Music Reviews | Colossal Reviews

Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. by Simon & Garfunkel (Vinyl record album review)

September 6, 2022 By Natan Gesher Leave a Comment

Record basics

Album name: Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.
Group name: Simon & Garfunkel
Year: 1964
Number of discs: one
Label: Columbia Records
Collection: Selman
Buy it on Amazon: $22.98

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I don’t think I’ve ever listened to Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. before, but I reviewed Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme last week, and The Concert in Central Park in May.

What I expected

More folk and folk rock with extensive use of vocal harmonies.

What it was actually like

There was a lot of good material on this record that I hadn’t heard before, such as the title track Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M.. I also thought that You Can Tell the World was pretty good, and I loved the extensive use of banjo in Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream.

Benedictus, on the other hand, sounds roughly like its name would suggest. When I listened to Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme recently, I wondered why these two Ashkenazi boys from Queens were so fixated on Christian imagery in their music, and that clearly is happening on this record as well. Go Tell It on the Mountain wasn’t that bad, though. At least it was an actual folk song.

I was pretty interested to hear the Simon & Garfunkel version of Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a-Changin’ and thought they did a pretty good job with a sort of high-low vocal harmony, and some slight changes to the guitar part from Dylan’s, though of course they don’t have Dylan’s… unusual voice… so while it’s the folkiest thing in the world for them to take Dylan’s song and reinterpret it, I do wonder whether it sounds as authentic coming from them as it did from him.

Not surprisingly, Sound of Silence steals the show on this record, as it’s such a riveting song.

Also, “Thirty dollars pays your rent on Bleecker Street…” Really? It definitely wouldn’t have paid my rent on Bleecker Street when I lived there twenty years ago, and now I think it wouldn’t even pay eight hours of rent in that neighborhood. But yeah, the 1960s was a wild time.

Grade

5/5: love it

Living in the USA by Linda Ronstadt (Vinyl record album review)

September 5, 2022 By Natan Gesher Leave a Comment

Record basics

Album name: Living in the USA
Artist name: Linda Ronstadt
Year: 1978
Number of discs: one
Label: Asylum Records
Collection: Selman
Buy it on Amazon: $89.98

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have no familiarity with this record, but it is the fourth Linda Ronstadt record I’ll have reviewed in the past few months (the others being Different Drum in June, Simple Dreams in July and Prisoner In Disguise in August).

What I expected

My opinion of the previous three Linda Ronstadt records was mixed to somewhat negative, and I want to be optimistic about Living in the USA, but it’s difficult with the extremely art deco / Miami Vice style design.

What it was actually like

Like previous Linda Ronstadt records, Living in the USA was a collection of covers, and I didn’t want to get my hopes up that Back In The U.S.A. would be a nicely done cover of one of my favorite Chuck Berry songs, but wow – she absolutely crushed it (and here is the MC5 version, which should not be missed)! This was the best song on the record by a country mile.

I thought Ronstadt’s version of Doris Troy’s Just One Look was passable, but very much in the way that the bread makes the sandwich, the backing track on her version was all late 1970s syncopated pseudo-rhythm with no character, and that really detracted from her very fine vocals.

Similarly, though I’m not a fan of Elvis Costello’s Alison, I didn’t think that Ronstadt’s version of the song did Costello’s justice, even though Ronstadt’s vocals on it were fine. The use of saxophone was definitely a negative. As I may have mentioned in the past:

I want to stress that rock musicians really need to avoid using saxophone in their music. If you’re Charlie Parker, I want to hear your saxophone part, but in rock I just don’t think there’s a lot of use for it.

The saxophone reappeared in Ooo Baby Baby, which under normal circumstances is a solid song, but I could not stand her version of it, which was way too slow and soft. White Rhythm was shockingly boring, so bad that the police should blast it when dispersing rioters.

I was eager to hear how Ronstadt would tackle Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender because I think it’s a song that really lends itself to interpretation, but unfortunately hers, while basically being true to Elvis’s original, was pretty flat and didn’t really do much.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Tumbleweed Connection by Elton John (Vinyl record album review)

September 4, 2022 By Natan Gesher Leave a Comment

Record basics

Album name: Tumbleweed Connection
Artist name: Elton John
Year: 1970
Number of discs: one
Label: Uni Records
Collection: Selman
Distinguishing characteristics: clipped corner (top right)
Buy it on Amazon: $41.91

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m not familiar with Tumbleweed Connection, but I did previously listen to two other Elton John records, first Caribou and then 11-17-70. I didn’t really enjoy either of them.

What I expected

More heavily produced singer-songwriter 1970s soft rock with extensive use of the piano.

What it was actually like

Tumbleweed Connection definitely had more a country sound than the other Elton John records, particularly on songs like Country Comfort, which kind of went back and forth between what I would consider to be a more classic Elton John style and a whiny country instrumentation. Similarly, Son of Your Father had only the smallest amount of country wah-wah during the verses, and then the chorus went full honky-tonk.

Many parts of the record had an orchestral quality, like towards the end of My Father’s Gun, and others had more than a hint of funk, like Where to Now St. Peter?

Love Song, meanwhile, was a very simple folk style song.

I didn’t care for Tumbleweed Connection any more than I enjoyed Caribou and 11-17-70, but there is another Elton John record coming up in the next few weeks, and there may be more after that.

Grade

2/5: weak, but I was able to listen to the whole thing

The Bitter End Years by Various Artists (Vinyl record album review)

September 3, 2022 By Natan Gesher 1 Comment

Record basics

Album name: The Bitter End Years
Group name: Various Artists
Year: 1974
Number of discs: three
Label: Roxbury Records
Collection: Selman
Buy it on Amazon: $9.99

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m familiar with the Bitter End and have even been there, but didn’t know that this compilation existed.

What I expected

It looks like The Bitter End Years, a three LP set, is divided into three sub-compilations, one on each LP: “early years” of folk music, such as Judy Collins, the Everly Brothers, Phil Ochs and Pete Seeger; “comedy years” including Woody Allen, George Carlin and Joan Rivers; and “rock years” including John Denver, Arlo Guthrie, Curtis Mayfield, Melanie, Bette Midler, Van Morrison and James Taylor. So folk, standup comedy and late 1960s / early 1970s pop music.

What it was actually like

Early years

I really liked the Limelighters’ version of If I Had A Hammer. Tom Rush’s Who Do You Love was also pretty good, though definitely more electric and more of a rock song than folk. Hearing Dodi Li was pretty surprising and it was faithful to the original^[1], though with the addition of some Spanish-style guitar.

I think the worst song from the “early years” has to have been Pete Seeger’s version of Where Have All The Flowers Gone, which has always been one of my least favorites.

Comedy years

There was nothing particularly funny about any of this “comedy.” Low points included the joke that Richard Nixon’s face looked like a foot, as well as the extended Godfather parody that would be right at home on “Saturday Night Live” of the early 2000s. I guess the William F. Buckley, Jr. impression was the funniest part.

Rock years

This collection of songs was so weird. There were twelve songs on this LP and, with one glaring exception, I was unfamiliar with all of them. Why would they have chosen second-rate and somewhat unknown songs for this compilation? Some kind of licensing issue?

The exception, of course, was Van Morrison’s Brown Eyed Girl, a childhood favorite of mine and the best song on the record by far.

Curtis Mayfield’s Gypsy Woman and the Isley Brothers’ Pop That Thang were the worst and didn’t qualify as rock at all… though I guess it only says “rock years” and doesn’t explicitly say anywhere that there wouldn’t have been funk songs from the rock years. But yeah, that was strange.

Another thing that was odd, and this is true of both the “early years” and the “rock years” LPs, is that none of the songs were live recordings, let alone live recordings from the Bitter End. Instead, they were all studio versions. I kind of assumed that, this being a celebration of a specific club, the songs on it would have had something specific to do with that club.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

References[+]

References
↑1	Well, maybe not to the original original, but to the XX century original.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme by Simon and Garfunkel (Vinyl record album review)

September 2, 2022 By Natan Gesher Leave a Comment

Record basics

Album name: Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme
Group name: Simon and Garfunkel
Year: 1966
Number of discs: one
Label: Columbia Records
Collection: Selman
Distinguishing characteristics: “DEMONSTRATION / NOT FOR SALE” stamped on back of album
Buy it on Amazon: $22.98

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m pretty sure that I’ve never listened to Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme before, but as I mentioned when I reviewed The Concert in Central Park a few months ago, I do know a decent amount of 1960s-era Simon and Garfunkel.

What I expected

Folk and folk rock with extensive use of vocal harmonies.

What it was actually like

I loved this record’s versions of the Simon and Garfunkel classics Scarborough Fair (though I’m not sure what they meant by “canticle” and why this pair of Ashkenazi Jews from Queens felt the need to superimpose so much Christian imagery on their essentially secular folk record) and Homeward Bound – the arrangements were very solid.

In general, of the songs that I didn’t previously recognize from The Graduate and such, I found them basically ok, if lacking in any pop-catchiness.

A Simple Desultory Philippic (or How I Was Robert McNamara’d into Submission) was definitely cute, and I do think they managed to capture and represent the essence of Bob Dylan, but I also think that it didn’t succeed as a Bob Dylan parody in the way that Rocky Raccoon did, because it was just too exaggerated. Dylan himself is so exaggerated that the right way to satirize him is with a bit of subtlety.

7 O’Clock News/Silent Night substantially detracted from the overall quality of the record, and I think that if Simon and Garfunkel wanted, for some reason, to record a Christmas carol, then they just should have done that and played it straight, rather than trying to make an awful and obnoxious point with the “7 O’Clock News” bit. I get that they were trying to be creative and clever, but it’s not like they invented juxtaposition.

Grade

4/5: would listen again