Monthly Archives: September 2020

THE ROLLING STONES – Steel Wheels Tour: Atlantic City, New Jersey

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When The Rolling Stones released ‘Steel Wheels’ at the end of the 80s, they’d spent the better part of a decade coasting off the back of some average albums and a lot of goodwill.  Although when heard many years later the album now sounds like the Stones on autopilot, in 1989 it sounded sharp and vibrant; streets ahead of both 1983’s ‘Undercover’ and 1986’s absolutely turgid ‘Dirty Work’.  The singles ‘Rock & A Hard Place’ and ‘Mixed Emotions’ harked back to solid rockers like ‘Start Me Up’ and ‘Little T&A’ from almost a decade earlier, while tracks like ‘Hold On To Your Hat’ proved the veteran rockers were still more than capable of cutting loose.

A great album deserves a great tour, and in that department, the Stones really didn’t short change their fans either.  The ‘Steel Wheels Tour’ of ’89 – renamed the ‘Urban Jungle Tour’ in 1990 – took the band around the globe and saw them visiting the US shores for the first time since 1981. Fans have already been able to revisit the Steel Wheels tour via a widely circulated show filmed at the Tokyo Dome in 1990, but the earlier show from Atlantic City in December ‘89 outdoes that in almost every respect.

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WAR CLOUD – Chain Gang EP

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With their 2017 debut release, US metal titans War Cloud championed a very old fashioned style of music.  In tracks like ‘Red Witch’, their debt to the roots of Black Sabbath seemed obvious, while in faster paced material it was easy to trace influence directly back to ‘Stained Class’ era Judas Priest.  What the record lacked in originality, it made up for with musical chops and a lot of enthusiasm.  2019’s ‘State of Shock’ gave the world more of the same, but cranked up the energy.  By chucking in the odd riff borrowed from Diamond Head and Kiss, the band mined classic rock’s rich past a little further with some very retro results.  Understandably, by this point, those who liked War Cloud seemed to really love them.

Although a global pandemic ground the world to a halt in 2020 and put an end to live gigs for the foreseeable future, War Cloud maintained their presence with a pair of releases.  ‘The Earhammer Sessions’ presented choice cuts replayed live in the studio and, although a strong career overview, didn’t really provide much of an alternative to the original recordings, while ‘Chain Gang’ – a two song stop-gap EP – gave fans something more to enjoy while the band considered their next move.
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CURTIS KNIGHT & THE SQUIRES feat. JIMI HENDRIX – You Can’t Use My Name: The RSVP/PPX Sessions

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In 1968, Capitol Records issued a selection of tracks recorded by Curtis Knight with Jimi Hendrix as the ‘Get That Feeling’ LP. These session recordings, made a few years earlier, were a deliberate attempt to cash in on the guitarist’s meteoric rise to fame over the previous eighteen months. Over the years, various combinations of those recordings made for the PPX and RSVP labels were issued as unlicensed albums in shoddy packaging, destined to fill the discount shelves of supermarkets and petrol station shops.

Issued in March 2015, ‘You Can’t Use My Name’ represents the first “Hendrix Family Approved” release of the session material. The chosen numbers allow a good insight into the range and talents of the younger Jimi, making it a worthwhile compilation.

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AMBASSADOR – Care Vale

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Two years on from their ‘Belly of The Whale’ album, this six track release from Ambassador presents the band in a slower and heavier mood than ever before. Throughout ‘Care Vale’s half-hour playing time, The Baton Rouge based post-rockers tackle a world of slow and intensive riffs, taking their sound further towards the gothic/doom variety, but without completely abandoning their previous love for a few proggy quirks. It’s worth noting that, from the outset, this slight musical shift means there isn’t anything on offer as immediately likeable – or melodic – as ‘Feral As They Were’, or necessarily as atmospheric as ‘Diorama’, but in terms of riffs, extant fans should still find something to enjoy.
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JOAN OSBORNE – Trouble And Strife

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For almost everyone, Joan Osborne will be best remembered for her mid nineties hit ‘One of Us’, but her long career has thrown up so many other gems along the way. Even that mega-hit’s parent album, 1995’s ‘Relish’ featured far superior tracks: with ‘Spider Web’, she introduced the world to her sassy blend of blues and soul via an insatiable groove and sultry vocal and her cover of Bob Dylan’s ‘Man In The Long Black Coat’, slowed down to a spooky crawl, ran rings around Zimmerman’s rather jerky original recording. Across several other far more neglected albums, Joan’s vocal talents continued to shine. ‘Dead Roses’, a particular highlight from her 2006 release ‘Pretty Little Stranger’, suggested she could rival Bonnie Raitt in the bluesy stakes; various cuts from 2012’s ‘Bring It On Home’ demonstrated her husky take on various R&B standards to great effect and 2017’s ‘Songs of Bob Dylan’ had plenty to offer anyone with a keen interest in different takes on a familiar back-catalogue. Wherever you choose to dip into Joan’s work, there’s something to enjoy…and always a nagging feeling that she should have been bigger. Perhaps her over reliance on other people’s material has hindered her being a star on a global scale, but there’s no questioning her vocal talent. However, none of her previous highlights are a match for her 2020 release ‘Trouble and Strife’.

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