Axl's Catch Groove

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.

David Gilmour is one of the most influential guitarists of his generation – a generation with many great guitarists. But being the guitarist in Pink Floyd is a big deal – his Pink Floyd solos are truly iconic. In 2007, Guitar World readers voted Gilmour’s solos for Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb,” “Time,” and “Money” among the top 100 greatest guitar solos. He is not the fastest, doesn’t have a broad palette, and is not technical, but he makes up for it with a beautiful tone and a tasteful sense of melody. As a friend of a friend once said: “It isn’t that David Gilmour is the technically best guitarist. He just happens to play exactly the right note at exactly the right time.”

This is Gilmour’s fifth studio album. It was produced by Charles Andrew, best known for his work with indie band Alt-J. In interviews promoting the album, Gilmour said that Andrew challenged him musically and was not intimidated by his past work with Pink Floyd. Luck and Strange is as strong as his last album, 2015’s Rattle That Lock, which, in my review at the time, I declared a masterpiece (that was a bit of an exaggeration – but I was excited at the time). I continue to be impressed with what some geriatric rock stars (the Stones, Dylan, Springsteen, etc.) are creating late in their careers (Gilmour is 78).

The album opens with “Black Cat,” an atmospheric instrumental that serves as a hors d’oeuvre to set up the rest of the album.

The music for the titular track, “Luck and Strange, ” is based on a jam with Pink Floyd keyboardist Richard Wright, who died in 2008. The original jam is included as a bonus track on the streaming version and various special editions (it is not part of the standard and color vinyl editions). That bonus track is worth seeking out.

“Between Two Points” is a cover of a 1999 song by the dream pop duo the Montgolfier Brothers. It is sung by Gilmour’s daughter, Romany Gilmour. Romany contributes backup vocals and harp on several tracks on Luck and Strange.

“The Piper’s Call” starts as a gentle acoustic guitar-focused ballad before unleashing a full-on Pink Floyd vibe, including an epic Gilmour electric guitar solo.

“A Single Spark” is a nice slow burn of a song until Gilmour launches into a quiet storm of a guitar solo.

“Vita Brevis” is a short but gorgeous harp solo from Romany Gilmour. It is a nice set-up for “Between Two Points,” which features Romany on vocals.

“Dark and Velvet Nights” sounds like classic Floyd.

“Sings” is a mellow, atmospheric, warm blanket sprinkled with Gilmour’s take on Merseybeat.

“Scattered” is a beautiful reflection on growing old and appreciating and accepting the waning days—the song is like a perfect sunset. It’s another tremendous searing guitar solo, too.

“Yes, I Have Ghosts” is an acoustic guitar-focused duet between a father and their daughter—the song is a quiet ending to a beautiful album—a minuet on quaaludes.

Gilmour has not lost a step in his vocals, guitar playing, songwriting, and studio wizardry. The collaboration with his daughter on vocals and harp is a nice touch. The guitar solos alone are worth the price of admission.

I have been listening to the Tidal high-resolution stream (24-bit/96 kHz FLAC), which sounds fantastic. This is one of the best-sounding recordings of the year. If you can listen to this album on a nice stereo, I highly recommend it—listening on Spotify with earbuds misses the point.

I am a sucker for Jerry Garcia’s live albums – specifically Record Store Day (RSD) releases. Garcia had a repertoire of “Jerry standards” (mostly covers, but some originals too) that he cycled through his live shows in bands of various configurations – so the joy is the unique vibe of each show (different musicians, different styles, different venues, the mood of Jerry, the mood of the audience, etc.) I have about 30 different recordings of live performances of Jerry outside the context of the Dead – mainly as the Jerry Garcia Band (several are RSD releases). All are good (solid performances and quality recordings), but some resonate with me more.

Electric on the Eel: August 29th, 1987 resonates with me. Jerry sounds particularly on top of his game: soulful vocals, tasty guitar solos, and a well-rehearsed, yet loose, band. That is not unusual for the Jerry Garcia Band, but there was some extra magic going on that night – good mojo.

A particular highlight for me is Jerry Garcia Band’s interpretation of the Dylan standard “Forever Young.” Vocally, Jerry doesn’t imitate Dylan, but he certainly channels him. This is a very different vocal take than you would ever hear on a Grateful Dead song—it is Dylanesque.

Every song is an excellent rendition – I highly recommend it.

Electric on the Eel is a live album released by the Jerry Garcia Band on March 15, 2019. It contains three complete concerts on six CDs. The shows were recorded on August 29, 1987, June 10, 1989, and August 10, 1991, at French’s Camp in Piercy, California, near the Eel River. This RSD album is from the 1987 show, and it is the first time that the show has been released on vinyl.

The Jerry Garcia Band Eel River shows were co-produced by Bill Graham Presents and the Hog Farm (considered America’s longest-running hippie commune). Evidently, the hippie rural setting created a unique vibe that was not always present in the urban settings Jerry usually played in. The band included keyboardist Melvin Seals, bassist John Kahn, drummer David Kemper, and backup singers Gloria Jones and Jaclyn LaBranch for all three shows.

RSD Black Friday 2024 limited edition of 4,000 pressed on Orange Sunshine vinyl.

The full 6-CD version of the album is available on streaming services.

Tracklist

SIDE A
A1. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) – James Taylor cover
A2. Forever Young – Bob Dylan cover
A3. Get out of My Life, Woman – Allen Toussaint (songwriter) and Lee Dorsey (performer) cover

SIDE B
B1. Run For The Roses – Garcia solo (written with Robert Hunter)
B2. And It Stoned Me – Van Morrison cover
B3. My Sisters And Brothers – Charles Johnson cover

SIDE C
C1. Deal – Garcia solo (written with Robert Hunter)
C2. The Harder They Come – Jimmy Cliff cover

SIDE D
D1. I Shall Be Released – Bob Dylan cover
D2. Think – Jimmy McCracklin cover
D3. Evangeline – Los Lobos

SIDE E
E1. Gomorrah – Garcia solo (written with Robert Hunter)
E2. Let It Rock – Chuck Berry cover

SIDE F
F1. That Lucky Old Sun – Frankie Laine cover
F2. Tangled Up In Blue – Bob Dylan cover

Father John Misty (FJM) née Josh Tillman’s new album, Mahashmashana, returns to Fear Fun and I Love You, Honeybear territory, but with a fresh new take on his smarmy lounge singer mystique. The FJM I fell in love with in 2012 is back!

2022’s Chloë and the Next 20th Century departed from the typical FJM sound. On that album, he doubled down on his smarmy lounge singer schtick with a big band, bossa nova, and Muzak arrangements (or, as FJM says: “fake jazz”). On Mahashmashana, FJM is back to his epic singer-songwriter self of his first four albums. That persona is one part Springsteen (epic and grandiose), one part Harry Nilsson (sweet yet twisted), one part Randy Newman (humor/cynicism/sarcasm), one part George Harrison (spiritual and seeking), and a pinch of Bon Iver (atmospheric). Although Mahashmashana is sonically in the territory of his first four albums, but this is a fresh take.

Per Wikipedia, the [album’s] title refers to the Sanskrit word Mahāśmaśāna (महाश्मशान), meaning “great cremation ground.“ Tillman chose the word after reading it in Bruce Wagner’s 2006 novel Memorial and feeling inspired by it: “Just visually, it has all these sha-na-nas and ha-ha-has in it. With the record, there’s a lot in there about the self and about identity, and I think just the micro and the macro scale of endings.”

The titular track, “Mahashmashana,” opens the album in a dream sequence. It is an epic nine-plus-minute song with strings, a wailing sax, and Josh fully embracing the FJM persona. As for what the song is about, I have no idea. But there is a pair of lovers, mockery of religion, dancing corpses, etc. If this was the only great song on this album, the album would be a success—but it is not. It is an overture to another FJM masterpiece.

I listened to a recent FJM interview, and he talked about wanting this album to be something dumb after his previous “fake jazz album” (Chloë and the Next 20th Century). “She Cleans Up” is a big dumb rocker. I hear Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up,” Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues,” and Viagra Boys’ “Punk Rock Loser.” The vocals remind me of Spoon and the rock version of T Bone Burnett (Alpha Band and Truth Decay/Trap Door). The first verse is about Mary of Magdalene knowing that her lover Jesus is going to die and she is not having it. The next verse is a contemplation of the 2013 movie Under the Skin. The final verse concerns a wannabe actress’s “me too” moment. Big ideas for a dumb rock song.

“Josh Tillman and the Accidental Dose” sonically has a Beck Sea Change/Morning Phase vibe that fits nicely on FJM. Lyrically, The narrator of the song has an existential crisis while on psychedelics (FJM likes to self-medicate with micro-doses of LSD).

“Mental Health” is a gorgeous power ballad. FJM mocks our society’s obsession with mental health and fixation on authenticity when we are crazier and more inauthentic than ever.

FJM referred to the sound of “Screamland” on the Zane Lowe Show as a mutilated Hillsong. Hillsong is worship music that incorporates pop music. The song is a new sound for FJM. It is beautiful and noisy at the same time—like a Bon Iver or Low song. Tillman credits producer BJ Burton with messing with the song to achieve his vision—“mutilated it like I wanted it.” Alan Sparhawk of Low contributes to the beautiful noise.

“Being You” is a beautiful soft rock – almost Yacht Rock song. Lyrically, FJM is wondering about an imaginary movie director.

“I Guess Time Just Makes Fools of Us All” is JJ Cale meets Stevie Wonder in the form of a disco song. This is one of my favorite tracks on the album. This song appeared in FJM’s “Greatest Hits” collection, released earlier this year.

“Summer’s Gone” is a pretty ballad about time (time is a recurring theme on the album).

Mahashmashana is produced by BJ Burton. Burton takes a slightly different route than long-time FJM producer Jonathan Wilson (who still has executive producer credit on the album). Tillman says that Wilson’s influence is still there despite Wilson not being directly involved. Burton helps FJM return to form yet not repeat himself.

In interviews, Josh Tillman suggested this could be his last FJM album. He said he envisioned making six FJM albums, and this is the sixth. I hope that is not so, as Mahashmashana is a high watermark in his catalog. Mahashmashana is one of my favorite albums of 2024!