Return Of The Dog Park Tapes

Update: In the preceding episode of "Bark Park Musicale," Bill and his two leashed companions, Dusty & Cedar, had put away Bill's Walkman when a chance encounter on the Hedge Apple Trail nearly ended in disaster. With the arrival of fall, however, our hero decided to once more pull out his tape player for the chance to reconsider old rock long-players in a pastoral weekend setting. The following five represent the cream of the Fall Dog Park Tapes:

Jam, In the City (Polydor): First released in 1977, the Jam's debut was subject to a lot of critical discussion in the day. At issue: was the Brit trio (group composition: guitarist Paul Weller, bassist Bruce Foxton & drummer Rick Buckler) truly "punk" or not? Some punk partisans loudly shouted, "No!" The band didn't affect any of the era's punk uniforms (wearing mod-ish suits instead) and some of their lyrics sounded downright conservative ("Time from Truth" ridicules a bourgeois revolutionary) even through all the "fucks." But the speed and unvarnished vocals could've only come out during the punk boom, even if the group's music wouldn't have sounded out of place on an early Who release (Motowny nonstop dance song here, ubiquitous guitar swooshes - including a freakout in album finale "Bricks and Mortars" that recalls the plane crash in "Glow Girl" - not to mention a remake of the "Batman" theme). If teenaged lead Weller had a prettier, less hectoring voice, the group might've been seen as the first great power pop band and also had a real radio career in America.

Nowadays the question of punk purity seems laughably irrelevant. As a collection of guitar-based hard rock with strong roots in the sixties, In The City is a bona fide success. The band would go on to put out several more great slabs of Britrock (This Is the Modern World, All Mod Cons and Sound Affects being the most successful) before Weller would lose me as a listener by moving into smooth pseudo-jazz with new group The Style Council. Decades later, though, the power and swoop of In The City remain unchallengeable.

Go-Betweens, 16 Lovers Lane (Capitol): Some bands sound like fall. Which is why this writer took his cassette tapes of Aussie alt rockers the Go-Betweens' Tallulah and 16 Lovers Lane on separate days over one October weekend. Both tapes were perfectly suited to walks on the kind of chilly, overhung days I was facing. Over its span as a group, the Go-Betweens have had several lineups: their peak is the one repped by these two elpees, with Amanda Brown adding suitably gloomy/beautiful violin and more to guitarist/songwriters Robert Forster and Grant McLennan's takes on bruised romance. As a singer, Forster is the type of moaner who'll occasionally get you wondering if the Walkman hasn't stretched your tape: not as extreme as legendary suicide Ian Curtis, perhaps, but still plenty dour. McLennan comes across a trace lighter, but only until you start listening to his lyrics.

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Article Author: Bill Sherman

Bill Sherman is a Books editor for Blogcritics. With his lovely wife Rebecca Fox, he has recently co-authored a sudsy comic fat acceptance novel entitled Measure By Measure.

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