Gregg Turner plays the Hits (review)

Gregg Turner Plays the Hits

review by Joe Viglione

Also on JoeVigTop 40 for August
http://joevigtop40.blogspot.com/2014_08_01_archive.html

 This writer knows Gregg Turner from Back Door Magazine, but a press release states he is also a “veteran of the Angry Samoans & New Mexico’s garage-rockin Blood Drained Cows.”  What you get on the 11 tracks on Gregg Turner Plays the Hits is another dimension tribute to the Velvet Underground and Modern Lovers, the Lovers being, of course, the direct sons of the V.U.

The fun that Turner imparts into his three minute and fifty one second “I Dreamed I Met Lou Reed” is an amalgam of Armand Schaubroeck’s “Ratfucker” with the V.U.’s own “I Heard Her Call My Name” / “Sister Ray” and a dash of the elements of “European Son” from the V.U. debut with a touch of the “Black Angel’s Death Song” tucked inside some Jonathan Richman talk-it/walk-it.

“I Lost My Baby to the Guy at the Bobcat Bite” and “Starry Eyes” take on the fifties with tongue-in-cheek parody, a bit of doo wop in both.  The dissonant “Eve of Destruction” is timed perfectly for all the madness going on about a half a world away, stylistically Turner pushing the three-chord rock routine to the limit.  

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“Santa Fe” takes things into a different direction, nice wet guitars – both rhythm and lead – like an outtake from Jimmy Webb via Glen Campbell.  Too bad Glen is in no shape to take this to his audience, but maybe Webb can.
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“Satan’s Bride” at 2:45 would make a nice flip side to the Unnatural Axe’s “They Saved Hitler’s Brain.”  It’s some rockabilly with a sci-fi edge and catatonic splintered leads somewhere in the back of the mix that explode just when the time is right.  “Tombstone” is the longest track at 4:49, a gunslinger epic that brings an old world (go a hundred years or so back) feel to this otherwise Proto-punk excursion.
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Now being someone who HAS met Lou Reed (along with Jo Jo Laine, when I reunited Jo Jo the cover gal from Nelson Slater’s Wild Angel with the producer of that epic backstage at the Orpheum in the 1990s) Lou and I both agreed that his early composition “Cycle Annie” is a good tune.  Turner agrees with Lou and this writer by covering the lost Reed classic and it is a highpoint of Gregg Turner Plays the Hits.
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The 3:49 of “Another Lost Heartache” appropriately closes out this 39 minutes of Gregg Turner, and it is a good one for college radio at 2 AM.  A nice segue for those young d.j.’s who find and adore Andy Mackay’s In Search of Eddie Riff.

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Gregg Turner plays Club Bohemia, downstairs at the Cantab, Central Square Cambridge this Thursday, August 14, 2014

“The Pharmacist from Wallgreens” could be directly from the Jonathan Richman Songbook, it’s kind of like Richman in search of medication after having been rejected by the New Teller

Pharmacist from Wallgreens

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YQKNPpw1I0

The New Teller  Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebURIAawBRI

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IN SEARCH OF EDDIE RIFF
http://www.allmusic.com/album/in-search-of-eddie-riff-mw0000061308

Read more here:

A youthful Andy Mackay along with saxophone and cat stare out from the front cover of this compelling instrumental LP recorded between February of 1974 and June of 1975. Opening with a cool cover of "Wild Weekend," the Top Ten 1963 hit for the Rebels, this is fun stuff from the artsy realm of serious U.K. musicians. With less complexity than listeners have come to expect from Roxy Music alum, an innocent ballad like Skeeter Davis' "The End of the World" becomes transcendent by way of simple instrumentation -- Mackay's sax as the lead instrument, tasty guitars, and keys filling in nicely. There is a definite '60s feel to this album, perhaps a testimonial along with the reinterpretation of the four covers included in this mix of originals and traditional songs. Mackay's "Walking the Whippet" is like some rave amendment to the number one surf rock hit from 1962, "Telstar" by the Tornadoes.   Read more here:

http://www.allmusic.com/album/in-search-of-eddie-riff-mw0000061308