Crazy Horse: Scratchy

Back when Neil Young hooked up with a group called the Rockets, he planned to not only use them as a backing band but also shepherd their career as a separate entity. As with most things in Neil’s career, intent didn’t always become results, and after the band was whittled down to guitarist Danny Whitten, bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina—and freshly monikered Crazy Horse—he augmented them on the road with session legend and mentor Jack Nitzsche. By the time they finally recorded their own album, young phenom Nils Lofgren was in the mix.

Danny is the main singer on Crazy Horse, beginning with “Gone Dead Train”, written by Jack and first heard sung by Randy Newman on the soundtrack of the Mick Jagger vehicle Performance at his most rockin’ ever. Neil’s “Dance, Dance, Dance” had figured in his own acoustic sets for a while; here it’s harmonized and augmented by Byrds-adjacent fiddler Gib Guilbeau. “Look At All The Things” is Danny’s first great song here, so simple yet mesmerizing. A constantly phased guitar colors “Beggars Day”, which Nils wrote and gets credited as lead singer on, but to these ears it sounds like Danny. But the song everyone remembers is the heartbreaking “I Don’t Want To Talk About It”, which got its widest exposure via Rod Stewart’s two cover versions.

“Downtown” has another Neil connection, as he’d pointedly release a live version one of his own albums. Jack’s piano drives his own “Carolay”, with cool California harmonies and surprising meter changes, but “Dirty, Dirty” isn’t much more than a three-chord stomp with lots of slide and little in the way of lyrics. We can hear more of Nils on “Nobody”, another strong early effort by the kid. “I’ll Get By” does indeed get by on the strength of some really obvious rhymes, and Jack proves why he was never a singer on “Crow Jane Lady”, which takes advantage of a long, long fade.

The sum is definitely greater than the parts on Crazy Horse, and the album holds together very well. We notice that Billy’s bass is more animated here than anywhere else captured on tape. But by this time Danny had become less than reliable, to put it mildly, and Nils was soon busy with his solo career. Nitzsche only had so much patience for most things anyway, and stuck with Neil. Undeterred, Billy and Ralph brought in erstwhile Rocket George Whitsell and two other guys to record a follow-up. Loose split the songwriting between the new guys, and given the generic country rock on display here, Whitsell was the key, with such strong tracks as “Try”, “Move”, and “All Alone Now”, but the wonderfully titled “And She Won’t Even Blow Smoke In My Direction” is sadly instrumental. (Greg Leroy’s “All The Little Things” is fairly decent too, and his slide guitar throughout does its best to fill the hole Nils left.)

But nobody cared, and this wasn’t enough to sustain them or keep them on Reprise, so at the end of 1972, Billy, Ralph, and Leroy started over again with two new members on keyboards and other guitar. At Crooked Lake sported a clever cut-out cover design, but that was about it. This music is even more generic than Loose—some tracks don’t even have the rhythm section at all—and can be avoided, unless you really liked Firefall. Both albums tanked, but luckily Ralph and Billy started working with Neil again, and eventually found guitarist Frank Sampedro, who was good enough to revive the Crazy Horse moniker, which is another tangent.

Neil has always spoken reverently of Danny Whitten, so Crazy Horse on their own haven’t exactly been forgotten as the decades passed. The band’s legacy got another boost in 2005 when Rhino Handmade compiled Scratchy, subtitled The Complete Reprise Recordings. This conveniently put the first album and Loose on one disc, with a handful of entertaining outtakes—mostly from the first album, plus a lame unreleased remake of “When You Dance You [sic] Can Really Love”—along with a “radio spot” and both sides of a 1962 single by Danny & The Memories (a.k.a. The Rockets when they were a doo-wop group) on a second disc. Historically it was nice of them to include both albums, but instead has us wishing they’d just stuck with a simple expanded version of the first album, with disc two’s extras added after the album proper. That’s how you can hear the first album on the Neil Young Archives site, after all.

Crazy Horse Crazy Horse (1971)—3½
Crazy Horse Loose (1972)—2½
Crazy Horse At Crooked Lake (1972)—2
Crazy Horse Scratchy: The Complete Reprise Recordings (2005)—3

Yes 9: Yesterdays

By now Yes were ready for a break, and who could blame them. While the key members worked on the requisite solo projects, the label bided their time with a compilation. Yesterdays didn’t have to stretch too much for a title, as it was built around tracks mostly from the era of their first two albums, a.k.a. the ones before Steve Howe. The big draw—outside the Roger Dean artwork, and we could do without the kid taking a leak on the back—were the non-album tracks making their first appearance on a Yes LP, and which bookend this one.

“America”, here in its full ten-minute splendor, is a molecular reconstruction of the Simon & Garfunkel album track, incorporating motifs from the unrelated song of the same title from West Side Story (clearly an influence on the band from the beginning). This is the only track here with Howe and Rick Wakeman, who are revved up and restrained, respectively. Of their epics, it’s not their best, but it’s still a good setup for “Looking Around” from the debut, which is itself followed nicely by “Time And A Word”. “Sweet Dreams” interestingly sits in the same side-ending slot as it did on the second album. Unfortunately, side two drags a bit, although “Then”, “Survival”, and “Astral Traveller” are undeniable harbingers of their later developed sound. The orchestrated “Dear Father” was the B-side of “Sweet Dreams” and a good place for it, as the religious hand-wringing doesn’t really suit them.

Yesterdays is redundant in the CD era, as the first two albums have never gone out of print, and the rarities have become standard bonus tracks. But it arguably chose the best tracks to satiate those waiting for the next big statement—or spur new initiates to fill in their racks—while sending some cash Peter Banks’ way.

Yes Yesterdays (1975)—2½

Kiss 14: Killers

The band’s rep had hit such a nadir by 1982 that their label—Casablanca no longer being the money chute it once was—fast-tracked a new Kiss compilation. They even insisted the band record new songs for it, but figured the band was such a lost cause that they didn’t bother releasing the set in the US or Canada.

Everything about Killers screams budget release, from the tacky lettering on the front to the garish pink triangle on both sides. There was no special inner sleeve, or any shilling for merchandise. Outside of the new songs, the balance is made up by older hits, all album tracks and some repeated from Double Platinum. Worst of all, Gene is shown with short hair, and Paul has a bandana. But since American veterans of the Kiss Army had to get it somewhere, they might have been surprised to see the alternate band logo on the German version of the album, as that country didn’t like how the “SS” in the regular version resembled that of Hitler’s Schutzstaffel. (The kids also would have had to find the Japanese and Australian editions of the album, each of which added two catalog songs, one of which was “Shandi”.)

Paul sings all the new ones, beginning with “I’m A Legend Tonight”, which is better than its chorus, save for the muffled drums. He yells his way through “Down On Your Knees”, which crams an awful—and we do mean awful—lot of clichés into three and a half minutes. This masterwork was co-written with Bryan Adams, of all people. Unfortunately, these only highlight the lyrical shortcomings of “Cold Gin” and “Love Gun”. “Shout It Out Loud” is the single mix, and “Sure Know Something” is one of the two “later” songs.

Paul wrote “Nowhere To Run” all by himself, and the best of the new songs musically; too bad he couldn’t think of a better chorus than “Nowhere to run/Nowhere to hide”. He also didn’t notice that “Partners In Crime” mentions someone being “down on your knees”; this riff deserved a better home too, and the canned horn blasts don’t help. It’s back to the hits with edited versions of “Detroit Rock City”, “God Of Thunder”, and “I Was Made For Lovin’ You”, ending with the Alive! version of “Rock And Roll All Nite”.

Even the hits can’t save this album. But being what it was, Killers was a popular import for decades, particularly since the four new songs wouldn’t be collected on any other compilation until the 21st century. By that time the album was made available for streaming, incorporating the three songs from the Japanese and Australian sequences. And in 2022, those four rarities were included in the Super Deluxe Edition of Creatures Of The Night.

Kiss Killers (1982)—2

Steely Dan 8: Reissuin’ The Years

Way back in 1978, as part of a last gasp by ABC Records before being swallowed up by MCA—and knowing the band wouldn’t have any other product out soon—a Greatest Hits album by Steely Dan hit the shelves in time for the holiday buying season. This two-record set was packed to capacity, literally and figuratively, going through the band’s six albums to date in order, and leaning heaviest on Pretzel Logic. Twelve of the songs had actually been singles, but the biggest draw at the time was “Here At The Western World”, an decent unreleased tune from the Royal Scam sessions.

Not included on the set, likely because ABC didn’t have the rights to it, was the superior standalone single “FM”, recorded for the soundtrack of the movie of the same name. This was, however, included on 1982’s Gold, a typically thrown-together MCA compilation that also included “Hey Nineteen” and “Babylon Sisters” from Gaucho and five earlier album cuts seemingly chosen at random. At least it filled two sides of a record.

Three years later, to appeal to the burgeoning CD market as well as audio snobs who wanted slick recordings with which they could demonstrate the new hifalutin technology, A Decade Of Steely Dan took ten tracks from Greatest Hits and added the three later songs from Gold (also substituting “Deacon Blues” for “Josie”), all in a pre-shuffled order. The cover art made no sense, but at least the insert included musician credits for each track.

That set became the go-to Steely Dan hits CD, which meant “Here At The Western World” was left in limbo in the digital age. This was rectified in 1991 when Gold was reissued in an “Expanded Edition”, which tried to compensate for duplicating four songs on Decade by adding “Western World” along with some other rarities. Two were Donald Fagen solo tracks that had appeared on two very different movie soundtracks; the mostly instrumental “True Companion” from Heavy Metal is very Dan-like, while the slick “Century’s End” from Bright Lights, Big City isn’t. Perhaps most enticingly, a hot live “Bodhisattva” from 1974 that had appeared eight years later as the B-side to “Hey Nineteen”, of all things, rounded out the disc. Besides being one of the few recordings of the band as a touring outfit, it sports a lengthy inebriated and censored introduction from one of their roadies. (While originally recorded on cassette, some of the song’s vocals sound too clean to not have been overdubbed after the fact.)

By now the box set industry was in full swing, and Steely Dan had their turn in 1993; plus, they were on tour to promote Fagen’s new album. Citizen Steely Dan crammed all six albums in sequence onto four CDs, with the occasional track swap for an “enhanced” listening experience at the start and/or end of some discs. The live “Bodhisattva” was inserted in place between Pretzel Logic and Katy Lied, just as “Western World” and “FM” bookended the Aja selections. Beyond those, the sole rarity was a 1971 demo of “Everyone’s Gone To The Movies” stuck at the end of disc four, eschewing their other oft-bootlegged, early work and even both sides of their long-lost first single, which both guys said they hated. (Their active involvement with the set was borne out by the meticulously remastered contents—though they forgot to include the intro of “Rikki Don’t Lose That Number” in the first pressing—along with particularly sardonic and occasionally hilarious liner notes printed in an annoying all-caps font.)

That should be sufficient for anyone, but the allure of disposable income is too much for any record executive to resist, and why would they. At the turn of the century, Showbiz Kids did a nice job of expanding the original Greatest Hits onto two CDs, complete with the requisite dip into Gaucho, the inclusion of both “FM” and “Western World”, and finally acknowledging “Dirty Work” and “Aja” as essential, though perhaps at the expense of “East St. Louis Toodle-oo”, which is no real loss. Six years later, The Definitive Collection proved to be false advertising by sticking to a single CD and featuring a song from each of their 21st-century albums. At least it included “Dirty Work”.

Steely Dan Greatest Hits (1978)—4
Steely Dan Gold (1982)—3
1991 Expanded Edition: same as 1982, plus 4 extra tracks
Steely Dan A Decade Of Steely Dan (1985)—3½
Steely Dan Citizen Steely Dan: 1972–1980 (1993)—3½
Steely Dan Showbiz Kids: The Steely Dan Story, 1972–1980 (2000)—4
Steely Dan The Definitive Collection (2006)—3

John Cale 6: Slow Dazzle

Having found a sound he liked, John Cale kept going. Slow Dazzle presented another set of mature, obscure rock disguised as pop, with the help of Roxy refugees Eno and Manzanera, but notably brought guitarist Chris Spedding into the fold. The result is a mostly straight-sounding album that lists steadily toward madness.

With just a hint of the Philly sound, “Mr. Wilson” acknowledges the influence of the head Beach Boy without aping him in the slightest. “Taking It All Away” recalls the chamber pop of Paris 1919, and is the first hint of remorse over a failed romance. The irritated narrator of “Dirtyass Rock ‘N’ Roll” uses onomatopoeia to convey how it soothes his soul, while “Darling I Need You” is greasy ‘50s rock right down to the sax solo and “Rollaroll” could easily be sung by Bryan Ferry, but he might not have taken Cale’s lead, which was to start to howl as the song fades.

Such an unsettling sound is carried over onto side two, where Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” is transformed into the soundtrack to a horror film. By comparison, “Ski Patrol” would appear to be a celebration of the fine workers who perform such a task at the world’s resorts, but there’s a good chance it could also be cocaine. “I’m Not The Loving Kind” would be an obvious cover choice for any adult contemporary crooner worth his salt, if only for the lovely wordless melody that makes up most of the choruses. The opening line of “Guts” makes plain why his marriage was currently in the toilet, and his anger increases over the end of the track much like “Fear”, except that the band keeps going. None of this can prepare the listener for “The Jeweller”, a Kafkaesque short story recited even more unsettlingly than “The Gift” over droning and controlled feedback.

Slow Dazzle is not an easy listen, but it’s right in line with his then-current trajectory. Chances are most people diving in without warning would swim for the ladder as soon and as fast as possible, but those who can take it will find possibly his most consistent album yet.

John Cale Slow Dazzle (1975)—3

Jayhawks 7: Rainy Day Music

Having proven that they could stretch outside the box, the Jayhawks took advantage of the alt.country wave of the 21st century and went back to the well, so to speak. Rainy Day Music pared the group back to the core of Gary Louris and Marc Perlman, supported by the stalwart Tim O’Reagan on drums and harmonies and former Long Ryder Stephen McCarthy on the other guitars and stringed instruments. With the help of producer Ethan Johns, scion of the legendary Glyn, and a sessioneer on most of the keyboards, the sound was pared back too, without excessive fuzz or feedback, giving the songs room to breathe.

Proof that they’ve gone back to basics is evident immediately on “Stumbling Through The Dark”, with its prominent banjo. “Tailspin” has a little more crunch, but gets its boost from a great chorus and a terrific countermelody from Tim. “All The Right Reasons” brings the proceedings back to just above a hush, at least until the drums kick in, and “Save It For A Rainy Day” is one of those catchy songs we could swear we’ve heard before. There must be a reason why the protagonist of “The Eyes Of Sarahjane” spells her name that way, but it still sounds like a chorus matched to a completely unrelated verse. Not quite as schizophrenic is “One Man’s Problems”, which skirts with funk when it’s not going for California pop. Both are eclipsed by Tim’s “Don’t Let The World Get In Your Way”, which even has a Mellotron.

Others have noted that the second half isn’t as strong, but that’s not to say it’s not good. “Come To The River” goes for a soulful Southern rock vibe, and “Angelyne” manages to get a new song out of the same chords that launched a thousand Byrds and Petty knockoffs. “Madman” is another vibe peace, with swampy bongos and acoustic guitars under close harmonies. While very much related to “Waiting For The Sun” musically, with more acoustic touches, “You Look So Young” succeeds, particularly in the breakdown and subsequent bridge. Tim contributes another strong one, “Tampa To Tulsa”, while “Will I See You In Heaven” comes solely from the pen of Marc, who does not sing it. The closing reprise of “Stumbling Through The Dark” only helps to suggest that the album does seem to run long and gets too quiet at times.

Despite that, Rainy Day Music is nice and cozy for any kind of weather, and a welcome change of pace. It also helped that the American label’s new distribution deal with Universal brought them within the purview of the Lost Highway imprint, which gave it decent promotion among people interested in Ryan Adams and the like.

As was common at the time, a limited edition package included a bonus CD titled More Rain, which included the rockin’ “Fools On Parade”, two demos of otherwise unreleased songs, two alternate versions of album tracks, and a live acoustic take of “Waiting For The Sun”. These songs were not included on the expanded reissue some ten years later; instead five different, previously unreleased demos and another live cut were crammed onto the end of the disc.

The Jayhawks Rainy Day Music (2003)—3
2014 Expanded Edition: “same” as 2003, plus 6 extra tracks

Brian Eno 27: Mixing Colours

We don’t know if being Brian’s younger brother has done Roger Eno any favors, but he has managed to build up a catalog of his own brand of ambient music over the decades. Mixing Colours was the Enos’ first released collaboration in decades, and it was apparently built over a period of 15 years.

The brief is very much like the albums Brian did with Harold Budd—Roger plays gentle keyboards, mostly in the acoustic or electric piano family, and Brian treats the sound or adds his own touches. Each track’s title is derived from a specific shade or tint, so whether or not they convey an accurate representation of a mood is up to the individual. That being so, we found “Snow” to be very pretty and engaging, even before we checked to see what it was called. “Celeste” seems to be one of the more musically developed pieces, as opposed to a sketch, and “Slow Movement: Sand” does convey a certain majesty as it builds. By comparison, “Desert Sand” is dominated by a Brian texture right out of 1976. “Obsidian” breaks from the mold with an organ-based sound, tempered by the more chamber-nursery tone of “Blonde”. The album is easy to have in the background, so one might not notice that the melody of “Spring Frost” turns up again an hour later as “Cerulean Blue”, for example.

Mixing Colours was released at the start of the COVID lockdown, and provided a companion for enforced solitude. Some time afterwards, the Luminous EP presented another seven tracks by the duo, which may be easier to ingest as a shorter program. These were then inserted into the album’s original sequence, which was rereleased as Mixing Colours Expanded. All together, it’s pleasant aural wallpaper from the family dynasty that invented it.

Roger Eno and Brian Eno Mixing Colours (2020)—3
Roger Eno and Brian Eno Luminous (2020)—3