[Ed.Note: Now and then we feel a release or re-release should be given special attention. Now and then we're so excited about it we just want to rant. For those reasons we introduce A Closer Look, a new series of features in which we'll surely do some gushing about the artists closest to our hearts. To kick it off, Alan Wright got ahold of some Wailers re-releases. A pair of two-fers, in fact: At The Castle/Wailers & Company and Wailers Wailers Everywhere/Out Of Our Tree, released by Big Beat Records.]
There was a time when finding Wailers albums meant hunting in used record stores and thrift shops and flea markets to find these elusive classics of '60s era Northwest music. Not so any more. A few years ago, Norton reissued albums like The Fabulous Wailers and At The Castle, along with the Livewire collection of material from Wailers Wailers Everywhere, Out Of Our Tree and some rare stuff. It looks like Big Beat is beating Norton at its own game with these reissues. First, they put out a CD of material from the famed Golden Crest sessions that resulted in The Fabulous Wailers album and various singles circa 1960-61. Now, they've reissued these four albums along with rarities on two separate CDs.
At The Castle, the Wailers' famed second album, recorded live at the Spanish Castle club in 1963, is paired up with Wailers & Company, both of which find the Wailers cranking out early '60s R&B maniac music, often joined by guest vocalists such as Rockin' Robin Roberts, Gail Roberts and the girl group The Marshans. Besides absolutely rocking live versions of tunes like "Wailer's House Party," "Dirty Robber," "Since You've Been Gone," "I Idolize You," and maniac frat-rock vocals and wild instros like "Louie Louie," "Frenzy," "We're Going Surfin'," "Party Time U.S.A.," "Shake Down" and more, Big Beat has added bonus tracks such as "Velva," "Stompin' Willie," "Be My Baby," another great previously unreleased take of "Tall Cool One," (version three!) and "I Remember."
For some reason, Wailers Wailers Everywhere, their fourth LP and first to feature singer/keyboardist Ron Gardener, is maligned by many. I think it's a fantastic LP of Beatles-esque, Merseybeat-influenced music that shows the Wailers could take on a current trend in music and make it their own. This LP features the totally hot instro "The Wailer," a rockin' cover of "Do You Wanna Dance," 12-string powered folkrock tunes like "You Better Believe It," "Tomorrow's Another Day," "Tears" and "Hold Back The Dawn." The melancholy "I Think Of You" is also a real classic. I love their version of Lee Dorsey's "Ya Ya" as well.
Out Of Our Tree was the Wailers' response to their protégés, the Sonics. A new drummer (Dave Roland replacing Mike Burke) and a new guitarist (Neal Anderson replacing Rich Dangel) and a return to the much more low budget Wiley-Griffith studios, a converted grocery store, in Tacoma - Wailers Wailers Everywhere had been recorded at the state-of-the-art Coast Recorders in San Francisco - resulted in an LP filled with garbage can drums, fuzzed-out guitar and screaming maniac singing. If anything, it's almost the opposite approach to the one they took on Wailers Wailers Everywhere, and it works well. This is arguably the album that most people discovered the Wailers through, as it was the only one available as a Euro pressing all through the late '70s and early '80s. The title cut is an oft-covered classic, as are tunes like a rerecorded "Dirty Robber," (version four!) "I Got Me" and "Hang Up." Then there's their seriously demented covers of "Baby Don't You Do It," "Mercy Mercy," "I'm Down," and "Bama Lama Bama Loo," a slowed-down corker take on "Hang On Sloopy," and a soulfully slow and simmering "Summertime." The only real misstep is an overly sappy "Unchained Melody." This CD reissue adds to the plate a great take of "You Weren't Using Your Head," and tunes like "Back To You," "Livewire," an alternate single version of "Hang Up," (without the fuzz guitar most people are familiar with on the album version), and the Brian Wilson-esque "All My Nights, All My Days," originally released as a single under the pseudonym The Breakers. The sound on this is phenomenal and - although I hate to say it - even better than the Norton issues, especially on the rare tracks, and the thick booklets have all kinds of details and info that a Wailers nut like me didn't even know.
