Rocks In The Attic #1233: Sheryl Crow – ‘Tuesday Night Music Club’ (1993)

Another long-awaited reissue. TUESDAY NIGHT MUSIC CLUB was never pressed on vinyl back in 1993, unless you lived in Ecuador, and never really hit the format properly until a reissue in 2018. I had one of those reissues in my hand at the time but didn’t buy it for some reason. That’s the risk of record collecting; whenever you see something in a record shop, you’re never really sure if it’s forever going to be in print from that day forward, or if it’s going to be a limited run, never to be seen again. 

Five years later, and it’s finally here again. And seemingly in larger numbers. Released so soon before Christmas, I too the risk of waiting until a chain store here ran one of their regular 20%-off sales. A huge risk, as I could have been waiting another five years to see it reissued again if I missed out. Thankfully, waiting a couple of weeks paid off and I’ve finally got it in my hands. 

Aside from being a well-recorded, well-produced, catchy bunch of songs – including All I Wanna Do, which I’ve always loved – I’m just as interested in the story behind this record. The title comes from the loose collective of players that convened every Tuesday to write and record the album, but as soon as it was released, the arguments started about who wrote what. There’s a biography of Crow by Richard Buskin which goes into the recording of the album in great detail which I wouldn’t mind reading. 

Crow was pushed by the others to co-write the whole album, as the publishing royalties she was set to receive was the only way she could pay off the debts of her unreleasable first album proper. Hmm, very interesting. Produced by Hugh Padgham, Crow describes it as being too slick and produced. 

Of course, we should never forget that Crow was one of Michael Jackson’s backing vocalists on the BAD tour – often dueting with him on I Just Can’t Stop Loving You. From memory, she can be spotted in the live performance sequences of 1988’s MOONWALKER. 

The 1996 self-titled album next please…

Hit: All I Wanna Do

Hidden Gem: What I Can Do For You

Rocks In The Attic #1200: Lenny Kravitz – ‘Are You Gonna Go My Way’ (1993)

It’s Rocks In The Attic post #1200 and as always I try and cover an album that means a lot to me for the big round numbers. 

I bought Lenny Kravitz’s third studio album ARE YOU GONNA GO MY WAY on CD the year it came out, buoyed by the lead title track which was all over the radio. It was one of the CDs I chose when I signed up to the Britannia music club, desperate for a bunch of dirt-cheap albums as soon as I started listening to rock music. It’s remained a favourite ever since. 

I was obsessed with Aerosmith at the time, ingesting everything I could about the band. Lenny had co-wrote  and provided backing vocal to Line Up, a song on their new album GET A GRIP, and I even remember them name-checking him when interviewed outside their trailer at the MTV Music Awards that year. When asked why they liked him, Tom Hamilton said ‘Because he plays the original <…>’ and mouthed something starting with a ‘sh’ sound. I’ve never been able to figure out what he said. It’s a mystery. Does anybody know?

I was so new to buying albums I wasn’t even sure whether I’d like the rest of ARE YOU GONNA GO MY WAY. I don’t think I’d heard any of the albums other singles – Believe, Heaven Help and Is There Any Love In Your Heart – by that point. I probably didn’t like much of it on first listen. It’s extremely ballad-heavy, especially in comparison to the balls-to-the-wall rock of its title track. But it grew on me. Big time. My favourite songs ended up being that final single, Is There Any Love In Your Heart, with a music video filmed in a spiral multi-storey carpark, and Sister, a song I still like to play on guitar. 

One of the things I loved at the time about Lenny is that he played all the instruments on the album himself, yet his live band – Craig Ross on guitar, Tony Breit on bass, Cindy Blackman on drums – was always super-hot. On that same MTV Music Awards appearance in 1993, he even enlisted John Paul Jones to play on Are You Gonna Go My Way when they were between bass players – a surefire marker that Lenny was the real deal that ‘plays the original <…>.’

The songs on this album are part of my DNA. I’m not even sure I could name of some of the songs’ titles, I’m just so overly familiar with them. Like all great albums, it’s a collection of songs I know as a collective whole rather than individual tracks. I don’t just love the playing on it either; the production – scaled back on some songs, full-whack on others – is a gem. The only downside is that final song, Eleutheria, which plays like an afterthought and possibly should have been held back as a b-side. Sister, the song before it, plays much better as an album-closer. 

For some reason, I went lukewarm on Lenny after this album. I bought up his two earlier albums fairly quickly, and found those all to be strong efforts, particularly MAMA SAID, which I think is almost as good as ARE YOU GONNA GO MY WAY, but he seemed to lose his way after this. His version of American Woman, recorded for his 1998 album 5 and used onthe soundtrack of AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME in 1999, was an out-and-out banger, but it was a lazy cover. I can’t think of anything he wrote after Are You Gonna Go My Way that matched the energy of that song and album. 

By the end of the decade, he was so far off my radar, I actually walked past him playing on the Sunday afternoon at Glastonbury in 1999, and didn’t stop to watch. Five years earlier, I would have been chomping at the bit to see him. I remember walking past as he played American Woman on the Pyramid Stage and thinking to myself ‘Oh, shit! I used to love Lenny Kravitz!’ I deeply regret this now but I didn’t know at the time that Lenny would essentially turn his back on touring and become a full-time celebrity. I bought tickets to see him a couple of years ago, and the pandemic put a kibosh on that happening. Maybe I was never meant to see him play live. 

Before long, Lenny would be known more for attending showbiz parties, his sometime-acting roles – wearing a distractingly eye-catching set of earrings in THE HUNGER GAMES – and wearing a ridiculously over-sized scarf out in public. What a dude. 

Hit: Are You Gonna Go My Way

Hidden Gem: Sister

Rocks In The Attic #1132: Smashing Pumpkins – ‘Siamese Dream’ (1993)

You win some, you lose some. And I definitely feel like I lost out with this one; something that’s left a very sour taste in my mouth.

The Smashing Pumpkins’ SIAMESE DREAM has become, for whatever reason, the gold dust of 1990’s rock reissues. Original pressings go for silly money online, and as I’m not that much of a fan, I’m happy to wait for a reissue.

The trouble is, the reissue came and went a couple of years ago, with seemingly very few pressed. You can’t move in record shops for reissues of NEVERMIND or APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION, or for any number of less popular albums. But it feels like an album of the stature of SIAMESE DREAM should be more available than it is.

My Music Taupo, an independent retailer here in New Zealand, managed to secure a number of copies a couple of months ago, but I missed out. When they posted that they had more coming in a couple of weeks ago, I jumped at the chance, not wanting to miss out.

It was the week before Christmas, and I couldn’t really afford it, but I managed to secure one. They weren’t cheap either – $139 NZD – which is extremely expensive. Most new release records here range from around $40, for a single-disc, to around $80 for a double-disc. Worryingly, that $80 price tag has creeped towards $100 for some of the bigger names – notably Bob Dylan’s ROUGH AND ROWDY WAYS and Paul McCartney’s FLAMING PIE reissue – in the last couple of years.

So $140 for a record, even a double-album with a, frankly needless, metallic-card sleeve? Grumble grumble, <hands money over>.

Then, the day I paid for it, merely hours after, a couple of other stores in New Zealand listed the album, for a much lower price of $100. Very bad timing. The same record in the Boxing Day sales, with 20% off, would have cost $80.

A friend managed to get me the recent John Hughes boxset at a very good price, which offset the loss, but this Smashing Pumpkins thing really pissed me off.

Ever since Amazon’s awful business practices came to light over the last decade or so, I’ve been trying my best to buy as much as I can locally. I still buy a lot of soundtracks from overseas, direct from labels, usually titles I know won’t land here otherwise, but everything else I try and buy here.

But when you have one record store selling an album for $140 which another store is selling for $80, there’s something wrong. I’m not sure if it’s the store owner, the distributor, or the record label, or a mixture of the three, but it’s fucked. I don’t want to blame My Music Taupo as their prices usually aren’t this out-of-whack; perhaps the other stores managed to secure a better deal on the stock?

If it wasn’t before, Billy Corgan’s voice is really starting to grate…

Hit: Today

Hidden Gem: Quiet

Rocks In The Attic #1120: tomandandy – ‘Killing Zoe (O.S.T.)’ (1993)

There’s something about this film – the cinematography, the music, the dialogue – that makes it feel like the most ‘90s film imaginable. It’s like an A.I. machine ingested RESERVOIR DOGS, DOG DAY AFTERNOON and a bunch of American-in-Paris movies and churned this out as a response. It also feels cheap; a poor clone of all those influences. Roger Ebert described it as “Generation X’s first bank caper movie”, although this really only applies if members of said generation hadn’t seen the far superior RESERVOIR DOGS.

I thought I had seen KILLING ZOE when it came out. I remember starting to watch it on VHS, but it was a knock-off pirated copy that looked like shit, so we didn’t get through the first 10 minutes. It’s nice to finally see it in full.

I really wasn’t expecting to see Ron Jeremy in a small cameo, and Tom Savini credited for special make-up effects. And it was great to see so much of Julie Delpy, of course.

There are three sections – the hotel room, the night out, and the bank robbery. I liked the fact that you don’t see the police outside the bank; we only see the robbery from the robber’s perspective.

Overall, this isn’t bad but it’s nowhere near as slick as some of the post-Tarantino crime movies towards the end of the ‘90s (HARD EIGHT, 2 DAYS IN THE VALLEY, GO).

It’s great to add the soundtrack to my ever-growing Tarantino collection though. This is only Tarantino-adjacent, of course, and while I’m not a fan of this kind of mindless Euro-dance in general (even though tomandandy are from New York City), there are some nice touches when they turn the drum machine off. This is MOV’s long-awaited first pressing of the soundtrack, and I’m playing a limited edition on translucent ‘bloody’ red coloured vinyl (#24 of only 300 individually numbered copies).

Hit: Go!

Hidden Gem: Z Names

Rocks In The Attic #1114: Jamiroquai – ‘Emergency On Planet Earth’ (1993)

If there’s one thing making can all agree on, all get behind, it’s a mutual dislike for Jamiroquai frontman Jay Kay.

No sooner had I posted this album on my two favourite go-to vinyl groups on Facebook – On The Turntable Right Now (my own group, of 1.5K members, by the way) and Vinyl Lovers Of Aotearoa New Zealand – I received a brace of like-minded responses.

I posted a photo of the album spinning on my turntable, with the text:

“Couldn’t stand this bell-end back in the day, but man, these albums have crept up on me over the years. Loving this reissue.”

Right from the off, people told me they felt the same:

“I too think he is a giant twazzock. But, like, there was the odd good song, and one of my mates could do that dance that made it look like he was sliding across the floor. So, there’s that, I s’pose.”

“Same here, just irritated me back in the day. Now I’m looking to buy the albums.”

“I love his music…but you’re right…he is a bell-end. He dated a friend of mine about 15 years ago. She was always crying over him.”

But my absolute favourite response, which reads like the perfect satirical piece:

“In 2002 my wife lucked tickets to the London Premiere of ATTACK OF THE CLONES. This bell-end was sat in front of my wife in one of his stupid oversize hats. Knob. It was cool to go to though. My mate took a wee next to the Emperor.”

Hit: Too Young To Di

Hidden Gem: Hooked Up

Rocks In The Attic #1045: Various Artists – ‘Coneheads (O.S.T.)’ (1993)

Some great films have been made as spin-offs from half-hearted SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE sketches – THE BLUES BROTHERS and WAYNE’S WORLD being the two that come to mind – but CONEHEADS is not one of them.

The film feels like something that has been made by somebody who has never seen a film before. It’s weirdly put together, as though the editor has removed anything that doesn’t resemble a joke, but even the material that remains is painfully unfunny.

The only sequence I liked was the nostalgia-soaked montage of happy family life set to Paul Simon’s Kodachrome. Nearly everything else was forgettable aside from some great appearances from the SNL (and SNL-adjacent) cast.

The film’s true power is in its soundtrack. A collection of classic bangers (Soft Cell’s Tainted Love, Paul Simon’s Kodachrome) and interesting covers by contemporary artists (a-Ha’s Morten Harket’s version of Can’t Take My Eyes Off You, Public Enemy’s Fight The Powerinterpreted by Barenaked Ladies, Steppenwolf’s Magic Carpet Ride covered by Slash and Hanoi Rocks’ Michael Monroe).

But it’s a couple of songs semi-exclusive to this release that are the most interesting: R.E.M.’s It’s a Free World Baby, an AUTOMATIC FOR THE PEOPLE-era song originally released as a b-side to Drive, and the Red Hot Chili Pepper’s Soul To Squeeze – a BLOOD SUGAR SEX MAGIK­-era song that was originally put out as a b-side to both Give It Away and Under The Bridge.

Hit: Tainted Love – Soft Cell

Hidden Gem: Fight The Power– Barenaked Ladies

Rocks In The Attic #872: The Cranberries – ‘Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?’ (1993)

Like everybody else, I was shocked to hear of the death of Dolores O’Riordan in 2018, another sad loss to the music world from circumstances related to depression. I had admired the band all the way back to the first tentative guitar lessons I had, learning the chords to Zombie – the one song of theirs that really hit me as a teenage rocker.

I might even have had that second album, No Need To Argue, on CD but nothing on vinyl until now. This 25^th anniversary reissue of the Stephen Street-produced debut album Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We?  was remastered at Abbey Road, and is nicely put together with a gatefold full of stylish black and white shots of the band and their instruments.

Held back due to the death of O’Riordan, the back cover pays tribute to their fallen bandmate: ‘This album is dedicated to the memory of Dolores O’Riordan.’ It’s so sad to mark the anniversary in such a way, to somebody who had struggled from depression and the pressures of fame throughout much of that time.

Dreams still sounds like it was tailor-made for the Irish tourism campaign it eventually soundtracked, and the other single, Linger, is a catchy piece of jangly Irish pop. But it is the album’s opener, I Still Do, which sets out the band’s sound – an ethereal, celtic slice of brooding Irishness not heard since Bono, The Edge, Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois were all in the same room together.

Hit: Linger

Hidden Gem: I Still Do

Rocks In The Attic #857: Bill Hicks – ‘Revelations – Live In London’ (1993)

I try not to get offended about things. Most of the time, I don’t let things get to me. I don’t think I’ve ever been offended by something that a comedian has said on stage. They’re just jokes, and even the ones that are designed to offend are usually admirable in how well they’ve been crafted.

Even the likes of Frankie Boyle and Jimmy Carr – two comedians who have a no-nonsense, offensive streak to their act – are comedy heroes of mine. They might make a joke about paralympians or the holocaust, or any number of taboo topics, but it’ll still make me laugh. The joke itself is usually funnier than its subject.

It’s a dangerous game though. Where do you draw the line? And who decides on what subjects are off-limits? Only last night I made a joke about Phil Spector, the famous record producer, in a Facebook thread. I was told my joke was in very bad taste, and yet the individual defending him seemed to be completely unaware – or in disbelief – of the fact that Spector is a convicted murderer.

I recently heard a BBC Radio 4 special called Ellie Taylor’s Safe Space (synopsis: ‘Stand-up Ellie Taylor airs her controversial opinions in her Safe Space’). I like Ellie Taylor; she can regularly be seen with Nish Kumar on The Mash Report, and has appeared on the likes of Live At The Apollo and Mock The Week. She’s a great comedian and, like Boyle and Carr, specialises in making light of offensive subjects.

Interspersed with her stand-up routine in the show were segments where Taylor would interview audience members and ask them about any controversial opinions they might have. The amnesty mined generally inoffensive points of view; unpopular opinions rather than offensive ones. For example, the first audience member thought that ‘Game Of Thrones / Breaking Bad – i.e. the best shows in the last ten years – are really not as good as they’re said to be’. As I said: unpopular but not offensive.

But one audience-member’s opinion did get my attention. Remember, this is coming not only from a Radio 4 listener, but one so involved with the station that they will seek tickets to, and then attend, the filming of one if its shows.

Mr. Val Jennings’ opinion was that ‘For those who can afford it – particularly people who happily subscribe to Sky, Netflix, Amazon Prime, etc – the license fee should be increased.’ When Taylor asked Jennings if he subscribed to any of these services, he replied with ‘No. The license fee is perfectly adequate for everything you need.’ He then suggested that those people should pay an additional £20 per year for their BBC license fee. The audience grumbled; I would have shouted ‘Bullshit!’

Who made this guy the arbiter of what content is suitable and not suitable for people? It has to be mentioned that Breaking Bad – generally regarded, as above, as one of the best shows in the last ten years – was never originally broadcast on British television. You had to subscribe to Sky to watch it. One of the freeview channels, 5USA, broadcast the second season in 2011, but didn’t pick up any of the subsequent seasons. You either had to buy or rent the DVDs, or wait until the launch of Netflix in 2012 to see the rest of the show.

Val’s argument – that the content offered by BBC radio and television through its license fee is perfectly adequate – seems to dismiss all content that is not offered through these channels. It sounds like the sort of argument a similarly-minded person would have made when television was inaugurated in the 1930s: ‘The wireless is perfectly adequate for everything you need.’

I’ve never been so offended in my life.

Hit: He Had A Gun

Hidden Gem: Put ‘Em In The Movies

Rocks In The Attic #838: Bill Hicks – ‘Rant In E-Minor: Variations’ (2016)

The first thing I ever heard about Bill Hicks was the title of his fourth comedy album, Rant In E-Minor. I was reading one of the music magazines – Mojo or Q, or something like that – back in 1994, and Phil Jupitus was being interviewed about his favourite albums. He chose Rant In E-Minor purely for its superb title (because surely everybody knows that Relentless is Bill’s best from those original four Rykodisc albums). It is a great title; possibly the greatest for a comedy album, especially for one so angry.

This release by Comedy Dynamics, for Record Store Day 2016, represents the very first of Bill’s work to be released on vinyl. It’s an expanded and unedited version of the Rant In E-Minor album, minus Bill’s musical interludes from the original release. Recorded at The Laff Stop in Austin, Texas in October 1993, the performance falls four months after his pancreatic cancer diagnosis, and just four months before his death at the age of 32.

My only concern is that Bill’s best friend, Kevin Booth, who produced three of Bill’s four original albums, seems to have now been sidelined by the Hicks family (three of which are listed as producers on this release). I hope Kevin still has some skin in the game, and eventually gets to release those original albums on vinyl at some point.

In early 1995 Bill’s family released a brief essay that he had written a week prior to his death:

I was born William Melvin Hicks on December 16, 1961 in Valdosta, Georgia. Ugh. Melvin Hicks from Georgia. Yee Har! I already had gotten off to life on the wrong foot. I was always “awake,” I guess you’d say. Some part of me clamoring for new insights and new ways to make the world a better place. All of this came out years down the line, in my multitude of creative interests that are the tools I now bring to the Party. Writing, acting, music, comedy. A deep love of literature and books. Thank God for all the artists who’ve helped me. I’d read these words and off I went—dreaming my own imaginative dreams. Exercising them at will, eventually to form bands, comedy, more bands, movies, anything creative. This is the coin of the realm I use in my words—Vision. On June 16, 1993 I was diagnosed with having “liver cancer that had spread from the pancreas.” One of life’s weirdest and worst jokes imaginable. I’d been making such progress recently in my attitude, my career and realizing my dreams that it just stood me on my head for a while. “Why me!?” I would cry out, and “Why now!?” Well, I know now there may never be any answers to those particular questions, but maybe in telling a little about myself, we can find some other answers to other questions. That might help our way down our own particular paths, towards realizing my dream of New Hope and New Happiness. Amen. I left in love, in laughter, and in truth and wherever truth, love and laughter abide, I am there in spirit.

Hit: Fevered Egos

Hidden Gem: Confession Time (Cops)

Rocks In The Attic #709: John Williams – ‘Jurassic Park (O.S.T.)’ (1993)

What does William’s score to 1993’s Jurassic Park have to do with Dies Irae, a latin hymn from the thirteenth century?

After watching the latest disappointing Jurassic Park sequel, it’s refreshing to wash my brain out with the score to Spielberg’s original film. At this point in his career, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Williams would be washed-up. Surely the composer of Jaws, Superman, the Star Wars trilogy, Close Encounters, the Indiana Jones trilogy – and many, many more – would have nothing left. Somebody that prolific can’t keep on being prolific, can they?

The answer seems to be a resounding Yes. Not only does Jurassic Park contain two distinctly memorable main themes – Theme From Jurassic Park and Journey To The Island – but the rest of the score is just as strong as his ‘70s and ‘80s output. But what’s all this about Gregorian Chant?

The answer is in a descending motif in the ancient hymn. For centuries, this doom-laden melody has been used as short-hand for evil or foreboding – Dies Irae itself translates to Day Of Wrath. A host of great composers have used the motif in their works – Tchaikovsky, Brahms, Holst, Liszt, Mahler and Rachmaninoff, to name but a few – but it’s its use in modern film soundtracks that interests me the most.

The tune is easiest to spot in the first few notes of The Shining’s opening Main Title, played by Wendy Carlos on the Moog Synthesiser. Here, the melody isn’t even disguised, it’s as clear as the day in which it’s used to soundtrack, as the Torrances drive up the mountain approaching the Overlook Hotel.

Williams uses it to great effect in Jurassic Park, throughout the cues entitled Incident At Isla Nublar (from 3:32), and High Wire Stunts (from 0:00). But this isn’t the first time he’s referenced it. It can be found a couple of times in his iconic score to 1977’s Star Wars. Here it plays as the accompaniment immediately before Luke’s Force Theme rises up in The Burning Homestead (from 1:28), and is echoed in the doom-laden brass line (from 1:43) as Luke’s fate realigns.

And it’s not just John Williams sliding it into his scores, the musical equivalent of directors inserting the Wilhelm Scream into their sound mix. Other famous composers have “borrowed” the melody too. In 2001’s The Fellowship Of The Ring, Howard Shore uses it as the bassline thoughout the cue entitled Weathertop (from 0:18), as the Ringwraiths attack the Hobbits. Jerry Goldsmith utilises it in his 1982 score for Poltergeist, Hans Zimmer uses it briefly in 1994’s The Lion King, and Bernard Herrmann used it back in 1963 for Jason And The Argonauts. Unsurprisingly the tune also makes for good horror music fodder.

Even back in 1927, Gottfried Huppertz inserted the motif into his Dance Of Death cue for Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (from 1:17) – confirming that the appropriation of Dies Irae in cinema is as old as cinema itself.

Interestingly, John Williams does something sneaky with Dies Irae in Jurassic Park. Usually the sequence of the first four notes in the motif is enough to suggest doom and despair, but Williams takes just the first three notes and does something unexpected with them. They serve as the starting point for the Jurassic Park’s main theme – as positive and upbeat a film theme as could be, even when played on a Melodica.

Hit: Theme From Jurassic Park

Hidden Gem: Dennis Steals The Embryo