simply, all hell breaks loose.

This one is quite the rarity. Outline released this as a single in 1981 and then one LP called "Maybe It's A Game" shortly after. They were a kind of Frank Zappa and the Mothers-esque band with a similar warped sense of humour. Copies of Outline's original records just do not turn up for sale anywhere, and nor are there videos common on the web. Enjoy this one, have a laugh, and hope for a reissue of their back catalogue.



Concrete Blonde - "Heal it up"

I'm not old enough to be a "senior", but I had a seniors moment of sorts the other day when I thought of this song being a modest hit in 1993, and thus it's 10 years old this year. Then it dawned on me that it is actually 2013 now and therefore it's 20 years old. Where did the time go? Psychological evaluation must be waiting for me around the corner...

Anyway, Concrete Blonde were a three-piece with a sensational bass-playing lead singer named Johnette Napolitano. In this track she starts off singing in a really low register in the verses, before rising slightly in the pre-chorus and then erupts in a high pitched wail that is purely goose-bump inducing.

Be ready for your hair to stand on end, people. This is pure gold.



Enjoy, and I'll see you next time.

February 2013 Playlist

Well it's the start of another month and therefore the end of another one. That means it's time to share with you the latest Spotify playlist of our musical travels here at The Sound and the Fury Podcast Blog.

What can you expect this month? Well, about 12 hours of great music for a start. Including:

Tunes from new releases by Johnny Marr, Tomahawk, Arbouretum, Parquet Courts, The Delta Riggs and Local Natives
Tunes from The Troggs (Reg Presley), Mindy Mcready and Tony Sheridan in memorium
Classics from Donovan, Faces, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Muse, Prince, The Motels
A beautiful laid back jam from Buckethead and Travis Dickerson which has to be heard to be believed.

and heaps, heaps more.

Put it on random, crank it up and discover your new favourite song!

Enjoy.

Status Quid?

Probably one of the most annoying advertising campaigns in Australia recently was the Coles one, where they asked Status Quo to re-record "Down Down" to advertise their grocery price cuts. You know the one, with the giant red hands? And the guitars shaped like giant red hands?



Within no time at all it has seemingly annoyed everybody in earshot of it. The thing is, as great as the original version was, it still sounds like bloody Status Quo!

In Latin, status quo means "the current state of affairs". To upset the status quo means to change things. The band Status Quo have been mining that four-on-the-floor boogie (duh-na-DUH-NA-duh-na-DUH-NA) and the boogie shuffle (duh---na-na---na-nah---na-nah---na-nah) since 1970. It's almost become a cliche - the name of the band being apposite for the music they create, i.e. the bloody same, album after album. It's fair enough to say that "if it ain't broke, don't fix it". And let's face it - a hell of a lot of people like what they do. The period of the band's music from 1970 up until 1980 is heaps of fun, but really, how long can you recycle the same grooves for? A long time, apparently - almost half a century!

While this recent Coles campaign presents the band almost as a parody of themselves, the HeeBeeGeeBees absolutely nailed a parody of Quo in 1981 as "Status Quid".

Angus Deayton and a couple of Oxford University mates formed a parody band called the HeeBeeGeeBees, initially to parody the Bee Gees (which they did magnificently, by the way) but also they diversified and skewered their barbs into David Bowie (as David Bowwow), Bob Dylan (as Bob Vylan), Kenny Rodgers (as Kenny Rodgered), Prince (as Ponce), Human League (as Human Leak) and many more. Sometimes they miss the mark, but some are dead on, and they are hilarious. The back catalog of HeeBeeGeeBees can be found on Spotify.

To milk a bit of mirth from the once-mighty Status Quo, here's Status Quid, aka the HeeBeeGeeBees, live on the Don Lane show in Australia in 1981 doing "Boring Song".

Enjoy!