Back to some basics this week with some (mostly) unplugged Americana albums from The Felice Brothers and the incomparable Bonnie "Prince" Billy, plus a unique fusion of country and acid (yes, you read right) from Brixton's Alabama 3, and a look at the 70s album covers of a classic glam rock band.
Last week I mentioned The Felice Brothers in the same breath as Wilco, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. Since listening some more and reading a bit more about them I revise that to stand in agreement with the frequent comparisons with The Band (
Music From The Big Pink era), Neil Young (
Tonight's the Night era), and yes, Bob Dylan (
Basement Tapes era). You couldn't ask for more really could you? Lead singer Ian Felice name checks
Tonight's the Night in an interview about their new album,
Life in the Dark (straight on the Christmas list), and his singing and lyrics are both very Dylanesque (in reference to the extended narrative songs and punchy nasal delivery of Dylan's early years, more than the inaudible bark of now).
It's nice when an album grows on you. I've had
The Felice Brothers for a few years but hadn't played it more than half a dozen times up until last week. Playing it more and sampling the new album the decision to get a ticket for next month's show became an absolute no brainer. It's gonna be a real stormer. The songs are naked and authentic with super melodies and devastating lyrics of sex, booze and guns.
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| The Brothers then - in The Band gear |
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| The Brothers now - more rock indie |
1. Arbouretum -
The Gathering
2. The Felice Brothers -
The Felice Brothers
3. Roxy Music -
For Your Pleasure
4. Alabama 3 -
Exile on Coldharbor Lane
5. Steely Dan -
Aja
6. Bonnie Prince Billy -
Beware
The Alabama 3 album is absolutely brilliant. Great songs, great grooves, and oodles of humour. I saw them at a festival once and assumed they were a genuine American gospel band from the deep south. They are actually from the deep south... of London... and the preaching, Texas drool and stage names are all in parody. They actually started out under the name of The First Presleyterian Church of Elvis the Divine with an ambition to fuse country music with acid! And it works with great melodies and pulsating electronic gated rhythms. This album should have been massive but it's little known and the band have pretty much sunk without trace despite some commercial fame when their
Woke Up This Morning featured on
The Sorpranos credits.
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| Please be upstanding for Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love and his Alabama 3 |
After hearing them at the festival and buying the album I went to see them a second time at our local Concorde2. This time around they were a disappointment with a chaotic set hampered by technical problems and bad tempers - The Very Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love (front left) inviting a heckler outside for a fight! You never really know what you are going to get live especially with bands like this infamous for outrageous performances.
The Arbouretum album was a favourite of mine for a period of time when it came out in 2011. Their music is slow and heavy grunge with distorted guitars reminding me most of The Foo Fighters or Neil Young. Most of their tracks are quite lengthy with thick guitar melody lines. They can also do sweet and lovely as heard on the gorgeous cover of Jimmy Webb's
The Highwayman. I haven't heard many versions of this famous song but this has to be the best cover out there and jumps straight on to my
playlist. Great lyrics too:
I was a highwayman
Along the coach roads I did ride
With sword and pistol by my side
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five
But I am still alive
I was a sailor
I was born upon the tide
And with the sea I did abide
I sailed a schooner round the Horn to Mexico
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow
And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed
But I am living still
I was a dam builder
Across the river deep and wide
Where steel and water did collide
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below
They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound
But I am still around
I'll always be around, and around and around and around and around...
I'll fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again, and again and again and again and again...
Bonnie "Prince" Billy, real name Will Oldham, is the embodiment of laid back, low-fi, americana/country. I don't know this 2009 album too well in comparison with some of his earlier Palace Brothers music and solo albums. This one seems more country than usual with plenty of pedal steel. I love his fragile voice and gentle guitar strumming and he is top of my gig wish list (he played a small church in Brighton a few years ago but the gig was sold out immediately before I heard). Much more on Will will follow.
Girls Girls Girls... Those Roxy Music Cover Girls
Even after listening to music for 40 years there are still new "old" bands to discover. When I say "new" I actually mean new to me as obviously Roxy Music are a very old band, but one I've never listened to before. I knew a bit about singer Bryan Ferry of course, and quite alot about knob twiddler Brian Eno, but had dismissed them as one of those throwaway glam rock pop bands of the early 70s like T-Rex or Slade. Then I got talking to someone in a pub about music (I can't even remember who now) and he recommended I take a listen to them, and to this album in particular.
There is some great rock on
For Your Pleasure (their second album) and some interesting extended electronics which I feel is foreshadowing Eno's Berlin work with David Bowie moreso than his ambient solo albums. Probably only
Do The Strand is a well known single, certainly the only one I recognise and as often the case that's probably a strength of the album.
Like a number of bands, including Little Feat mentioned in an earlier log, Roxy Music were famous for their album covers which featured various glamour models, some of whom were Bryan Ferry's girlfriends.
The artwork for their early albums imitated the visual style of classic "girlie" and fashion magazines of the time, featuring high-fashion shots of scantily-clad models.
The model for the debut album was Kari-Ann Muller who was reportedly paid £20 for the assignment. She also appeared in the Bond film
On Her Majesty's Secret Service and is now a yoga teacher living in London with husband Chris Jagger, brother of Mick.
It was very ... ice-creamy, in a way. The colours remind me of a marshmallow, like something really delicious.
Amanda Lear appeared on the cover of our featured album walking a blank panther and is perhaps the most mysterious of Bryan Ferry's muses. She was reportedly a mistress of Salvador Dali and Rolling Stone Brian Jones before having affairs with both Ferry and David Bowie. Bizarrely there were also persistent rumours that she was actually a transsexual man!
But what of those rumours?
Hah hah! That was bullshit, a phony publicity stunt in order to sell records. No-one wanted a boring girl like any other. But it was the time of the Rocky Horror Show, and I was around, looking glamorous, and people always dream, don't they? The lady is a girl, and that's it.
To read more about her fascinating life (you couldn't make this stuff up) please have a look at
https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2000/dec/24/focus.news
Marilyn Cole was the girl on the album
Stranded. She was a Playboy model and eventually married Victor Lownes, president of Playboy Enterprises, after a brief involvement with Ferry.
Perhaps many people's favourite (certainly of teenage boys) is the
Country Life cover which features two random German fans the band met in a bar in Portugal, (l to r) Eveline Grunwald and Constanze Karoli. I don't know how rare a name Karoli is in Germany but it always surprises me how often a common name does indicate a blood relationship and in this case Constanze was Can guitarist Michael Karoli's cousin, and Eveline was his girlfriend. It continues to be a small somewhat incestuous world.
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| Roxy fans Eveline and Constanze looking surprised on the cover of Country Life |
Without looking too closely I always thought this was a shot of the girls lying flat on the grass but they are actually standing against a pine tree and posing as if suddenly caught in the glare of car headlights.
We just had to look weird and surprised.
Some album covers of the 70s (particularly of heavy rock or metal bands - Blind Faith, Whitesnake, The Scorpions etc) were pushing the sexual boundaries and this cover was banned in many countries on release which was actually saying something in those days. Incidentally does anyone remember those truly awful Top of the Pops compilation albums our parents used to buy?
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| Where have the girls gone? The censored version of Country Life. |
I often think it must be strange to be remembered for one tiny (insignificant at the time) thing in life that happened forty years ago – literally a "15 minutes of fame". Neither
Country Life girl went on to become models. Eveline became an art teacher and Constanze is a practising psychotherapist. Rather cool to have such a dinner party subject to bring up though. Imagine flicking through a host’s CD collection and chancing across
Country Life and revealing your secret!
Without doubt Jerry Hall is the most famous of the Roxy models and appeared on the
Siren cover literally as a siren washed up on some rocks in Anglesey, North Wales. One of the original, if not
the original, super models, Texan Hall dated Bryan Ferry for some time before meeting Mick Jagger. Her recent marriage to Rupert Murdoch was a surprise to many.
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| Love on the Rocks - Hall and Ferry in Anglesey |
Again not looking closely enough I thought the model on the front of
Flesh and Blood was one person but it actually shows Aimee Stephenson and Shelley Man casting javelins. Aimee Stephenson (the nearest to the camera) later worked in film (script writing and production). She tragically died in 2001 from burn injuries sustained from exploding fireworks on a bus in Peru (I know, it sounds so unlikely but when your time is up, your time is up, and as I said above you couldn't make this up - the bizarre and random twists of life). As for Shelley Man she is literally residing in the "where are they now" file, gone and forgotten at least as far as the internet is concerned - hopefully this indicates she is enjoying a quiet happy family life somewhere in the Cotswolds, free from controversy, rumour or tragedy.
Once more initial appearances can be deceptive with the realistic dancing "models" on the front of
Manifesto actually being mannequins.
Having spent the 70s enjoying many a tryst with his band’s cover stars, Bryan Ferry finally made a long-term commitment to one of them in 1982, when he married model Lucy Helmore who starred (albeit anonymously with back to camera and wearing a medieval helmet) on the front of the
Avalon album.
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| Ferry with Avalon lady Lucy Helmore |
The above owes a debt to an interesting article on the subject from https://threeinacrowd.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/roxy-music-cover-model/
, but a very successful one leading to a hugely powerful album that I think will stand the test of time. Take it in the car on a long drive and play it loud!
