While veteran guitarist Ricky Byrd (Susan, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts) puts his story out to the world on Lifer, and with Iggy Pop noting his Lust for Life, the venerable vocalist from Paul Revere & The Raiders, Mark Lindsay, issues his colorful very Nuggets-influenced Life Out Loud – a splashy, loud rock & roll excursion into the world you find on Little Steven’s radio program on Sunday nights.
This is a record for Lindsay’s hardcore fan base of 60’s aficionados and he gives them everything they want and more. From the jangly Chesterfield Kings-styled “Baby Come Back” with its inverted Kinks riff to more splashy chord changes on “Easy Street,” nothing here goes over 4:10 (the song “New Thing,” track 11, which is like the Psychedelic Furs meets subdued Marilyn Manson – think: “The Dope Show”). (I Love) “Everything About You” rolls off of Mark’s lips in sleek fashion while “Rainy Day Children” provides a shimmering ballad perfect for summer radio. “Ghost of a Girl” crosses glitter with rockabilly while “Like Nothing You’ve Ever Seen” takes Jim Morrison’s “20th Century Fox” lyrical riff (“Got the world locked up inside a plastic box” vs. “I can give you everything that you need”) over an “I’m Not Your Steppingstone” riff.
These are little sonic bites of Sky Saxon imaginings, “Let’s Fly Away” is the Seeds song that the Seeds never got to write and play. “I Can’t Slow Down” is more stripped down new and revived form of rockabilly while “Don’t Stop” is another blast of B-side magic. “Merry Go Round,” along with “Rainy Day Children” perhaps the tracks that work best for me, not just because they are ballads, but because that great Mark Lindsay vocal sound we love and appreciate really breaks through on them the best.
A very fun record by a master of fun.
Joe Viglione is the Chief Film Critic at TMRZoo.com. He has written thousands of reviews and biographies for AllMovie.com, Allmusic.com, Gatehouse Media, Al Aronowitz’s The Blacklisted Journal, and a variety of other media outlets. Joe also produces and hosts Visual Radio, a seventeen year old variety show on cable TV which has interviewed Jodie Foster, director/screenwriter David Koepp, Michael Moore, John Cena, comics/actors Margaret Cho, Gilbert Gottfried, Gallagher, musicians Mark Farner and Don Brewer of Grand Funk Railroad, Ian Hunter of Mott The Hoople, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals, political commentator Bill Press and hundreds of other personalities.
