generation x (1978) – generation x: chrysalis records, CHR-1169

In many ways, Generation X are the forgotten band of England’s nascent punk scene. People obviously remember The Clash and the Sex Pistols, but they also tend to have more vivid recollections of bands like Stiff Little Fingers, The Damned, The Buzzcocks, or Ian Dury and the Blockheads than they do of Gen X.

I think I know why, too. It’s because of all those bands, Gen X always seemed to be the one that was approximating punk without actually being punk. Just look at the album cover: the lads wore the right “punk” clothes, they had the “punk” hair, they had the “punk” hard poses, and had the “punk” attitude but for some reason it all seemed like an affect.

Take Billy Idol as an example. The guy had the same spikey hair and insubordinate snarl as Sid Vicious, but one always felt that with Sid it was an external manifestation of his internal psychopathy, while with Billy it seemed a costume. And that’s not quite fair, because Billy and Gen X were a part of the bona fide, OG, London punk scene from the mid-70’s, before punk was even officially punk.

The problem was that the band and and their songs didn’t have the same level of pure anger, disillusionment, and fuck you attitude as other punk bands from London. And that made it seem as if they were merely playing at being punk for the sake of exploiting an emerging market.

Their eponymous first album was released in 1978.

Side 1: Gimme Some Truth Wild Youth From The Heart Ready Steady Go Kleenex Promises Promises
Side 2: Day By Day One Hundred Punks Your Generation Kiss Me Deadly Wild Dub Youth Youth Youth

I remember buying this album while still in high school, when I developed my infatuation with Elvis Costello, The Ramones, X, and The Clash. At that time I couldn’t get enough of this new music, and would scrimp and save every penny to buy records or to afford to get tickets to see live shows at venues like the Whiskey, Madame Wongs, The Roxy, The Rainbow, and other clubs in Hollywood.

It was a glorious time to be young and involved in a musical revolution. It seemed as if every time you blinked there was a new band out demanding your attention. Some of them were good, most not so good, but there was a choice and an apparent endless supply.

So when I first heard One Hundred Punks on KROQ, I immediately took an interest and got the record.

I played it.

I listened to it.

I liked it.

But I didn't love it. Even though songs like Gimme Some Truth (a great cover of a John Lennon song), Wild Youth, and One Hundred Punks are really freaking awesome, there was something about it that kept me at arm's length and stopped me from loving it in the same way halitosis might stop a dude from really loving making out with a girl, or hangovers might stop someone from really loving a night of hard drinking.

It was at this listen where that something finally crystallized for me as being this odd sense that Gen X were like a gifted actor portraying a real person, or an exceptional cover band. They were close, but just reproductions of the real thing, and that gap between them and real produced enough of a hollow sound to make a difference.

As it turns out, I’m not alone in this feeling. Others have noted Gen X’s accessibility, pop tendency, and non-threatening sound. In fact, the members of the band themselves admit that they pursued a path with their band trying to navigate between the aggression of punk and the acquiescence of mainstream.

Eventually the band broke apart for the same reasons all bands break apart, and the guys went their own way. Billy became a huge solo artist, peddling the same pseudo-punk music, attitude, and style as Gen X did, eventually becoming a bit of a caricature of himself in the process.

But this album is still quite catchy and a nice nostalgic journey to an exciting time when music was constantly changing.

Up next: Maturing from punk to performer

geese & the ghost, the (1977) – anthony phillips: passport records, PP-98020

As I sat listening to this album last night, it struck me that Anthony Phillips’ career could be used as a sort of a Rorschach test to find out whether someone was a glass “half full” or “half empty” person.

A “half empty” guy would see Ant’s trajectory as a modern tragedy worthy of the Shakespeare treatment: a guy with incredible talent and vision, and founding member of Genesis who voluntarily left before the band started to achieve notoriety (due to paralyzing stage fright), only to fall into near total obscurity, where only fringe fans and other musicians remember who he is.

A “half full” guy, on the other hand, would understand the reason for Ant’s withdrawal from Genesis, and instead focus on how he continues to create incredible music, free of all the baggage, obligations, pressure to create something that the public will consume that comes from being in a successful rock band.

Then there’s Ant’s own state, which seems to be one of contentment with his lot, coupled with a tinge of regret at not having shared in the success and development of Genesis during their prog years.

The Geese & The Ghost, released in 1977, is his first solo album.

Side 1: Wind Tales Which Way The Wind Blows Henry, Portrait From Tudor Times Fanfare Lute’s Chorus Misty Battlements Henry Goes To War Death Of A Knight Triumphant Return God If I Saw Her Now
Side 2: Chinese Mushroom Cloud The Geese And The Ghost Part i Part ii Collections Sleepfall: The Geese Fly West

This album is very familiar territory for fans of very early Genesis, and with good reason. Not only were Ant’s fingerprints all over the album Trespass (and to some extent Nursery Cryme), but many of the songs on G&G were co-written with Mike Rutherford, and sung by Phil Collins.

It’s like the Genesis album that never was. Almost. See, even though the guitar and arrangements on a song like The Geese And The Ghost sound like they could fit seamlessly on Trespass, Nursery Cryme, or, to a lesser extent, Foxtrot, the reduced significance of keyboards marks this as absolutely not Genesis.

What it is, however, is an album that, while a nice example of Ant’s prowess and very listenable, seems a bit wanting. The songs are all competent and at times interesting, but never totally compelling, and during this listen I found myself guilty of a sin I could never commit when listening to Genesis or King Crimson: I would inadvertently wander at times away from the music. Whether that’s because of the heavy medieval influence on the music or because of a hole that Ant and Rutherford couldn’t fill with their composition, the music on G&G was often less than exciting. And that’s hard for me to say, because in many ways both the album G&G in general and the song G&G in particular, picks up threads left by Nursery Cryme’s opening song, the Musical Box (written by Ant), and I desperately wanted this album to be as interesting as that song.

However, the thing that did capture my interest during this listen is the way in which G&G expressed how influential Ant was in creating the sound Genesis would build in the early 70’s, even though it was Steve Hackett who did the actual building.

Even though this write-up is supposed to be about Ant’s first solo album, I simply cannot listen to it without drawing comparisons to early Genesis. And that’s both good and bad, because it does acknowledge Ant’s lasting legacy with the band and his huge talent, but also laments the fact that, despite being made one founding member of Genesis with great help by another founding member of Genesis, G&G simply does not stand alongside the Genesis albums Trespass or Nursery Cryme.

Up next: Between My Generation and Your Generation

from the inside (1978) – alice cooper: warner bros records, BSK-3263

By the late 70’s Alice Cooper the band and Alice Cooper the stage character had merged into Alice Cooper the entity, and eventually possessed the body of the band’s frontman creating Alice Cooper the trinity (Band, Character, Person). If that makes any sense to you at all then you must be Catholic, and have come to terms with the whole Father-Son-Spirit thing.

In any case, Alice Cooper was now something more than a person, band, or idea, and was residing in the body of a scrawny guy from Arizona named Vince. Now that’s some heavy dope to be carrying around, and it would put the zap on anyone’s head, but when one considers that Vince was a dorky preacher’s kid who grew up sheltered from the excess of Rock and Roll, one can understand how a hedonistic lifestyle of unlimited sex, booze, and drugs combined with the adoption of an extremely over-the-top personality might prove to be a bit too much to handle.

So it was no surprise that Alice/Vince finally snapped, and ended up spending time in a safe, quiet building with many safe, quiet padded rooms. And since art seems to come from pain, it’s also not really surprising that Alice took Vince's experience, employed art as additional therapy, and recorded an album about it: 1978’s From The Inside.

Side 1: From The Inside Wish I Were Born In Beverly Hills The Quiet Room Nurse Rozetta Millie And Billie
Side 2: Serious How You Gonna See Me Now For Veronica’s Sake Jacknife Johnny Inmates (We’re All Crazy)

The first thing that comes across on listening to this album is just how different this sounds from previous Alice Cooper albums. The songs have more melody and a gentler touch to them. There’s a stronger use of piano (often as the primary instrument), and far less of the “shock and horror” that categorized the earlier stuff. In fact, in many ways, From The Inside sounds less an Alice Cooper album than an Elton John album.

Part of that is because of how intensely personal this album is (more on that in a bit), but really the softer, more Eltony sound is because of the songwriting partnership between Alice and Bernie Taupin. Bernie, as you probably know, was Elton’s songwriting partner for donks, which explains the predominance of piano and why one can almost hear Elton’s warbling on songs like The Quiet Room or How You Gonna See Me Now.

But for all the Bernie/Elton qualities, this is still very much an Alice Cooper album. There are harder songs (Beverly Hills, Serious, and For Veronica’s Sake), and while the delightfully perverse Millie And Billie may be the only song with typically nightmarish Alice Cooper lyrics, there’s no mistaking the snark and darkness of the content in the other songs.

The difference is that while the macabre content of earlier albums were invented and remote in a sort of HP Lovecraft way, the songs on this album are disturbing because of their authenticity.  Alice/Vince really did suffer from a psychotic break. Alice/Vince really did spend time in a nuthouse. And Alice/Vince really did meet people with some seriously fucked up heads. These songs are based on that experience and the people. Wish I Were Born In Beverly Hills, Serious , and How You Gonna See Me Now tell about Alice/Vince’s personal demons. Nurse Rozetta, Millie And Billie, and Jacknife Johnny are about some of the other nuts in the facility. And From The Inside, The Quiet Room, and Inmates are about the place.

Following the reputation of Alice Cooper albums for creative packaging, From The Inside goes one more step by actually making the album cover a part of the record, rather than just decoration. It’s an immersive experience that actually enhances the songs, by interactively drawing one into the insanity. The front cover close-up of a confused and frightened Alice opens in the middle like double-doors revealing a scene filled with the characters from the album, letting us identify them and relate to them while listening to their songs. We see the timid sexual curiosity of the preacher as he lifts Nurse Rozetta’s skirt, or the manic expression on the rich gal born in Beverly Hills, the desperation of the guy who needs to get back to Veronica, and the dead expression on Billie. Opening the small door labeled “The Quiet Room” shows a tiny, huddled Alice. Finally, the back of the album also has double-doors, which upon opening shows a mass of dangerous lunatics charging out.

The raw honesty of the subject matter makes this album compelling. Even when dressed up and sanitized (and in songs like Rozetta also given a comical take), the paranoia, pain, and hopelessness of the situation comes through making it a tough listen. But that honesty also makes it rewarding enough so that listening to it close to 35 years after I first bought it, it still has an impact.

Up next: Tales of love, war, and loss from a Prog Pioneer

free your mind … and your ass will follow (1970) – funkadelic: westbound records (french pressing), SEW-012

The late 60’s and early 70’s were a turbulent time for culture in the USA. Hippies were questioning authority; freaks were tuning in turning on and dropping out; women were burning their bras; gays got fed up with all the fagbashing and stood up for themselves at Stonewall; weird communes and cults started springing up in the desert of SoCal threatening the suburban nuclear family; college students were demanding an end to the war in Vietnam … oh, and black folks finally got tired of passive resistance and peace-marches and began to aggressively demand their basic human rights as guaranteed by the constitution, by any means necessary.

The revolution was indeed on, and (with apologies to Gil Scott Heron) not only was it televised, it also came with a groovy soundtrack that put some serious fear into the squares.

Remember, nothing scares The Man as much as angry blacks, and so the stuff coming from new black musicians in the late 60's and early 70's was particularly of concern. And there were few black musicians who were scarier than George Clinton and Funkadelic. It wasn't their music (which avoided more explicit confrontational lyrics), nearly as much as their appearance. They had weird hair, they had bizarre clothes, but most of all they were unapologetically black.

Free Your Mind … And Your Ass Will Follow is their second album.

Side 1: Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow Friday Night, August 14th
Side 2: Funky Dollar Bill I Wanna Know If It’s Good To You Some More Eulogy And Light

The first thing this album does is remind one that Funkadelic is NOT Parliament, and even though both are George Clinton bands recording at the same time and often had the same musicians, there are no butt-shaking extended bass grooves or hip-grinding beats. You won’t be hearing Flash Light or Atomic Dog on this.

What you do get is some of the grooviest, weirdest, gnarliest psychedelic rock along with solid R&B and socio-politically astute jams.

The first time I heard this album was over at a friend’s house when I was about 13, in my second year of Junior High (that’s what we used to call Middle School back in the Mesozoic era). His older brother was playing it and it just blew me away. At the time I knew about George Clinton and Funkadelic, but only as the hybridized P-Funk, so my assumption about them was that they were like the Ohio Players, Bar-Kays, or the Gap Band. You know, serious butt-shaking, bass-thumping, hip-grinding stuff. So when I heard the high-voltage guitar and seriously trippy acid grooves from this album coming out of the speakers , I had to do some serious recalibration.

Needless to say, I went out and grabbed a copy of the album for myself and damn near wore out side one from the constant play.  I also damn near wore out the cover from the constant ogling.

Side one is definitely the more trippy, with Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow taking you on a near-11 minute journey down a rabbit hole of mind-expanding sonic pulses. Side Two brings more of a mix, with a bit of funk (Funky Dollar Bill), some more rock (I Wanna Know If It’s Good To You), a bit of Staxx Records organ-driven Memphis soul (Some More), ending with some wonderfully indulgent weirdness (Eulogy And Light).

Free Your Mind is one of the albums I always whip out whenever I want to introduce someone to the true beauty and experimentation of post-60’s, pre-disco music of the early 70's. It’s not as weird as Zappa or Captain Beefheart, not as aggressive as Zeppelin or Cream, and not as non-threatening as the Beach Boys or Springsteen. It’s really one of those albums that encompasses that spirit that there were no boundaries or limits, and that a bunch of talented musicians open to letting themselves just be open could make something freaking awesome.

And seriously, that cover is too cool for school, too.

Up next: We’re all crazy!