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On this episode, we discuss Fleetwood Mac’s sixth album, 1972’s Bare Trees. This album was released during the period between co-founder Peter Green's departure from the band and  Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nick's arrival and is easily the most overlooked and underappreciated period in Fleetwood Mac's long history. This period marks a tumultuous time for the band, full of dizzying personnel changes and exploration of new musical directions away from their blues-based beginnings into what would ultimately become one of the most popular bands ever.

Fleetwood Mac is no stranger to drama, and the story of this album is no exception.   Guitarist Bob Welch (who would later find success as a solo artist) and keyboardist Christine McVie (nee Perfect) each contributed songs that provide a glimpse into the pop direction the band would take in subsequent albums.  However, the unsung leader of the band for this album was a 22-year-old guitarist named Danny Kirwan. While issues with alcohol and his erratic temper would eventually see him fired from the band while on tour in support of this album, Bare Trees is a testament to Kirwin’s talent as a songwriter, a singer, and above all, an unbelievably exceptional and one of a kind guitarist.

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Joe Ely, Adam Carroll, and Willis Alan Ramsey. What do these three have in common? They're all born and raised in Texas and they have each released fantastic albums that are uniquely Texan. 

Joe Ely's 1978 album "Honky Tonk Masquerade" is a mixture of old school country, with a touch of zydeco and norteno mixed in, and a collection of songs written by Ely and his Lubbock bandmates, Jimmie Dale Gilmore and Butch Hancock. Adam Carroll's first album, South of Town, is a debut album by an excellent songwriter who seems wiser than his then 23 years old. He is like an updated version of Bob Dylan from the Freewheelin' days. And Willis Alan Ramsey's so far only release is a classic, a touchstone for many Texas artists to come, with songs that are almost impossible to categorize. 

We hope you enjoy this little window into the world of these great Texas songwriters and performers.

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On this episode, we take a look at the fifth album by arguably THE band of the 1970s: Led Zeppelin’s Houses of the Holy.   

After Led Zeppelin’s monster success with their fourth LP (Zeppelin IV, ZOSO, etc.), the band felt uncertain about how to follow up such a successful album. That success also gave the band a sense of artistic freedom that found them in a more experimental mood, departing from their heavy blues sound and embracing acoustic instruments, synthesizers, and a favorite instrument here at the This Is Vinyl Tap:  the mellotron.   

Released in 1973, Houses of the Holy, named for what the band dubbed their concert venues, is the first Led Zeppelin album with a name not associated with the band’s moniker.  While the lyrics still read like bad Tolkien and Coleridge,  the band's performance for the most part is sublime. The vocals are more restrained and the instrumentation is both complicated and subtle. Houses of the Holy is an album full of some of their more well-known hits (“the Ocean,” “D'Yer Mak'er,” “Over the Hills and Far Away”) and the album that cements their reputation as one of the biggest bands of the 70s.

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On this episode, we take a deep dive into the third album by the power-pop band, Fountains of Wayne: Welcome Interstate Managers.  

After two critically acclaimed, but in the eyes of the Atlantic Records commercially underperforming LPs, the label dropped them. The band shopped around for a label, but with little success, As a result, Welcome Interstate Managers. was self-financed. The record saw the songwriting duo of Adam Schlesinger and Chris Collingwood crafting songs about the alienation and working day travails of young adulthood. The album spawned a Grammy-nominated hit “Stacy's Mom”, and also garnered them a “Best New Artist” nod as well. 

As long-time fans of the band already knew, “Stacy’s Mom”  only scratched the surface of what the band had to offer.  Without the backing of a major label, the band crafted an LP of 16 pop tunes containing some of the most deftly written funny,  heartbreaking, and poignant lyrics on just about any pop album made before or since.

Sadly, the world lost Adam Schlesinger, arguably one of the best, and certainly one of the most prolific songwriters of the 21st Century, to Covid in 2020.  

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On this week’s episode, we discuss the 10th album by Aretha Franklin, and her first for Atlantic Records, the groundbreaking I Never Loved a Man the Way That I Loved You. 

The  Queen of Soul had made a series of decidedly un-soulful albums when her career began with Columbia Records. Discovered by the legendary John Hammond (Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Billie  Holiday), he tried to mold her into the next Billie Holiday with big band and string arrangements, and ignored those very things that made her special. The move to Atlantic Records saw her teaming up with Jerry  Wexler, who understood exactly what made Aretha Franklin unique. Backed by some of the most legendary session musicians around, Franklin and Wexler produced an album full of gospel-infused soul that showed the world what it had been missing, a singer and musician of unparalleled  emotion and power.  Popular music would never be the same again.

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On this episode, we discuss the 1975 album by Jerry Jeff Walker, Ridin’ High. Prior to moving to Austin, Texas,  Walker was essentially a folkie, but he distinguished himself by penning "Mr. Bojangles” a song covered almost as many times as "Yesterday" and by a very wide variety of artists, most famously by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. After he and the Lost Gonzo Band recorded the highly influential Cosmic American music masterpiece Viva Terlingua, an outlaw country legend was born. 

By the time Ridin’ High came to be, Walker decided to take his music to the next level by augmenting his Lost Gonzo band with some of Nashville's finest session musicians, including ubiquitous session drummer, Kenny Buttrey, and the great fiddle player (and former Texas Playboy), Johnny Gimble. The results are an album of serious musicianship that never takes itself too seriously. If you are at all familiar with Jerry Jeff Walker, then chances are you know some of these songs. It's a fine album containing some of Walker's best tunes, along with some outstanding songs penned by others, including members of his band and Willie Nelson.

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On this week’s episode, we take on an “angry young man” and dive headfirst into what many consider Graham Parker’s finest artistic statement, 1979’s Squeezing Out Sparks.

By 1979, Parker, backed by a fantastic group of former pub rock musicians known as the Rumour,  had recorded three albums of horn-infused soulful rock and roll, when he decided he needed to take a different direction. Having changed to a more supportive label in the US, he enlisted the production talents of Jack Nietzsche, a man known for his arrangements for the girl groups produced by Phil Spector. Perhaps surprisingly, this album is stripped down, focusing on the talents of his backing band, with guitar hooks galore and music you can dance to, but with an added urgency due to Parker’s lyrics, which were remarkably biting, acerbic, and witty.

Overlooked by the music-buying public to a certain extent, but not by critics, Squeezing Out Sparks is a remarkable album by a musician at the height of his creative talent. 

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On this episode, we look at the 1983 debut of legendary Texas blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan: Texas Flood. While  Stevie Ray Vaughan seemed to come out of nowhere when he walked on stage with his band, Double Trouble, at the Montreaux Jazz Festival in  Switzerland, and, indeed, he was the first to perform without a record label backing him. 

While the performance was met with boos from the audience, it did catch the attention of two figures in the audience:  Jackson Browne and David Bowie. Bowie was so impressed he asked Vaughan to lay down tracks on his upcoming album, Let's Dance. Jackson Browne was so impressed that he lent them his private studio to record some tracks. The recordings at Browne's studio caught the attention of legendary Columbia record executive John Hammond, who liked what he heard enough to release it as an album. That album, Texas Flood, launched Vaughan's solo career. 

Vaughan’s blend of traditional blues and rock and roll swagger was already known around his home state of Texas, particularly in Austin, where he had been a staple of the club scene for nearly a decade. However, his work on Let’s Dance, as well as his videos being in constant rotation on a fledgling MTV, catapulted him to international stardom. Texas blues would never be the same again. 

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On this episode, we discuss Neil Young’s 1992 album, Harvest Moon. 

After a stint at Geffen records that resulted in a  lawsuit for not sounding characteristic enough and churning out two albums for Reprise that basically planted the seeds for grunge, Neil  Young decided it was time to give his ears a rest. Harvest Moon finds Young in familiar and popular territory. The album is very reminiscent of Young's 1972 album Harvest, includes many of the players and singers from that album, and even touches on some of the same themes. 

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On this, our first Violation Podcast, we turn our attention to songs on albums that we don't think we could review. Sometimes the song might be a good song on an otherwise so-so album, or the song might be on an album too "out there" for us to consider, or the song itself is worthy of recognition even if the album itself isn't. Regardless, we hope you these tunes spark some interest in you to consider these bands and maybe their works.

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