Zeitgeist presents Tim Rose, Grant Langston, Modern Dance


Grant Langston	Modern Dance Musik Gegen Gewalt 3	Tim Rose

Grant Langston - Chinese Fire Drill

When we reviewed Grants first CD, "All This And Pecan Pie" we said he was like a cheerier Mark Eitzel, weaving witty storytelling across a highly melodic Americana sound to remarkable effect.

However, Grant Langston's second solo release, Chinese Fire Drill, although continuing to explore his personal outlook on women, booze, sex, heartache and modern angst, is a much darker beast. Less commercial, more internal, the irony and irreverence is still there, but the stories are of harder times.

Largely dropping the Wallflowers and Sheryl Crowers who contributed to Pecan, much of Chinese Fire Drill was done with Grant playing and singing as many of the parts as possible. Grant says, "The idea was to take all the technology and try to make a fun, organic record. The approach was very lo-fi. If a truck rumbled by while cutting a vocal and the take was good, I kept it, rumble and all. High spots this time around include a tribute to Los Angeles strip joint "Jumbo's Clown Room", the vicious failed romance of "Thank You Baby For Breaking My Heart" and the even more vicious take on staying together, "Land Of Love", this is another gem from Mr Langston. Buy this, buy Pecan and make a bitterish man slightly less bitter.

TIM ROSE "American Son" (MYS CD 150)

The press release for this CD predicted that ‘American Son’ would be one of the best records of 2002. Is such euphoria justified? Before we come to the record let’s put a little historical perspective on this quixotic and elusive singer song writer. Now 61 years young Tim won music awards at Washington High School. He was in Big Three with Cass Elliott and on his 1967 debut album was accompanied by excellent musicians like Bernard Purdie, Felix Pappalardi and Hugh McCracken as he gave the world the classic songs ‘Morning Dew’ and ‘Hey Joe’ (the latter a re worked traditional folk song) I also remember a song ‘Come Away Melinda’ appearing on an early CBS sampler LP. That is just about all I know about Tim apart from his releasing 3 further albums between 1969 and 1974 and attempting an unsuccessful collaboration with Tim Hardin (whose ‘Hand On To A Dream’ was covered by The Nice)

What of the music then? Well, from the first bars of ‘American Son’ you are hooked. There is an immediate familiarity about the opening (title) track not just in Tim’s wonderfully warm and gritty voice but also in the ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ rhythm (although I have to say the vocal style owes more to Leonard Cohen than to Lou Reed!)

This album has been a long time comin’ and Tim works out accumulated frustrations on tracks like ‘Because You’re Rich’ a clever acerbic dig at capitalism and hypocrisy with excerpts from American financial news reports running in the background. A trip down memory lane comes next as Tim asks ‘Where Did the Good Times Go?’ in country style. ‘Ageing Soldier’ is a tragic 7 minute song about the Vietnam war while ‘Broken Song’ is a beautiful Tony Harper love song played solo on acoustic guitar by Tim. ‘Tigers in Cages’ is a lament about man’s inability to ‘find the key’ to life from the sixties to the present. He obviously yearns for a different time and philosophy- "The flowers of a San Fran and Hendrix were dead and Woodstock was empty and muddy. And Tim doesn’t seem too impressed with the ‘rotten’ eighties and nineties- "Money and grunge and love and the dream were forgotten".This is a wonderfully passionate protest folk song in the great tradition of Seeger, Dylan et al.

‘She Was Born To Fly’ is another strong biographical tale played on guitars and dulcimer (Kato Aadland who also contributes Hammond B-3 and mandolin to the album) ‘Live it to the Brim’ shows Tim has less serious moments where the ‘feelgood factor’ kicks in. The penultimate song is another Tim Rose solo while the closing song the 8 minute ‘Once He Was’ has a killer chorus and an electric arrangement with all the band participating.

A faultless collection of songs exquisitely arranged and played. The only puzzling thing is why it took Tim Rose so long to produce an album like this. Sheer passion and commitment shine through every track. It’s hard to argue with Mystic Records’ assertion that this is going to be one of the albums of 2002. Highly recommended.

Modern Dance #35

Here we go again, with me wittering on about the best free music zine around. Blah de blah, best, comprehensive, more reviews than you can shake a very long stick at. David Neil Cline (hurrah), ELP (boo), Girl (hurrah), Genesis (boo), Hawkwind (double hurrah), OMD (double boo), Mike Forse (triple hurrah), you get the picture. Hunnerds of reviews. And did I mention it's free.

Musik Gegen Gewalt 3

All the way from germany comes this chunky little paperback, 118 pages long, lots of piccies and every word in German. Consisting of four lengthy essays, each dealing with an aspect of music and culture, this is a bargain at 6 Euros. There's nothing quite like a stimulating essay on graffiti culture to make you want to beat up every skater within arms reach:-) A worthwhile venture and one for anyone who can a) read German, and b) has more than a passing interest in music from Heavy Metal to Hip Hop and all points in between.

This is affiliated to the Netzwerk CrossOver. CrossOver is the network for non-commercial, alternative and Christian youth culture which gives it an interesting slant on music today.