Howlin' Wolf (MCA/Chess)

Re-released posthumously after his death, this second Howlin' Wolf record is one of those classics that has the iconic cover and the iconic sound, and I'm not sure what I can write here that would really do the record justice. If this project is in many ways about my personal feelings on a record and my relationship to it (which is certainly more interesting than hearing someone write about how great Pet Sounds is for the 60000th time, I hope) then I have little to say here. Every time I have ever played this record, which is culled from a bunch of disparately recorded singles between 1957 and 1961, I've enjoyed it immensely. And that's all I can really say about it - I like Howlin' Wolf, really who doesn't? - but he's never been someone I made a personal connection to. His voice was always what I latched onto, but listening today I'm really appreciating the space in the recordings and how, for 'electric blues', they really take their time to get places. 'The Red Rooster' is barely there, shuffling along with guitar bursts only as Mr. Wolf seemed to feel like it; it's Hubert Sumlin who I think does the really sharp leads on most of this record, and some of them are pretty fucking cutting. 'Wang-Dang Doodle' is the obligatory dirty sex entendre that all late 50s blues records have (well, that and 'Back Door Man' and probably all of the other cuts too), and on this the repetition of the rhythm section is remarkable, as they seem to hang back from the 12 bar progression or at least give it a pleasantly monotonous feel. 'Spoonful' has a real trashcan sound, again quite spacious and the surface noise from this repress might as well be part of the mix, as I couldn't imagine this without it. Surely for as much as I'm a fan of Captain Beefheart I must recognise Wolf's influence on him vocally - there's parts on this record where his vibrato is so extreme that it sounds like he must be singing into a piece of waxed paper. I'm also really into the piano playing on this record, which is noodly, all upper register, and sometimes just a series of trills punctuating between the 12 bars. It's true that this is definitively 'urban' in comparison to the 'country blues'/pre-war sound that is so collectible, and I don't think it's just because the instruments are electrified - there's something about the feel, like you can imagine the hot city air when it was recorded, and maybe it's just the group nature as opposed to a solo artist. So yeah, I've just done the exact thing I said I wouldn't do - blandly described this record instead of trying to find a personal connection to it. My father's record collection is all either classical music or blues from this style/era, though I'm not sure if he's a Howlin' Wolf fan or not. I guess there's a feeling of some sort of connection to him when listening to this, though it's a grasp, to be honest. Actually, listening to this makes me think of Little Howlin' Wolf, whose music has little to do with this besides the name but is truly indescribable and (I think) inspiring - but we're still a looooong way from the Ls. And by the way, this is the 500th post!

Thee Headcoats - 'W.O.A.H! - Bo In Thee Garage' (Get Hip)

Consistency is a virtue, right? And maybe so is prolificness (is that a word?). Discogs lists only 19 full-length albums by Thee Headcoats, which is fewer than I expected, but then Billy Childish has spread his vision over a variety of bands and pseudonyms (which are surveyed nicely on the Archive from 1959 compilation from a few years back) besides this one. Somehow this LP is all I have managed to accumulate, even though they're all eminently listenable examples of a real scene, postmodern primitivism
at its finest. This is a conceptual one, I guess, being entirely made up of Bo Diddley covers. It's recorded live in mono, and it sounds more or less like a dictaphone recording of a raunchy garage-rock band banging it out in some room somewhere -- which is precisely what this is.  Childish translates Diddley's swagger well through his vocals, and the covers are fairly faithful; nothing is sped up or riffed upon (as far as I can tell - I'm not quite super familiar with the originals), and there's a ramshackle quality that suits the material well. 'Greatest Lover in the World' sounds great when recast from the mouth of a white Englishman; 'Keep Your Big Mouth Shut' shows his own vocal capabilities, and has a nice sassy snarl to it. Somehow this all works and doesn't raise any obvious questions about race or appropriation: it's a tribute that is fun, heartfelt, and an easy listen. The rough fidelity helps - it's as much about the sound of this record as the performance, if this makes any sense. Mono records on vinyl often sound great, and this is blistering and raw, especially when the cymbals start to blur together into a tinny haze. Somehow everything is exuberant enough to work, and thus this document of a band likely just fucking around one afternoon, nearly 30 years ago now, is somehow completely fresh and living.

Brian Eno - 'Floating in Sequence' (The Impossible Recordworks)

I think I have three records from this illustrious bootleg label, though this is really just an EP, with only six songs. There's some radio sessions which are of stellar sound quality (though still nice and raw and unproduced) and some live material from the 1976 Reading festival. These two live cuts have an expected level of crowd noise, clearly an audience recording, though that's not without merit. 'The Fat Lady of Limbourg' (an odd choice for inclusion, really) starts with ambient (no pun intended) crowd chatter over a pulsing shaker rhythm, sounding like a Casio beat except I don't think Casios were invented yet. The arrangement doesn't stray too far from Taking Tiger Mountain's version, with obviously a more limited palette. Eno's vocalisations are earnestly precise, enunciating every lyric of this cryptic tale as if he means it. One can only imagine a crowd of festival-goers at various stages of drunk and/or high, patiently sitting through this song in hopes that something more satisfying will come along. The applause at the end is pitiful, but the other live cut is 'Third Uncle' so they probably got their wish. This version is as brilliant as ever -- can this song be ruined? Built to Spill even did a great cover of it, check YouTube -- and a bit grungier than the album version, as to be expected.  Simon Phillips keeps it fluttering along on the drums, and Manzanera shines as always, particularly when it turns into a thrashed-out melee. But the radio sessions are the highlights of this LP - 'Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch' absolutely rips, with the guitars exploding in a violent cacophony and sounding at points like some lost private-press psych LP, like something you'd read about in The Acid Archives, except with vocal exaltations that are distinctly Eno's. There's a cover of 'Fever' which is fun, and not at all tossed-off, suggesting that the band actually worked this out for some release. 'Baby's on Fire' has a speedier tempo than normal (or else this is mastered too fast, a not uncommon trait of bootleg LPs) and the solo/bridge section accelerates into screeching monotony before the band comes back having doubled the pulse. This segues right into 'I'll Come Running', which (as I suggested a few posts ago) is greatly improved with crunchy electric guitar riffs instead of piano arpeggios. I never thought of Eno's band as something I would have wanted to see live, but these two cuts suggest they would have been a sight to see. I now realise that if I had a time machine, instead of killing Hitler or doing anything altruistic, I'd probably just use it to see old bands. And eat cheaper lunches.