Rain Dogs is stuffed full of bold production choices, exotic instrumentation, junkyard percussion and found sounds recorded around New York all delivered in Waits’s inimitable voice. The recording choices, Waits’s reliance on real, unadorned, unprocessed sounds and performances which made it sound so out of place in the 80’s now sound years ahead of the time. It’s a striking and brilliant album, one which is particularly flattered by the Vinyl format.

The post JUNE: Vinyl of the Month – Tom Waits “Raindogs” appeared first on Luno.

Lou Reed’s tales of drug deals, addiction, prostitution and S&M so controversial at the time are, with hindsight, wonderfully evocative tales inspired not by a desire to shock but by a love for authors and poets such as Raymond Chandler, Allen Ginsberg and Williams S Burroughs.

Similarly, while many at the time were simply not ready for the screeching viola drones, feedback and  primitive pounding on upended drums, John Cale who had a huge part in arranging the songs on this record, was actually a skilled multi instrumentalist and experimental composer studying classical music in the US on a scholarship.

What came out of the collaboration was a wonderfully alien sounding album, both literate and grimy, raw and cerebral that challenged the notions of what a pop song could be.  In fact, the very same things that made the album unpalatable to a larger audience in the late 60’s have ensured that it still sounds fresh and not entirely like anything else almost fifty years later.

The recordings themselves, made with next to no money in a ramshackle studio over a matter of days at full performance volume, are technically rough around the edges but still sound thrillingly alive, particularly on vinyl, a format perfectly suited to an album as singular and colorful as this one.

The post JULY: Vinyl of the Month – The Velvet Underground & Nico appeared first on Luno.

Maybe though you remember Lee Dorsey’s “Working in the Coal Mine”, the Rolling Stones “Fortune Teller”, or The Who’s version, Glenn Campbell’s “Southern Nights, The Doors “Get Out of My Life Woman”, or any number of  other Toussaint originals made famous by Al Hirt, Bonnie Raitt, The Pointer Sisters, Herb Alpert and many more.

August’s vinyl of the month pick is one of his own albums from 1972, his first for Warner and a belated tribute to a giant of a man who’s massive influence on New Orlean’s R&B and rock and roll in general should not be understated.

The twelve tracks that comprise Life, Love and Faith while mostly rooted in New Orleans R&B also dabble in funk, soul, and even elements of psychedelia.  While clearly the work of a focused idiosyncratic genius, Toussaint’s songwriting is as consistently strong as ever. Every track here sounds like an exhumed solid gold hit. Timeless in terms of quality, sound, and arrangement.

The fact that the album barely sold and yielded no real hits on release is almost unthinkable when you listen to it, but it’s a testament to the quality and quantity of Toussaint’s work over five and a half decades that this album which would be held up as the defining work of many lesser artists is often overlooked when discussing his legacy.

The post AUGUST: Vinyl of the Month – Allen Toussaint “Life, Love and Faith” appeared first on Luno.

Here, as with his previous album “Push the Sky Away” the violent arrangements of old have been largely replaced by eerie ethereal constructions that feel as if they could collapse under their own weight at any second.  Woozy detuned synths, sparse drums, manipulated vocals and arhythmic loops drift in and out all in support of that unmistakable baritone.   The album mix too is excellent…uncluttered with great use of space and texture, intimate, engrossing and perfectly attuned to the musical and lyrical content, this is a record that will reward you for actively listening with your head between the speakers.

Determinedly unpolished, visceral and threaded through with a palpable grief “Skeleton Tree” is not easy listening though it’s always gripping and, even divorced from it’s tragic backstory, has an otherworldly weight that’s affecting and hard to shake off.

The post SEPTEMBER: Vinyl of the Month – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Skeleton Tree” appeared first on Luno.

A good one, indeed.  As the story goes, the relationship between singer and band was at a particularly low point and, according to Elvis, the producer Nick Lowe happily “agreed to an approach that would get the music recorded before the band and I fell out completely,”

What this meant in practice was everyone recording together in the same room with amps at near stage volume, no headphones, no separation and minimal overdubs.  Nick Lowe would sit in the middle of the room with an acoustic guitar acting as a kind of conductor and time keeper while the songs were recorded with all members playing simultaneously in very few takes.

It’s a recording technique that’s not often used as it limits the producer and mix engineer’s control of both performances and sound.  If one player messes up then you have to start all over again instead of editing their mistakes neatly out.  If you want to turn up the drums you may find that you’re also inadvertently turning up the bass guitar that’s bled over in to the drum channels.  In short, for a control freak, it’s a nightmare.

And yet listening to Blood and Chocolate, you’ll wish all albums were recorded this way. To hear these songs cut together fast, off the cuff and before an opportunity to second guess or sanitize could sneak in is more than worth the price of a little clarity (though, for the record I wouldn’t change anything about the roomy soupy sound of the album)   The performances here are gritty, energized, and full blooded in a way no Elvis Costello and the Attractions collection before or since has been.

The songs too are some of the best in Costello’s songbook and the recording complements the material perfectly.  As the fantastic and epically creepy “I Want You” nears it’s end the instrumental channels for The Attractions are switched off one by one until finally you hear them only as a ghostly presence bleeding in to Elvis Costello’s microphone.  The effect is unsettling, it’s a great moment and there are at least a dozen more as good as it on this extraordinary record.

The post OCTOBER: Vinyl of the Month – Elvis Costello “Blood and Chocolate” appeared first on Luno.

xx

Jennifer, Dan, & Emmylou

The post DECEMBER – Dan & Jennifer cover “Jingle Bell Rock” appeared first on Luno.

1.  It’s a great album, a bona fide classic.  Usually that alone would be enough but….

2.  We (that’s myself and Jennifer) just celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary this November 11th and, while the album is one that we both love in pretty much it’s entirety, Heart of Gold has a special place in our hearts as both the song I proposed to her to and the soundtrack to our first dance.

3.  It gives us an opportunity to retell Graham Nash of Crosby Stills and Nash’s story about the first time he heard the album.  Sure, we install audio systems in bespoke pieces of furniture, Neil Young apparently went a step further;

“I was at Neil’s ranch one day just south of San Francisco, and he has a beautiful lake with red-wing blackbirds. And he asked me if I wanted to hear his new album, “Harvest” And I said sure, let’s go into the studio and listen.

Oh, no. That’s not what Neil had in mind. He said get into the rowboat.

I said get into the rowboat? He said, yeah, we’re going to go out into the middle of the lake.

Now, I think he’s got a little cassette player with him or a little, you know, early digital format player. So I’m thinking I’m going to wear headphones and listen in the relative peace in the middle of Neil’s lake.

Oh, no. He has his entire house as the left speaker and his entire barn as the right speaker. And I heard “Harvest” coming out of these two incredibly large loud speakers louder than hell. It was unbelievable. Elliot Mazer, who produced Neil, produced “Harvest,” came down to the shore of the lake and he shouted out to Neil: How was that, Neil?

And I swear to god, Neil Young shouted back: More barn

The post NOVEMBER: Vinyl Of The Month – Neil Young “Harvest” appeared first on Luno.

When LUNO’S Dan and Jen asked me if I’d be interested in contributing to their ‘Vinyl of the Month’ blog pieces, I knew right away what the first record I reviewed would be. “I wanna do ‘Nevermind’ first”, I said to Jen.

Having just marked its 25th anniversary, the release of Nirvana’s sophomore album “Nevermind” is now looked back upon as an unexpected culturally seismic event; almost singlehandedly credited with not only ushering in the grunge era but also smothering the excesses of the hair metal age under Kurt Cobain’s anguished wails. Filled with cynicism, angst, and a tense dichotomy of pop sensibility and punk anarchy, ‘Nevermind’ turned Nirvana into almost overnight superstars. And as I approach my 38th birthday, my introduction to the album remains the single most profound introductory experience with a band I’ve ever had.

In January of 1992, I was a precociously intelligent, emotionally raw, twelve-year old kid living in a ‘group home’ in Redlands, CA. Not only was I small for my age, I was also a year ahead grade-wise of my age group, which made me the smallest 8th grader at Moore Jr. High. I had recently run away from an extremely abusive foster home and was placed in this special home for boys with behavioral problems and was having considerable difficulty navigating both the institutional rigors of the home and the increasingly chaotic psychic waters of my burgeoning adolescence. Fights and violent outbursts were a regular occurrence. I was administered a seemingly endless cocktail of pharmaceuticals to help me keep my emotions in check. I was bewildered by what I saw as a surefire exercise in futility on the part of the adults charged with my care: that they’d taken a bunch of kids from extremely volatile backgrounds and lumped them together under one roof with underpaid and unqualified staff members to tend to them and then when the inevitable behavioral conflicts emerged, treated those kids as though there were something intrinsically wrong with them for behaving that way and responding by stuffing them psychoactive drugs, largely against their will. Looking back now, I see a correlation between my 12-year old self’s condemnation of the powers that were in charge of my upbringing and the kind of ‘I’m not crazy, the world is’ mindset that it fostered, and the society-at-large shunning cynicism of Nirvana.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, Nirvana’s “Nevermind” had been released late the previous year and was quickly accumulating a critical mass of both artistic and commercial success. Walking to school one day, a friend of mine approached me on the street excitedly and said I just had to listen to this new band. He threw his headphones over my head and pulled out an ‘L.A. Guns’ cassette tape. I knew of L.A. Guns and didn’t like them at all. I started to protest but he quickly re-assured me. “I taped over it,” he said, “this is a new band, they’re called ‘Nirvana.’. What I heard immediately astounded me. It was unlike anything I’d ever felt before from music. I had grown up on Otis Redding, Stevie Wonder, and Kool and the Gang from my foster parents, and from the older boys in my neighborhoods I’d been fed a steady diet of N.W.A., Too Short, and 2 Live Crew. My only real introduction to rock of any kind had been Guns ‘n Roses and I felt no connection to it at all. My connection to the music on ‘Nevermind’ was immediate and beyond a comprehension I could elucidate at the time. Long before I would understand most of the underlying social themes of the arrangement choices and Kurt’s lyrics, I simply FELT connected. The scratching guitar, violently pulsating drums, and Kurt’s feral wail were sonic representations of my psyche’s confusion and angst. It was like after years of being unable to explain to anyone the turbulent rhythms that were torturing your brainwaves, some stranger came along and not only validated your complaints but gave your symptoms names.

Listening to “Nevermind” all these years later on the LUNO console–two whiskey’s deep and a third swirling in my glass–several things stand out to me about the album. First, the ferocity, vitality, and immediacy is not dimmed after all these years (and the LUNO console delivers that shit in spades) yet it still also retains a good deal of unexpected enigma, both in the arrangements and the bleak opacity of some of Cobain’s lyricism.

The second thing was just how much Dave Grohl’s drumming shapes this album. Much has been written over the years about Cobain’s artful vacillations between hard/soft/hard tones in both his writing and delivery, but Grohl’s drumming proved equally adept at maneuvering between those lines and he structured his approach to suit each song, alternately unleashing hell or pulling back when necessary. The wild brutality of the percussion on songs like ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and ‘Breed’ makes it easy to overlook the appropriate restraint on songs like ‘Something in the Way’ and especially ‘Come As You Are’, in which the drums allow that incredibly catchy bass line to serve as the emotional core for most of the song before really coming alive just before the bridge. Then there are moments when the drums dominate and propel the whole song, as in ‘Territorial Pissings’, in which Grohl enters with machine gun ferocity and provides a violent, psychic surge for two thirds of the song’s run time before pulling back a little to provide a deceptively soft cradle for Cobain’s dire, ironic warning: ‘Just because you’re paranoid, don’t mean they’re not after you.’ It’s pulse quickening in a way that is almost cinematic in its build and payoff, like a Hitchockian thriller. I remember reading a review somewhere years ago that said that Grohl ‘beat the drums like they owed him money’. It’s a vivid and memorable description but it doesn’t capture the artistry veiled beneath the rage. To me his drumming conjures up images of the shy, quietly sturdy kid who gets picked on by the school bully and proceeds to knock him out with a series of expertly delivered combo punches. Only afterwards do you find out he’s been training to box for year and years.

But back to that bass line on ‘Come As You Are’. The third thing that dawned on me from my LUNO experience with ‘Nevermind’ is that I cannot think of a single more instantly recognizable-and completely isolated- bass line intro in all of popular music than Novoselic’s on ‘Come As You Are’. Think about it. When one thinks of the most instantly recognizable bass line intros, there’s a handful of true standouts: The Temptations’ ‘My Girl’, Orbison’s ‘Pretty Woman’, Queen’s ‘Another One Bites the Dust’ and their Bowie collab ‘Under Pressure’, Pink Floyd’s ‘Money’, the Beatles’ ‘Come Together’, and Lou Reed’s ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ all come to mind but every one of those has some other musical accompaniment to its bass line intro. ‘Come As You Are’ opens with bass and bass only, and it is unmistakable and instantly recognizable. The only song I can think of that comes close is the Pixies’ ‘Debaser’ (which also seems like a spiritual forbear and probably influence on Novoselic’s bass line) but the Pixies song simply doesn’t have the cultural cache or reach of ‘Come As You Are.’ Recently, not long after I’d begun working on this article, Dave Grohl came into the restaurant where I was bartending and I shared that realization with him. He also couldn’t think of another isolated bass intro that matched ‘Come As You Are’ but did offer the interesting tidbit that on their previous album ‘Bleach’. Nirvana actually began the entire album with an isolated bass intro, on the track ‘Blew’. He was then quick to praise Novoselic, saying that he felt that Krist’s work was probably often overlooked because his great ability was to take the sometimes difficult trajectories of what Kurt had written and be able fit the bass line inside them in a way that helped give them structure but didn’t necessarily stand out, much like Ringo’s drum work for the Beatles.

That got me to thinking about Novoselic. If it’s possible to be unheralded when you’re one-third of a group that created a certified twice diamond album which came to define a generation’s angst and which Rolling Stone named the 17th greatest album of all time, then Krist Novoselic is pretty unheralded. While Cobain entered the tragic pantheon of rock gods too soon gone and Grohl went on to become one of the most successful and richest musicians of the last two decades, Novoselic, though continuing to continue various musical endeavors, became more entrenched in political activism and faded from the spotlight.

Cobain’s suicide in 1994 ensured that the trio of himself, Grohl, and Novoselic, would release only two full studio albums, “Nevermind” and its follow up “In Utero”.

25 years after its release, “Nevermind” is still the moving, maddening, sometimes infuriating and sometimes rapturous experience it was to that twelve year old kid walking down the sidewalk with wounded eyes and a storm throbbing in his head, wondering if there was anyone out there who could give a name to that aching.

The post FEBRUARY: Vinyl of the Month – Nirvana “Nevermind” appeared first on Luno.

Things were going quite differently for David Bowie, “Hunky Dory” was just a few months old when “Lou Reed” was released and was being hailed as a classic, instead of resting on his laurels he released possibly his best album “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars” in June. He was at this point so prolific he was happy to just give away the near perfect single “All the Young Dudes” to a fledgling band from somewhere near Wales with a silly name. Oh yes, and somewhere among all of this he found time in 1972 to collaborate with Lou Reed on one of the best things to feature either men’s name

Recorded in just two weeks the session was, by all accounts manic. Bowie along with his guitarist and right hand man Mick Ronson would record Transformer in the daytime before playing shows around the UK at night. Lou Reed was drugged to near catatonia and couldn’t understand a word Ronson was saying thanks to his Hull accent. Despite this formidable communication barrier it’s Ronson, by all accounts, who was the unsung hero of the album, playing multiple instruments and contributing innovative arrangements.while Bowie was occasionally found in the studio bathroom weeping.

Take “Perfect Day” for instance, initially arranged around guitar, it was Ronson who slowed the song down and instead framed Reed’s vocal with a simple piano line and a striking string arrangement, a move that gave the song a universal appeal so broad that twenty years later it was equally at home soundtracking a Ewan McGregor Heroin overdose or as a celebrity sing along single for a UK Children’s Charity.

Make no mistake though, while the outfit was new, this is still very much the same Lou Reed of the Velvet’s underneath as evidenced by the only single to be taken from the album, “Walk on the Wild Side” . A series of short narrative verses, each one based on one of Andy Warhol’s “superstars” from the Factory. The song touched on subjects like cross dressing, transsexuality, drugs, male prostitution and famously only avoided censorship by the BBC and many major US radio stations because, apparently, no one knew what phrases like “giving head” actually meant.

The other notable thing about Walk on the Wild side is “that bass line”, a legitimate celebrity of the bass line world, sampled by a Tribe Called Quest among others, it’s actually two bass lines entwined, a double bass and an electric bass. Asked about the creative genesis of this the bass player, Herbie Flowers, explained that if he could find an excuse to overdub two bass lines on a song he got paid double.

Other notable tracks include the aptly named kickoff track “Vicious” and the ballad “Satellite of Love”. Vicious was inspired by Andy Warhol’s exhortation to Lou to “write a song called Vicious”. When Lou asked for clarification Warhol explained “Oh, you know, vicious like I hit you with a flower.” and the rest, as they say…

Two more things to know about Transformer, It has one of the best sleeves of all time (front and back) and, yes, it sounds great, Ken Scott mixed it.

The post MAY – Vinyl of The Month: Lou Reed “Transformer” appeared first on Luno.

One of the hardest rocking bands of all time meets one of the most refreshing cocktails this side of hells bells. This whiskey cocktail, our AC/DC Back in Blackberry Fizz,  is the perfect pairing for an album that is pure fire from the first riff to last. All you need for this recipe is:

AC/DC BACK IN BLACKBERRY FIZZ

1 1/2 oz Starward Whiskey

2 tbs Simple Syrup

1 tbs Blackberry Juice

6 tbs Club Soda

Mint Sprig

Add ice to your cocktail glass. In cocktail shaker with ice: add whiskey, simple syrup and blackberry juice and shake it all night long. Pour into glass while straining out ice from shaker. Top off with soda, garnish with blackberry and mint, and have a drink on me!

The post WHISKEY COCKTAIL: AC/DC BACK IN BLACKBERRY FIZZ appeared first on Luno.