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Marauder --- Blackfoot --- 1981 (Atco)


Hey, maybe all these years I was wrong! I was told/assumed that these guys were all Indians --- excuse me, Native Americans! --- but their writeup on Wiki doesn't mention any such heritage. Perhaps they weren't, and maybe I just got suckered in by the name Blackfoot, which is obviously the name of a real Indian tribe, but if they aren't, then they certainly seemed to play up to that image, with songs like “Rattlesnake rock'n'roller” and “Indian world”, not to mention their debut album being called (ahem!) “No reservations”!

Well, whether or which, nothing takes away from the fact that these guys ROCKED with a capital R (and the rest of the letters capitalised too!) --- you'll find no AOR-fodder here, few songs about love and loss, and nary a ballad to be found. “Marauder”, their fifth album, can only be described as a powerhouse. It's southern rock verging on full-on heavy metal --- move over Lynyrd Skynyrd! Kicking you right in the gut from the off, “Good morning” rattles in like a runaway steam train, the churning guitar of Charlie Hagrett backing the powerful, gravelly, almost Lemmy-like vocals of Rickey Medlocke, sticksman Jakson “Thunderfoot” Spires, pounding away so hard you can almost smell the sweat (eeewww!). Spires also co-writes every song on this album with Medlocke. Now admittedly they're not going to win any prizes for original lyrics, but hey, that's not what Blackfoot are about. Let other delve deeply into the human psych, put the world to rights or give their opinions on this and that: these boys are here for one reason and one reason only: to rock!

And how they do! Slowing down a little for “Payin' for it”, the second track comes across as the very best of Sammy Hagar, with great bass from Mister Greg T. Walker (heavy, as he says himself in the liner notes, on the “Mister”!), and some vocal harmonies that stray just over the border into AOR territory, before they're roped and pulled back into the dry, dusty plains and Hagret gives his guitar a fine work out to show this band is all about rock, and to Blackfoot there is only one type, or one type that matters anyway: Southern!

“Diary of a workingman” is a great little acoustic ballad, a real song for the ordinary guy. ”Been a poor man all his life/ And just when everything was going right/ Some stranger takes his woman away/ Don't know if he'll see another day.” It's the second-longest song on the album, just beaten out by seconds by the closer, and one of only two that are over five minutes long. Blackfoot are not about rock epics, no sir! But they can turn it on when they feel the need to, and here they fashion a truly great southern ballad which smoulders and smokes with indignation and rage at the injustices of the world. Yeah, I know I said earlier they don't write songs about putting the world to rights, but this is an intensely personal song. It's about one man (okay, indicative of ALL workingmen, and women), but doesn't seek to change the world, just point out how ****ty it can be for those who aren't lucky enough to be born into privilege. Witness the end lines: ”With a tear in his eye/ And a gun in his hand/ So ends the diary/ Of a workingman.” Says it all.

After this brief introspective pause they're off and running again, rockin' hard with “Too hard to handle” before we're into “Fly away”, the shortest and most commercial song on the album and indeed their only hit single. Maybe if they had written more songs of this calibre they might have been a lot more successful, but then I feel that chart success was never really on Blackfoot's radar. All they wanted to do was get out there and rock. If people bought their records, great, if not, then **** them. A real no-nonsense, no-frills band in very much the mould of the late, legendary Rory Gallagher.

In addition to the guitars, bass and drums on the album, Blackfoot also draft in some other musicians to play the likes of trumpet, harmonica, banjo and horns, most notably Medlocke's grandfather Shorty, who gives it a blast on banjo, racking off a truly astonishing solo as well as speaking the intro to “Rattlesnake rock'n'roller”, which he also co-wrote with his grandson and Spires. It's a great boogie rocker/blues/country jamboree hybrid, with some truly inspired gee-tar and some honky-tony pianner from Mister Greg T. Walker, not to mention some mean horns! Yee-haaaww!

That would have been a good enough closer, but then we get the five-minute-plus “Searchin'”, which, cliché as it may seem, gives “Free bird” one hell of a run for its money. A slow-burning start on guitar and keyboard yields to Rickey Medlock's impassioned vocal, then the drums kick in as he sings ”They tell me that a man must crawl/ Before he can walk/ Yeah they told me/ You gotta cry before you can talk.” Some more great vocal harmonies, before the inevitable guitar solo as the song charges to its end on a perfect southern-rock arrangement. A great way to end the album, rockin' all the way.

If you like deep lyrics, thoughtful messages and complicated, four-part songs, look elsewhere. If you like lots of ballads, AOR tracks and synthesisers, jest ride on by. But if you like the smell of cordite and horse****, the taste of neat whiskey and the feel of the hot desert wind in your face as you ride, the aroma of motor oil and the acrid smell of burning fretboard, then come on in, partner, for you have found your long-lost brothers.

TRACKLISTING

1. Good morning
2. Payin' for it
3. Diary of a workingman
4. Too hard to handle
5. Fly away
6. Dry county
7. Fire of the dragon
8. Rattlesnake rock'n'roller
9. Searchin'



Suggested further listening: “Tomcattin'”, “Strikes” and the live album “Highway song”

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Escapology --- Robbie Williams --- 2002 (EMI)


This was the last Robbie Williams album I listened to. It's not that I went off him, it's just that a release like “Rudebox” made me pause before just rushing out and buying his next album, and after that I was pretty much inundated with so much downloaded content that the idea of getting his next few albums, although flirted with and not by any means disposed of, is still more or less on the back burner. I really enjoyed “I've been expecting you”, thought “Life through a lens” was ok and quite enjoyed “Sing when you're winning” (but ignored the swing album, as I don't like that sort of music particularly), and ended up here.

So, is it any good? Yes it is. It's very good. Not that surprisingly, being the album that was intended to break him commercially in the US, it's polished, slick and very commercial, but still retains the arists's quirky sense of humour, and a lot of his own heart and soul, on songs like “Nan's song” and “Hot fudge”. The album opens with him exclaiming, in very Divine Comedy manner, “Cows!”, rather fittingly, as the title of the opener is “How peculiar!”, and sets his stall out from the start as he sings ”I am all of the above..” It's more bluesy rock than pop, a gap Williams straddles quite well, given his already established popularity and image as a pop star. It's a heavy start to the album, perhaps not what his longtime fans would have expected, and the follow-up, the first single, “Feel”, would be more to their taste.

A piano-driven semi-ballad, it's well known as it was in the charts and on the radio seems for ever, and it's a really good song, a look into the heart of the artist as he looks for meaning in his sometimes superficial life. ”I don't wanna die/ But I ain't keen on livin' either...” The album is if nothing else good value for money, with fourteen tracks, few of which come in at under four minutes, with one of them running over seven. Perhaps surprisingly, there are really no bad tracks on this album, and some really good ones. I wouldn't class it as better than, or even as good as “Expecting”, but it comes darn close.

“Monsoon” is a great autobiographical song, almost Oasis-like (which I know he'll hate, as he has a real problem with the Gallagher brothers, but hey, he's hardly likely to read my little review, is he?) with some truly great guitar work, and some of the best, sharpest lyrics he's written to date: [i]”To all you Sharons and Michelles/ With all your tales to tell/ Save your milk money well/ I'm glad that spending the night with me/ Guaranteed you celebrity.”[/] “Sexed up”, the first real ballad is just perfect, piano and acoustic guitar melding in a gentle song about a breakup, hard feelings and regrets, selected as the fourth single from the album and getting into the top ten.

“Love somebody” is another ballad which starts off pure acoustic, then gets going with some really nice strings arrangement, a real sense of desperation in the chorus, real urgency. Great vocal harmonies, almost a gospel song in its own right. “Come undone” was another single, and no doubt you heard it on the radio at some point, so not too much to say about it other than that it's a great little song, and indeed one of only two on the album not co-written by longtime songwriting partner Guy Chambers. I much prefer the hilarious and clever “Me and my monkey”, though, which is in fact the longest track on the album. Hey, you have to listen to it, just for its having a title like that! But it is a great song, with a totally out-there lyric involving casinos, fast cars and Mexican stand-offs, all under a great horn-driven theme made to sound like a mariachi band playing.

”We hit the strip with all the wedding chapels/ And the neon signs/ He said 'I left my wallet in El Segundo'/ And proceeded to take two grand of mine.” You just don't get songs written like this anymore! And then you get the weirdly titled “Song 3”, where Robbie channels the ghost of Kurt Cobain, and very well too. “Hot fudge”, meanwhile, is pure LA-funk, Robbie revealing his long-held wish to make it in the US:”Hot fudge, here come the judge/ There's a green card in the way/ The Holy Ghost and the whole east coast/ Are moving to LA/ We've been dreaming of this feeling/ Since 1988...”

The album ends on a very simple, tender tribute to Robbie's grandmother, the song simply called “Nan's song”, in which he sings of losing her and how he misses her. It's a very revealing song, raw with emotion and backed by acoustic guitar and violin, a real insight into a man often accused of being more than a little shallow. It's also the other song he wrote without the help of Guy Chambers, and it closes the album in fine, if low-key style.

“Hidden tracks” can be weird. He's included two here, which run after “Nan's song” ends, so don't hit the “stop” button just yet! Screeching guitar introduces a sort of end-theme to the album, called “Save the children”, then you have to be patient as the second hidden track doesn't come in for another six minutes (!), on the back of an acoustic guitar strum, joined by organ and then piano, apparently Robbie's random thoughts when he was out on a boring date. He calls this “I tried love”.

Maybe his subsequent albums were all great, but as I said I haven't listened to anything after this one, and on that basis I find it not to be his best --- that honour still goes to the stunning “I've been expecting you” --- but a very close second. If nothing else, listen to it for “Me and my monkey”...

TRACKLISTING

1. How peculiar
2. Feel
3. Something beautiful
4. Monsoon
5. Sexed up
6. Love somebody
7. Revolution
8. Handsome man
9. Come undone
10. Me and my monkey
11. Hot fudge
12. Song 3
13. Cursed
14. Nan's song (incorporating “hidden tracks” Save the children and I tried love)



Suggested further listening: “I've been expecting you”, “Life through a lens”, “Sing when you're winning”

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