Finishing The First Step by The (Small) Faces

Flying - On vinyl, this was the track that started Side B. I would have selected it to be the opening track on the album because of its dramatic nature... After about 20 seconds, it dawns on you that this is basically Traffic's Dear Mr. Fantasy with new lyrics. When the chorus comes in, it becomes the second song on Step that sounds like Handbags and Gladrags. Kenny keeps it interesting - in a Jim Capaldi-like way - and the ending actually sounds like a plane flying over the ocean; flying you home.

Pineapple and the Monkey - A fun instrumental track that used to serve as the opening for "Rock Album Review" on KUOP-FM in Stockton, California.

When, exactly, did bands stop recording instrumentals? (The Beatles recorded a couple that were never released.)

Nobody Knows - Clever lyrics: "I'm waiting here in Patience/ And I'm waiting all in vain/ Will I see you? Will I touch you? Will I hear you call my name?" A nice double-tracked vocal ballad from Rod and Ronnie Lane that actually worked. This served as a reminder of the fact that on occasion the Faces Small sounded like no one else.

Kenny added the "falling down the stairs" drumming.

Looking Out the Window - The second fun instrumental, with heavy bass and Winwood-like organ. Like an out-take from The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys, although we doubt that Steve Winwood would ever loosen up this much. The lead guitar work from Ron Wood shows that he - like Steve Marriott - listened to more than a few Pink Floyd albums.

The many changes in tempo before the end arrives at 5:02 illustrates what a tight band the Faces were once upon a time.

Three Button Hand Me Down - This was one of their best songs performed live, both because of Ronnie Lane's Jack Bruce/Cream-like bass line and because Rod still sounded like he was genuinely enjoying himself.

Ian McLagan on organ, please.

"Others may come and others may go/ But that suit will be around wherever you go/ Three button hand me down..."

Summary: Although we liked the later-released Long Player, this first effort captured the Faces at their professional best. Similarly, to experience the best of Rod Stewart you need to hear the Truth - Beck-Ola - The Rod Stewart Album - Gasoline Alley four-pack.

I saw the Faces live four times and, sad to say, they got sloppier with each performance. They eventually became the Rolling Stones on an off night.

Note: If you find this CD today, you'll see a cover that reads "faces." But the original cover read "small faces." Revisionist history on the part of Warner Brothers.

Next: See the rare sleeve cover for the Flying/Three Button Hand Me Down 45 RPM single.

The First Step by The (Small) Faces - A Retro Record Review...

The drums! This album is all about the drums. Kenny Jones was let loose on this 10 song, 48-minute, collection in a way that he never would be again. If you only heard the drum work, you might think you were listening to The Who, Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience or Bob Henrit of Argent - who played the part of Keith Moon on the (Roger) Daltrey solo album.

Note: I won't be quoting many lyrics here as my review copy CD is a Japanese import with lyrics printed in Japanese characters.

OK, so let's review the ten tracks...

Wicked Messenger - A Bob Dylan-penned fable with heavy organ (think Emerson, Lake and Palmer) starts the album off with a literal bang. Quite fine and quite audible bass work from Ronnie Lane, Ron Wood on the lead guitar, and Kenny pounds the drums until the very last of the 4:08. Good to the last beat!

Rod the Mod does such a great job as "the voice" that he could have made a career out of covering BD songs. Oh, and, yes, the arrangement does sound like Hendrix' cover-arrangement of BD's All Along the Watchtower.

Once the last drum beat hits, its obvious that Martin Birch did an A to A+ job of engineering.

Devotion - This ballad about family ("It's so good to be with the people that know you/ It's good to hear the things they say/ At times when you are with them...") would have fit perfectly on the Elizabethtown soundtrack. This is the first of two songs on First Step that sounds like Handbags and Gladrags on The Rod Stewart Album - meant and intended as a compliment. Wood picks in circles like Dave Mason on this one. Kenny kicks the drums right before the end.

Shake, Shudder and Shiver - It starts off like Foghat with a heavy lead guitar opening riff isolated on the right channel before the rest of the band drops in on the left. Kenny pushes the band like a locomotive barreling down the tracks. There's more than a trace of Cream's Sunshine of Your Love in the lead and bass rhythm. This is one of those hard rock tracks that, heard live, would cause fans to light their Bics in tribute.

Stone - Sorry, but talky tracks with banjo and mandolin were never a favorite of mine, and this Ronnie Lane vocal goes on for all of 5:43 - about twice the length needed. As a short throwaway, it might have seemed cute. The one positive is hearing Rod as a not so bad (and barking) back-up singer.

Plynth - This was the band's live show stopper and with good reason. Early Fleetwood Mac (pre Buckingham-Nicks) meets Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Robin Trower. Absolutely brilliant stereo production - it's moving in stereo - and Wood has never played a crisper lead. The drums are so clean and clear you feel like you're sitting under the kit.

(Part I of II... Continued tomorrow, from Flying to Three Button Hand Me Down .)

Is This Any Way to Run A Company?

The Warner Music Group lost $56 million in the most recent fiscal year, and its stock lost 25% of its value. So the CEO of WMG, Edgar Bronfman, Jr., was paid a $3 million dollar bonus for "strong operational performance in a historically challenging industry environment"!

How's that for standing logic and common sense on its head?

(Poor Year Doesn't Stop CEO Bonuses, The Wall Street Journal, 03/18/09.)

Disclosure: This Friday and Saturday, we're publishing a two-part retro review of The Small Faces' The First Step album, which was released on Warner Brothers Records. I was not paid a million dollars for the review.

"The Small Faces was the best English band never to hit it big in America." allmusic

A Retro-Review of Brian Wilson's Smile...

Note: I originally wrote this record review in early 2004, when the long-delayed Smile was released. However, at that time I had no place to post it; now I do.

"God is not subtle." Albert Einstein. But could God have a sense of humor?

A REVIEW OF SMILE

OK, so first of all, forget everything you've read or heard about this being Brian Wilson's Sgt. Pepper's album. This is not Sgt. Pepper's - Pet Sounds was that and more - but another Abbey Road, side two.

Side two of the Beatles' Abbey Road was basically a collection of unfinished songs, ideas for songs that Paul McCartney called "bites." Brian Wilson called his song ideas "bits" and today, in the age of digital recording, they might appropriately be called "bytes," but that's another story. (The idea of playing song pieces derives from the English music hall and American burlesque halls, where musicians who ran out of sheet music to play filled in with their ideas for future songs.)

Smile is a collection of bites and bits and more; and like Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper's the work is more than the sum of its parts. It is a collection of musical ideas intended - like the Who's Tommy or Chicago II - to be experienced by the listener as one piece, from start to finish, for better or worse.

Let me get the worst out of the way right now. The biggest flaw with Smile is Brian's need, then and now, to show us what a comprehensive student of music he is. The pivotal and repeating "Heroes and Villains" theme borrows from Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf." Further, as we listen we hear the influences of Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copeland, Gershwin, Erik Satie, Mozart, Dvorak, movie soundtracks such as How the West Was Won, casino crooners, Spike Jones and his City Slickers, and the colored vinyl children's records that Brian first digested. Some also hear Bach and/or Schubert.

It is all, at first, a bit too much, a kitchen sink approach to music. Just like the 23 tracks on the symphony-like Chicago II was at first too much, especially with the producer's note: "This endeavor should be experienced sequentially." But the more you listened, the more the whole effort made sense and eventually you couldn't consider re-arranging the track order.

This is what happens with Smile. Initially, it seems too cute, too bloated and busy. But then you remember the very appropriate title of this collection, and the original album art that looked very much like the cover of a children's book.

Oh... This isn't meant to be SERIOUS, this is for fun, deliberately childlike and childish in a deliberately non-grown up way.

Come to think of it, too much of our music is far too serious. From Springsteen's post-9/11 The Rising, to Sinatra's aging album September of Our Years ("Tonight is not for fun, tonight is for serious..." said the liner notes), to personal and brilliant but troubling confessionals like Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks and Joni Mitchell's Blue, it is all too serious. It is all so tiredly adult.

So, Smile isn't Paul Simon's Graceland nor Peter Gabriel's Us, but it is equally life-affirming when heard with a different ear; a child's ear, before the end of the innocence. (Interestingly, like those two albums, Smile is acceptingly multicultural and not Anglo-Saxon ethno-centric.)

Smile is not one of those hard to absorb albums about the weariness of life or life's losses or heavy lessons. It's not a divorce album or an album about eventual survival or death. It is a simple collection of songs about enjoying life simply ("eat your vegetables") and having fun. Let's play that funny horn and make silly noises! Let's pretend to fly! I'll be Davy Crockett!

Smile is an album dedicated to the enjoyment of music, the enjoyment of life no matter how short - even if your siblings (like two of Brian's) pre-decease you. Enjoy life even if the worst is going to happen, when you grow up someday.

Smile tells us that music is enough. Smile reminds us that life is a miracle and so this music is Brian's prayer, his tribute, a child's contribution to God. A simple prayer, a fun prayer, a prayer meant to make even God smile.

Smile is not a masterpiece, but for human beings it is close enough.

Thank you, Brian.

No Longer Waitin' On Dave Mason

We were afraid that our retro review of Dave Mason's Alone Together album would not post on St. Patrick's Day due to some technical difficulties... but due to some technological miracles - and the luck of the Irish - it did appear, and you can read the full review, below.

It has dawned on us that the AT title may have derived from the lyrics of Waitin' on You, the third track on the 1970 album:

While there's no one that I can believe
It's all because I couldn't see (that)
The best friend that I'll have is me...