Axl's Catch Groove

Big Star is a cult band – perhaps the original cult band. The bands they influenced include R.E.M., The Replacements, Mitch Easter, The dBs, and countless others. They have gained in stature over time. They are the original indie-rock band.

Big Star’s Keep an Eye on the Sky is a four-CD, 98-song career retrospective box set featuring unreleased tracks, demos, alternate takes, and live performances. It also includes material from founder member Chris Bell’s pre-Big Star bands, Rock City and Icewater. It includes all titles (in many cases as alternate mixes or demos) from Big Star’s three studio albums.

In addition to the music, there is an excellent mini coffee table book with three essays and photos.

My “introduction” to Big Star was the 1986 The Replacements song “Alex Chilton” from Pleased To Meet Me. I had no idea who he was until I started reading the Pleased To Meet Me reviews and PR. Based on Paul Westerberg’s infatuation with Chilton, I picked up Chilton’s 1987 solo album, High Priest. Unfortunately, High Priest sucks. At about the same time, I got a copy of Big Star’s Third/Sister Lovers, which baffled me (I eventually learned to appreciate it). I assumed Paul Westerberg was hearing something I was not.

It wasn’t until 1992, when a two-for-one CD of the first two Big Star albums (#1 Record and Radio City) was released, that I got Big Star’s music – I immediately understood the hype. It was Beatlesque but with an American twist. All the songs were good to great. This would be my recommended introduction to Big Star.

By 2009, when Keep an Eye on the Sky came out, I was hip to Big Star. For some reason, I did not listen to it extensively. Now that CDs are part of the Desert 🌵 Sessions and I am retired, I am seriously exploring the box set. It was pretty random that I grabbed Keep an Eye on the Sky to bring to the Desert 🌵 Sessions. I am glad I did!

The first three CDs are chronological and follow the arc of their three studio albums, and the fourth CD is a live show. Disc One includes pre-Big Star material and the songs from their debut. Disc Two includes songs from their second album and some Chris Bell solo material. Disc Three includes songs from their third album and covers.

Disc Four is a live set at Lafayette’s Music Room in Memphis, TN (January 1973), shortly after the release of Radio City. It is a solid performance by the band (now a three-piece as Chris Bell had departed the band). Sonically, it sounds great—especially given that it was miked in the audience rather than a board recording. It’s a mix of Big Star originals and covers. It is a remarkable artifact that made its first appearance on this box set.

Keep an Eye on the Sky is a grad school course in one of the most influential bands in rock history. Highly recommended.

I am a power chord/interconnect/speaker wire agnostic. I have participated in speaker wire blind comparisons and selected the higher-priced wire, but not necessarily the most expensive. In general I have noticed a difference in cables, but not a preference.

An audiophile friend asked me to break in his new Nordost Frey 2 power chord while he was out of town. I was more than happy to do that and compare it to the stock power cord my amp’s manufacturer provided. At first, I assumed that I was using Nordost’s entry-level power cord (the Purple Flare at $260), but I learned that it was the Frey 2, which is up thier product chart (at about $2200) but not at the top (Nordost has a $56K power cord!). Please note my audiophile friend did not pay list price for his Frey 2.

Per the Nordost website: “Norse 2 Series power cords deliver a level of performance not previously possible at their price points. Nordost’s proprietary Micro Mono-Filament construction creates a virtual air dielectric complete with an elegantly engineered suspension system. When combined with silver-plated OFC solid core conductors and FEP insulation throughout, the result is the ideal electrically and mechanically controlled construction for ultra-fast, low-impedance current and voltage transfer. The complex topology of Micro Mono-Filament conductors is especially effective in dissipating mechanical energy present on the AC line, which otherwise enters your delicate electronics rendering dynamic responses sluggish and blurry.”

Well, what ever that means.

This review will be purely subjective – no objective measurements were done. I am not a technical-oriented audiophile – I am more of a musichead with a nice stereo, mid-fi vs. hi-fi.

I tested the power cord on my Croft Acoustics Phono Integrated amplifier, which is part of the Desert Sessions. The Croft is a hybrid tube preamp and solid-state amp. The stock power cord is heavy-duty but nothing special. Speaker wire is generic 16 gauge copper. Interconnects are Amazon Basics RCA cables.

My reference source material was The Pat Metheny Group’s eponymous LP from 1978. I chose this recording because I am intimately familiar with it. It has a lot of dynamics and was beautifully recorded, mixed and mastered. I used both a vinyl version and a streaming version.

Vinyl—The Nordost cord sounded slightly different than the stock cord. I sensed it was an improvement, but not a two-grand improvement. In summary, I was underwhelmed.

Streaming—Here, the Nordost cord showed a significant improvement. Everything sounded better: highs were brighter, and lows were punchier—in a good way. The overall sound stage was more expansive and richer. It was a $260 improvement when I thought it was a Purple Flare – an upgrade I would seriously consider, given that most of my listening is streaming these days. But once I realized that this was the Frey 2, it was not a two-grand improvement. I am not sure it is appropriate to test such a high-end item on a budget stereo (the Frey 2 costs more than the Croft amp). But it certainly was a fun experiment. After this experiment, I am less skeptical about high-end cords, but I also have a self-imposed limit: if there isn’t an appropriate return on investment, I will not make this kind of upgrade. I also wonder if there would be a difference if the cord were plugged into a power conditioner vs. straight into the wall.

I am not surprised that there was a big difference between the vinyl and streaming test drives, as the Croft amp’s specialty is its focus on its phono pre-amp (a tube-driven stage) – this initially drew me to the amp, given my extensive vinyl collection.

I am grateful to my friend for lending me the Frey 2. This is a component I would never get to experience otherwise. Messing around (speaker placement, A/Bing cords, tube rolling, etc.) makes the audiophile hobby fun, and when you can experiment for free, it’s even better!

Larkin Poe sounds like a female version of The Black Crowes: soulful blues rock crunch and arena rock swagger. Larkin Poe are even an Atlanta singer-songwriter siblings like the Brothers Robinson.

According to their website, “Rebecca & Megan Lovell of Larkin Poe are Grammy-winning singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist sisters creating their own brand of Roots Rock ‘n’ Roll: gritty, soulful, and flavored by their southern heritage.”  In 2023, they released Blood Harmony, which won the 2024 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Rebecca (34) and Megan (35) had been playing professionally, first as the Lovell Sisters, since they were teenagers in 2004.

In a different era, Larkin Poe would be huge – like Heart Huge. What is crazy about contemporary music is that there is so much great music that you have never heard of. It is easier than ever for an artist/band to get their music out into the world, given home recording and the internet. More significantly, some bands are successful that you have never heard of. Back in the day, a band would have come across the average rock fan’s radar if they had a twenty-year career with eight studio albums, eight EPs, and one live album (which is the case for Larkin Poe). Today, there are artists/bands a musichead has never heard of playing in arenas and, in some cases, stadiums. Larkin Poe is not Billy Strings big, but they are playing 1000 to 2000-person capacity rooms.

Their back catalog is pretty rootsy. Bloom sounds like a grab of the brass ring toward mainstream success with its arena rock ambitions. There is nothing wrong with ambition, especially if you can pull it off, and Larkin Poe pulls it off.

The most apparent thing you hear on Bloom is blues rock with big guitar riffs/hooks. But what makes this special are the vocals. They are a touch country in that way that Bonnie Rait and Susan Tedeschi’s blues are country. And then there are the blood harmonies – they are pretty dreamy.

The album has no bad tracks, but “Bluephoria” sticks out with its giant guitar riffs and outstanding vocals.

Another standout is “Easy Love Part 1,” which has a Bonnie Raitt vibe: the vocals, the slide guitar, and the attitude. Its companion, “Easy Love Part 2,” slows things down to a quiet storm. Like “Part 1,” it has a Bonnie vibe with an excellent vocal performance and slide guitar solo.

Overall, this delightful album will appeal to classic rock fans.

I have been a fan of the Rose City band since their eponymous debut (2019). I dig their mellow and psychedelic take on country rock. Per the band’s Bandcamp page: “Rose City Band’s music is sun-kissed timeless country rock whose seemingly effortless momentum carries the joy of its creation without ignoring the darkness pervading our consciousness.”

Sol Y Sombra is the band’s fifth album, and it is similar to their prior albums, although the band is better at its craft. The music reminds me of the mellow and spacey side of the Grateful Dead; The War On Drugs is another good reference point. It is pleasant enough to be background music and engaging enough for active listening.

Per Wikipedia, “Sol y Sombra is an after dinner or breakfast alcoholic drink (or digestif), consisting of equal parts brandy and anise dulce (sweet anise or anisette) served in a brandy snifter, that is well known in Madrid and Spain generally. The drink’s name comes from the Spanish words for sun and shade and refers to different types of seats one can buy at bullfights. The cheap seats are Sol, and are in the full sun, whereas the most expensive seats are Sombra and are fully shaded. A Sol (Sun) y Sombra (Shadow) ticket has some shade and some sun throughout the day. The drink’s name reflects this, as the drink is a combination of the dark brandy (sombra) and the clear anise (sol).”

Despite the mellow vibe (sol), there is also some darkness (sombra). Per the band’s leader, Ripley Johnson: “With Rose City Band, I’m generally trying to make uplifting music, good time music. This time, I couldn’t avoid the shadow being more of a presence. There’s no getting away from it. The shadow is always there. So, I left it in.”

In addition to guitarist and vocalist Ripley Johnson (Wooden Shjips and Moon Duo), the Portland (aka Rose City) band includes pedal steel guitarist Barry Walker Jr. (Mouth Painter and North Americans), keyboardist Paul Hasenberg, and drummer John Jeffrey (Moon Duo).

I revisited their debut, the album that turned me on to the band, and the recipe is the same five albums into their career – except they are somehow better and deeper.

This is part one of two posts.

One of my retirement activities is being involved with the Arizona Audio Visual Club (AAVC). I have met some great people who share my audiophile and musichead interests. One of those great people is Greg, a retired plumber, who has built a fantastic man cave in a shed in his backyard in Sun City, AZ. The AAVC fondly calls it Greg’s Audio Shrine. The Audio Shrine is set up for Dolby Atmos (surround) and two-channel audio.

Greg recently invited me over for a listening session and generously invited me to crate dig through the crates he had of LPs (or, as the kids say, vinyls) that he no longer wanted. I was happy to dig and take about two dozen albums off his hands.

Before crate digging, we listened to Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon in Dolby Atmos. It was phenomenal. Then we moved on to two-channel audio, and I DJed the records I had brought. Both the Atmos and the two-channel setups sounded excellent. Greg’s Audio Shrine is one of the best audiophile setups I have experienced.

This blog will summarize the PVC (polyvinyl chloride) gems I found at Greg’s Audio Shrine. Several of the titles are albums I have in my Minneapolis collection—it is great to have a copy of them as part of the Desert 🌵 Sessions . Once I started listening to the LPs, I was grateful for their excellent condition.

This is one of my favorite albums from the early 1980s. It was produced by Elvis Costello and has one of my top 100 singles, “Tempted,” sung by new band member Paul Carrack.

I was so into this album that I went to a concert back in the day just because Squire was the warm-up act. I stayed for the headliner too (some British band named Queen-they were good).

This album and a couple of its singles, “Two Tickets to Paradise” and “Baby Hold On,” were massive when I was in high school. It is a sentimental favorite of mine. I never owned it, as the singles were omnipresent on the radio back in the day—I saved my music buying dollars for things that were not on the radio.

I was a big fan of R.E.M.‘s debut (Murmer from 1983) but then lost track of them until their fifth, Document (1987). It turns out I was more familiar with Reckoning than I realized, as I recognized the two singles: “So. Central Rain (I’m Sorry)” and “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville.” Has any other band had so many parenthetical song titles?

I am even more unfamiliar with this album than Reckoning. Although as jangly as its two predecessors, it has a slightly different sound: darker and murkier. It also has new instrumentation: sax and banjo. I will be digging deeper into the album.

Although this is Prince’s third album, it is the first album he became PRINCE! His first two albums were good but were conventional R&B for the time. Dirty Mind rewrote the rules to create Prince music: horn parts from a synth, the look, the X-rated lyrics, etc.

This album wasn’t a commercial flop but was a long way from the top (If You Wanna Rock ‘n’ Roll). It was critically panned. I have always liked the album. I don’t get why it would be twelve more years before Bonnie would grab the brass ring with Nick of Time. Her albums before Nick of Time, like this one, were good.

This is one of the greatest debut albums. Kris Kristofferson wrote in the liner notes: “Twenty-four years old and writes like he’s two-hundred and twenty.” There are so many classic songs: “Illegal Smile,” “Hello In There,” “Sam Stone,” and “Angel From Montgomery.” Produced with a delicate touch by Arif Mardin.

I have no history with this album or with Joe Pass. I know Joe Pass as one of the great jazz guitarists, but I have minimal experience with him. I have several jazz albums on the Pablo label—they are all excellent. And so it was without reservation that I pulled this album from the crate. This album is solo guitar (a hollow body Gibson ES-175), with Joe mostly playing standards. According to Wikipedia, Viruoso is considered Joe’s best album and one of the best jazz guitar albums. It certainly sounds great to me.

Pablo Records was a jazz record company and label founded by Norman Granz (founder of Verve, Clef, and Jazz at the Philharmonic) in 1973. Granz was acknowledged as the most successful impresario in jazz history. Pablo initially featured recordings by acts that Granz managed: Ella Fitzgerald, Oscar Peterson, and Joe Pass. Pablo’s albums are well-recorded and nicely packaged. I have never been burned by a Pablo recording.

I am a pretty minor Talking Heads fan, but it was impossible to be a musichead in the late 70s and 80s without appreciating the Talking Heads. The Talking Heads were an adventurous band that dabbled in punk, New Wave, funk, Afrobeat, etc. Little Creatures is almost Americana – before that term was even used. It was critically acclaimed and is the band’s best-selling studio album (more than two million copies sold in the U.S.). The songs “And She Was” and “Road to Nowhere” were hits for the band. As wonderfully odd as they were, it is incredible they had mainstream success.

When I was a kid, Glen Campbell was huge. He started his music career as a member of The Wrecking Crew and leveraged his guitar chops to become a pop star. He had hit singles (selling over 45 million records), was an actor, and had a TV variety show. He had a solid two-decade run.

The Southern Nights LP peaked at number one on the Billboard Top Country Albums chart, and the single “Southern Nights” (an Allen Toussaint song) reached number one on both the Billboard Hot 100 (a pop chart) and Hot Country Songs charts. The album has brilliant and kitschy moments – but that was Glen Campbell.

This concludes part one – I still have a dozen more LPs to audition – stay tuned.

“This box collects Bob Dylan’s first eight 12-inch LPs…as most people heard them, as they were expected to be heard, and as most often they were meant to be heard: in mono.” Greil Marcus in the liner notes

Well, that is news to me. I grew up listening to stereo mixes. Actually, I knew the mono story. The Beatles had taught us the importance of the mono mix with The Beatles in Mono (2009) the year before. 60s albums were envisioned as mono mixes; the stereo mix was an afterthought. Mr. Marcus is wrong and right: more people have heard the stereo mixes, but the mono mixes are better.

Specific to Dylan, Bob Johnston, the producer of Blonde On Blonde, told this story:

“We mixed that mono probably for three or four days, then I said, ‘Oh shit, man, we gotta do stereo.’ So me and a coupla guys put our hands on the board, we mixed that son of a bitch in about four hours!… So my point is, it took a long time to do the mono, and then it was, ‘Oh, yeah, we gotta do stereo’.”

I picked up this box set when it came out: I was a serious musichead with a nice stereo and a Dylan fan – I was very ripe for this.

The box is the mono mix of Dylan’s first eight studio albums on nine compact discs, the album Blonde on Blonde being issued on two discs as in its original vinyl format. The packaging gimmick was that each album was a mini version of the original LP, and the CD label was a facsimile of an LP label.

I played this a lot when I got it, and it predates this blog – otherwise, there would have been a post on it. I have not listened to the set for a long time. But I have enhanced the Desert 🌵 Sessions for CDs this winter, so I brought down a 14” x 14” box of CDs, and Original Mono Recordings was part of the bunch. This seems like a good time to break into the Mono Box as a pre-game to seeing A Complete Unknown on Christmas (2024)*.

I listened to the albums in a haphazard order. Starting with my favorites, and kind of random. BLONDE ON BLONDE (1966) was the first album for the Desert Sessions. It is one of my favorite Dylan albums—my favorite of the first eight albums in this box.

Experiencing albums that are well known to you in stereo in mono is quite a shock. First, the soundscape is way better than you would expect. Just because it is mono does not mean it is lo-fi. The production values of the 50s and 60s were excellent. The studios sounded good, and the engineers were highly skilled. I have listened to the mono reissues of the Beatles, Miles Davis, and Dylan; they all sound fantastic. The big difference is that the mono mixes sound immersive – surprisingly immersive on headphones, but best on speakers. When stereo became available to consumers in the late 50s and before mono was phased out in the late ’60s, stereo mixes were often gimmicky. The worst was jazz, where one instrument would be panned far left, and the other was far right. It did not sound natural at all. The glory days of mono were the ’60s for several reasons: the recording profession was highly skilled, overdubbing had been perfected, and sound engineers knew that at least some of their audience were audiophiles with great playback equipment, so they made an effort to make things sound good.

Blonde On Blonde is well known to me, and as I have already mentioned, it is one of my favorite Dylan albums. It was the final piece of the “Bob Goes Electric” trifecta: Bringing It All Back Home (1965) and Highway 61 Revisited (1965) being the other two. Bob headed to Nashville with keyboardist Al Kooper and guitarist Robbie Robertson, got the Nashville A-Team stoned, and made his psychedelic masterpiece before promptly checking out of pop culture at his first apex. It is widely considered one of the first double albums in popular music with complete original recordings by the artist. Even in the CD era, at seventy-three minutes, it can barely be contained on a CD (which has an 80-minute max, but best practice is to keep the audio under 74 minutes).

I have multiple versions of this album: vinyl (stereo), CD (stereo), SACD (stereo), and the mono CD that is part of this box. The mono is my favorite because, as I have already mentioned, it sounds immersive. I have learned that CDs sound best with a good CD player with a good DAC (onboard or separate), as a quality DAC warms up the digital to near analog perfection.

I drew out THE FREEWHEELIN’ BOB DYLAN (1963) next. Although this is his second album, I consider it his first as it is mostly original songs (one cover and one co-write). The recording is just Dylan playing solo: voice, guitar, and harmonica. There is no reason to have a stereo mix. The mono mix is like having Bob in your room singing to you directly. The album shows Dylan’s genius with absolute classics that would become Dylan standards, if not pop music standards, including: “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “Girl from the North Country,” “Masters of War,” “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall,” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right.”

Some very early pressings of the album contained four songs that were ultimately replaced by Columbia in all subsequent pressings. These songs were “Rocks and Gravel”, “Let Me Die in My Footsteps”, “Rambling Gambling Willie” and “Talkin’ John Birch Blues”. Copies of the “original” version of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (in either mono or stereo) are extremely rare. Unfortunately, this mono reissue does not include those early-pressing songs.

HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED (1965) is the album that turned Dylan into a pop star. Dylanogist Michael Gray argues the 1960s “started” with this album. If someone had never listened to Dylan before and asked for a one-album recommendation, this would be the one. If they could listen to one song, it would be “Like a Rolling Stone.” Every song on the album is significant in Dylan’s canon. This is the first Dylan album with a full rock and roll aesthetic. A lot is going on here. Unfortunately, this is the one album in the box that doesn’t sonically shine. The original first-generation mono master tapes could not be found, and this album is made from a second-generation overseas copy of the mono mix.

BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME (1965) is half electric and half acoustic. I fully appreciate Dylan’s folk era, but when he went electric, that was something special – next-level shit. This is part one of the most fabulous hat tricks in pop/rock history. Every song on this album is essential. This is when Bob Dylan became BOB DYLAN! Not only does he go electric, but lyrically, he abandons the protest singer themes and becomes psychedelic. This mono mix sounds fantastic – both on the electric and acoustic songs.

After checking out from being the voice of his generation and going electric, Dylan returned with a new vibe: what we would now call Americana. JOHN WESLEY HARDING (1968) is not folk nor rock ‘n roll – it is something else. It includes one of Dylan’s most famous songs, “All Along the Watchtower,” that Jimi Hendrix rocked up. On JWH, it is an acoustic folk instrumentation song with Dylan’s electric vocal snarl. Dylan’s live performances have been influenced by Hendrix’s cover to the extent that they have been called covers of a cover. Dylan tries to create a new vocal affectation in almost every song on the album. This is the final mono recording – subsequent albums would be envisioned as stereo.

BOB DYLAN (1962) is Dylan’s debut, featuring folk standards and two original compositions, “Talkin’ New York” and “Song to Woody.”  This is Dylan’s solo: voice, guitar, and harmonica – which works flawlessly in mono. The album stiffed initially but sold more copies once Dylan became more successful. Although it is primarily covers, it shows Dylan had a clear vision of his folk style at age twenty.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ (1964) is Dylan’s third album but the first to feature only original compositions. The songs mainly concern racism, poverty, and social change. The titular track is one of Dylan’s most famous. Dylan is at the height of his folksinging skills.

The original master tape for THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN’ could not be found for this reissue, so a new master was mixed from the original three-track tape, using the original vinyl pressing as a guide. Again, this is just Dylan’s voice, guitar, and harmonica, and it sounds great in mono.

ANOTHER SIDE OF BOB DYLAN (1964) was the last of the pure acoustic folk albums before Dylan went electric. The lyrical themes are personal (“All I really want to do / Is, baby, be friends with you”), psychedelic (“Motorpsycho Nightmare”), and his folk protest thing (“Chimes of Freedom”). When I first discovered Dylan at the end of the 1970s as a budding musichead, this was one of my favorites. I loved the novelty song with a yodel: “All I Really Want to Do,” the reflective “My Back Pages” (a hit for the Byrds), and the prototype for the classic cruel Dylan love song: “It Ain’t Me Babe.”

The Mono Box includes a liner notes booklet with photos, an extended essay by Greil Marcus, and recording details. As best I can tell, the Mono recordings are unavailable on streaming services. However, the CD box is readily available for about $80. The vinyl LP version is also available but is ridiculously expensive ($600 plus).

There is an old joke: “Do you like Dylan?” to which the response is “Which one?” These first eight albums were a fantastic foundation to build a career on. If Dylan had never recorded another album after Freeweelin’ he would still be considered consequential in pop music. But that was just the beginning. He wore the folk musician coat for a while, and at his apex as a folkie, he changed to a psychedelic rocker – changing the world only to check out of the culture. Only to return as something else – an Americana artist before there was such a thing. Not even mentioned here is he took an obscure backup band and made them The Band. The original point of this post was to reflect on the Mono Box, but the gift was being reminded how brilliant the first decade of Dylan’s career was.

*Postscript: A Complete Unknown – my wife and I saw the movie at the first showing at our local theater on Christmas day and were blown away. I came into the film with a lot of trepidation. Most biopics suck. I think what the movie did right was to capture Dylan’s vibe as his career blew up rather than try to be historically accurate – it is accurate enough. You understand how fast his career took off after arriving as a Midwest nobody in New York. You also get a good understanding of how Dylan bristled under the orthodoxy of the folk movement. Despite every indication that he should stay the course with folk music, he could not help himself and go electric. For those who don’t know the Dylan story, this does a good job of telling it. For those who know the story but were too young (which includes me – I am almost 66) to witness it in real-time, it is emotional (my eyes welled up, and I got goosebumps from several scenes) to see a glimpse of the early magic. Highly recommended.