We Sold Our Soul for Rock 'n' Roll is a good single-disc collection of many -- but not all -- of Black Sabbath's best tracks from the Ozzy Osbourne era, drawing about half of its material from the group's first two albums, Black Sabbath and Paranoid. That makes it ideal for the fan who only wants one Black Sabbath disc, but those who want to dig deeper should be advised that all six LPs from the Osbourne period contain high-quality items not present here, especially the under-represented Master of Reality and Vol. 4. Still, there's no quibbling with what is here.
Black Sabbath was unraveling at an alarming rate around the time of their second to last album with original singer Ozzy Osbourne, 1976's Technical Ecstasy. The band was getting further and further from their original musical path, as they began experimenting with their trademark sludge-metal sound. While it was not as off-the-mark as their final album with Osbourne, 1978's Never Say Die, it was not on par with Sabbath's exceptional first five releases. The most popular song remains the album closer, "Dirty Women," which was revived during the band's highly successful reunion tour of the late '90s. Other standouts include the funky "All Moving Parts (Stand Still)" and the raging opener, "Back Street Kids." The melodic "It's Alright" turns out to be the album's biggest surprise -- it's one of drummer Bill Ward's few lead vocal spots with the band (Guns N' Roses covered the unlikely track on their 1999 live set, Live Era 1987-1993).
In the Golden Autumn from 1983 kicks off with “Renee”, a driving pop song anchored by a drum machine and shimmering guitar jangle that recalls a rougher version of the Police at their peppiest. Having released several cassette albums prior to this one, Newell was working as a kitchen porter at this point, depressed and broke after a book deal gone bad. If Newell was in a dark place at this point in his life, he was still writing insanely catchy earworm pop songs. From the triumphant acoustic bounce of “A Halloway Person” to the Beatles Revolver-era stomp of “Please Don’t Step on My Rainbow” to the delightfully demented dance rock of “Marilyn on a Train”, In the Golden Autumn is stacked to the brim with hit songs from an alternate universe. Newell sounds genuinely hopeful throughout this album with only “Ghosts in Doorways” and the eerie sonic experiment “The Autumn Cornfield” providing moments of darkness. Newell brings a huge amount of sonic experimentation in to the pop song templates of In the Golden Autumn resulting in some of his most interesting work. “Sandstorm in Paradise” is a maelstrom of guitar meltdowns and vocal freak-outs over an eerie synth line that never takes away from the song’s underlying groove.
A collaboration between Will Isenogle (Merryl) and David Grubba (Enea). These four tracks contain fifty minutes of pure drone and pulsing rhythms in an improvisational setting. This is Prophet-heavy synth bliss.
Western music may live forever, but in the early '60s it had already suffered a decline. The singing cowboys had all but disappeared from the silver screen, and the days when western attire and repertoire were expected of country artists would soon be over. The album format became the new domain of commercial western music, and stalwarts like the Sons of the Pioneers and Tex Ritter continued to release moderately successful albums long after their hitmaking heydays. Eddy Arnold had a number one hit in 1955 with one of his recordings of "Cattle Call," but this 1963 LP was his first all-western album and his first to make the Billboard album charts. In addition to the expected western standards on Cattle Call, Arnold "westernizes" popular songs like "The Wayward Wind," and his smooth baritone fits these songs just as well as that of Rex Allen or Johnny Western. The re-recording of the title track is a haunting beauty with a real yodel rather than the falsetto vocal treatment it often receives, and is the version that is frequently anthologized even though it wasn't a hit. Well made and well remembered, Cattle Call is perhaps the most significant western album of the '60s.
As a consummate display of Atkins' refined finger picking style, this album sets its own lofty standards. A nearly invisible rhythm section underpins Atkins' one-man guitar ensemble with very subtle rhythm support on side one, where each number shines like a finished gem. To cite two examples, "Swedish Rhapsody" has dignity and subtle swing -- the perfect expression of a country gentleman -- and the note selection on "Liza" is astonishingly right every time. On side two, Atkins goes it alone, often leaning toward short, sometimes hokey classical pieces, the exception being "Unchained Melody," which has a simply stated first chorus followed by an echo-delayed overdubbed second chorus. In general, the tunes with rhythm on side one are more ingratiating than the unaccompanied pieces on side two, yet they all display a relaxed, confident musicality at all times.
Chet Atkins Picks the Best is the title of a recording by guitarist Chet Atkins. At the Grammy Awards of 1968, Chet Atkins Picks the Best won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Instrumental Performance.
Heroin were one of the defining innovators in early '90s hardcore. The first 7" record by the band, released in 1991, also marked the first release for upstart label Gravity Records. Operating out of San Diego, CA, Gravity was soon to be one of the preeminent representatives of the '90s emo vanguard. Interesting, innovative, mysterious, and somewhat pretentious in presentation, Heroin made amazingly dynamic landscapes out of one minute blasts of noisy vitriol. While Heroin's influence may be substantial, the back catalog left behind is not. Nearly two years after the initial 7" release, the sole full-length release and final album from the band was offered up in 1993. Matt Anderson went on to engineer and occasionally perform on several releases with artists such as A Minor Forest, Angel Hair, Kari Bunn, and Mohinder. Ron Avila kept hangin' tough with Antioch Arrow, Final Conflict, and Get Hustle.
Known as "the thinking man's hillbillies," Homer Haynes and Jethro Burns got a lot of mileage out of an act that shouldn't have lasted or gone as far as it did, at least on the surface of things. Certainly there were other, far more established duos mining similar turf on the country music circuit, with Lonzo & Oscar leading the way. But Homer & Jethro were far more than just two hayseeds doing cornball send-ups of pop tunes. Underneath the cornpone facade were two top-flight musicians with a decidedly perverse sense of humor and a keen sense of satire.
In his liner notes to this release, John Fahey mentions his desire to have an entire world orchestra in his guitar, Western to Eastern, bagpipes to gamelan. Perhaps it's this mental approach that sets his music so deliciously far apart from other so-called folk guitarists. Requia is essentially in two sections. One is a series of blues-based pieces in line with music he had previously recorded. These include the lovely "Requiem for John Hurt" and a wry "Fight On Christians, Fight On," both of which sound remarkably modern more than three decades after they were recorded. The slightly off-center variations he works on these songs are more vital and gorgeous than any ten of his peers. The second major section here is a four-part suite, "Requiem for Molly," which interpolates tape collages with his guitar playing. These do, in fact, sound a bit dated, largely because his source material ("Deutschland Uber Alles," marching bands, screams, etc.) sounds heavy-handed and trite in retrospect. Still, he anticipates similar usage by Charlie Haden in his Liberation Music Orchestra from the following year, as well as pointing toward wider explorations in that field that Fahey himself would undertake in the future. Requia doesn't rank up with the absolute best of his releases, but contains enough fine and interesting work to recommend it to Fahey fans.
Magic Trick is the '60s psychedelia and '70s folk-influenced band led by the Fresh & Onlys' frontman, Tim Cohen. The group began in San Francisco as Cohen's solo outlet between Fresh & Onlys tour dates, which yielded the albums The Two Sides of Tim Cohen, Laugh Tracks, and Tim Cohen's Magic Trick between 2009 and 2011. When it came time to play the songs live, Cohen tapped James Kim (Kelley Stoltz), Alicia Vanden Heuvel (Aislers Set), and Noelle Cahill, with Magic Trick eventually morphing into a full-time band. The first official Magic Trick release, The Glad Birth of Love, arrived on the Empty Cellar label in 2011, featuring four long-form compositions infused with Cohen's vivid lyrical imagery and sounds ranging from acoustic blues to dense ragas to lush harmonies, followed later that year by the Bad Blood EP for Captured Tracks. Magic Trick jumped to the Hardly Art label in 2012, offering sophomore album Ruler of the Night that June. In 2013 the project found itself on yet another label, with third album River of Souls arriving on Empty Cellar late in the year.
The Glad Birth of Love. This is Tim Cohen's fourth album following his 2009 debut, The Two Sides of Tim Cohen (Empty Cellar), and two full-lengths (Laugh Tracks / Tim Cohen's Magic Trick) and one EP (Bad Blood) on New York's Captured Tracks label. Featuring guest appearances by JOHN DWYER (THEE OH SEES), GRACE COOPER (SANDWITCHES), DIEGO GONZALEZ (GONG, CITAY, JONAS REINHARDT, DRY SPELLS), JOE ROBERTS (BLACK FICTION), AMBER LAMPRECHT (RODRIGUEZ BAND), and STEVE PEACOCK, The Glad Birth of Love is the first Tim Cohen album to not directly bear his name, but the name of his band, MAGIC TRICK. Recorded in a tower at Tim Cohen's home this album marks a departure from his signature radio-ready song craft. The Glad Birth of Love is a 45 minute album composed of four epic long-form compositions saturated with Tim's uncanny pop sensibilities and vivid lyrical imagery. Transitioning seamlessly from sparse acoustic blues, to dense psychedelic bass & oud ragas, to lush layered vocal harmonies this album is a culmination of Tim's work to date.
The mysterious noise rock combo known as Man Is the Bastard was a project put together by Eric Wood and Joel Connell after they had left hardcore outfit Pissed Happy Children. Dubbing the band "power violence," the sound was a brutal mix of complicated technical riffing and straight-up hardcore. Making things even more interesting were the member's interest in the burgeoning noise scene, something that affected their music greatly. The group lasted until 1997, when they mutually decided that if they continued they would no longer make quality music. The members still work together on projects, including Wood's Bastard Noise projects.
BEATTIE (vocals), CONNELL (drums/cymbals) and WOOD ("FOUR STEEL GIRDERS"/ vocals) teamed up with sinister BASTARD NOISE lead vocalist ARTZ and the astounding voice of AMBER ASYLUM, KRIS FORCE to create this long, long awaited album of sound and cinematic vision. Carefully orchestrated basses layered to massive perfection, the most progressively brutal and tasteful drumming coupled with ornate four part vocal arrangements and drilling, esoteric TROGOTRONIC custom "skull electronics" make The Lost M.I.T.B. Sessions one for the record books.
