Serious Sandler: Funny People (Mostly) Succeeds.

The Good: Good performances, Interesting characters, Moments of empathy/themes
The Bad: Mood is often oppressive, Pacing issues
The Basics: Adam Sandler effectively delves into his dramatic side with Funny People, a Judd Apatow flick that reasserts the writer/director’s ability to plumb the depths of drama . . . with mixed results.


Regardless of how both films might have underwhelmed at the box office, Judd Apatow’s Funny People owes quite a debt to P.T. Anderson’s Punch-Drunk Love (reviewed here!). Punch-Drunk Love was the first major film to truly use Saturday Night Live alum Adam Sandler in a dramatic role with any real success. Funny People also explores Sandler’s ability to play a deeply serious role and had Punch-Drunk Love not softened American audiences up for such a twist from the comedian, it might have been even more off-putting than the film already was.

Unfortunately, Judd Apatow’s endeavor into getting a serious performance out of Adam Sandler feels more clogged and problematic than Anderson’s more compact, focused role for Sandler. Sandler’s ability to play rage in Punch-Drunk Love plays somewhat better than his character’s apathy in Funny People and the somewhat sprawling nature of this film. Even so, George Simmons is one of Sandler’s better performances and more memorable roles following his career in dippy comedy blockbusters. Sandler makes Simmons substantive and compelling to watch, even if he is not always interesting.

George Simmons is a highly successful comedian who came up from the stand-up circuit before he started making million-dollar blockbusters and became one of the highest grossing actors in America. Depressed and somewhat lethargic, Simmons encounters aspiring comedian Ira Wright and his roommate, Leo Koenig. Wright hates his job serving sandwiches and he leaps at the opportunity to write jokes for Simmons for a MySpace event – if for no other reason than to show up his hack roommate Mark. After the big event, Ira begins working for George and George admits to his new assistant that he is dying of leukemia. As George has Ira start selling off his stockpiles of swag, he starts pining for the woman who got away, Laura.

Ira finds working for Simmons to be a largely losing proposition. Working for George keeps him distracted, which gives Mark time to move in on his love interest, Daisy. It does, however, get him some exposure on the stand-up circuit, but he finds that hanging out with Simmons doesn’t get him laid and he gets mired in Simmons’ depression. But as Simmons wrestles with his own mortality, Ira helps him find Laura and George disrupts her unhappy marriage. The result makes Ira a witness to a life he has always dreamed of having and forces him to decide if it is the way he wants to live going forward.

Funny People departs from Judd Apatow’s other films by, despite the title, being anything but a comedy. The film reminds viewers of the more character-based, dramatic moments that made Apatow’s Freaks & Geeks (reviewed here!) a cult-smash. Unfortunately, while Seth Rogen has no trouble embodying a serious Apatow-written character (Rogen plays Ira), the role has him meandering around the much more cinematically-powerful Sandler. Even when Sandler’s Simmons is acting bored and depressed, Rogen is unable to steal the spotlight from him. The more significant character journey in Funny People is, arguably, Wright’s arc, but Rogen does not make the film feel like it is truly his.

To his credit, writer-director Judd Apatow manages to create a film where almost every significant (male, at least) stand-up comedian alive shows up. For sure, many – like Paul Reiser, Norm MacDonald, and Dave Attell – have roles that are little more than cameos, but the fact that they show up at all makes the world of Funny People feel very real and the drama within it compelling.

That said, Funny People takes far too long to get going. Apatow thoroughly develops the relationship between Simmons and Wright and by the time the viewer is bored with the two of them, the film makes the shift into the relationship between Simmons and Laura. When that transition is made, Wright becomes something of a hapless sidekick and his role as witness robs him of a character arc where he actually keeps real control over his life. Instead, he reacts to how Simmons throws a bombshell into Laura’s family and the result hardly makes Wright compelling. Apatow alum Leslie Mann plays a less-bitchy version of her prior characters and Apatow makes viewers wait for Eric Bana long past the point that he is able to carry any enthusiasm from seeing his name in the opening credits.

Bana and Mann have pretty poor on-screen chemistry, but their characters are supposed to be estranged, so it is hard to complain too much about that. Unfortunately, Sandler and Mann have no real on-screen charm together and the result is that it is hard for viewers to be convinced that they have more of a chance than the married couple that seems set in every way, but the passion department. The problem with Funny People is that none of the characters have innate chemistry with the others: Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman lack real chemistry with Seth Rogen in Funny People, so it is off-putting at the beginning even to make the viewers believe that they are all actually roommates!

Despite the chemistry problems and the fact that Mann plays a very familiar type of character, Funny People is well-acted. Seth Rogen plays the up and coming, very awkward comedian well and Jason Schwartzman plays the jackass roommate with complete plausibility. Jonah hill is fine as Leo, though his character does not get nearly angry enough when Ira’s big secret is finally revealed to him.

But that is the way of Funny People: the film takes a long time setting up, developing, redirecting and expositing until, like life, if just goes nowhere. That makes it a film with so many winning elements, but an ultimately underwhelming resolution and execution.

For other works with Eric Bana, please visit my reviews of:
Hanna
The Time Traveler’s Wife
Star Trek
Hulk

6.5/10

For other movie reviews, please check out my Film Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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A Fine Historical Document, Nothing More Saturday Night Live - The Complete First Season On DVD.

The Good: Moments of humor, Great historical relevance
The Bad: Becomes far too self-referential, Early episodes are scattered, Repetitive, Does not use whole cast well.
The Basics: A trip down memory lane for those who lived it, a mediocre historical document for the rest of us, NBC's Saturday Night's first season is unremarkable.


Every now and then, I come across a work that I pick up on DVD to review and when I'm done, I know that an objective review of the material I've just witnessed will bring about a small storm of negative comments. As I finish my viewing of the mistitled Saturday Night Live - Season 1, I find myself overwhelmingly underwhelmed. Yes, I am overcome with how unimpressed I am with this boxed set. Capturing the 1975 - 1976 season of the sketch comedy show NBC’s Saturday Night and Saturday Night, what would become Saturday Night Live, this eight disc set follows on the heels of years of terrible "Best Of" collections which focus on individual performers from the Saturday Night Live family of performers. What this boxed set reveals, more than anything, is how tenuous a start the cultural phenomenon that is Saturday Night Live had.

With all twenty-four episodes on eight discs, the first season of the show that became a sketch comedy series is presented almost as it originally appeared in the mid-1970s. NBC’s Saturday Night starts out as a variety show, with almost all of its parts divorced from one another. Executive Producer Lorne Michaels assembled a show that featured a guest star - usually a comic or musician -, musical guest(s), Muppets, and a sketch comedy troupe that soon became known as the "Not Ready For Prime Time Players." That troupe was quickly whittled down to Dan Aykroyd, John Belushi, Jane Curtain, Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, and Gilda Radner.

The series began as far more of a variety show, with the "Not Ready For Prime Time Players" contributing far less in the beginning than they did by the middle and end of the season. So, for example, the first episode starred George Carlin, who held court on an open stage several times in the episode. But less of his standup routines, he presented himself in a more philosophical light. And he bombed. That's not just me saying that, listening to the audience reacting, I was wondering if they had a cricket machine they could have plugged in to give feedback! Alas, they did not and it took until the last set before Carlin began to get laughs from the audience. His musings now seem somewhat banal and very dated. And I like George Carlin!

In addition to Carlin, there were two musical guests who each did two sets, a short film presented by Albert Brooks, the Muppets from the land of Gorch, and a few sketches, most notably the news, which was hosted by Chevy Chase. I swear I cannot recall what any of the sketches that first episode were. But there were very few. And they were fairly unmemorable as they squeezed in between Carlin mellowly lecturing the audience, rock stars of the day and the somewhat surreal experience of adulterous monstrous Muppets.

Beginning with the second episode, Chevy Chase opens each episode with a pratfall, which he begins to reference as the season progresses. But the second episode is an exceptional example of how different NBC’s Saturday Night is from the Saturday Night Live it became. Paul Simon was the host, not the musical guest, and almost the entire program involves him singing. The show opens, he sings two songs, Art Garfunkel is brought on, they do two songs together, Garfunkel does one alone and Simon gets an additional song (maybe two) on his own. Before you know it, the episode is over. And, again, sketches are stuck in between the other stuff.

That said, this season introduced the world to the physical and satirical comedy of Chevy Chase. He falls into most episodes and relentlessly mocks president Gerald Ford and the deceased president Franco of Spain. He fumbles his way through the news and has the honor of delivering the "Live from New York, it's Saturday night!" line every outing. As well, it contains the Samuri (he's a tailor, deli chef, divorcee etc. depending on the week), Gilda Radner's hearing-impaired social activist Emily Litella, and the Headmaster for the New York School For The Hearing Impaired. As the season progresses, the sketches begin to be tailored to the guest host, like a short film containing Raquel Welch dancing (and nothing else!), Ford's Press Secretary portraying Press Secretaries Through History, and Buck Henry playing nervous white guys.

It's intriguing to watch the first season and see who was considered famous and cutting edge enough to present the show as a guest host. The first season was hosted by: George Carlin, Paul Simon, Robert Klein, Buck Henry, Dudley Moore and Peter Cook, Rob Reiner, Lily Tomlin, Candice Bergen, Peter Boyle, Dezi Arnez, Madeline Kahn, Ron Nessen, Raquel Welch, Anthony Perkins, Elliot Gould, Dyan Cannon, Louise Lasser, Kris Kristofferson and Richard Pryor. The musical guests are interesting for their mix of artists that have remained well known, like Paul Simon, Patti Smith, Abba (who lip-synched one of their songs for some reason), Gordon Lightfoot and Carly Simon (who had a recorded performance, though it's cool because Chevy Chase actually joined her on "You're So Vain!") and those who seem to have been either one-hit wonders or whose works faded from the general popular rotation, like Janis Ian, Betty Carter, Martha Reeves, Phoebe Snow, John Sebastian, Leon Redbone, Harian Collins and Joyce Everson, and Leon and Mary Russell. Indeed, two of the most memorable musical performances involve Garrett Morris singing an opera piece and John Belushi's one-trick pony sweaty rock star (it starts as a Joe Cocker impression) interrupting Leon and Mary Russell. It is also worth noting that Howard Shore, the composer for Peter Jackson's Lord Of The Rings films (among others) is the band leader and composer for the orchestra this season!

And I'll admit, I was cheesed when Belushi cut Gordon Lightfoot's guitar strings because I was hoping he might perform "Sundown!" The problem here is that this DVD set is presenting a sketch comedy/variety show that is very dated. The reason is simple; the humor is topical. It's fresh and funny in 1975 to comment on Gerald Ford and the wide-open 1976 Primary contest. Those of us who lived through the Reagan Regime will delight to hear Chevy Chase (and others) relentlessly mock his first presidential bid as he loses the Republican primary to Ford (which ought to have been the death knell of his political career!). But it's pure nostalgia and it often makes references that will leave the less educated viewers completely lost. So, for example, most high school history courses will not teach students that George Wallace was a vociferous racist, which becomes the focus of all non-wheelchair jokes pertaining to Wallace.

There are two general categories of sketch comedy series: current events and broadbased satire. Cultural Events sketch comedy rely heavily on observations of politics, societal trends and pop culture of the day. Broadbased satire attempts to more frequently comment on the nature of human existence and immutable social institutions. It's the difference between comedy that pokes fun at Gerald Ford and Jaws (reviewed here!) and comedy that lashes out at Monarchy and male/female relationships. Are the two mutually exclusive? Absolutely not, but very few comedy troupes find a decent balance (though most do a Jaws, Star Trek, - the first of many Trek parodies appears late in this set! - and Star Wars parody at some point) and Saturday Night, when it becomes more of a sketch comedy show leans heavily toward the Cultural Events category as opposed to the Broadbased Satire grouping.

The final problems with the content are that as it evolves, the show begins to take some weird turns and becomes much more self-referential. Albert Brooks's short films, which were generally not terribly funny to begin with (though some were not supposed to be), were replaced by similar short films from someone whose name I don't even remember now (it's Weis, by the way). Come to think of it, I couldn't tell you the subject of even one of his short films despite having just finished watching the first season finale less than two hours ago. Albert Brooks, by the way, had short films that included him performing a bypass surgery and searching for the next big thing (there was a blind cab driver in that one); I might not have dug them, but they were vaguely memorable. Come to think of it, the other guy did one where he intercut a p.i. recalling how he catches cheating spouses and a new couple expressing their love for one another. The thing is, as the season progresses, fans were invited to send in home movies and they included peanuts slicing up a guy who ate a ton of peanuts, a choral song presented from a men's bathroom, and apple strippers (peelers); I recalled three instantly.

The point here is that the show is dramatically erratic, episode to episode and within episodes. It does not take long before the adult Muppets are canned, as are some of the writers who begin as part of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players. But most of all, it's dated. As well, there are several bits that are repetitive. The season featured parody commercials, many of which are replayed more than once, which is accented as a problem on the DVDs when one sits and watches them back to back.

Saturday Night Live - The Complete First Season goes a long way toward proving the argument I made when I reviewed Star Trek - The Complete First Season (Remastered), which is that the technology exists to clean up the old series', but it is often too costly to be realistic for restoration. Recently, Star Trek has been given a complete face-lift for HD and while the visual effects have been altered, the cleanup for HD removing film imperfections and the general grain of 1960s filmstock makes for a decent presentation. What we get with this DVD set is a series plagued by light burns, dust spots and the grainy quality that comes with the filmstock of the time. Yes, there has clearly been some remastering (though there are still fall-outs on the soundtrack at various points), but this is not the archiving of a historical document, nor the restoration of it to the best it could possibly be. Instead, we get a half-measure, a compromise print that makes the thirty year-old series look respectable, but not as good as it could look (and sound).

As well, this boxed set makes poor use of the DVD medium by presenting little in the way of bonus features. There are no commentary tracks and only two featurettes, both from 1975 - an interview and casting tapes. Those who are invested enough (emotionally) in this series to invest in the capital to purchase the set are likely to be disappointed that there are no featurettes discussing the cultural impact, the relevance or even the effect the show had. Some of that is addressed within the series in self-referential comments, but much of it is a complete mystery. The series is a fair historical document of mid-70's humor, music and celebrity, but there is nothing to make this set valuable for that by actually addressing it.

As it stands, the photo booklet gives the most information on that sort of thing and it is woefully little. Die-hard fans (the ones I lost with my opening lines of this review) who might have been waiting for this boxed set for the years it took to get all of the musical clearances needed to assemble this set are likely to be even more disappointed than I was (a lowly cinematic historian) by the lack of extensive bonus features exploring either the development of the season, commentary on specific sketches, or the impact or even any form of retrospective from surviving cast members on their impressions thirty years later.

But alas, there is nothing like that. Instead, we have endless references to Gerald Ford's stupidity, Patty Hearst (the O.J. trial of the day, I suppose), Francisco Franco's continuing death, and the rising political lights of the 1976 primary race. We have pained performances by Andy Kaufman (he comes on and lip-synchs, one of which where he has guests performing with him and he's electric on) that are sometimes more disturbing than funny, there is a broad array of musical guests that appeal to a huge segment of society as opposed to the narrow visions of 12 - 24 pop culture (that's something that actually is pretty okay), and the endless opening falls of Chevy Chase. And it might have been great in its day, but now, it's a historical document in a way that other sketch comedy shows are not (but someday The Daily Show will be!).

My final comment on this is this: this set is not ideal for fans of today's Saturday Night Live. If you have a youngster that loves Saturday Night Live, this is the ideal gift for that kid's parents, so they have something to bond over. Nowhere near as relentlessly (attempting to be) funny as today's Saturday Night Live, this requires a lot more patience and despite the supposed genius of the Not Ready For Prime Time Players, this is very skewed toward Chevy Chase and Jane Curtain (as the season goes on and Gilda Radner picks up the recurring Barbara Walters impression, she gets good airtime as well). How Dan Aykroyd made it big based on the first season remains a mystery. Laraine Newman, John Belushi and Garrett Morris are given ridiculously little to do as well.

Lopsided and dated, this boxed set is best for those who appreciated it the first time around, but it's more likely they'd get as much out of renting it as opposed to buying it; this eight-disc set has little to come back to more than once.

For more work with Lily Tomlin, please check out my reviews on:
The Pink Panther 2
The West Wing
A Prairie Home Companion
Orange County

4/10

For other television reviews, be sure to check out my Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2007 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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Mid-'80's Schmaltz Leaves Me Indifferent With James Taylor's That’s Why I’m Here!

The Good: Decent vocals, A few good lyrics
The Bad: Boring, produced instrumentals, Short
The Basics: Very average James Taylor, That’s Why I’m Here is surprisingly bland and overproduced when it is not being repetitive and dull.


Sometimes, I hit ruts of very average works. This includes where I am falling on James Taylor's 1985 album That’s Why I’m Here, which I have been listening to for the last two days. Truth be told, I'm looking forward to moving on after this album; James Taylor seems to have some innate talents, but his works - in bulk - ultimately end up as fairly tiresome and I'm ready for some musical variety again! Without being insulting; and I've never endeavored to be while reviewing James Taylor, Taylor's works seem to act as something of a chameleon for Taylor in regards to style. In his early works, his songs are vocally driven folk-rock with the whole "one man and a guitar" thing that defined a lot of popular music in the late 1960s/early 1970s. Then, in the seventies, eighties and nineties, Taylor seemed to become obsessed with adding more production elements to his music, as was the style of the times and while it might have worked as part of the day when they were released, listening to some of those albums - like That’s Why I’m Here - now there is a very dated quality to the sound. Even now, as Taylor seems to help define the adult contemporary niche, it seems he is doing more original work than he did in the mid-80s.

With twelve songs, clocking out at 39:55, That’s Why I’m Here is arguably one of the least James Taylor-influenced albums of his that I have reviewed to date. On the writing front, Taylor wrote eight of the songs (to be fair, one of those is a twenty-five second instrumental reprise of the first track) and the other four are not even co-written by Taylor. He has cover songs from Livingston Taylor ("Going Around One More Time"), Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart ("My Romance"), Norman Betty and Charles Harden ("Everyday"), and Burt Bacharach and Hal David ("The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"). I had only heard of Bacharach and David before this album, though "Everyday" seems to be on a number of the James Taylor compilations I have listened to.

James Taylor provides all of the primary vocals, though he is not credited with them on all of the songs. As well, according to the liner notes, Taylor did not provide any of the instrumental performances on this album. He surrounds himself with notable vocalists and instrumentalists, like Joni Mitchell, Don Henley, Graham Nash and David Sanborn, but he is not credited with even one guitar performance in the credits. At best, Taylor is given a co-producer's credit so it is hard to argue that Taylor did not create the album he wanted to with That’s Why I’m Here.

Largely, That’s Why I’m Here is mellow and overproduced and simply boring. The tracks which made this album successful in its day are "Only One," "Everyday" and - from what I hear - "Only A Dream In Rio." The title track pops up on some of Taylor's compilation albums, which is somewhat appropriate as it is possibly Taylor's most self-referential song. In fact, if anything perhaps that is why the album is so boring: the overall feeling is "this is James Taylor!" as opposed to "This is what James Taylor has to say . . ."

This comes through in a lot of the writing, for starters. The songs mix from being directly about James Taylor (“That’s Why I’m Here”) to storysongs about those peripherally in Taylor's (or his musical protagonist alter ego's) life ("Limousine Driver," "Mona") to just plain standards ("The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance"). There are fewer universal storysongs on this album or songs that are just about emotions, which tend to balance the specific songs on other albums better than this one does. Songs like "Mona" just seem tired in the writing department with lines like "Life's good friends are hard to find / And now one of mine is dead / And things I should have said to her / I shall say to you instead / Mona Mona / So much of you to love / Too much of you to take care of / Mona Mona / You got too big to keep / And too damn old to eat." When you're singing to your dead animal, it's a tough sell to a wide audience. Had the song stuck to a human subject (or not a cannibalistic protagonist, I suppose) it might have work, had Taylor also focused on the emotion of guilt for failing to say things when they still mattered, "Mona" could work. But regret over the things you never said to an animal you might have considered eating at some point . . . that's just schmaltz!

And Taylor is pretty much a master of schmaltz, that over-the-top sappy earnest emotive quality that is just too cheesy to be real. This is disappointing coming from an artist who actually has the ability to articulate complex ideas with a pretty impressive array of diction at his disposal. Instead, he comes up with songs that are repetitive and over-the-top obvious, like "Only One." Sure, it sounds good when Taylor sings "There's only one road before me / Too many turns in the way / Thousands of things to do today / Millions of moments I must admit / But only one only one / You are my only one you are my only one . . ." ("Only One") but the rhyme scheme is obvious and it gets only real quickly. Moreover, it is too simplistic for the notion it is describing; commitment and fidelity deserve a more complicated rhyme scheme than rhyming "one" with "one" over and over again.

It's not all bad and, in fact, Taylor does have one of his very best songs on That’s Why I’m Here. "Song For You Far Away" might well be the best song about loss Taylor ever did after "Fire And Rain." Anyone who is experiencing distance from or loss of a loved one can completely understand the loneliness Taylor describes as "Sitting here all alone / Is bringing it on again I'm gone again / Sitting here thinking of you / Is driving it home again / This is a song for you far away so far away . . ." ("Song For You Far Away"). As well, the song is one of the least produced and has an earnest quality to it that is heartwrenching, which is exactly what one wants from a song about loss and abandonment and distance.

This stands in direct contrast to most of the rest of the album. "Turn Away" is an upbeat pop-rock number that is terribly overproduced and strangely percussion-driven for a James Taylor track. Any number of the songs on this album are banal and directly "pop" in a way that makes them hold up poorly over multiple listens. Songs like That’s Why I’m Here, "Only One," and "Only A Dream In Rio" utilize a lot of instruments and backing vocals that overwhelm Taylor's own vocals more often than accent any of his points.

Taylor's vocals are generally good, but they do not stretch his range. As a result, songs like "Going Around One More Time" are immediately recognizable as James Taylor even though it was never a single. He is safely within his range, articulate but a very obvious, smooth vocal style that is exactly what we have heard from him before. Songs like "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" are not reinterpreted in any new ways that make it his own and "My Romance" sounds like a Christmas carol!

The result is an album that is very mid-1980s in most of the most boring and obvious ways. Because all of the best songs on this album do appear on compilations Taylor has produced, it makes it very easy to recommend not picking this one up. That’s Why I’m Here is not bad in a way that one wants to strongly denounce it, but it is not good in a way that one wants to recommend buying it either. It's just remarkably average.

The best track is "Song For You Far Away," the low point is "Mona."

For other James Taylor albums, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
James Taylor And The Original Flying Machine
James Taylor
Sweet Baby James
Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon
One Man Dog
Gorilla
Greatest Hits
Never Die Young
New Moon Shine
James Taylor Live
Hourglass
Greatest Hits 2
Appalachian Journey (with Yo-Yo Ma)
October Road
The Best Of James Taylor
One Man Band
Covers

5/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for other music reviews I have written!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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It's Not Just That I'm Getting Tired Of James Taylor, Never Die Young Is Mediocre Taylor!

The Good: Good voice, Decent mellow tunes, Some lyrics
The Bad: Some repetitive lyrics/sound, SHORT!
The Basics: A decent James Taylor album, Never Die Young is unfortunately short and lyrically divisive, reducing the overall strength of a musically rich album.


It feels like every time I seem to be nearing the end of my James Taylor odyssey, I get another album by him that crosses my desk. As I prepare to take a few day's break to return to Janis Ian's works, I find myself eager to review Never Die Young, the last album before that break to cross my desk. Never Die Young is actually a fairly decent James Taylor album that seems to be straddling the gap in albums between his early, acoustic-sounding works and the later, more produced works. It is an interesting blend of sounds for Taylor and the album would certainly replay better were it not for the repetitiveness of many of the lyrics and the short duration of the album.

That said, Never Die Young is a musically rich enough album to keep the listener intrigued over several listens to the disc, though it is also fairly unsurprising to me that with all of the James Taylor albums I have listened to of late, only one of the songs from this album appeared on any of the compilations.

With only ten tracks coming in at 40:22, Never Die Young is a fairly collaborative effort for James Taylor. Three of the songs are co-written with others, Taylor provides the primary vocals, but is one of two primary guitarists on the album. As well, Taylor is not credited with playing any other instruments and he is not a producer or co-producer on the album. As a result, how much of this endeavor is the musical vision of James Taylor is subject for debate. This is not to say the album is not good, but given that it is different and he seems to have taken steps back in terms of instrumentation and writing, the question has to be asked: how much of this is what Taylor wanted the album to be?

Never Die Young falls perfectly into the late 1980's, early 1990's easy rock, pop-funk that was actually remarkably mainstream at the time. This is the style that was popularized by Richard Marx and the solo efforts of George Michael. James Taylor actually sounds rather Marx-like on this album, save that Taylor seems able to hit the notes and hold them without the strain or raspy quality that Marx often had. What tends to bring people to the later albums of James Taylor, more than the sound, is the lyrics.

Never Die Young is a mixed bag in that department. The album is made up of a number of Taylor's musical storysongs, like the best of his albums have. This album seems much more preoccupied with the storysongs than with the emotive poems Taylor usually mixes in with the storysongs. While "Valentine's Day" and "First Of May" seem to pay tribute to the melancholy days that Taylor tries to poetically invoke, they fall a bit flatter than earlier songs of his.

Take, for example, "Valentine's Day." The song is poetically interesting when read, but as a song it seems terribly uninspired as a list poem. When Taylor sings the lines "Beneath the tide the fishes glide / Fin to fin and side to side / For fishy love has now begun / Fishy love, finny fun / Paper moon, paper heart / Pink balloon, work of art / Al Capone, Bugs Moran / Valentine's Day" ("Valentine's Day") the lines come across as singsongy and ridiculous. There is no sense of irony or even a sense of deeper meaning to the lines. It is almost like Taylor looked around at his surroundings and just made a list of things that rhymed. It's possible for an artist like James Taylor to do a song like that that is fun and carefree, but here he performs it like it is deep and meaningful and it falls flat.

On the flip side, "Home By Another Way" actually has some of the depth that fans of Taylor's have come to expect of him. On that song, Taylor creates a rather original song paying tribute to the three wise men. He sings "Home is where they want you / You can more or less assume that you'll be welcome in the end / Mustn't let King Herod haunt you so / Or fantasize his features when you're looking at a friend / Well it pleasures me to be here / And to sing this song tonight / They tell me that life is a miracle / And I figure that they're right" ("Home Another Way"). Taylor is not singing an original storysong, but he is retelling a familiar story with a decent level of diction and intrigue to create a song that tells a new perspective on the familiar story. Indeed, in the Bible, Jesus's birth is celebrated and Taylor sings about the reasonable fear those visiting the baby must have had and that perspective and level of insight is pretty wonderful!

The album's title track, which opens Never Die Young is a decent anthem to life and it works, as well. On that song, Taylor makes his poem actually rock when he presents a song about the relationship between nature and life and the wish of all living things to live well when he wrote "Syncronized with the rising moon / Even with the evening star / They were true love written in stone / They were never alone, they were never that far apart / And we who couldn't bear to believe they might make it / We had to close our eyes / Cut up our losses into doable doses / Ration our tears and sighs" (Never Die Young). If nothing else, this album splits the listener between the idea that James Taylor can still write and that he's stretching for something to say. Ultimately, what he wants to say seems to come through enough that it makes it worth listening to the album a few times.

As well, Never Die Young is musically richer than some of Taylor's other albums. While the predominate sound is light pop-rock that is almost always called "adult contemporary" now, the album mixes it up a bit, too. "T-Bone" and "Runaway Boy" are essentially Country songs, "First Of May" has an almost Caribbean sound before it becomes an average pop song. There is another that sounds like a Gospel track and "Sweet Potato Pie," for as little as I like is, at least sounds unlike anything else Taylor has done since his unfortunate song "Chili Dog."

Never Die Young certainly keeps the listener interested with a decent mix of musical styles that work quite well to create a more full and vibrant sound than some of Taylor's more narcoleptic albums.

That said, Taylor's vocals are firmly rooted in this album within his comfortable range and he plays that mellow, articulate smooth sound well, but this album does not illustrate any expansion of vocal range. He does, however, show some decent ability to hold notes that he has not, traditionally, done and that helps the album, too. In fact, more than any other James Taylor album in the last few weeks I've listened to, the predominate feeling I have when this one ended was wishing there was more on it to hear.

The best track is "Home By Another Way," the weak track is "Sweet Potato Pie."

For other James Taylor albums, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
James Taylor And The Original Flying Machine
James Taylor
Sweet Baby James
Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon
One Man Dog
Gorilla
Greatest Hits
New Moon Shine
James Taylor Live
Hourglass
Greatest Hits 2
Appalachian Journey (with Yo-Yo Ma)
October Road
The Best Of James Taylor
One Man Band
Covers

7/10

Check out how this album stacks up against other music I have reviewed by visiting my Music Review Index Page where the reviews are organized by the quality of the reviewed work in order from best to worst!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Robust Taylor, Covers Satisfies Those Looking For Something Different From James Taylor!

The Good: Good vocals, Musically robust
The Bad: Not a great selection of songs for Taylor
The Basics: A good album that is not exactly indicative of James Taylor's writing talents, Covers expands Taylor's vocal range and provides impressive reinterpretations of known songs!


After a month and a half of listening to recordings by James Taylor, I was quite ready to move on with my life and focus on other musical artists. In fact, I've decided to revisit some of the female pop-rock artists who I might have glossed over on the first pass and I've been rather excited about that. But then, two days before Black Friday, I was given a copy of James Taylor's musical outing, Covers and I felt compelled to give it a couple good listens before moving on with the music I would rather have focused on.

The short version is Covers is a good album. But it's not a good James Taylor album. As a James Taylor album, it is adequate and at best it shakes up the perception of James Taylor as a tired, mellow singer songwriter who kind of blandly strums through a soft-rock repertoire. Covers alters that perception only by presenting James Taylor as a guy who can belt out some vibrant new versions of old songs that others wrote and recorded before him. The problematic contrast here, of course, is that one going back to Taylor's other works are likely to notice how stark and boring they are when one plays any three of them back to back to back.

With twelve tracks, clocking in at 41:51, Covers is James Taylor's least creative album to date. First, he did not write a single track on the album, nor did he co-write any of them. For this album, Taylor relied on the writing of others and perhaps the most familiar to his sound is Holland-Dozier-Holland, who Taylor got "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" back in the '70's - on this album Taylor uses their song "(I'm A) Road Runner." Taylor does provide all of the lead vocals and he plays guitar on the album as well. He does take a co-producer's credit, so the sound of each song my reasonably be attributed to James Taylor.

To be fair to James Taylor, Covers is a decent album and it is one that mixes up his sound rather well. Instead of the usual placid, mellow, niche-bound James Taylor, on Covers, he really opens it up. Instead of just light rock, adult contemporary that Taylor has been embedded in for the last few albums, he mixes it up with more jazz and a classic country sound that harkens back to the singer-songwriter's musical roots.

Unfortunately, one of the strongest elements Taylor usually has working in his favor on his albums is the strength of his lyrics. Utilizing other people's works leaves him at the mercy of sensibilities often inferior to his own. Take, for example, "(I'm A) Road Runner," a song about moving, living life and not worrying so much about money and success. Taylor has dealt with this topic on several of his own, original tracks and with the lines "Money, who needs it? / Just to live my life / Free and easy / Put the toothbrush in my hand / And let me be travelin', man / 'Cause I'm a roadrunner, baby / I'm a roadrunner, baby / Can't stay in one place too long / I'm a roadrunner, baby / Mess with me and I'll be gone" ("(I'm A) Road Runner") it is simplified in a way that he never did on his own versions of dealing with the concept. While Taylor is one of the few artists I can think of who gets away still with using "baby," it's on this song a bit much even for him!

Similarly, Covers is plagued by repeatability that weakened some of the original tracks. "Hound Dog" is a remarkably simple song and while Taylor's version is longer than most, it is hardly less repetitive. This is not to say that all of the tracks are poor choices for Taylor. Even with a simpler rhyme scheme, "It's Growing" by Smokey Robinson and Warren Moore fits well within Taylor's sensibilities when he sings "Like the rose bud / Blooming in the warmth / Of the summer sun, / Oh baby, it's growing / Like the tale by the time / It's been told by more than one, / It's growing / Every day it grows a little more / Than it was on the day before / My love for you just grows / And grows / Oh, how it grows and grows / And where it's gonna stop / I'm sure that nobody knows." Taylor might be the only one who could make "grows" rhyming with itself and "knows" still work. The opening song cleanly establishes Covers and Taylor presents the song well.

Some of the songs James Taylor presents on Covers are actually on-par with Taylor's writing and sense of poetics. As a result, it is easy to see why James Taylor would want to present "Some Days You Gotta Dance" by Johnson and Morgan. With lines like "Well I was talking with my baby / Over a small glass of tea / He asked the loaded question / He said how do you feel about me / My mind was racin' I was pacin' / But the word just wouldn't come / And there was only on thing / Left to do I feel it comin' on" ("Some Days You Gotta Dance") it sounds almost like Taylor himself wrote it. After all, James Taylor has an impressive ability when it comes to writing storysongs in a classic folk-rock tradition and lyrically, "Some Days You Gotta Dance" fits well into that.

The sound of this album, though, is anything but folk-rock. Honestly, I've not heard all of the songs that James Taylor presents on this album in their originally-released versions. I would guess I have heard about half. What Covers does remarkably well is reinterprets known songs with entirely new sensibilities. Most of these songs are "oldies" or classic rock songs and James Taylor loads the album up with musical accompaniment. Instead of James Taylor's usual guitar or piano-driven tracks, Covers is filled with a virtual orchestra. As a result, it is not uncommon to hear trombones, trumpets, saxophones, flutes and violins on songs that never had them originally.

Take, for example, "Hound Dog." Arguably the most famous version was Elvis Presley's version, which was a guitar and percussion-dominated track. In fact, on his version the percussion is one of the most influential and complicated bits of rhythm in rock and roll music. For Covers, James Taylor completely reimagines the song as a song heavy in guitar, bass, and keyboards with a completely different sound and rhythm. Somewhat slower than the original, Taylor's version is more of a jazz track than a rock and roll one and the reimagining is quite impressive.

Even more well-known tracks (or equally well-known songs) like "On Broadway" have been cleverly reconfigured for this album. Unlike the brass-driven march I'm more used to (thank you, American Beauty!) Taylor presents a less raucous version of the song that leaves it with a very different resonance, one more of longing than of celebration.

As well, Covers provides a hugely different range of vocals from James Taylor. Taylor is all over the vocal range on this one, much like he was on his very first outing, James Taylor And The Original Flying Machine. In fact, for fans of Taylor's the best reference point would be his song "Steamroller." On "Steamroller," James Taylor sings lower and more soulful than on virtually any other track of his. Yet, he replicates a similar sense of range with songs like "Suzanne" and "Not Fade Away."

In other words, despite not being as strong as some James Taylor fans might like on the lyrical front, Covers provides a counterpoint to the more mundane musical outings many of his albums are. This is a much more lively, musically and vocally rich expression by James Taylor. One can only hope he takes that sensibility back to the studio for his next original work.

The best track is "Not Fade Away," the weakest link is the less-memorable "Sadie."

For other James Taylor albums, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
James Taylor And The Original Flying Machine
James Taylor
Sweet Baby James
Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon
One Man Dog
Gorilla
Greatest Hits
New Moon Shine
James Taylor Live
Hourglass
Greatest Hits 2
Appalachian Journey (with Yo-Yo Ma)
October Road
The Best Of James Taylor
One Man Band

6/10

For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Good, But Short, James Taylor, Gorilla Satisfies, Though It Doesn't Use The Medium Well.

The Good: Decent vocals, Good instrumental sound, Some decent lyrics
The Bad: SHORT, Very limited vocal sound
The Basics: A decent James Taylor outing brought down some by the shortness of the album and the vocal monotony, Gorilla is still worth listening to!


As I near the end of my "studies" of the works of James Taylor - and debate getting in the last three or four albums of his that I have not listened to and reviewed - I find myself both strangely glad I made the effort and obviously glad to be moving on to other artists who I hope will be more interesting and diverse in their works (any suggestions on who I should devote next month to are welcome!). James Taylor has the lyrics and the voice, but there seems to be a pretty significant stretch in his career where he was essentially producing the same type albums with himself, his guitar and his smooth, bland vocals.

And while that might be enough for some, it's not enough for me. Taylor's later works reflect a greater sense of polish and production, but some of them lack the lyrical greatness of his early works and he seldom escapes his rather safe range with his vocals. The result is an artist whose career of radio hits seems to be a study in bland niche-sinking that degenerates into an adult contemporary career of strange musical experimentations that lack the punch or significance of songs like "Fire And Rain." Gorilla seems to be the album where he abandoned some of his musical experimentation (along with producer Peter Asher) and settled into a mellow, easygoing sound that helped to define the music of the 1970s.

With only eleven songs, clocking in at 39:04, Gorilla is a pretty lousy use of the c.d. medium: any two early James Taylor works could fit onto a single c.d. and that Warner Brothers Records opted not to give fans any sort of additional value by doubling up is disappointing. Still, this does appear to be mostly the work of James Taylor. James Taylor wrote all but two of the songs - his highly popular "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)" is a cover and "Wandering" is a traditional song, though Taylor arranged it. Taylor provides the lead vocals on all of the songs. As well, James Taylor plays several instruments on that album and while he expands his instrumental repertoire to include the ukulele on this album. He is more prominently featured using acoustic and electric guitars as well as high string guitars. He also is credited with providing more vocal harmonies than he did in the past.

Taylor is accompanied instrumentally or vocally on Gorilla by the likes of Carly Simon, Crosby and Nash, and long-time collaborator Danny Kortchmar, who only plays Taylor's works on the album, not writing his own for Taylor to use. As well, Randy Newman appears on "Lighthouse" on the hornorgan. Strangely, Simon's only contribution is vocal and only on "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)." Taylor is not given any form of production credit and someone else is actually credited with string arrangements on the album, which seems odd. Still, it does seem to be largely the musical vision and talent of James Taylor.

And Gorilla is all right. Were it not for the short duration of the album, it would have been an above-average outing for James Taylor. On c.d., though, it is disappointingly short and it seems underdeveloped as a result. That said, Gorilla is actually one of Taylor's more fun and upbeat albums. Starting with the party song "Mexico," the album is easy listening light pop-rock that pays tribute to "Music" itself before presenting the straightforward feel-good swing singsong that is "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)." Taylor includes the usual storysongs with "Wandering," Gorilla and "Lighthouse." The rest of the album is padded out with songs that focus on essential human emotions and Taylor makes them sound good and he writes quite poetically.

Take, for example, "You Make It Easy." This is a seduction song where a lonely man contemplates a one night stand with a woman and Taylor creates a scenario that virtually every married couple has gone through when he writes and sings "Heaven knows I love my woman / We're just bound to fuss and fight / And I wind up on this barroom stool / Buying drinks and keeping tight / But you know that I've never done / What's come in my mind tonight / You make it easy / For a man to fall" ("You Make It Easy"). Taylor does not justify his narrator's thoughts of straying from fidelity, but he paints a picture that is fairly universal and adequately expresses the frustration a loving couple goes through that leads often enough to one partner doing something stupid.

Fortunately, Gorilla is not an album all about cheating on one's wife. Taylor sings about the utter mystery attraction can be on "I Was A Fool To Care." After acknowledging that the object of his affection might not be right for him in a rational sense, Taylor writes "I'm still in love with you / Had I listened to the grapevine I might have had my doubts / But I did my level best just to block them out / 'Cause love is so unwise / And love has no eyes / And it took awhile for a fool to see / What his friends were on about" ("I Was A Fool To Care"). Taylor adequately uses the song to explore how beautiful and irrational love can be and he performs it with a precision that makes it clear he knows just what he is talking about!

Similarly, Taylor does something few pop-rock or folk-rock artists ever do: he explores simple anger. He does not sing a song about being angry at someone for something on "Angry Blues" but rather writes and sings about being overcome with rage irrational and he does it quite well. Instead of trying to repress it, he explores anger in the lines "If I had my way / I'd be sitting on top of the world / I can't help if if I don't feel so good / When the anger comes in him / There's no place for a man to hide . . . I ain't looking for details / Won't you just give me a clue / Oh Lord what am I gonna do" ("Angry Blues").

Lyrically, Gorilla (the album) is not bad. Taylor writes generally well and has something to say on virtually every subject in terms of emotions, relationships and just singing telling stories. Similarly, this is not a bad album vocally. Taylor does stretch his range slightly on "Music" when he goes a little higher, but otherwise, this album's vocals are characterized by the mellow, somewhat banal vocals that are present in "How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)." Taylor has a wonderful, smooth voice that is easy to listen to and is both clear and articulate. It is also fairly boring and because the album is so short, it holds up poorly over multiple relistens.

As well, after "Mexico's" upbeat instrumentals, Gorilla settles into a pretty mellow, light rock sound that is most often characterized by James Taylor and his guitar. There are one or two piano-driven tracks, but mostly this is a pretty straightforward man and his guitar sound and that, too, drags some when one listens to the album over and over again repeatedly.

Still, Gorilla is worth the listen, if for nothing else than the sheer number of decent tracks on this album that are not on any of the compilation albums. In fact, this is one of Taylor's stronger musical outings and it just leaves the listener unsatisfied that there isn't more to it than the few short tracks that appear.

The best song is "I Was A Fool To Care," the low point is the unmemorable "Sarah Maria."

For other James Taylor albums, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
James Taylor And The Original Flying Machine
James Taylor
Sweet Baby James
Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon
One Man Dog
Greatest Hits
New Moon Shine
James Taylor Live
Hourglass
Greatest Hits 2
Appalachian Journey (with Yo-Yo Ma)
October Road
The Best Of James Taylor
One Man Band

6.5/10

Check out how this album stacks up against all other albums and singles I have reviewed by visiting my Music Review Index Page which features musical works in order from best to worst with clickable links to the reviews of each work!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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James Taylor's Other Early Experiment Underwhelms Me With One Man Dog.

The Good: Good vocals, Musically rich
The Bad: Not Taylor's best lyrics, dreadfully short songs, short album
The Basics: Instantly more interesting to listen to than most of James Taylor's works, One Man Dog trades substance for style and ultimately fails the listener.


For those who might be reading along my many reviews of the music of James Taylor and getting to the point where they are sick of the reviews, please believe me; it's worse listening to each of these albums at least eight times! After all, when an album works and is good, it is easy to write about it and it is a pleasure to listen and re-listen to it over and over again. But when an artist finds their musical niche and sticks to it pretty faithfully, this is a form of torture to listen over and over and over to the same albums to be able to fairly and realistically critique them.

I mention this because Taylor's album One Man Dog is both an album I could see merit in and became sick of remarkably quickly. Musically, it is one of Taylor's richest with supporting instrumentals and vocals that give him a very full sound that makes for a complete album and a decent concept for what the abilities of this artist can be. Unfortunately, it holds up poorly over multiple listens and more than any other early James Taylor work, I can't find the single. It was "Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight," but that song is virtually lost on this album which is packed with other songs that are far more musically full. And while the first "official" James Taylor album left me baffled as to how it was made, One Man Dog is less cohesive as a musical experience and it is hard to imagine that many people found this a satisfying and enduring album back in the day even.

With eighteen tracks clocking in at only 37:51, One Man Dog is one of James Taylor's most collaborative early works. Taylor, well known for being a singer-songwriter right from the beginning of his career let a number of people write or co-write on this album. Out of the eighteen songs, only fourteen are written by Taylor exclusively and at least two of those are instrumental tracks. Of the other four, only one is co-written by Taylor - "Woh, Don't You Know," one of Taylor's worst and most self-referential songs of his career. The other three are written by early bandmate Daniel Kortchmar ("Back On The Street Again"), Bill Keith and Jim Rooney ("One Morning In May") and John McLaughlin ("Someone"). Even the songs that are written by Taylor aren't his best ever, but "One Morning In May" doesn't even sound like one of Taylor's.

James Taylor, naturally, provides the lead vocals for all of the songs that have vocals to them, but he is backed by a number of vocalists. "One Morning In May" is essentially a duet between Taylor and Linda Rondstadt and Carole King appears on three songs, one of which also features Carly Simon doing background vocals! Instrumentally, Taylor does branch out a bit on One Man Dog. In addition to his usual acoustic guitar - which he plays on thirteen tracks - he branches out with the harmonica ("One Man Parade"), electric guitars on four songs, bells, autoharps, and even a toolbox of instruments when he plays a chain saw, hammer and 4 x 8 on "Little David."

Moreover, Taylor is not the only one playing different or more instruments than one usually hears on the standard James Taylor album. Taylor does not play an instrument on "Hymn," but the song is in no way bland or underperformed. Instead, like many of the tracks, it has a brass section - trumpets and trombones - that Taylor introduces to his folk-rock sound on this album. It is too bad that with his musical enrichment, he didn't have the writing to back it up. One Man Dog is like a movie with an excellent cast, but no script. This is instantly intriguing to the ear, but the moment one picks at it slightly, the whole work falls apart as a somewhat sludgelike musical experience.

That said, the best song by far as far as the lyrics is also the one that sounds most like the traditional, mundane James Taylor that one might know and love. That song is "Don't Let Me Lonely Tonight." What makes that song so wonderful is that Taylor actually has something to say on the song and he says it with beautiful and lasting poetry. Taylor takes a stab at the universal desire to love and be loved when he wrote and sang, "Say good-by and say hello, / Sure enough good to see you, but it's time to go, / Don't say yes but please don't say no, / I don't want to be lonely tonight. / Go away then, damn you, / Go on and do as you please, / You ain't gonna see me gettin' down on my knees. / I'm undecided, and your heart's been divided, / You've been turning my world upside down" ("Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight"). This song is amazing in its presentation of desire and ambivalence toward one's own desire.

"Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" is also an exception on the album. What One Man Dog often lacks is that sense of universal. It also lacks truly meaningful storysongs that generally define the works of James Taylor. What it does have is musical experimentation. With this also comes lyrical experimentation. Perhaps the most extreme example of that is "Chili Dog." I first heard "Chili Dog" on one of Taylor's live albums and I wondered where the heck it came from. It appears to have come from One Man Dog. Sadly, it does not make it any better with its lame lines of "Make my bed out of wonder bread / Spread some mustard upon my head /
I don't want no onions or sauerkraut, mamma / Hold on to the bun baby, work it on out. / I'm a chili dog / I guess you guessed by now / Sure 'nuf I'm a chili dog, baby (you and me) / Delicious" ("Chili Dog")! At least it's better than his ode to getting high with "Mescalito."

The thing is, One Man Dog lacks a lot of the sophisticated lyrical development one expects even from early or experimental James Taylor. Many of the songs are no more than two minutes and the short duration makes a number of them seem less professional or polished than they ought to. Take, for example, "Little David." This song is comprised entirely of the lines "Little David, play on your harp / Hallelu, hallelu, little David / Play on your harp, hallelujah / Little David, play on your harp / Hallelu, hallelu, little David / Play on your harp, hallelujah / Hey now, I don't know for sure / It gets said, I got told / Someone said that the streets of heaven /
Are paved with solid gold / It must make a might fine road" ("Little David"). There's a repetition of the first stanza again, but basically, this is a nine-word song interrupted by a five line poem. There is a reason it does not make it into the annals of great James Taylor works; it's too short to leave much of an impression and it runs right into the song that follows it.

In other words, One Man Dog is something of a failed experiment and what Taylor added in sound, he lost in lyrics. Longtime producer Peter Asher let Taylor go wild on this one and, if anything, it is an argument for restraint in the creation of folk-rock music. At least, it's an argument for having something to say with folk-rock music and One Man Dog does not seem to have anything coherent to say.

For other James Taylor albums, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
James Taylor And The Original Flying Machine
James Taylor
Sweet Baby James
Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon
Greatest Hits
New Moon Shine
James Taylor Live
Hourglass
Greatest Hits 2
Appalachian Journey (with Yo-Yo Ma)
October Road
The Best Of James Taylor
One Man Band

5/10

For other music reviews, please check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all of the music reviews I have written!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.

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The Debut Of James Taylor Makes Me Yearn For The Familiar, Developed Taylor!

The Good: Some of the lyrics, Moments of vocals
The Bad: Terrible instrumentals, Some poor vocals, Some ridiculous lyrics, SHORT!
The Basics: Early recordings of some of Taylor's best songs are not only unfamiliar,but disturbing on James Taylor,an album that proves sometimes getting a proper studio backing you isn't the best thing.


For those who do not follow my reviews, I have been going through the audio library of James Taylor, one of the premiere American singer-songwriters of modern times. I have reviewed ten of his albums and finally managed to get my hands on his earliest works and as I listen to them, I have to salute people like Peter Asher, who produced the first official James Taylor album, James Taylor. Asher saw some potential in Taylor that is not evident on this album.

I have critiqued Taylor for his limited vocal range and the monotony of his music, but having now listened to quite a few of his albums and made it back to his beginning, I have to say that he did get better with age. James Taylor is a musical nightmare that leads the listener to wonder how Taylor managed to get his musical career up and running with so little evidence of the greatness he would come to possess. It is worth noting, as well, that the best and most recognizable songs on this album, like "Carolina In My Mind" and "Something In The Way She Moves" were both re-recorded at a later point for their use on every compilation that followed as well as most radio play. Hearing them in this early incarnation is actually unnerving after hearing them so many times the other way!

With a dozen songs coming in at 38:24, James Taylor is a poor use of the c.d. medium to be sure. At least two of his early works could have been fit onto a single disc and it is disappointing the producers of the c.d. did not think to offer the listener the value of doing that. This is, however, largely, the musical vision of James Taylor. Taylor wrote or co-wrote all of the tracks, save "Circle Round The Sun," which is a traditional song. Taylor arranged that song, as he did with his instrumentation of "Greensleeves" on the opening track of the album. As well, Taylor provides the primary vocals on all of the songs and plays guitar on all of the tracks. One might be interested to note that Taylor plays electric guitar on "Night Owl" and he is accompanied on the album by none other than Paul McCartney and George Harrison (at least on one track each)! So, this does appear to be Taylor's musical vision, especially when one considers that five of the songs appeared on his original demo album (James Taylor And The Original Flying Machine) .

But it's not good. Songs that he did on earlier works, like "Knocking 'Round The Zoo" and "Brighten Your Night With My Day" are reorchestrated to be ridiculous and noisy and upbeat pop tunes, respectively. The latter track is one of Taylor's best early ballads, but it is presented here as a pop song in a way that does not work with the lyrics. Similarly, The instrumentation on "Carolina In My Mind" is upbeat and dancable as opposed to more cerebral as it was later re-recorded to be. On that track, Taylor is also accompanied by several back-up singers who make it sound like a sugar coated pop song that is just sickly sweet. Similarly, "Rainy Day Man" is overproduced for the lyrics; that song would do great with a starkness that reflected the lyrics.

Indeed, "Rainy Day Man" is possibly one of Taylor's best-written songs because it tackles despair with a sense of realism lacking from many of Taylor's later tracks. It is on this song, that he asks, "What good is a that happy lie / All you wanted from the start was to cry / It looks like another fall / Your friends don't seem to help at all . . . It does you no good to pretend / You've made a hole much too big to mend / And it looks like you lose again my friend . . . All those noble thoughts don't belong / You can't hide the truth with a happy song . . ." ("Rainy Day Man"). Every time I'm in a bad mood now and I hear "Shower The People," I have the urge to blast "Rainy Day Man" because it is pretty much the quiet anthem of the depressed and angry.

But more than just a surprisingly cranky young man, James Taylor illustrated a real talent for love songs here at his beginning. "Brighten Your Night With My Day" deserves a place on his various "best of" albums from the lyrics, if not the presentation (the earlier presentation is much better). On this song, Taylor poetically sings "Daybreak finds you up and alive - just as though you could touch a star / But sunset seems to leave you weary - alone and wondering who you are/ Don't deny that lonely feeling that keeps stealing on you from deep down inside / Hey you can't see that it's no good concealing a feeling it hurts you to hide . . . Girl you can count on my - / Watch those shadows fade away - and brighten your night with my day" ("Brighten Your Night With My Day"). Taylor establishes himself with this track as a musical poet who has some impressive lyrical abilities.

Of course, the best known track on the album is Taylor's classic song "Carolina In My Mind" and one does not have to love the South to like this song. The musing, mellow quality to the lines "In my mind I'm gone to Carolina / Can't you see the sunshine. / Can't you just feel the moonshine / And ain't it just like a friend of mine / To hit me from behind / And I'm gone to Carolina in my mind" ("Carolina In My Mind") instantly creates a mental picture for anyone who has been to the Carolinas. It is a song that resonates even today and Taylor's sense of imagery goes a long way with that. He is a poet.

So how does this album fall so far down that I advise avoiding it (in direct opposition to other reviewers)? It's all the sound of the album. "Sunshine Sunshine" has overbearing violins that drown out Taylor's vocals. This comes on the heels of the screams and shrieking that come at the end of this album's version of "Knocking 'Round The Zoo," which ought to have been enough to sink Taylor's career from the start. Gone is the smooth funk that made this song interesting on his demo album replaced instead with . . .well, noise.

Similarly, "Something Wrong" was an instrumental track on his debut and here there are lyrics, which are one of the poorest examples of Taylor's writing. Moreover, instrumentally, the track was a stark guitar track that might not have been menacing to imply the title, but it was musing and emotive. Here Taylor is accompanied by a string quartet and an oboe and bassoon that destroy any emotional relevancy.

As well, "Taking It In" is a dippy pop song which echoes many of my problems with this album's version of "Carolina In My Mind." There are moments on the song where Taylor sounds like he is simply reading the lyrics to "Taking It In" as opposed to singing it.

Vocally, this album illustrates no real range for James Taylor and producer Peter Asher has a poor sense of balancing the accompaniments with Taylor's voice. He is drown out by instruments or vocals on many of the tracks.

For those looking for early James Taylor, I'd go for his demo before this debut: at least that is different from other James Taylor works in a good way. For those looking for classic James Taylor go for one of his early compilations (like "Greatest Hits") because then you'll at least be getting the familiar and well-liked versions of the songs you like.

The best track is "Rainy Day Man," the worst among these generally disappointing tracks is "Taking It In."

For other James Taylor albums, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
James Taylor And The Original Flying Machine
Sweet Baby James
Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon
Greatest Hits
New Moon Shine
James Taylor Live
Hourglass
Greatest Hits 2
Appalachian Journey (with Yo-Yo Ma)
October Road
The Best Of James Taylor
One Man Band


3.5/10

For other music reviews, please be sure to visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing of all my music reviews!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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Few Artists Can Fake Being A One Man Band, But James Taylor Does It Fine.

The Good: Good voice, A few interesting re-interpretations of songs, Good mix, Adequate instrumentals.
The Bad: Nothing terribly extraordinary, DVD is "meh," "live" conceits.
The Basics: A decent mix of classic and contemporary James Talyor songs, One Man Band offers some good intepretations of the singer-songwriter's works.


After weeks of listening to little else save the works of James Taylor, it - admittedly - takes quite a bit to get me excited about listening to a new to me James Taylor album. Taylor is a decent singer-songwriter, but his voice gets monotonous after two albums back to back (this is album number ten for me from his library!) and his lack of genuine musical diversity becomes tiresome pretty quickly, especially with his albums of collected works, which tend to be biased toward the earliest parts of his career.

On One Man Band, though, James Taylor manages to present a live concert album that is decent enough to recommend. Unlike Live, on One Man Band, James Taylor presents a decent mix of classic James Taylor songs and his newer works off some of his latest albums. There were even two songs I had not yet heard (or that had not registered with me if I had). Then again, "Chili Dog" is hardly a memorable enough song to bother mentioning.

With nineteen tracks taking up a full 77:53, One Man Band is a decent blend of songs written and performed by James Taylor over his thirty-five year career. The songs on this album are mostly ones he wrote himself, save such obvious exceptions as "You've Got A Friend" and "Shower The People." He provides the primary acoustic guitar on each track as well as the vocals on all of the songs. As well, James Taylor takes a co-producing credit and that level of creative involvement makes this concert c.d. and DVD clearly his production and vision.

Perhaps the nicest thing about One Man Band that separates this album from his "greatest hits" and "best of" compilations is on this album he truly does mix the old with the new. Sure, there are classic hits like "Something In The Way She Moves" (which opens the album), "Carolina On My Mind," and "Fire And Rain," but they are interspersed with new tracks, like "Mean Old Man," "Line 'Em Up," and "Copperline." The album has no real theme other than "This is James Taylor!" But even in that, Taylor manages to surprise and do a few different things.

First, many of the songs are not simply literal interpretations of the prior studio tracks. "Slap Leather" is presented through a megaphone and sounds completely mechanical, lending a whole different interpretation to the song. "Copperline" is presented with an entirely different sense of syncopation and rhythm, which makes for a different sound and feel to the song. After hearing the same live version of "Steamroller" over and over again on other albums, it is refreshing to hear a different version on this album. Taylor actually sounds playful on this live take of "Mean Old Man" and it's nice to hear him having fun if for no other reason than he is presenting something other than bland and mellow.

Largely, the lyrics are the same as he always sings, but it is worth noting that James Taylor - for all of my problems with his smooth, monotonous vocals - has a genuine ability to write. He has some impressive story-songs, like "My Traveling Star." Lyrically, this is an intriguing musical poem with lines like "My daddy used to ride the rails / So they say, so they say / Soft as smoke and as tough as nails / Boxcar jones, old walking man / Coming back home was like going to jail / The sheets and the blankets and babies and all / No he never did come back home / Never that I recall" ("My Traveling Star"). It is rare for an artist to be able to populate songs with actual characters and give them little arcs, but Taylor does it (and well) with this song, like many of them on One Man Band.

Taylor also has a powerful ability to sing about universal emotions, as he does on "Secret O' Life." On that song, he muses on the nature of living and aging, something we all inevitably do. Taylor captures it well when he sings, "The secret of love is in opening up your heart / It's okay to feel afraid / But don't let that stand in your way / 'Cause anyone knows that love is the only road / And since we're only here for a while / Might as well show some style / Give us a smile" ("Secret O' Life"). Despite the rather inane rhyme scheme, Taylor makes a decent musical point and he presents it well.

But not all of the songs are winners. "School Song" is utterly unmemorable - even after eleven listens to this disc. Similarly, one wonders what Taylor was thinking with "Chili Dog" with its inane lines, such as "Make my bed out of wonder bread / Spread some mustard upon my head / I don't want no onions or sauerkraut, mamma / Hold on to the bun baby, work it on out. / I'm a chili dog / I guess you guessed by now / Sure nuf (sic) I'm a chili dog, baby (you and me) / Delicious!" With the massive catalogue of James Taylor tracks in existence it is astonishing to think that he could not come up with a song better than that to pad out this album.

Not that it truly needs any padding. James Taylor enthusiasts will no doubt be psyched by this presentation as it includes James Taylor introducing several of the songs with interesting anecdotes about them.

Instrumentally, One Man Band does not truly live up to its title. Taylor plays the guitar, but he is often accompanied with drums, piano, and some background vocals. Interestingly, he continued to make stylistic choices that allowed him to reinterpret several of the songs through how he used his accompaniment. For example, "Shower The People" has a more stark sound as this version is not overwhelmed with background vocalists. Similarly, "Line 'Em Up" has a different timbre as a result of its backing vocals, at least compared to the album version I heard before this one.

But for those looking for a radical re-interpretation of James Taylor, One Man Band is not it. Despite differences on some songs, many of the songs are the man and his guitar and they sound, well, like the easy listening light rock that they are. One of the nicest aspects of the album is the typical "live" sounds are kept to a minimum!

The DVD is a literal transcription of the concert, so it has only the nineteen tracks from the c.d. version of the event with the same introductions as appear on the audio disc. There are no additional tracks or commentaries. There are, however, four "outtakes." In that section, Taylor stumbles through a take of "Carolina On My Mind," fumbles "Fire And Rain" before talking about a terrible experience he had with the song on the BBC and has make-up applied mid-set. As well, he offers an explanation to "Steamroller" which is actually quite interesting.

Fans of James Taylor will want to include this in their collection and those who are not big fans, this offers a decent enough mix to be a reasonable staple in a collection for one who wants vast diversity. If you need a James Taylor c.d. in your collection, you can do a lot worse than this one and the DVD can be a nice way to kill a couple of hours on a cold, long night.

For other James Taylor albums, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
James Taylor And The Original Flying Machine
Sweet Baby James
Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon
Greatest Hits
New Moon Shine
James Taylor Live
Hourglass
Greatest Hits 2
Appalachian Journey (with Yo-Yo Ma)
October Road
The Best Of James Taylor

7/10

For other album and single reviews, please be sure to check out my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2012, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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