By her own admission, the ’80s were not kind to Raitt, but she hit paydirt at the decade’s close with the aptly-titled, self-penned Nick Of Time. Her refined allure and mature sensibility have yielded a series of tasteful, emotionally resilient releases since then. This collection highlights the importance of her relationship with producer Don Was and ability to cherry-pick from trusted composers like Richard Thompson, Paul Brady and John Hiatt. The only regret is, given that she’s capable of songs as classy as “Nick Of Time”, she doesn’t give her own compositions more prominence.

999

999/SEPARATES

BOTH EMI

From the siren that opens The Ruts’ “Babylon’s Burning”, the first track off these two EMI repackagings of classic punk fare, we’re bovver-booted back to Fatcher’s Britain with vigour and vividness. Digital remastering emasculates the rawness but highlights the power-pop credentials of Southall’s finest?”Staring At The Rude Boys” was a crafty Jam/Clash hybrid, and there’s bucketloads more invention and chops than was normally put before the crophead unwashed. “Jah War” inhales the ganja of honky dub as convincingly as anything by The Clash, and “Love In Vain” is a bizarre white-boy stab at lovers’ rock.

The Ruts died in 1980 with lead singer Malcolm Owen, and therefore didn’t play into their dotage in endless punk revival festivals. That is 999’s richly-deserved fate, for, like this set, it gives new generations a chance to despise their caricature, underpowered, nerdy hybrid of punk and R&B, still sounding like a genre parody by Kenny Everett on an off day. Makes Eater sound as classy as Shostakovich.

SPECTRUM

Loose Ends

THE BEST OF

EMI GOLD

Two bands that could, and should, have achieved more. Central Line earned immortality with ’81’s “Walking Into Sunshine”?here represented twice, in original and Larry Levan-remixed form?and it’s noticeable how much better the material from their 1982 debut album Breaking Point is than their later work. “That’s No Way To Treat My Love” and “Don’t Tell Me” are US funk-rivalling highlights.

Loose Ends specialised in vaguely paranoid electro-soul balladry. “Hangin’ On A String”?the best soul record ever to come out of a British studio; Gaye and Terrell ghostdancing?hangs over the rest of their work like Damocles’ sword, but the beautiful misery of “Choose Me” has to be recognised, as does the Timbaland-anticipating “Stay A Little While, Child”.

Just about the crispest of the San Fran heavy bands, Quicksilver Messenger Service were hippies with guns and drugs. Spinning off a song-based axis with the capacity to rock out, they featured the duelling Gibsons of John Cipollina and Gary Duncan, an airtight rhythm section and a rather feeble singer called Dino Valente. At their best the Quicks rampaged over Bo Diddley’s “Who Do You Love (Part I)”, culled here to single length from the classic Happy Trails album, and presaged the dark side of the era. A handy, well mastered introduction.

In may 1977 Gene Clark, Roger McGuinn and Chris Hillman reformed The Byrds for a European tour. At the appropriate moment, McGuinn would turn to Clark and ask: “So, Gene. Do you wanna be a rock’n’roll star?” To which Gene always replied, “Nope.”

Many a true word. Gene Clark had quit The Byrds back in the mid-’60s, while Fifth Dimension was in pre-production (imagine George Harrison leaving The Beatles during Rubber Soul), blaming his fear of flying; an irony considering that “Eight Miles High” was his swan song with them. Whatever, the gag tells us plenty about this reluctant team player.

Harold Eugene Clark from Tipton, Missouri grew up in Kansas City with his own agenda. Heading west for Los Angeles, California, aged 19, he joined eccentric folkies The New Christy Minstrels, then did the Troubadour/Whiskey A Go-Go thing and hooked up with Jim McGuinn’s nascent Byrds outfit. He was the straight man to the band leader’s commercially cute ‘let’s-do-Dylan-and-make-a-million-bucks’ persona. Which happened. So he stayed for a while. And then he left. That was Gene Clark’s way.

Following stints in The Gosdins and Dillard & Clark, he achieved moderate sales for 1971’s Gene Clark (confusingly also known as White Light) and 1972’s Roadmaster, initially available only in Holland. Welding an increasingly cynical streak to a love of chemicals, booze and Zen Buddhism, Clark immersed himself in a new venture with madcap producer and sometime Steely Dan cohort Thomas Jefferson Kaye. Kindred spirits, they were astute enough to enlist various elite LA sidemen and the heavenly gospel voices of Venetta Field, Clydie King, Cindy Bullens, Claudia Lennear, the Matthews sisters and Ronnie Barron.

Checking into The Village Recorder, West LA in March 1974, Clark wanted something more considered. Something darker, in the way some Rolling Stones records are. Six months and $100,000 later he’d got his wish: an album that evoked Hollywood Babylon versus the death of the hippie dream?a staple obsession of this period judging by contemporary albums by the likes of Stevie Wonder, Mac Gayden, Stephen Stills, Steely Dan, Neil Young and Steve Miller.

Unfortunately, Asylum’s boss, the flamboyant, hard-nosed David Geffen, was as contrary as his prized signing. Asylum refused to bankroll a double album (five other songs were cut and squirrelled away) and offered minimal promotion. Where were the singles? Why was Gene on the cover posing like Valentino in a Hollywood Hills mansion? Why was he wearing make-up and camp satin pants? Despite himself, Geffen was not amused.

Of course the cover, often dismissed as a red herring that bears no relation to the music inside, was part and parcel of the whole. Art-directed and designed by Marlene Dietrich’s grandson John, and photographed by his wife Linda, the sleeve glorified the golden age of 1920s Hollywood debauchery. The Gene genie aside, it showed a motley selection of sensual flappers and matinee idol hunks like Rudi Sieber (Marlene’s onetime husband), and gave off a vibe based on decadence, coke-sniffing rou

The four CDs Hicks released or planned in his lifetime are such a perfect legacy, building from un-PC gut-laughs to death-shadowed prophecy, that the live albums beginning to proliferate look more like random death cult product than anything essential?over-familiar routines here show the thin pickings left unissued. That said, his anti-Bush/Gulf War riffs are strangely affecting, because he could have said them last week, and would not be in the wilderness now. Some very funny ‘fresh’ routines and Hicks’ unusual warmth on the night complete a decent fan purchase.

Mark Farner and Don Brewer’s Grand Funk Railroad were alternative superheroes on the ’60s/’70s cusp, when US bands could live high on the hog thanks to outdoor shows. Dogged by mismanagement and internal strife, the Railroad knocked out meaty riffs under the auspices of producers like Todd Rundgren and Jimmy Lenner, and this well-stuffed set includes their calling cards?”We’re An American Band” and the absurd “Walk Like A Man (You Can Call Me Your Man)”. Quite a period piece.

STILL FEEL GONE

MARCH 16-20 1992

COLUMBIA LEGACY

Uncle Tupelo’s 1990 debut took its name from a Carter Family song and gave birth to the No Depression/alt.country movement. Yet, ironically, it’s the most rock-oriented album they made, owing as much to H

HIGH VOLTAGE

EPIC

Every home should have at least one AC/DC album. Most likely it’ll be 1980’s Back In Black: that their most famous album is also their best is somehow fitting for a band whose genius lies in an endless repetition of the obvious. AC/DC’s precision, granite-cracking boogie, sky-bothering choruses and artless lust never sounded better than here, even though singer Brian Johnson?Benny Hill in an iron lung, ostensibly?had only been a member of the band for two months.

Now digitally remastered and with plentiful sleevenotes, most AC/DC albums have their charms. But beyond Back In Black, the most consistent date from the Bon Scott-fronted ’70s line-up. Of these, the ’76 UK debut High Voltage just shades ’79’s Highway To Hell, if only because it proves the band that was playing Melbourne fight clubs sounded frighteningly similar?a little production gloss notwithstanding?to the one at home in Midwestern stadia. A pleasure, as always.

This 1996 debut album from Philippe Zdar and Etienne de Crecy (later of Cassius and the Super Discount series respectively) is the starting point for the French dance movement, and therefore one of that decade’s most important records. Yet the spaces its 10 tracks inhabit are far darker than anything Daft Punk or Air have achieved.

Motorbass’ tactic was to build their tracks slowly, almost imperceptibly, so that naked beats evolve into imperious grandeur (the Norman Whitfield utopia of “Ezio”), or to utilise naggingly familiar samples within huge, vaguely intimidating landscapes (“Les Ondes”, “Neptune”).

The bonus CD includes their long-deleted first two EPs, the second of which, 1993’s “Transphunk”, is noticeably more playful and irreverent.

Post-punk was kinder to women than any previous rock era; the Delta 5, Slits, Bush Tetras and countless others blossomed, providing endless amounts of quirky, inventive, visceral material. In the centre of it all was Lora Logic, whose sax adorned records by X-Ray Spex, The Raincoats and The Stranglers, as well as those of her own Essential Logic. With experimental vocal techniques, Ornette-meets-James Chance sax and odd time changes, Essential Logic were practically prog-punks, as close to early Gong as to Gang Of Four. This generous two-disc collection brilliantly captures the band’s brief moment in the sun as well as Lora’s solo forays.

Forget J-Lo?on this absolute jewel of a record, Teena Marie redefined the boundaries of female pop. The primary-coloured explosion of the title track suggests a familiarity with the mischief of Ze Records, as well as a clear foretaste of what Prince would achieve later that decade. Indeed, future Paisley Park prot

Just as the jam, and even The Style Council, exercised quality control when it came to B-sides, the solo Weller was similarly shrewd in his choice of extra tracks, even after he traded the romantic 45 rpm seven-inch for the sterile CD single.

As compiled over Fly On The Wall’s first two discs, his non-album off-cuts between 1991’s “Into Tomorrow” and 2000’s “Sweet Pea” fall into three categories. First there are ones that got away, like 1995’s “A Year Late”?a harsh jab of acoustic melancholy which might have closed Stanley Road (instead it became the B-side of “You Do Something To Me”). Or 1997’s Heavy Soul-era “Shoot The Dove”, a mid-tempo rock spiritual which would have made a terrific single. Typical of Weller’s maturing repertoire, both deserve inclusion on any career best-of.

Secondly, there are instrumentals. Eight of them, from the early-’90s Acid Jazz hangover of “That Spiritual Feeling” to the block rockin’ beats of “Steam” (its charging drum loop adapted from Stanley Road’s “Whirlpool’s End”) and the E-wary funkadelia of ’97’s “So You Want To Be A Dancer”.

Thirdly, there’s remixes. Portishead’s spy-thriller distortion of “Wild Wood” (from a 1994 NME EP) still sounds great. Ditto Noonday Underground’s sinister shake-up of Heliocentric’s “There’s No Drinking After You’re Dead”.

Finally, there’s the Button Downs (reverse of Pin-Ups?geddit?) covers CD; ad hoc homages to CSNY (“Ohio”), Dylan (“I Shall Be Released”) and others. As well as unreleased takes on Ben Harper’s “Waiting On An Angel” and The Beatles’ “Don’t Let Me Down”, there’s “Instant Karma”, only previously available on last year’s Uncut Lennon tribute compilation (Take 66). It’s an intriguing epilogue, though Fly On The Wall is merited on the strength of its first two thirds alone, where Weller emerges as a prolific songwriter whose will to experiment has proved integral to his survival. The 10-year diary of a changing man, this is compulsive listening.

After his sizzling stint with Bowie, Mick Ronson recorded two solo albums before joining Mott The Hoople and going on to collaborate with Ian Hunter in a recording partnership that lasted 15 years. His third and final solo album, Heaven And Hull, was released a year after his tragic early death in 1993. This specially priced compilation offers 10 tracks without documenting their original provenance or providing writing credits. Hard to see who this package is aimed at.