BEEHIVE CANDY

Back in July, I ran a piece on the 1991 'Alanis' album, and the rather dated 1980's 'disco' sound. This was rather cruel considering how young she was at the time (1991 that is, not last July!). I am, I hope in my own small way, something of an advocate for some of the excellent artists that have come out of Canada and achieved international recognition. Alanis Morissette is no exception, indeed as previously mentioned, she was absolutely fantastic when I saw her live in London some years ago. So in order to address the balance here is a concert of Alanis from 1996. This is from a CD boot that seems to have emerged from the Czech Republic on 'Oxygen' records. The album title is 'Miss Thing' which considering that the CD back cover, claims to have 'art direction and design' , makes me wonder about the creativeness amongst bootleggers in that part of the world, (anyway is is now digitized and free of charge). This is Alanis Moris

The Beatles - The Alternate Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and A Little More, was released by Dolphin Productions (CDP 790103 - 2 CD set) in 1997. Like a lot of bootleg CD releases, the packaging attempted to make the album look official, however the back cover failed to list the track contents accurately, and the front shown here was a little predictable. However the music is the key factor, and on this occasion the album is something of a gem to put it mildly. For nearly every track there's the mono mix at some stage in production, and a few stereo versions along the way. There are a lot of fragments from 'The Making Of Sgt. Pepper's' with George Martin playing back the individual tracks and explaining things. There's Anthology stuff, snippets from interviews, songs previously released on the Unsurpassed Masters series by Yellow Dog, tracks from 'The Lost Pepperland Reel' (like the Good Morning Good Morning animal noises) and more.

The Devo credentials 'are all there'. The pivotal moment for the formation of Devo was the first hand witnessing by one of the bands founders Gerald Casale of the Kent State University shootings of May 4, 1970. The first form of Devo was the 'Sextet Devo' which performed at the 1973 Kent State performing arts festival. They are 'discovered' by David Bowie and Iggy Pop in 1976, and subsequently record ' Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! ' which was produced by Brian Eno . They are referenced as 'punk', 'new wave', 'post punk', 'art rock', and into the 1980's as the acceptable face of 'synth pop'. That's not a bad selection of street credibility references in any ones books is it? There is so much to Devo, that I am going to take the easy way out, and provide a link HERE to wikipedia. Actually I have read through it and learned a lot more, and of course been reminded of the fantastic visual

First of all the radio bit. WPLJ became in late 1970, a '100% live free form' rock format station. By September 1971 they had developed into the very first AOR (adult orientated rock) station in the USA. The station would play the music of artists such as Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Aerosmith, Jimi Hendrix, Cream, The Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Deep Purple, Rod Stewart, and The Allman Brothers. The station would also play more 'popular' songs from artists such as James Taylor, Stevie Wonder, Elton John and Carly Simon. All in all, and compared to the ' AOR format' in later years, at least the music was new or relatively new back then, and throughout the 1970's WPLJ was one of the most successful stations on the planet! Procol Harum sat comfortably in WPLJ's 'free form' rock format, back in April 1971. Having moved on from the psychedelic pop music phase that was 1967's 'A Whiter Shade of Pale', Procol Harum were a well respec

The controversy of it all! 1965, the year Bob Dylan 'went electric' . Looking back now, it all seems so quaint. Fans outraged that Bob Dylan had sold out, abandoning his folk roots, and daring to perform with a band, and not only that, some of them had 'electric guitars'. It all began at the Newport Folk Festival in July of that year, with the crowd apparently 'booing' as he performed three songs with what was then most of The Paul Butterfield Band . The legend of going electric (with the famously recorded heckle of 'Judas' the following year in Manchester - England), is of course in the scheme of things pretty unimportant, but way back then the folkies were clearly a serious bunch, not open much to their icons doing the unthinkable. Mind you it did not do Bob's record sales any harm, and can you imagine 'Desire' or 'Blood On The Tracks' as wholly acoustic affairs? After the Newport festival and in support of the

The Byrds have been credited with forging the link between the musical style's of Bob Dylan and The Beatles back in the 1960's. They can also claim to be one of the pioneers of folk rock and country rock, whilst retaining a pedigree in the sixties psychedelia scene. Not bad eh? In 1969 they performed at the Fillmore West, the concert subsequently being released as an official album, and receiving good reviews and sales. The following year (1970) the Byrds were touring and promoting that years 'Untitled' double album , (with the second half again being live). During the tour the band were legitimately recorded in Holland by Dutch radio organisation VPRO. This concert had a notably different set list than the Fillmore West concert. This then is The Byrds, Live Concertgebouw, Amsterdam (Holland) on July 7th, 1970. This is a pristine copy from the broadcast on the Dutch Radio 2 on August 10, 2006 by KRO, as direct from the original master tape - lets just s

I am going to avoid any pretentious personal charts for the year soon to pass. Rather you can just skip back over the previous 'Whats Up Doc' posts, and if you are still awake, after the ordeal, get a feel for some of the more current music that has appealed to my ears. Among those already featured have been, Vanessa Paradis, Clare Burson, Lucy and The Teenage Monster, Siouxsie, Tegan and Sara, Radiohead, Bruce Springsteen, Babyshambles, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, The White Stripes, Pauline Croze , and plenty of others, some well known and some not so well known. So on this edition I thought I would fill in some of the gaps, of other artists and music, that has appealed this year. Afterwards I will probably remember some more, so lets just say, this is far from definitive. Neil Young's 2007 release 'Chrome Dreams II' is simply wonderful! Full of a variety of styles , it exceeded all expectations by miles. Here are a couple of examples: Links Removed - MP3 Pol