Trollheart

The worm always liked this one, from the Human League. This is “Mirrorman”.

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Trollheart

Yeah, but you like a challenge, right?

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billyjerome

I have always thought I had a gigantic taste in music but you, you sir, have a much wider, broader taste, and I can only compliment you and slow clap in your general direction. Congratulations!!! You are well-rounded!

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Trollheart

Why thank you sir! Though compared to the mighty Jackhammer I am but a mote of space dust within the nebula, or something. Wait till you see what I have coming up next --- a rock opera in three parts? Better believe it! Working on the review at the moment, should be ready in the next few days.

Ah, I'm like a shark: if I stop moving I'll die. Plus I have a row of razor sharp teeth and dark eyes. Not really.

Hey, this journal is my outlet: keeps me going when the world seems to want to close in on me from all sides. Gotta have your escape route, and if it benefits other people at the same time, so much the better. Share the joy, that's what I say!

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Trollheart

Coming around again --- Carly Simon --- 1987 (Arista)


Not an artiste I would normally be that interested in, my curiosity was piqued when a friend spun the album for me, and I was quite surprised at how good it was. I'm not a Carly Simon fan, have none of her albums bar this one, and in all likelihood will probably not buy any more, but I did like this one. I think it was the surprise factor that did it for me, the fact that as an album it's really solid and has really very few if any bad tracks.

As you might expect, it's music that's best described as adult contemporary: you're not going to get any mad guitar solos, long keyboard passages or very deep lyrical themes on this, but for what it is it's very good. The opening track is also the title, and is a mid-paced ballad, which not incongruously sings of the normal, everyday trials of middle-age, with its opening lines ”Baby sneezes/ Mommy freezes/ Daddy breezes in/ So good on paper/ So romantic/ So bewildering.” It's a song of love found in ordinary places, and of perhaps accepting what you have. It's carried on nice acoustic guitar and keyboards, and Carly's voice is still strong, clear and passionate, even sixteen years later(at that point) and twelve albums prior to this, and she still has a lot to say.

With a songwriter of her calibre and pedigree, it will come as no surprise that she writes or co-writes most of the tracks on the album, with some star help here and there. “Give me all night” is another ballad (there are rather a lot of them), but with a harder edge, thumping drums and electric guitar giving the song a lot of heart, and it kind of breaks out into a type of AOR tune, boppy in a mid-paced way and very catchy. The standout is her cover of the classic song from that classic film “Casablanca”, and she does a really fine job with “As time goes by”, featuring Stevie Wonder on piano and harmonica. You can just see her in a long red dress, smoking a cigarette in those then-fashionable holders they used to use, stretched on a piano as the song plays.

“Do the walls come down” is carried on gentle guitar with some nice keyboard and piano, a gentle yet insistent ballad with great backing vocals and a great beat. “Stuff that dreams are made of” is a little faster, but still laid-back, as most of the tracks here are. Again it's a song of making the best of what you have, instead of flying off to pursue unattainable dreams, of finding your heart's desire right where you least expected to, as she sings ”What if the prince in the fairytale/ Is right here in disguise?/ And what if the stars you've been reaching for/ Are shining in his eyes?” Sobering words, indeed.

The whine of a familiar electric guitar introduces the only song written by Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, and “It should have been me” has their fingerprints all over it. Yet another ballad, it has a rockier edge, a very power ballad feel, with the obligatory guitar solo, while “Two hot girls (on a hot summer night)” is just great fun, jazzy and funky with some smooth sax: you can almost hear the streets steaming in the hot summer air, the moon low in the sky over the city, cats prowling the darkened alleys in search of prey, or shelter from the heat.

“You have to hurt” is another cautionary tale set to music, as Carly foresees disaster as her friend tells her she is in love, and the older, more mature woman knows how it's going to go. Nice piano line and some decent guitar, with a certain amount of bitterness in the lyric, which is one of the two on which she had no input: ”It was good to see her/ Believe me/ But I couldn't stand to hear this anymore!” After the somewhat bitchy snap of this song, “All I want is you” is a more uptempo celebration of love, with an almost Bruce Hornsby sound, a lot more positive now that Carly is again calling the tune, then the pure gospel of “Hold what you've got” would have been a fantastic closer (though it's not the last track), with Carly stretching herself and showing that age has not dulled her voice or her enthusiasm one bit, with her holding court from the pulpit on the importance of loving the one you're with. Hallelujah, sister.

The closer, when it comes, is odd, and yet strangely appropriate. “Coming around again/ Itsy bitsy spider” is a combination of a sort of reprise of the title track allied to the children's nursery rhyme, which in itself sort of takes the album full circle, as the ”Itsy bitsy spider/ Climbed up the spout again.” Never give up seems to be the theme of the album, displayed in the most offbeat and yet deepest fashion in this strange little finale.

This is an album to relax to, not to dance around the room to. I wouldn't relegate it to the status of background music, but it certainly can be listened to without too much attention having to be devoted to it. And it improves on subsequent listenings. You may not listen to it that often, but on occasion you'll find yourself digging it out, and reminding yourself why Carly Simon is the renowned and respected artiste she is, and has been for over forty years now.

TRACKLISTING

1. Coming around again
2. Give me all night
3. As time goes by
4. Do the walls come down
5. Stuff that dreams are made of
6. It should have been me
7. Two hot girls (on a hot summer night)
8. You have to hurt
9. All I want is you
10. Hold what you've got
11. Coming around again/Itsy bitsy spider

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Trollheart

Often castigated for not having enough soul on the journal, the worm presents today's offering from the mighty Drifters, with a tale of a practice that sadly may be going out of fashion in these days of DVDs and downloadable films. This is from a simpler time, it's “Kissin' in the back row of the movies”. Oooh baby!

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Trollheart

Monday, November 28 2011
Calling card --- Rory Gallagher --- from "Calling card" on

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Trollheart

Little shop of horrors OST --- Cast recording --- 1986 (Geffen)


Movie soundtracks are not something I review very often, but this one is pretty special. Not only is the film itself great, clever, funny and entertaining, the music forms a perfect backdrop to it, and every time I hear it I can see the movie running in my mind's eye. Possibly all the more surprising as it stars two people I really do not rate, they being Rick Moranis and Steve Martin (although the latter has something of a supporting role). Moranis annoys me because he always seems to play the stereotypical geek-become-hero figure, which for me reached an unacceptable peak with the “Ghostbusters” movies, and Martin I used to like but lost faith in him after he made “Roxanne”: for me, it's been a steady slide downwards for him from there, as far as my appreciation of him goes. Don't anyone even mention Sergeant Bilko!

But the movie is great, a remake of course of Roger Corman's 1960 B-movie, which was made into an off-Broadway musical and from thence to a movie. For any who hasn't seen it, the basic plot runs thus: Seymour Krelborn (Moranis) works in a flower shop as a dogsbody and unappreciated genius with plants, admiring from afar the beautiful but dizzy blonde who works in the shop with him, Audrey Fulquard, played by Ellen Greene. One day he brings in a “weird plant” he has bought, and when his boss sees it he decides to put it in the window, to attract interest, which it does. After a while, the shop, which had been struggling, is making lots of money and Seymour becomes famous as the owner of the plant, named Audrey II, in honour of his unattainable love.

However, things soon take a turn for the worse, when Seymour scratches himself on one of the plant's thorns and the Audrey II SPEAKS to him, demanding blood. Turns out it's an alien lifeform, and needs human blood and flesh to live. Cue black humour as Seymour first feeds Audrey's abusive boyfriend, dentist Dr. Orin Scrivello (Martin) to the plant, but this is not enough and once Audrey II has a taste of blood it wants more, leading to a comical trail of corpses making their way to the evil plant.

Along the way, Audrey (the girl) and Seymour declare their love for each other, and then Seymour has to take down the alien plant in a final showdown...

The plot isn't that important, but it does help to know it as the musical numbers basically narrate and advance the script. But it's the music that makes the movie, and this being a music forum, that's what we'll be concentrating on in this review. The above was just to give you a grounding in the film, so that what follows will make some kind of twisted sense.

It opens, as most musicals do, with an overture, or prologue, with narration to introduce the plot, behind dramatic music which suddenly breaks into bright, rock-and-roll piano to introduce the theme, sung by three girls who act as a kind of ongoing narrative device as the movie goes along. They're known as Chiffon, Ronette and Crystal, but I'll just refer to them as the Trio for handiness' sake. They only feature a little in the movie anyhow. What is essentially the title track is a rock/soul romp, very fifties in nature, with lots of piano and brass, but it's not one of the better tracks on the album.

It fades into one that is, that being “Skid Row (Downtown)”, a gospel-like opening that catalogues the horrors of living “downtown”, in the lowest of the low neighbourhoods, known colloquially as “Skid Row”. The song introduces the two main characters, Audrey and Seymour, the latter of whom bemoans his fate as he sings ”Poor, all my life/ I've always been poor/ I keep asking God what I'm for/ And he tells me gee, I'm not sure/ Sweep that floor kid!” It's a real soul track, building in intensity as the characters (mainly Seymour and Audrey) declare their determination to get out of this place. It goes totally Hollywood, ending on a big finish. In the movie, it's really clever as after the big finish someone throws slop out on the sidewalk and a tramp shuffles past, somewhat ruining the atmosphere.

The arrival of the alien plant is introduced in “Da doo”, with Moranis as Seymour detailing how he came to buy the Audrey II from an old flower shop run by “a Chinese guy”, as the Trio rip off a perfectly-balanced ”To-tal-e-clipse-ofthe-sun!” Ah, you have to hear it. It's very fifties again, like most of the music: lots of piano, doo-wop singing, close harmonies and the like. So with his plant bought, Seymour then begins to think he's been sold a lemon, as the plant refuses to grow, no matter what he does. In the next song, “Grow for me”, a parody of an old fifties love song, Moranis begs the plant to grow, detailing all he's done to try make it grow, and at the end snaps ”Whaddya want from me? Blood?” Of course this is the spark, and when he discovers this is what's needed, he squeezes out a few drops, eyes closed, but this will never be enough. Still, the plant does begin to grow when he leaves in frustration, as the dramatic finale to the song denotes.


Another standout then in the lovely “Somewhere that's green”, as Ellen Greene in the role of Audrey sits and sings of her dream life, married to Seymour with kids in a house with a white picket fence. A beautiful fragile piano melody carries the song, about halfway getting more forceful and desperate as the strings come in, then fade away as Audrey realises this is just ”A picture out of / Better Homes and Gardens magazine”, and the piano slowly leads the song to its sad conclusion. Greene's dizzy-blonde voice is a little hard to put up with, but she does have a lovely singing voice, and it's a really nice song.

“Some fun now” reintroduces the Trio, but I could live without it. It's a sort of caribbean styled/limbo song that really goes nowhere as far as I can see. But then we get “Dentist”, which introduces the mad character played by Steve Martin, Orin Scrivello, a dentist who gets off on pain. Not his, other people's. He's in the right business then, as he gleefully sings that his mother told him when he was a child ”You'll be a dentist/ You have a talent for causing pain/ You'll be a dentist/ People will pay you to be inhumane.” It's a kind of a play on the old “Leader of the pack” song, with lots of echoey drum and guitar, and to be fair, Martin makes the song with his insane persona of the sadistic dentist.

Then it's time to hear Audrey II sing, and her voice (his voice: the plant is male, despite Seymour's having given it a female name) is provided by Four Tops legend Levi Stubbs. “Feed me” is a real rock/soul tour-de-force, as the plant promises to give his owner anything he wants if he will feed him some human flesh. Seymour comes in on the song, unsure: ”I don't know/ I have so many strong reservations/ Should I go and perform mutiliations?” and the rock vibe goes up and the two join as Seymour realises that Audrey's dentist boyfriend could be a victim: ”The guy sure looks like/ Plant food to me!”

And so the stage is set, and the plant has the first of many victims. With the abusive dentist gone from her life, Audrey is free to fall in love with Seymour, and they duet on the lovesong “Suddenly Seymour”, with nice piano and strings which, like “Somewhere that's green”, starts off quietly and gentle but gets more operatic and powerful as it heads towards its, ahem, climax. On this song Greene really shows off her singing prowess, and to be fair, Moranis can carry a tune, but the girl is without question the star of this song. Reminds me of Sam Brown at her best.

That's the end of the lovey-dovey stuff though, as “Suppertime” brings back in Levi Stubbs and encourages Seymour to kill his boss, who has discovered what he's been doing back late at the shop. A great funky number, it also features the Trio, who function in this song as a backing group for the Audrey II,

Seymour's life starts to spiral out of control as his fame rises, as “The meek shall inherit” tells us, with the Trio and Seymour singing as Moranis tries to make up his mind whether he should allow Audrey II to live, or finish it off and so kiss goodbye to his new fame and riches. Almost a tango in style, it slows down near the end as gentle strings and piano sway his mind back as Seymour reasons that without the Audrey II and the fame it brings his own Audrey might not love him, and the song ends on a somewhat confused crescendo.

Stubbs' piece-de-resistance then is “Mean green mother from outer space”, where he rocks and funks it out like there's no tomorrow, laughing in Seymour's face: ”I'm just a mean green mother/ From outer space/ And I'm bad!/ Just a mean green mother/ From outer space/ And it looks like/ You been had!” The climax both of the film and of the soundtrack, it rocks along and gets really frenetic near the end as the plant is destroyed --- great guitars and brass, excellent percussion and rollicking piano all mesh to make a fine almost-closer, but the last word is reserved for “Finale (Don't feed the plants)”, a rocker with great backing vocals, kind of a reprise of the opening theme which brings the curtain down really well.

Like most soundtracks, it helps if you've seen the movie, but even if you haven't, you can still enjoy this album on its own merits. There's some great music on it, some fine vocal performances, and hey! Levi Stubbs! I mean, come on: what are you waiting for?

TRACKLISTING

1. Prologue (Little shop of horrors)
2. Skid Row (Downtown)
3. Da-doo
4. Grow for me
5. Somewhere that's green
6. Some fun now
7. Dentist
8. Feed me
9. Suddenly Seymour
10. Suppertime
11. The meek shall inherit
12. Mean green mother from outer space
13. Finale (Don't feed the plants)

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Trollheart

Who doesn't like a bit of ABBA, from time to time? Here they are with one of the worm's favourites, this is “The winner takes it all”.

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Trollheart

Tuesday, November 29 2011
Transfiguration --- Virgin Steele --- from "The marriage of Heaven and Hell, Part II" on T&T

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