Bob Dylan - The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964

This entry in the Bootleg Series is number 9; I don't know why it took Columbia 19 years and that many volumes to release 47 tracks from Dylan's gestational period as an artist while they saw fit to release a rarities collection spanning 1998-2006 two years ago. Apparently only 15 of the 47 tracks haven't shown up in other versions either on official releases or earlier bootlegs, but as I haven't heard any of the other entries in the bootleg series (barring the relatively recent live albums), this isn't an issue for me.

It seems Dylan started churning out original material at a rapid rate following his covers heavy debut in early 1962; although some of the non-LP tracks borrow melodies from traditional sources, only "Baby Let Me Follow You Down" is a cover. Not only is more than half of 1963's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan here in demo form, but also four from 1964's The Times They Are a-Changin' (including the title track) and even a piano version of "Mr. Tambourine Man", which eventually showed up on the acoustic half of 1965's Bringing It All Back Home. These demos are lyrically and compositionally identical to their well known counterparts; the main differences, besides fidelity, are in the nuances of Dylan's performances. Befitting a protest song, Dylan's staccato strumming on "Blowin' in the Wind" is more pronounced on the Freewheelin' version than the version presented here.

The non-LP tracks find Dylan at various stages of his transition from folk juke box to protest singer with an original voice and showcase an array of influences, such as Mississippi John Hurt in the fingerpicking on "Seven Curses" and Big Bill Broonzy or any number of post Robert Johnson, pre T-Bone Walker delta blues artists on "Ballad for a Friend". "Talkin' Bear Mountain Picnic Massacre Blues" and "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues" are early versions of what would become "I Shall Be Free #10". "I Shall Be Free" (included here) is an early version of "Bob Dylan's Blues", which doesn't share I Shall Be Free #10/Bear Mountain/John Birch's chord progression, but features similar off-the-cuff lyrics. This explains the title and number of the Another Side track, and the #10 doesn't seem quite as hyperbolic anymore - perhaps Dylan really did write five other variations. "John Birch" is as good a satire as Dylan ever wrote. It sees him joining the then new John Birch society and conducting an increasingly narrowing search for communists within his own house.

The Whitmark Demos comes with a long booklet of photographs preceded by an essay, and if you're lucky, as I was, you'll also get a short live disc, which unfortunately contains nothing exclusive. Even without these bells and whistles, it's valuable both as a historical document and a listening experience.

Extempore #6: Eep

Regularly updated blogs are for pussies.

Turn Me On, Dead Man

Please forgive the lateness of this post, but "Yesterday", as we all know, was the 44th anniversary of the death of Paul McCartney. Often referred to as "one of the four Beatles" in recognition of his contribution to the band's great success, McCartney died of auto-erotic asphyxiation at the age of 24.

Ten Great EPs

To say that the EP is becoming a lost art is stating the obvious. More to the point is the fact that I was born in the wrong time to appreciate them. There are probably many classic EPs from the 60s, 70s and 80s that have been lost to the ravages of time. I've probably absorbed some of them through reissues and compilations, and if that's the case, you probably won't see it in this list. This list is for EPs I enjoy in their own right, on their own terms. There are some obvious ones I've left out, and in most cases I've done so to allow space for some less appreciated EPs.

Alice in Chains - Sap (1992)

For most of its existence, Sap has been most readily available with its successor Jar of Flies as a 2CD set. Both are mostly acoustic and make great companions. Jar of Flies is an excellent EP and well deserving of being included in this list, but I chose Sap because it is the more concise of the two. Ignoring the goofy secret track, Sap is four tracks long, each of them excellent. It's hard to pick out a single highlight when presented with the anesthetising dirge "Am I Inside", the melancholy "Brother", the almost bluesy "Got Me Wrong" and the supergroup singalong "Right Turn".











Augie March - Waltz (1999)

Waltz obeys the two rules of releasing a second EP before your debut full length: it has to be better than the first EP, but also has to leave room for the LP that follows to refine your sound even further. Having said that, "Rich Girl" and "The Mothball" have seldom been surpassed. By anyone, I mean.











Boards of Canada - In a Beautiful Place in the Country (2000)

After the classic, more than hour long Music Has the Right to Children, Boards of Canada proved they could work in a more limited space. In contrast to the serene nature of the music, the EP and track titles and the artwork were inspired by David Koresh and the Branch Davidians.











The Breeders - Safari (1992)

EPs typically don't sell well, and this 12 minute one, released a year before The Breeders' breakthrough Last Splash LP, didn't fly off the shelves. However, it become a cult favourite and matters greatly to me because within it is my favourite Breeders song "Don't Call Home", an initially mostly acoustic number that climaxes in a squall of noise.











Deerhunter - Flourescent Grey (2007)

Deerhunter is one of the few bands around these days that really understands the EP format and how to best utilise it. The sound is appropriately somewhere between the second half of Cryptograms and Microcastle, and the title track is arguably the best song the band had written up to that point.











Gomez - Machismo (2000)

Gomez followed the overlong Liquid Skin with a concise EP whose character was unlike its predecessor or any other Gomez release. The title track uncovers new ground with its use of samples and effects, but it's the 13 minute Meddle-esque closer "The Dajon Song" that elevates this EP to exceptional status.











Mission of Burma - Signals, Calls & Marches (1981)

Arranging for the six songs that comprised the original tracklist of this EP to all appear on a single release brings to mind the setup of The Usual Suspects. It was a very strong lineup to begin with, but then Rykodisc reissued it two extra tracks, including the band's debut single "Academy Fight Song". An EP just isn't supposed to have two songs of the caliber of "Academy Fight Song" and "That's When I Reach For My Revolver", but then Matador reissued the EP again in 2008, adding another two tracks, this time putting all four bonus tracks at the front. It's more of an album than an EP that way, and it's almost as good as their debut LP Vs, and despite its relative obscurity and lack of easy availability, of theoretically wider appeal, leaning as it does closer to the punk side of post-punk.











Radiohead - My Iron Lung (1994)

Every Radiohead EP after their debut LP is a roundup of b-sides and/or other unreleased tracks, but that's usually not a problem when you're talking about a band whose castoffs are better than most band's album tracks. The songs span a few years; the very Sonic Youthy "Permanent Daylight" had plenty of time to have been included on Pablo Honey (and would have been one of the best songs on it if it had), while "Punchdrunk Lovesick Singalong" looks ahead to the atmosphere of OK Computer.











REM - Chronic Town (1982)

This is probably the most obvious selection here, but justifiably so. Chronic Town is such a clear portent of what was to come that you'd swear REM recorded it after their third album, put "1982" on it and surreptitiously slipped it into record store shelves. If there's one criticism I have of Chronic Town, it's that the mix is a bit timid and reluctant to put the band's obvious talent on full display. Peter Buck's serpentine arpeggios, Mike Mills and Bill Berry's secretly hard working rhythm section and the enigmatic mumble of the young Michael Stipe are all here; Chronic Town isn't a record of a band searching for its sound, it's a record of a band that has found it and is ready to improve on it.











Spoon - Soft Effects (1997)

As great as A Series of Sneaks is, it just doesn't have the energy of Telephono. Soft Effects, released in between those two albums, definitely does. It traverses the entire sphere of the Spoon sound of the time, from the terse pop song "I Could See the Dude" to the fuzz-heavy "Get Out of the State".

Swans - My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky

This is the first Swans album in over a decade. I don't know what their earlier stuff sounds like, but this album sounds like what might have resulted if Iggy Pop had a twin brother, a crazy, reclusive preacher who came out of hiding to record a hardcore album.

He also cooks

I don't know about you, but I could use some comic relief after that last entry.

Nirvana - Radio Friendly Unit Shifter (MTV Live & Loud)

Extempore #5: Paul Hester

Not long after Mark Linkous' suicide this year was the 5th anniversary of the suicide of Crowded House drummer Paul Hester. Every time I see the odd bit of footage, I can't help but think how obvious it was that he was in trouble. He just seemed too happy, as suicide victims often do. Hindsight is 20/20 and I'm not saying anyone in particular failed him, but it's just a shame.

Tame Impala - Innerspeaker

Just when you think Australian music's fixation with everything "retro" couldn't produce anything worse than Jet, you were right, at least for now: Tame Impala takes not sucking to extremes I haven't heard from an Aussie band since Dappled Cities. If you like the sound of Hendrix-style fuzz, delay and the EHX Small Stone with the colour switch up, you're gonna love this shit. Think of John Lennon joining the Jimi Hendrix Experience, taking the lead vocals and sharing the songwriting, and that'll give you some idea of what to expect. That sounds like the greatest thing ever, right? Well yeah, but more importantly, Tame Impala is a band, not a jukebox; they use their chosen aesthetic as a platform from which to launch their original ideas rather than compensate for a lack thereof. And just when you think that aesthetic isn't going to sustain itself long enough, they come up with an interesting innovation such as the brass-sounding guitar in "Alter Ego" which brings to mind Curtis Mayfield's Superfly soundtrack soaked in a particular narcotic that would be a cliche to mention. Basically, holy shit.

Happy Birthday, Kid!

Extempore #4

For the 50th post on this blog, I would just like to say that ZEPPELIN ROCKS!!!

Les Savy Fav - Root for Ruin

Tim Harrington's antics at Les Sav Fav shows are legendary. The first five rows will often get wet, and I ain't takin' about water. The former webmaster of We Want the Airwaves Back, a 5 foot nothing Asian chick, briefly interviewed him immediately post-show for the zine and claims that when she said she couldn't hear him, he grabbed her by the head and spoke directly into her ear. At the show I saw, played in an alley at the Laneway Festival in Sydney, he stripped down to his underwear (dressy by his standards), revealing himself to be covered in fake sunburn and rambled incoherently for a while. During "Rome", he ran through the crowd (directly past me), climbed onto a wall and proceeded to abseil down it with the aid of one of the plants growing at the top. I'm told he didn't stick the landing as well as he appeared to and actually landed on a friend of mine nowhere near capable of supporting his weight. What does he have against short people? Anyway, it was the best festival set I'd ever seen until Neil Young played at the 2009 Big Day Out.

Even when he screams, which he's been doing less and less often these days, Harrington seems so much more restrained and thoughtful on record. Les Savy Fav's music has increasingly emphasised melody since Go Forth, but "Sleepless in Silverlake", which gently floats over the bassline for its duration, would have been inconceivable back then. Still, Root for Ruin rocks harder than 2007's Let's Stay Friends, and does so straight out of the gate with the up tempo "Appetites", which inexplicably borrows its closing phrase "I love you to the max" from Silver Jews' "Punks in the Beerlight".

Root for Ruin continues the holding pattern that Let's Stay Friends started, but is propelled along with the enthusiastic force of Les Savy Fav's early albums. Let's stay friends!

Richard Thompson - Dream Attic

Things haven't changed in the two minutes since I posted that Autolux review; I'm still pissed off about the state of modern rock music. Now a 61 year-old has come along to show all those mediocre practitioners of what passes for rock these days how it's done. They should be fucking embarrassed.

Granted, Richard Thompson is a fucking awesome 61 year-old. As the guitarist for Fairport Convention and a prolific solo artist since, he's made his Stratocaster squeal more times than you've had hot dinners. He's particularly known for transcendent live performances, and while Dream Attic isn't his first live album, it is his first comprised of all new material. I'm making it eligible for my yearly Top 10; right now it's number one and will be tough to budge.

Thompson's albums don't always start auspiciously, and so it is with Dream Attic. "The Money Shuffle" is a decent mid tempo rocker, but little more. Later on, however, the album becomes the best showcase in over a decade of Thompson's serpentine guitar solos. His most popular templates are there: the uptempo rocker ("Demons in Her Dancing Shoes"), the folk throwback ("Sidney Wells"), the mournful, glacially slow dirge ("Crimescene, "If Love Whispers Your Name") and the ridiculously catchy pop song ("Big Sun Falling in the River", which sounds a bit like "Wall of Death"). That is to say that that Thompson doesn't really break any new ground here, but his songwriting and performance are in such fine touch that it doesn't matter.

The deluxe edition comes with guitar and vocal demos of all of the songs - mostly acoustic guitar, vocals and nothing else. It's like having an alternative universe version of the album.

Related:
Richard Thompson - Electric

Autolux - Transit Transit

It's been six years since Autolux's debut Future Perfect helped make 2004 one of the best years of the last decade for music. It wore its influences of the past proudly while pointing to a future golden age of rock music that unfortunately never happened. Were it released today, it would still show up the watered down crap that passes for rock these days, and, presumably, slip under the radar and not inspire anyone to do anything about it.

Transit Transit doesn't start with Carla Azar's speaker-shaking drums. She holds back for the most part this time, but she's still what elevates Autolux from solid to compelling. Transit Transit is slower than Future Perfect and could use maybe one "Turnstile Blues", but it's never ponderous and is one of the most interesting albums to come out in some time. It's Kid A to Future Perfect's OK Computer in a sense, and veers off into Sergeant Pepper's-like tangents were its predecessor was more straightforward. It will be a vital album to sustain me during the impending long, mediocre season of rock.

Nirvana - Icon

I've left that image its original size so you can see the tracklist and thus the pointlessness of this new Nirvana release. Apparently done raiding the vaults (for now), Geffen has once again turned to re-releasing the Nirvana songs we already know. With 20th the anniversaries of Nevermind and In Utero coming up, it seems likely that Geffen will reissue them and probably remaster them as Sub Pop did with Bleach. That's fine, because it's overt. Nobody will deny that they're going back to the well for a quick buck. Just make the reissues look pretty and maybe throw in a live disc and we'll happily fork out for more heavily compressed copies of albums we already own. In the meantime, why not liberate some bootlegs? Live at Reading is fantastic.

These are all the official studio versions, with the exception of the last two, which are culled from the equally widely available Unplugged in New York album, a trick Geffen already pulled on the self-titled compilation from 2002. These versions are all making at least their third appearance on a Nirvana CD (almost all of them having been released as singles) and at least one officially released alternative version exists of each of them.

The redundancy of Icon is one thing - a compilation by definition isn't going to offer you much that you can't hear anywhere else - but more importantly, it fails to adequately summarise Nirvana's career. The acoustic "About a Girl", as is the case on the live album from which it is taken, is the only track from Bleach included; so much for any young prospective fans hoping to get an idea of Nirvana the indie band that drove from its small logging town to Seattle to record an album for $600. So how about the effect that being blasted into the public consciousness had on the band musically? Unfortunately you only get a glossy cross section of In Utero. They left out "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter" because it isn't one; ditto "Milk It" and all the other abrasive songs that hinted at what Nirvana album #4 might have sounded like. For all its faults, Nirvana acknowledged the existence of the 1992 odds 'n' ends collection Incesticide, but the same can't be said for Icon.

Do I think I can do better? Yes I do. My own tracklist follows. Normally I would make it chronological, but I don't think that's necessary for a band with only three studio albums to its name, plus given how overplayed the Nevermind singles are, I found it necessary to separate them in order to make them most effective. This is not a fan's mix, but a genuine attempt at a compilation that provides a cohesive listen while fairly representing the band's catalogue. It should stand alone as an enjoyable listen for anyone who likes it but doesn't wish to pursue the band's music any further, while providing those who do with a good idea of what to expect.

1. Aneurysm (BBC session version)
2. Blew
3. Smells Like Teen Spirit
4. Heart-Shaped Box
5. Negative Creep
6. In Bloom
7. Dumb
8. Dive
9. Radio Friendly Unit Shifter
10. Lithium
11. About a Girl
12. Come As You Are
13. You Know You're Right
14. All Apologies

"Aneurysm" archetypal Nirvana and is a b-side on the "Smells Like Teen Spirit" single. The version in my tracklist, however, is a 1992 BBC session recording included on Incesticide and is considerably superior. "Smells Like Teen Spirit" arrives early on and the listener has already heard three singles before the halfway mark. "Dumb" showcases a "kindler, gentler" Nirvana. "Radio Friendly Unit Shifter" represents the abrasiveness I mentioned earlier and for that reason appears when the listener will have already committed so as not to scare them off. This tracklist provides a balanced selection of tracks(4 songs each from Nevermind and In Utero, 3 from Bleach and 3 non-LP tracks) and can't be said to be a self-indulgent and obscure knee-jerk reaction to Icon - nine of the fourteen tracks have been previously released as the A or B side of a single. For that matter, nine of them appear on Icon in one form or another. It could be leaner, but three more tracks is a small price to pay to get it right.

In conclusion, my proposed compilation rules, while Icon is a piece of shit cash cow that you should physically avoid looking at in music shops. Whether you're a Nirvana-curious pre-teen-to-mid-twenty-something or a Gen X-er who never caught on back in the day and for some reason wants to rectify that now, you're too good for it.

Related:
Nirvana - In Utero (20th Anniversary Edition)
Nirvana - Nevermind (20th Anniversary Edition)

Queens of the Stone Age - Rated R (10th Anniversary Edition)

What is there left to say? It was number 9 in my Top 50 Albums of the Decade and was the dying breath of American hard rock. There's no remaster job on this release, so you wouldn't buy it to replace your original CD or your eight track from the 70s or OKeh Records wax pressing from 1930 or whatever you have. No, the carrot here is a decent bunch of b-sides and a very decent Reading Festival set. Nice, but a DVD would have been nicer.

Black Sabbath - War Pigs (Live in Paris 1970)

Extempore #2

Steel drums: fun to play, horrible to listen to.

Extempore #1

If people had any goddamn sense, Metric would be the biggest band in the world.

The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main Street (Deluxe Edition)

The Rolling Stones made Exile on Main Street for somebody's sins, but not mine. It's a double album in the same way that London Calling and Daydream Nation are double albums: they don't fit onto two sides of vinyl, the dominating format at the time. Double albums often come at the peak of a band's creativity, a time when to put out another dozen or so songs seems like a facile endeavour - it's surprising that the late 60s produced as few as it did, it being at time when an album a year was standard.

Exile on Main Street is many people's favourite Rolling Stones album, but I'll take its predecessor, the concise ten song set Sticky Fingers over it any day. Exile lacks the restless eclecticism of London Calling and with Keith Richards as chief songwriter, doesn't play host to the warring personalities of its members as does The Beatles (The White Album). It doesn't even bother with a concept, as The Wall did, and not much of it is given over to experimentation. Pared down its best tracks, Exile makes a very good single album, but still not one that matches Let It Bleed or Sticky Fingers. "Tumbling Dice" vs "Brown Sugar"? No "dice". "Sweet Black Angel" vs "Wild Horses?" Fuck off.

The Deluxe Edition comes with a bonus disc out outtakes. The quality is surprisingly high for such a disc and demonstrates that the Stones weren't the best judges of their own material; Exile could have been improved by replacing some of its duds with some of these songs, especially "Plundered My Soul".

You might be wondering why I hate Exile on Main Street. That's a question I can't answer, because I don't hate it. I actually like it quite a bit. I just like some other Rolling Stones albums a hell of a lot more.