Rock The World - Various Artists

 

Provenance: Back when I were a lad and finding my feet musically, compilation albums proved a great gateway drug. I look down on them a little these days, and perhaps I should rethink; it is through a compilation album that I got hepped to my favourite band, Blue Oyster Cult. 

Now, Rock The World and I have a history going back many years. My mum used to work in a library, and as such would often bring home tapes and CDs that she thought my brother and I would be into. That way led me to becoming a fan, fairly idiosyncratically, of both ZZ Top's Recycler and Aerosmith's Nine Lives, neither of which would ever be hailed as tree toppers by those bands' fans.

Rock The World was one of these albums mum brought home to us, and we played the shit out of it. I think my brother even obtained a copy. However, like some kind of weird divorce, as we drifted off to university, first me and then my brother, our music collections had a parting of the ways. All of a sudden I was bereft of Van Halen, Ozzy Osbourne and Megadeth; he was left pining for Steve Vai and Motorhead, amongst others. Nonetheless, Rock The World went one way, I went another.

Fast forward to April 2020 and I was idly dicking about on Discogs looking for some eldritch NWOBHM release or another when from nowhere the thought popped into my head: Rock The World! And lo, there it was, with a British seller and a total price (including p&p) of £6.44. Automatic purchase. The transaction was conducted swiftly, buyer 'n' seller gave each other pleasant reviews, and then I waited.

And waited.

And waited.

Until, finally, I contacted the seller to suggest the CD was lost in the Bermuda Triangle of a Royal Mail sorting office. £6.44 duly refunded and I got on with life.

Then, last week, a padded envelope arrived. Not entirely unexpected as this coincided with my birthday, and friends often send me music as a gift. But - you've guessed it - inside was Rock The World a full eight months after I had ordered it. The address was one house number awry, and this was apparently enough to send it into limbo for two-thirds of a year. Still, I have it now, a little piece of my youth. Nice, eh?

Review: What is there to say? It's the kind of rock comp that contains 'Layla' by Derek and the Dominoes (sans Duane Allman outro), '(Don't Fear) The Reaper' by Blue Oyster Cult (retaining Buck Dharma's masterful solo) and other big beasts like 'Bat Out Of Hell', 'Smoke On The Water', 'Born To Be Wild', 'Boys Are Back In Town', 'Hold The Line'...you get the picture. Little you hadn't heard before, one would suspect.

Indeed, the listening experience is like a pleasant stroll through one of the calmer zones in Jurassic Park - imagine each of these songs as peaceful sauropods lumbering around, any threat that their sheer size presents countermanded by their docility. Fuck, there's even a mimetic quality to 'Smoke On The Water', possessing as it does the exact rhythm, one suspects, of a charismatically large dinosaur ambling to a watering hole. 

In fact, this harmlessness is the common characteristic to all the cuts on Rock The World. There's no New Wave spikiness, nor thrashy bite to proceedings, and precious little mystery. Black Sabbath's hoary old workhorse 'Paranoid' is about as occult as things get (though that didn't stop us playing it at Band Bash - our version contained an ill-starred slide guitar solo, performed by yours truly). Saying that, there are a couple of curveballs herein - relatively speaking, of course.

For example, when I first encountered Python Lee Jackson's downbeat beauty 'In A Broken Dream' I was very impressed with how their lead singer could ape Rod Stewart so well (until I discovered it actually was Rod Stewart). Starship's 'Jane' is the only track with a cod reggae section, and Atomic Rooster's brassy 'Devil's Answer' would be partly responsible for my later purchase of their excellent Death Walks Behind You album. Amusingly, as there was about a zero percent chance of licencing a Led Zeppelin track, some jabronis called Black Velvet deliver an admittedly very credible 'Since I've Been Loving You' (were Kingdom Come not available?).

Ultimately, though, the value of Rock The World doesn't stem from the music it contains, though it's a bit of quaint knockabout fun in the age of streaming and shuffle. It doesn't even matter that it's dad rock incarnate, so much so that you can picture it in bootcuts, feigning expertise in single malts and hitting on your girlfriend. No, this album represents something greater - sitting on the battered sofa in my bedroom with my brother and our friends, going nuts at each other over a multiplayer cage match of WWF War Zone on the PS1. Memories of laughing uproariously, dropping the Stone Cold Stunner whilst 'Black Betty' blares away in the background - now, isn't that worth £6.44?

Aqualung - Jethro Tull

Provenance: I guess at one time I decided that should get into Jethro Tull. Anyway, I purchased this album before I went to university because it formed part of the meagre collection of burnt CD-Rs that accompanied me to halls of residence. I blasted the shit out of this thing during my first year.

Review: Some artists or albums are hardy perennials - they can be played almost any time of year and slot right in. For some reason, Jethro Tull are a seasonal band; I couldn't imagine spinning Heavy Horses or Songs From the Wood whilst the sun is shining. Very particularly, Aqualung is a winter album. Perhaps it's due to to the imagery of the title track, with its ice and 'December's foggy freeze'. It may be due to the seam of religion that runs throughout, which for some reason I've long associated with a dank coldness (the interiors of churches and cathedrals, perhaps?).

Or it might be that Aqualung goes well with the most deathly season because it sounds pretty goddamn deceased itself. I've got plenty of albums from eras where recording technology was still quite rudimentary, others whereby some creative studio trickery dates the music badly. I've even got a couple made by a sex offender in his basement. Whatever their flaws, none of them sound as dead as Aqualung. There are grime tracks recorded on mobile phones with more presence. The cardboard guitar in the video to Judas Priest's 'Breaking the Law' has better tonality than Martin Barre achieves. There are uncontacted tribes deep within the Amazon who have opinions about the production on Aqualung.

Let's be charitable. It was one of the first albums recorded at Island Record's Basing Street studios. Teething issues, an' all that. It's not as if any other album, being recorded at the exact same time at the exact same facility, sounds any good.

I've got more beef with Aqualung. About the only moment of human warmth and empathy on the entire collection comes early on, in the acoustic mid-section of 'Aqualung', where we are invited to feel sorry for the subject of the track, the titular tramp. For the rest of the album, Ian Anderson's lyrics are by turns arch and sneering, as if he's just that wee bit more clever than the listener. It's particularly insufferable on 'My God' and 'Hymn 43', which come across as 1971's equivalent of watching a YouTube atheist channel. (NB - please don't watch any atheist-themed YouTube content - it almost drove me, a staunch non-believer, to the seminary.)

Take, for example, Sparks - a band who are undoubtedly arch and oh-so-smart, but who wear their erudition lightly, and deploy a winking charm to make their references to Shakespeare, the Rockefellers and the human reproduction cycle slide down easily. Jethro Tull, alas, come across as dour as any carping Presbyter or dorm-room Maoist in their attempts to enlighten.

It's a shame, because putting aside the hectoring and shit production, Aqualung possesses the kernel of a prog classic. The electric guitar riff to 'Aqualung' is a blooter, and is rightly smashed out by greenhorns in guitar shops up and down the country. 'Cross-Eyed Mary' has some wonderfully angular guitar work, and is probably the leanest, dirtiest thing on the platter. 'Locomotive Breath' is another corker, an indomitable chugger that is nevertheless not as heavy as the version that plays in my head. It also sounds like a rubber band is part of the instrumentation. Ah, fuck it, 'Locomotive Breath' properly smokes.

Even 'Hymn 43' doesn't sound so bad, if you ignore the lyrics. In fact, it would have fit in very nicely on Atomic Rooster's Death Walks Behind You, an album that I like very much.  Pick of the bunch for me is 'Mother Goose', not only for its delightfully absurd lyrics, but because it best resembles the twisted folk that would appear on my favourite Tull joint, Songs From the Wood. Hey, maybe I'm being tough on Aqualung because it's not Songs From the Wood! Maybe!

Look, I can take the sermonising if the music sounded immaculate, and it doesn't. I still like this weird, somewhat cerebral little beast but it could certainly do with someone like Steve Wilson to give this a bit of remastering spit and polish. Oh, and I was wrong earlier on - contrary to my claims that Aqualung was altogether bloodless, 'Wond'ring Aloud' possesses a lot of heart. It's rather beautiful, in fact.

NB - my CD version of Aqualung contains a rather interesting interview with Ian Anderson about Aqualung. In the interests of fairness, it's not just me who thinks the album doesn't quite sound right; Anderson uses a portion of the conversation to bemoan the production, and the difficulties of getting decent performances on tape in the particular studio Jethro Tull were assigned.

Death Walks Behind You - Atomic Rooster

Provenance: I heard a version of 'The Devil's Answer' on some completely random rock compilation that also featured INXS and Hootie & the Blowfish. I liked it, so when I came across a CD version of this album that included two versions of 'The Devil's Answer' as bonus tracks (as far as I'm aware, it was only ever released as a single in the UK), I thought to myself, what the heck, let's have a bash at some of their other stuff. Also, you can't fault using a William Blake monotype as cover art.

Review: After the gossamer-light ululations of Kate Bush, we're back down on terra-very much-firma with the clunking fist of Atomic Rooster. The band look every bit as typical and anonymous as you expect them too - like three replacement members of Steppenwolf, or indeed, absolutely anyone from Cactus - and don't make any surprise moves on the musical front either. Another early 1970s 'eavy and 'umble outfit with a few proggy pretensions. File next to virtually every other band of the era aside from Black Sabbath, who at least had the good grace not to lard their nascent doom-metal with lashings of organ. Every fucking band of this time thought a big ol' Hammond was the key to sounding portentous, when really the answer was feed your bassist too much cheese before bedtime and then let him write lyrics about the resultant experience.

This is all a bit unfair with regards to Atomic Rooster - or, at the very least, Death Walks Behind You - because I think it's a top quality album. Just because I've heard a gajillion bands crawling their way through the doped-up sludge rock ooze of the early 1970s doesn't mean that there aren't a few good'uns amongst them. It's true that I spent years trying to convince myself that Deep Purple were decent when they actually weren't, but some, like the Groundhogs, or Mountain, or the Edgar Broughton Band, or even Uriah Heep did something neat enough or funny enough to distinguish them from the patchouli-powered peloton. So, what distinguishes Atomic Rooster's sophomore effort from the likes of Leaf Hound, Elias Hulk, et al.?

The answer - songs, dear boys, songs! Whilst many of their peers seemed content so merely pen frameworks for their semi-improvised jamming (yawn), the Atomic Rooster lads had the good grace to actually write some tunes. I'm sure a goddamn Night Sun album sounds great when your whacked off your gourd, but in the mundane environs my front room in 2019, I'm unlikely to take too many journeys to the centre of the mind assisted by sparkling water and Glacier Fruits. And thus, the music has to stand or fall by its own terms.

Death Walks Behind You starts almost like something from King Crimson's Red, albeit not quite so wilfully oblique, a minor-key piano theme jutting against some dissonant ambient noise, but then it crashes into an unexpectedly funky chorus riff, one that manages to be both catchy and heavy at the same time. The verses are good as well; a descending chord sequence that sounds like a demonic inversion of Chicago's '25 or 6 to 4'. It builds tension admirably, with the release coming in a reprise of the chorus. This is cool! The next track isn't so great, seeing as it sounds a bit like a lumpen version of Yes' 'Roundabout', or perhaps a Focus outtake where Thijs van Leer forgot to bring his flute along, but it's okay as far as rock instrumentals of this vintage are concerned, plus it's called 'Vug' so I sense the band didn't think too much of it either. It is certainly 'eavy though!

However, here's a decent joint on the docket - 'Tomorrow Night', which actually gave Atomic Rooster a UK top twenty hit. Thematically it's a slight departure from the rather chesty boasts about sexual conquests made by many of these spectacularly hairy groups, as it introduces notes of doubt and insecurity into the mix. It's still delivered with stridency by guitarist / vocalist John Du Cann (whose rich low tenor delivery is very appealing), but it fits in with an undertow of existential confusion that runs throughout Death Walks Behind You. At this juncture, I feel I should also mention that Du Cann's rhythm work on the album is really fine, abhorring anything too finicky in favour of a sledgehammer attack, often barrelling huge power chords at the listener in ack-ack bursts. If anything, drummer Paul Hammond is the busiest, his combination of heft and jazzy nous a welcome contribution. Somewhere in the middle is the talented, tragic Vincent Crane (organ / piano), who often complements Du Cann but allows himself the odd Keith Emerson-flavoured wallop on the keyzzz.

I guess it's the forward motion, the propulsion behind many of these tracks, that makes Death Walks Behind You such a listenable confection. 'Sleeping For Years' is a proper standout; in other hands this could have devolved into some interminable head number, but here it whacks you around the chops a bit and then lets you go to enjoy the next offering. That offering is 'Can't Take No More', which sounds a helluva lot like the Electric Light Orchestra's 'Don't Bring Me Down'. Songs sound like other songs, I get that, but Jeff Lynne of ELO fame was added as a writer to The Hives' 'Go Right Ahead' after it was recorded, because the band thought it sounded so similar.

'Go Right Ahead' was released in 2012. 'Don't Bring Me Down' was released in 1979. 'Can't Take No More' was released in 1971.

Death Walks Behind You doesn't really falter in quality as an album until right at the end - 'Nobody Else', the penultimate track, is built around a lovely, plaintive piano theme from Crane - and it's only with closing instrumental 'Gershatzer' that it's a bit ragged and disjointed. It's the kind of thing I guess The Nice did fairly well, and I don't like The Nice. Still, if you can stomach the odd indulgent instrumental for the sake of a collection of high quality, slightly foreboding and melodically strong hard rock, Death Walks Behind You should be on the Crimbo list.

Oh, and 'The Devil's Answer' still rocks!

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida - Iron Butterfly

Provenance: I bought this because it has 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' on it.

Review: Well, at least In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida has 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' on it.

Alright, it's not terrible. Most of IAGDV is listenable enough. Hell, I even saw a Butterfly lineup that featured classic-era members Ron Bushy and Lee Dorman play at Arrow Rock Festival, and I enjoyed it. I was especially taken by a track called 'Easy Rider', which isn't on this album.

What IAGDV does serve up is a trip through the various flavours of psychedelia popular in the late 1960s. You've got the peppermint 'n' patchouli of the insipid 'Flowers And Beads', coming on like a heavier, less artful Zombies throwaway. There's the slightly more ominous, bad trip psych of 'My Mirage' and 'Are You Happy' - these are fairly engaging, sounding a bit like The Nice or Atomic Rooster. Comparisons with Atomic Rooster are especially apposite as the member who takes the majority of lead vocals, Doug Ingle, has a touch of John Du Cann about his vocal delivery, brimming with portent yet slightly haunted.

But, just like the reviews on this blog, it's a touch ham-fisted. Perhaps its just a symptom of heavy psychedelia of a certain vintage that I'm not used to, but the sudden transitions into the 'wig out' portion of each track is irksome. 'Are You Happy', which has some of the strongest musical ideas on the whole album, is, alas, also the worst scene of the crime.

It should also be said that IAGDV has also dated quite badly. I was going to say 'inevitably', but so much pop music of that era still stands up to this day - Motown, Stax (hell, a lot of soul and R&B of the time), garage rock, even a fair bit of the blues rock laid down at the time (such as Taj Mahal's debut, or the Rolling Stones' Beggars Banquet) all sound fresh to me. Sadly, IAGDV is a museum piece, trapped in amber, deemed too hoary a dinosaur for Jurassic Park. To twenty-first century ears (even those as accustomed as mine are to listening to older stuff) the sentiments are twee to the point of cloying and the music lacks any kind of edge. But surely - surely - IAGDV is rescued by 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida', no?

Ah, a little. Rescued-ish, perhaps.

Yes, that riff is immortal. It's incredibly satisfying to crank up the amp, slam your guitar through a fuzz box and wail on that bad boy for a good five minutes. It's also been a mainstay in popular culture; you have probably encountered it, whether in The Simpsons, on a Nas album (he's used it twice so far by my reckoning) or in my favourite example, the climactic scene to Michael Mann's superb film Manhunter. That riff is totally one of the most metal things from the 1960s.

Yet 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' is also seventeen minutes long. To put that into perspective, the studio album version of Lynyrd Skynyrd's 'Free Bird' is only nine minutes. I've argued before that time is a quality of music that can be stretched or constricted for effect, just like any other, but it's a dicey one to fuck with. Much can be excused by playing loud 'n' fast, but to do the opposite - slow, soporific, measured - takes no little skill. Black Sabbath can do it. Electric Wizard can do it. Sunn ())))) can do it. Iron Butterfly can't do it.

The lion's share of the title track should be that devilish minor-key riff and Doug Ingle's slurring, zonked-out vocal. In reality, it's dedicated to Ingle's meandering organ (variously sounding, at points, like a drunk version of 'Tidings of Comfort and Joy' or the Tetris theme music on quaaludes) and a drum solo. Not a very good drum solo either (if, indeed, such a thing exists). I can't find the piece right now, but I'm sure I read about Led Zeppelin laughing at Ron Bushy's interminable solo at the heart of 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida', and that's a band who weren't averse to self-indulgent percussion centrepieces themselves. I guess - and I'm really guessing here - that if you've taken a few bong rips, or you're staring into the depths of your lava lamp after a tab, all of 'In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida' could conceivably sound cool. I am sitting in my front room with nothing stronger than Dr Pepper (diet, I should add) to aid me. It just sounds boring.

In summary, IAGDV isn't bad, but it isn't good either. It entirely bespeaks of a very short time in popular music that has retained its traction within the wider consciousness for a number of reasons - the enduring quality of the music not necessarily one of them. On the other hand - DUM DUM, DA-DA-DA-DUM - DA DA DAA!!!!