Queen - Live at the Rainbow 74 (2014)

Queen Live at the Rainbow 74 is a newly released live album of Queen’s two 1974 shows at the famous Rainbow theatre in London, shows which took place during the bands Queen II tour in March which forms the basis of disc one, and the Sheer Heart Attack tour in November which features on disc two. The recordings capture the band at their hard rocking and theatrical best, when they were really just unknown novices and before they had broken through into the mainstream. The concerts were originally supposed to be released as a live album at the time but instead were put on the backburner with the band deciding to focus instead on the recording of their seminal album A Night at the Opera. Now forty years later, the original tapes have been re-mastered and polished up and boy oh boy do they sound good, with a crystal clear sound and fantastic mix which means you can actually here the individual instruments. This is something you don’t always get with live albums where often the sound is a bit muddled and not always the best. I am sure some pitch correction and other such things have gone on to get the sound up to a modern standard, but this is all in the name of getting a great sounding modern day historical release.

As for the material on this album, well the focus is the band’s first three albums Queen, Queen II, and Sheer Heart Attack, albums which if you know anything about early Queen are very heavy and quite progressive, something which may surprise people who only know Queen through their big late-70s and 80s hits. There are big vocals a-plenty as Mercury flexes is range, theatrics and banter with the crowd, something that occurs between each song and is a pleasure to listen to, heavy guitars, and a thunderous rhythm section courtesy of John Deacon and Roger Taylor, a somewhat underrated pairing. Song-wise, the highlights are for me mostly on disc one, the March concert with the band playing some stellar versions of tracks from their first two albums. There is the anthemic “Father To Son”, the early metal of “Ogre Battle”, the Sabbath-esque sounding “Son And Daughter”, along with two great versions of “Seven Seas Of Rhye”, “Liar” and a fantastic rollicking cover of rock and roll classic “Jailhouse Rock”. Disc two for me is the lesser of the two discs, but still captures great versions of the likes of “Keep Yourself Alive”, “Stone Cold Crazy” and “In The Lap of The Gods Revisited”. What is amazing about the material overall is how heavy Queen sounded in their early years, a sound far removed from what they became most-famous for later on. I would go as far in saying as a new band on the scene in 1974 following in the footsteps of the likes of Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, The Who and Black Sabbath, they certainly were footing it with the big boys of British heavy rock that had come before.

In conclusion, Live at the Rainbow 74 is a fantastic sounding record and offers up a great insight into early-Queen, a period in their career which has not really received much attention, especially in terms of re-releases. People forget Queen started as a hard rock band and this album does a great job in capturing their early sound. For people not familiar with the early part of the bands career, some of the material might fall a bit flat at times just because of their often theatrical and progressive nature both lyrically and musically, but this does not get in the way of what is a great 70s rock and roll show, featuring a band throwing everything they had in their arsenal out there on the stage. Little did they know that this was just the start of something much, much bigger to come, but as this albums shows, the marker was being laid down in a big way. 

A

- Sam 

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - CSNY 1974 (2014)

CSNY 1974 is the newly-released, retrospective live album of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s infamous 1974 stadium tour, a tour which many rock historians consider to be the first major stadium rock tour. This live retrospective is being released in several formats, something which is pretty standard these days for nostalgia releases like this one. I managed to get my hands on the cheaper single disc release, although you can upgrade to the more expensive deluxe and super deluxe editions which contain multiple discs of the entire set-list, as well as god knows what else. What’s the point I say unless you are a collector, or like to look at photocopies of old tickets. For me anyway a standard one disc version does the trick just nicely.

The tracks on this album were recorded at various concerts across the tour and according to Graham Nash who supervised and helped produce this release, some cutting and pasting of songs took place, although you wouldn’t know from listening as the production and sound quality is pretty good I must say. This comes as a relief as there is nothing worse than a live album with poor sound quality, something which is often the case with live albums, especially from decades gone by where the technology was not as good.

So what is the music like? I for one was quite intrigued when I heard this album was coming out as I have always thought about how CSNY would sound live, given how good they sound on record. Thankfully there is plenty on here to satisfy and interest the listener and there are little moments which do make the listener take notice. For example, one thing I did like was hearing Young’s backing vocals on tracks he did not originally appear on. So obviously I am talking CSN tracks here and some of the solo material from the other three. Likewise, it was great hearing Crosby, Stills & Nash sing in harmony together on Young’s solo stuff, “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and “Old Man” were two particular standouts. The ending to “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” provided one of the high points of the album when the four of them sang the final verse a cappella in what can only be described as a spine tingling moment. The version on here of “Teach Your Children” was also another great moment, with the voices moulding so well together, something which in itself amazes me considering the noise that would come from playing in front of fifty-plus thousand people. Album closer “Ohio” was the icing on the cake. A stellar version which included some amazing guitar dulling between Stills and Young, two six-string maestros going at full tilt in what really was a moment of 70s rock ecstasy and the perfect way to end on.

All in all a very interesting retrospective look into CSNY live as they were in 1974, and as they could have continued to be if they actually liked each other. As a live recording it’s not going to blow any of the great live albums out of the water, but there were some nice moments amidst some lesser ones as well, something which maybe comes down to song quality and the difference between Stills and Young, who are frankly better song-writers, and the other two. In the end definitely worthwhile as an historical exercise and worth a release, all be it forty years later. 

B 

- Sam 

Tom Waits - The Heart of Saturday Night (1974)

The Heart of Saturday Night was the second album by American singer-songwriter Tom Waits. Released in 1974, this album saw Waits begin to branch out musically from the more L.A. singer-songwriter style he explored on his first album Closing Time to a more jazzy/bluesy style, or what I like to describe as sleazy night club jazz. Waits take on jazz as seen on this album was a style which he would perfect throughout the seventies and that would bring him notoriety amongst music critics and fans alike.

The jazz/blues sound of The Heart of Saturday Night is characterised mainly by Waits gradually developing gravelly voice, something that would become one of his biggest assets and musical trademarks, although there is still a lighter texture to his voice on this record in comparison to his later records. His voice combines nicely with jazz arrangements that include piano, double bass, drums, horns and even strings on the more sombre pop tracks. Ultimately it is this combination that gives this album that seedy night club/backstreet ally way feel that conveys to the listener scenes of drunks, hookers and bohemians, or should I say the outcasts of American society. One track “The Heart of Saturday Night” even contains sound effects of a car horn and traffic. It is this setting which Waits also addresses in the lyrics with the songs in a way appearing like little poetic depictions of the world of late night bars and city streets. “Depot, depot what am I doing here”, “looking for the heart of Saturday night”, and “tight-slacked clad girls on the graveyard shift” are just some of the lyrical examples which Waits conveys to the listener to describe the underbelly of 1970s America. Jack Kerouac and the beatniks are also an influence on the material on this album, with Waits on a couple of tracks “Diamonds on My Windshield” and “Ghosts of Saturday Night” not singing but instead reciting the verses backed by jazzy accompaniments. The music on this album and indeed later releases would be heavily influenced by beatniks such as Kerouac, with Waits especially taken by the idea of fusing spoken word and jazz together.

Although the overall jazz feel of this album flows quite nicely, there are a few tracks which standout for me on here. Opening track “New Coat of Paint” is very jazzy and a contender for best song on the album, while it showcases Waits ability on the piano with a style of playing reminiscent of Fats Domino. “San Diego Serenade” is a beautiful ballad which captures Waits at his most soulful, while “Fumblin with the Blues” is probably the bluesiest track on the album. Finally album closer “Drunk on the Moon” is a souring jazz song which features delicate piano playing and a mid-song free jazz jam in what is definitely a fitting song to end the album.

This album set the tone for the rest of the decade for Waits during his beatnik/jazz period, although it is stylistically very different from his more experimental work of the 80s and 90s, in fact almost unrecognisable if you compare the two periods. Music critics seemingly also warmed to this album, with Rolling Stone magazine placing it at number 339 in its list of the top 500 albums of all time, Waits highest placing on that list. Musically it is a very nice listen highlighting his interest in the beat generation and jazz, as well as showcasing his ability as a singer, songwriter, and arranger. In conclusion then, The Heart of Saturday Night is well worth a night time listen with wine in hand, and is a good place to start for those who want to get in to this great musician.

A-

- Sam

The Meters - Rejuvenation (1974)

In the 1970s, The Meters were one of the leading rhythm & blues/funk acts doing the rounds in America at a time when there was an explosion of funk, soul and R&B going on, and acts such as Stevie Wonder, Cutis Mayfield and Parliament/Funkadelic were in their prime. Originally from New Orleans, The Meters not only performed and recorded their own energetic and highly charged style of R&B/funk, but also played as backing musicians for acts such as Dr. John and Allen Toussaint, and were amazingly talented musicians in their own right. The band’s style was heavily influenced by their home town New Orleans and was characterised by the extensive use of piano and organ, horns, and a strong emphasis placed on syncopated rhythms which gave their sound an underlying funk feel. This hybrid of funk and R&B has often been described as New Orleans R&B, and as a style was best represented on their 1974 release Rejuvenation, which is the album that I now turn.

Rejuvenation is a high class mix of funk and R&B, serving as a showcase for the individual band members and their talents as players. One thing you cannot miss when listening to this album is how good these guys are as musicians and notably how their individual talents are so important in coming together as one whole unit to create this groove based funk-R&B hybrid. There’s Art Neville’s funky keyboard playing and bluesy organ of which both feature strongly throughout, George Porter Jrs. bass playing and Zigaboo Modeliste’s drumming which gives many of the tracks a strong syncopated rhythmic feel, and Leo Nocentelli’s funky guitar. These guys lock in together so well as a band on this album that they could in fact go down as one of the tightest bands in history, a tightness and musical harmony that is best seen on the albums centrepiece “It Ain’t No Use”, a twelve minute epic that contains a seven minute free-jam section. The quality of the playing on this album means that the Neville Brothers soulful vocals are often overshadowed by the instrumental backing and don’t feature as prominently as they probably should. However with this in mind I guess apart from the really good vocalists within this genre this is probably the norm especially considering the heavy focus that is placed on instrumentation, rhythm, and free-jamming.

As individuals songs go on this album, the highlights for me included album opener “People Say”, the soulful “Love Is for Me”, “It Ain’t No Use”, and the piano driven “Loving You Is on My Mind”, however this album is less about the individual songs and more about the quality playing and musicianship. The emphasis on great song-writing or lyrical genius is minimal on here, but this is definitely excusable when you consider the singing and lyrics are pretty much just there to support the brilliant playing.  With this in mind it then comes as no real surprise that these guys were such in demand backing musicians within the R&B genre, and in many ways you could describe them as being the 1970s version of The Roots, just a thought anyway.

Although the album wasn’t a success commercially, I have no doubt it would have resonated strongly within the R&B/soul community at the time, while the band’s sound would surely have had an influence on many future soul, funk and R&B acts. This albums prominent position within the music community especially amongst critics is also seen in that it was ranked 138 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Overall Rejuvenation is a fantastic album with an immensely groovy vibe thanks to the incredible playing on display. I could not recommend it more and suggest it would be worth a listen for those into 70s R&B/funk as well as to all those who like to grove, something this album has plenty of.  

A

- Sam

John Lennon - Walls and Bridges (1974)

Released in 1974, John Lennon’s fifth solo album post-The Beatles “Walls and Bridges” should in many ways have a best of the rest title imposed on it. “John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band” and “Imagine” were by far and away better than anything else he would produce during his solo career, but “Walls and Bridges” as an album comes in comfortably in third place. Written, recorded and released during his separation from Yoko or what was better known as Lennon’s “Lost Weekend”, “Walls and Bridges” is a very open and honest record with Lennon portraying through the music his emotions and feelings at the time.

Lyrically, Lennon addresses a whole number of topics in the songs but by in large focuses in on maturity and ageing, while also having time to express his feelings towards the two main women in his life. “Going Down on Love” and “Bless You” explores his relationship with Yoko and their separation at the time, while “Surprise Surprise (Sweet Bird of Paradox)” is a song written about his lover at the time May Pang. Apart from relationships and love, Lennon also has time for Allen Klein in “Steel and Glass” in what is a sort of “How Do You Sleep” take two, the ills of show business in “Nobody Loves You (When You’re Down and Out)”, and his fear of ageing and loneliness in the haunting “Scared”. The range of themes on display in the songs in many ways signify a man coming to terms with his maturity but also seem to paint a picture of a man lost and depressed within a “lost weekend”.  It therefore should be of no coincidence that shortly after the album’s release Lennon was to be reunited with Yoko after a separation that lasted around eighteen months. The album has quite a slick 1970s New York feel to it and is very over-produced with layers of strings lining the songs as well as carefully constructed piano and horn arrangements. Stylistically, “Walls and Bridges” sticks largely to a standard mid-70s pop/rock formula with a mix of ballads such as “Old Dirt Road” and up-tempo numbers including “Whatever Gets You thru the Night” featuring Elton John on backing vocals. Although throughout the album there are splashes of sexy jazz “Bless You” and an underlying R&B feel that includes a soulful edginess to Lennon’s vocal delivery in what is a standout on the album.

The one main criticism I have of this album is its production. It is too over-produced as an album, something that seemed to be in vogue throughout the 70s amongst musicians in the rock/pop hybrid genre and what became a common feature of Lennon’s material post-Imagine. The slickness of the production I feel at times is quite contrived and appears unnecessary, especially as the quality of the songs could have come through better without a dense background of strings and horns. I would have plugged for a more “Plastic Ono Band” stripped back feel to allow the rawness and feeling in the lyrics to come through more. On the other hand I shouldn’t be surprised as Lennon had been working with Phil Spector at the time, someone whom he respected as a producer and who’s “Wall of Sound” recording technique is built around the idea of records being over-produced with layers of instruments. Despite this criticism, “Walls and Bridges” remains a favourite Lennon album for me, and as a collection of songs is definitely the best he would do post-Imagine. Its historical significance is also worth noting in that it was recorded during a critical period in his life where he was away from Yoko for an extended period, while it was also his last album of original material for five years during which he would take a self imposed exile from music lasting until 1980.

 

B+

 

- Sam

Neil Young - On the Beach (1974)

After the success of his previous album “Harvest” propelled him to the status of megastar, Neil Young took a massive change of direction on his next studio release “On the Beach”. The long awaited follow up to “Harvest” was interestingly enough recorded after what would be his 1975 release “Tonight’s the Night”, but released before that album in 1974 and stylistically was a big departure from the commercially successful folk rock sound he had perfected on both “After the Gold Rush” and “Harvest”. “On the Beach” is quite a dark, bleak sounding record both lyrically and musically, as Young lays bare for all to see his feelings about the 1960s counterculture, as well as the 1970s music industry on what is largely a bare bones rock record amidst small splatterings of acoustic folk just to keep the purists happy.

Young is quite savage in places as he takes aim at various people (largely unnamed) from his life during the previous few years. Some of the people he has it in for on this album include the critics and music press who he mentions on “Motion Pictures” singing the line “all these headlines just bore me now”, big business in the music industry “For the Turnstiles” and the counterculture “Ambulance Blues” with the famous line “You’re all just pissing in the wind”. On the whole, “On the Beach” could have been Young’s way of saying to the fans and critics alike how he didn’t care what they thought of him, this after  the preceding “Tonight’s the Night” tour got bad press and a lukewarm reaction, with Young being derided for playing mostly new material and hardly anything from “Harvest”. By this stage it was fair to say Young had long given up caring what people thought of him or his music, a belief that comes through strongly on “On the Beach”.

Musically “On the Beach” is a very sparse and under-produced sounding album, something which in many ways lends itself well to the subject matter in the songs. There is not much going on here musically, which is a good thing in this case as the songs do not need much in the way of virtuosity or brilliant instrumental escapades. In fact the music on the album in many ways is just a support act for what Young has to say in the lyrics. The backing instrumentation is minimal in terms of sound and musical exploration, working well as a subtle addition underneath the strong and vivid themes portrayed in the lyrics. The quality of the songs comes through in their subtle nature and I feel that if Young went all hell for leather with wailing guitar solos and extended jams like he has a tendency to do on occasion, the same intimacy and connection these songs portray to the listener would not nearly have the same effect.

Despite not being commercially successful at the time, “On the Beach” has become a favourite Neil Young album amongst fans and critics. For a couple of decades On the Beach even became a cult like record in that it became a rare collector’s item after it had stopped being printed during the 1980s.  The fanfare and longing for this record came to a head in 2000 when 5000 people signed an online petition to have the album released on CD, a request which Young eventually responded to in kind with the album finally getting it’s long overdue CD release in 2003. “On the Beach” is one of Neil Young’s best albums (all be it quite underrated it seems) and contains some of his best songs. Here he is drawing a line in the sand with his life and says goodbye to the 1960s generation he was very much part of, rejecting rock stardom and the counterculture in the process. “On the Beach” is a nice little collection of songs (eight in total) and is worth a listen if you are a Neil Young fan, or a curious rock fan looking for something new to listen to. I thoroughly recommend it.

 

High A-

 

- Sam