Folk&Country


BUCK OWENS Open Up Your Heart: The Buck Owens & The Buckaroos Recordings 1965-1968 Bear Family 7-CD/book set www.bearfamily.de


It seems criminal to be paying mere lip service to this lavishly packaged and painstakingly researched artifact but I fear a full appraisal


would take longer than I have left on this earth. In a nutshell, here’s practically every note


cut by seminal country singer-songwriter Owens and his band The Buckaroos between 1965 and ’68. During this time – together or apart – they released a staggering 19 albums and lord knows how many singles and EPs, most of which shot to #1 on the Billboard Country Music Chart and made the 30-something former Alvis Owens – already eight years into his tenure with Capitol Records – one of American music’s biggest and most successful stars. But behind the matching satin suits, cosy


Christmas albums and old school appeal was, in


KRIS KRISTOFFERSON Please Don’t Tell Me How The Story Ends: The Demos 1968-72 Light In The Attic CD www.lightintheattic.net


Brownsville, Texas- born, Renaissance man Kris Kristofferson wrote most of the 16 songs on this landmark project while he was toiling as a


janitor on Nashville’s celebrated Music Row. With these and others like ‘Sunday Morning Coming Down’ and ‘For The Good Times’ he gave country songwriting a much needed shove in a more personal, adult direction and, while the only real hit here is an organ and vocal chorus embellished version of ‘Me And Bobby McGee’, they all reveal his knack for the well turned phrase and contemporary subject matter. He even takes aim at Nashville’s conservative ways on the name-checking ‘If You Don’t Like Hank Williams You Can Kiss My Ass’.


Other nuggets include the Mickey Newbury-


like ‘The Lady’s Not For Sale’, the bluesy break-up song ‘Come Sundown’, a Johnny Cash-influenced ballad about a junkie called ‘Billy Dee’ and the sad, slow ‘Little Girl Lost’. Features a 60 page colour booklet and


complete lyrics. Gary von Tersch


MARIANNE SEGAL Gypsy Girl: Archives 70s, 80s and 90s Volume 1 Snow Beach CD www.mariannesegal-jade.com Little did Marianne Segal expect there to be such interest in her music 40 years after the release of her band Jade’s sole album in 1970. After


the acclaimed reissue of that record – most recently as a double CD on Sunbeam – the


Owens, an enormously talented and prolific songwriter and a crack unit of musicians who were fucking with the formula from the off. Along with Merle Haggard, they were responsible for the “Bakersfield Sound” that so influenced nascent Californian country-rockers like Nashville West, The Dillards and The Flying Burrito Brothers and therefore virtually every alternative-country artist since. They boldly wore their rock ’n’ roll influences on their sleeves, favouring electric instruments (witness those matching Fender guitars!), and incurred the wrath of the old guard when Buck proclaimed his admiration of The Beatles who, of course, had recently covered his ‘Act Naturally’. At 249 tracks over seven CDs, this set


plainly isn’t aimed at the novice but with Owens’ back catalogue having been so mercilessly and tastelessly hacked up for endless Greatest Hits sets over the years at the expense of any kind of structured reissue program, it marks the first outings on CD for much of the material. Besides which, the 120-page hardback book, containing a jaw-dropping selection of photos, essays, session details and a complete discography with every last pictures sleeve you could wish for (stops to draw breath) is worth the price alone. Andy Morten


timing of this limited edition compilation couldn’t be better. Bringing together 15 recordings, it features a feast of backing musicians including Graeme Taylor (Gryphon and The Albion Band), Dave Mattacks (Fairport Convention), guitarist Chris Spedding and vocal group The Real Thing on a journey through Marianne’s singer-songwriter productions. The earliest recording is the ’72 outtake


from an unreleased solo album, ‘Circle Round The Sun’, probably the closest thing to Jade here. A polished lush production lends the lilting ‘See Me See You’ a quality matched by Marianne’s instantly recognisable vocal style which is also in top form on ‘Ben’ with Dave Waite (ex-Jade) on bass. Richard Allen


THE THREE CITY FOUR The Three City Four/Smoke And Dust Fuse CD www.leonrosselson.co.uk


These two albums from 1965 and ’67 come courtesy of a folk lover’s supergroup, featuring (over the two records) Marian McKenzie,


Ralph Trainer, Martin Carthy, Leon Rosselson and Roy Bailey. The Three City Four played in a politically-oriented, but not heavy-handed, rambunctious style. The vocals here are spot on, especially


Carthy’s (simply brilliant on ‘Sally Free And Easy’), and the songs, contemporary rather than traditional, are carefully picked and simply arranged. Overall, it’s an interesting snapshot of how ’60s folk music in Britain could happily meet at the juncture of protest, integrity and popularity, with splashes of jazz, blues and the beat ethos thrown in too. However – for no discernable reason – not


all the original tracks have been included, they’re not in their original order, and songs from both LPs are jumbled up together. Why do reissue labels do this sort of thing? Why? Jeanette Leech


69


1980s/1990s


THE FLESHTONES It’s Super Rock Time!: The IRS Years 1980-85 Raven Records CD www.ravenrecords.com.au


The Fleshtones have always been better live than in the studio. But if there was ever a time when their recorded output matched their hip-


shaking stage performance, it was when they were on the esteemed IRS roster of the early to mid-80s. The EP Up Close, the albums Roman Gods and Hexbreaker!, songs like ‘The Girl From Baltimore’, ‘The Dreg’, ‘Shadow Line’ – this was top-shelf material that put the New Yorkers on a par with other stellar ’80s garage revivalists like The Lyres, The Nomads and The Fuzztones. The Fleshtones take fuzzed-out garage-rock


and turn it into frug-friendly party anthems; and on these highlights of their early studio takes, they managed to capture the brain-bending frenzy of that party on record. It’s nice that Raven threw on a handful of tracks from the band’s two 1985 live albums for IRS too. Brian Greene


THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION Dirty Shirt Rock ’n’ Roll: The First Ten Years Shove CD www.myspace.com/jsbluesexplosion Having morphed into The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion from indie-punk noiseniks Pussy Galore in 1990, the new band honed their musical chops


and defined the more jagged edges of their harsh lo-fi punk sound to forge a heady blend of Stooges style fuzzed-out rock ’n’ roll and punk- blues to provide a perfect antidote to the then increasingly predictable grunge movement. Certainly, their extreme and often discordant


take on the blues won’t be to everyone’s taste, but there’s enough variation here to ensure that JSBX never sound stagnant: from alt-punk blues numbers like ‘History Of Sex’ and ‘Fuck Shit Up’, through the Jaggeresque ‘Magical Colors’ to The Cramps-like shockabilly of ‘Wail’ and the metallic industrial hip-hop fusion of the ‘Flavor’ remix. The most mainstream offering here has to be the exuberant ‘She Said’ from 2002. Dirty, shirty, mean and shouty, scuzzy industrial-blues don’t get much better than this... except maybe for the full series of forthcoming JSBX album reissues. Rich Deakin


The Plimsouls


KEVIN JUNIOR Ruins (A Collection Of Rarities, B- Sides & Outtakes) Hanky Panky/Sunthunder CD www.myspace.com/hankypankyrecords Akron, Ohio native Kevin Junior, currently the singer/songwriter and guitarist for The Chamber Strings, one of the best


American indie-rock bands on the current scene, cagily pauses between his acclaimed group and solo projects to raid his archives and compile this 80 minute, 19 track opus that, delightfully, has a little bit of everything along with detailed track-by-track liners commentary. While only one selection derives from Junior’s 1986-92 days with The Mystery Girls (a boogie revamp of Ike Turner’s ‘Contact High’) there are four from his sojourn with The Rosehips – including an inspired cover of Phil Lynott’s fighting song ‘Whiskey In The Jar’. Finally, a few fascinating solo demos accompany a deluge of Chamber Strings sides – notably the peppy ‘Telegram’, stunning takes on both The Chiffons’ ‘Baby It’s You’ and The Box Tops’ ‘I Pray For Rain’, the eerie ‘Dead Endings’ and the shivering, sighing ‘Last Lovers’. Gary von Tersch


THE PLIMSOULS Live! Beg, Borrow And Steal Alive! Natural Sound CD www.aliveenergy.com


Alive! continues its run of Peter Case- related releases with this set that finds The Plimsouls hammering out a sweat-soaked


performance at The Whisky A Go Go on The Sunset Strip in 1981. The sound quality is well above average for a live CD and the band is on fire. Of course they turn in versions of many of the originals that made their eponymous debut from ’81 and ’83’s Everywhere At Once such powerpop landmarks, and of course ‘A Million Miles Away’ is a standout amongst those. But it’s some of the cover versions that are


the real treats here. Wearing their influences on their guitar straps, they run through blistering takes of The Kinks’ ‘Come On Now’ and The Easybeats’ ‘Sorry’. It’s already a party before The Fleshtones join them for a raucous, call-and-response happy two-song encore, but that’s the point when the roof comes off. Brian Greene


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