Paint It Black! The Reverend's Archives, Volume 5

By Rev. Keith A. Gordon

Paint It Black! is a collection of rock ‘n’ blues album & book reviews penned by the “Reverend of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Rev. Keith A. Gordon.

The fifth and final archive volume documenting the Reverend’s 50 years as an award-winning music journalist and critic, Paint It Black! features over 150 album and book reviews, covering both the greatest and some of the most obscure artists in rock and blues music! From classic rock or Americana pioneers to trailblazing blues artists, cult rockers, and much more, Paint It Black! is a genre-spanning guide to your next record purchase!

Rev. Gordon has written or edited 24 previous music-related books, including Blues Deluxe: The Joe Bonamassa Buying Guide, The Other Side of Nashville, and Scorched Earth: A Jason & the Scorchers Scrapbook.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Rev. Keith A. Gordon
• Release date: May 15, 2021

Rev. Keith A. Gordon

The "Reverend of Rock 'n' Roll," Rev. Keith A. Gordon has almost 50 years in the pop culture trenches. Gordon's work has appeared in over 100 publications worldwide, as well as in several All Music Guide books and on the AMG website, as well as Blurt magazine and the Rock and Roll Globe. Rev. Gordon is the author of nearly two-dozen music-related books including The Other Side of Nashville, a history of the city's rock 'n' roll underground; Blues Deluxe: A Joe Bonamassa Buying Guide; and The Rock 'n' Roll Archives series.

Book preview

PAINT IT BLACK!

THE REVEREND’S ARCHIVES, VOLUME FIVE

(1988 – 2021)

Album & Book reviews by

Rev. Keith A. Gordon

Smashwords Edition • Copyright 2021 • All Rights Reserved

Smashwords Edition, License Notes:

This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

I. LONG-FORM ALBUM REVIEWS

Alex Chilton – A Man Called Destruction

Alice Cooper – Welcome To My Nightmare

Bad Religion – Stranger Than Fiction

Bash & Pop – Friday Night Is Killing Me

Ben Harper & Charlie Musselwhite – No Mercy In This Land

Big Star – Live At Lafayette’s Music Room

Blue Oyster Cult – Agents of Fortune

Bob Marley – Concrete Jungle [bootleg]

Bob Seger – Transmission Impossible

Bruce Springsteen – A Journey to Nowhere [bootleg]

Bruce Springsteen – Tracks

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band – Live In New York City

Captain Beyond – Lost & Found 1972-1973

Carla Thomas – Stax Classics

Chris Bell – I Am the Cosmos

Chris Hillman – The Asylum Years

Copperhead – Live At Pacific High Studios San Francisco 1972 [bootleg]

David Bowie – Earthling

David Bowie – Hours

David Honeyboy Edwards – I’m Gonna Tell You Somethin’ That I Know

Dead Kennedys – Frankenchrist

Dead Kennedys – Live At the Old Waldorf, San Francisco

Dead Kennedys – Mutiny On the Bay

Elvin Bishop – Elvin Bishop’s Big Fun Trio

Eric Gales – That’s What I Am

Flamin’ Groovies – Fantastic Plastic

Frank Zappa – Chunga’s Revenge

Frankie Miller – Frankie Miller’s Double Take

Gary Moore – Back to the Blues

George Thorogood & the Destroyers - Boogie Chillin’ [bootleg]

Gov’t Mule – LIVE…With A Little Help From Our Friends

Guided By Voices – Bee Thousand

International Submarine Band – Safe At Home

Isaac Hayes – Stax Classics

Janiva Magness – Blue Again

Jason Ringenberg – Rhinestoned

Jeff Beck – Truth

Jesse Ed Davis – Red Dirt Boogie

Joe Grushecky & the Houserockers – More Yesterdays Than Tomorrows

John Hammond – Mirrors

John Lee Hooker – The Modern, Chess & Veejay Singles Collection 1949-62

John Mayall – Talk About That

Little Richard – The Rill Thing / The King of Rock and Roll

Little Richard – Second Coming / Lifetime Friend

Mad For the Racket – The Rackets

Magic Sam – The Essential Magic Sam

Manfred Mann – Mann Made Hits

Mark Robinson Band – Live at the 5 Spot

Metallica – Garage Inc.

Michael Monroe – Life Gets You Dirty

Mick Ronson – Heaven and Hull

Mike Bloomfield – Bottom Line Cabaret 31.3.74 [bootleg]

Midnight Oil – Live On Air [bootleg]

Mothers of Invention – Burnt Weeny Sandwich

Neil Young – Bottom Line 1974 [bootleg]

Nitty Gritty Dirt Band – Nashville ’74 [bootleg]

Paul Krassner – Brain Damage Control

Peter Case – On the Way Downtown

R.L. Burnside – Wish I Was In Heaven Sitting Down

Raging Fire – These Teeth Are Sharp

Ray Wylie Hubbard – Crusades of the Restless Knights

Rocket From the Tombs – The Day the Earth Met The Rocket From the Tombs

Rory Gallagher – Cleveland Calling [‘authorized’ bootleg]

Sam & Dave – Stax Classics

Shane MacGowan & the Popes – The Snake

Shemekia Copeland – America’s Child

Social Distortion – White Light, White Heat, White Trash

Sonic’s Rendezvous Band – Sweet Nothing

Sour Ops – Family Circuit

Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes – Live At the Paradise Theater

Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes – The Fever: The Remastered Epic Recordings

Stevie Ray Vaughan – Live In Albuquerque & In Denver [bootleg]

Stevie Ray Vaughan – Nashville 1978

The Band – Syria Mosque 1970 [bootleg]

The Clash – From Here To Eternity Live

The Dictators – Bloodbrothers

The Dramatics – Stax Classics

The Jayhawks – Tomorrow the Green Grass

The London Quireboys – This Is Rock ‘n’ Roll

The Meters – A Message From The Meters

The Rascals – The Complete Singles A’s & B’s

The Raspberries – Pop Art Live

The Rolling Stones – R.S.V.P. [bootleg]

The Rolling Stones – Steel Wheels Live

The Searchers – Another Night: The Sire Recordings 1979-1981

The Suburbs – Viva! Suburbs!

The Yardbirds – Live In France

Too Much Joy – …Finally

Townes Van Zandt & Guy Clark – Live at Great American Music Hall [bootleg]

Various Artists – Beyond Bowie: The Mick Ronson Story

Various Artists – Woody Guthrie: The Tribute Concerts

Warren Zevon – Life’ll Kill Ya

Wayne Kramer – Citizen Wayne

Webb Wilder and the Beatnecks – Powerful Stuff!

Weird Al Yankovic – Bad Hair Day

Weird Al Yankovic – Running With Scissors

Willie Nile – Beautiful Wreck of the World

Willie Nile – Children of Paradise

Willie Nile – Positively Bob: Willie Nile Sings Bob Dylan

Wilson Pickett – In the Midnight Hour/The Exciting Wilson Pickett

Wu Tang Clan – Wu-Tang Forever

II. ALBUM REVIEWS – SHORTS

6 String Drag – High Hat

6 String Drag – Top of the World

Black Label Society – Sonic Brew

Catfish – Get Down/Catfish Live

Circle Jerks – Golden Shower of Hits

Discharge – Discharge

Dixie Dregs – Full Circle

Ed Petterson & the High Line Riders – Somewhere South of Here

Guadalcanal Diary – At Your Birthday Party

Half Japanese – Bone Head

Helios Creed – Busting Through The Van Allan Belt

Ian Anderson – The Secret Language of Birds

King Crimson – Live In Vienna

Marky Ramone & the Intruders – The Answer To Your Problems

Mike Watt – Ball-Hog or Tugboat?

Moloch – Moloch

Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets – Live At the Roundhouse

Nick Moss Band – The High Cost of Low Living

P.J. Harvey – Rid of Me

Pat Dinizio – Pat Dinizio

Peter Holsapple – Game Day

Phil Seymour – Prince of Power Pop

Reggae Cowboys – Tell the Truth

Shemekia Copeland – Uncivil War

Shuggie Otis – Inter-Fusion

Social Distortion – Live At the Roxy

Sour Ops – X

Joe Strummer - Assembly

Steve Wynn – Sweetness and Light

Terry Anderson – You Don’t Like Me

The Damnation of Adam Blessing – The Damnation of Adam Blessing

The Damnation of Adam Blessing – The Second Damnation

The Eyeliners – Sealed With A Kiss

The Fleshtones – Face of the Screaming Werewolf

The Pretty Things – Bare As Bone, Bright As Blood

The Replacements – For Sale: Live at Maxwell’s 1986

The Saints – (I’m) Stranded

The Saints – Eternally Yours

The Skeletons – Nothing To Lose

The Sons of Hercules – Hits For the Misses

Tommy Bolin – From the Archives, Volume Two

Tommy Bolin – Live From Ebbets Field

Various Artists – Memphis Rent Party

Various Artists – Rockers OST

Wailing Souls – Live On

Walter Trout – Ordinary Madness

William Topley – Black River

III. BOOK REVIEWS

Aubrey Powell – Vinyl. Album. Cover. Art: The Complete Hipgnosis Catalogue

Bruce Iglauer – Bitten By the Blues

Daryl Sanders – That Thin, Wild Mercury Sound

Joe Hagan – Sticky Fingers

Martin Popoff – Beer Drinkers and Hell Raisers: The Rise of Motörhead

Martin Popoff – Born Again! Black Sabbath In the Eighties and Nineties

Martin Popoff – Sabotage! Black Sabbath In the Seventies

Peter Guralnick – Careless Love

Richard Morton Jack – Psychedelia: 101 Iconic Underground Rock Albums 1966-1970

Robert Gordon – Memphis Rent Party

Introduction: Paint It Black!

Well, here we go again – the fifth and final volume of my personal archives, weighing in at 100,000+ words and collecting over 150 album and book reviews, a few of which were unpublished until just this very moment. Like the four other volumes in this series, the book is named for a song – whereas the previous tomes were named after classic tunes by Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, and John Lee Hooker, this one gets its inspiration from the Rolling Stones’ hit Paint It Black, the first Stones song I remember hearing and one that would lead to a lifelong love affair with the band. The song was ubiquitous during the summer of 1966, hitting #1 on the U.S. and U.K. charts alike while I joyously celebrated my ninth birthday with a shiny black 45rpm copy of the song.

The Stones were a gateway group, of sorts, to the blues, soul, and R&B music that I’d immerse myself in during my teens. I was never a huge Beatles fan and ‘though I dutifully owned copies of Abbey Road and Let It Be, the Fab Four’s music never resounded with me the way that albums like Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed did. If the Stones opened my ears to American blues, it was Memphis music legend Furry Lewis that pushed me through with his performance on the Alabama State Troupers’ album that I’d won a copy of from Nashville’s WKDA-FM radio. I soon found cut-out copies of older albums by Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Little Walter, and John Lee Hooker to feed my addiction to play alongside the various London Sessions releases that featured young British rockers playing with their idols.

I’ve described my entry into rock criticism, courtesy of the legendary scribe Rick Johnson, in previous introductions to these archives so I won’t continue to bore you all with the sordid details. Over the years I’ve written nearly three thousand album reviews, many of them of the long-winded, long-form variety that I describe below, a few hundred in less wordier formats, for over 100 publications worldwide. Next year (2022) will mark my 50th anniversary as a rock critic and music journalist, a long way from the stage originally provided by the late Mr. Johnson (my editor) and the still-thriving Mr. Bill Knight (publisher) at Sunrise magazine. Along the road I’ve made a lot of long-time friends, and heard a heck of a lot of great music which I’m happy to share my thought on within these pages.

Four years ago, with the publication of Boogie Chillun: The Reverend’s Archives, Volume Four, I wrote that it would be the final collection in my archives. More than a few people urged me to keep on scribbling my reviews, however, advice that didn’t take too much arm-bending for me to accept. I’ve penned a couple hundred missives to records I like a lot (or outright love) since Boogie Chillun, including more than a few album retrospectives published by the Rock and Roll Globe website (and collected in my Planet of Sound book!). This really will be the last book of this type from my near-bottomless files, though…it really is time for my bootheels to be wandering, and five doorstops clocking in at roughly a half-million words is enough self-aggrandizement for any one person. Enjoy this final collection and keep your eye on That Devil Music.com for whatever comes next…

Rev. Keith A. Gordon

May 2021

Listening to Elmore James while sitting somewhere outside of Buffalo NY

LONG-FORM ALBUM REVIEWS

The long-form album review has become a dinosaur, I’m afraid, a relic of a simpler era when ink and paper was the only venue for music criticism and the column inches available for coverage in any music rag seemed endless. I’m talking about reviews of 800-1,200 words or more, the kind of lengthy diatribes that Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, Rick Johnson, et al scratched out on beat-to-hell typewriters back at the dawn of the form, i.e. the mid-to-late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

I learned to type on a cast-off Smith & Wesson typewriter that my dad had carried off to college after serving in Korea and I dug out of a dusty corner of the garage. Yeah, long-form reviews can get tedious and meandering in the wrong hands, but I’ve always preferred the form as a way to really express my thoughts on a particular album. Here are roughly 100 of these long-winded reviews for your reading enjoyment…

ALEX CHILTON

A Man Called Destruction

(Omnivore Recordings)

By the time that he returned to Ardent Studios in Memphis, Tennessee during the summer of 1994, Alex Chilton had already enjoyed a tumultuous and storied career. Joining blue-eyed soul band the Box Tops at the young age of 16, Chilton experienced the highs of the record biz as the band scored late ‘60s hits with classic songs like The Letter, Soul Deep, and Cry Like A Baby. After a brief foray exploring the possibilities of solo work, Chilton formed power-pop legends Big Star with like-minded musicians Chris Bell, Andy Hummel, and Jody Stephens. Big Star would deliver a pair of critically-acclaimed albums in 1972’s #1 Record and 1974’s Radio City (a third Big Star album would be released in 1978, years after the band’s break-up), but when commercial success seemed out of reach, Chilton re-started his solo career.

To say that Alex Chilton’s solo career was checkered is in no way an exaggeration. As Big Star’s posthumous influence and reputation grew and inspired bands like the Posies, the Replacements, and R.E.M., among many others, expectations soared whenever Chilton sojourned into the recording studio. For every acclaimed effort like 1985’s Feudalist Tarts there would be a sloppy, undisciplined work such as 1979’s Like Flies On Sherbet, Chilton often recording doomed, anarchistic and anachronistic albums for European labels charmed by his legend. Chilton even took a brief hiatus from music in the early ‘80s, washing dishes in a New Orleans restaurant, returning only to subsume his identity as a (mostly) anonymous member of Tav Falco’s Panther Burns. Chilton had largely beaten his demons by the time he went home and recorded A Man Called Destruction, and the long out-of-print gem has finally been restored to the Chilton catalog.

A Man Called Destruction is every bit as eclectic as the artist that recorded it, Chilton mixing up the rockin’ style of R&B that he’d perfected with the Box Tops with Big Star-styled power-pop and elements of blues, soul, gospel, and country music. Featuring original material as well as covers from Chilton’s big book of favorites, A Man Called Destruction was recorded with old friends like bassist Ron Easley and drummer Ron Garrison as well as a brace of local Memphis studio pros like keyboardists Al Gamble and Charlie Hodges and saxophonist Jim Spake. The result was an engaging, if often-confusing collection of sounds, none of them anywhere close to resembling contemporary in 1995, a year during which hip-hop and alt-rock ruled the charts.

For instance, Chilton’s cover of the Fats Domino hit Sick and Tired (originally written and recorded by Louisiana native Chris Kenner) skews towards a New Orleans big band sound, with a jazz-flecked rhythm track providing locomotion behind Chilton’s spirited Mardi Gras vocals. The original Devil Girl got plenty of college radio airplay back in the day, the song’s low-slung groove, sultry lyrics, and smoky vocal delivery matched with syncopated rhythms and Chilton’s skronky, chaotic fretwork. I never cared much for the loopy What’s Your Sign Girl, Chilton’s fatback guitarplay outshining his goofy vocals, but a cover of his pal Keith Keller’s Lies is a muscular rocker with explosive percussion and blistering six-string work.

Jimmy Reed’s You Don’t Have To Go is provided a reverent, bluesy reading with Chilton’s surprisingly skillful harp playing. The instrumental Boplexity is a wild, swinging affair, with Charlie Hodges’ excited keyboard-pounding and Chilton’s mighty fine chicken-pickin’ reminding these ears of Booker T & the M.G.’s trailblazing mix of blues, jazz, and R&B whereas a cover of the Jan & Dean B-side New Girl In School is appropriately whimsical, Chilton delivering his best Brian Wilson vocal impersonation while an extended guitar solo moves the surf-pop ditty dangerously close to leather-clad garage-rock turf. Don’t Know Anymore is a jazzy, late-night dirge with more than a little blues in the grooves, sparking some flashy guitar licks and accompanied by icy blasts of horn.

The album-ending Don’t Stop is the kind of power-pop creation that Chilton defined with Big Star – melodic, but with ramshackle guitar and the sort of joyous sonic construction that would inspire a hundred bands in the 1980s and ‘90s. The Omnivore Recordings reissue of A Man Called Destruction tacks seven previously-unreleased bonus songs onto the original track list, including an outtake of Devil Girl with double-tracked vocals that heighten the song’s surrealistic malevolence. Chilton’s original You’re My Favorite is a rockabilly-tinged romper-stomper with exhilarating guitar riffs and propulsive rhythms while Please Pass Me My Walkin’ Shoes is a similarly-flavored 1950s throwback with a Carl Perkins heart and a Chicago blues soul that features raucous fretwork and an overall reckless vibe. A mash-up of the flighty Why Should I Care – a jazzy pastiche of British dancehall rhythms – with the somber, dark-hued It’s Your Funeral is not as odd a pairing as one might think at first, two sides of the same coin as it were.

One of Alex Chilton’s final studio albums, A Man Called Destruction can also easily be considered one of his best recordings overall. Chilton’s joyful performances at Ardent Studios provide insight into his love of music of all stripes while spotlighting his vastly underrated guitar skills. The cult rocker seldom sounded as happy, inspired, and motivated as he does on these tracks, Chilton willing to discard the mythology that had grown up around him like so much kudzu vine to simply play what his heart desired, and the results speak for themselves. Eclectic it may be, but A Man Called Destruction displays Chilton’s immense if often-unutilized talents like few albums in the artist’s catalog, bolstering his status as the man who launched a musical revolution with the sound of his guitar and expressive vocals. (That Devil Music, 2018)

ALICE COOPER

Welcome To My Nightmare

(Rhino Records)

When Alice Cooper, the band, broke up in the mid-’70s due to the rigors of stardom (insert imagination here), many thought that Alice Cooper, the man, was history. Alice was, after all, an honest-to-god freakshow, the controversial artist behind such future classics as School’s Out, Billion Dollar Babies, and I’m Eighteen. Without the backing of strong musicians such as Michael Bruce and Glen Buxton, cried the critics and other observers, Cooper was on his way to becoming nothing more than an interesting footnote in the checkered history of rock ‘n’ roll.

The 1975 release of Alice’s solo debut, Welcome To My Nightmare, proved the critics wrong and provided Cooper with some degree of vindication. With the benefit of hindsight, we critical types now consider Cooper to be one of the legends of rock ‘n’ roll, a heavy metal godfather who has influenced artists such as Marilyn Manson and Rob Zombie, among many others. Back in ‘75, though, teenage whiz kids such as myself couldn’t have cared less about the ruminations of a bunch of erudite college grads slumming in the ghetto of rock criticism. Alice Freakin’ Cooper had a new album out and for hundreds of thousands of high school stoners, rockers, and underachievers, that was good enough!

Conceived by Cooper as a concept album (which tied in with the effects-laden stage show and wildly successful tour that accompanied Welcome To My Nightmare), the album both blazed new trails and also revisited classic Cooper-styled songs. It introduced Cooper the crooner, yielding a monster hit in the ballad Only Woman Bleed that won the artist a new distaff audience and opened the door for power ballads by contemporaries like Ozzie and a slew of ‘80s’ hair bands.

Welcome To My Nightmare also further defined horror rock with monster cuts like the title track, The Black Widow (complete with children’s choir), and Cold Ethyl, with narration provided by the crown prince of terror, Vincent Price. Department of Youth was a stylistic throwback to Cooper’s previous band sound, with Detroit rocker Johnny Bee Badanjek delivering a solid drumbeat behind Cooper’s vocals. To replace the muscular sound of his long-standing band, Cooper recruited Lou Reed’s rock ‘n’ roll animals, guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, who stacked up fiery riffs like so much sawmill fodder throughout the songs on Welcome To My Nightmare.

The remastered Rhino reissue of Welcome To My Nightmare brings new brilliance to the sound of this classic album and adds previously unreleased live versions of Devil’s Food, Cold Ethyl, and The Awakening culled from an ABC television special. Manic liner notes from Cooper biographer Jeffrey Morgan and a handful of rare photos round out an exceptional package. Although I personally would like to have seen Rhino begin their restoration of the Alice Cooper catalog with early albums like Love It To Death or Killer, the work that they’ve done with Welcome To My Nightmare and, previously, Billion Dollar Babies, is nevertheless impressive. If your knowledge of Alice Cooper is limited to his early band work or more recent metal horror albums, you owe it to yourself to check out Welcome To My Nightmare. (Alt.Culture.Guide™, 2002)

BAD RELIGION

Stranger Than Fiction

(Epitaph Records/Atlantic)

Twenty years ago, as a teen, I had been a rock ‘n’ roll fanatic for a number of years already. My interest in ‘60s-era artists like the Stones, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Jimi Hendrix had given way to bands like Alice Cooper, the Mothers of Invention, and Kiss with the changing of the decades. By 1975, however, rock ‘n’ roll was beginning to become a mega-buck biz, and artistic integrity had suffered.

One night, however, my faith in the music was reclaimed as I crouched on my ears at a heating vent in my parent’s house, straining to hear the notes of Born to Run that were coming up from a radio in my sister’s room. It was a seminal moment in this young critic’s life, a renewal in my belief in the power of rock ‘n’ roll. Bruce Springsteen became a savior for many in my generation, the commercial success of his roots-oriented rock opening the door to great bands like the Clash, the Jam, the Ramones, and others of the original late ‘70s/early ‘80s punk-rock/New Wave assault.

It’s been a while since those halcyon days, and although, in my role as critic and publisher, I hear a lot of fine music, there’s a lot more chaff to dredge through than ever before. For every Liz Phair, there’s a dreadful Mariah Carey; for every Pavement, there’s a Michael Bolton or Vanilla Ice or...well, you get the picture. It’s enough to discourage a true believer...

From the rocking opening chords of Incomplete, the first song on Bad Religion’s Stranger Than Fiction, I knew that I was experiencing the magic that I’ve only felt a few times during the past decade or so, that personal renewal of faith in the unbridled power of rock ‘n’ roll as an expression of thought, to offer complete freedom, to change the world. The words of Incomplete are timeless, expressing teen angst and a questioning of identity that is as valid today as it would have been in my day. Mother, Father, look at your little monster/I’m a hero, I’m a zero, I’m the butt of the worst joke in history... The song serves as an open door to the best collection of songs of the year, one of the best I’ve ever heard, period.

Bad Religion has been around for a few years, releasing their first album in 1982 on their own indie Epitaph Records label. Throughout the ensuing period, they’ve worked their way up to become the most successful indie band ever, racking up sales figures that make the majors envious. They’ve done it their own way, delivering hard, fast, and loose hardcore punk that takes no prisoners, offers no quarter. Album by album, their fortunes have grown, and they’ve seemingly not made a bad record in the bunch.

Stranger Than Fiction is the band’s major label debut, and although there will be those who will say that the band has sold out, I’ll deny that claim. Music that is on an indie label isn’t necessarily always good (or even listenable) and major label releases aren’t automatically dreck. With Stranger Than Fiction, Bad Religion seem to have reached critical mass, the sixteen cuts offered here are as full of vigor and energy as any hardcore punk release has ever been. Graced with not one, but two gifted songwriters in vocalist Greg Graffin and guitarist Brett Gurewitz, Bad Religion, like the Clash before them, has the intellectual depth and the innate talents to deliver the goods.

And how good are Bad Religion? They incorporate decades of rock ‘n’ roll history in creating a hard rocking sound that is at once both unique and original, familiar and friendly. The power of the three-minute song in not lost on this gang, and they use it with a great élan. I hear strains of the Clash, the Jam, the Who, Springsteen, the Ramones, and much more in these songs, but they’re distinctive, nonetheless, as patently identifiable as Springsteen’s lyrical poetry or Peter Townsend’s roaring guitar riffs.

It all boils down to the songs, though, and it’s here that Bad Religion’s songwriting tag team comes into play. Although their lyrical styles are different (a practiced listener could identify a song’s writer by its rhythm and wording), both Graffin and Gurewitz construct tunes that are intelligent, thoughtful, and meaningful, surrounding them with similar sonics. Cuts like Inner Logic, with its closing chants of No equality, no opportunity, no tolerance for the progressive alternative are evidence of the band’s social awareness, but an earlier verse – If I pierce the complexity, I won’t find salvation, just the bald and overt truth of the evil and deception - illustrates their underlying cynicism. The literary references of Stranger Than Fiction, the album’s title cut, are cleverly mixed with poetic commentary on our short, fateful existence upon this sphere, closing with the beautifully haunting, wise verse Life is the crummiest book I ever read, there isn’t a hook, just a lot of cheap shots/Pictures to shock, and characters an amateur would never dream up.

This is heady stuff, and head and shoulders above even the most verbose, overly serious, highly respected folk poet...and it was delivered by a bunch of scruffy punk rockers in a three-minute song that will rock your socks off rather than bore you into a dull fever. In 1982, the Clash were punk-rock’s great hopes, the remaining survivors of a washed-out trend. They were, as they proudly proclaimed, the only band that mattered. They’ve since come and gone, leaving their indelible mark on the music. It is now 1995, however, and with Stranger Than Fiction, I’d say that Bad Religion has picked up that long-lost mantle, they’ve earned the honor of being this era’s only band that matters. Without a doubt in my mind, Stranger Than Fiction is the album of the year, a classic that is certain to withstand the test of time to go on and influence future bands. (R.A.D! zine, 1995)

BASH & POP

Friday Night Is Killing Me

(Omnivore Recordings)

Widely considered one of the greatest outfits in the history of rock ‘n’ roll, the Replacements enjoy a cult following far above and beyond the band’s meager commercial accomplishments. Part of their hallowed status among fans is due to the band’s unpredictable live concerts where the ‘Mats could be the best band in rock on any given night…or possibly the worst. Either way, the band’s ramshackle performances were never dull and were always entertaining. Considering the enduring nature of the band’s classic recordings like Let It Be and Pleased To Meet Me, the Replacements have earned their place on the Mount Olympus of rock ‘n’ roll.

When internal tensions broke up the Replacements in 1991, bassist Tommy Stinson – an integral part of the band’s honest, anarchic sound – wanted to continue playing in a group. Switching to guitar, he convinced Replacements’ drummer Steve Foley to join the new band, along with his brother Kevin Foley on bass, and he brought in guitarist Steve Brantseg to form the outfit known as Bash & Pop. The foursome subsequently recorded Friday Night Is Killing Me with producer Don Smith, the 1993 album including guest appearances by Benmont Tench and Mike Campbell from Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers and Wire Train’s Jeff Trott. The album received modest critical acclaim for its energetic, guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll but went nowhere fast, and Stinson soon wandered off to eventually join Guns N’ Roses.

Although Friday Night Is Killing Me paled in comparison to the Replacements’ best work, the album has grown in stature in the nearly quarter-century since its release, no mean feat as the CD has been out-of-print for 20 years. Nothing more was heard from Bash & Pop until earlier this year, when Stinson hooked up with friends like Steve Selvidge of the Hold Steady and Luther Dickson of the North Mississippi Allstars to record Anything Could Happen, the first Bash & Pop album since 1993. With renewed interest in the band growing, Omnivore Recordings has reissued Friday Night Is Killing Me as a deluxe two-disc set featuring the original album mastered by current B&P bassist Justin Perkins as well as an eighteen-track bonus disc featuring rare singles, home demos, and B-sides, most of which are previously-unreleased.

The original tracks on Friday Night Is Killing Me offer no-frills, guitar-driven rock ‘n’ roll. Album opener Never Aim To Please, for instance, twangs ‘n’ bangs like the Georgia Satellites on dexies, with a BIG drum sound, scorching fretwork, and a melody you could hang your coat on. The mid-tempo Loose Ends is similarly rootsy, Stinson’s drawled vocals matched by Steve Foley’s measured timekeeping, a throbbing bass line, and scraps of twinkling guitar. One More Time bursts out of the gate like a champion race horse before teetering off the track, Foley’s can-slamming providing the only anchor to the musical chaos.

The punkish fervor of Fast & Hard is perhaps the closest that Stinson comes here to replicating the inexplicable chemistry of his former band, the song displaying reckless energy and great musical dynamics while the album’s title track is a grandiloquent almost-ballad with tortured vocals and lush instrumentation. The bonus disc provided with the Friday Night Is Killing Me reissue is a roller-coaster jaunt through the Bash & Pop archives, a mish-mash of demos and rarities that is uneven by nature. The home demo of Hang Ups is delightfully raw and more ramshackle than the final version while the rowdy Situation reminds of Rod Stewart & the Faces and should probably have made the cut on the original album tracklist.

Ditto for Harboring A Fugitive, a feedback-laden slab o’ punky power-pop with ringing guitars and enchanting instrumental drone; tailor-made for ‘90s era rock radio it could have cut through the grunge onslaught on the FM band. The band’s contribution to Kevin Smith’s 1994