Music Record Shop Weekly (CONTEST!!)

Welcome to the weekly feature (look for it every Friday) called MusicRecordShop Weekly.

Instead of the usual special releases to browse over, Mark has let the CVR blog have one copy of Mad Season's 'Above' to give away to a lucky blog reader.  So, the 33rd emailer with the words "Music Record Shop Mad Season Contest" in the subject line to this email address rbenson30@wi.rr.com  wins!  Limit one entry per person please! 



Mad Season - Above

This expanded double 12" vinyl edition includes the original album in its entirety as well as three songs from the band's unfinished second album with newly recorded vocals by Mark Lanegan, a previously unreleased instrumental, "Interlude," and a remixed version of Mad Season's cover of John Lennon 's "I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier."

Above is the only studio album by the American rock band Mad Season, released on March 14, 1995 through Columbia Records. The album has been certified gold by the RIAA in the United States.  The album's gloomy, black and white cover art was illustrated by Staley. The drawing was based upon a photograph of Staley and his then-girlfriend, Demri Lara Parrott.

Mad Season
Barrett Martin – drums, percussion, double bass, cello, marimba, vibraphone
Mike McCready – lead and rhythm electric and acoustic guitars
John Baker Saunders – bass guitar
Layne Staley – vocals, rhythm guitar, illustrations

Think of the one-shot Seattle supergroup Mad Season as the grunge version of sober living. Guitarist Mike McCready, best known as the main six-string slinger in Pearl Jam, met bassist John Baker Saunders while in rehab, and the two paired with Screaming Trees' drummer Barrett Martin and Alice in Chains vocalist Layne Staley, partially in hopes of steering the singer onto the path of the straight and narrow. Ultimately, the plan didn't pan out, but for a brief while, the quartet -- who adopted the name Mad Season -- did have their moment of clarity, captured on the 1995 album Above. There was a single issued to modern rock radio -- "River of Deceit" -- but this record downplayed easy hooks and melody in favor of churning introspection and slow vamps that occasionally flirt with blues (the never-ending 12-bar "Artificial Red," balanced by the distorto riffs of "I Don't Everything"), but usually conjure nothing more than the dank sludge of Seattle. Mad Season aren't quite mired in the darkest areas of grunge -- they're clever enough to let a saxophonist lend color to "Long Gone Day" -- but the lack of melodicism is a bit of a drag over the long haul, turning Above into a bit of heavy mood music. In a sense, it's the id of Seattle run rampant: all the bands involved, outside of Saunders' Walkabouts and Martin's Trees (who were nevertheless considerably more popular than Saunders' group), enjoyed commercial success in 1995, so they could have gotten away with anything and, in a sense, they did, as a major-label actually released this turgid bit of soul-baring heavy rock. McCready gets plenty of room for his elliptical guitar, the players has space to dig into their minor-key vamps, Staley essays his only set of completely original lyrics, but the whole thing feels kind of inert and indulgent, which may be appropriate for a band treating rock & roll as therapy.   -All Music Guide

• Vinyl 2-LP Import 2013
• Label  - Music On Vinyl
• 180 Gram Vinyl Records - 2-LP - Sealed
• Limited Edition
• Numbered
• Previously unreleased bonus tracks - ("Locomotive," "Black Book Of Fear," "Slip Away") and a remix of "I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier"

Track Listing
LP1
1. Wake Up
2. X-Ray Mind
3. River Of Deceit
4. Artificial Red
5. Lifeless Dead
6. I Don't Know Anything

LP2
1. Long Gone Day
2. November Hotel
3. All Alone
4. Interlude
5. Locomotive (bonus track)
6. Black Book Of Fear (bonus track)
7. Slip Away (bonus track)
8. I Don't Wanna Be A Soldier (remix)

Buy At MusicRecordShop



Musicology 101

Let's have a little fun, so here are some rock and roll nuggets so you can win at music trivia games and become a top musicologist!

For many years it was thought that the very first song ever recorded was "Mary Had A Little Lamb," as spoken by Thomas Edison while testing an early phonograph in 1877. In March, 2008, the Association for Recorded Sound Collections announced the discovery of a recording of "Au Clair de la Lune," found by audio historians in the archives of the French Academy of Sciences in Paris . The recording was made by Parisian inventor Edouard-Leon Scott de Martinville and recorded on a "phonautograph", a device that engraved sound waves onto a sheet of paper blackened by the smoke of an oil lamp. The recording took place on April 9th, 1860...17 years before Thomas Edison invented his phonograph.

When Elvis started filming 'Loving You' in early 1957, he dyed his hair jet-black for the part. He liked the change from his natural dark blonde so much, he continued to dye it for the rest of his life.

Little Richard's opening line to his hit "Tutti Frutti", A-wop bop-a loo-mop, a-lop bam-boom! was a scat that was supposed to imitate a drum solo opening.

The first few copies of "Hey Paula" were credited to "Jill and Ray," since the singer's real names were Jill Jackson and Ray Hildebrand. For continuity sake, the duo were quickly re-named Paul and Paula.

The Allman Brothers' only Billboard Top 10 hit, "Ramblin' Man" was the last song recorded by bassist Berry Oakley before his death in 1972.

The soundtrack for the movie Saturday Night Fever was composed and performed primarily by The Bee Gees and has gone platinum fifteen times over. Despite this success, The Bee Gees' Robin Gibb stated that he had never seen the film all the way through.

The Eagles first learned the J.D. Souther written "How Long" in 1974, and although it was frequently included in their live shows, they refrained from recording it so Souther could use it on his own solo album. It finally appeared on their 2007 album, 'Long Road Out Of Eden' and was released as a single in January, 2008. A month later, the song brought the band their fifth Grammy Award for Best Country Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.

When an interviewer asked Paul Simon "What's the smartest thing you ever heard anybody in Rock 'n' Roll say?", Simon answered "Be bop-a-lula, she's my baby."

After the amazing success of "Dark Side Of The Moon", Pink Floyd planned an album that featured the sounds of household objects, which fortunately was never recorded.

Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Sweet Home Alabama" was written as an answer to two Neil Young songs, "Southern Man" and "Alabama", which dealt with themes of racism and slavery in the American South. Young was born in Toronto, Canada and Skynyrd's members were from Florida.