New discs from Mtx, Iggy and Robert Plant

Friday, January 16, 2004

By Ed Masley, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

MTX

"Yesterday Rules" (Lookout!)

The Mr. T Experience revisits several of the better cuts on last year's Dr. Frank EP here. "Jill," "Institutionalized Misogyny" and "Big, Strange, Beautiful Hammer" (far more beautiful than strange or big) retain the stripped-down charm of Frank's home demos, while "The Boyfriend Box" is filtered through the shagadelic sounds of Swinging London. It's a new pop classic, as are several of the songs that weren't on Frank's EP.

"She's Not A Flower" gets things started on a caffeinated high, as raucous as "Revenge is Sweet, and So Are You" (but on the more garage-punk side of that equation). "Oh, Just Have Some Faith In Me" gets started with one of the funnier opening lines I've heard since "Alcatraz" ("You didn't make my crucifixion/I know you had a lot on your plate/But from what I read and what everyone said, I handled it just great"). And "London" finds him tugging at your heartstrings after getting in one classic put-down of the girl who broke his heart ("You have to hate the world/It's required by your clothes").

But the highlight of all highlights here is one whose title we can't print. "Messed Up on Life" we'll call it. It's Frank at his finest, full of smile-inducing phrasing, giant hooks and hilarious lyrics. There's even some scatting, followed by "I never know what I should do or say/When words fail me I react reciprocally."

That he's able to balance these moments with downers as heartfelt as "London" is what makes this, the band's 10th album, both a fitting successor to "Alcatraz" and proof that rock 'n' roll (and the people who make it) can grow old gracefully without abandoning that life-affirming sense of fun and humor.

IGGY POP

"Skull Ring" (Virgin)

As reunions of seminal bands that haven't played together in three decades go, this is shockingly good -- so good, in fact, you'll wish they'd kept recording until they had a whole album together. But they didn't. Not yet. Only four of 14 songs here were recorded with the last two Stooges standing (Ron and Scott Asheton), but all four are filthy with that knuckle-dragging, wah-wah-driven, proto-punk garage-Doors swagger that generations have been struggling to recapture since the golden age of "1969." They've even got the handclaps down in an opening rocker that promises the listener, "They'll be frying up your hair in that little electric chair."

The other cuts find Iggy joined by everyone from Peaches to his touring band, the Trolls. The two cuts recorded with Green Day (and written with Billie Joe Armstrong) sound like Iggy fronting Green Day. In a good way. The song he recorded and co-wrote with Sum 41 is nothing special, but at least it's better than the stuff he did with Peaches, where he comes off sounding like an old man trying way too hard to prove that he could be her dog. And why in God's name is he toasting? What is he, the great lost Ying Yang Triplet?

Several of the Stooge-free highlights were recorded with his own band ("Superbabe" and the droning psychedelic balladry of "Inferiority Complex" in particular). The big surprise here, though, is Iggy's solo porchfront blues, a profanity-laden attack on the music industry that's both hilarious and damning. It ends with the threat of intervention from a vengeful God. "God and his captain," Iggy warns, "they wanna pull the [expletive] plug ... and give the skies back to the birds and bugs."

JIMMY BRYANT

"Frettin' Fingers: The Lightning Guitar of Jimmy Bryant" (Sundazed)

Cue up the "Flight of the Bumble Bee"-style speed-guitar of 1951's "Truck Driver's Ride" or the dazzling finger work of "Frettin' Fingers," cut in 1955, and it's pretty obvious where Jimmy Bryant (or his label) got the nerve to call an album "The Fastest Guitar in the Country." He could play so fast, in fact, that Greensburg's own Rich Kienzle gets his liner notes started with the tale of how Bryant responded when a group of "clueless" DJs accused him of "studio trickery," suggesting that he'd sped the tape up (as Les Paul had done before him). Bryant took his gear to Nashville's annual DJ convention, set it up and let her rip. And that, as Kienzle notes, was that.

But there was more than speed at work on these at times astonishing recordings. Whether playing Western swing and country polkas or responding to the instrumental-rock invasion of the pre-Fab '60s, Bryant could be counted on to hang his frettin' fingers on actual songs with hooks to speak to those outside the virtuoso-watcher camp. And that's what ultimately makes the best of Bryant's output stand as timeless instrumental music, a head-on collision of improvisational jazz and country fueled by Bryant's lightning runs and, while it lasted, Speedy West's eccentric, at times futuristic steel guitar work (at its quirkiest on early cuts as exotic as 1951's "Railroadin'"). The first two discs, which take you from the (relatively) subtle charms of "Bryant's Boogie," his earliest Capitol session, to the dazzling fretwork of 1966's "Blow Your Hat in the Creek," are more consistent than the third.

But disc three is certainly nothing to sneeze at, peaking on the better tracks from 1967's "The Fastest Guitar in the Country," which brought such awe-inspiring highlights as his hopped-up take on "12th Street Rag" and (for Bryant) a fairly conventional ride on Duke Ellington's "Caravan."

There are 75 recordings here, many rare and some making their first appearance anywhere. Some cuts are better than others, of course, but even on the weaker compositions, Bryant's genius as a lead guitarist is never in doubt.

ELVIS COSTELLO

"Singles, Volume 3" (Edsel)

The third in a series of smartly packaged CD replicas of the entire Elvis singles catalog, this 11-disc box begins with "Every Day I Write the Book," his first Top 40 hit here in the States, and ends with "A Town Called Big Nothing," a song he recorded for the 1987 Alex Cox film "Straight to Hell." Along the way, you'll find such well-known classics -- well known by those who were paying attention, anyway -- as "Tokyo Storm Warning," "Peace in Our Time" and "I Want You," still the most intriguing performance he's ever committed to tape. You'll also find plenty of lesser-known treasures, from the raucous, joyful "Baby's Got a Brand New Hairdo" to the soulful ballad, "Get Yourself Another Fool." But mostly, it's a coffee-table box-set -- nicely packaged, fun to look at, cool to own, but almost everything worth hearing (with the notable exception of an understated version of "I Hope You're Happy Now" and OK, on some bizarre level, the dance remix of "Pump It Up") is already out there on other reissues. Unless, of course, you truly feel the need to own all four alternate versions, including an instrumental take, of "Every Day I Write the Book."

ROBERT PLANT

"Sixty Six to Timbuktu"

Sure, the '80s hits sound dated -- with the notable exception of the Honeydippers' "Sea of Love" (which featured former bandmate Jimmy Page on lead guitar). But it's the singer's pre-Led Zeppelin work that makes this two-CD collection interesting. Whatever post-Led Zeppelin hits you'd recognize are on the first CD. But the second disc starts with a horn-fueled cover of "You'd Better Run" by the Rascals, cut in 1966. From there, he tries his hand at Italian schmaltz -- and somehow wins -- with "Our Love," a song you won't believe was cut the same year as the Band of Joy material -- stoner-rock covers of "For What It's Worth" and "Hey Joe" with Bonzo on drums. The final pre-Zeppelin recording, "Opera-tor," is acoustic blues from '68 with Alexis Korner producing and Plant on harmonica. Other highlights range from a steel guitar-fueled cover of the Arthur Alexander ballad "If It's Really Got To Be This Way" to "Philadelphia Baby," a Charlie Rich cover recorded at Sun in 1983 for the soundtrack to "Porky's Revenge" by Plant, Dave Edmunds and Phil Collins. The sound is so perfectly retro it makes me think of "Git It," that Gene Vincent tune with Eddie Cochran singing backing vocals.

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