REO Speedwagon - Not Live: You Get What You Play For

A while back I posted a Peter Frampton comp that recreated his Comes Alive! album using the studio versions. I was wondering if other live albums could be given the same treatment. Here is the first of those efforts.

In the 70s, double live albums were all the rage. For many artists, their live albums were their breakthrough moment when the general public took greater notice of them. Some breakthroughs had long lasting results pushing the band into the upper elite of rockdom, others were brief flashes of stardom that gave them their 15 minutes of fame before being sent back into near obscurity.

REO Speedwagon fell somewhere in between. Their live album gave them enough of a push to see them through at least two albums that would spawn several chart hits.The hits would slow down as they seemed to push their MOR ballads over their more snappier rock tracks. By the early 90s they were once again playing clubs and the festival circuit. They still tour and record but only the singer Kevin Cronin and keyboardist Neal Doughty are from the classic line-up and the keyboardist being the only founding member. Gary Richrath, the guitarist from the classic line-up who sparred many times with Cronin over creative control left the band in 1989 and passed away in 2015.

01 Like You Do
02 Lay Me Down
03 Any Kind Of Love
04 Being Kind (Can Hurt Someone Sometimes)
05 Keep Pushin'
06 (Only A) Summer Love
07 Son Of A Poor Man
08 (I Believe) Our Time Is Gonna Come
09 Flying Turkey Trot
10 157 Riverside Avenue
11 Ridin' The Storm Out
12 Music Man
13 Little Queenie
14 Golden Country
15 Roll With The Changes
16 Time For Me To Fly

Reality Notes

In the 70s it seemed everyone and their grandma released double live albums. Some were good, some were not so good and a few were amazing. REO's was good but I'm not sure about amazing. I think the downside of these albums is that if this was the band's breakthrough then the live versions of their songs become the definitive versions over the studio versions. This tends to minimize the importance of those studio albums that came before. Though the die hard fans will seek out anything and everything related to their favorite band the casual fan will stick with the live album or the greatest hits package.

Personally I prefer the studio over the stage. Even as a musician I prefer recording over performing. While I enjoy the immediacy and 'in the moment'-ness of performing live, the studio has an additional creative layer to it. Painting with sound as the cliche goes.

For REO, their live album was where it all came together. They had struggled through their six previous studio albums, riding out personnel changes that included three different singers. Kevin Cronin joined the band for their second album and quit while recording their third. His replacement lasted two more albums before Cronin rejoined them for the sixth album. The setlist for the album draws from four of the six studio albums. Completely ignoring albums four and five which Cronin had no input into, being recorded during the time he was away from the band.

So this comp features three different singers. Although the band has released some tracks from the third album that feature Cronin's voice before they were replaced I chose to stick with the officially released versions. As a bonus, similar to what I did with the Frampton comp, I included the hit songs from the follow up album.

I used the original album cover as a template for the cover I made. Turned out nice I think.

Melancholia - Volume 11

I wasn't sure if I was going to post the last few general editions but I already had this one uploaded for some reason so why not? I'm kind of running out of ideas at the moment and these are already put together so not much effort is needed to keep the blog running a little longer.

The remaining non-themed collections, while enjoyable and fine comps, don't hold as much emotional attachment for me which is why I hesitated on posting them. While the ones that were originally done as mixtapes can evoke a special time or feeling because of the time and effort put into them, these were created first as playlists and consist of songs that did not find a place on earlier editions or songs that are more recent discoveries. All songs still have that sound or feeling that I'm attracted to regardless of genre and they still take me somewhere else.

01 Del Fuegos - Don't Run Wild
02 The Weepies - Hideaway
03 Jimmy Buffett - One Particular Harbor
04 Blackberry Smoke - Ain't Much Left Of Me
05 Madonna - Crazy for You
06 Elton John - Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters
07 Berlin - Take My Breath Away
08 Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill
09 UB40 - Don't Break My Heart
10 Melanie - Pebbles in the Sand
11 Velvet Underground - Pale Blue Eyes (Closet Mix)
12 Cyndi Lauper - Time After Time
13 Eric Clapton - Please Be with Me
14 Bee Gees - Islands In The Stream
15 Sheryl Crow - No One Said It Would Be Easy
16 Dimentia 13 - 108 Sacred Stages
17 Alison Moyet - It Won't Be Long (Acoustic)
18 Lenny Kravitz - Let Love Rule
19 Dionne Warwick - Walk On By

Melancholia - Volume 16 - Not Feeling Guilty

This edition is based on a series found on the Any Major Dude blog. Named after his series, Not Feeling Guilty, which currently is up to volume 8, it is chock full of middle of the road late 70s early 80s pop. Perfect for playing in the background while you sit in your comfy chair reading romance novels.

If I have a musical guilty pleasure, this might be it. I mean, this is the stuff our parents listened to when they wanted to feel hip and contemporary. Lots of blue-eyed soul, light R&B and general middle of the road schmaltz. Enjoy.

01 Bob Welch - Sentimental Lady
02 Ace - How Long
03 Commodores, the - Easy
04 Player - Baby Come Back
05 Christopher Cross - Sailing
06 Atlanta Rhythm Section - So in to You
07 Poco - Crazy Love
08 Ambrosia - How Much I Feel
09 Dave Mason - We Just Disagree
10 Little River Band - Lady
11 Robbie Dupree - Steal Away
12 Doobie Brothers - Takin' It To The Streets
13 Orleans - Still The One
14 King Harvest - Dancing in the Moonlight
15 Paul Davis - I Go Crazy
16 Randy Vanwarmer - Just When I Needed You Most
17 Robert John - Sad Eyes
18 Elvin Bishop - Fooled Around And Fell In Love
19 Stephen Bishop - On And On
20 Firefall - You Are The Woman
21 Hall & Oates - She's Gone

Melancholia - Volume 6

I have a few more Melancholia volumes to post yet. There are two more themed editions and a few non-themed editions that I may or not post.

This edition was the first volume to be constructed from CD to tape and the last non-themed edition that was constructed on a physical medium. At the time I used a 60 minute tape and remade it every few weeks or so. This construction is a summary of sorts featuring those songs that made repeat appearances timed to fit on a single CD.

This is a good snapshot of what I was listening to at the time. All of the source CDs were new purchases with only a few being repurchases of things I once had on vinyl and most of the songs were roughly contemporary with a few old favorites thrown in. There are a few songs from the time that did not fit due to space limitations. Those songs found space on later editions.

01 Rhythm Corps - Common Ground
02 Maggie's Dream - Love and Tears
03 Soup Dragons - Divine Thing
04 Sun-60 - Out of My Head
05 King's X - It's Love
06 Michael Hedges - Spring Buds
07 Prince - The Cross
08 Chris Cornell - Seasons
09 Guns N' Roses - You're Crazy
10 Matthew Sweet - Divine Intervention
11 Julian Lennon - Rebel King
12 Queensrhyche - Gonna Get Close To You
13 The Church - Under the Milky Way
14 Hoodoo Gurus - Death Defying
15 Jesus Jones - Right Here, Right Now
16 Elvis Costello - Alison
17 Pete Townshend - The Seeker
18 Uncle Wiggly - It's Looking Good
19 Larry Norman - Looking for Footprints

Lindsey Buckingham - Tusk

Thanks to AEC for giving me a little nudge on this one. A while back I took apart Fleetwood Mac's Tusk and created a McVie/Nicks album. So here we have its companion, Lindsey Buckingham's Tusk.

Lindsey was in a frantic state of mind by the time Tusk was finished. Cracking from the pressure of following Rumors, one of the best selling records of all time, and fueled by heavy use of cocaine he was determined to deliver something different in order to compete with the younger New Wave bands of the time.

Side One
01 Not That Funny
02 Save Me A Place
03 What Makes You Think You're The One
04 That's All For Everyone #1
05 The Ledge
06 That's Enough For Me

Side Two
01 Tusk
02 Walk A Thin Line
03 I Know I'm Not Wrong
04 That's All For Everyone #2
05 Out On The Road
06 Kiss And Run

Bonus Track
Tusk (USC Version)

Reality Notes

When I first took Tusk apart to make the McVie/Nicks album I did try to collect Lindsey's songs into an album. At the time I only had a single disc of outtakes and at best I  was only able to come up with about 30 minutes of material. I've recently found more material in the form of the five disc deluxe version of Tusk. With the additional tracks I was not only able to expand the album to a more acceptable length but also swap some tracks with alternate versions with less Christine and Stevie to make it feel more like a solo album.

What Makes You Think You're The One, The Ledge, Walk A Thin Line, That's All For Everyone #2 are the original album versions. That's All For Everyone #1 is an earlier version with different lyrics. Out On The Road evolved into That's Enough For Me. This version is very different from the finished song keeping the chord structure but little else.

Kiss And Run is a proper outtake that sounds like an impromptu studio run through of a song that was never taken further. It was written by Jorge Calderon, the percussionist from the Buckingham/Nicks band and features McVie and Nicks a bit more prominently than I would like but it works. Its informality adds to the charm.

Tusk is an early take that does not have the USC marching band so I included a version that is only the USC band. as a bonus track

For the cover I rotated the image and inverted the colors on the original cover and did a few other modifications.

Dimetia 13 - 108 Sacred Stages

To close out 2018 here's something special and a bit obscure. the neo-psyche band Dimentia 13.

Dimentia 13 released their first album in 1985 and released five albums while they were active. Hailing from Ohio they were similar but separate from the Paisley Underground bands of the time with influences closer to Syd Barrett, Robyn Hitchcock and the 13th Floor Elevators. Trippy lyrics and lots of fuzz guitar.

Fronted by Brad Warner who wrote the songs and on the early albums played most of, or all of the instruments. In the early 80s Brad was the bass player for the hardcore punk band 0DFX. When that band had run its course Brad went back to school, formed Dimentia 13 and discovered Zen. In the 90s he moved to Japan to teach English and went on to work for the company that gave us Godzilla and Ultraman. At that time he also became an ordained Buddhist monk in the Soto school of Zen. These days he leads Zen meditation classes, gives talks and writes books on Buddhism and Zen and plays bass in the revived 0DFX.

This is a collection of demos, outtakes and live tracks from his band Dimentia 13.

01 108 Sacred Stages
02 Hey, Maharaja!
03 Fog Camouflage
04 Truth
05 Weight
06 Innocent Anemia
07 Somebody Stop Me
08 In The Past
09 Snow Is Falling
10 Twice The Speed Of Time [Demo]
11 Can't Stand Still
12 All Is One
13 Mr Blood Clot
14 We Are
15 Mesmerized
16 Get Me Outta Sing Sing
17 Lucifer Sam
18 Do What You Will
19 God Part III

Reality Notes

I discovered Brad Warner through his books on Buddhism. If you have an interest in that kind of thing, I highly recommend them. His writing style is very accessible and personable and helped clarify many misconceptions I had about Buddhism in general and Zen in particular.

After reading his first book, Hardcore Zen, I found his website. There he would post articles and pictures of dinosaur books. He also posted some songs from his music career. The first ten songs in this comp came from there. The rest of the songs can be found on YouTube and are mostly live tracks and a couple of outtakes.

Tracks 14-17 come from a 1988 T.V. appearance on a Chicago public access show called Friday Club. Each performance was separated by other content so I edited the songs together to seem like a continuous performance.

Snow Is Falling was originally released on the various artist Christmas album put out by the record label he was signed to Midnight Records.

Can't Stand Still is an outtake from the album Flat Earth Society produced by Glenn Rehse of Plasticland.

Mr Blood Clot was released on a Flexidisc given away with an issue of the British psych mag Freakbeat.

God Part III is a more recent live solo acoustic performance of a song from the album Flat Earth Society.

I found the cover pic online and added the text.

Hardcore Zen blog
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Melancholia - Volume 5

I think of all of the non-themed volumes, this is my favorite.  What makes this compilation slightly unique is that it is the first and only comp in the series originally made from dubbing cassette to cassette. It was made at a time when I was between buying vinyl and not yet buying CDs. Because of this, this is a good cross sample of what I was currently listening to at the time whereas previous collections were a mix of new discoveries and old favorites. There is still that mix but everything was purchased around the same time.

At the time this was complied I was working at a restaurant where on my breaks I would go and sit in the dinning room and chat with the other workers. We had a jukebox that played three songs for a quarter and I would always play the same three songs; Free Fallin' by Tom Petty, The Flame by Cheap Trick and Almost Hear You Sigh by the Rolling Stones. I'm not sure why the Stones song didn't make the comp but it should have. I must have run out of room.

01 Tom Petty - Free Fallin'
02 The Rainmakers - No Romance
03 Jimi Hendrix - The Wind Cries Mary
04 Heart - Love Alive
05 Ringo Starr - It Don't Come Easy
06 Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - Feel Your Love
07 Love and Rockets - So Alive
08 Tracie Spencer - Imagine
09 Ziggy Marley & The Melody Makers - Tumblin Down
10 Vanilla Fudge - Ticket To Ride
11 David Crosby - Tracks In The Dust

12 Cheap Trick - The Flame
13 Nazareth - Love Hurts
14 Belinda Carlisle - Mad About You
15 Guns N' Roses - Patience
16 Indigo Girls - Closer To Fine
17 Tin Machine - Amazing
18 Eric Clapton - Please Be With Me
19 Living Colour - Broken Hearts
20 Ike & Tina Turner - River Deep Mountain High
21 Paul McCartney - Distractions
22 Prince - Mountains
23 Enya - Orinoco Flow