Review: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' 'The Live Anthology'

It's invigorating to see musical veterans make the most of new opportunities. Earlier this year Neil Young issued the "Archives, Vol. I," a massive box set that utilized Blu-ray technology to give fans comprehensive access to 10 discs' worth of Young's early material.

Tom Petty, another classic rocker, has assembled an impressive collection of his live work with his band the Heartbreakers that's similar in spirit to Young's remarkable anthology if not quite as expansive.

At its simplest, "The Live Anthology" is a four-CD set featuring 48 live tracks that span the Florida rocker's career from 1978 through 2007. That version is a bargain, listing for $24.98 and available for less than $20 at Amazon.com and elsewhere. Where things get fun, though, is in the expanded versions that tap into the heightened aural quality of the Blu-ray disc format and the possibilities of the Web.

A box set being offered as a retail exclusive at Best Buy and on Petty’s official fan club site -- listing for $149.98 but discounted to just under $100 -- fleshes out the basic box with a 14-track fifth CD and one audio-only Blu-ray disc. The Blu-ray disc is said to be the first of its kind using only the audio capability of the high-end audio-visual system and includes all 62 tracks in high-resolution stereo and 5.1 surround sound.

The bigger box also has two DVDs, one with a never-released documentary on the group's 1995 "Wildflowers" tour by director Martyn Atkins, the other containing audio and video from the band's 1978 New Year's Eve show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. There's also an LP of an "Official Live 'Leg" bootleg album. 

2010 Grammy Hall of Fame recordings announced

The newest additions to the roster of Grammy Hall of Fame recordings remind music fans that “a kiss is still a kiss,” “I wish they all could be California girls” and to “Shake it up, baby!”

Among the 25 recordings being inducted for 2010 are Dooley Wilson’s 1944 version of “As Time Goes By” from “Casablanca,” the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” from 1965 and the Isley Brothers’ 1962 party hit “Twist and Shout.”

The pop, rock, jazz, R&B, gospel, reggae and comedy selections also include Janis Joplin’s 1971 album “Pearl,” Duke Ellington’s 1940 single “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore (Never No Lament),” Bob Marley & the Wailers’ 1973 album “Catch a Fire,” George Carlin’s  1972 album “Class Clown,” Mahalia Jackson’s 1958 single “His Eye is on the Sparrow” and Jose Feliciano’s 1970 Christmas classic “Feliz Navidad.”

Recordings must be at least 25 years old to be eligible. The full list is available at the Recording Academy’s Grammy Hall of Fame website.

-- Randy Lewis

Taylor Swift is tops at American Music Awards

The young country-pop singer adds five AMAs to her trophy collection. Michael Jackson receives four awards posthumously.

Not long after 19-year-old country-pop sensation Taylor Swift walked off with the Country Music Assn.'s biggest awards in Nashville, the American Music Awards handed her more trophies to add to her growing collection.

Swift, who came in with a field-leading six nominations, landed all but one of those, including the evening's top honor as artist of the year. She also was named favorite female pop-rock, country and adult contemporary artist. Her "Fearless" CD collected the favorite album trophy.

Michael Jackson was the evening's next big winner, taking four posthumous awards as favorite male pop-rock and soul-R&B artist, while his "Number Ones" hits collection won the favorite soul-R&B and pop-rock album awards.

The pop-rock album category was the only one in which Swift was nominated but did not win.

"There's no one that's ever been able to wow audiences quite like Michael," said Paula Abdul, former "American Idol" judge and onetime choreographer for Jackson, on Sunday, "and I don't think there will ever be someone as magical."

Swift had to skip the show at downtown L.A.'s Nokia Theatre because she was in London rehearsing, but she accepted her awards with enthusiasm by satellite from backstage at Wembley Arena.

"I will never be able to say how much I love you," she told her transatlantic audience.

Eminem replacing 'Relapse' sequel with 'Refill'

Eminem is rebooting plans for the successor to his first studio album in five years, “Relapse,” which brought the Detroit rapper back to the top of the national sales chart when it was released in May.

He had announced his intention to release “Relapse 2” in December, but now comes word that on Dec. 21,  he and his label, Interscope Records, are putting out “Relapse: Refill,” an expanded version of the first “Relapse” that includes seven bonus tracks. He said he and producer Dr. Dre had to rethink what they had come up with for the follow-up.

“I got back in with Dre and then a few more producers, including Just Blaze, and went in a completely different direction which made me start from scratch,” Eminem states in post on his website. “The new tracks started to sound very different than the tracks I originally intended to be on ‘Relapse 2,’ but I still want the other stuff to be heard."

The bonus material includes “Forever” from the “More Than a Game” soundtrack; “Taking My Ball,” which appeared first in the DJ Hero video game; and five previously unreleased recordings.

"Hopefully, these tracks on 'The Refill' will tide the fans over until we put out 'Relapse 2' next year," Eminem said.

-- Randy Lewis

Photo: Getty Images

Music download site BlueBeat hit with a preliminary injunction; site's founder responds

A federal judge in Los Angeles granted Capitol Records’ request for a preliminary injunction today against a San Jose-based website that had put the Beatles catalog online for digital downloading at 25 cents a track, without permission from the band or its record label.

U.S. Central District Court Judge John F. Walter said the defendant in the case, BlueBeat.com and its owner, Hank Risan, had failed to demonstrate that it had not violated Capitol’s copyright because it claimed to be selling “psychoacoustic simulations” of the Beatles catalog, not the actual protected recordings.

“Mr. Risan fails to provide any details or evidence about the ‘technological process’ that defendants contend was used to create the ‘new’ recordings or adequately explain how the ‘new’ recordings differ in any meaningful way from plaintiffs' recordings,” Walter wrote in approving the preliminary injunction.

Walter also got to play music critic for a day, noting that “after listening to the CD attached as Exhibit 1….the court, albeit to its musically untrained ear, was unable to detect or discern any meaningful difference between plaintiffs’ recordings and defendants’ recordings.”

Reached Wednesday, Risan claimed he had received the label’s permission to work with the recordings (The full interview with Risan is at the bottom of this post).

“Had we been able to appear in court,  we can show that we obtained that content lawfully,” Risan said. “If you obtain something lawfully, we have the right do things with it, like perform it, display it. We were paying the statutory royalties on it….We’re not pirates.”

A spokeswoman for EMI, Capitol’s parent firm, said Wednesday that the company declined to comment,  “as it is a matter of litigation.”

-- Randy Lewis and Todd Martens

After the jump, a Q&A of Pop & Hiss' brief chat with BlueBeat's Risan:

Tex-Mex pioneer Doug Sahm, a decade later

Ten years ago today -- on Nov. 18, 1999 -- the pop music world lost a bona-fide original, Tex-Mex innovator Doug Sahm. First as frontman for the Sir Douglas Quintet in the 1960s and 1970s, through his solo work in the '70s and '80s  and then through his musical and spiritual leadership of the Texas Tornados in the '90s, Sahm helped break down walls between rock, country, soul, R&B and norteño music.

Earlier this year, Vanguard Records put out a spirited salute to the San Antonio-based singer, songwriter and guitarist, “Keep Your Soul:  A Tribute to Doug Sahm.” It’s worth seeking out for empathetic versions of his music by admirers including Los Lobos, Dave Alvin, Jimmie Vaughan, Joe “King” Carrasco with surviving members of the Tornados, longtime friend and collaborator Flaco Jimenez, Delbert McClinton, his son, Shawn Sahm, and several others.

He’s best known for the Sir Douglas Quintet’s signature hits “She’s About a Mover” and “Mendocino,” but his legacy extended well beyond those brief encounters with the pop mainstream. Bob Dylan once said he considered Doug Sahm a kindred spirit in his innate understanding of music and his ability to find the heart and soul of a song.

Here’s a clip of Sahm during his Tornados days doing the song that usually springs to my mind first whenever his name is mentioned: “Is Anybody Going to San Antone,”  built on one of his irresistible, border-defying Tex-Mex grooves. He died, far too early, at age 58, apparently of natural causes.

-- Randy Lewis

 

Live review: Charlie Haden Family & Friends at Disney Hall

Jazz luminary Charlie Haden took no small amount of perverse joy Tuesday night in bringing the old-time country music with which he started his musical career in the Midwest seven decades ago into the tony surroundings of Walt Disney Concert Hall.

“Man, oh, man,” the 72-year-old bassist said upon taking the stage. “Who would have thought we’d have a country audience at Disney Hall?”

And that’s not the half of it. In less than three weeks, the hall has hosted Steve Martin’s mostly serious-minded venture into bluegrass music, Kris Kristofferson’s solo show and now Haden and a group of stellar Nashville singers and instrumentalists playing what once upon a time was referred to as “hillbilly music.” If this keeps up, people are going to start confusing Disney Hall with Disneyland’s Country Bear Jamboree.

But while this tour takes him back to the music he played with his parents and siblings through the Ozarks and elsewhere before he fell in love with jazz, flew the coop for Los Angeles, met Ornette Coleman and signed on with the saxophonists groundbreaking Liberation Music Orchestra, Haden’s hardly slumming.

The band members he brought with him to Disney Hall, most of whom also played on his inspired 2008 “Rambling Boy” album that spawned the tour, has as much in common with the stereotype of primitive hillbilly music as a $400,000 International Harvester Axial-Flow Combine has with a cast-iron plow.

Album review: John Mayer's 'Battle Studies'

On the high-contrast black-and-white cover photo of John Mayer's latest studio album, the singer, songwriter and guitarist's hands are pulling at the collar of a thick winter coat. It seems as though he's trying to brace against the onset of frosty conditions; the overall effect is fairly Morrissey-esque.

That's no coincidence -- in themes and tone, Mayer shows a lot in common with the great romantic fatalist of '80s Brit pop: He's "Perfectly Lonely" in the song with that title, and he opens the collection with "Heartbreak Warfare," about the ways we hurt the ones we ostensibly love.

Musically he's exploring the moody territory of acts such as Coldplay and Snow Patrol; at the same time, he displays his debt to guitar heroes including David Gilmour, Eric Clapton and George Harrison.

For the most part, he expresses himself more eloquently through his guitar than his lyrics in the 10 of 11 songs he wrote. (Intriguingly, his version of Robert Johnson's blues classic "Crossroads" puts Clapton's signature blues-rock riff through effects processing that leaves it sounding like a keyboard.)

Why he decided to ape Dave Mathews in "Who Says," his ode to the benefits of escapism during down times, is anybody's guess, but it's set to a lovely country-rock shuffle. "Assassin" stretches the metaphor of a stealth killer too far, while "War of My Life" sets foot on U2's turf -- without the soul-deep passion of the Irish rockers. That deficit leaves many of the songs strangely uninvolving, despite the beauty of his melodies and empathetic production he and drummer Steve Jordan have given them.

The lesson of "Battle Studies"? If you're heading to war or in to love, better to take no prisoners.

-- Randy Lewis

John Mayer
"Battle Studies"
Columbia
Two and a half stars (Out of four)

Live review: Loudon Wainwright III and Richard Thompson at UCLA

Loudon Wainwright III and Richard Thompson wrapped up their five-week tour as a duo, under the fittingly ironic title “Loud & Rich,” with a sterling display of songwriting acumen and musicianship Friday at UCLA, but one that wasn’t particularly loud or likely to make anybody rich.

Not in the filthy lucre sense, anyway. These two folk-rock veterans appeared long ago to have achieved peace in the knowledge that their astute brand of music fills clubs and theaters, not arenas and stadiums. They’ve been pals at least since the days when Thompson produced a couple of Wainwright’s standout albums in the '80s, and used the occasion of their stop at Royce Hall as part of UCLA Live’s eclectic music series to revel in the richness of words skillfully strung together and married to music that carries those words straight to the heart. And, on more than once occasion, to the funny bone.

In fact, many times during the evening Elvis Costello’s famous pronouncement -- “I used to be disgusted, but now I try to be amused” -- seemed to be play, but it was often hard to tell who was on which side of that equation.

Wainwright, perhaps the most adroit humorist in pop music of the last 40 years, opened the three-hour performance with a set heavy on recent-vintage material, including three from his ambitious double album “High Wide & Handsome: The Charlie Poole Project.” That set showcases the music of the influential but largely forgotten early country singer from Spray, N.C., a freewheeling, wisecracking, hard-drinking, banjo-playing troubadour for whom Wainwright, also born in North Carolina, obviously holds an affinity.

The solo format left him without the deft instrumental and vocal support he gets on the album from a broad swath of family members (including his kids Rufus, Martha and Lucy) ex-family members and friends. But Thompson jumped in to add color on "If I Lose," bending and sliding steely notes and making his acoustic guitar sound like a dobro.

Memorial for Masque founder Brendan Mullen set for Sunday

Friends of Masque founder Brendan Mullen, who died at age 60 on Oct. 12 after suffering a stroke,  are invited to a memorial service and wake Sunday at the Echoplex in Echo Park.

Mullen was one of Los Angeles’ early champions of punk rock, and when he opened the Masque in Hollywood in 1977, the disjointed punk community found a focal point. It provided a forum for bands such as the Nerves, the Germs, the Dils and X, and also was the flash point for countless fans who went on to form their own bands. After the Masque closed, Mullen continued with adventurous bookings of music, theater and other events at Club Lingerie and other venues

The site for the memorial and wake was chosen because “The Echoplex is where Brendan booked his last show, a reunion of Masque bands to celebrate the publication of his book 'Live at the Masque: Nightmare in Punk Alley',” said his longtime partner, Kateri Butler, who was celebrating Mullen's 60th birthday with him on a trip through Ventura County when he had the stroke. “Many thanks to Liz Garo, queen of the Echoplex and a booker extraordinaire whom Brendan mentored early in her career, for her graciousness and generosity.”

Doors will open at 4 p.m., the memorial begins at 5 p.m. and the wake will follow. The Echoplex is at 1154 Glendale Blvd., Echo Park.

“The memorial is open to everyone who would like to pay his or her respects to Brendan,” Butler said. “I hope I have reached all of Brendan's friends, but it's certainly possible I may have missed some folks….Also, musicians: Anyone who wants to jam unplugged during the wake is welcome to do so. We will have Brendan's drum kit there.”

-- Randy Lewis