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Today in rock history: on this date in 1995, the sole release from Seattle super group Mad Season, Above, arrived. The band was made up of Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready, Alice in Chains vocalist Layne Staley (who also created the artwork for the album’s cover), John Baker Saunders from The Walkabouts and Barrett Martin, drummer for Screaming Trees. The album achieved gold sales status, dented the top 20 on U.S. album charts and produced a single that received plenty of contemporary rock radio stations at the time of its release, “River of Deceit.” The album is made up of songs that show off the many influences of the band’s members like blues, some jazz and, of course, harder-edge rock. Reviews for the album were lukewarm but that didn’t stop the success of the record at the time when bands from the Northwest were extremely popular and in demand. The record has since been re-released and repackaged to include many tracks that were recorded for the album but didn’t make the final track listing. Live concert recordings were also added to later versions. Layne Staley dropped out of the music scene by the year after the release of Above and was found dead in 2002 after a long battle with drug addiction.
LONG NIGHTS
Review: Eddie Vedder goes solo at Ruth Eckerd Hall, Clearwater
Today in rock history: on this date in 1933, musical genius and legend Quincy Jones was born in Chicago, Illinois. The multi-talented musician carries a lengthy list of accomplishments in his bag: he’s a renowned conductor, record producer, arranger, songwriter, business entrepreneur and record label executive. Inspired by an encounter early in his life with another musical legend, Ray Charles, Jones began his musical career as a trumpet player for band leader Lionel Hampton in the early 1950s and has remained a major force in music ever since. Besides his own hit, multi-platinum records like 1981’s The Dude and Q’s Jook Joint from 1995, Quincy Jones has also created and composed several film scores and soundtracks throughout his amazing career. No mention of his many accomplishments is complete without a nod to the many successful albums he’s produced, most notably, the best-selling album of all time, Michael Jackson’s Thriller from 1982 as well as releases by Frank Sinatra, George Benson, Rufus, Sarah Vaughan, Donna Summer and so many more. One of the most important and influential musical figures of the last 60 years, this musical icon celebrates his 85th birthday today.
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Today in rock history: on this date in 1984, British pianist, singer and songwriter Joe Jackson released his seventh album, Body and Soul. The difficult to categorize musician is known for often delving into different genres and styles and this album was no exception. Focusing more on jazz than anything, the record also featured Jackson’s forays into Latin rhythms and catchy pop. The album’s centerpiece is the bright, catchy single “You Can’t Get What You Want (Till You Know What You Want)” which performed extremely well on the pop singles chart as well as on the adult contemporary chart in the United States. The song received airplay on radio stations of various different musical formats and appealed to a wide cross-section of record buyers. Body and Soul fared well in Britain as well as in America and cracked the top 20 on album charts in both regions. As a nod to his love for jazz music, Jackson mimicked the cover of saxophone virtuoso Sonny Rollins’s 1957 album, Sonny Rollins, Vol. 2 for the cover of this album. Jackson visited Clearwater’s Capitol Theatre last summer — read our review here.
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Today in rock history: on this date in 1980, young Sheffield, England hard rock band Def Leppard released its first album, On Through the Night. As part of a crop of brand new“New Wave of British Heavy Metal” bands to emerge from Britain in the early 1980s, Def Leppard was most likely the youngest in age of all those bands with most of the members still in their late teens when the debut album was released. Re-recording some of the songs that appeared on its 1979 self-released EP, the band forged a strong collection of raw, aggressive hard rock songs that instantly got the Def Leppard noticed and drew positive responses from English rock critics and fans alike. On Through the Night climbed as high as No. 15 on British album sales charts and just bubbled under the top 40 on American charts. The album contained several singles including “Wasted,” “Rocks Off,” “Hello America” and “Rock Brigade” which helped boost the album’s popularity in England. Still together and recording and touring (albeit with a slightly different line-up), Def Leppard has become one of the most popular and best-selling rock bands in the world since its first album was released 38 years ago today. Read our recent interview with Phil Collen here.
This article appears in Mar 8-15, 2018.
