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Something / Anything? by Todd Rundgren (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Something / Anything?
  • Artist name: Todd Rundgren
  • Year: 1972
  • Number of discs: two
  • Label: Bearsville Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon: $65.84

Something / Anything? by Todd Rundgren

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have heard of Todd Rundgren, but don’t know anything about him.

What I expected

Folk rock.

What it was actually like

This was a really bad record, and I strongly disliked it. As a double record, it was also way too long, and I couldn’t make it through the whole thing.

A lot of it was what I would call easy listening, such as It Wouldn’t Have Made Any Difference, Cold Morning Light, Sweeter Memories and Torch Song.

Various parts were R&B, such as I Saw the Light, which was not bad at all and had pretty good rock guitar.

Other parts were more progressive rock, such as Breathless, which had some techno.

The Night the Carousel Burned Down was very slightly Oompa Loompa, and sort of in the genre of Faul’s granny shit, except nowhere near as good.

To describe Song of the Viking, just imagine if Monty Python had decided to write and record a song with that title, and that’s what Rundgren’s song would be like (musically, it sounded like Kaveret, though).

Couldn’t I Just Tell You was a 1970s stadium rock song, but very poppy.

Little Red Lights was crappy proto-metal, atonal noise and extremely unpleasant.

Side 4 started with a cover of Money (That’s What I Want) that sounded like a studio demo, not a serious recording, and I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t just record it for real to include on the record.

Grade

1/5: horrible enough that I couldn’t make it through

Innervisions by Stevie Wonder (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Innervisions
  • Artist name: Stevie Wonder
  • Year: 1973
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Tamla Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: both of my parents thought that the other had owned this
  • Buy it on Amazon: $36.55

Innervisions by Stevie Wonder

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I don’t know a whole lot about Stevie Wonder, except that he’s blind. Also, my parents said that this record was extremely popular and that everyone had it, and they referred to him as “Little Stevie Wonder” when I said that I would be listening to it.

What I expected

Soul.

What it was actually like

I thought that I would like this record a lot, but actually I hated it! There was a strong funk sound to much of it, but so much of funk is wonderfully melodic and harmonic, while so many of these songs, like the first two, Too High and Visions, were almost atonally unpleasant.

Living for the City was more of a rhythmic soul song, but with a thumping techno sound (without getting too Oompa Loompa). Golden Lady was also soul, but incredibly boring.

He’s Misstra Know-It-All was also pretty boring, with sort of a soft piano lounge sound, and without the vocals I might have mistaken it for elevator music.

All in Love Is Fair was a terrible piano jazz love song.

Don’t You Worry ’bout a Thing was kind of similar, except with a Caribbean sound. Without that island vibe, this song was more like what I expected the whole record to be.

It turned out that I recognized Higher Ground, a pretty famous funk-sounding song that I thought was good. I never realized that it was a Stevie Wonder song, but now that I know, it’s my favorite Stevie Wonder song by far.

Grade

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

The First Songs by Laura Nyro (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: The First Songs
  • Artist name: Laura Nyro
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Verve Forecast
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon: $134.00

The First Songs by Laura Nyro

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have no familiarity at all with Laura Nyro.

What I expected

Acoustic singer-songwriter.

What it was actually like

Well, this definitely wasn’t what I had in mind when I anticipated “acoustic singer-songwriter,” though it may technically have been right. Laura Nyro’s voice on this record was remarkable, and I had to look it up to find out, but she was around just 17[1] when she recorded this in 1966. It’s hard to believe that a teenager could have made these, and it sounds like she might have lived at least twice and maybe three times as long as she actually had.

So what was the style? Most of the songs had a sort of timeless, ageless, jazzy or bluesy lounge act sound, while several of them flipped to the style of a Motown or R&B girl group that’s deeply rooted in its period (early to mid 1960s) and its members’ ages (within a few years of 20).

The first set included Billy’s Blues, I Never Meant to Hurt You, He’s a Runner and Buy and Sell, the last of which was a love song to cocaine – and let’s remember that Nyro was 17 years old when singing it, and might have been even younger when she wrote it. These were my least favorite.

Lazy Susan started out that way, but picked up nicely, and I thought I would like it, but the harmonica was a big distraction. And When I Die, on the other hand, did the same thing, starting out slow and getting faster, and I loved it.

California Shoeshine Boys was much more upbeat, and was one where I thought the harmonica was great, making it my favorite song on the record. Blowin Away, while not as fast, had a similar style, and it felt like Nyro was doing the work of an entire mid 1960s girl group. Wedding Bell Blues also had a great R&B sound.

It was during Stoney End that it occurred to me what I liked so much about this group of songs: it’s not that they sounded innocent at all – nothing about any of this was innocent – but that it didn’t seem to have any of the cynicism that was already seeping into popular music around this time.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

References

References
↑1 If you know what I mean…

Affectionately Melanie (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: Affectionately Melanie
  • Artist name: Melanie
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Buddah Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my mother
  • Buy it on Amazon[1] : $34.69

Affectionately Melanie

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I’m not familiar with this record, but several months ago I listened to Candles in the Rain, which Melanie recorded after this, and I rated it 4/5.

What I expected

Folk and folk rock.

What it was actually like

This was a good record, less folk than I anticipated, but with a lot more soul style. I liked Melanie’s childlike voice throughout and her vocal adventurousness, but I did not like that the second side was a bit scratchy.

Soul Sister Annie was a standout with a blues style and a bit of soul, good guitars and drums, pretty slow, and I thought that it still would have been a strong song without the vocals, but that the vocal part was great.

Uptown Down was another song that was very interesting to me, since at the beginning I thought it was going to be a soul song, but the verses sounded almost like a kind of proto-rap, which was not what I expected to be hearing on a record from the late 1960s. The very slowly sung chorus was a little weak, though.

Beautiful People is the song that Melanie got famous for performing at Woodstock, and I thought it was fine, but I’m not such a fan of it.

For My Father and Baby Guitar were two more that were pretty simple, but substantially elevated by recording them as soul songs instead of folk, which I enjoyed a lot. I also really liked the guitar distortions and choppy piano at the end of the latter.

One song that I couldn’t figure out was Any Guy, which sounded a bit like musical theater – she sung it in her own very distinctive voice and vocal style, but with kind of a different accent.

Grade

4/5: would listen again

References

References
↑1 I’m not sure why, but the album cover on my copy appears to be a different version. Maybe there was a later pressing? Or maybe one of the versions was made to be more limited and/or special than the other?

I Stand Alone by Al Kooper (Vinyl record album review)

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Record basics

  • Album name: I Stand Alone
  • Artist name: Al Kooper
  • Year: 1969
  • Number of discs: one
  • Label: Columbia Records
  • Collection: Brenner / Gessner
  • Who owned it: my father
  • Buy it on Amazon: $3.99

I Stand Alone by Al Kooper

My review

Level of familiarity before listening

I have no familiarity with Al Kooper.

What I expected

I would have guessed folk, but my mother said this would be jazzy.

What it was actually like

I wouldn’t say that this was a jazz record or a folk record, though it did have some jazz, folk, soul and rock parts. It was more of a clever record, with far too much cleverness to sound authentically like anything at all, but nowhere near enough cleverness to chill out and just record a bunch of songs that people would actually enjoy.

Overture started things off with some creepy cackling, then proceeded to screams, and then shouts, and added a variety of what sounded like sound effects from movie scenes, though I couldn’t figure out why. After that, there were some jazz and gospel, but that could have already been the title track I Stand Alone – it was impossible to tell because there was not really any break between songs, with all the sound effects going on.

Camille was more of an actual song with jazzy instrumentation and some soul style vocals. It was decently catchy, but I thought the vocals were weak… and then it ended with a heartbeat sound effect.

One is one of those extremely famous songs (“One is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do”) that’s equally extremely difficult to place. This version was very Beatlesesque, and actually sounded eerily like Eleanor Rigby, which I had not expected.

On the subject of the Beatles, Coloured Rain sounded like more of Faul’s granny shit, as if Kooper’s goal was to get as many sounds as possible onto one recording, whether those sounds made any sense at all or not, which was actually pretty difficult in the late 1960s because studio technology was nothing like what it eventually became. This track was filled with discordant sounds that contributed nothing but cacophony.

Soft Landing on the Moon had sound effects that were just about as bad as a Moody Blues record. I guess it was supposed to represent his science fiction concept of a moon landing, though I’m not sure that it occurred to people in 1968, when this was recorded, that there is no sound at all on the moon because space is a vacuum. Womp womp.

I Can Love a Woman was an actual song with kind of a soul sound, and it was not bad at all, but it still had to end with some kind of sound effect that I could not even identify.

Blue Moon of Kentucky is a famous Bill Monroe song, so of course I loved it, but what a weird and interesting version of it! Kooper’s approach managed to create a bluegrass feel, while not actually being a bluegrass song at all. At first I was thinking that it was more of a rock sound, but it really wasn’t rock either – I would call it rockabilly, though there was a nice banjo solo. Then it ended with… a rooster sound effect.

Toe Hold, the Isaac Hayes song, had an excessive use of horns, which were quite distracting, and ended with more sound effects, this time something that sounded like a gunfight from a movie.

Right Now for You sounded eerily familiar, but I couldn’t place it. It had kind of a Spanish style guitar, with more of an overall folk rock sound, and then added an echo effect that evoked the Moody Blues again.

Hey, Western Union Man had more soul sound with more horns, and since the subject was the telegraph, added some obnoxious morse code beeping effects, and ended with circus sounds effects.

Song and Dance for the Unborn, Frightened Child managed to evoke Eleanor Rigby again, and also added some screaming effects, ending with with bongo drums and an overdubbed narration, followed by… a gong sound.

I was so glad when it was finally over.

Grade

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