Let’s Dance (1983)
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So Bowie sold out. Really, what else could he do? Selling out was the thing to do in the ’80s, and Bowie was always one to stay on top of current trends. Of course, he had to have it his own way, drafting Nile Rodgers as producer, enlisting Stevie Ray Vaughan as the lead guitarist, and making a hit out of an old Iggy Pop collaboration (that would be the only slightly cringe-inducing “China Girl”). And of course, some of the songs had to kick ass. “Modern Love” is as exciting an opener as any in Bowie’s catalog, and the title track was a deservedly huge hit, an addictive slice of disco-funk that sounds like it was recorded in an exceptionally trebly cathedral. The rest of the album is carried along by the momentum of the three singles, not just in terms of quality but stylistically as well, which means that this is essentially a party album through and through. It may be the one case where all the “style over substance” claims lobbed at Bowie ring true, but it’s still one hell of a style. Fuck art — let’s dance.

Tonight (1984)
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Apparently running out of ways to surprise his audience, Bowie decided to try failing miserably. This isn’t terrible as far as mainstream ’80s pop goes, but by Bowie’s usually high standards, it’s a complete misfire. Supposedly he didn’t even want to record this album, and it shows: more than half of the album’s songs are attempts to get Iggy Pop more royalty money, leaving two genuinely good singles (“Loving the Alien” and “Blue Jean”) and two lame-ass covers that make a valid case for manually removing and eating one’s own eardrums. I suppose there’s some decent stuff among the Iggy numbers, provided you’re comfortable with a barely-audible Tina Turner, an overzealous horn section, and a full-time marimba player. Welcome to the ’80s, Bowie fans. Welcome to hell.

Never Let Me Down (1987)
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Well, the good news about this album is Bowie’s back to writing songs again. The bad news? He thought those songs needed drum machines. Really loud drum machines. Hell, why not make everything deafeningly loud? Loud guitars, loud ’80s keyboards, loud, loud, loud. This entire album sounds like it was drowned to death in a bathtub full of digital reverb. Luckily for the faithful, the songs themselves aren’t all bad and the lyrics are dark as hell. “Time Will Crawl” is the one bona fide classic here, a paranoid nuclear war rant with some genuinely unsettling lyrical imagery (and a horrendously stupid video, but let’s not dwell on that). Elsewhere, “Bang Bang” exhumes the spirit of Iggy once more, “‘87 And Cry” predicts the loud rock of Tin Machine and “Shining Star (Makin’ My Love)” sets some seriously depressing lyrics to the most incongruously bouncy, happy music of David’s career. The latter track also features David Bowie and Mickey Rourke (!) “rapping.” I suppose this counts as “experimentation.” Look, it’s a late-’80s mainstream pop album, not some indelible work of art. Bowie had a mullet around this time and I’m okay with that. Are you?

Tin Machine (1989)
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Shaking the cobwebs off his artistic credibility, Bowie decided to form a hard rock band that owed as much to the Pixies as his work with Iggy Pop. In fact, it was Iggy Pop’s rhythm section of Hunt and Tony Sales who formed the rhythmic backbone of the group, while Bowie discovery Reeves Gabrels provided the avant-metal lead guitar skronk. Admittedly the results are kind of one-note, but if you have any kind of fondness for straight-up hard rock there may be a place in your heart for this one. Plus, Bowie’s artsy tendencies were slowly creeping back to life, as evidenced by the eerie, detuned grind of “I Can’t Read,” the first genuinely scary song Bowie had written in almost a decade. Other highlights include “Heaven’s in Here,” the Adrian Belew-ish “Amazing,” and the surprisingly melodic closer, “Baby Can Dance.” If any complaint can be lodged against the album, it’s that the lyrics, as refreshingly blunt as they are, are among the clumsiest Bowie’s ever written, and the production is almost too chaotic to give these songs their fair due. Gotta give him points for trying, though.

Tin Machine II (1992)
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Though it helped restore his artistic cred to an extent, Tin Machine was also very, very unpopular. This album has been out of print and relegated to bargain-basement hell for a while now, and even people who defended the first album tend to gloss over it. Ingrates, the lot of them. There’s material here that easily outclasses anything on the first album, and while the worst stuff is pretty atrocious (more on that in a second), the best of it earns it a spot as Bowie’s most underrated effort. In fact, one could say this is the most overtly Bowie-ish album he’d done in a while, with lead-off track “Baby Universal” sounding like a conscious throwback to his ’70s rockers. Elsewhere, “Shopping for Girls” has the best riff on the album and some very dark lyrics about underage prostitution, while “Amlapura” and “Goodbye Mr. Ed” show a surprisingly dreamy, subdued side to the band. My personal favorite is “One Shot,” though the fact that it was once deemed the Most Boring Bowie Song Ever doesn’t exactly help my case. Of course, there are those atrocious moments I alluded to earlier, both of which involve drummer Hunt Sales taking a turn at the mic. He’s not a completely terrible singer, but he sure as hell ain’t a songwriter, especially when compared to … well, David Bowie. It’s like finding a generic Hallmark card in a book of Leonard Cohen poetry, for God’s sakes. Nevertheless, I stand by this as my pick for Bowie’s most underrated effort. He’s done far better, but you could pick out much worse.

Black Tie White Noise (1993)
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It’s amazing what falling in love can do for a person. One year you’re in a foundering hard rock band, writing stream-of-consciousness lyrics and insisting that you’re going back to your roots, and the next you’re back with the producer that gave you the biggest hit of your career. By gum, it’s like Tin Machine never happened! Still, Bowie sounds refreshingly happy on this one, which at least counters those usual claims of insincerity that get thrown his way. The material, however, is something of a mixed bag. Instrumentals “Pallas Athena” and “Looking For Lester” are disconcertingly cheesy, the title track is an unforgivably goopy duet with Al B. Sure!, and the abundance of early-’90s R&B keyboards dates everything considerably. Nevertheless, there are highlights. “Jump They Say” is a slick, club-ready single that hides a powerful anti-suicide message, while “I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday” is a wonderfully, ludicrously over-the-top cover of a Morrissey song, one he actually wrote as a tribute to Bowie himself (ha!). The album also features guest spots from Mike Garson and an ailing Mick Ronson, their return adding to the general feeling of optimism and goodwill.

The Buddha of Suburbia (1993)
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Though it’s since been reissued, this was once the holy grail for Bowie fans: an obscure, perpetually out-of-print soundtrack to a BBC miniseries that featured some of Bowie’s best, least image-conscious material in ages. I’m not gonna be one to argue, though I will add that the mix is as flat as a pancake. Nevertheless, it’s definitely a treat to hear Bowie simply experimenting again, something he can’t claim to have done over the length of an album since Lodger. Several Eno-inspired instrumentals pop up, as well as an almost-instrumental vamp based on Bowie mumbling through a voice processor (“Sex and the Church,” easily one of the slinkiest, sexiest songs he’s ever done). There are some bona fide pop gems here too, from the self-referencing title track through to the manic disco-rock of “Dead Against It,” which sounds like a decent Pet Shop Boys song until the absolutely gorgeous guitar interplay kicks in and takes it to a whole other level. Though it’s one of Bowie’s humbler efforts, this album gave many fans cause for celebration: at long last, he was letting his muse run wild again.

Outside (1995)
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Finally, a late-period Bowie album that can’t be damned with faint praise! Any pretense of objectivity flies out the window in the face of this thing, an inscrutable hour-long concept album (technically, its full title is 1. Outside) that revolves around the ritual murder of a 14-year-old girl, with the industrial-tinged backing music edited together from a weeks’ worth of improvs masterminded by Bowie and returning collaborator Brian Eno. If this already sounds like something that’ll send you running away screaming or slapping your forehead in embarrassment, you may want to stay away. But let me tell you something: I’ve gotten more people into Bowie with this album alone than anything else in his catalog, and a lot of these were people who already had a distinct anti-Bowie bias. The delicious irony here is that, like Buddha Of Suburbia, it sounds like Bowie’s happy just being himself again, albeit a dark, fucked-up self we hadn’t seen since he last worked with Brian Eno. A lot of people point out how much of this album is influenced by Nine Inch Nails, which is true to an extent (”The Hearts Filthy Lesson” and “Hallo Spaceboy” both give Trent Reznor a good run for his money), but one can also detect traces of late-period Scott Walker (”The Motel”), King Crimson (”The Voyeur Of Utter Destruction”), and even the burgeoning jungle scene that would inspire his next album (”We Prick You” and “I’m Deranged”). On top of that, the album closes out with two majestic pop songs, the soaring “Thru These Architect’s Eyes” and a reworking of The Buddha of Suburbia’s “Strangers When We Meet” that utterly demolishes the original. After an albums’ worth of gloom and doom, it’s a welcome relief. Nevertheless, this was precisely the kind of difficult, unsettling work that a lot of fans were hoping Bowie still had in him, and on that merit alone, it demands your full attention.

Earthling (1997)
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Though not quite in the same league as Outside, Earthling still shows Bowie in fighting form. The gimmick here is that he’s gone electronica on us, gravitating mainly towards the jungle/drum-and-bass axis of things. Naturally, a couple of the overly-mechanical numbers sound suspiciously like so much trendy filler, but the actual songs are pretty much aces. “Dead Man Walking” nicks the riff to “The Supermen” and strands it in a robot jungle, “Looking for Satellites” is suitably spacey, and Outside leftover “I’m Afraid of Americans” has probably the best hook on the album (all together now: uh-uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh, uh-uh-uh), not to mention the some bitingly sarcastic, genuinely funny lyrics. Detractors of the album tend to point out that the manic arrangements distract from the actual songs, whereas others argue that the arrangements are the most innovative aspect of the whole thing. Certainly, Reeves Gabrels’s squalling guitar has never sounded more at home than here, although even that can be construed as a drawback. Look, I’m gonna rephrase an earlier point to put it in perspective: Bowie was 50 years old and had gelled, spiky, bright-orange hair around this time. I, personally, am okay with this. Are you?

“Hours …” (1999)
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Well, apparently that hairstyle didn’t go over too well. This is Bowie trying to pass himself off as a regular guy with mixed results. Certainly, this isn’t the return to Hunky Dory that all the prerelease hype suggested, though it’s not a complete write-off either. If anything, this is one of the most low-key, downright neutral-sounding albums Bowie’s ever done. If Bowie albums were people, this would be the vaguely dissatisfied middle-aged friend who you go for coffee with every coupla months, and always at the same place. It’s that kind of album. Of course, my view of it is biased from having heard live versions of every song that inevitably knock the stuffing out of the originals, leading me to believe that this album’s relative blandness has more to do with the production than the actual songwriting. Then again, “Something in the Air” has the line “Abracadoo / I lose you,” so maybe that’s just the state-enforced medication talking. It’s not all drowsiness and downers, though: “The Pretty Things Are Going to Hell” is the first no-frills riff-rocker Bowie had penned since Tin Machine, and “The Dreamers” does develop a pretty strong pulse as soon as the drums kick in. Otherwise, it’s all lush keyboards, dreamy-sounding guitars, tasteful drum loops in the background, and GOD THE NEXT ALBUM DOES THIS SO MUCH BETTER SO LET’S JUST TALK ABOUT THAT INSTEAD.

Heathen (2002)
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More middle-aged grumbling, but now with a slight spiritual bent and, perhaps more crucially, absolutely stunning production. Tony Visconti’s back! Hi, Tony! We missed you! Yes indeed, this is the warmest, fullest, richest, most atmospheric production Bowie’s had in ages. Then of course there are the songs, which are … quite good, actually. There’s a reason this was near-unanimously hailed as Bowie’s triumphant return to form, and that reason is that Outside was too divisive to engender any kind of mass sympathy. Wait, no. Sorry. It’s because this was his most thoughtful, well-crafted, emotionally affecting release since Visconti was snubbed some 20 years previously. Though the reckless experimentalism of some of his ’90s work was refreshing, there’s something to be said for an album that seems to have made with a lot of effort and careful consideration, the kind that draws on years of experience instead of making yet another clear break with the past. Accordingly, this is around the time Bowie seemed to have made peace with himself and his legacy, and this album reflects that emotional maturity not only in its lyrical content but the way it seems to be a hodgepodge of all the styles Bowie’s flirted with over the years. The key here is that it’s all done subtly, without any kind of obvious nod to one specific era — it just sounds like Bowie, straight up. Since anything on the second half counts as a highlight in my book, here’s the mournful, beautiful “Heathen (The Rays),” which closes the album, and the deceptively happy-sounding eulogy of “Everyone Says ‘Hi’.”

Reality (2003)
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After six years of thinking of this as Heathen’s lesser sibling, I have to admit: this ain’t half-bad. The problem, I think, is that Heathen was such a serious, introspective affair that to release something so casual-sounding so soon afterwards was bound to engender a certain amount of backlash. Not to say that this album is short on lyrical introspection, but musically this is about as lightweight and relaxed as Bowie gets. In fact, the Bowie album I’m most inclined to compare it to is Tin Machine II: a melodic modern rock record that’s played mostly straight… well, straight by Bowie’s standards anyhow (no, that’s not a bisexuality joke). Mind you, there’s a good deal of stylistic range here, and while it does result in a plodding cover of George Harrison’s “Try Some, Buy Some,” it also gives us one of Bowie’s rare forays into jazz, the mournful, late-night lament of “Bring Me the Disco King.” The rest is, as stated earlier, melodic modern rock, ranging from a demented reading of the Modern Lovers’ “Pablo Picasso” to the almost Frank Black-ish “Fall Dog Bombs the Moon.” There’s also — let’s be frank here — some generic, underwritten crap, indifferent verses with big, catchy choruses tacked on so that the songs play well live. I suppose it’s not Reality’s fault: where Heathen’s weaker moments disappeared in the general flow of the mostly low-key songs, Reality is so loosely assembled that the weak moments can’t help but stick out like a sore thumb. Ultimately, though, its quirky nature is part of its intentionally modest charm, a sort of post-millenial Lodger. If this is the last we’ll hear of Bowie, it seems almost appropriate that he’d end his career not with a bang or a whimper, but a question mark.

Most people born before 1990 have some familiarity with the rock band KISS. Fans my age (44) remember the glory years in the mid- to late ‘70s, while younger fans remember the reunion tours of the mid-’90s, or bass player Gene Simmons’s A&E reality show, Family Jewels. Hand in hand with familiarity come opinions regarding the efficacy of the group: Were they just a glam band with a great marketing plan? Is their music any good? Or as my friend Debbie said, “They’re okay, but they’re no Scorpions!”

I’d like to help the non-KISS fan here to:

• recognize the musical appeal of the group;
• know which albums to embrace and avoid;
• gain a greater appreciation for what KISS did for live rock ‘n’ roll performance.

By the same token, KISS did (and continues to do) ridiculously stupid things, and pointing out some of those foibles makes for good sport. So let’s begin at the beginning with the first three albums, released in 1974 and ‘75.

Skip all three. They’re crap.

Although the covers of KISS, Hotter Than Hell, and Dressed to Kill are some of the best the band ever had, these musical clunkers are only suitable for framing (most Walmarts carry “album frames” you can use to showcase the covers on your wall, like I have). Slapped together under pressure from their label, Casablanca Records, and produced as if they were recorded in an oil drum, they shouldn’t be listened to, period. If you were to listen to any of them out of context, your perceptions of KISS would be forever tarnished.

The first, self-titled album was recorded in late ‘73 and released in February of ‘74. KISS’s cover is significant in that drummer Peter Criss had his makeup done by a professional makeup artist, giving him a one-time-only, intricate multicolor cat-whisker look he would never have again. Lead guitarist Ace Frehley’s silver-tinged hair was the result of spray paint he applied in order to blend in with the silver-and-black color scheme of the band.

KISS contains many of the songs the band continues to play in concert to this day: “Deuce” (download), “Strutter,” and “Cold Gin” (written by Ace) are classics. One of the most interesting songs on the record, “Kissin’ Time,” is a cover of the Bobby Rydell classic, and was included on the record as part of a publicity stunt by Casablanca, which sponsored a “KISSing Contest” in stores across the midwest as a way to bring attention to the band.

The next album, Hotter Than Hell, was recorded during the band’s 1974 U.S. tour when they stopped off in L.A., and was released in October of that year. Produced again by the team of Kenny Kerner and Richie Wise, it’s a darker album, with several concert staples, including “Got to Choose,” “Parasite” (download), and the awesome title track. The cover of Hotter Than Hell has an interesting backstory as well, with all the band members, except self-proclaimed teetotaler Gene, extremely drunk and engaging in hedonistic behavior encouraged by the photographer. Also, Ace was recovering from a recent car accident, so his cover shot is actually two different pictures of his face airbrushed to look like one.

The final album in this unofficial trilogy, Dressed to Kill, was recorded quickly in New York in early ‘75 at the request of Casablanca in order to build some momentum for KISS and combat sluggish sales of the first two records. It’s the weakest of the three in terms of songs, with plenty of filler (“Ladies in Waiting” and “Getaway” are musical turds), though “Love Her All I Can” has a great riff.

However, Dressed to Kill is frequently cited by all four of KISS’s original members as their favorite early album. Maybe that’s because it features the band’s best-known anthem, “Rock and Roll All Nite.” A great song, to be sure, but not in the form you find it on this record. Great songs like “She” and “Rock Bottom” (download) are here as well, but they reappear in an awesome way on the next record — a record that should change your life, if you like rock ‘n’ roll.

The live album Alive!, released in June of ‘75, contains enough three-chord blues-based rock to satisfy any Led Zep, AC/DC, or Nickelback fan. Rumors persist that half the album was actually overdubbed in the studio — it depends on whose account you want to believe — but who cares? Recorded at shows in Iowa, Ohio, and mostly Detroit, Michigan, in early ‘75, this two-record set jumps right out of your speakers from the first song on. If the hairs on the back of your neck don’t stand up after hearing Ace’s solo at the end of “She,” check your pulse — that song made me want to buy a Cherry Sunburst Les Paul! The molten chunk of “Firehouse” (download), the falsetto vocals in “Got to Choose” — Alive! is the reason most of us older fans became fans.

The cover of the record makes you want to see the band live (it was staged instead of actually shot during the tour it represents), and the gritty songs should help change your perception of the group. Can they actually play? Hell yes! Once you’ve been satiated by this audio ear candy, it’s time to move back into the studio with KISS.

Buy all three of these — today! Destroyer (1976), Rock and Roll Over (1976), and Love Gun (1977) represent the apex of rockin’ studio work by the original lineup of Gene, Ace, Peter, and lead singer and rhythm guitarist Paul Stanley. Mostly great songs on all three albums, superior production compared to their previous three studio records, and a true sense that these guys were a combination of rock stars, great instrumentalists (especially Ace), and superheroes (no doubt the mass marketing of KISS merchandise that started around this time had something to do with that latter perception).

Highlights from these three albums include concert staples like “Detroit Rock City,” “Calling Dr. Love” (download), and “Love Gun,” while lesser-known tunes guaranteed to rock your crotch include “King of the Night Time World” (download), “I Want You,” and “I Stole Your Love.” “Shock Me” (download), the first KISS song with Ace on lead vocal, and “Makin’ Love” are both standout tracks as well. Good ‘n’ hard ‘70s-style rock, sure to please. Now, are you ready for some live versions of the tunes I’ve just mentioned? Then you should buy the next collection …

KISS’s second double album of live material, Alive II, was released near the end of 1977, at the zenith of the band’s popularity and credibility, and features versions of “Makin’ Love” (download) and “Detroit Rock City” that you’ll thoroughly enjoy. You’ll hear how Paul pulls off his high-pitched vocals in a live setting, you’ll hear the guitar feedback and Ace’s incredible solos, and you’ll enjoy looking at the cover of the product, another classic featuring a bloody Gene, a pensive Paul, a practically blond Ace, and an unusually friendly-looking Peter.

Plus, the five new “bonus tracks” tacked onto the end of Alive II include a couple of classics: Ace’s “Rocket Ride” (the only one of these studio tunes Ace actually played on) and “All-American Man,” featuring the guitar stylings of Bob Kulick, older brother of future KISS guitarist Bruce Kulick. A little over half of Alive II is required listening, which gives it good “KISS value.” Now, dear reader, it’s time to tread cautiously into an interesting chapter in KISStory: the post-renaissance period.

The albums pictured above represent the end of the first incarnation of the original KISS lineup. (Side note: beware of a collection called The Originals, featuring the first three crummy albums packaged together, and Double Platinum, a worthless compilation of songs from the first three records with “Strutter ‘78,” a reworked, horrible version of “Strutter,” thrown in.) The four self-titled “solo” albums were conceived by Casablanca as a way to give each member of KISS some artistic breathing room while getting the maximum financial bang for their buck from the record-buying public.

All four albums were released on the same day in September of ‘78, about a month before the premiere of the KISS made-for-TV movie KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park. According to several sources, making the movie was a real bitch and tempers flared often; both Ace and Peter allegedly threatened to leave the band if they weren’t given a chance to “do their own thing.”

The solo album by Ace is considered the best of the four, spawning the excellent Top 40 hit “New York Groove” and the solid deep cut “Rip It Out” (download), while Peter’s effort was universally panned. It was the weakest seller of the four (ouch!), and it’s not difficult to hear why. Full of poorly conceived “soul tunes” and R&B covers, like “Tossin’ and Turnin’” (download), it is, in short, a truly wretched album.

Paul’s solo album is a solid collection of rock songs, including “Move On” (download), which the band played live on several subsequent tours, and “Hold Me, Touch Me.” The Starchild’s record, which employs journeyman guitarist Bob Kulick once again, sounds the most like a late-’70s KISS album.

Gene readily admits he was trying to “shock KISS fans” when he put together his misguided collection of wacky tunes, including a cover of “When You Wish Upon a Star” (download), and he doesn’t play any bass parts on Gene Simmons, preferring to play rhythm guitar and some keyboards instead. “Radioactive” (download) is the only song that got any attention from this album; KISS played it during their subsequent “Return of KISS” tour in ‘79.

Peter was on his way out of the band as Dynasty (1979) was being recorded (he plays on only one track, the forgettable but accurate “Dirty Livin’”), but this album is most famous for its disco hit, “I Was Made for Loving You.” Dynasty has many worthy tracks, though, including “Sure Know Something” and “Magic Touch” (download). Ace returns with a couple of tunes, including a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “2000 Man,” and Gene submits the album’s low point, “Charisma,” quite possibly the worst song he ever wrote, but luckily it’s not enough to ruin the record.

Now we enter the period of KISStory I call “musical members.”

Peter Criss left KISS in 1980 — he claims he left to pursue his solo career, while Gene and Paul insist he was fired due to drug use and poor musicianship — and was replaced by wunderkind drummer Eric Carr (who would remain with the band until his death from cancer in ‘91). Unmasked (1980) features Peter on the cartoon cover, but all the drum parts were played by longtime Late Show With David Letterman drummer and former session pro Anton Fig. I hesitate to recommend this album, basically because it’s a poppy, muddily recorded mess, but two tracks stand out: “Shandi” (download), of which a far superior live version is available, and Ace’s “Talk to Me.” “Is That You?” is a Paul Stanley rocker that deserves a listen, but Unmasked is mostly a dud.

Entire chapters could be written about KISS’s next project, 1981’s Music From The Elder, an ill-fated concept album produced by Bob Ezrin (who produced Pink Floyd’s The Wall and KISS’s earlier masterpiece, Destroyer). It was such a monumental commercial flop that it nearly bankrupted the band; they literally had to sue Casablanca Records to get back on their feet. The only song worth recommending from this weird collection is “A World Without Heroes” (download), an interesting ballad cowritten by Gene and Lou Reed. During the mess that was the recording sessions for The Elder, Ace began making noises about leaving the group, and he was ultimately replaced in the studio during the recording of KISS’s next album, Creatures of the Night (1982).

Creatures is a solid rock record, featuring songs like “War Machine” (cowritten by Bryan Adams — yes, that Bryan Adams), “I Still Love You,” and the title track (download). Ace’s likeness is featured on the cover, and he’s also featured (with short hair!) in the video for the awful single “I Love It Loud,” written by Gene. But Vinnie Vincent cowrote many of the songs on Creatures and played most of the lead-guitar parts, giving the album a welcomed heavy vibe. Between Creatures of the Night and Lick It Up, Vinnie officially replaced Ace.

Prior to recording the follow-up to Creatures, KISS removed their famous makeup during a late-night MTV “exclusive.” Lick It Up, which came out in September of ‘83, is another solid rock record, with the title track being the strongest cut (later live versions, with real guitar solos and better vocals, make the studio version sound rather tame). Animalize (1984) repeats the formula of Creatures of the Night, with heavy rock tunes and even faster guitar solos courtesy of new lead guitarist Mark St. John, who replaced the mercurial Vincent in early ‘84. The tracks “Under the Gun,” “Get All You Can Take” (download), and the radio hit “Heaven’s on Fire” are all A-list rock songs that help KISS fans forget musical bowel movements like Gene’s “Lonely Is the Hunter.”

The albums KISS recorded during the last half of the ’80s featured the lineup of Gene, Paul, Eric Carr, and new lead guitarist Bruce Kulick. All in their mid-30s by now, KISS were playing well, looking average, and basically assuming a B-level status in the American rock world.

Asylum (1985) is an okay rock record. The Led Zeppelin rip-off “Radar for Love” (download) is well crafted, and “Ugh! All Night” is a personal favorite, but the single “Tears Are Falling” is clearly the best cut. Alas, Asylum is barely recommendable.

Crazy Nights (1987) was produced by pop-rock expert Ron Nevison, who crafted Heart’s big comeback album in ‘85, and the songs show it — poppy candy-rock anthems that are safe enough to play for your parents, like “Reason to Live” (download) and the well-intentioned but lame title track. You won’t be missing any of the “essence” of KISS if you skip this album, but it should be noted that Crazy Nights sold well compared to other later-career KISS records and even got some radio airplay.

Hot in the Shade (1989) is a great hard-rock album, with highlights like “Rise to It” (download), “Hide Your Heart,” and the hit single “Forever.” Eric Carr finally gets his writing/singing showcased on the rocker “Little Caesar,” but it would be the last album he’d record with the band — he succumbed to cancer near the end of ‘91, when KISS were in the early stages of writing their next studio album.

Before we leave KISS in the ’80s, be sure to avoid buying the 1988 greatest-hits package Smashes, Thrashes & Hits — this lamely titled collection doesn’t “thrash” at all. It’s only noteworthy for the inclusion of the ’70s hit “Beth” (download) with Eric Carr singing the lead vocal in place of Peter Criss. (I know — why?) The new songs on the record, “Let’s Put the X in Sex” and “You Make Me Rock Hard,” are Paul Stanley throwaways.

Revenge (1992), featuring new blond drummer Eric Singer, who replaced the recently deceased Carr, is a great party album. (Ignore the dark, brooding cover and title.) Produced by Bob Ezrin, it features mindless, catchy hard-rock tunes like “Take It Off” (download), “I Just Wanna,” and “Domino.” Gene and Vinnie Vincent, who returned to the band as a songwriter for Revenge, got together to write the creepy but sturdy “Unholy” (the video is disturbing too).

For many fans, including myself, Revenge is the final studio album that matters from the unmasked lineup of the band. I mention this because a “final” album from Gene, Paul, Singer, and Kulick — Carnival of Souls: The Final Sessions — came out in October of ‘97. Recorded in early ‘95, it was intended for release later that year or early in ‘96, but once the original band reunited in the winter of ‘96 and announced their summer tour, Carnival got lost in the shuffle. It was then bootlegged extensively by hard-core KISS fans, and because of the bootlegging, Gene and Paul eventually decided to give it a proper release. If you like later material by Alice in Chains, Soundgarden, and Stone Temple Pilots, you may dig Carnival — tunes like Gene’s “Hate” (download) come across as if they’re trying to grunge-ify the KISS sound. The track “I Walk Alone” features Kulick on lead vocal, and he does a serviceable job.

Gene and Paul, in Behind the Mask: The Official Authorized Biography, indicate that Carnival was a misguided attempt to modernize the band’s sound, and they view the album unfavorably. However, Kulick is said to be very fond of Carnival. Go figure.

Are you ready for some molten metal? Then run out and buy Alive III (1993) and crank it to 11, baby! Recorded during the Revenge tour, this single-CD release has very few mediocre songs, and the songs that were mediocre in their studio versions kick ass here, especially “I Was Made for Loving You” (download). The rumors persist that, like its predecessors, this live album was seriously “souped up” in the studio. I ask you again: who cares? If you’re air-guitaring to “Deuce” or “Lick It Up,” you aren’t concerned if Paul touched up his rhythm parts in the studio.

The songs from Revenge sound much better live, and Bruce Kulick’s lead guitar brings another dimension to KISS classics like “Deuce” and “Heaven’s on Fire.” Don’t get me wrong — Alive III doesn’t pack the wallop that the first two installments from the ‘70s do, but it’s a well-played, well-produced collection of songs that breathes new life into some stodgy old tunes.

Now get ready to explore the softer side of KISS. The MTV Unplugged CD (1996) has some great versions of KISS classics played on acoustic guitars — “Sure Know Something,” “Got to Choose,” and “Plaster Caster” (download), for example — and it features the unlikely reunion of the four original members playing together for the first time in 15 years. Unfortunately, those tunes are the weakest ones on the album. But the tracks that feature all the band members, past and present, are fun to listen to, and benefit greatly from the superior musicianship of Kulick and Singer.

It occurred to me, after listening to Unplugged, that KISS was a lot better musically with Bruce and Eric than they were with Ace and Peter. But like most other KISS fans, I wanted the original lineup to get back together, so this “musicianship issue” was overlooked.

Oh yeah, the original members recorded an album of new material during the never-ending reunion tour called Psycho Circus. It’s not very good, and Ace and Peter played very little on it, though Ace’s “Into the Void” (download) is probably the best song on it. Released in 1998, it contains avant garde rock songs that sound like they were hastily thrown together, like Gene’s “Within,” which the band attempted to perform live on the subsequent Psycho Circus tour. According to sources close to the production, most of the songs were recorded by session players, including Kulick and Singer, because of the belief that Ace and Peter couldn’t maintain the high standards of studio performance. (Are you beginning to sense a trend here? Me too.)

Many courses I took in college had a required reading list and a supplemental reading list. And because I aim to be thorough in guiding your ongoing studies of KISS, I’d like to recommend the following DVDs.

The market is full of DVDs featuring the band in various incarnations, but the three KISSology discs will teach you everything you need to know about the beginning, middle, and end of the original lineup. These DVDs give you an invaluable glimpse into the tunes and albums I’ve recommended, how the band sounded playing them, and what they looked like doing it. You’ll gain an appreciation for how hard the band had to work to sell itself, how low-tech their original costumes and stage shows were, and how they handled the changes in members and makeup.

The KISS: Symphony DVD (2003), featuring the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, has outstanding versions of “Shandi” and “Detroit Rock City.” Recorded in 2002, it features the odd pairing of a recently rehired Peter Criss — he left in 2001 over a contract dispute, came back the following year, then left again in ‘04 when his contract wasn’t renewed by Gene and Paul — and lead guitarist Tommy Thayer, who once played in a KISS tribute band called Cold Gin, wearing Ace’s “Spaceman” makeup. (Ace left in 2001 following the conclusion of the band’s “Farewell Tour,” a name apparently only he took seriously.) Watching Gene attempt to flirt with one of the cello players in the orchestra is hilarious — and sad. (The CD version of this concert is known as Kiss Symphony: Alive IV.)

I can also recommend the videocassette The Animalize Tour: Live and Uncensored (I don’t know of a DVD version) that features a set from their 1984 tour (with Gene’s wig and all!). Two DVDs out there, KISS Konfidential and KISS: X-treme Close-Up (sometimes sold as a set), are unique for their interview portions, showing Gene and Paul bagging on Ace and Peter while minimizing the contributions those two made to KISS. Real fans of the original band will find this stuff distasteful and hypocritical considering that three years after these videos were made, the band reunited with lots of love and praise for each other.

Many prominent fans of KISS, including Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue and Eddie Trunk, host of VH1 Classic’s That Metal Show, have questioned why Gene and Paul are so openly hostile to Ace and Peter. Gene’s 2002 autobiography KISS and Make-up is a 200-page treatise on what dumbasses they are, and the liner notes of the above-mentioned DVD collections are full of piss and vinegar about the shortcomings of the two original members. Gene’s response to criticism of his treatment of Ace and Peter is usually along the lines of “Who cares what you think? I’m an ugly millionaire with two great kids and my own reality show!”

I recently saw KISS interviewed in England at the start of their “35th Anniversary Tour” (I caught it at Konocti Harbor Resort and Spa in Clearlake, California), and Paul was displaying the dismissive, self-indulgent attitude that’s always been Gene’s trademark. That’s too bad, because Paul was always my favorite member of the band, owing to his vocal style and mild temperament.

But that’s the contradiction of KISS: they’re easy to like because of their groundbreaking fusion of heavy metal and theatrics, but they’re easy to hate because of their Gene-driven commercialization and history-destroying animosity. I like a good egomaniac as well as the next guy, but Gene Simmons is out of control, and he’s only one-fourth of what made KISS so great in the first place. Enjoy the band in moderation.

The point is, he’s David Bowie, and depending on which variation of David Bowie you encounter, there’s no guarantee that you’ll like what you hear. The best of his material, however, retains a freshness and relevance that counters any dismissal of his talent as mere trend hopping. So here it is, folks — hot on the heels of the most pompously reverent-sounding introduction I’ve ever written, part one of the Popdose Guide to David Bowie.

David Bowie (1967)
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If this album had been released today, it would’ve been all acoustic guitars and glockenspiel, the singer would have an American accent, at least one song would’ve been used in some pretentious Garden State rip-off, and Pitchfork would’ve given it a 9.65 (or whatever dumb-ass decimal system they use to rape the mere concept of music criticism). As it stands now, it just sounds like the weirdest children’s album ever made. I understand that Bowie’s aiming for British music-hall whimsy here, but come on — it sounds like a fucking kids’ record. This is not without its charms, of course — only David Bowie would write a cheerful-sounding ditty with the lines “I have prepared a document / Legalizing mass abortion / We will turn a blind eye to infanticide” (that would be “We Are Hungry Men”). So, yes, there’s that. There’s also “Love You Till Tuesday,” a song so joyously retarded sounding that Syd Barrett actually slammed it in a record mag while he was still lucid. Essentially, this is Bowie’s novelty album, and let’s all be thankful he never tried anything like it again.

Space Oddity (1969)
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After quickly realizing that pretending to be Anthony Newley wasn’t getting him anywhere, Bowie switched gears and reinvented himself as a soft-headed folkie balladeer. Naturally, Space Oddity is a significant improvement over the last album, aided greatly by the fact that it includes one of Bowie’s best songs ever. That’s right, it’s the title track, a gorgeously over-orchestrated song about an astronaut who deliberately strands himself in space, thus establishing one of Bowie’s most important lyrical devices: the alienated character study. The other highlights of this album are a couple of sweet ballads about his recent ex (”An Occasional Dream” and especially “Letter to Hermione”), and … well, that’s about it. There’s nothing bad here, per se, but a lot of it sounds underwritten, like Bowie was too excited about some of his admittedly clever arrangement ideas to bother writing really solid material. Or maybe he wasn’t able to yet. Well, that was about to change really soon, lemme tell ya …

The Man Who Sold the World (1970)
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My Lord, this is one fucked-up album. Sort of like early Black Sabbath, but with the bong hits replaced by a coupla philosophy textbooks and science-fiction novels. Dark, sludgy hard rock for the intellectuals and pseudo-intellectuals among us, essentially. You can thank new axman Mick Ronson for the “rock” aspect of that, and thank David and producer Tony Visconti for the overarching creepiness. Bowie’s finally come into his own as a vocalist, gleefully singing of blatant homoerotica (“The Width of a Circle”), crazed Vietnam vets (”Running Gun Blues”), and omnipotent robots (”Saviour Machine”) with a theatrical flair that would come to define the best of his ’70s work. Of course, everyone knows the title track thanks to Kurt Cobain, but would you believe that everything else on The Man Who Sold the World is just as good? I’m not gonna slap any more hyperbole on it — Bowie’s winning streak begins here.

Hunky Dory (1971)
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Though he doesn’t completely abandon the dark themes of The Man Who Sold the World, Bowie’s definitely in a much more cheerful mood this time around. Piano is now the dominant instrument, catchy hooks and singable melodies are everywhere, and we even get a cute song written for his newborn son, “Kooks.” Of course, it’s quickly followed by the darkly existential ballad “Quicksand,” but such is the ambiguous nature of Hunky Dory. Bowie is still an earnest young man with a lot on his mind, but this time he subverts the darker side of his lyrical obsessions to emphasize his strengths as a pop songwriter. As it turns out, he has quite the knack for it: “Changes,” “Oh! You Pretty Things,” and “Life on Mars?” are all stone-cold classics, all with deeper lyrical connotations that can even be downright troubling when analyzed too closely. Of course, it’s still possible to put your brain in neutral and sing along, something that separates Hunky Dory from the more challenging fare on The Man Who Sold the World. It’s also one of the most sincere, down-to-earth, and immediately likable albums he’s ever made, so those looking for an easy way into Bowie’s back catalog would do well to pick it up.

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars (1972)
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Some praise this as Bowie’s masterpiece. I dunno about that. Speaking as a recovering Bowie obsessive, I simply see it as one of many great albums he put out during this period. However, one can easily argue that it represents the culmination of everything he’d done well up to this point: the hard-rock crunch and teasing sexuality of The Man Who Sold the World synthesized with the undeniable pop hooks of Hunky Dory, all with an inscrutable new concept about some alien rock star named Ziggy who comes down to a pre-apocalyptic Earth to– … oh, never mind. Let’s focus on the songs, ‘kay? There’s an abundance of classics here, starting with “Moonage Daydream,” perhaps the best look-at-me-I’m-awesome statement ever set to rock music, on through to the breathless, adrenalized crunch of “Hang On to Yourself” and “Suffragette City,” and Bowie even finds time for a coupla lighter-waving ballads like the touching, Marc Bolan-inspired “Lady Stardust” and the self-mythologizing title track. It all culminates with “Rock ‘n’ Roll Suicide,” one of many tracks that reminds you you’re listening to a Big Important Rock Album, one of the best, one for the ages, etc. Hey, maybe Ziggy Stardust is Bowie’s best after all. Who knows? Not me.

Aladdin Sane (1973)
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Ziggy gets schizophrenic. I’d argue that the songs here are every bit as strong as on the previous album (if not stronger), but the stylistic inconsistency means it doesn’t exactly hold together. To be fair, Bowie himself was exhausted at the time, burnt out on perpetual touring and riding high on a wave of drug-fueled paranoia. That same paranoia creeps into a lot of the lyrical content, with “Drive-In Saturday,” “Panic in Detroit,” and the title track all portraying a world on the verge of total catastrophe. However, we also get some loud, sleazy glam-rock goodness in the form of “Cracked Actor” and “The Jean Genie,” so there’s at least some semblance of the fun, decadent vibe that permeated Ziggy Stardust. Still, what this album really feels like is a party spinning wildly out of control, casual flirting turning to kinky sex and mild intoxication giving way to a full-on drunken stumble. All this and a couple of straight cabaret numbers make this one of the most fascinating (and baffling) albums from Bowie’s “classic era.”

Pinups (1973)
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A throwaway, to be fair, but not without its charms. It’s essentially an album of covers performed by the latest variation on the Spiders From Mars band, with the most notable shift being the addition of Aynsley Dunbar on drums. Some songs work better than others, but they at least blow through them with the kind of breezy, carefree enthusiasm that’s so rarely associated with Bowie. Having said that, there’s nothing particularly revelatory here, and the few attempts at reinventing the songs usually wind up being more than a little embarrassing. So, if it’s more straight-up rock from the Spiders you want, pick this up. But make sure you get those last coupla albums first. The single was “Sorrow,” and just for kicks, there’s a version of Pink Floyd’s “See Emily Play” that’s damn near ruined by the “wacky” pitch-shifted vocals.

Diamond Dogs (1974)
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Having gotten all the fun and mirth out of his system with Pinups, Bowie ditched the Spiders and made his darkest, dourest album since The Man Who Sold the World. The album’s concept is loosely based around George Orwell’s 1984, but most of the time any kind of narrative cohesion takes a backseat to the abstract, unsettling imagery of the lyrics and the coldly abrasive, proto-punk-ish music. It’s rough going, but there are some absolute gems here, from the ambitious “Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing (Reprise)” suite to the darkly dystopian visions of “We Are the Dead” and “Big Brother.” “Rebel Rebel” is also a highlight, though the upbeat feel (and tuneful guitar playing) make it stick out like a sore thumb. Much more characteristic of the album’s overall feel is the title track, a musically murky, corrosively sarcastic vision of the future that features what may be the best intro to any Bowie song: “This ain’t rock and roll — this is genocide!” Indeed.

Young Americans (1975)
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Well, this must’ve been … unexpected. With Young Americans, Bowie temporarily ditched his dark side, intentionally off-putting song arrangements, and rock music altogether and reinvented himself as a newly americanized soul crooner. Huh? One can hear the genesis of this transformation on the otherwise wretched David Live album, but here it comes into full bloom, with a chorus of soulful backing vocalists, actual full-blown string arrangements, and David Sanborn, thankfully using his saxophone powers for good and not evil. This album also saw the introduction of Bowie’s new guitarist, the almost superhumanly funky Carlos Alomar. While all these elements work in the album’s favor, this feels more like an intermittently successful genre exercise than any kind of standout in Bowie’s discography. It’s a perfectly enjoyable listen from beginning to end, but this one of the rare albums where Bowie immerses himself in the style so thoroughly that it’s hard to tell these are even his songs. That said, the John Lennon collaboration “Fame” is one mighty fine slice of disco-funk, and the title track boasts one of Bowie’s most frenzied vocal arrangements, matching what may be one of the densest and most distinguished set of lyrics he’s ever penned. However, both of these songs can be found on various compilations, so you may want to save this one for later.

Station to Station (1976)
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Call it “Young Europeans,” or soul music without the soul — a detached, icy take on funk music that shows Bowie’s burgeoning interest in krautrock and avant-garde music. It also features the screeching rock guitars of one Earl Slick, and some of the slickest and most sterile production of Bowie’s entire career. By their powers combined, you get Station to Station. The cliche is to call this Bowie’s “transitional” album, an assessment which is actually quite accurate. Halfway between the ’70s soul stylings of Young Americans and the sonic experimentation of his work with Eno, this album nevertheless stands on its own merits. Of the six songs, two are ballads, two are straight funk-rockers, and one is the delightfully odd “TVC 15″ (about a TV eating Iggy Pop’s girlfriend). Which leaves the title track — all ten scorching minutes of it, from slow buildup to ecstatic climax. The return of the thin white duke, as he himself puts it. This is one of those songs that Bowie fans speak of in hushed, reverent tones, and the album on the whole is widely regarded as one of his best. Unlike my backpedaling on Ziggy Stardust, I’m still going to maintain that Station to Station is just one of many strong albums from this era, but it did mark the beginning of what I consider to be the strongest phase of his whole career.

Low (1977)
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So one day, David Bowie blew his nose and claimed to have seen some of his brain come out. It was at this point that he decided to quit cocaine, leave Los Angeles, ditch his increasingly scary obsessions with fascism and the occult, and try to figure out where the hell he went wrong. Low is essentially the sound of someone letting themselves hit bottom so they can rebuild their lives from the ground up. It’s also one of the most restlessly experimental rock albums ever made, from the massive treated drum sound to the harsh synths to the unconventional, minimalist song structures through to the all-instrumental second side. Brian Eno’s presence definitely adds to the overall quirkiness, but this is very much Bowie’s show, his usual detachment giving way to a much more human expression of loneliness and vulnerability. For example, though few knew it at the time, “Always Crashing in the Same Car” is about an aborted suicide attempt, though it also works as a metaphor for the drug addiction that had caused Bowie to flee LA in the first place. There are also some more general statements of emotional isolation, but ultimately the story is told mostly through the music. In fact, the instrumentals outnumber the vocal tracks here, with “Warszawa” and “Subterraneans” both featuring wordless chanting that communicate depression and despair better than any “real” set of lyrics ever could. To this day, I can’t name a single album that truly replicates the sound of Low, only the innovative spirit. It’s a queasy-sounding album from a sick man trying to heal himself, the sheer joy of creation carrying him through.

“Heroes” (1977)
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So how the hell do you follow up on an album like Low? Well, if you’re Bowie, you de-emphasize sonic experimentation in favor of more structured songwriting, and maybe tell Eno to give Robert Fripp a call. That’s right, it’s Fripp, Eno, and Bowie — the ultimate art-rock tag team! Fripp’s guitar work on this album is tremendous, adding greatly to Tony Visconti’s thick, swampy production sound and an already discordant and chaotic set of songs. Half the time Bowie has to sing his lungs out just to be heard. Of course, he’s also singing his lungs out because he really means it, which brings us to the title track. Possibly the most overplayed, overcovered song Bowie ever did, “Heroes” is nonetheless an incredibly powerful song about love and bravery in the face of insurmountable odds. All I’m gonna say is, if this song does not move you in any way, shape, or form, you are not human. There’s another Bowie classic on this album, though, one that isn’t quite as widely recognized: I’m talking about the snarling, bloodthirsty monster of an opener that is “Beauty and the Beast,” probably the most menacing and aggressive rocker Bowie ever wrote in his prime. Truth be told, there’s a wealth of great material here, but it’ll probably take a few listens to really sink in. This is a dark, dense, difficult album — Low’s angry, ugly, defiant little brother. It’s also, like Low, one of the greatest rock albums ever made.

Lodger (1979)
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The fact that Bowie exchanged Robert Fripp for ex-Zappa sideman Adrian Belew on this album speaks volumes. Even more song oriented than “Heroes,” Lodger is also funnier, less cohesive, and much, much weirder. By trying to cram his most experimental impulses into the restrictions of the three-minute pop-song structure, Bowie winds up with some of the most jarring material of his career, and not all of it works. “Red Money,” for example, is a half-assed rewrite of Iggy Pop’s “Sister Midnight,” and a lot of the material on the first side falls flat. The rest is all aces, though, from the Talking Heads homage of “DJ” to the frankly unsettling account of spousal abuse found in “Repetition.” There’s also “African Night Flight,” which sounds like a precursor to Eno’s work with David Byrne on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts, and “Boys Keep Swinging,” a song where all the band members switch instruments to make one of the most ironically lunkheaded odes to male privilege ever written. Though it often gets dismissed for not reaching the lofty peaks of Low and “Heroes,” Lodger is an album with a quirky charm all its own.

Scary Monsters (1980)
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The end of Bowie’s “classic period,” Scary Monsters is the sound of him getting the residual ugliness of the last three albums out of his system once and for all. Guitars shriek, drums pound, synths buzz, and Bowie’s voice drips bile and sarcasm at nearly every turn. This is the relentlessly harsh rock album that “Heroes” threatened to be, with the lyrics now returning to the doomsday dystopia of The Man Who Sold the World and Diamond Dogs, the difference being that it’s no longer an imagined scenario but a reflection on what’s happening right here, right now. It’s not just the lyrics that press this point, either — this is some of the most visceral and urgent-sounding music of Bowie’s career. It’s also Bowie’s most blatantly new wave-ish album, and for all its harshness, it’s still the most accessible, downright commercial thing he’d done since Station to Station. The hit here was “Ashes to Ashes,” a haunting, melancholy follow-up to “Space Oddity,” where he admits to being sick of wearing masks and playing characters, a theme that carries over into “Teenage Wildlife,” a gloriously over-the-top anthem that shows him rejecting his status as a disposable pop icon and taking the piss out of the new-romantic movement he helped inspire. The other hit here was “Fashion,” one of the most monstrous slabs of sarcastic ugliness to ever set itself to a disco beat. Like I said, Scary Monsters is a pretty confrontational album, but it makes a fitting coda to one of the most intriguing runs of albums by a single artist. It’d be three years before Bowie would gather the strength to return to the limelight, by which point things had changed quite significantly.

Todd Rundgren’s Utopia (1974)
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Though many categorize this album as Todd Rundgren’s big leap into progressive rock, I actually hear a pretty big jazz-fusion influence here as well (à la Return to Forever and the like). Frank Zappa also casts a mighty shadow over the proceedings, “Freak Parade” being more or less a 10-minute Zappa pastiche. To sum it up briefly: this album is a perfectly valid exercise in prog-jazz-rock-fusion-whatever-you-wanna-call-it, mainly because the band is full of first-rate players and Rundgren makes sure to throw in some actual song-like parts amidst all the noodling. However, unless I start investing in a serious psychedelic drug habit, I can’t see this ever entering heavy rotation on my personal playlist. It’s not every day that I’ll want to sit down and listen to a half-hour piece of music, regardless of how good it is (this would be “The Ikon”), and the shortest track on the album (“Freedom Fighters”) is also the least memorable. In spite of my nitpicking, however, this is still a fascinating curio in Todd Rundgren’s discography, and definitely worth at least a cursory listen (though it takes a lot of patience to get to the good stuff). Here’s my favorite track, “Utopia Theme”.

Another Live (1975)
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More tightly wound proggery, this time condensing the lengthy suites into the more easily digestible format known as “songs.” Unfortunately, the material itself is fairly uneven. The best of it finds the band sounding like a friendlier, happier counterpart to Frank Zappa’s mid-’70s work or even a slightly more unhinged Chicago Transit Authority — “Another Life” and “The Seven Rays”, in particular, are standouts. But the worst material… well, some might disagree with me on this, but I find “The Wheel” to be the kind of embarrassingly insipid hippie sing-along crap that I usually associate more with bad open mic nights than good Todd Rundgren albums. They also throw in covers and Todd Rundgren solo songs, to varying degrees of success. If you’re curious about early Utopia, you’d do better to get the debut instead, but as with most Todd Rundgren projects, there’s still enough interesting material here to warrant a listen.

Ra (1977)
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From this point onwards, Utopia now consisted of Todd Rundgren on guitar, Roger Powell on keyboards, John “Willie” Wilcox on drums, and new kid Kasim Sulton on bass, all of whom took turns singing (though Todd and Kasim were essentially the main vocalists). This album is also notable in that it represents Utopia’s first conscious move away from prog and into the arena-ready rock sound that would mark it’s next couple of albums. This is probably due to the fact that, with two of the three keyboardists gone, there’s more emphasis on Todd’s guitarwork in the songs, and Willie seems to have gotten a lot more comfortable in the drummer’s seat. It’s also worth noting that, though there’s less of an emphasis on technical virtuosity this time around, the band actually sounds a lot tighter by virtue of the fact that they’re playing in the context of more compact, fully fleshed-out songs. Well, except for that 18-minute fairy tale suite on side two. No, I don’t wanna talk about it. Highlights include the absolutely thunderous opener, “Communion with the Sun,” and the quirky, almost Brian Wilson-esque “Magic Dragon Theater.” There’s also the mildly controversial “Hiroshima,” a clumsily arranged yet passionately angry seven-minute dirge that’s either one of the best tracks on the album or a bit of an embarrassment, depending on who you ask. I’ll reserve my judgement and let you decide for yourself.

Oops! Wrong Planet (1977)
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So prog is out, arena rock is in, and if the lyrics are any indication, Todd is very pissed off. Take the opener, “Trapped,” for instance, easily the loudest, angriest song the band ever wrote:

You’ve got to break out, you’ve got to prove you’re alive
What makes you think that the weak survive?
And if you don’t have the stomach for all this radical crap
Then have the guts to stand for something or you’re gonna be trapped

Hell yeah! The rest of the album veers between militant rockers like these and sweet ballads like Willie’s underrated “Crazy Lady Blue” and the now-classic “Love Is the Answer.” The major exceptions to this rule are the gloomy funk of “Abandon City” and “The Marriage of Heaven and Hell,” a schizophrenic, three-part mini-suite that manages to cleverly disguise itself as a straight rock song. This track is key, as it shows how the band had managed to rein in their excesses without compromising their more ambitious side. This isn’t a perfect album by any means (there are a few songs here and there that seem a bit undercooked), but it’s definitely one of their most solid outings.

Adventures in Utopia (1980)
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With this album, Utopia streamlined their sound even further, meaning that they were now a progressive-rock-turned-arena-rock-band disguised as a new wave pop group. They pulled it off pretty well, too, with “You Make Me Crazy” sounding like the best song the Cars never wrote, and Kasim’s goofy, poppy “Set Me Free” providing the closest thing the band ever had to a hit. The flipside is that there’s also some pretty pedestrian material — “Shot in the Dark” has never done anything for me, and “Love Alone” is a pretty song nearly ruined by its all-synth instrumental backing. On the other hand, the album closes with the tongue-in-cheek disco jam “Rock Love”, which is just too much fun to dismiss. So, ultimately, I have conflicted feelings about this album — it’s a good pop record, but too often I find the rough edges of their last two efforts have been sanded down, resulting in an album that has a lot of good attributes, but very little by way of a distinct identity. But hey, most people rank this as their favorite Utopia album, so what do I know?

Deface the Music (1980)
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See, now this was just a bad, bad idea. This is Utopia’s album-length tribute to the Beatles, with the first half being a pastiche of their earlier, poppier material, and the second half being an exercise in smarmy faux-psychedelia. The first half is at least kind of fun, as Todd Rundgren has always had a way with pop hooks (derivative or not) but by the time the music-hall pastiche of “Always Late” rolls around, I’m inclined to either take the record off or punch someone’s lights out. And no, before you ask, I’m not a Beatles purist by any means. It’s just that the Beatles’ sound is aped in the most irritatingly superficial way, reducing what could have been an interesting piss-take on a great band’s career to an entire album’s worth of ’60s-inspired clichés. “I Just Want to Touch You” is the most well-known song here, for what it’s worth. If this sounds like your idea of a good time, go for it. But if that’s the case, can I interest you in a slightly used Rutles album?

Swing to the Right (1982)
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I don’t quite know where to start with this one, so I’ll just get my own bias out of the way and say this is my favorite Utopia album, bar none. First of all, the main theme of this album is the rise of the greedy, materialistic mindset that characterized the Reagan era, which means the righteous anger and cynicism of Oops! Wrong Planet has returned with a vengeance. Also, musically speaking, this is probably the most experimental and listener-unfriendly Utopia album since the debut, throwing in everything from jazz rock (the awesome title track) to Tubes-esque new wave (”The Up”) to disco (”Fahrenheit 451″) to… whatever the hell “Junk Rock,” “Shinola,” and “The Last Dollar on Earth” are supposed to be (aside from really, really ugly). They even throw in one of Rundgren’s best-ever ballads, the masterful “Only Human,” as if to prove that they’re not completely devoted to fucking with their audience. Still, this can be tough going, and not everyone’s going to like it. Which, incidentally, is why I love it.

Utopia (1982)
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After releasing two of the most alienating albums of their career, Utopia switched labels and suddenly reinvented themselves, once again, as a straight power pop band with new wave affectations. They also came up with what may be their catchiest set of songs ever, unloading hook after hook after hook over a total of 15 tracks, making this paradoxically one of the longest and most consistent Utopia albums ever. Picking highlights in nigh-impossible — there aren’t many instant classics here, but there isn’t a weak track among the bunch. “Libertine” is a hell of an opener, though, while “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” is a Beatles homage that body-slams anything on Deface the Music into submission. Even Roger and Willie’s vocal highlights turn out to be some of the best on the album. Don’t let the stiff, bare-bones production fool you — this is easily one of their best.

Oblivion (1984)
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I’m probably the only person I know who likes this album so, like my assessment of Adventures in Utopia, there’s a good chance you should disregard everything I say here. However, I do think Oblivion’s gotten a bit of a bad rap. Most people tend to point out that this is one of Utopia’s more generic-sounding albums, stuffed to the gills with loud guitars, fake drums, and blaring synths. Okay, fine. But taken on its own merits as a slightly derivative ’80s pop album, I’d say it’s actually quite good. “Crybaby” is a shamelessly cheesy (not to mention highly addictive) rocker, “Winston Smith Takes It on the Jaw” suggests a hidden Thomas Dolby influence, and “I Will Wait” is an awesome, heartfelt album-closing ballad. Elsewhere, “Bring Me My Longbow” and “Too Much Water” are paranoid, jittery eco-funk-rants that’ll either make you want to dance around the room or reach for an Advil. Like I said, I’m in the minority on this one, but if you’re looking for a higher caliber of 80s cheese, why not give this album a try?

POV (1985)
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Aside from a live reunion album from 1992 (which I highly recommend), this is Utopia’s swan song and, unfortunately, it’s not very good. The entire band was experimenting with sequencers this time around, which means pretty much everything but the guitars and vocals sound fake, and the sterile production makes it sound like the band was somehow trapped inside one of their own drum machines and were trying to record as quickly as possible to avoid eating each other for sustenance. Only Roger Powell’s Devo-ish rocker “Zen Machine” (which I’ve presented here in a far superior live version from the aforementioned 1992 reunion) and the closing “Man of Action” raising an appreciable head of steam, but still, you know something’s very wrong when the Rundgren-sung songs are actually the worst. Well, okay, fine, I suppose I should mention “Mated,” a ballad that’s become something of a minor Rundgren classic. Still, though, the emphasis here is on “minor.” This is a sad, sad end to a criminally underrated band.

Click full screen to get the full effect. Also, just so you know, I’ve never done radio, a podcast, or pencast in my life, so please consider this the rookie effort it is.

]]> http://popdose.com/the-popdose-guide-to-jimmy-smith/feed/ 12 http://popdose.com/beyond-ubiquitous-the-popdose-guide-to-syd-straw/ http://popdose.com/beyond-ubiquitous-the-popdose-guide-to-syd-straw/#comments Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:30:05 +0000 Jon Cummings http://popdose.com/?p=15770 For someone who can talk your ear off, Syd Straw certainly has built an enigmatic career. After establishing her bona fides as an arty modern-rock diva during the mid-’80s, as part of the Golden Palominos collective, Straw released her solo debut Surprise in 1989 – then didn’t make another album for seven years. Her next break, following 1996’s War and Peace, was even longer: a dozen years, ending with the appearance last year of Pink Velour.

Not that Straw wasn’t working through the intervening years. Her husky, distinctive voice has made her a favorite among discerning artists and producers looking for a duet partner or backing vocalist; her list of guest credits is as long as her own discography is short. She also found work as an actress during the 1990s, and a generation of Nickelodeon-bred dorks (you know who you are) remember her as the number-fetishizing Miss Fingerwood on The Adventures of Pete and Pete.

Most of all, she has remained a beloved, influential (and eccentric) presence among fellow musicians, indie-rock scenesters, artists and literary types – always quick with a bon mot (or 10), always with her beloved dog Henry in tow, and always generous with her time and talents. (The title of this Popdose Guide was Straw’s idea, something to do with a well-connected artist who’s released just three albums in 20 years circling all the way back around from obscurity to a position just the other side of ubiquity.)

The Golden Palominos, Visions of Excess (1985) and Blast of Silence (1986)
Straw got her first exposure to the musical big time singing background vocals for Pat Benatar, but she rose to prominence with her contributions to these albums, which (like all the Palominos’ discs) featured collectives of high-profile alt- and art-rock musicians gathered together by former Feelies and Pere Ubu drummer Anton Fier. Visions of Excess was the group’s second album and its most popular, thanks to Michael Stipe’s vocals on “Boy (Go)” and “Omaha” as well as John Lydon’s on “The Animal Speaks.” It was Straw, however, who proved the real discovery on Visions; her riveting vocals came as a revelation toward the end of the set, on the tracks “(Kind of) True” and “Buenos Aires.”

Blast of Silence followed a year later and featured an utterly different sound from its predecessor; two decades on, it’s remembered as one of the albums that gave birth to the alt-country genre. Fier’s assemblage this time featured Matthew Sweet, Jack Bruce, T-Bone Burnett, Don Dixon, Chris Stamey and many others. Again, however, it was Straw who provided the most resonant contributions, including “Angels” (which she co-wrote with Fier and Peter Blegvad) and a terrific cover of Lowell George’s “I’ve Been the One.” Straw toured extensively with the Palominos during this period, enhancing her reputation as both a lead vocalist and band member, and endearing her to a vast array of alt-rock insiders who would provide her with work and comradeship for decades to come.

Responding to a question about Fier’s working style, Straw says, “He was neither genius nor evil. He’s like a lot of people I’ve known, smart and troubled. That was a very meaningful time for me. Anton was the first person who gave me the assignment to write a song – he said, ‘Here’s some music, why don’t you put some words and a melody to it.’ That was a wonderful thing for me.

“However,” she adds, “we did this Peter Holsapple song called ‘Diamond’ [on Blast of Silence], I was in the studio doing the vocal, and Anton was screaming at me! We’d been up all night recording it, and he’d get on the talk-back button, and at one point he said, ‘You know, I can make one phone call and get a real singer in here!’ I loved that song, and it was my idea to do it, but I wound up being tortured because he was so mean and drunk and critical. I left the studio and walked into a little snowstorm at 5 in the morning, and I had his angry yelling in my ear, and I realized that I was so tortured by Anton’s deep beratement that I didn’t sing the third verse – I just repeated the first verse, and I missed the best verse of the song.

“Except for that little moment, working with Anton making those records and touring [with the Palominos] was nothing but deep, deep learning and pleasure.” Collector’s note: Visions of Excess and Blast of Silence are both available on import, but a better bet is the Golden Palominos box set on the import Golden Stars label, which collects the group’s first three albums at a bargain price. Perhaps a dozen Palominos compilations have appeared through the years; this one has the distinct advantage of remaining in print.

Surprise (1989)
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Signed to Virgin Records America, Straw made her solo debut with this slice of state-of-the-art, late-’80s modern rock. All the requisite ingredients for just-left-of-the-mainstream success were in place. A clutch of sturdy, self-penned songs? Check! (Among the best: “Heart of Darkness,” co-written with former Slapp Happy member and occasional Pink Floyd collaborator Anthony Moore.) A ringer of a jangle-poppy cover tune? Check! (Peter Holsapple’s “Think Too Hard,” on which Straw previously had sung backing vocals when it was recorded for the dB’s The Sound of Music album.) High-profile guests? Check! (Alphabetically, among others: Dave Alvin, Ry Cooder, Marshall Crenshaw, Joe Ely, Jim Keltner, Daniel Lanois, Van Dyke Parks, Benmont Tench, Don Was and Bernie Worrell, as well as Palominos cohorts Fier, Blegvad, Stamey and Richard Thompson.) A Michael Stipe cameo? Check! (The soaring “Future 40’s (String of Pearls)” would mark her sole appearance on a Billboard chart, peaking at #16 on the Modern Rock Tracks list. Stipe later would sing a verse from it on R.E.M.’s Tourfilm video.) A quirky, well-made video perfect for MTV’s 120 Minutes? Check!

Nonetheless, Straw had no illusions that she would become as popular as some of her peers. “Oh, God, no – are you kidding? Nobody ever even saw that video!” she says now. “Did they ever even play it?” She exaggerates, perhaps, but her instinct was correct: While Surprise attracted near-universal critical acclaim, it failed to catch fire in the male-dominated realm of modern-rock radio and didn’t sell enough copies for Virgin to commit to a second album. Still, she says, “It was a great experience, because of the people who were with me on that album and tour … I had met a lot of nice people on tour with the Palominos, and what I have found in my experience so far is that people love to work. They love to be called upon to do what they excel at —and that’s what I asked those folks to do for my first album. And I’ve been asked to do that many times by all sorts of people I admire since then. If we can just put whatever we’re good at in a big pile for the greater good, we can make a big contribution to the world. That’s my modus operandi.”

War and Peace (1996)
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When Straw’s name finally graced a CD again, it was in a radically different guise from her first album. The humbly titled War and Peace, released by the reincarnated Southern-rock label Capricorn Records, is a far rootsier, more rocking affair – which makes sense, since it was recorded with Lou Whitney’s renowned garage-rock outfit the Skeletons at their home studio in Springfield, Missouri. Straw laid out the album’s principal themes on its opening track, “The Toughest Girl in the World,” serving notice that she’d be exploring her wounded heart from a variety of angles. She’s jaded, if not quite bitter, on the jangly “Love, and the Lack of It”; on “CBGB’s” she’s earnest and touching, wondering if a onetime lover remembers her and if he’s turned out happy. Later she begs for “Water, Please,” hoping not to get hung out to dry by an inattentive boyfriend. Through it all the Skeletons shift brilliantly with Straw’s moods, and give her wry wit plenty of room to color the material.

“It was such a riot making that record,” she says. “I had been such a fan of the Skeletons for so many years, and I been down in Springfield years before with my good friend Eric Ambel from the Del Lords, when we made this fun record called Roscoe’s Gang [in 1988]. Lou Whitney makes pot after pot of very weak coffee, and I once said, ‘Lou, my God, is there some reason your coffee is so bad? It’s so weak you can see right through it! What are you saving the beans for – is somebody better coming in later to record something?’ And he said, ‘Well, Syd, if I keep it weak like this I can keep drinking it all day and all night.’ And that’s when I understood the genius of Lou.”

War and Peace met a fate quite similar to that of Surprise. Hailed by critics, well-regarded in the industry, played some by Adult-Alternative radio and treasured by a cult of worshipful fans, it still failed to become a hit. Released just a bit too early to ride the Lilith Fair wave of late-’90s female singer-songwriters, and buried by more accessible contemporaneous releases like Alanis Morissette’s Jagged Little Pill and Sheryl Crow’s eponymous second album, War and Peace also suffered from Capricorn’s insufficient marketing (the label folded again a few years later). Straw moved on, hopeful about the future; in 1997, she told the British magazine Hearsay that “I’m gonna make a record in late summer! In keeping with not letting seven years just slip through my fingers, I’m just gonna get right back up on the horse and ride again.” Famous last words…

Pink Velour (2008)
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Straw was hardly inactive as a songwriter during the dozen years that separated War and Peace from last year’s Pink Velour; indeed, several tracks date back to the millennium and even before. (Once she stopped laughing after having the above quote read back to her, she said, “Hmmm – something must have happened in between, right? I guess something came up! A lot can happen in the average day, you know.” Anyway, after completing various tracks in fits and starts, and after searching in vain for a label to release the album, she finally went the DIY route and started her own imprint, Earnester Records. It’s a good thing, too – even though the album has been roundly ignored in the overwhelmed music press – because Pink Velour is a witty, serious, utterly mature stunner of an album, steeped in love and history and (especially) loss.

The heartbreaking “Pink Velour” lays bare Straw’s pain at the deaths of both her parents in recent years; it traces the emotions that surrounded her move to California as a child following their divorce. (A few years ago Straw told an interviewer that she had been “kidnapped” by her mother and did not see her father, the musical-theater actor Jack Straw, for seven years afterward.) “Where in the world are you now?” she sings to her father. “We only see you in movies / And I wish for you when I’m wishing on a star / And I always check the weather where you are.”

“About to Forget” continues along these lines, sorting through Straw’s (and her dog Henry’s) responses to her mother’s death – and beginning with an unforgettable stanza: “It’s hard to explain heavy things to a dog / But one day you’ll sleep like a log / It’s hard to explain heavy things to a pup / One day you’ll sleep and you won’t wake up / And it kills me in advance, my dear.” On the other hand, “Marry Me” is considerably happier – in fact, it just might be the most loopily romantic wedding song in pop history. (The full stories of both songs will be told on Thursday, when Popdose publishes a full-length interview with Straw.) Elsewhere, some of the album’s strongest songs recall the themes of War and Peace: “Storm Warning” hearkens back to the loved-and-lost trope that dominated the earlier album, while the whimsical waltz “Papier Mache” asks a new lover to tread gently because “I’m tough but I’m tender, in my own way.”

The closing track on Pink Velour is the extraordinary “Actress,” a caustic, autobiographical epic built around the central line “I’m having a kind of career.” Straw says, “The whole damn thing’s about me. I am having a kind of career! I really like that song — though, when I played it for my father, he said, ‘Oh, honey, that’s the dullest song ever, nobody will ever want to hear that.’ I said, ‘Don’t you think that’s a little harsh?’ And he goes, ‘It goes on and on, and nothing ever happens!’

“The song really is me, though. If I was a bit more driven, or ambitious, or beautiful, I’d be working it a different way. But I have so much pleasure at the margins! It’s so frolicsome over here at the edge of the paper, where nobody really much cares what I do, so there’s not a lot of editing.”

Straw recently contributed several songs and incidental music to the soundtrack of Motherhood, a new indie comedy directed by Katherine Dieckmann (with whom Straw previously worked on Pete and Pete and other projects) and starring Uma Thurman. Dieckmann had written Straw’s song “CBGB’s” into the closing scenes of the film, which premiered at Sundance in January. Additionally, Straw just recorded a cover of “Hey Self Defeater,” a solo track by Miracle Legion co-founder Mark Mulcahy, for an upcoming tribute/benefit album; proceeds will go to Mulcahy, whose wife died suddenly last fall, leaving him to bring up their two daughters on his own.

Such projects have always played a key role in Straw’s career. Here is a small selection of her contributions to compilation albums and recordings by friends and colleagues:

“For Shame of Doing Wrong” (with Evan Dando, from the Richard Thompson tribute album Beat the Retreat)
“I’m a Believer” (with Squeeze and Jules Shear, from the first-ever episode of MTV Unplugged)
“When I’m At Your House” (with Loudon Wainwright III, from his album History)
“My Daddy (Flies a Ship in the Sky)” (from Daddy O Daddy: Rare Family Songs of Woody Guthrie)
“(I Am Always Touched By Your) Presents, Dear” (from the Chris Stamey Band’s Christmas Time album)
“The Man With the Child in His Eyes” (from the Kate Bush tribute album I Wanna Be Kate)

Of the last track, Straw says, “That’s the only [song of hers] I wanted to record. I don’t think we did it justice, but I was pleased to be on that record. I met Kate Bush years ago, at a Pink Floyd party in London. And I went up to her and said, ‘Kate Bush! You don’t know me from a pole in the ground, but someday I would like to sit in a room with you, on a couple of chairs, and sing together.’ And she got all nervous, and finally said, ‘Why?’ And I said, ‘Because you and I would sound like angels in heat!’ And at that point, she was like … [holds her finger up] ‘Security!’”

Come back on Thursday for more crazy tales from the life and career of Syd Straw.

Their creative alchemy reached its zenith on 1988’s Used Guitars, one of the decade’s finest recordings, and a celebratory four-night run at the Bottom Line in New York that brought together all the album’s songwriters. Those shows (and a subsequent appearance on Late Night with David Letterman) were a highlight of Jones and Dixon’s never-ending tours of those years, which we discussed last week here at Popdose. But a funny thing happened along Jones’ ascent as the pre-eminent interpreter of modern pop: Used Guitars, like her previous albums, didn’t sell, and neither did its highly touted follow-up, Any Kind of Lie. Within a couple years she had parted ways with two different major labels and found herself effectively out of the industry.

Since then Jones has released precisely two studio albums in two decades, focusing instead on her budding career as a painter; these days you’re far more likely to find the fruits of her creative labor on a gallery wall than in a concert hall. Her paintings reveal the same idiosyncratic spirit that always characterized her musical performances – sometimes serious, sometimes whimsical, always authentic. Popdose posted an exclusive “official bootleg” of a Don-and-Marti show last week; next week, Jones will discuss her recent endeavors, as well as the highlights of her musical career, in an exhaustive Popdose interview. Until then, you may view some of her artwork at www.martijonesdixon.com, and join us now as we explore her back (and, in far too many cases, out-of-print) catalog.

Color Me Gone (1984)
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Jones, a product of the surprising musical hotbed that was northeastern Ohio in the 1970s, began her career playing the club circuit in the Akron-Canton area. Friend and fellow Ohioan Liam Sternberg, who was already an established producer and songwriter by 1980, gave Jones her first studio experience singing demos – including one for a Sternberg ditty that eventually became one of the decade’s biggest and most polarizing hits (more about that next week). It was Sternberg who suggested she join up with the three members of Color Me Gone, an established Akron act in need of a lead singer. He then arranged a deal for the band with A&M Records, resulting in this six-song EP of promising, if slight, jangle-pop.

The tuneful lead track “Lose Control” set the tone; songwriter/guitarist George Cabaniss (formerly, if briefly, one of the Stiv Bators-led Dead Boys) kept things tuneful and gave Jones plenty of dramatic high notes, qualities also employed to good effect on “Almost Heaven” and “July/December.” The production (by the high-profile trio of Sternberg, David Anderle and Barry Mraz) and the musicianship are workmanlike, the harmonies somewhat less so. What really leaps off the grooves, of course, is Jones’ voice – which explains why, when Jones bailed out on the band following a dust-up with Cabaniss, A&M gave her a solo deal and relegated the rest of the band to obscurity.

Unsophisticated Time (1985)
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Jones’ career path – not to mention the course of her personal life – was set when A&M arranged for Dixon to produce her first solo outing. (The two had met prior to the Color Me Gone EP’s release, when her fellow band members were shopping for a producer to remix the record; Dixon had told them to leave well enough alone.) Quickly discovering they were simpatico on any number of levels, Jones and Dixon got out of the gate in a hurry with Unsophisticated Time. It’s a record full of gorgeous melodies, experimental bits, and well-chosen covers (the dB’s’ “Lonely Is (As Lonely Does),” Richard Barone’s “Show and Tell”). Dixon penned four tracks, including a brilliant song of regret that became a staple of the duo’s live act, and which he later reclaimed for himself (twice!) on his odds-and-ends collection Note Pad #38: “(If I Could) Walk Away.”

Jones’ rendition of Elvis Costello’s “The Element Within Her” was a particular critical favorite, and commenced her series of fine covers of his work. But the best-remembered track off Unsophisticated Time is a tune Dixon brought to Jones from his buddy Bland Simpson of the Red Clay Ramblers. “Follow You All Over the World” is witty, heartfelt, beautifully sung – it is, in short, one of The Greatest Love Songs Ever. “It continues to be the track of mine that everybody remembers – I had to quit [one of the social-networking sites] because I was getting a million e-mails from people wanting the guitar tabs for it,” she says now. “It’s funny that it’s so attached to me, but I’m thrilled about that – it’s a great song.”

Match Game (1986)
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Eager to parlay the critical acclaim for Unsophisticated Time into an actual hit record, A&M, Dixon and Jones assembled an all-star lineup of songwriters and musicians for the recording of Match Game. The album’s back cover fairly screamed its creators’ commercial ambitions, name-checking those contributors prominently even as the freshly permed Jones offered up her best glam pose for the camera. There’s a metaphor in there somewhere, of course, and there are indeed moments on Match Game when Jones seems buried under those ambitions and the collective weight of her supporting cast.

To be sure, there are fine moments as well. The big chorus of “We’re Doing Alright” provides immediate uplift on side one, courtesy of songwriter Reed Nielsen (late of the Nielsen/Pierson Band), while Jones’ countrified cover of Costello’s elegy “Just a Memory” verges on majestic – as well it should, considering the personnel on the track (Marshall and Robert Crenshaw, T-Bone Burnett, Paul Carrack, Anne Richmond Boston of the Swimming Pool Q’s). Interestingly, while he plays on a couple of other tracks, Marshall Crenshaw didn’t participate in the remaking of his own “Whenever You’re On My Mind” – an adult-contemporary-ish interpretation that overlays nice backing vocals on the chorus but features an overly pristine vocal from Jones in what sounds like a blatant play for a pop hit. It didn’t happen; in fact, Match Game failed to build much on the momentum engendered by her debut album, and wound up contributing fewer tracks to Jones’ concert repertoire than her other records.

Used Guitars (1988)
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Two years later, in the midst of 1988’s boomlet of new female voices, Jones returned with her finest album – an eclectic achievement that showcased three wonderful songs co-written with Dixon as well as an impeccably chosen set of covers. Of the originals, the free-spirited “Tourist Town” was perhaps the album’s signature moment – the song she performed on Letterman, and that received the most radio airplay – but the horn-laden “Twisted Vines” is practically as good. Janis Ian and Kye Fleming contributed two superb songs, the lovely “Keep Me in the Dark” and the torch song “Ruby,” which became a favorite in live performance. John Hiatt, a year removed from his own commercial breakthrough with Bring the Family, also contributed two fine tracks, the uptempo “The Real One” and the gorgeous album-closing ballad “If I Can Love Somebody.”

Bland Simpson’s “Wind in the Trees” features dramatic octave shifts between the verses and bridges that allow Jones to show the power in her upper register. Then there’s her delicious take on a brilliant song from Graham Parker’s Real Macaw album, “You Can’t Take Love for Granted.” Jones shifts expertly between a detached, almost laconic tone in the verses, which concern the slights inflicted upon each other by a pair of longtime lovers, and the snarling envy of the bridge as she stands alone and watches them waste their good fortune. Used Guitars was, and remains, essential listening for any fan of singer/songwriter folk-pop; sadly, it got lost in the shuffle of those new female artists, and received what Jones considered a grossly inadequate push from A&M. In fact, she was so disappointed by the label’s indifference that she asked out of her contract and signed with RCA for her next album.

Any Kind of Lie (1990)
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Empowered by the success of their songwriting efforts on Used Guitars, Jones and Dixon largely followed their own muse on its follow-up. Any Kind of Lie features only two covers, Clive Gregson’s “Second Choice” and Loudon Wainwright III’s beautiful “Old Friend”; unfortunately, not enough of the originals here live up to the high standard of “Tourist Town” or “Twisted Vines.” The opening track, “Living Inside the Wind,” and several others recall the breezy spirit of those earlier songs, but occasionally the arrangements become too sophisticated, the songs too stylistically diverse for the album’s own good, perhaps in an effort to ensure a hit for her new label. Dixon at times seems to think that more of everything – a brighter sound, denser percussion, layered backing vocals – will add up to a more radio-friendly production. What gets lost is the emotional connection that Used Guitars and Unsophisticated Time achieved so easily; it’s ironic, yet undeniable, that Jones seemed more at home on those cover-heavy sets than she does here.

Any Kind of Lie didn’t achieve any kind of chart success, and a regime change at RCA cost Jones her key supporter at the label, Bob Buziak. Jones, along with numerous other acts, was summarily dropped, at which point Jones and Dixon decided to begin raising a family. Their daughter, Shane, became Jones’ top priority, and she wouldn’t release another album for six years.

Live at Spirit Square (1996)
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The independent label Sugar Hill announced in early ’96 that it would be releasing a pair of Jones albums just a few months apart. First came this six-year-old live recording, committed to 24-track during a set at the Spirit Square Center for the Arts in Charlotte during the summer of 1990. As a document of the Any Kind of Lie tour it sounds great, and as a reminder of the wonderful Don-and-Marti shows of the late ’80s it served as a nice re-introduction to an artist who’d been away too long. The set focuses, for obvious reasons, on the album she was promoting at the time, and features faithful renditions of songs like “I’ve Got Second Sight.” But it also features a nice selection of tunes from her earlier albums; it’s heavier on Used Guitars than its predecessors, but includes a nice version of “Inside These Arms” from Match Game. (Other tracks from Live at Spirit Square were posted last week; grab ’em while they’re still there, if you haven’t already.)

My Long-Haired Life (1996)
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Jones gets the explanations for her extended absence over with in the opening seconds of My Long-Haired Life. The title itself (and the cover painting that accompanies it) intimate that pop-star glamour has been traded in for child-rearing efficiency; the baby’s laughter that kicks off her cover of Nick Lowe’s “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass” tell listeners all they need to know about where Jones’ head is at. Fortunately, her new priorities (and the attendant lowered expectations) seem to focus the emotional impact of My Long-Haired Life, rather than diminish it. Gone are the production gimmicks that weighed down parts of Any Kind of Lie; back is the delightful eclecticism of Jones and Dixon’s cover choices, from the soulful (Otis Redding’s “Champagne and Wine,” a duet with Dixon on Joe Tex’s “You Got What It Takes”) to the singer/songwriter-y (Costello’s “Sleep of the Just,” Aimee Mann’s “Put Me on Top”). The four originals include a couple of terrific efforts, “It’s Not What I Want” and Dixon’s “Life’s a Game.” All told, My Long-Haired Life marks a blissfully welcome return – and a return to form.

My Tidy Doily Dream (2002)
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“The years go by so easily,” Jones sings on “Celebrity in Exile,” the centerpiece of the album that followed another six-year absence from the recording studio. Those years may not have gone quite so easily – along with considerable domestic bliss, they brought turmoil as well (Dixon’s 2001 heart attack, for one thing). They also brought Jones new songwriting concerns, not to mention new partners – Richard Barone on “Celebrity in Exile,” and Kelley Ryan of astroPuppees, who wrote one song apiece with Jones and Dixon. Jones and Ryan collaborated on the album opener “Always,” a gorgeous and plaintive track that sounds unlike anything Jones had recorded to date. (Ryan’s girlish backing vocals mark a profound departure in and of themselves.) The track portends the quiet that pervades My Tidy Doily Dream – not always a quiet of contentment, but a quiet of maturity and rumination, and sureness of purpose. It’s a lovely album, if not as stylistically ambitious as her previous work – nothing here rises above a midtempo groove, as though Jones is determined not to disturb the wheels of time as they keep turning. (The passage of time, and the juxtaposition of past and present, are persistent themes, most prominently in the elegiac set closer “Last of the Lukewarm Lovers.”) One can only hope this isn’t Jones’ last studio album – hers is too precious a voice to be silenced – but if it is, it’s a softly caressing, heartfelt way to go out.

Lucky Stars: New Lullabies for Old Souls (2008)
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It began with a request from a friend who was putting together an album of lullabies to sell in hospitals to new parents. It continued with Jones’ desire to record, but lack of interest in putting together a complete album. And it came together when Kelley Ryan and erstwhile Gin Blossom Jesse Valenzuela contributed the nifty tune “Lucky Stars,” a song good enough to build an album around. That’s what Jones and Dixon have done here, joining six soothing songs with five delicate musical interludes and making the result available for download. While hardly a major addition to either’s catalog, this serves as a sweet little coda for Jones’ career to date – one whose last vocal track, “Love Is An Ocean,” is (fittingly) a romantic duet.

Dixon’s recollections of his producing career were the topic of last week’s Hooks ’N’ You column, and he reflected on some of his best-remembered songs two weeks ago in that same space. We’ve got more Dixon- (and Jones-) related tricks up our sleeve in the coming weeks here at Popdose; in the meantime, here is an overview of his recordings, with commentary from the man himself.

Most of the Girls Like to Dance But Only Some of the Boys Like To (1985)
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The word “seminal” gets tossed around way too frequently in rock-crit circles, but here goes: In 1969-70, as a student at the University of North Carolina, Dixon co-founded a band called Arrogance that played a seminal role in the growth of the music scene around the state’s “triangle” area (Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill). Arrogance released five LPs over the next decade, and nearly made the big time despite the usual assortment of personnel changes and label difficulties. Their best chance came with a signing to Curb/Warner Bros. and the release of an album titled Suddenly in 1980; unfortunately, the album stiffed, and within a couple years Arrogance was no more. (Tracks from the band’s records can be downloaded from efolkmusic.org.)

While still with the band, Dixon wrote several songs that would become staples of his early solo career – including the debut single that remains his most popular hit, “Praying Mantis.” During the three years after he went solo, he holed up in several recording studios (including Mitch Easter’s Drive-In) to lay down demos of his best songs. Eventually – his reputation having spiked with the general acclaim for R.E.M.’s first two albums, which he co-produced with Easter – he was signed to Demon Records and “Praying Mantis” (recorded with Arrogance, but released as a solo track) became a college-radio fave. Most of the Girls… followed in 1985, first in England and then in the U.S.; it’s primarily a DIY collection of those early demos, but it was also a blueprint for the rollicking pop-rock that would characterize his more … intentional albums to come. “I cut songs up into tiny pieces, threw them onto the floor and swept them up, shoved them into an envelope, and sent them to my publisher. That’s what that record is,” Dixon says – but no fan of his later work would be so dismissive of prime cuts like “Girls L.T.D.” (download) and “Renaissance Eyes” (download).

Romeo at Juilliard (1987)
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Now signed to Enigma/Restless, Dixon here received “my first opportunity to make a solo record from start to finish, and control the songwriting curve of the record.” The result was a minor classic, an amalgam of Big Star-style power pop and latter-day “beach music.” (If for some reason you don’t recognize that slightly dated, Carolinas-centric term, go here for an explanation.) The rave-up “Your Sister Told Me” was a holdover from the Arrogance era, while “Swallowing Pride” (download) brought out the soul in Dixon’s gruff voice. Both of those songs became staples of his live act, along with “Borrowed Time,” “Heart in a Box” and “Cat Out of the Bag.” Elsewhere, he rocked up the jazzy “Cool,” from West Side Story, and channeled Elvis Costello a bit on “February Ingenue” (download). The lighthearted Romeo at Juilliard showcases Dixon at the height of his pop-songwriting powers, and the heightened visibility it brought helped him build upon the fan base he had earned with “Praying Mantis.”

Chi-Town Budget Show (1988)
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By the time Dixon played the gig at the Chicago’s Park West nightclub that was documented for a radio broadcast and this budget-priced CD, his life and career had become intertwined with that of Jones. He had met her while producing her debut solo album, Unsophisticated Time, and soon enough they had formed a partnership that would produce much great music – not to mention some of the most joyous concert experiences of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Chi-Town Budget Show, on which Dixon and Jones are backed by the North Carolina band the Woods, exemplifies the high spirits that reigned during those shows; don’t miss Marti’s loving/ridiculing John Denver reference that concludes their rendition here of “Heart in a Box” (download). Of this particular gig, Dixon says, “It came at a great time, when I was getting a lot of airplay on [Chicago alt-rock station] WXRT. We had a wonderful crowd, and everybody knew the songs.” (Watch Popdose in the weeks to come for much more about those co-headlining tours.)

EEE (1989)
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No doubt jazzed by the critical response to Romeo at Juilliard and encouraged “to make a record that Enigma might actually be able to sell to someone beyond the fans I already had,” Dixon kept the mood light and the hooks flowing (for the most part) on his second studio album, even recruiting the Uptown Horns to crank up an old-school groove. EEE “was my horn record,” he says now. “I tried to invent a new kind of soul music on that record.” To that end, his originals “Oh Cheap Chatter” (download) and “I Can Hear the River” fit neatly alongside covers of James Carr’s “Dark End of the Street” and Brenton Wood’s beach-music staple “Gimme Little Sign” (presented here as a sweet duet with Jones). Dixon also recorded John Hiatt’s “Love Gets Strange” (download), and included his version of the brilliant song he had penned with Marshall Crenshaw for the Mary Jean and 9 Others album, “Calling Out for Love (at Crying Time).” He even found room for a bizarre bit of audio collage, “EEE/T.O.T.TV.” A bit too clever for its own good, and therefore not quite the album Romeo had been – and not quite the popular breakthrough Dixon or Enigma were looking for – EEE nevertheless provided plenty of welcome additions to the live act.

Romantic Depressive (1995)
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Following extensive, back-to-back tours behind Dixon’s EEE and Jones’ Any Kind of Lie albums, the couple retreated into semi-retirement to begin raising a family. While their recording careers were on hiatus Enigma released a Dixon best-of, If I’m a Ham, Well You’re a Sausage, that includes his Heathers contribution “Teenage Suicide (Don’t Do It).” (Go here for a discussion of the CD and a download of that track.) By the time he returned with Romantic Depressive, on the Sugar Hill label, his perspective had matured and his themes had darkened a bit – exemplified by the inclusion of a stark recollection of Vietnam’s impact on college students, “Lottery of Lives.” For the most part, Dixon still was concerned with matters of the heart; he calls the album “a record about being unable to comprehend your relationships with any girl, and the general incomprehensibility of heterosexual relationships.” Before you run screaming in another direction, check out the soulful groove of “Angel Angel” (download), the gorgeous melody of “Giving Up the Ghost” (download) or the jazzed-up “Everytime I Think of Home.”

Having come off a six-year break to release Romantic Depressive, Dixon proceeded to wait another five years before following it – though 1996 would see the release, also on Sugar Hill, of the score from King Mackerel & the Blues Are Running, a musical show Dixon had created during the mid-’80s with fellow Carolinians Bland Simpson (of the Red Clay Ramblers) and Jim Wann. Dixon & Co. have performed the show, a tribute to life in the coastal Carolinas, dozens of times over the past two decades.

The Invisible Man (2000)
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Dixon takes on middle age – and the concept album – with this collection of songs written from a variety of perspectives. Having obviously put a great deal of thought and care into conceiving the record, he clearly wanted his intentions understood; the extensive liner notes go so far as to lay out the particular age of each song’s narrator. “It’s about mortality,” he says now, “and not knowing exactly where you fit in the cosmos.” After setting that tone of detachment with the album opener “Invisible and Free,” Dixon surveys the voices in his own head, ranging from an 18-year-old’s puppy-love obsession on “Decline and Fall” to an 85-year-old’s rant about how life couldn’t possibly have met his ridiculously high expectations (“All I Wanted”). These descriptions might suggest a downbeat affair, but Dixon leavens the seriousness with an eclectic mix of tempos and instrumental quirks, such as the fuzz guitar on “Digging a Grave” (download) and the percussion on “High Night for the Tide” (download) – a duet with Jones that is like nothing Dixon had recorded before. Released on Gadfly, a tiny independent label based in Vermont, The Invisible Man is far from Dixon’s most accessible album; that’s just as well, since the project seems to have been aimed at a few intense listeners rather than the browsing multitudes.

Note Pad #38 (2001)
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So, you put out an album steeped in ruminations about mortality, and then the next year … you have a heart attack! And emergency bypass surgery! Actually, the new millennium had brought some rather momentous events even before the onset of Dixon’s health problems. He had pulled Arrogance back together for a pair of reunion shows (which the band has since parlayed into a semi-regular string of gigs, most recently this past September). He also had remixed Arrogance’s five albums and re-issued them on CD (in very limited quantities), and had begun to work with his once and future bandmates to organize a release of their never-released final album, 5’11”. While immersed in these archival matters – indeed, Dixon has released these projects under the auspices of his own Dixon Archival label – he decided to release a second collection of odds and ends from his solo career.

To hear Dixon describe it, Note Pad #38 is a bookend to the earlier Most of the Girls Like to Dance. “I cut up a bunch of tape, threw it on the floor, swept it up, put it into an envelope, and sent it to the pressing plant,” he says (in a familiar way) of this collection, which gathers songs from throughout his career that hadn’t fit on other albums. He includes “fast” and “slow” (download) versions of “(If I Could) Walk Away,” a song he had given to Jones 15 years earlier for Unsophisticated Time. “Test” is a close cousin of the Miracles’ “Shop Around,” as Dixon advises his teenage daughter to “Pick your boyfriend with precision, like you’d choose a truck or van/Put your ear up to the engine, test out everything you can.” Other highlights include the funky “Alone with the Moon” and “Wise Up” (download), which spotlights Dixon’s musicianship on the bass as well as a soul-tinged falsetto vocal.

The Entire Combustible World in One Small Room (2006)
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Hooks ‘N’ You author Will Harris writes: Dixon’s second concept album sets each of its 10 songs in the various rooms of a house – as given away by titles including “Sunlit Room,” “Roommate,” “Kitchen,” “Secret Room,” and “Man on the Hall.” Dixon calls it “an exploration of how specific environments affect one’s psychological balance.” Opener “In Darkness Found” (download) begins, “Well, there’s no sparkle in your eyes/There’s something queer about this room/Everybody knows you passed away too soon,” setting the tone for a decidedly melancholy track; only when Dixon momentarily borrows the melody from “Glory Hallelujah” does the song briefly turn upbeat. In fact, it really isn’t until “Roommate” (download) – the album’s fourth track – that Dixon surges into the propulsive pop mode in which he’s a master. As Dixon had begun communicating when the century was new, when he began hovering in a more despondent flight pattern on The Invisible Man, everyone grows up and every one of us dies, sometimes before his time. He had discovered that life’s events can’t always be summed up within three minutes of verse/chorus/verse/chorus/repeat to fade … but that’s what age brings: a more realistic view of life and a loss of naiveté.

The Nu-Look (2008)
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Setting out to record a power-trio album with longtime touring cohorts Jamie Hoover and Jim Brock – and christening the triumvirate the Jump Rabbits – Dixon entered Hoover’s home studio with one song in hand (Willie Dixon’s “300 Pounds of Joy”) and emerged last spring with The Nu-Look. Recording quickly, live in the studio with no overdubs, Dixon gathered songs by friends and colleagues including Jones, Parthenon Huxley and former dB Peter Holsapple. The trio sizzles on Holsapple’s classic “Amplifier” (download), and smolders on “The Night That Otis Died” (download) , a song Dixon co-wrote with his King Mackerel colleague Bland Simpson. In the wake of the very-serious Entire Combustible World, Dixon approached The Nu-Look as a lark, an opportunity to make some fun music in a new format with old friends – and that’s precisely how the album sounds.

Almost simultaneously with The Nu-Look, Dixon and Jones released their first official album as a duo – a lovely set for parents and children called Lucky Stars: New Lullabies for Old Souls. It’s hard to imagine two more diverse albums coming from one artist in the same year, much less the same season. But that’s Don Dixon for you. Who knows what he’ll come up with next … or how long it will take him to get around to it?

Seeing it that way, anyone who still grooves to the grunge and college rock of yesteryear either has some serious unresolved personal issues, or simply hasn’t learned how to grow up yet. As it turns out, one of that era’s icons, Juliana Hatfield, is about to publish her first book, a memoir titled When I Grow Up. Do with that what you will.

Most of us first became familiar with Juliana in the summer of 1993, when what was to become her signature song, “My Sister,” took hold of modern rock radio and MTV, disarming us with its blunt opening line: “I hate my sister, she’s such a bitch.” Either you were enthralled with empathy, you were turned off by the girlishness of Juliana’s voice, or you were like my mother and just laughed. But no matter what the response, you likely did respond in some way to that introduction.

In reality, Juliana does not have a sister (though she does have a brother, Jason, who has collaborated with her once in a while in the studio), and by ‘93, she already had six years of record-making and live performance behind her. While attending the Berklee College of Music, Massachusetts native Juliana Hatfield was approached by drummer Freda Boner (later the less eyebrow-raising Love) and singer/guitarist John Strohm in 1986.

By the next year, they had released their first album, Nicely, Nicely, with Juliana on bass and lead vocals, as the Blake Babies. Their earliest recordings sported a punk-like intensity that mirrored the light-on-distortion approach of the Minutemen, albeit with more straight-ahead pop songwriting. Plus, with Juliana’s thin alto carrying most of the lead vocals, her lack of rasp gave even their cover of the Stooges’ “Loose” (download) (from their second full-length album, 1989’s Earwig) a jangly quality.

By 1990, their sound had developed into cute and catchy jangle pop on their masterpiece, Sunburn. Juliana’s demons really came to the fore — “Watch Me Now, I’m Calling” dealt with self-mutilation, “A Million Years” (download) married an anthemic songwriting approach to desperation fed by self-loathing, and on “I’ll Take Anything” (download), there was the no-win combination of slackerdom and desperation matched with what was fast becoming an elegant songwriting voice.

After one more EP in ‘91, the Blakes were no more. A hit with the college crowd, the Blakes’ relative success would, in short order, be overshadowed by Juliana’s own.

Hey Babe (1992)
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Juliana had already shown her dark side with the Blake Babies, albeit with a pleasing balance of spunk and cuteness. On her first solo record, for the North Carolina-based indie Mammoth Records, the spunk in her voice was toned down a bit — being on her own suited her well, but she sounded just a tad less confident at first than she did with her old band. No matter — her songwriting chops were already in enviable shape, and she had guests like former Minutemen bassist Mike Watt to help fill in the gaps and beef up her new sound, which was generally fuller and more shimmering than the Blake Babies, though still very much cut from the same cloth.

Part of the connection to the Blakes’ sound can also be pegged on principal Lemonhead (and occasional Blake Babies collaborator) Evan Dando, who sang backgrounds on “Lost and Saved” (download) and the single “Everybody Loves Me But You,” and played some guitar on “The Lights.” Juliana returned the favor by playing bass on the Leomonheads’ It’s a Shame About Ray (released a few months after Hey Babe), but no, they were never an item, as the press at the time had us believe.

Though Hey Babe definitely rocks and feels like a band recording, it’s at least as lonely an album as the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds. The predominant theme is love — mostly unrequited (typified by “Everybody Loves Me But You” and “I See You”) or otherwise dysfunctional — the most telling line, from “Forever Baby,” being “I see my long lost home in his eyes / He sees a nice hotel in mine.”

It’s also a somewhat schizophrenic album — the two heaviest rockers are life-affirming in completely opposite ways. The voice of “Nirvana” (download) — reworked into a full-on rocker from its previous incarnation as a solo acoustic recording on the Blake Babies’ Rosy Jack World EP — is on the verge of suicide, until it declares to us, “I’ve got Nirvana in my head / I’m so glad I’m not dead.” And yes, it’s that Nirvana. The particular song that inspired Hey Babe’s centerpiece was, according to Juliana herself, “Negative Creep.”

Then there’s “Get Off Your Knees,” where the sheer will to survive is reflected not just in the lyrics (”There’s a lump in my throat that won’t go away / I’m gonna rip it ooouuuttt!!!”), but in the speedy, punked-up tempo and Mike Watt’s beautifully insane bass line. All the rock just shields the pathos, ultimately — it’s Juliana’s solo performance of “Ugly” that says everything one needs to know about the psychology of the whole record. With just her voice and a guitar, she coos “I’m ugly with a capital U / and I don’t need a mirror to see that it’s true.”

It’s not the easiest bunch of words to digest just for pleasure. It is very real, the kind of real that troubled young girls could identify with, and that young sensitive guys could use to feed their fantasies of rescuing a cute waif from her demons. She’d soon be turning her gaze outward a bit more, and after revealing to Interview Magazine that she was a virgin to minor controversy, it was pretty much a given that some filtration would be happening in her work.

“Everybody Loves Me But You” video, 1992

Become What You Are (1993)
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The transformation is dramatic on Juliana’s second album, credited to the Juliana Hatfield Three. Lame band name aside (it just doesn’t have the same ring as the Bobby Fuller Four or the Dave Clark Five), the consistency of approach to the music worked wonders. Todd Philips, drummer on Hey Babe, is part of the band, as is Dean Fisher on bass. And that’s it. No guests. Plus, now that she had the backing of Atlantic Records, she could afford to have Scott Litt as her producer to beef up the sound, while still retaining her jangle pop roots. After all, he had been working with R.E.M., so the fit couldn’t have been better.

Arriving in the summer of ‘93, a large enough portion of the mopey grunge/alternative generation that was eating up Beavis and Butthead and The Real World responded positively to that opening line of “My Sister” that she was soon moving beyond cult status. What put her over the top, however, was the inclusion of the album’s second single, “Spin the Bottle,” in the Reality Bites soundtrack.

And yes, the gaze was truly turned outward this time — “My Sister,” though sung in the first person, is not autobiographical; “Mabel,” as revealed in her April 14, 2008 blog post, was inspired by the manic-depressive lead character in John Cassavetes’ film A Woman Under the Influence; “A Dame With a Rod” (download) is a fantasy about giving a rapist just what he deserves; and “For the Birds” is probably the best pop song anyone will ever write about a dead bird. And while her repetition of the phrase “I’m saying something really deep” in “President Garfield” (download) (which was inspired by Henry Rollins — he really does have a “neck like a tire”) may have been meant to insist without ambiguity that she was not referring to Rollins’ penis when she sang “I want his power inside of me,” it risks annoyance in an otherwise solid rocker that throws the whole verse-chorus-verse pattern clear out the window. Even at that, Become What You Are is something of a classic of early ’90s alternative rock, and is still Juliana’s most easily digestible platter of pop confection.

“Spin the Bottle” video, 1994

Only Everything (1995)
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The title Only Everything is a nod to Dinosaur Jr. (lifted from the lyrics to “Raisans,” which Juliana covered for one of the “Forever Baby” single’s b-sides). The casually extreme title is fitting — Only Everything is Juliana’s longest album (14 songs total), it features the heaviest drummer she’s ever worked with (Josh Freese, whose credits include A Perfect Circle, Nine Inch Nails, and Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy sessions), and Juliana plays all guitars on the album herself.

Though the album is about one song too long (”Dumb Fun” is all too apt a title), it was a powerful follow-up to Become What You Are. The guitars are loud and confident, and even though Juliana was still her dependably contemplative self on songs like “What a Life” and “Outsider,” she sounded like she was truly enjoying her success. “Universal Heartbeat” took that contemplative side and turned it into a philosophy (”a heart that hurts is a heart that works”) that sounded less like consolation, and more like just some rock n’ roll fun. It should have been a much bigger hit, but then, she didn’t have the promotional push of a hit movie soundtrack this time around. Shame, as her re-recording of the “Spin the Bottle” B-side “My Darling” (download) has an old-fashioned charm that probably could have made some headway with more exposure.

As it was, her silly side came through in “Fleur de Lys,” and the old heartbroken Juliana came back beautifully on “Bottles and Flowers” (download). Best of all, however, was the album’s supporting tour. Those who were lucky enough to make it to one of her ‘95 performances were treated to an opening performance by her co-headliner, Jeff Buckley.

“Universal Heartbeat” video, 1995

God’s Foot (unreleased, 1997)

It was with God’s Foot that Juliana Hatfield entered the unreleased album club (as documented in Dan Leroy’s excellent book “The Greatest Music Never Sold”). Granted, she would have preferred that it was released, but Atlantic frustratingly decided to keep it locked up when they dropped her from their roster.

It was frustrating to the fans as well, who had been hearing songs like “What Have I Done to You” (download) in her live sets throughout 1996, in anticipation of the album’s release. She still held out for the possibility of a future release a year after the album was cancelled, keeping some of the God’s Foot songs in her live sets in 1997, even as she prepared an EP for release on the indie label Bar None. Eventually, “Mountains of Love” and “Fade Away” would see proper release on Juliana’s first anthology, but still, to this day some of her most hauntingly beautiful paeans to loneliness (”How Would You Know” (download), “Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Melody”) are circulating as crummy-sounding mp3’s of questionable origin. Musically speaking, it was enough of a tragedy. But what it meant for Juliana personally was more painful than any fan could have realized.

Juliana performing solo at the free Waterplace Park concert series in Providence, RI, Summer 1996 (photo by MF)

Please Do Not Disturb (EP, 1997)
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This six-song EP was intended as a stopgap, a little taste of some new music as Juliana continued to tour in ‘97 with God’s Foot songs in her setlist and some hope that another label would buy back the masters from Atlantic. Unfortunately, no one was interested at this point in spending the money Atlantic was demanding, and instead, Please Do Not Disturb marked the beginning of Juliana’s second life as an independent artist.

She let her guitar scream through feelings of envy (”Give Me Some of That”) and desperation (”As If Your Life Depended On It” [download]), but was most poignant on her acoustic guitar as she mourned her friend and one-time touring partner Jeff Buckley (”Trying Not to Think About It”). The EP’s other acoustic tune, “Edge of Nowhere” (download), is a mood piece, and one that violates the directive in the disc’s title. “Daydreaming of unconsciousness” and contemplating “Valium sleep mixed with wine” would set off alarms with most anyone concerned, and yet, her double-tracked vocal has the effect of making her sound detached as she sings, in stark contrast to the naked pain she expressed with unadorned voice in “Ugly” or her b-side “Feed Me.” It was as if the forcefulness on display in the disc’s electric songs had drained her, or rather, the battle to keep God’s Foot alive was draining her.

Bed (1998)
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Just as with Brian Wilson after the collapse of the Beach Boys’ Smile sessions, post-God’s Foot, depression overcame Juliana and she retreated to her bed. Hence the title of her first album for Rounder Records’ Zoë imprint. At first, she sounds reinvigorated and back to fighting form — “Down on Me” opens with squealing guitar feedback, and proceeds (like the rest of the self-produced album) in a raw, no-nonsense manner.

But the quirks that mark this album as a low-budget, bang-’em-out-and-move-on affair are evident right from the beginning. Even before “Down on Me” hits its first chorus, Juliana’s doubled vocal falls out of synch for a jumbled few words. And, between nods to early ’80s pop (stealing the opening line from “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around” in “Sneaking Around;” writing “Swan Song” (download) as a sequel of sorts to John Cougar’s “Jack and Diane” — “Dear Jack, I hate you / Love Dianne” — and dig the nod to “Brown Sugar”) and ruminations on the mind of a mugger (”Bad Day”) and the sweet release of spending all one’s assets to the very end, both for fun and for charity (”Let’s Blow It All” [download]), Juliana also started a pattern in her albums of sprinkling a quorum of appealing melodies with some less-fulfilling vehicles for her stories and confessions.

Beautiful Creature (2000)
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First Guns N’ Roses, then Bruce Springsteen. Almost a decade after those two megastar artists sprang two albums on the public on a single release date, Juliana did the same. OK, so not much more than her diehard fan base was noticing such a move by now, but it was still a milestone of sorts. It was also another example of a double album release where one record was far superior to the other. Beautiful Creature outshone its sister album, Total System Failure, by a long shot. Pity that more folks didn’t hear it. This was mostly her softer side, with very few rockers and mostly acoustic or otherwise sparsely arranged songs; very pretty songs, but sad songs (which by now had easily become Juliana’s trademark and specialty), and executed with grace.

Though the mood is fairly consistent throughout, the production chores were actually split between Philly-based Andy Kravitz (on “Cry in the Dark”), Wally Gagel (he added the album’s few electronica tinges on “Cool Rock Boy” and “Don’t Rush Me”), Juliana with David Garza (on the sweet lullaby “Close Your Eyes”), a few Automatic For the People-worthy selections manned by Scott Litt (”Until Tomorrow” [download] is especially reminiscent of R.E.M.), and Juliana alone, on the awkward “Daniel” and the startlingly poignant “Choose Drugs” (download), which quietly and undramatically escapes a happy ending. No other album of Juliana’s had so many different producers, which should have made for an uneven record. That it came out as consistently excellent as it did — indeed, it is one of Juliana’s proudest achievements and best albums — is a testament to her singular vision.

“Don’t Rush Me” video, 2000

Total System Failure (2000)
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The second of her pair of records from 2000 shows off Juliana’s loud, punky, abrasive side, and doesn’t deviate for a second. Not only does Total System Failure differentiate itself from Beautiful Creature through volume, it also has only one producer (Juliana herself), and is credited to “Juliana’s Pony” (a trio rounded out by drummer Zephan Courtney and her bassist from Bed, the then-current Weezer bassist Mikey Welsh).

It certainly is fun — yay for songs flipping a metaphorical bird at unfit parents, marriage and shitty drivers — but suffers from too much of a good thing. Too many amped up guitars juxtaposed against double tracked vocals, too many of the same dynamics, two songs that are the same exact track with almost identical melodies but different lyrics, songs that sound half-finished…the best tunes were the ones that bucked the pattern: “My Protégé,” “Noblesse Oblige,” the slow and rudely blunt “Using You” (download), and the solo electric “Ten Foot Pole” (download), where she carries the whole performance herself, rhythm section be damned. It may not have been a joke record, as Juliana defended in the next entry’s liner notes (she can say whatever she wants, but “Leather Pants,” “Road Wrath” and “”Let’s Get Married” are funny, whether intentional or not), but it was far from her best work and suffered even more in comparison to such a magnificent record as Beautiful Creature.

Side note: in 2001, all those who missed out on seeing Juliana play with the Blake Babies were treated to a one-off reunion tour and album. However, it was abundantly clear that the group was not intent on replicating the original experience. Rather than playing bass, as she did originally with the Blakes, Juliana stuck to guitar and Daniel Johnston (no, not that Daniel Johnston) was hired for bass duties. The concerts were a joy, featuring all the old tunes that Juliana had consciously shut out of her solo career, as well as covers of Fleetwood Mac’s “Walk a Thin Line” (download) (done faithfully) and “I Wanna Be Sedated” (played as if the wish for sedation had already been granted). Both of these ended up on a limited edition EP entitled Epilogue — the title made it clear that another reunion shouldn’t be expected.

The full-length album that resulted from the reunion, God Bless The Blake Babies, was even stronger evidence that, as the people in the band changed, so did the music. Juliana’s songs were more measured and less spunky; Freda Love Smith’s songwriting had developed to the point where she couldn’t be denied a few contributions, and as Evan Dando’s ‘regular guest’ status resumed, his presence was also felt much more strongly than before. The record came off sounding like the Blakes’ own White Album, albeit at half the length. Sometimes, a reunion is a good thing, if only to prove that “it’s not the same anymore.” This was one of those — it was awesome, and very welcome at the time, but if it never happens again, it wouldn’t be considered a great tragedy.

Gold Stars 1992-2002: The Juliana Hatfield Collection (2002)
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Gold Stars is a great example of why artists shouldn’t always have a lot of say in a compilation’s track selection. While “Sneaking Around” and “Cry in the Dark” might have had personal significance for Juliana, “Nirvana” should have been there somewhere, if only to recognize its resonance. Small matter, though — the four new songs included were all winners, as were her heartfelt cover of Neil Young’s “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” (download) and her fun remake of “Every Breath You Take.” Apart from the EP’s worth of new songs tacked onto the end, and the official release of the God’s Foot tracks “Fade Away” and “Mountains of Love,” the best part of the collection was Juliana’s song-by-song liner notes. This marked the beginning of Juliana reaching out more to her fans via the printed word. Little did we know just how much more she had to say.

Side note: the most lasting effect of the Blake Babies’ reunion was the new partnership that emerged from Juliana’s re-connection with Freda Love Smith. The two recruited Heidi Gluck on bass, and together, a new trio was formed for 2003, with a very rock n’ roll band name: Some Girls. As Juliana has shown a great appreciation for Neil Young over the years, stretching back to the early days of the Blake Babies, it wouldn’t be a stretch to consider Some Girls as Juliana’s equivalent of Crazy Horse. She could play with better musicians if she wanted (and regularly did/does when she’s out solo), but there’s camaraderie there, and no one can deny that Freda has her own distinct drum style. Plus, who doesn’t like to watch an all-girl band have fun rocking out? Their sound is sparse and modest, guitars aren’t too crazy, and the songs on their Koch Records debut Feel It are simple and catchy (dig “Robot City” [download], for example). Just like Crazy Horse, Juliana only takes them out when the time is right, and who knows when they’ll be back again?

In Exile Deo (2004)
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Juliana’s time with the Zoë imprint, despite having major label distribution (through Universal), hadn’t turned her commercial fortunes back around. Her last album for the label, In Exile Deo came off like an attempt to create a more commercially palatable recording, though not blatantly so. By all rights it should have gotten more attention. However, even though this mostly self-produced effort sports a slicker sound than anything else she had released since Only Everything, and though Juliana was also singing at her most confident since that same record, the fact remained that her songs were still far from the feel-good anthems of a Melissa Etheridge or a Sheryl Crow, and nowhere near as fascinatingly strange and eccentric as a Polly Jean Harvey or a pre-Matrix Liz Phair.

No matter how she dressed up her songs, she remained true to herself — a depressed yet hopeful sort of plane Jane whose small but pretty voice sits in stark contrast to the aggressive, distorted guitar lines she routinely tosses out in traditional rock n’ roll fashion. In other words, in 2004, she could really only play to the small but loyal fan base that continued to keep her afloat. And everyone else lost out on brutally direct rockers like “Get in Line” and “Because We Love You” (download), the surprisingly positive “Sunshine” (download), and the fun “Dirty Dog,” which features a cameo from Juliana’s Labrador retriever. This was some of her most streamlined classic rock material, and was the true (s)equal to Beautiful Creature, ranking among her best. But with In Exile Deo marking the end of her relationship with Zoë, from here, she takes a different tack.

Made in China (2005)
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Radiohead gets all the credit now, but almost three years before they were offering In Rainbows as a “pay what you want” download, Juliana was experimenting with what she referred to as “the honor system” in 2005. Rather than selling a finished album in this manner, however, she was offering up songs from her archives — previously unreleased demos, outtakes, alternate versions and other rarities — aimed squarely at that core audience that continued to stick with her in spite of changing tastes and a changing world. Next to each download link was a PayPal link. Juliana’s suggestion was $1 per song, but she made it clear that you could give more if you wanted, or nothing.

Though she never did release the exact figures of what she made from this experiment, which she has repeated on two more occasions, she did claim that the money she made from the downloads financed the making of Made in China, which became Juliana’s first album release on her own Ye Olde Records label. ‘Release’ is definitely an appropriate word for the record — in contrast to the art-and-commerce balancing act performed on her Zoë efforts, on Made in China she pretty much went for broke. She let brash songs like “New Waif,” “Going Blonde” and “Digital Penetration” fly out and onto tape with little regard for the structured pop songcraft that marked her prior releases, and sang them with an angry punk-infused passion that was as refreshing as it was unfiltered. And yet, with “My Pet Lion” (download), she doesn’t completely abandon punchy pop-punk. Her quiet side is here too — the acoustic 9/11-inspired tune, “Hole in the Sky” (download), actually sounds like it could have been recorded in an apartment on a cheap four-track.

While this approach was in some ways similar to the loud assault of Total System Failure, the variety of moods, arrangements, players, and the decidedly DIY aesthetic (all the photos, drawings and scribbles in the CD booklet are Juliana’s own) set it apart from all the rest of her recordings. Yes, it’s low-budget, (four of the songs feature no other musicians than Juliana herself) and she probably should have practiced more before laying down her first (and only, to date) released drum track on “Oh,” but its honesty is as striking and refreshing as (dare I say) Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band. It’s Juliana in the raw — figuratively in the music, and literally on the front cover.

The White Broken Line: Live Recordings (2006)
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It’s not a document of Juliana at the peak of her popularity and cultural relevance. It’s not a complete concert. It’s not even an especially dolled-up package. It is, however, the one and only official live album in Juliana Hatfield’s discography. It captures Juliana playing in a live trio setting for most of the program, with bassist Ed Valauskas and drummer Pete Caldes, in support of the Made in China album while opening for X, playing material drawn mostly from her post-Atlantic career (the lone exception being the obligatory “My Sister” [download]).

Especially revealing is how often Juliana was singing just behind the beat, from the first track “Hotels” on down the line, though she does this less often on the two songs drawn from a 2002 solo performance at the Orpheum in Boston, “Choose Drugs” and “Ten Foot Pole.” Her guitar is always locked in tight with her rhythm section, however, so the effect is almost like that of a jazz singer fronting a punk band (as in, it sounds slightly sloppier than it should), even though she rarely takes liberties with her melodies. OK, that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but the point is clear — she’s not concerned with replicating her studio recordings. She does take some liberties, not just with the melody but with the vocal rhythm, however, in “Down on Me” (download) — while her guitar stays firmly locked in with her bassist and drummer.

“Oh” (download) is the most welcome recast — whereas the end results on Made in China were very demo-ish and tentative due to Juliana playing all the instruments, including drums, here it finally has the power the rest of the album has, with Caldes drumming away with a pro’s confidence. It’s not necessarily an essential entry in Juliana’s catalog (and she’s had better tour performances on top of that), but as a window into her live presentation, it captures a particular moment with all the raw-ness that she continually embraces, even when she’s dolling up her sound in the studio.

Side note: Juliana trotted out Some Girls for another go-round in 2006 with the album Crushing Love. She sings most of it, but cedes more of the songwriting duties to Freda and Heidi this time. Jake Smith helps out with some songs too, contributing the two best moments of the album (”Is This What I’ve Been Waiting For” and the title track). And of the songs of Juliana’s that are included…let’s just say she kept the best stuff for her own records.

Juliana Hatfield & Frank Smith — Sittin’ in a Tree… (2007)
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Juliana snuck this cutely titled EP out in the spring of ‘07… not that any of her post-Atlantic discs could be considered major release events, but Sittin’ in a Tree, simply by virtue of being an EP, probably escaped even those who follow Juliana closely. It doesn’t even register in Metacritic, which is a shame, because there’s a whole bunch of Jayhawks and Son Volt fans that probably would have dug it, had they known about it.

On these six songs, Juliana teamed up with a Boston (now Austin) band that long ago joined that elite club of bands named as if the collective is one person (i.e. Edward Bear, Danny Wilson), handing over production and arranging duties to the alt-country collective. What came out was some of the most refreshing music Juliana had released since her major label days. Much of what she released since then, with some exceptions, tended to be serious. Here, she really truly sounds like she’s having fun making music with a new bunch of people. It even comes out in the serious songs, like the gentle “On Your Mind” and the confident kiss-off waltz “364″ (download), the latter co-written with her brother Jason.

Best of all, though, is “If Only We Were Dogs” (download). It has every right to be a song filled with innuendo — what else could “I want to run right up and jump all over you” mean, really? And yet, what can you possibly take away from lyrics like “licking crumbs off plates together?” That dark banjo intro doesn’t give any indication of what’s to come, which itself is a stroke of genius. Only “My Kitten” comes off like a throwaway (absolutely no way this song is about anything else but losing a little kitty cat), and even at that, it’s still a gas hearing the band play.

How to Walk Away (2008)
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In contrast to Sittin’ in a Tree, which was a fun and highly enjoyable little tease of an EP released with little fanfare, Juliana embraced Web 2.0 to set up anticipation for How to Walk Away over the course of almost half a year. Between streaming songs from the forthcoming album on her MySpace page, engaging her audience with very long and detailed weekly posts about fan-chosen songs from her catalog on her blog An Arm and a Leg, and the announcement that she will be releasing her first book in September, the build-up and promotion for the album was pretty impressive for a tiny independent label. And, while How to Walk Away does indeed boast some very well-crafted songs (including “My Baby,” which ranks among Juliana’s best, most infectious pop tunes), it doesn’t play like the major statement or exciting musical shift that would merit such a push.

Then again, Radiohead’s In Rainbows received the same criticism in some quarters, but the case here is that the music on the Sittin’ in a Tree EP, just ahead of How to Walk Away, seems more like the kind of music that would pick up traction from such a strong push. The overwhelming positive of that EP — its carefree, fun vibe combined with solid arrangements — finds its foil here. Juliana sounds down and out amid the airy, precise pop production of Ivy’s Andy Chase. Indeed, as she is singing against such sad, minor chords in “The Fact Remains” and declaring that “next time maybe I will know how to walk away with pride and grace,” the feeling is very isolated and contemplative. Not that this is much different from some of what she put forth on Hey Babe, except that here she sounds resigned and exasperated, or maybe just older…experienced.

This laid-back approach is par for the course with Ivy records, but too much of that on a Juliana Hatfield album is actually somewhat scarier than hearing her sing of contemplating a double suicide (as she does in Bed’s “Running Out”). Some of her fire comes back in “So Alone” (download) — more minor chords, and sung in the second person (”you’re so alone / you wanna die, and nobody knows”). And then, on the album’s closer and other best song, “Law of Nature” (download), her vocal finally meshes in perfect unity with Andy Chase’s production, striking a beautiful balance between passion and resignation and leaving us with the fatalistic truth that “reason has no chance in this selfish world.” For a record that doesn’t carry a lot of oomph overall, it ends like a classic.

“I’ve been contemplating the idea of ‘giving up.’ I’m looking at it as an option, in various areas of my life… You’ve heard the expression to ‘drop the ball’? Record companies are often accused of ‘dropping the ball’ on a band, or an album, by refusing to promote it, or to continue to put money into it. What if I, as my own (Ye Olde) record company, decide to drop the ball on myself? Just something to think about.”
– “My Pet Lion” blog post, 7/14/08, An Arm and a Leg

It’s hard to imagine Juliana Hatfield’s artistic ebb and flow coming to an end so soon (okay, so she’s been musically active for more than two decades, but who’s counting?), though it wouldn’t be the first time someone walked away from a music career whose artistic richness hasn’t been generating likewise returns. If she were to call it a career at this point in time, she would at least be leaving behind a fascinating, enjoyably lasting, body of work that’s impressive by any standard. But what would she do? She’s only 40, which seriously is not as old an age as it was back when she was 20. There’s time yet to figure out that old “what will I do when I grow up?” question, and people who will pay to find out.

But they’ll get back together, as they always do, and the dance of love and hate will go on. They’ll remember the good times, before it all went south, and cling to each other in mutual self-delusion. MacGowan’s genius is in showing us how willing these people are to let themselves be deluded. It’s a brilliant, harrowing bit of songwriting. And, whether MacGowan intended it so or not, it’s a brutally honest summation of the group dynamic of the Pogues.

Origins

What you think you know about The Pogues is mostly right. Irish by ethnicity if not by birth, the name from the Gaelic pogue mahone (”kiss my ass”). Folky tunes played at punk velocity, by turns sentimental and profane. Lots of heavy drinking. Lead singer possessed of the most heinous set of gnashers in all Christendom. All correct — but missing a little context.

In Julien Temple’s Sex Pistols doc The Filth and the Fury, you can see Shane MacGowan hamming it up in the archival footage; and, like seemingly everybody else who saw the Pistols in their heyday, he went out and started his own band straightaway. After a stab at fame with his punkabilly outfit the Nipple Erectors, MacGowan hit upon an idea as simple as it was audacious — to apply punk’s DIY, anyone-can-do-it aesthetic to Anglo-Irish folksong, a musical form that valued scholarship and tradition.

MacGowan quickly recruited his sometimes housemates Jem Finer (banjo and guitar) and Peter “Spider” Stacy (vocals, tin whistle) into his new, folk-informed project. James Fearnley, briefly guitarist for the Nipple Erectors, was drafted to play accordion — an instrument he’d never touched — on the grounds that he’d taken piano lessons when he was young. Bassist Cait O’Riordan, only 17 at the time, had met MacGowan when the latter was working at a record shop. Drummer Andrew Ranken, who’d been fronting an R&B big band, was last to join the line-up. The new band, Pogue Mahone, played their first gig in late 1982, and spent the next year or two playing shows, pissing off folk purists and punks alike, and slowly building a following.

Red Roses for Me (1984)
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The band’s first recording, Red Roses for Me, is evenly split between MacGowan originals and reworked traditional songs. The sound is raw — though Finer and Ranken were journeyman musicians, O’Riordan and Stacy were enthusiastic amateurs at best — but producer Stan Brennan recorded them like a folk group, muting much of the energy that was still their greatest asset in a live setting. MacGowan’s songwriting chops were already apparent in the indelible chorus to “Streams of Whiskey” (download), but the barking vocals are oddly subdued, and there’s no snap in the rhythms. Hints of the band’s future power emerge in the spaghetti-western slither of “Boys from the County Hell” (download), and in a freeform wail through Brendan Behan’s “The Auld Triangle” (download), but overall Red Roses sounds like a blueprint for better records to come.

As the band gigged around the UK, the continued to attract high-profile fans, including Joe Strummer, filmmaker Alex Cox, and Elvis Costello.

Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash (1985)
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With the Costello-produced second album, the Pogues began to deliver on their promise. The sound is still primarily acoustic, but it’s fuller — former Radiators from Space guitarist Philip Chevron, who guested on Red Roses, comes on board as a permanent member — and Costello brings a rock ‘n’ roll excitement to the proceedings from the opening cut, the gleefully profane “Sickbed of Cú Culhainn” (download). MacGowan produced his first real classics in “A Pair of Brown Eyes” (download) — a woozy, impressionistic account of terrorist bombing — and the black-comic tall tale “Sally MacLennane” (download). Although he was already the focal point, Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash still sounds like the work of a band, and finds room for vocal turns from Stacy, Ranken, and O’Riordan: her lovely take on the traditional “I’m a Man You Don’t Meet Every Day” (download) is a quiet respite in this raucous carnival of a record. The disc closes with a towering version of Eric Bogle’s anti-war classic “And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda” (download)

Soundtracks and Poguetry in Motion (1986)

Work on the follow-up to Rum, Sodomy, and the Lash was delayed by a series of personnel shakeups and a foray into film. Director Alex Cox asked the Pogues to contribute to the soundtrack to Sid and Nancy; along with several instrumentals (mostly composed by Finer and Ranken), the group donated “Haunted,” a MacGowan original featuring O’Riordan’s finest vocal. The girl-group sound of “Haunted” (download) gives a hint of MacGowan’s fascination with 60s pop — a strain of The Pogues’ musical DNA that is often overlooked.

A stopgap EP, Poguetry in Motion (out of print), finds the group’s musical reach expanding, in part due to the arrival of journeyman folkie Terry Woods — recruited by Pogues manager Frank Murray, who’d known him when Woods was briefly a member of Steeleye Span — on mandolin and cittern. Jem Finer begins to come into his own as a composer; the maudlin ballad “Rainy Night In Soho” coasts on a gorgeous orchestral arrangement, while “London Girl” (download) spotlights Fearnley’s accordion in a British Invasion pop framework. The EP’s highlight is probably “The Body of an American” (download), wedding one of MacGowan’s most sharply-observed lyrics to a sing-along refrain.

The entire band then decamped to Spain, where they had been cast in Alex Cox’s deranged Sergio Leone homage Straight to Hell. — along with Costello, Joe Strummer, and a very young Courtney Love, among many others. The film itself — essentially an extended, boozy in-joke — is not without its charms, but the soundtrack features a clutch of hidden gems, including “Rake at the Gates of Hell” (download) and the original recording of “If I Should Fall from Grace With God” (download) — which would become the title track of the third full-length Pogues disc.

If I Should Fall from Grace With God (1988)
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After filming Straight to Hell, Costello and O’Riordan were married, and O’Riordan left the Pogues. Longtime roadie Darryl Hunt came aboard as bass player, solidifying the lineup that would last for five years and three albums. Where O’Riordan had never been much more than a thumper, Hunt brought a solid groove and even a touch of swing, vastly expanding the band’s musical range. The songs on Fall from Grace turn on a dime from two-steps to ballads to big-band swing, with a dash of Spanish fiesta music for good measure.

While MacGowan is still the dominant songwriter, Fall from Grace sees significant contributions from the other Pogues, from Finer and Ranken’s jazzy “Metropolis” to Terry Woods’s arrangement of the sea chantey “South Australia” (download) Philip Chevron brings out the album’s secret weapon, the emigrant anthem “Thousands are Sailing” (download) — one of the most emotionally affecting songs the Pogues ever recorded.

Steve Lillywhite’s production is thick, but not muddy. If it loses some nuance (compare the album version of the title cut to the original, for instance), it emphasizes the band’s sheer power, bringing clarity and punch even to MacGowan’s wordiest songs, like the racetrack yarn “Bottle of Smoke” (download). Lillywhite is also responsible for bringing in MacColl — then Mrs. Lillywhite — as MacGowan’s duet partner for “Fairytale of New York,” the least-likely Christmas classic since those damned barking dogs.

The Pogues continued to build their reputation in the States on the strength of their ferocious live gigs; the addition of Hunt and Woods added both energy and precision to the band’s stage show, and MacGowan — for all the tales of his prodigious boozing — was a snarling, cursing, surly anti-star. Electrifying in spite of himself, he effortlessly became the center of attention. And that’s where it all began to go wrong.

The cult of personality surrounding Shane MacGowan is the worst thing to ever happen to the Pogues. In addition to facilitating MacGowan’s slow-motion self-destruction — the Holy Genius cannot be held to same standards as lesser mortals, or so goes the myth — it devalues the work of the rest of the band, all of whom are terrific players and songwriters in their own right. They found themselves cast as enablers for a talented alcoholic; and, as anyone who’s ever watched a codependent relationship in action (or, God forbid, been in one themselves) knows that these things always last longer than you think they will — but they can’t last forever.

Peace and Love (1989)
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An artistic watershed, but also the beginning of the end, this set was almost impossibly eclectic. With the band’s secondary songwriters coming to the fore, the sound was one left turn after another, from the spy jazz of “Gridlock” to the Caribbean highlife of Chevron’s “Blue Heaven,” Finer’s lush balladry, and Terry Woods’s pub-ready romps. MacGowan’s half of the record had a dark, druggy tinge exemplified by the foggy Bo Diddley-isms of “U.S.A.” The single “White City” (download) was a high spot — a summation of the band’s strengths — but more typical is the droning, mildly psychedelic “Down All the Days” (download). Kirsty MacColl returned to duet with perpetual underdog Phil Chevron on “Lorelei” (download), a straight-up rock hymn.

The experimental nature of Peace and Love made it a deep, rewarding listen — but between the grooves, evidence of MacGowan’s disintegration was piling up. A drop-off in his diction was evident, and the inclusion of good-natured studio goofs like “Cotton Fields” smelled like filler. Bad enough — but live shows were positively worrying. MacGowan went on tangents, forgot lyrics, laughed to himself, and sometimes simply wandered offstage as the band vamped gamely, shooting nervous glances at each other. There had always been nights when the band had carried him, but now it was becoming routine.

Hell’s Ditch (1990)
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Recorded with longtime friend of the band Joe Strummer behind the board, Hell’s Ditch sounds at first blush like a partial return to form. MacGowan comes back with nine new songs, and the band’s folk-pop attack is crisper than ever; but it never sounds like an essential record. It’s their Pussy Cats, in a way — a boozy lark, good-humored but insubstantial.

Take “Five Green Queens and Jean” (download). It’s one of MacGowan’s prettiest melodies, with an arrangement that captures an atmosphere of lazy afternoons — all in the service of wispy little nothing of a lyric. Now, I’m not so pompous as to believe that a record has to have to have an element of social importance to be great; but when a band has so many pissy masterpieces on its résumé, it’s dismaying to see them retreat to this sort of genial half-assedness.

Listening to “Sunnyside of the Street” (download), with great lines like “As my mother wept, it was then I swore / to take my life as I would a whore” bumping alongside cringers like “Been in a palace and I’ve been in a jail / I just don’t want to be reborn a snail,” it’s easy to imagine MacGowan dashing the lyrics on the back of an envelope — and still having room for the stamp. (In fairness, Terry Woods’s two songs are even lazier.) The best songs, and the most deeply felt, are the darkest — MacGowan’s grim fable “Lorca’s Novena” (download) and the Mediterranean-tinged title track.

By now the trouble signs were unmissable, and on the eve of a U.S. tour in support of Hell’s Ditch MacGowan dropped out (or, more likely, was booted), citing “ill health.” His last-minute replacement was none other than Joe Strummer, and the resultant shows were extraordinary. Strummer’s gruff, open-hearted charisma was a perfect match for the band. With a late-set cover of “London Calling” the only nod to his rock-star past, Strummer seemed born to front the Pogues.

Waiting for Herb (1993)
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The prospect of a full-time Strummer-led Pogues remained just an intriguing might-have-been. When the band reconvened for their sixth album, Spider Stacy had assumed frontman duties. It’s an odd decision. MacGowan left big shoes to fill, but Stacy seemed particularly ill-suited to fill them; of the remaining Pogues, he’s neither as distinctive nor as versatile a singer as Woods, or even Chevron. Odd, too, is the choice of Michael Brook as producer. A compatriot of Brian Eno, he softens the band’s trademark thwack and sweetens the sound with discreet synths and whine of his own “infinite guitar.”

It works brilliantly on the opening track and single “Tuesday Morning” (download), Stacy’s sole songwriting credit and as perfect a pop song as anyone could wish for — but the record drops off immediately. All the members contribute songs — except, inexplicably, Chevron — with Finer emerging as de facto chief songwriter. Finer had always been good for a tune or two on previous records, but he’s stretched pretty thin here. The first-timer’s efforts range from the banal (Hunt’s “Big City”) to the truly awful (Fearnley’s interminable, tuneless “Drunken Boat”). Old pro Terry Woods seems spent, too. Only Ranken shines, coming on like a meth-tweaked Tom Waits on the mutant blues “My Baby’s Gone” (download).

Overall, though, there was an air that The Pogues had reached a point of diminishing returns — an impression bolstered when Woods, Chevron and Fearnley all jumped ship shortly after recording Waiting for Herb, leaving the remaining Pogues to tour with a stage full of ringers. The shows were dispiriting. There was little attempt to retool the old songs to suit the reconfigured band; the group played it by the numbers, with Stacy offering up a second-rate MacGowan impersonation in lieu of a more personal approach. The Pogues seemed content to trade on their established brand name.

Pogue Mahone (1996)
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Stacy, Finer, Ranken, and Hunt took the touring band into the studio for a record that — from its no-imagination title on down — seemed like a last gasp. Steve Brown’s production is lush and energetic, and Stacy’s gentle voice is credible on the big ballads like “Love You Till the End” (download). But songs like “Oretown” (download) are essentially generic, “Celtic”-tinged AAA — everything The Pogues were reacting against, twenty years before. After a final tour, Finer called it quits, and the band dissolved.

Aftermath

In the five-year hiatus that followed, Kirsty MacColl died. Joe Strummer died. Philip Chevron got throat cancer, but pulled through. Shane MacGowan, somehow, managed not to die. The record companies resequenced, repackaged, and rereleased the records, over and over, and everybody got paid. Only MacGowan pursued anything resembling a functional solo career, and only sporadically. The others paddled around aimlessly — starting new bands, re-forming old ones, playing the occasional gig. Finer took a post as artist-in-residence at Oxford; Stacy, at one point, took over as frontman for a Pogues tribute band. Nothing that amounted to much.

It’s puzzling, on the surface of it. These are all immensely talented people, seasoned performers with lots of contacts. Any one of them should have been able to put together a session career, a touring spot with a major artist, something. But for half a decade, they spun their wheels, waiting for the inevitable reunion. And they got it. MacGowan rejoined the Pogues for a set of shows at Christmas, 2001, and they’ve performed together on and off, in various configurations, ever since.

Here’s the thing: The Pogues are a band less undone by Demon Rum than by codependency. The same failure of will that kept any of the band members from forging a significant career outside the Pogues is what keeps them returning MacGowan’s phone calls. Finer and Stacy had ambition, up to a point — but they just couldn’t break away to start a life without him.

And now, the Fall from Grace-era lineup is reunited in its entirety, and the shows are selling out. And if nobody seems interested in writing or recording any new material, well, what of it? There’s a new five-disc boxed set coming out, packed with rare and unreleased material; what more could a true fan ask? And if MacGowan is looking puffy these days, if his voice is a whisper of what it was, well, the fans still come in for the shows, don’t they?

Because that’s the thing about enablers — they always take the drunkard back.