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Philip Kane

Songs For Swinging Lovers

Corrupt

http://www.philipkane.com

        What exactly are you supposed to make of a guy who entitles his album Songs For Swinging Lovers, then starts the proceedings with a track entitled "Me, The Ladyboy, and Gloria Estefan"? You’re probably thinking, okay, this is going to be goofy. Except that, when the guy starts singing, he produces a soulful voice that’s somewhere between Al Green, David McAlmont, and, hell, I don’t know, maybe even a little Jeff Buckley. Then, lyrically, there are hints of Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, and even Paul Heaton of the Beautiful South. Take, for instance, these lines from "Sally’s Birthday": "I’m sorry I said / When I pissed in your bed / It was your fault, keeping me drinking / But you know how I get / When my tonsils are wet / I was never too much good at standing." Sounds like Heaton to me! This is an unexpected treat of an album. The only disappointment is the lack of printed lyrics, particularly when virtually every couplet is sprinkled with a dark wit and decided poignancy.

Kansas

The Ultimate Kansas

Epic/Legacy

http://www.kansasband.com

        At first glance, it’s hard to take the title of this 2-disc compilation, The Ultimate Kansas, very seriously, particularly when it’s a matter of public record that the band released a box set back in 1994.  Logically, you’d have to figure that a box set would, simply by sheer volume, have the edge on a mere 2-disc compilation.

          Turns out, though, that the so-called “box set” contained only 2 discs...which, I think most of us would agree, is a pretty crappy excuse for a box set.

          The next step, therefore, is to make a comparison of the tracks contained on these two double-disc compilations and see which comes closest to the definition of “ultimate.”

          As it happens, this is not a case of false advertising.  There’s little question that The Ultimate Kansas blows away any previous competition in the field of “most comprehensive Kansas anthology.”  No, it doesn’t cover the MCA years, let alone anything the band’s done since...but it is, without question, the best existing collection of the band’s work from 1974 to 1983.

          The average radio listener is probably only familiar with Kansas for their two biggest hits:  “Carry On Wayward Son,” from Leftoverture (a.k.a. the song that taught the band Jellyfish how to harmonize together), and “Dust In The Wind,” from Point Of Know Return.  If you stretch your album-rock memory, you might even recognize “People of the South Wind,” “Hold On,” and “Play The Game”; the latter was a pretty substantial hit, but if you’ve thought it was by Styx for all these years, trust me, it’s an easy mistake to make.  Still, it’s the two albums cited above that are generally considered the watershed moments of the band’s career.

          Kansas were definitely a unique entity when they first emerged on the music scene.  Somewhere between Yes and the Doobie Brothers, mixing American rock with British progressive tendencies, it might be overstating things to say that, at certain moments during the ‘70s, they were the US equivalent of Led Zeppelin, but not by much.

          Listening to The Ultimate Kansas, though, one realizes that, as good as some of the material may be, Kansas were definitely one of the bands that led directly to the beginning of punk rock.  It’s songs like the 10+ minute “Song For America” and the 9+ minute “The Pinnacle” that inspired a generation to rebel against lengthy, bloated tracks of epic length and get back to hard, fast nuggets of rock ‘n’ roll.  It’s names like Genesis, Yes, and King Crimson who tend to be cited more often than not, but, rest assured, Kansas were a part of the “problem” (as seen by the soon-to-be-punks, anyway) as well.

          The band’s last album for Epic, Drastic Measures, is often written off as a desperate attempt for commercial viability in the just-getting-started MTV generation.  If that’s what it was, then it was a dismal failure; it proved to be Kansas’s least successful album since their debut.  Still, at the same time, there’s surely a certain percentage of the cable-viewing public that fondly remembers the video for the album’s single.  Those folks will be glad to know that, while no other song from Drastic Measures made the cut, “Fight Fire with Fire” does, indeed, appear on The Ultimate Kansas.

          There are a handful of omissions that diehards could argue about, but that’s par for the course with any collection from any band, really.  “Where’s ‘Questions Of My Childhood?’” some will want to know.  The answer, of course, is that it’s still sitting quite comfortably on Leftoverture, where you can always find it if you want it, since, if you know that song, you probably already own that album, anyway.

          It’s not very likely that a casual fan would choose The Ultimate Kansas over the less-unwieldy, single-disc compilation, The Best of Kansas, particularly considering that the latter contains pretty much every significant radio hit the band ever had.  Anyone looking for a career overview of the band’s work that covers both the airwave-friendly stuff in addition to the 7+ minute album tracks, however, would do well to lunge headlong into this set.

Tommy Keene

Isolation Party

Matador

        1998 is already off to a good start with Tommy Keene, pop guitar god extraordinare, returning with his second new album in two years.  Not too shabby for someone who had a gap of half a decade between discs last time....especially considering he's been keeping busy helping out other people.  Keene served as lead guitarist for Velvet Crush while they opened for Oasis (and been described by Noel Gallager as "the clever fucker with the Telecaster") during '96, and he served in the same capacity for Paul Westerberg during live shows in '97, but he's still found the time to record 12 new originals (and a cover of Mission of Burma's "Einstein's Day") for Isolation Party.

        An all-star cast contributes to the record, including Jeff Tweedy (from Wilco) and Jesse Valenzuela (late of the Gin Blossoms), and the quality shows, from the opener, "Long Time Missing," all the way until the end.  The best track, though, is "Take Me Back," with its memorably melodic guitar riff.  Keene's vocals are remarkably reminiscent of Adam Schmitt's at times, but that's certainly far from a bad thing.

          Be aware that Isolation Party doesn't find Keene breaking any new ground, but, to be honest, who cares?  As long as he's still consistently melodic, his albums will continue to provide an enjoyable listening experience, and that's what counts most.

Kris Kristofferson

The Essential Kris Kristofferson

Columbia/Legacy

http://www.chapter33.com/

                One of my fondest memories of growing up is riding along with my dad in his green Ford pick-up truck, listening to Johnny Cash’s Live At Folsom Prison on 8-track tape.  (Yes, 8-track.  I’m no spring chicken, my friend.)  It’s a little foggy, the memory, as I was still in the single digits back then, so maybe I’m wrong about the pick-up truck.  Maybe that came later, and I was actually listening to Johnny while cruising along in a blue Maverick, or possibly an orange Datsun.  But that caveat having been offered, it doesn’t change the fact that, to this day, I can still sing “Dirty Old Egg Sucking Dog” and “Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart” word for word.  I have equally warm recollections of listening to a cassette tape of Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings crooning “Luckenbach, Texas (Back To The Basics Of Love)” and “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys.”

                So when I heard about the debut album by the Highwaymen being released in 1985, I thought, “Sweet!  Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson all singing and playing together!”

And, yet, when I actually looked at the country equivalent of Mount Rushmore staring out from the cover of the album, all I could think was, “Who’s the guy on the far right and what the hell does he think he’s doing up there with Johnny, Waylon, and Willie?”

“The guy on the far right,” of course, was Kris Kristofferson.  And, with a bit more reflection, I’m sure I recognized him…but not from his music.  Not really, anyway.  No, if anything, I probably thought, “Hey, that guy was on ‘The Muppet Show’!”  (Season Three, baby.  He co-hosted with his then-wife Rita Coolidge.  Check it out.)

Somehow, my education in country music had managed to omit poor Kris.  What I would later come to realize, however, was that I had actually come to know some of his work without actually knowing it was his.  I’d certainly heard Janis Joplin’s version of “Me and Bobby McGee,” probably Johnny Cash’s interpretation of “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and, given how many times it’s been covered, I can’t imagine I hadn’t at least heard someone’s version of “Help Me Make It Through The Night” (probably Glen Campbell’s).

Still, Kris Kristofferson is definitely the least-familiar member of the Highwaymen to mainstream America when it comes to his music (his face, of course, is easy identifiable from his film and television work).

Thanks to Legacy Recordings, there’s now a stellar introduction to the man’s material:  the 2-disc Essential Kris Kristofferson.  It isn’t the first best-of he’s had released, and it might not even be the best, but it's no less a fine sampling of Kristofferson’s career to date…or, at least, of his work on Monument and Columbia, anyway.

Essential is more than a little top-heavy with material from Kristofferson’s early years.  Disc 1 contains ten songs from his 1970 debut (11 if you count “Come Sundown,” a demo of which is tacked onto the 2001 CD re-release of Kristofferson), seven from 1971’s The Silver-Tongued Devil And I, and a solo version of “From The Bottle To The Bottom,” which he later recorded with Coolidge for ‘73’s Full Moon.  Disc 2, meanwhile, is far more sprawling, essentially covering from 1972 to 1985.

Spending 18 tracks on two years worth of material, then 19 tracks on thirteen years worth certainly makes the majority of Kristofferson’s work post-1971 seem decidedly less than essential.  While Disc 1 might well contain the work that made Kristofferson a legend in the country music community, Disc 2 certainly isn’t without merit.  For one, the Jimmy Webb-composed “theme song” for the Highwaymen is about as perfect a meeting of four country legends as you could hope for…even if only Johnny Cash could get away with singing the line, “I fly a starship ‘cross the universe divide.”  The John Prine-dedicated “Jesus Was A Capricorn” is certainly a classic, and you can’t fault any duet with Willie Nelson (“How You Do Feel About Foolin’ Around”).  But the second disc is decidedly uneven and isn’t nearly as representative of Kristofferson’s later work as the first disc is of his earliest material.  It might not be as memorable as the stuff from the early ‘70s, but it still doesn’t deserve quite as short a shrift as this.

Missing in action altogether are such tracks as “You Show Me Yours And I’ll Show You Mine,” “I Got A Life Of My Own,” and “Who’s To Bless And Who’s To Blame,” but perhaps that’s done to give other Kristofferson best-of collections a reason to remain in print.

It’s arguable that The Essential Kris Kristofferson is inferior to the 1991 2-disc compilation Singer/Songwriter, which takes the interesting tactic of offering a disc of Kristofferson’s original versions alongside the often-more-successful cover versions by other artists, thereby offering a fuller picture of what he’s accomplished as both a songwriter and a recording artist.  Additionally, by not touching much of anything beyond 1985, this certainly isn’t a definitive collection by any means.

                Nonetheless, the material contained within these two discs is more than enough to clarify exactly how Kris Kristofferson earned his position within the Highwaymen.

Post-Script:  In a moment of pure serendipity (thereby giving me the opportunity to use the word “serendipity” in a sentence for the first time in my career in journalism), less than three hours after writing this review, I attended the Williamsburg Film Festival and was introduced to Alan Rush, who worked at Monument with Kris Kristofferson and, among his many other studio and songwriting credits, played on Jesus Was A Capricorn.  When I told him about the review I’d written that morning, he asked with amusement if his name made it into the credits of The Essential Kris Kristofferson.  (It does.)  He then admitted that the aforementioned Singer/Songwriter collection might actually be the better way to investigate Kristofferson’s work.  “He’s a brilliant songwriter,” Rush easily acknowledged, “but he isn’t necessarily the best interpreter of his own songs.”  He then went on to offer up several anecdotes about Kristofferson’s contemporaries that I’d love to regale you with, if it wasn’t for the fact that virtually all of them are probably libellous.  Damn.

(originally appeared on PopMatters.com)