Canned Heat's second LP of `68 is an expansive affair, reflecting the excessive spirit of the times. The sheer amount of content is what matters here, especially towards the end with the experimental "Parthenogenesis" collection followed by TWO - yes, two - twenty minute live versions of the "Refried Boogie", complete with extended solos from all instruments. This also includes the band's other big hit "Going Up the Country" which became the unofficial theme of Woodstock. But with the emphasis on lengthy jams it may not be a good idea to make this your first Canned Heat album to listen to.
What should have been just a fun throwback-style comedy turns into an unnecessarily overcomplicated train wreck that never quite gets untangled.
Zephyr's debut record is usually dismissed as either a Big Brother & The Holding Company clone because of frontwoman Candy Givens and her Janis-like vocals, or as just the project which launched guitar God Tommy Bolin's career. There's a kernel of truth in the former sentence and more than enough fallacy, for they were really a loose, heavy-blues, jazz-inflected ensemble better suited for the stage than the studio, having not that much in common with the folk-leaning San Francisco sound. It's difficult to distinguish one song from another and better to enjoy the overall vibe and great interplay between the musicians. One drawback is the muddled production, which tends to hoard the instruments together and somewhere there is Candy's howling voice in that maelstrom. But this is a nice album from a gutsy band that deserved better.
Out of the horde of hair metal bands from the 80's, Winger was one that got a bad rap for a number of reasons - one of them being that their most notable song celebrated underage relations. All of the members had paid their dues as part of other groups (most notably Kip Winger with the comeback version of Alice Cooper), and eventually came together in New York City to form Winger. They had reasons to be confident, they were experienced and professional enough, and despite the show-off tone at certain points ("Seventeen", "Poison Angel"), there is a mature, evocative thread running through the record, making it one of the better second-wave glam debuts.
Three albums into their career, as one reviewer on Amazon put it, Winger took the "kid gloves off", shed their prevailing hair metal image, and put out an album which really showcased their virtuoso talents. Or so they would have us believe. I'm not saying that Pull - ironically titled for what people were doing with Winger CD's, in the wake of the grunge movement - is a bad disc, or that it does not meet up to the band's own lofty standards. In fact, it would seem, going by the downtrodden, heavily sarcastic mood of many of these tracks, that the band was all too aware of their notorious reputation, and was not above using it as a tool at their disposal - especially if they thought it made the music more interesting. And it does, to a certain extent. But when is it too much, and more importantly, maybe it's not as fun as the old days of the synth-intertwining power ballads and sleaze rockers dripping with professional sheen?
