Crabb Bits: Bad Music, Da Hood, Deep Purple

Spring arrived on Tuesday but it actually came two weeks earlier and there's a dire possiblilty of mowing the yard before April since the grass is growing, the bugs are out and going to Matsell's is a good way of coming out there covered in ticks.  So basically, I've been trying to spring clean the house and see what I can donate to our local goodwill store in terms of music and CDs brought for a buck, played halfway through and kept the jewel case.


I was reading the best albums of the 2000 century and not to my surprise I didn't have very many and some of the ones they posted showed me more why this decade sucked more then empowered me.  Kid A for one. I'll go with Throbbing Gristle before Kid A anyday.  And Yankee Hotel Foxtrot still has never grown on me and basically turned me off on Wilco that I don't associate with them at all.  Everybody has their critic favorites and I have mine, you don't see them on the 20 best of.  I'll go with The White Stripes Elephant, at least Jack White had his eye back on the rock and roll and not the arty farty of Kid A or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.  Miranda Lambert's Crazy Ex Girlfriend is another great album of the century, she remains the best that ever came out of the TV Make Me A Star shows (American Idol, Nashville Star, The Voice, X Factor, etc etc) and she's never made a bad album, or anything under a B plus.  Brad Paisley America Saturday Night is his classic, over This Is Country Music but Keith Urban's Love, Pain And The Whole Dang Thing, bloated at it is, I enjoy more.  No Carrie Underwood in the way (sorry Carrie Nation, although she's a good singer, she goes over the top way too much for me).  After that, anything Jay Z, or Kanye West  or Tricky or Lil Carter isn't even considered.  Don't like their beats and rap and less said the better.  We here at Crabb Central love our outdated rock and roll and the only place you'll find that The Randy Cliffs Trixie Trailer Sales their 2003 boozefest remains a century classic and trumps anything that's da hood, tats and processed autotuner beats.

Too bad that 40 years ago, black music was funky, beat driven and added some horns to the mix and James Brown to boot.  Or Curtis Mayfield.  Nowadays it's all rap and filling my car up with cheap 3.69 a gallon gas in the bad part of town, ended up behind my back hearing two black dudes yelling and screaming and jiving with F bombs and a bad rap playing in the background that it came to me that the Chicago Transit Jive that moved into Wellington has taken our down to ghetto proportions.  It wasn't much better in 1994 when I used to visit a friend down there and seeing the jive on the step of the apartment at 2 AM and wondering if I could make it to my car without being mugged.   There's some hope for black music in Bruno Mars but to the rappers more concerned about their tats and smacking their bitch up, that crap is a dime a dozen.

You may not noticed but there's a new Deep Purple Live album out called Montreux 2011 and this time out they brought themselves a orchestra.  There are no shortages of live DP out there, and they did made an album with an  Orchestra on the 1970 Concerto For Group n Orchestra to which I have the original Tentagammon 8 track.   And on paper this would have worked a lot better had they done this back in 1996 or even 2005 to which Eagle Rock recorded and put out on DVD or Cd.  Problem is that Ian Gillan had pretty blown out his voice to which the world is spared of Child In Time.  Also the orchestra wasn't used to the best advantage either.   Oh, they crank it up on Highway Star or Knocking At Your Back Door or Perfect Strangers but half the time it misses the mark.  And the usually reliable Steve Morse is doing recycled Eddie Van Halen riffs or going through the motions.  Montreux has never been a good place to record but Ian Paice's drums sound almost like he's drumming on cardboard boxes, it certainly could have used a Martin Birch mix of Made In Japan.   And what used to be a 20 minute version of Space Truckin, with all the showboating solos and what not (Blackmore is missed on that) we get a sparse 5 minute version to which Gillan ad libs here and there and sings in a lower tone since he can't scream them out.  Or messes up the words to Highway Star or Strange Kind Of Woman.

In all fairness time and age has a way to tone down the excess that made Deep Purple a fun band to hear and listen although I really have no use for Made In Japan anymore (had that on 8 track too, CD you can now get for five bucks at Best Buy) although it made Deep Purple what they are today, for better or worse.  Like Montreux 96, 2011 revisits a couple obscure numbers (No One Came, When A Blind Man Cries)  pulls out Hard Lovin Man from In Rock and Gillan even covers Hush  (although he'll be dammed if he ever covers anything from David Coverdale although I would love for Gillan to take on Burn some day).  The whole live performance sounds like they're on autopilot till they get to their anthem Smoke On The Water to which when the orchestra jams with Morse on the guitar signature riff, it all comes together and then they catch fire for the encore of Hush and the 9 minute Black Night to which they recreate the sound of what made Made In Japan a fun listen.  A bass solo here, drum solo there (doesn't last too long) and Gillan sounds like he's having fun regardless.  To which after the final note is over and done with, you wish that Deep Purple could have sounded like that at the beginning of the show as well.  It all came together too late.  But then again I still remain a big fan of the Gillan/Glover DP years more than others, Gillan was the gas to Blackmore's water and their explosive personalities makes one wish for the early years (but we'll never get since Blackmore refuses to have anything to do with Gillan ever again).  Montreux 2011 with Orchestra remains a curio listen, there's potential, there's promise and at the tail end it comes together but you kinda wished that it would have happen earlier on before the masses got bored and moved on to other things.

Grade B-