Alphabet crisis! The homemade list of my record collection has gone haywire. Nuts. Well, that means we have to take a couple of steps back to what should have been between Meg Baird and The Band, being a 2007 compilation of tunes by the mighty Lavern Baker originally released between 1954 and 1963. Baker was an awesome R&B singer and she really belted them out with the best of them, but there is a fantastic control to the gravelly delivery and what seems at a cursory listen a bit like bellowing is actually phenomenally clever singing. There was a tendency in those early rock n roll days to make pop songs as novelties and nonsense like Bop-Ting-a-Ling and Tweedle-Dee is disappointingly throwaway now but I suppose at the time it was all par for the course. However, the serious stuff ('Soul on Fire', 'I Waited Too Long') is absolutely spellbinding and the majority of Baker's recordings are truly fabulous.
Now we have The Band of Blacky Ranchette and their fourth album Still Lookin' Good To Me (2003). This is essentially one of the many vanity projects by Giant Sand's Howe Gelb and by the time of this final outing for Blacky Ranchette he had managed to pull together a dazzling array of alternative Americana's brightest stars, namely Calexico, most of Lambchop, bits of Grandaddy, Cat Power and Neko Case to record a loose collection of ramshackle old fashioned C&W influenced Americana. Like much of Gelb's work it's sort of charming, sort of thrown together and sort of brilliant, but it's hard to really get to love. There are some really nice songs here but I often find myself wishing he'd give up the "dust-blown" feel and really work on these songs because they could be really great rather than pretty good. As is often the way with these indie supergroup type of deals, it's all sadly underwhelming.
Next up is a lengthy retrospective of art-noise-rockers Band of Susans called Wired for Sound (1995) which covers their work from 1986-1993. Pioneering stuff this, if a little insipid in today's compression stifled age. Students (literally in some cases) of John Cage, Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca, they made a sheet metal kind of feedback drenched noise which fit well with the NY scene at the time, sounding musically at a kinship with Sonic Youth, Foetus and Big Black. It's all very high end, with the bass sitting sludgily deep in the mix and their songs were never really up to much, nor their vocals, but the songs really were just an excuse to contort the guitar mangling into some sort of melody. It's the instrumental pieces which unsurprisingly are much more successful and there are some pieces that the Band of Susans recorded that could easily stand up next to Branca or Chatham's own superb work.
Hurrah, pop music! Who doesn't love The Bangles, particularly glorious debut album All Over the Place (1984)? Eh? Who doesn't? I pity the fool. Anyway, yes, All Over the Place, what a great guitar pop record this is. How much did I have the hots for the Hoffs? Eh? What's that? What's that got to do with anything? Well, nothing really, except if pop music is as much about the people making it then the Hoffs was it. Obviously I'm not talking about the Hoff here, but Susannah Hoffs. Hmm, er, well, anyway, yes, All Over the Place, it's a great guitar pop record. It's got some fantastic not quite throwaway tunes ('Hero Takes a Fall', 'Going Down to Liverpool' - and let's not forget the fantastic video with Leonard Nimoy in it) and the whole thing is a joyous celebration of a post-punk world where everyone plays guitar and listens to Big Star, it's brilliant. Second album Different Light (1986) is a rather more heavily produced affair, but even the presence of Prince's underwhelming 'Manic Monday' can't put a dampener on the whole affair. It's easy to imagine that girl-band veteran Michael Steele and the Petersen sisters must have felt that the band was being taken from them, as this is a session musician, keyboards and drum machines record with Hoffs placed centre stage, and the whole business is a very long way from their origin as guitar-slinging ramshackle post-punk girl band. Nonetheless, there's no denying the greatness of the pop songs ('Walking Down Your Street', 'If She Knew What She Wants', 'Let It Go', they're all diamonds, even the brain meltingly familiar 'Walk Like an Egyptian' is grand) and the whole record is pretty fun while not having the real spirit of All Over the Place. They give their props to Alex Chilton though with a suitably straight cover of 'September Gurls'. The band moved even further down the calculatedly chart-bothering style with third (and first break-up) album Everything (1988). Again you can't argue with the songs though ('In Your Room' is a cracking opener) and although the production is even more unpleasantly 80's than ever (ugh, those drum machines, why are they so high in the mix??), there are still some truly blistering pop songs here and if anything the harmonies are more beautifully worked out than ever. I suppose that's the key to Everything's success, these are brilliantly written songs, much more so than on All Over the Place or Different Light. Hell, even the middle eight in the otherwise ghastly Eternal Flame is absolutely stunning.
Finally for today we have a dose of the majestic Brigitte Bardot, with her first album Brigitte Bardot Sings (1963). Now obviously this is a pretty stupid record and if you compare it to other relatively lightweight French singers of the time like the wondrous France Gall or even Sheila, Bardot is disastrously lacking in a voice and the songs they gave her were considerably more ridiculous novelty fare. Nonetheless you can't deny the charm of this nonsense and while it's all a bit carnivalesque, there's still a completely irresistable 60's lure to this stuff. Nobody would suggest that it's worth listening to Bardot over watching her movies (although most of them were fairly dicey too) but you can't help but love this fabulous fluff. We also have a seriously dodgy Italian picture disc (if the picture has worked you can see what kind of market it was aimed at) called The Early Years, but this is actually Bardot Sings with one extra track ('Sidonie' from a 1961 film soundtrack).
Till tomorrow, when we start with Barlow. And no, I don't mean Gary.
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