Peter Cetera

Generally, those who recall Peter Cetera think of his saccharine drenched Chicago and solo ballads like Hard Habit to Break, You're the Inspiration, Glory of Love, and The Next Time I Fall in Love. It's understandable really, as Peter has made a solo career of love songs. He has an excellent voice that gives conviction and passion to even the most obnoxiously saccharine drivel. Even though I don't necessarily care for the style of music he's chosen to perform since his 1985 departure from Chicago-- I can't help but have tremendous respect for him, for he's performing the kind of music he wants to perform. His career, his life, his music-- it's all on his own terms and there's a certain artistic integrity in that.

And even if I don't necessarily agree with or like some of the career choices Cetera has made, I respect the fact that he's doing what makes him happy. After leaving Chicago he as much as gave up the bass, he still picks it back up for a song or two on his few and far between live gigs, but these days his bass is more a novelty than an integral part of his career as a musician.

Listening to the Rhino re-issues of Chicago's Columbia Records catalog, Cetera's skill and ability as a bass player is clearly evident. Because he's such an exceptional singer, his bass-playing talents are usually overlooked. But back when Chicago was still a nameless, faceless band-- back when people knew the Chicago SOUND but not necessarily any of the band member's names Peter was not only an exceptional vocalist, but he showed some incredible bass chops on songs like South California Purples, In the Country, 25 or 6 to 4 (the bass-line was so good Green Day chose to "borrow" it for one of their own songs), Dialogue Pts. 1&2, State of the Union, Goodbye, Rediscovery, Hollywood, What's This World Coming To, Hideaway, Alive Again, and Overnight Cafe.

But Peter HAD to be good out of necessity. The multi-layered textured mixing of Chicago's earlier albums often pushed his bass to the front of the mix where it was quite noticeable. And while it was the horns that set Chicago apart from other bands, it was their tight rhythm section-- Danny Seraphine on drums, Terry Kath on rhythm (and lead) guitar, Laudir de Olivera on percussion, and of course Peter on bass that held their sound together. There was a tightness, a cohesiveness-- a chemistry between Peter, Terry, Danny, and Laudir that was even more prominent than Chicago's trademark horns-- that is, if you knew to listen for it.

In 1981, four years before he opted to leave Chicago, Peter released his debut solo album. Unfortuntely, due to poor promotion it sold quite poorly. It's a shame because his solo debut is probably one of his best albums. It even prompted Chicago to perform it's opener, the driving rocker, Livin' in the Limelight (incidentally it was also good enough to be covered by southern rockers Blackfoot in 1984) on Peter's last few tours with them. What is so surprising about it, and what sets it apart from the rest of his solo material is the lack of any ballads. All of the songs on it are either mid or uptempo rockers. Where most of his eighties output with Chicago and as a solo musician featured pop and A/C radio fodder, his solo debut was an AOR rocker with a kick. Luckily, within the past year or so his solo debut was FINALLY released on CD domestically and is a steal from Amazon at under $15 (a steal, especially considering I paid over twice that for it when it was still only available as a Japanese import-- OUCH).

Ambrosia (1975)

While best known for ballads like How Much I Feel, Biggest Part of Me, and You're the Only Woman Ambrosia's earlier material showed a much more multi-faceted sound fusing symphonic art rock with lush multi-layered pop music for a sound entirely unique to them.

With their 1975 debut, Holdin On To Yesterday caught the attention of the listening public-- and many of those who opted to purchase the album upon hearing that hit went on to say that as excellent as that track was it was actually the weakest on the album. While the rest of the tracks aren't necessarily as "accessible" this was one of those rare albums that lacks "filler" material-- you know those weak tracks all too common tossed in just to fill up space on the record (or today on the CD player). Whether it was Alan Parsons exceptional production or the musicianship of David Pack, Joe Puerta, Christopher North, and Burleigh Drummond-- someone made sure that all of the material that was inevitably recorded for this album was of superlative quality.

The symphonic nature of their music acts as a lush palette on which their voices can make their most artistic of paintings. Whether it's the tip of the hat to Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle on Nice, Nice, Very Nice, the melancholic Time Waits For No One, the pleading rocker World Leave Me Alone, or even their hit Holdin' On To Yesterday there's a musical seamlessness that touches on the alienation they would later and more fully explore on 1978's Life Beyond L. A. album.

Pack whose voice is the most prominent on most of the tracks is imminently pleasant and thoroughly listenable. His tone soft and soothing beautifully complements the music which graces this exceptional debut. Puerta's coarser and sometimes almost menacing vocals are generally reserved for the uptempo and often cynical tracks. However both Puerta and Pack show their versatility in their ability to switch roles from time to time with Puerta handling some of the more soothing and melodic pieces and Pack taking a turn on the more uptempo works-- adding a hint of grit to his vocals to give them that extra conviction which made those songs that much more believable to the listener.

In short this album is the first of Ambrosia's trifecta. The follow-up, 1976's Somewhere I've Never Travelled is the logical next step in Ambrosia's musical journey followed by 1978's Life Beyond L. A. Their final 2 albums One-Eighty and Road Island are noticeably more pop-oriented and lack the symphonic lustre of their first 3 albums-- while they do have their high points they lack the cohesiveness which made Ambrosia's first three albums consistently interesting and enjoyable.

Goodbye Lemon by Adam Davies

I was "burned" on Davies debut, The Frog King, I found it a rather mediocre tale. It was given to me by a coworker all too familiar with my love of Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City. I gave The Frog King a try as it had a similar premise-- young writer guy in NY struggling to find himself gets his heart broken and has to re-define himself after messing up his relationship. Where McInerney succeded, Davies had failed. For all his faults, I was still able to make an emotional connection with McInerney's main character-- the same could not be said for Harry Driscoll, Davies' protagonist in The Frog King.

But I believe in giving second chances-- and after reading Davies Goodbye Lemon am I ever glad I did! Every once in awhile I'll read a book which packs a rather emotional sucker punch to the gut. I hadn't read one in awhile, so Goodbye Lemon was a very welcome and long overdue sucker punch.

The Frog King's Harry Driscoll was a rather unlikable louse who essentially got what he deserved-- he cheated on his girlfriend, she left him. Good for her-- and despite Davies best efforts to make Driscoll a likable character he really wasn't. On the flip-side, Goodbye Lemon's Jackson Tennant was an incredibly human and tragically flawed character. Sure he made mistakes, he carried with him a huge ball of hate-- a ball of hate that was everything he knew, a ball of hate based on his perception of the events surrounding the death of his older brother, Dex, when they were still children.

This is a book of love-- it's not the dime-store romance drivel. It's not romantic love at all which is what makes it so refreshing. The "guy meets girl, guy loses girl, guy gets girl back" is dime-a-dozen "dick-lit" (the male equivalent of chick-lit)-- much of it is just poor man's Hemmingway or Fitzgerald (it seems all the protagonists in those novels are modeled on Jake Barnes from The Sun Also Rises). Goodbye Lemon instead focuses much more heavily on fraternal and paternal love and how one tragic event was able to turn a family inside out and tear them apart and how it took another near-tragedy to pull that family back together.

Jack is not generally a likable guy. But his flaws are tangible and real which makes him sympathetic even in those parts of the book where one might want to reach into the pages and knock some sense into him. While the novel starts by focusing on Jack's relationship with his girlfriend, Hahva, it takes a rather dramatic shift in focus to the relationship between Jack and his brother Pressman and his estrangement from and his desire to become the antithesis of his father for whom he carries a profound hatred.

The book does have its comic moments, but essentially it's rather heartfelt and poignant in its own stark masculine way and has made it into my favorite books list-- I'd say number 4 with a bullet. So, if you're looking for something a little different than the dime-a-dozen dick-lit contemporary fiction, Goodbye Lemon is just what the doctor ordered.

The Big Bamboo by Tim Dorsey

Florida is an unusual state-- this is a fact which is made evident by the writings of Dave Barry, Carl Hiaasen, and the lesser known Tim Dorsey.

Dorsey, a long time contributor to various Floridian newspapers, is quite familiar to all of Florida's various eccentricities. Dorsey's brainchild, Serge A. Storms, a frenetic, unhinged, yet imminently likable chap has graced all of Dorsey's novels either as the major character or as a major supporting character.

Using Storms, Dorsey perpetually illustrates the eccentricities that set Florida apart from other states, the over-abundance of senior citizens, Cubans, and all the various other unique characters that make Florida so... well... Florida.

While not as reknown as Barry or Hiaasen, Dorsey's brand of humor is just as thoroughly enjoyable. No one is immune to Dorsey's humorous jabs in his most recent offering-- The Big Bamboo, a hilarious send-up of the celebrity culture of Los Angeles as Serge and his perpetually drug-addled cohort, Coleman, take a trip to the City of Angels in Serge's latest pet project-- returning the film industry to Florida. In the process Serge and Coleman get themselves involved in a bizarre kidnapping scheme and find themselves being chased by the Japanese mafia and some Alabaman oil barons who worship anything and everything that has to do with SEC college football.

While the vanity, self-importance, pretension, and general atmosphere of Los Angeles are incredibly easy targets for Dorsey-- he does manage to insert plenty of amusing jabs to keep the reader chuckling throughout the book. This may not be Dorsey's best offerings, but it's certainly not his worst either and is as enjoyable as any of his other comedic offerings. All of his satirical barbs at Los Angeles do seem to find their mark despite being rather predictable and cliche.

Def Leppard - Slang (1996)

By the mid-nineties the very style of music which had made Def Leppard's Pyromania (1983) and Hysteria (1987) albums so popular was as good as dead. After hiring former Dio guitarist, Vivian Campbell to replace the late Steve Clark, Def Leppard opted to re-invent themselves in the image of the music of that era.

Disposing of not only the logo but also the bombastic, fun, over-the-top glam/hair metal that had graced all of their previous albums the Lep entered uncharted territory.

While some may argue that Slang was a failed experiment-- credit must be given to Def Leppard for at least attempting to reinvent themselves, rather than sticking to the same tried and true formula of their previous albums.

Other than the title track, there's nothing on this album that would have fit on any other Def Leppard album. The musical style is more spare, minimal, and generally "naked." Some would say that the greatest flaw of Slang is that much of the music is far too serious or too dark. People who were expecting the fun of Rocket, Rock of Ages, Pour Some Sugar On Me, or Armageddon It instead got songs that dealt with death, suicide, and other similarly somber topics. This wasn't the Def Leppard the fans had come to know and love in the eighties and the resulting lukewarm reception was quite evident in its modest sales.

Stand-out tracks include Breathe a Sigh (which has my favorite misheard lyric EVER*), Slang, Work it Out, Pearl of Euphoria, and Where Does Love Go When It Dies. But, that being said, this isn't a singles album-- the album as a whole is actually greater than the sum of its parts.

With over ten years having passed since Slang's release one can offer a bit more objectivity-- hindsight, if you will. While this wasn't the "fun" Def Leppard of the eighties it, very likely, was an album the band HAD to make. Prior to this album, the band hadn't really dealt with the death of guitarist, Steve Clark. As much as it is a change of direction, it was the band's way of getting past Clark's death and moving on with their lives.

Three years later with Euphoria the band would get back to that fun-loving, happy-go-lucky pop-metal of the Hysteria era. But sometimes a band needs to take a step in a different direction, a personal re-evaluation, before they can move forward. Slang was just that for the Lep.


*the first time I heard the lyric "I more than long for your affection" as "I mow the lawn for your affection."

Def Leppard - Yeah! (2006)

Sometimes you want music that makes you think—that makes you re-evaluate certain long held opinions you may have. Other times you just want music that’s just plain fun—pure mental vacation. This is the music that doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s not music for the sake of music, it’s not music for the sake of the almighty dollar, it’s music purely for fun.

Def Leppard is fun, they always have been, their new album Yeah! is no exception. Generally cover albums are “stop-gaps” to buy time for the band to finish working on original material without the band falling out of the public spotlight. Generally they’re hit or miss, and many fans consider them “cop-outs”—after all we fans have heard the same old song before. We want something new!

What makes Yeah! work where other cover albums have failed is Def Leppard’s song selection. These are all songs by bands that influenced the various members of Def Leppard in their youth. With many of the groups/musicians they chose to cover—they didn’t go with the obvious—with T-Rex a lesser band would have covered Bang a Gong (Get It On), Def Leppard chose 20th Century Boy; for Sweet one might expect Ballroom Blitz or possibly Fox on the Run, but they chose Hell Raiser; for Free just about anyone would expect All Right Now, but instead they went with Little Bit of Love, with ELO the obvious would have been Don’t Bring Me Down (or possibly Do Ya?), but Def Leppard instead went with 10538 Overture.

Some of these songs Def Leppard is exactly the band you’d expect to cover them—Hell Raiser is probably the most obvious. On their Retro-Active CD the Lep chose to cover Sweet’s Action to great effect. Perhaps because Sweet was to the seventies what Def Leppard was to the eighties. Pure glam-rock fun, not at all pretentious, just good old fashioned rock and roll fun (with a bit of hairspray thrown into the mix for good measure).

Other songs are less obvious, although still (in some cases surprisingly so) quite respectable covers—The Kinks Waterloo Sunset, ELO’s 10538 Overture, David Essex’s Rock On, and Roxy Music’s Street Life all fall within that category.

After 2002’s X, which bored me to tears after only a couple of spins in my CD player, I was a bit apprehensive, but the price was right and I figured after High ‘n’ Dry, Pyromania, and Hysteria Def Leppard had more than earned a second chance. These guys may not be the band to make you think about the ills of the world, their music isn’t what one might hear in a Starbucks, and it certainly will never be considered high art—but there’s already plenty of that kind of music out there. Def Leppard is fun, that’s what people listen to them for and Yeah! is just the kind of album that can re-establish their reputation with a new generation of fans.

The Fourth Star in Heaven

On February 18, 1959 the small plane carrying Buddy Holly, J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper), and Ritchie Valens crashed killing all on board. Songwriter, Tommy Dee, wrote the song Three Stars which was subsequently performed by Eddie Cochran in memory of his 3 fallen peers:

Three Stars in Heaven

Look up in the sky, up towards the north
There are three new stars, brightly shining forth
They're shining oh-so bright from heaven above
Gee, we're gonna miss you, everybody sends their love

Ritchie, you were just starting to realise your dreams
Everyone calls me a kid, but you were only seventeen
Now Almighty God has called you, from oh-so far away
Maybe it's to save some boy or girl
Who might have gone astray
And with your star shining through the dark and lonely night
To light the path and show the way, the way that's right
Gee, we're gonna miss you, everybody sends their love

Buddy, I can still see you, with that shy grin on your face
Seems like your hair was always a little messed up
and kinda outa place
Now, not many people actually knew you or
understood how you felt
But just a song, just a song from you
could make the coldest heart melt
Well you're singing for God now, in his chorus in the sky
Buddy Holly, I'll always remember you with tears in my eyes
Gee, we're gonna miss you, everybody sends their love

I see a stout man, the Big Bopper's your name
God called you to heaven, maybe for new fortune and fame
Keep wearing that big Stetson hat and ramble up to the mike
And don't forget those wonderful words, you know what I like

Look up in the sky, up towards the north
There are three new stars, brightly shining forth
They' re shining oh—so bright from heaven above
Gee, we're gonna miss you, everybody sends their love

The cruel irony of this is that, on his way to Heathrow airport at the conclusion of his tour of England, the limo carrying Duane Eddy, Eddie Cochran, and Eddie's girlfriend crashed. Cochran, age 21, was killed, and Duane Eddy suffered a serious leg injury that led to a gimp he still suffers from today. Cochran became the “4^th star” in heaven, just over a year after Holly, Valens, and Richardson were taken from us.

While Cochran has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, his songs have been covered by the likes of The Who, Brian Setzer, Led Zeppelin, Blue Cheer, Faces, and the Sex Pistols to name a few—he’s not really been given the same level of attention as some of his peers and contemporaries.

The British Invasion was a reaction from “across the pond” to our very own homegrown talents like Eddie Cochran, Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis Presley—On Cochran’s one and only British tour, a young George Harrison would lie about his age to get into Cochran’s shows, and a young Paul McCartney got into a certain band-- The Quarrymen-- on his ability to play and sing Cochran’s Twenty Flight Rock—and while the bands and musicians they inspired—The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Who, The Kinks, etc. etc. are well respected within the pantheon of classic rock history. Guys like Eddie Cochran, Ritchie Valens, Duane Eddy, The Big Bopper remain mere cultural footnotes.

I’m not saying the likes of the Beatles, Stones, Who, Kinks, et. al. don’t deserve credit for their musical accomplishments—they certainly do. And maybe it was the brevity of their lives and careers, but the forebears of the British “musical pioneers” American music fans and critics cream their jeans over have not stood the test of time near as well as the bands that they inspired. Isn’t it about time these guys finally got the level of respect they so richly and rightly deserve?