Hot Buttered Soul by Isaac Hayes (40th anniversary remaster with bonus tracks)

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on The Green Man Review. Copyright 2009. Reprinted with permission.

Music legend Isaac Hayes began his career as a session musician and songwriter for Stax Records. (He and partner David Porter wrote "Soul Man" and "Hold On, I'm Comin'" for Sam and Dave.) Hayes's debut solo album Presenting Isaac Hayes was a flop, however, and he was intending to go back behind the scenes when Stax severed its relationship with Atlantic Records in 1968. This resulted in Stax's losing its entire back catalog.

Executive Vice President Al Bell (also a songwriter and producer) thought quickly and initiated extensive recording sessions with all of Stax's house artists, in order to create a new "back catalog" of twenty-seven albums by mid-1969. Hayes agreed to record this second album in exchange for creative control, though Bell would still sign on as producer.

The result was Hot Buttered Soul, a four-song, forty-five-minute exercise in interpretation and improvisation that still astounds and mesmerizes to this day. I believe that the album's long-lasting reputation lies in its sound; it was ahead of time then, and modern artists still aspire to its originality. The multilayered music feels timeless, presenting, if you will, a sort of symphony of love gone sour.

If one follows the traditional four-movement format as perfected by Haydn and his students Mozart and Beethoven, this becomes clearer. In the opening track, the singer asks his former love to "Walk on By" so she won't see him crying. Hayes's interpretation of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David pop standard (popularized by Dionne Warwick in 1964) serves as the introductory movement, laying out the main ideas behind Hot Buttered Soul: specifically the thickly orchestrated (strings by the Detroit Symphony), lengthy interpretation — twelve minutes, in this case — of someone else's music. (The process of taking a popular song and expanding on it harkens back to the symphony, as well, since composers often used their local folk music as the springboard for their works.)

"Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" (which has been inconsistently misspelled since its conception, even on the album cover — the backup singers are clearly saying "-nistic") is the fun and light second movement. Its lyrics, by Hayes and Bell, refer to the practice of using big words unnecessarily, and take a more active approach with an attempt at re-wooing the lost love through high-minded compliments: "Your modus operandi is really all right, out of sight. / Your sweet phalanges really know how to squeeze. / My gastronomical stupensity is really satisfied when you're loving me." (Although some doubt is laid on the singer's own knowledge since the chorus is, "Now tell me what I said.")

But the main attraction of "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" (or whatever you want to call it), other than trying to decipher the lyrics, is the instrumental that fills out the latter six minutes of the song's nine-minute running time. Pianist Marvell Thomas spans the range of keys while the Bar-Kays' bassist James Alexander and drummer Willie Hall (who would later join The Blues Brothers Band) lay down a groove that hits somewhere around the coccyx and requires the hips to move in time.

While "One Woman" is not a minuet, or even in 3/4 time, it does serve as the "dance" on this album. The shortest song by far at only five minutes (and surprisingly never a contender for a single), its lyrics about what Mary McGregor called being "torn between two lovers" only emphasize this role. Its chorus could not be clearer — "One woman's making my home while the other one is making me do wrong" — though there's obviously some communication lacking in the former relationship.

Then the piece de resistance, Jimmy Webb's "By the Time I Get to Phoenix" — sung by a man who is finally leaving the woman who cheated multiple times but whom he had always taken back before — differs from the popular Glen Campbell recording in practically every thinkable way. First off, Hayes holds a single chord on his organ and drummer Willie Hall clangs a single cymbal for eight minutes while Hayes expounds on the story behind the song. I've never heard anything like it. It was reportedly performed live numerous times before recording, and yet it seems entirely extemporaneous. For the remaining ten minutes, Hayes draws out every single drop of emotion that can be squeezed from these powerful lyrics, turning it into a most-grand finale of this "symphonic" soul classic.

Stax has rereleased the album with liner notes by Jim James of the band My Morning Jacket (fan) and Bill Dahl (historian), digital remastering, and two bonus tracks: the single edits of "Walk on By" and "By the Time I Get to Phoenix." The sound is remarkably clearer than my previous recording of Hot Buttered Soul, and that will be the main draw for repurchasers.

The singles are novelties at best, with their only attraction being to compare where things were cut to make the songs playable on single-oriented radio. Since the lyrics are not what raise Hot Buttered Soul above the rest, and the singles make sure to focus on those to the detriment of the wonderful instrumentals, fans are unlikely to listen to these more than a couple of times each, though they may serve as relatively smooth introduction to newcomers.

Book Review: John Bonham: A Thunder of Drums by Chris Welch and Geoff Nichols (Led Zeppelin drummer biography and analysis)

This review originally appeared in somewhat different form on The Green Man Review. Copyright 2004. Reprinted with permission.

Ask any aspiring drummer for his influences, and odds are the name John Bonham will appear on his/her top five list. Voted the second most influential drummer ever by Rhythm readers (only Buddy Rich was higher), John "Bonzo" Bonham's effect on modern drumming (especially hard rock and heavy metal) cannot be overestimated. Not bad for a working class bloke from Redditch in a band that was only recording for a decade.

Unfortunately, John Bonham: A Thunder of Drums is only partially successful in capturing that in print. The book is divided into two portions: rock journalist Chris Welch covers the biographical portion while drummer/writer Geoff Nichols analyzes Bonham's style.

Welch is thorough, I'll give him that. He combines research with personal experience to give a full readout of the important events (musically speaking, primarily) in Bonham's life. However, he utilizes such pedestrian prose that his portion is only interesting from an informational standpoint. I can't see myself reading his chapters over again.

Nichols, on the other hand, writes with such passion for the instruments and with such a true appreciation for Bonham's oeuvre that his two chapters of analysis are a joy to read. John Bonham: A Thunder of Drums will be going on my music reference shelf on the basis of his input alone; specifically his coverage of each album individually and his picking out of representative songs on which to focus.

As a fan of Led Zeppelin, I appreciate Welch's depth of research and I feel I learned a lot about Bonham's place in the band's legacy. However, Geoff Nichols' analysis taught me more in the way of Bonham's place in the creation of the band's sound. As a drummer, I find that infinitely more valuable.

Black Ice by AC/DC

There are few things in this crazy world that you can really depend on, but the sound of an AC/DC song is one of them. Since their beginnings in the early 1970s, their sound has changed very little — even through a change of frontmen that, in retrospect, was more drastic than it seemed at the time — except that more modern producers have removed the tinny sound of their early records and replaced it with a deeper one that truly does their music justice.

Now, I'm not saying that AC/DC are the best band ever, but they're certainly one of the most consistent, and Black Ice is just one more example of this. Of the fifteen songs on this, their first studio album since 2000's Stiff Upper Lip (and the first to feature lyrics by vocalist Brian Johnson since 1988's Blow Up Your Video), only a couple are not up to the level of their brethren. The rest of the album is a solid lineup of concert anthems, the kind of rock n roll at which the boys from Australia have always excelled.

Johnson's comment that "we found out what we were good at, and that was rock n roll" may have been what inspired the group this time around, given that there are three songs on Black Ice with "Rock n Roll" in the title (and one called "Rocking All the Way"), including the first single, "Rock n Roll Train," whose chorus actually says "Runaway Train." (But God forbid someone confuse them with Soul Asylum!)

The lyrics have never been the high point on any AC/DC album (except, as stated above, when it comes to their consistency). This time, if anything, they are a bit tamer than usual, with what seems to be much less innuendo (possibly something to do with the album being primarily available through Wal-Mart in the U.S.). But arena-rock songs aren't about intelligent words, anyway, to wit this verse from "Rock n Roll Train":

One hot Southern belle
Son of a devil
A schoolboy spelling bee
A schoolgirl with a fantasy

Those words don't mean anything, but when Johnson wails them, well, you just want to wail right along with him. Luckily, the musicianship on Black Ice is strong enough to carry the album. Though it's the heavy-metal/hard-rock listenership that most fully embraces them, AC/DC has always been, at its heart, a blues-rock band, and several songs bring this right to the front. Witness the riff on "Decibel" that sounds lifted right from Beale Street, with Johnson surprisingly deft at using his lower register vocals in accompaniment.

In fact, most of the second half of Black Ice is saturated in blues rock, and it's so far my favorite portion. Don't get me wrong: I love a good fist-pumping riot as much as the next guy, but there's just something about that white-boy blues that brings it on home for me. There's not enough "Stormy May Day" to go around in my opinion — Angus uses a slide(!) and reminds me of Led Zeppelin's "In My Time of Dying." (Incidentally, "Skies on Fire" reminds me of another Jimmy Page track from his best solo album, Outrider.)

But whatever you think of the band's style, if you're a fan, you'll be enthralled by Black Ice. Even my three-year-old son is already a fan of "the train song" and "Big Jack" (which he thinks is actually about Big Jet from Little Einsteins, and I don't correct him because I think it's cute), so there's another potential fan on the way up. Luckily, the odds are that, by the time he's old enough to pay money for his own albums (in whatever form they're available by then), AC/DC will still be playing the same kind of hard rock grounded by Phil Rudd's journeyman 4/4 beat, Chris Williams's unwavering bass, and Malcolm Young's invisible rhythm — and I'm really glad they are.

Last Man Standing by Jerry Lee Lewis (duets)

The title of Jerry Lee Lewis's new album refers to his legacy as one of the original founders of rock 'n' roll. The legendary Sam Phillips's Sun Records studio was the launching pad of many of the greats: Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison. Of that stellar group, Lewis is the Last Man Standing — that is, he is the only one still alive.

But don't let the morbidity of the album's title put you off, because Last Man Standing showcases "The Killer" at his best. Even at 71, he still knows how to, in the words of Chuck Berry, "keep a-rockin' that pi-a-no."

Despite a guest list that reads like the membership rolls of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Last Man Standing is a "duets" album in name only — this is a Jerry Lee Lewis album through and through. Lewis has an amazing ability to make people like Jimmy Page (on "Rock and Roll"), Bruce Springsteen (on "Pink Cadillac"), John Fogerty (on "Travelin' Band"), and Mick Jagger (on "Evening Gown") look like unwelcome guests on songs that they wrote.

Lewis, who proclaimed himself one of only four great stylists in music history (in company with Al Jolson, Jimmie Rodgers, and Hank Williams), plays them as if he wrote them, and it often seems like he did, with rhythm and melody changes suiting them more to his individual style. It's like he's saying to his fellow legends, "Last Man Standing is my album, and you're lucky to be on it."