| Alright. I've been trying to think of something else to write about for ten days, and I just can't come up with anything. So I'm gonna do another one on Trower. But it should be the last word from me on that subject, because it concerns the only other album of his I've listened to at great length: the follow up to Victims of the Fury, the cleverly titled BLT. I remember reading a review of BLT when it first came out, probably in that tired, bloated, anchored-in-the-sixties-and-Springsteen, thinly disguised press release known as Rolling Stone. And the reviewer spent most of his allotted column-and-a-half reviewing the sandwich on the album cover. How the bacon wasn't cooked properly, and who would make a BLT on rye, and the lettuce looks far too wet. This guy has a fucking job. Or at least he did at the time. The first thing you have to know about BLT is that it stands for Bruce, Lorber, and Trower. For reasons unknown to me (you Trower freaks out there can clue me in), longtime Trower vocalist James Dewar left the group/was kicked out/found God/became hopelessly addicted/got sick of Trower's bullshit/couldn't bare to sing 'Day of the Fucking Eagle' one more time/you fill in the blank here. (No disrespect to the fine vocalist/bassist, who, if I understand correctly, is at this moment seriously ill, dying, or already dead, according to ominous references in an interview with Trower.) Enter tired hack Jack Bruce, who seems to turn up where he's least wanted to form another bogus 'supergroup' and make everything sound creepy. No one knows Dewar. Everyone knows Bruce. But whereas Dewar was subtle and interesting on Victims, Bruce comes off condescending and bitter on BLT. Dewar writes mostly in the first person; Trower and Reid's lyrics have Bruce continuously pointing the finger at someone else, right from the first track, "Into Money." It sounds like a jab at Clapton or some other 60's crony for selling out, but only serves to showcase pettiness (and, most likely, envy). The lyric lists off the things this disdained figure has ("You've got the house/you've got the car/you live upon the hill among the stars") and then tries to make it sound like a bad thing ("I hate to see you like this, baby, with your back to the wall"). It just sounds like self-righteous bullshit. Trower sounds alright, and Father Eddie could tell you whether or not Lorber (or Lettuce, if you prefer) is any good; but Bruce gets even worse on side two. The only Bruce-penned track, "Life On Earth," sounds like some attempt to mimic the then-burgeoning new wave approach to songwriting: quick and quirky. It sounds fucking embarrassing. You can't tell which is worse: this 60's relic trying to sound contemporary, or him singing the ludicrously dated refrain "children of the rainbow!" in 1981. "Feel The Heat" is the other major dog on this album. It just reeks of old dudes jamming in the studio on some cover, changing it slightly, making up some worthless lyrics, and having egos bloated enough to think their audience won't notice that they aren't half trying. |
Okay. Now is where we do that classic critic about-face maneuver, where the guy spends the whole review ragging and then tries to make it sound like he likes it at the end. Real critics probably fear that they'll run into Jack Bruce at a party, or the A & R guy at Chrysalis won't cop him a few lines anymore. I have no such pressures biasing my reviews; that's why Blah Blah Blah is the rockrag of choice among afficianados. "Won't Let You Down" must've been the attempt at a single, and it could've been a hit; it falls into that "Hearts" by Marty Balin type of mold, you know the one: the aging rocker makes a nice JC-120 type of ballad for Quiet Storm radio formats and hopes it maybe crosses over. Fat entertainment lawyers listen to it in their BMW's, trying to impress their young whore escorts. It peaks at #199 in Billboard and is never heard from again. It's not a bad tune, it's just a little too calculated. "Carmen" is better, and uses the eeriness of Bruce's voice to its' best effect. But "End Game" is where everyone seems most comfortable - just a slow simple blues. It's as though this is what they would have rather been doing all along, if only the record company would let them. The rhyme scheme's kind of bunk, and Bruce is once again talking about someone else; but something cool seems to go on with it, even if you don't buy that he's not just inventing some character to somehow have something to write another song about. I don't know what happens to these old dudes. They just seem to run out of steam. They get soft, they get bloated, they turn bitter, they have nothing to say anymore. It's as though they forget what feelings are. BLT just barely has enough to listen to and call it an album. "No Island Lost" (which starts off with indiscernable cockney gibberish...if any one can make it out, tell me what he's saying, I've been trying to figure it out for years) is a reasonable facsimile of psychedelic rock, as is "Once The Bird Has Flown." "Once The Bird Has Flown" also has the only evidence that a reknowned bassplayer is on the record: Bruce throws in a pretty slick fill after every line in the chorus. I don't know if it's to his credit to have held everything else back, or a sign of laziness; in any case, the rest of the bass playing on the record could've been done by anyone; it's nothing special in tone, feel, or technique. "It's Too Late" is also not a bad tune; once again, the band seems most comfortable (and most convincing) on the slower numbers. But Victims of the Fury is on the other side of that tape, and the more I flip it over, the more obvious it is how much stronger Victims is. The follow up to BLT, Back It Up, is even worse, from the lame cover on down. After that, I stopped listening. |
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