The Morse Code Part 2: Spock's Beard's Beware of Darkness

Some observations and speculation on Beware of Darkness, the sophomore release from Spock's Beard, with a focus on the standards it set for the band moving forward.

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The Morse Code Part 1: Spock's Beard and The Light

 An introduction to the band Spock's Beard through the lens of their 1995 debut, The Light

Suzanne Vega's 99.9 F°: The Crimson Frame

 A flashback from the age of Nirvana - Suzanne Vega's 99.9 F

Keep track of the Top 20 with me!

Bobgoblin's 12-Point Master Plan: Never Sell Out

A look back at a relatively obscure classic from 1998, The 12-Point Master Plan by Bobgoblin.

Relevant links: Text post on Bobgoblin's Love Lost for Blood Lust, my 2016 Album of the Year

Matthew Sweet's 100% Fun: Stick With the Basics

Review and discussion on Matthew Sweet's 1995 power pop classic 100% Fun.

Relevant Links: 70s inspired animation by Eva Landry

Morphine's The Night: The Sandman Sleeps

Review and discussion on The Night, Morphine’s 2000 release.

Relevant links:

Post on Cure for Pain

Part 3 of Cure for Pain: The Mark Sandman Story

Yes' Open Your Eyes: An Eternal Battle

Review and discussion on Yes’ divisive 1997 album Open Your Eyes, with a particular focus on the album’s historical relevance to their oeuvre.

Relevant links:

A collection of past writings I did on Yes and their albums from the text days:

https://drspinsmusicalmusings.blogspot.com/search/label/Yes

Morphine's Cure for Pain: The Sandman's String Theory

Review and discussion on Morphine’s 1993 classic Cure for Pain, with some speculation about the origins of Mark Sandman’s unique approach to the bass.

Relevant links:

Full Diddley Bow explanation and performance

Full In Spite of Me clip by Bueno Movies

Cynic's Focus: An Elemental Synthesis

Review and discussion on Cynic’s Focus, with a special nod given to the late Sean Reinert and Sean Malone.

Public Enemy's "Fear of a Black Planet:" Predicting Our Orbit

Review and discussion on Public Enemy's 1990 hip hop classic Fear of a Black Planet.

Chomsky's "Selections:" Rebooting With Possibilities

Review and Discussion on Chomsky’s 1999 release A Few Possible Selections to the Soundtrack of Your Life.

Relevant Links:

I consider this album to be my 2000 Album of the Year

Fountains of Wayne's Utopia Parkway: Ennui and Responsibility

Review and discussion on Fountains of Wayne's 1999 album Utopia Parkway, as well as an overview of Adam Schleisinger's career.

Duran Duran's New Ordinary: The Wedding Album

Review and discussion around Duran Duran’s 1993 self-titled release, often referred to as The Wedding Album.

Weezer's Pinkerton: A Star Wars Story

Review and discussion on Weezer’s Pinkerton (1996), as well as a little Star Wars speculation.

Relevant past posts:

Everything Awakens: Parenting and Weezer’s Issues

Sharp Turns and Bright Colors: A Weezer Retrospective

Talk Talk's "Laughing Stock:" Improvisations in the Dark

Review and discussion on Talk Talk’s 1991 album “Laughing Stock.”

Links to full videos by Ricco Buitink

Myrrhman

Taphead

Moving, Bobgoblin, and "Denton Escape Velocity"

Many years ago, when I had barely been playing Chapman Stick for a matter of months, a jazz pianist friend of mine (whom we shall refer to as “Breakfast”) was kind enough to invite me out to play in a pizza joint on the square with Paul Slavens. I just barely stumbled through the gig. I am not sure what I played, and in retrospect I am sure there were some embarrassing moments, but I made it, nonetheless. I distinctively remember playing a song called Denton Escape Velocity, which described a fascinating phenomenon: it is possible to leave Denton, but you have to be going REALLY fast. Otherwise, you just get sucked back into orbit. As are many of Slavens’ best songs, it was satirical, funny, and inarguably true. Many people who leave Denton seem to come back.

I moved to Denton in 1989 to go to UNT, and I stayed in the city’s orbit for nearly twenty years. When my wife and I finally left the metroplex in 2008, I thought for sure that I had reached Denton Escape Velocity and that my path would lead me away from my second home. I was wrong.

There have been several issues with our life in Austin that have become impossible to ignore.  I have been increasingly dissatisfied with aspects of my position.  The rising cost of living in the city has made it impossible to subsist on our teacher’s salaries.  We have not found a sustainable plan for getting P into kindergarten that doesn’t turn her into a latchkey kid at age 5. These and other nagging problems made the idea of a change more and more appealing. My wife and I began putting out some feelers in Austin, Houston, and the northern DFW metroplex to see if we could land something that would resolve some of these problems. Being an elementary art teacher, she got the first real bite.

And don’t you know where it was?

Denton.

She was offered a position at a brand new elementary school in a reputable district, and we decided that she should accept. Not only would she take the lead at a new school, but she felt so confident in the school’s philosophy that we both felt comfortable about P attending with her. Additionally, P and EJ could grow up in Denton, which is more like the Austin of my youth than the ridiculously overcrowded, overpriced, self-important, bloated mess that the city has sadly become. I would much rather let my kids make fond memories of dancing the polka to Brave Combo at Denton’s Christmas Tree Lighting on the Square than inhaling car fumes at the Trail of Lights.

Seems oddly fitting, then, that after almost two decades, one of my favorite bands from Denton’s big live music boom of the 90s has released a new album this year. Back when I played with Fletcher, we had a few projects that we openly supported whenever we could, and one of them was Bobgoblin. They had all the accessible punk-pop aesthetic of Green Day, but tempered it firmly with the virtuosity, intensity, and intellect of Rush. Plus, they wore uniforms.



They were a great live act whose musicianship far exceeded any superficial preconceptions surrounding the punky style in which they played. I particularly remember finding it difficult to take my attention away from drummer Rob Avsharian. His playing was always a presence, and often a subtle one. He was Bobgoblin’s spark plug, not unlike Terry Bozzio was when he played with the Missing Persons in the 80s. Avsharian could energize a relatively straightforward rhythm simply by aggressively nailing it deep in the pocket, but he could also throw out highly technical and melodic passages when it served the song.

Bobgoblin had a major release in 1997 called the 12-Point Master Plan that deserves its own dedicated post at some point, but for now let’s suffice it to say that it was and still is personal favorite. Since then, the band has been active at varying levels and in different forms, but no plans for a new full-length Bobgoblin release have ever been announced - until recently.

Several months ago, plans for the release of Love Lost for Blood Lust, the first full Bobgoblin album in nearly twenty years, began to surface. Early recordings were posted and taken down.  Partial digital releases were teased on Amazon and other major outlets.  Finally, earlier this year, the album was released in full form on disc.  I ordered it directly from the Bobgoblin site and amazingly, it picks up right where the band left off. The consistency between it and its predecessor belies the decades-long gap that exists between them – a continuity that stands in tribute to Bobgoblin’s unwavering mission statement.



It is important to note, however, that Love Lost for Blood Lust is not a rework of the 12-Point Master Plan. It is a more mature album, but as with most things Bobgoblin, its maturity is only subtly revealed. Superficially, they still present themselves a purveyors of angular, riff-driven, intensely delivered power pop with a countercultural edge. Inside these infectious tunes, however, hide dense production, complex rhythms, and an almost sarcastic mastery of the power chord’s harmonic ambiguity. None of these features are new to Bobgoblin, of course, but they are expressed on this album in way that suggests decades worth of consideration, rather than a spontaneous rehash.



Love Lost for Blood Lust has the sense that it is a labor of love made for long time fans of the band, with the optimistic undercurrent of raising visibility in the process. It is certainly being released to a much different world than its predecessor. Gone are the days of beating the streets to get a record deal and getting gypped by the company. For better or for worse, artists today have much more creative control over their work and often have a direct line toward their audience. I for one am very grateful to have the opportunity to dip my toe in 90s nostalgia without living in the past as I end one era of my life and usher in another.

The Subtle "Innuendo:" Freddie Mercury's Epitaph

It has always been so: college textbooks are frighteningly expensive. During my undergraduate, the annual investment of textbooks was the most fluid and generally stressful financial aspect of starting a semester. With several hundred dollars on the line, it did not seem like tacking on another $20 or so to indulge in some new music was such a big deal - at least not to the irresponsible twentysomething that I was. There were a couple of albums that I snuck into my collection under the umbrella of my textbook budget, one of which was Tin Machine II. Another was Queen’s Innuendo, an album that I have been thinking a lot about in the past few weeks.

In 1991, Queen held the same position for me that I described in my previous post about David Bowie. I grew up with them featured prominently on the radio, but the only album I had by them was the Flash Gordon Soundtrack, which was an odd entry in their catalog. I also owned a greatest hits CD and had every intention of eventually expanding their presence in my collection.

It took me almost two decades to realize this latter ambition, by the way.  As of this writing, the only Queen studio album missing from my collection is The Miracle, which I did have at one point.  That, however, is another story.

Queen had a progressive aspect that kept them on my radar, so when I read that Steve Howe had a guest appearance on Innuendo,  it became the first proper Queen album in my adult CD collection. Before its release, it seemed that Queen’s music had suffered from some inconsistency due the commercial expectations of their success. Certainly, Radio Ga Ga had its sights on the masses and did not compare to the cinematic scope of Bohemian Rhapsody, at least in my mind. The symphonic horizons of Innuendo suggested that Queen was making an earnest attempt to recapture the adventurous artistry that informed their best work. I enjoyed it a lot.



What I did not know when I bought Innuendo, however, was that Freddie Mercury was sick. He had been fighting a very private battle with AIDS for several years by that point, but publicly denied that his health was deteriorating. Mercury finally announced his condition late in 1991, and passed away virtually the next day. With this news, Innuendo suddenly and dramatically changed for me. Within the context of Mercury’s mortality, the album’s earnestness and good humor seemed more like urgency and poise.



Queen was an album band, so although their songs could be taken individually, the programming always seemed to enhance the album's overall narrative.  The placement of the melodramatic The Show Must Go On as the closing track on Innuendo was an undeniably clear statement. After the announcement came, I remember sitting in my dorm room getting choked up with several friends imagining the once vibrant Mercury sitting on a stool for support and belting out the vocals for this track in spite of his own fading strength.



Within the context of Mercury’s imminent demise, it suddenly became apparent that the impetus for this album was not merely an effort to recapture past glories. Even taking Mercury’s condition into account, the value of Innuendo did not lie in the fact that it was the last time he would record with Queen before he passed. Rather, it was because that album was about his impending death and a document on the manner in which he chose to approach it.  Mercury's death was the innuendo that ran throughout the album, too subtle to notice on the surface, but impossible to ignore once it came to light.

Bowie’s recent passing brought this situation to mind.  The brave and subtle way in which Innuendo brought Mercury’s struggles to light was so revealing about his character and his art has inspired me to seek the same in Bowie's recent posthumous release, Blackstar. Certainly, I don't expect it to sound the same as Innuendo.  There are few artists who are willing to put that kind of struggle up for public scrutiny, however, and I think it would be a shame to overlook such a personal epitaph.

Defined by a Footnote: David Bowie and Tin Machine

David Bowie's recent passing effected me, and like many, I feel the need to contribute to the many voices lamenting our loss.  I should admit at the outset, however, that although I have always been a fan of his work, I have never been a particularly devoted follower.  Even today, my collection of Bowie albums is embarrassingly small.  My introduction to Bowie was in the early 80’s when Let’s Dance was in regular radio rotation. Despite never actually owning the album myself, I can trace the majority of its tracks in my memory and faithfully air guitar along with Stevie Ray Vaughn’s inspired soloing.  I later got the ChangesBowie compilation that was released in 1989 and went to the accompanying Sound+Vision support tour in 1990. I admit, however, that I was far more interested in seeing King Crimson guitarist and frontman Adrian Belew play as Bowie's right-hand man. Belew did not disappoint, by the way - his backup vocals on Space Oddity still stand out as one of the live music highlights of my entire concert-going experience.

I paid attention when Bowie did anything, but clearly I was often distracted by the people in his orbit.  I did not "get" him as an artist in his own right well enough at that stage to begin prying open his catalog, and my interest in him might have all but stalled if it weren't for an article I misread.  I kept up with several music publications in the 80s, and in a brief editorial I saw that David Bowie was recording an album with a band at The Power Station.  When I saw this, I confused the New York studio that bore the name with the 80s supergroup led by Robert Palmer and backed by Duran Duran members. I was a fan of their eponymous album, and thought that David Bowie would be a really interesting lead for The Power Station if Robert Palmer planned to focus on his solo career. I tucked this piece of misinformation in the back of my mind and sat on it for months. 

This led me to the Bowie project that made the biggest impression on me, and oddly it was the one in which he tried to fade into the background: Tin Machine.  In the big scheme of Bowie’s career, Tin Machine might end up being a mere footnote, but it was the vehicle that brought me to a greater understanding of Bowie’s restless musicianship.

When Tin Machine showed on the new release rack of my local Sound Warehouse, I stubbornly perceived it as the Power Station’s follow-up album, despite the discrepancy in the name and an obviously different lineup. Listening to the Tin Machine album with the expectation of a glossy Power Station release was somewhat jarring. There was an aggressive intensity that the albums shared, but Tin Machine was significantly more ragged and noisy than I expected.  I did, however, find the tension between the obviously intellectual guitarist Reeves Gabriels and the gorilla groove tactics of the Sales brothers on bass and drums to be most compelling.



Still, it was Bowie that really piqued my interest in this project. At that point, he was the “guy that sung Blue Jean” as far as I was concerned. It was a puzzling phenomenon to see a high-polish pop-rock icon thrive in a relatively harsh musical environment. In retrospect, however, it was clear that his success had afforded him a certain status and, being the musician he was, would have nothing else to do with the artistic trappings of this title. Tin Machine, then, was an environment with one foot in the cerebral and the other in the primal and it effectively allowed Bowie to thumb his nose at the industry to which he owed his notoriety.

Tin Machine was, at times, abrasive, and did not sound like anything else that was out there in the public eye at the time. Its contrarian virtuosity was appealing, and it developed into a somewhat indulgent, private favorite at the end of my senior year. I had my eyes open for its follow up in 1991, and Tin Machine II served as the soundtrack to my second year at UNT. Tin Machine II was a more well-developed statement than its predecessor. In retrospect, the more polished feel of this album caused Tin Machine to lose a bit of the the manic grit that made them distinctive in the first place.  It is still quite good, and perhaps more varied in style than the debut album, but has not weathered quite as well.



I would continue to cross paths with Bowie’s material, playing his songs in cover bands, listening to adaptations of his more cerebral work, and just generally keeping tabs on his comings and goings. Delving into his massive catalog seemed daunting, however, and his mercurial nature made it difficult to get a bead on where to start. I got Low a few years later with the intent of examining his so-called “Berlin Trilogy,” but I never followed up. Sadly, that’s about it. It’s not that I disliked his material or had anything against him. I just kept putting it off – for decades.

And then he died.

So now I have the awkward feeling of being too late to David Bowie’s party, falling into the category of people who will disingenuously purchase Blackstar and Ziggy Stardust remasters post-mortem in an attempt to stay relevant. Perhaps that is the case, but I don't feel that my dragging feet reflect my impression of him as an artist or bandleader, but rather with my delusional idea that we would have him forever. Fortunately, he left a massive body of work behind, and an indelible mark on popular music.

Curating the Past and Predicting the Future: Yes' "Union"

Hopes were really, really high when Union came out. By the time it was released in 1991, I was pretty familiar with Yes’ entire catalog. 90125 had made me a devoted fan of the Rabin-led lineup of the band, but I quietly held the opinion that the clumsily named Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, and Howe album released in 1989 was a superior album to Big Generator. The press for Union advertised that it was to be the ultimate lineup, combining the personnel from both groups. I envisioned a broadly collaborative album, with Rabin and Wakeman facing off in a virtuosic prog-rock wankery of the highest order. When I got the album to my dorm room and perused the liner notes, however, I was profoundly disappointed.

Despite its broadly inclusive roster, Union might be the least collaborative Yes album in their catalog. The two lineups had discrete tracks from one another, with the “Big Generators” contributing 4 tracks and the “Starship Troopers” contributing the rest. I was willing to look at it like Fragile, where different aspects of the band lent their voice to a larger picture. But the truth of the matter was, the majority of the material on the album just wasn’t very convincing. The best thing to come out of the album was the tour.



Still, I recently had a revelation about Union that has some relevance to the band’s current situation, so with some trepidation, I revisited it. Union has always sat quite comfortably very close to the bottom of the barrel for me as far as Yes albums go, but what if time had actually been kind to the album, and it was better than I remember? My whole hierarchy of Yes albums might come crumbling to the ground!

Fortunately, I suppose, this was not the case. Although there are a few good moments on the album and some outstanding musicianship, by and large it sounds as it did in 1991 - unfinished and uninspired.  One of the more outstanding moments on the album, however, is the track The More We Live – Let Go. I always felt that this swirling, powerful piece stood out in terms of quality. This track is of particular relevance now because it is, to my knowledge, Billy Sherwood’s first appearance on a Yes album.



Which I think is interesting. Union was intended to unify Yes’ convoluted history, but one of its more musically convincing moments also inadvertently foretold Yes’ future. Now, almost 25 years later, this single writing credit was the first stone in a long path that led Sherwood to a position in which he could significantly contribute to the band’s continuing output.

With this in mind, Union might be viewed as a reservoir of under-credited potential rather than an album sunk by record company meddling. If that is the case, despite its somewhat spotty political setting, Union could be a resource by which other musicians already woven into Yes’ history could carry on the Yes name.

If you are just tuning in, I have been playing this "Nu-Yes fantasy football” game for well over a year, and it was all fun and games when I made that first post.  Clearly, things took a more serious turn this summer, but Yes has continued (as I predicted, eerily enough) and, according to reviews, the current lineup is playing quite well, due in no small part to Steve Howe. Certainly, he shows no sign of slowing down. Still, one must wonder what would happen if he were at some point decide not to carry on as Yes’ guitarist. As the most longstanding member of the current group, his successor is not as visible as Squire's.

There is, however, a somewhat awkward situation surrounding the guitars on the Union album that most fans don’t like to address, but that might provide a solution. According to legend, Howe’s contributions to Union were demo quality, and he intended to rerecorded them before the album’s release. The record company’s unreasonable deadlines, however, could not accommodate Howe’s other commitments. Guitarist Jimmy Haun was brought in and in the end, many of the guitars on Union that are recorded in Howe’s name are not Howe. They are instead Haun’s uncredited performances.  Without Hope You Cannot Start The Day is one of several tracks that are entirely Haun.


Although I have no way to really prove it, I have sometimes had the sense that Howe’s parts felt a little different on Union, as if he was trying something new.  This track was not one of them.  It sounds like Howe, and I think it is absolutely astounding that Haun could mimic his distinctive style and sound so well.

Haun was my dream team choice for a “nu-Yes” from earlier this year, mostly due to the work he has done with Sherwood in Circa:. I knew that he had contributed to Union, but I was not aware to what extent until I began researching for this post. If Yes fans were to openly accept this uncomfortable chapter in the band’s history, it might not be unreasonable to view Haun as an uncredited Yes guitarist, and one that has enough respect for the band to carry on its creative legacy in the unfortunate event that Howe chooses to retire.

The Jellyfish Family Tree Part 3: Getting Into Imperial Drag

Jellyfish deliberately used the familiar melodic and harmonic conventions of yesteryear as a nostalgic vehicle for expressive musicianship. That band cratered under the weight of its own talent, but a few years later, keyboardist Roger Joseph Manning Jr. and touring guitarist Eric Dover reconvened under the name Imperial Drag. Although this project was stylistically different from Jellyfish, it operated under a similarly constructed identity. Instead of recalling The Beatles and other late 60s/early 70s pop groups, however, Imperial Drag’s image scaffolded on the conventions of T. Rex and glam rock.

I was not aware at all of Imperial Drag’s relationship to Jellyfish, at least not at first. Sometimes an album’s artwork catches my attention, and their debut, with its shiny foil star and rainbow bolt, jumped off at me from a record store wall display. The back cover was no less attention-grabbing, as it showed two teenage girls with imaginary Imperial Drag fan club schwag all over their room, fondling their vinyl copy of the album. In the late 90s vinyl was considered to be completely dead, so in the context of the Imperial Drag’s cultural climate, this reference carried quite a bit of weight. Overall, the album looked like a prop from “That 70s Show.”

I ended up buying Imperial Drag purely out of curiosity, but I was won over by the band’s compelling songwriting and impressive musicianship. It wasn’t until I started looking at the liner notes that I put the pieces together.

Imperial Drag had a low-key hit from this album in the mid 90s characterizing the orgiastic sexuality that is part and parcel of late 70s nostalgia. Although not all of their lyrics are so obvious, rarely do two stanzas go by in any given song without some sort of innuendo or double meaning sneaking in. Sex looms so large on Imperial Drag that it’s hard to tell if its presence is tongue-in-cheek or if Eric Dover has a somewhat perverse side.



The album was sorely, but predictably, overlooked, which stands as a testament to the myopic nature of the late 90s music press. The little attention that they received for the album as a whole was generally negative, perhaps because it existed in a time when esoteric, folkish genuineness was more valued than clever semiotic play. In any case, the search for “The Next Nirvana” was so blinding that many great bands were left in the dark to fend for themselves. Imperial Drag ended in a flash and its members, again, split off into various projects.



Getting into Imperial Drag was one of the first steps I took as I began to follow Jellyfish’s members. Although Roger Joseph Manning has been extremely prolific, I have not followed Eric Dover after the band’s demise. I do know that he went on to play and sing in Slash’s Snake Pit, and also performed as a side man for Alice Cooper. In researching Imperial Drag, I also found that he has a new project called Sextus, which I have not examined too closely as of yet. Perhaps in the near future.

The previous post in this series is back here.
You can see where it goes next right here.