Flipping This Quarter

Release Date: March 1971
Date I Got: 26 March 2005
Best Track: Debris
Other Notable Tracks: Stay With Me, Miss Judy’s Farm, That’s All You Need, Memphis

Historicity, I believe, is a key component in determining "good" music. This makes new music reviews exercises in prognostication, guesses at the direction of popular and not-so-popular trends. It’s much easy to write and think and deal with a thirty-six year old album than a six month old one. Writing and thinking and approaching, say, The Beatles or The Eagles, carries a certain amount of baggage, but you know where they stand in history. So, you don’t like the Beatles, but it hardly changes the fact that they’re the predicate for a whole bunch of modern music.

Historicity cuts both ways. Time has that habit if cutting and discarding the chaff as being unimportant or unnecessary. Today’s second-tier band is still worth listening to, but will that be true for my kids? Is a second-tier band from my parents’ generation worth spending time with? Not all that is cut away is bad, but not every hidden gem shines.

I am assuming Faces–and early Rod Stewart in general–to be second-tier, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t fuckin’ amazing, because it is. My point is this: age doesn’t make a whole lot of things better and music isn’t one of them.

But whatever. If I’d been around with this came out, it’d probably be counted among my favorites. Even so, I do have friends that count it as such. I find it hard to really get into this album despite how great it is. I think age has a lot to do with it. It’s an album that has, if you will, potential contextual energy while a lot of newer music (and the great old stuff) has more of a kinetic contextual energy. What I mean is: no one cites Faces or Rod Stewart as influence. Maybe this is sad–I’m willing to hear arguments–but it doesn’t worry me all that much.

This is the only Faces/Rod Stewart I have, which probably is sad. If you’re looking to get into it, this is a great start, as every track is excellent. The production isn’t great, but that’s a personal issue I have with a lot of late 60’s/early 70’s rock albums.

Still, I’m not going to crank this in order to enlighten the neighbors as I do some other music.

Addition: You really have to love youtube. Watch both of these live versions, then tell me I’m wrong about all the above, because I am. Right now I’m adding "Seeing a Faces Show" to the list of things I’m going to do when I build a time machine. Were the 70’s really this fun?

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[allmusic]
[Live - Stay With Me] [Live - Miss Judy’s Farm] [Live - Memphis]

Release Date: 24 October 2000 (Sony)
Date I Got: December 2000
Best Track: 2129
Other Notable Tracks: Wade Into the Water, Too Sick to Pray, Sinking…

My misgivings about the previous album concerning A3’s earnestness (or lack thereof) are less valid on this release. The humour is less overt and the satire–if it is indeed satire–is less severe. It is darker because of a diminishing of levity, as if the title and album cover didn’t give it away. Though it has nothing that hits like "Woke Up", this is the better of the two albums.

I didn’t like the album on first listen. I bought it shortly after my conversion to the way of the music geek. For a couple of months there I bought one of those New Music Magazines that came with a free sampler. One included "Too Sick to Pray." I liked it well enough to take a chance on the album. I don’t think I listened to it again for six months.

What brought me back to it I don’t know. But I’m glad it happened, and I ended up with quite a fondness for it. It’s not perfect by any stretch; it’s not an album I would expect anyone else to like it like I like it. There are a few tracks here that I think are great.

"Wade Into The Water" is one of the few tracks that let up on the darkness, though there’s still a touch of uneasiness about it–perhaps it just seems from context–but an uneasiness that you can dance away. It’s about something like salvation-as-love or love-as-salvation (and I always get those confused). A sample lyric:

We got brighter than Heaven
And, oh lord, we shown like the stars
I got us drunk as Bogart
You were smokin’ like Bacall

It’s not my favorite track, though. And neither is "Sinking…", the closer. My British poetry knowledge is rusty, but it seems to be aping from "Rime of the Ancient Mariner." I could look it up, but so could you and I’m pretty lazy. But yeah: a ship cursed due to a downed albatross, ship crashes, the usual. It really doesn’t seem that out of place with songs about cocaine and fires and Bad Stuff. But I’m a sucker for themes of salvation and damnation and redemption, and the song’s second half shifts into a major key and provides all three:

Just as we started sinking
The harbor lights came on
Arms of angels carried us
From the rocks that we broke upon
Swam into still water
The band began to play
I heard again that sweet refrain,
Oh Lord the Happy Day:

It’s Gonna be…alright

The best track is "2129." It walks the line the previous album tried but failed: it’s not "funny" or "satiric" or anything the that album is, but it does take effort to stay in the music. What I mean is: the song’s lyrics almost challenge you to willfully abandon any attempt to parse them, primarily via copious name-checking and a response of "Hey I know who that it!". Those include (but not limited too) Jesus, John Lennon, Robert Johnson, Judas, Mary, Sgt. Pepper, JFK, and the album’s only mention of Lenin (or maybe it’s another Lennon?). The songwriting here–and by this I mean the music and the sound of words, primarily, though the words are still pretty interesting–overcomes this limitation. Even this isn’t entirely accurate. The interplay and challenge between these elements allows for a greater song than it would otherwise be.

And in 2129 I’m going to meet you in a cantina in Carleta
I’m gonna put Bessie Smith on the Jukebox all night long
When the Spanish sun comes up on our empty cups
I’m gonna take you dancing deep down into the dawn
One bright morning when we meet St. Peter
I ain’t gonna give a damn if he don’t let us in

Or maybe I’m just a damned romantic.

—–
Related: Alabama 3 - Exile on Coldharbour Lane

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[official] [allmusic]
[Video - Too Sick to Pray]

Release Date: 11 November 1997
Date I Got: 30 December 2001
Best Track: Woke Up This Morning
Other Notable Tracks: Ain’t Gonna Goa, Mao Tse Tung Said

If Alabama 3, known as A3 in the US for copyright reasons, is known at all, it’s for Woke Up This Morning: the song over the Sopranos opening credits. The song is pure strut and works as a perfect introduction to the show.

It’s a bit out of place on this album. The other tracks are a mash of country, gospel, blues, and dance. It doesn’t always work, but it works enough to make the album compelling more than once.

I’ve had this album for nearly six years and have yet to determine if it should be taken seriously. There are obvious reasons to conclude the negative, like the tear-in-your-beer country of "U Don’t Dans 2 Tekno Anymore" and the copious references to Mr. I.V. Lenin. But there’s a lot to like as well.

The track that best exemplifies this is "Mao Tse Tung Said." What did Mao say? Change must come through the barrel of a gun. Referencing the good word of both Lenin and Mao is tricky at best if serious. The opening of the song is a sermon-like sample (I think) decrying the ability of love and trumpeting the power of hate. It’s an argument that can’t be dismissed out-of-hand, but, really…? It’s too early in this blog’s life to get into some bullshit philosophy of love and hate, so I won’t. Maybe later. I linked to a live version of this song that, well, check it out.

In some ways, Alabama 3 on this album is the music equivalent of Paul Verhoeven or professional wrestling: damned entertaining if not serious, dangerous if it is. This is one of only half dozen albums in my collection that I hope aren’t earnest.

Earnest or not, I do like it like I like wrestling and Verhoeven.
 

"The righteous truth is there is nothing worse than some fool lying on some Third World beach wearing spandex psychedelic trousers, smoking damn dope–pretending he’s gettin consciousness expansion. I want consciousness expansion I go to my local tabernacle and I sing!

Get a second opinion!
[official] [allmusic]
[Video - Woke Up This Morning (Sopranos version)]
[Video - Woke Up This Morning (Original version)]
[Video - Ain’t Gonna Goa]
[Live - Mao Tse Tung Said]