3/5 Reviews | Colossal Reviews

Flat Top and Pin Drop by Bruce Springsteen (Vinyl record album review)

August 31, 2022 By Natan Gesher Leave a Comment

Record basics

Album name: Flat Top and Pin Drop
Artist name: Bruce Springsteen
Year: 1975
Number of discs: two
Label: Exodus Records
Collection: Selman
Distinguishing characteristics: “SELMAN” written in blue ink on top left of album
Buy it on Ebay: $691.00

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve never heard of this record, which doesn’t appear to have been a standard live album released through normal channels. I guess it might have been a bootleg?

What I expected

As I mentioned a few months ago when I reviewed Bruce Springsteen’s Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., I’m not really a fan of his work. But maybe this will be the record that turns me into a Springsteen fan?

What it was actually like

To begin, the song names printed on the two LPs’ four sides did not appear to have anything to do with the actual songs that were part of this record, leading me to be a bit more certain that this record may not be “official” – though from pictures online, it certainly looks legitimate, despite not being present in Amazon or Wikipedia.

Flat Top and Pin Drop was a live album that sounded like a recording of one concert, though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was parts of multiple concerts that all made the cut. The audio quality was not great, and I could barely follow Springsteen’s extensive discourse during Pretty Flamingo and at other parts of the record. I suppose it could probably use a remastering or something.

The concert itself sounds like it was a super fun affair for the band and the audience, with just the right amount of chaos. It’s always cool to listen to the differences between how bands play songs live versus how they sound coming straight out of a studio – some songs are purely studio creations, and to perform them for an audience, they have to be reworked extensively, while others really only make sense when they’re played live, and a studio recording is just a hint at a song’s real sound. Born To Run is a good example in this case of a song that was performed pretty tightly, making it sound a lot like – and arguably much better than – whatever version I’ve always heard, leading me to believe that it’s essentially a live song.

Anyway, as I may have mentioned once or twice 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.

So ultimately I didn’t come away from Flat Top and Pin Drop a Springsteen fan. Spirit In The Night was an example of a song that I didn’t mind at all, as it was enough of a jazz song that the saxophone didn’t distract me.

I also loved the closing medley at the end of side four, with a very serviceable Devil With The Blue Dress On, as well as a short but strong Wooly Bully, and a quite impressive take on Little Richard’s Good Golly, Miss Molly.

Also, here is the Good Golly, Miss Molly scene from the educational cinematic masterpiece King Ralph, starring John Goodman.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits! (Vinyl record album review)

August 30, 2022 By Natan Gesher Leave a Comment

Record basics

Album name: Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits!
Artist name: Frank Sinatra
Year: 1968
Number of discs: one
Label: Reprise Records
Collection: Selman
Buy it on Amazon: $94.95

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I listened to The Best Of Frank Sinatra a few months ago and didn’t really like it; that’s the only time in my life that I ever intentionally listened to his music.

What I expected

Same as before, I guess: smooth, jazzy vocals for my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations. But maybe I’ll find some songs on this one that I enjoy?

What it was actually like

I actually recognized a couple of songs on this Frank Sinatra compilation, starting with Strangers in the Night, which wasn’t terrible.

It Was a Very Good Year was another song that I knew, because it’s indelibly seared into my memory from the opening montage of the fist episode of the second season of The Sopranos, which is available to watch on Youtube^[1].

This Town was all right, but the background vocals on Softly, as I Leave You were horrible and sounded like a choir or something. Forget Domani was probably the worst song and sounded extremely gimmicky.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

References[+]

References
↑1	Also, if you’re thinking about putting perfume in your hair, don’t do it.

11-17-70 by Elton John (Vinyl record album review)

August 23, 2022 By Natan Gesher Leave a Comment

Record basics

Album name: 11-17-70
Artist name: Elton John
Year: 1971
Number of discs: one
Label: MCA Records
Collection: Selman
Distinguishing characteristics:
- Sticker with “J-8-4” and “1971(2)”
- Sticker with something crossed out
- Sticker with “J” (presumably for filing under John, Elton)
Buy it on Amazon: $8.99

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m not familiar with this live record or the songs on it, with the exception of the Rolling Stones’ Honky Tonk Women.

What I expected

Bad Elton John music.

What it was actually like

I really am not an Elton John fan, as I may have mentioned when I reviewed Caribou, but I actually have to give him a lot of credit for doing a good job on 11-17-70.

I didn’t really care for much of it and won’t listen again, but the parts of it that had a more rock sound, such as the fast bits of Burn Down the Mission (and working the Beatles’ Get Back into it, medley style), were quite decent.

Take Me to the Pilot was also good in that way, and the best song on the record was his version of Honky Tonk Women, which I thought could easily hold its own against how the Stones did it.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

A Child’s Garden of Grass: A Pre-Legalization Comedy by Jack S. Margolis (Vinyl record album review)

August 20, 2022 By Natan Gesher Leave a Comment

Record basics

Album name: A Child’s Garden of Grass: A Pre-Legalization Comedy
Artist name: Jack S. Margolis, with Jere Alan Brian and Ron Jacobs
Year: 1971
Number of discs: one
Label: Elektra Records
Collection: Brenner / Gessner
Distinguishing characteristics: “G” written on top left of album, indicating that my father owned it
Buy it on Amazon: $131.00

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

Ummm. I’m familiar with “grass,” but this record is new to me.

What I expected

I have no idea.

What it was actually like

I guess to begin, despite its name, this record is not suitable for children – and not just on account of its primary subject matter, but also because parts of it would definitely be rated NC-17.

So what is its main subject matter? Let’s just say that in order to get the full experience of listening to “A Child’s Garden of Grass: A Pre-Legalization Comedy,” I first ingested a certain medicinal herb. As a result, it was difficult to keep my mind from wandering at times, until the sound effects returned.

Wait, what sound effects? This was a humor record, and one of the main approaches to humor of Jack S. Margolis (with Jere Alan Brian and Ron Jacobs) seems to have been goofiness, including a more than healthy dose of weird sound effects and silly voices, with lots of accent work, which is how you know it’s classy humor.

Just kidding. It was kind of like an audio recording of some sort of cringe avant-garde “theatre,” in which all aspects of marijuana use are explained to an audience of bourgeois naïfs, except that the real audience is the counter-culture. So to be clear, this was a comically half-assed extended insult of working class people, masquerading as critique of middle class culture and traditional values. They’re so uncool and easily swayed by advertising! Can you believe that?

I don’t understand why my parents’ generation had to be quite so weird, why they felt the need to subject their own parents and children to what is the very definition of cringe. I also don’t understand how Jack S. Margolis, Jere Alan Brian and Ron Jacobs didn’t die of the giggles while recording and editing “A Child’s Garden of Grass: A Pre-Legalization Comedy,” since they seem to have found their navel-gazing so insanely funny (one example: it was as if they had just invented the ability to record something in stereo, and took advantage of every opportunity to share the miracle of stereo recording with the audience).

Warning: don’t make any serious attempt to listen to “A Child’s Garden of Grass: A Pre-Legalization Comedy” without the aid of a certain medicinal herb. Also, beware that it ends with a whimper.

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

Hooligans by The Who (Vinyl record album review)

August 16, 2022 By Natan Gesher Leave a Comment

Record basics

Album name: Hooligans
Group name: The Who
Year: 1981
Number of discs: two
Label: MCA Records
Collection: Brenner / Gessner
Who owned it: I think I bought this one!
Buy it on Amazon: $10.99

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’ve been a fan of the Who for decades, and I’m pretty sure that this record was part of my parents’ collection because I bought it and left it in their basement (as I never owned a turntable until my parents gave me theirs when they moved). It’s a compilation and I know most of the songs on it, especially the earlier songs, but I don’t have any clear memory of ever listening to it.

What I expected

Four sides of The Who, but focusing much more on their 1970s era music than on their earlier eras.

What it was actually like

If you name your band “the Who,” you’re obviously doing it for the puns, and for other people to use a lot of puns about you. In this case, the name of the record, “Hooligans,” is an obvious example, and then to take it a step further, they even named the four sides “First Bunch of Hooligans,” “Second Bunch…,” &c.

First Bunch of Hooligans

This was the most varied and excellent side, covering a very small sampling of their Maximum R&B era (I Can’t Explain), extending through the “Tommy” era (Pinball Wizard) and “Live at Leeds”^[1] (Summertime Blues). I have always loved the Who’s reinterpretation of Summertime Blues as a hard rock song.

The Relay was the only song I didn’t already know, and also the only song I didn’t enjoy.

Second Bunch of Hooligans

It’s just four songs from Who’s Next (Baba O’Riley, Behind Blue Eyes, Bargain and The Song Is Over), so it might be easier just to read what I wrote when I listened to it last month.

Third Bunch of Hooligans

Slip Kid is an astonishingly bad song, and in fact, this is really the era of the Who that I enjoy much less, and I know very little about it – as far as I’m concerned, there was redeeming value in “Quadrophenia,” but so much of their work from the mid 1970s was highly questionable.

Join Together and Squeeze Box are both good, but I have a difficult time listening to Squeeze Box because it’s so over the top. The Real Me was also all right.

Fourth Bunch of Hooligans

I did not like side four of this double LP.

Who Are You is annoying, but doesn’t really bother me, except that it’s somehow treated as one of the Who’s better known and/or more important songs, but all three other songs – Drowned, Had Enough and Sister Disco were abysmal. Rock bands should not play disco music, period. And with extremely rare exceptions, such as “Who’s Next,” they should just avoid any and all techno music.

I really wish The Who had retired after “Quadrophenia.”

Grade

3/5: interesting, but not for me

References[+]

References
↑1	“Live at Leeds” is a desert island record for me, and that was probably what I was listening to on repeat, on the CD player in my mother’s Volvo, around the time that I bought “Hooligans.” I’m guessing it would have been around summer 2000, at the used record store around East Gude Drive in Rockville.