THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 25, 1995 TAG: 9508240121
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E8 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Record Review
LENGTH: Medium: 86 lines
Love, ``Love Story: 1966-1972'' (Rhino)
There's lots of bands you haven't heard. But imagine there was one that inspired Jim Morrison and Led Zeppelin, was honored by a tribute disc and has regularly been credited with making one of the best records of the '60s. That band existed, and it was Love.
Present-day groups including Urge Overkill covered Love songs last year on the disc ``We're All Normal and We Want Our Freedom.'' But few succeeded in wrapping their own styles around songwriter and singer Arthur Lee's quirky tunes, a catalogue that draws on folk rock, psychedelia, flamenco and even classical music.
This 2-CD set would be valuable if it did little more than preserve the band's masterpiece, the 1967 album ``Forever Changes.'' It is a moody, airy, visionary classic enlivened by orchestral instruments and psychedelic effects. Available up to now in only an inferior CD transfer, it is here spread out over two CDs, forcing the listener to consider the album's original side break.
And this is a record worthy of serious listening. Lee, who is still performing the occasional date today, wrote quirky lyrics - one song begins, ``Oh, the snot has caked against my pants/it has turned into crystal''; another includes the line ``Yeah, I heard a funny thing/Somebody said to me,/You know, that I could be/In love with almost anyone.'' Like these words, the music can seem lightweight or even flip at first hearing. But after a while, the cascading strings, the trumpet, the harpsichord and even the awkward guitar solos seem right because they're not just decoration, they're part of a haunting, expressive whole.
The surrounding 33 songs from before and after ``Forever Changes'' have hardly a dog among them. ``The Everlasting First'' includes a solo by early collaborator Jimi Hendrix. ``Hey Joe'' is a rocking take on a song that remain more familiar in Hendrix's later, slower version. Bandmate Bryan Maclean's ``Orange Skies'' is a ballad that could have come from one of the trippier Broadway shows of the era.
Love made hardly a dent in the Billboard charts - ``Forever Changes'' rose to the humble 154th spot and their highest-charting single, the frequently covered ``7&7 Is,'' went only to No. 33. But they ruled L.A. in their early years, and Morrison reportedly once remarked that he wanted to be ``as big as Love.'' They got bigger, but never better.
- Mark Mobley ``The Show!'' (Def Jam)
``The realest thing you could do was just put a drumbeat with nothing but a drumbeat, but also loud,'' hip-hop magnate Russell Simmons recalls at one point in the soundtrack album from the concert film ``The Show!''
He's remembering Run-D.M.C.'s early work. But save for that brief allusion, the title (borrowed from Doug E. Fresh's 1985 classic of silliness) and a couple of comments from trailblazers Kid Creole, Kid Capri and Ecstasy, there are no traces of the party music that led to the most massive pop-cultural upheaval of the '80s and '90s. Given that today's hip-hoppers are proud to give props to their forerunners, why shouldn't younger listeners get the chance to discover what made those oldies so great?
The CD, like so many others associated with recent motion pictures, is built largely on throwaway performances from major names. Mary J. Blige offers ``Everyday It Rains,'' a midtempo torcher that doesn't come close to the excitement of her best tracks. A Tribe Called Quest, L.L. Cool J and Domino are also among those whose own albums smoke their ``Show!'' contributions.
That stuff's just dull, though. The worst comes with a tearily sentimental nod to the ``Ol' Skool'' from newcomer Isaac 2 Isaac and a dreadfully self-congratulatory performance by 2 Pac obviously cut before his recent incarceration. Putting himself in the head of an imaginary gangsta, he boasts that ``life in the pen is not for me, 'cause I'd rather die.'' Oh yeah? 2 Pac pays lip service to innocent drive-by victims before deciding that it's OK for thugs to steal welfare checks if they use them to buy chrome wheels. The only other cut that comes close to this level of idiocy is South Central Cartel Productions' ``Sowhatusayin,'' a cartoonish but unfunny litany of gangsta cliches.
Finally, is it fair to fans of Snoop Doggy Dogg, Treach and Slick Rick to list their interview comments as separate tracks on this album's back cover? Warning: These guys may be rapping, but they're not rapping. As Doug E. Fresh used to say, ``Oh, my God.''
- Rickey Wright ILLUSTRATION: [Color Photo]
by CNB