Music Video Of the Week - May 23, 2025

"Someone Saved My Life Tonight" by Elton John  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Rush - Permanent Waves (1980)

I can't describe the concept of Rush's Permanent Waves album with one word, like I could with Moving Pictures (motion).  I couldn't even describe the concept of Permanent Waves in a paragraph, as I'm not even sure of what the overall arching theme is.  But who cares?  Permanent Waves is an astonishing album, brimming with challenging, dynamic music and some of Neil Peart's most insightful lyrics and expanding Rush's boundaries as a progressive power trio.  Alex Lifeson's memorable guitar solos and Peart's hyperkinetic drumming blend seamlessly with Geddy Lee's inventive bass lines and keyboard riffs and - always the icing on the cake - his free-spirited, wailing vocals.  Rush in 1980 were still suffering slings and arrows from professional (as in paid, not expert) rock critics, with their fellow Canadian Alan Niester dismissing Lee's voice as a cross between Robert Plant and Donald Duck.  But it's Lee's enunciation and his ability to give Peart's intellectual lyrics a sense of fiery urgency and indignance that makes him not a great singer but a great rock and roll singer.

If there is a common theme between the six tracks on Permanent Waves, it's the collision of irresistible forces not with static objects but with each other.  The album storms out of the gate with "The Spirit of Radio," a full-throated rocker carried by a celestial synthesizer line and a Lifeson guitar solo that spells Lee's vocal for piercing effect.  The song is both an appreciation of radio and a lament for what corporate interests had begun to turn it into.  "Freewill" reinforces Peart's obsession with self-determination, the urgent lyrics endorsing a clear path to a better future while offering both a balm and a challenge to those resigned to fate. The crunchy guitar riffs of "Freewill" offer a sense of menace, while Lee proves once again that  he's the most thoughtful synthesizer programmer in North America northeast of Stevie Wonder.

Rush produced very few love songs, and Permanent Waves has both of them.   "Entre Nous" is a sharp power ballad that explores the differences and the emotional void between two lovers, while "Different Strings" is a quiet, more subtle work of romantic introspection underlined by Lifeson''s gentle guitar growl in the fadeout.  But the two epic tracks that close each side both make the case for Rush as master composers who avoid the tedium normally associated with long, extended prog compositions.  "Jacob's Ladder" is an ominous depiction of a passing storm with as much tension as one might feel with the coming of severe weather, the crescendo at the end providing an ecstatic dissipation.  "Natural Science," the closing cut, is a three-part dissertation of cause and effect, drawing parallels of the intimacy of microorganisms in tide pools o the expansion of the universe and man's role in it, coming full circle at the end with the sound of cashing waves.  Such a composition from other prog bands played on the radio would be a signal for a bathroom break; you don't get that vibe from "Natural Science" because you're too busy tapping your feet to the music and immersing yourself in the literary words on the lyric sheet. 

Released at the beginning of 1980, Permanent Waves was Rush's opening salvo in their quest to become one of the most relevant rock bands of the new decade, an aspiration they achieved the following year with Moving Pictures - in spades.  But they could never hope to be the coolest rock band of the eighties, a decade dominated by hair bands, and certainly not the coolest musical act of a decade in which the ground moved under rock's feet and transferred coolness and hipness to MTV pop divas and pretty-boy New Romantic British groups.  As the decade wore on, Rush would try to contemporize their sound, but their commitment to the substance that underpinned their music remained, and they weren't about to cater to the "in" crowd, much to the relief of their outcast fans.  It was really just a question of honesty.

Yeah, honesty.   

Music Video Of the Week - May 19, 2023

"On the Road Again" by Willie Nelson  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Steely Dan - Gaucho (1980)

In which the coolest band of the seventies begins a new decade and ends its run on a whimper.

Off the road for years and down to just Walter Becker and Donald Fagen relying on a revolving door of backing musicians, Steely Dan had gotten just a little too comfortable in the studio by 1980, and Gaucho was the result of their complacency.  The album is a set of songs offering clichéd depictions of the same sort of seedy characters they'd so vividly brought to life on earlier albums, and the music on Gaucho shows that Steely Dan's music had calcified into subdued, overproduced "smooth jazz" arrangements.

Conceptually, Gaucho mirrors Aja, with epic songs that allow the session musicians to stretch out but with none of the warmth and intimacy that characterized that earlier album.  The sound is quite antiseptic, and the effect is soporific enough to listen to as an alternative to a Sominex.  "Hey Nineteen,"  Gaucho's hit single about a May-December romance, is interesting mainly thanks to Steve Gadd's drumming, but even with Bernard Purdie's shuffling beat, "Babylon Sisters" actually makes depravity sound boring.   "Glamour Profession," like "Babylon Sisters" a song about the decadence of southern California, has a little more punch to it, but no heart, either.  And you would expect a song like the title track, about a guy being used by a friend to do a favor for his friend's partner, to be edgier than the actual song is.  And the pseudo-blues-rock arrangement for "Time Out of Mind" almost evaporates into thin air.

The problems with Gaucho are largely the sedate keyboards and the relaxed brass sections, and there's no one comparable to a Skunk Baxter or an Elliott Randall to provide a memorable guitar solo.  (Dire Straits' Mark Knopfler played a solo for "Time Out of Mind," but his contribution got edited and mixed down to almost nothing.)  Becker and Fagen certainly didn't do their session players any favors; the basic tracks were subjected to numerous retakes, and the songs underwent countless remixes before the duo were satisfied, though more often than not they settled for whatever they could get.  Steely Dan let the perfect be the enemy of the good on Gaucho, and as a result the album wasn't much of either.  No wonder Becker and Fagen, apart from helping Rosie Vela with her 1986 album ZaZu, wouldn't work together again for over a decade.

(After four album reviews - all of which were downers, more or less - I'm taking another break from reviewing records.  I should be back soon, and at least I got them started on a semi-related basis again.)

Crosby, Stills and Nash - Replay (1980)

The second Crosby, Stills and Nash greatest-hits compilation is credited on the hideously ugly record sleeve to "David Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash," which suggests a greater emphasis of the individual members of the group over their partnership.  There's a subtle reason for this, though; Replay is filled out by songs recorded outside the group.

Replay was Atlantic Records' effort to produce CSN product for the 1980 Christmas market in the face of the trio's chronic inability to provide a steady frequency of new material.  But with only three LPs to draw from - the first two having already sourced the 1974 Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young compilation So Far - four songs from their solo and duo projects had to be included. Two of those songs were taken from records from rival labels.  The group didn't want to put this record out but were given no choice; David Crosby didn't even know about it until just prior to its release.  

The CSN songs on Replay are among their most solid efforts; Nash's diverting "Marrakesh Express" finally gets its due after having been passed over for So Far, and the wistful 1977 Nash-penned hit "Just a Song Before I Go" is here too.  Crosby is represented here only by "Shadow Captain," but it's a monumental piece of work that features his most enigmatic lyrical imagery as well as co-composer Craig Doerge's stirring music.  

One can begrudgingly respect the decision to mix Crosby, Stills and Nash songs with tracks from their work outside the group; rather than take the easy way out and use well-known hits already used on So Far, like "Suite: Judy Blue Eyes" and "Teach Your Children," the record label aimed to deliver value for money by offering more diverse and overlooked material.  But the solo and duo tracks pose a problem.  Not with their quality, as they're as strong as any songs the trio did together - the problem is that, as part of a CSN compilation, they remind you how much better Crosby, Stills and Nash's solo and duo songs could have been if they had recorded them together and challenged and communicated with each other instead of going off on their own tangents.  As wonderful as Crosby and Nash's suite "To the Last Whale . . . " is, you're left wondering what Stills could have brought to it.  Stills is inevitably represented here by his big solo hits, "Love The One You're With" and "Change Partners," and while they might not have been right for a CSN album, "First Things First," from his 1975 Columbia solo album, is definitely in the running for a list of the best CSN songs that never were; it easily could have benefited from Crosby's and Nash's input.  (The three solo songs from Stills are technically CSN songs, though, as David Crosby and Graham Nash sing backup on all of them.)

The biggest problem with Replay overall is the randomness of the song selection; despite the quality of the songs that were selected, there's little coherence between them, and they're not sequenced with much imagination.  The result is a compilation that's as awkward and scattered as the trio's divergences.  Stephen Stills has publicly stated that he and his groupmates became cavalier with their careers by going off on so many solo projects because of petty egos and disagreements; Replay is a sobering document of that recklessness. And the cover really is ugly.

So was there any reason to get Replay when it first came out?  Actually, there was.  Stills reworked "Carry On," which opens the LP, by removing his recycled Buffalo Springfield song "Questions" at the end and mixing in an extra chorus and a newly overdubbed guitar riff; I actually prefer it to the original Déjà Vu version.  Stills also mixed out the strings on "I Give You Give Blind" (making it sound tougher than on the 1977 CSN album) and mixed in a percussion intro onto "First Things First."  But these re-imagined cuts have since been made available online, making this record unnecessary.  Crosby dismissed it as "an obvious money trip" and Nash called it "insanity," given the paucity of group material available for greatest-hits packages.  And, as noted, there's that ugly sleeve.

Fortunately for Crosby, Stills and Nash, no one noticed that Replay even came out, though possibly for a tragic reason; it was issued the same day as John Lennon's murder, which focused rock fans' attention elsewhere, and so it sank without a trace.  But it probably would have done so under different circumstances.  Replay simply isn't the best Crosby, Stills and Nash greatest-hits package that could have been devised.  Because  . . . well, again, that sleeve is so damn ugly.

Music Video Of the Week - March 19, 2021

"Aqualung" by Jethro Tull  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - November 27, 2020

"Coming Up" by Paul McCartney  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - November 20, 2020

"Games Without Frontiers" by Peter Gabriel  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week: October 30, 2020

"Without Your Love" by Roger Daltrey  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.) 

Music Video Of the Week - October 23, 2020

"Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime," the Korgis  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week- January 17, 2020

"The Spirit of Radio" by Rush  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - November 8, 2019

"Cheap Sunglasses" by ZZ Top  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - May 31, 2019

"It's Still Rock and Roll To Me" by Billy Joel  (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)

Music Video Of the Week - October 6, 2017

"Refugee" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Go to the link in the upper-right-hand corner.)