What I can't understand is how people like Jon Landau can put down the band for being uninteresting, musically as well as lyrically, and then turn around and praise Stewart's version of "Losin' You," to the skies, considering that the song is done by Faces, not only in concert but on the album. I happen to think that Stewart's solo work, while always brilliant, doesn't match the band for sheer excitement, which makes me a minority of one, because I don't know anybody who likes the band as well as Stewart, solo. And I'd like to say a word here in their defence, because the band loses consistently in the inevitable comparisons of Stewart's solo music with his ensemble work. On occasion, Stewart chooses to do a song for his solo album with the band, Faces. It harkens back to the early days of blues, to a time when instrumentation wasn't nearly so advanced as it is now. Instead, there seems to be the slightest discrepancy in overdubbing, and in timing, which leads to the one-take feeling inherent in Stewart's solo work. The resulting morass of instrumentation is not muddy, possibly because each instrument is clearly recorded. Stewart adds to this many layers of acoustic and electric instruments playing more or less the same thing. To add to its crudity, the drums are mixed very prominently when you hear a song, the drums while not completely separated on your stereo, are always very loud, and "up front" in the total sound. Harsh and brazen, solid and simple, Waller is the backbone of the sound. And much of that crudeness stems from Mick Waller's drumming. The crudeness he achieves on record is as much studied as it is technical. And to insure that success, he's kept his solo album band intact. From the beginning of his solo career, Stewart has striven to achieve an atmosphere of barely controlled chaos within his music. Musically, the album is also a continuance. Thematically, Never a Dull Moment continues nearly all the ideas first set forth in "Gasoline Alley." The major songs are by and large continuances or enlargements of a theme or fragment whose origins come in part from "Gasoline Alley," and are more fully treated on Every Picture Tells a Story. Stewart plays songs from his shuffling youth in front of ever-larger audiences. And more than anyone else with the pretensions, he fits the role of troubadour-the single, often lonely man, who writes and performs songs of his travels. Stewart is doubtless the best lyricist writing popular music. Since then he has rearranged his priorities in recording, and his albums, an equal measure of originals and exhumed classics like "Cut Across Shorty," have settled into that fairly predictable blend. But it is with Gasoline Alley's title song and his reworking of Elton John's "Country Comforts" that Stewart became seriously concerned with a partially autobiographical view of himself as vagabond. The idea of Stewart as the eternally travelling vagabond can be traced as far back as "Man of Constant Sorrow," from his first solo album. Deadend bookings can result from training new hires, forgetfulness, or fraud on the part of the travel agent.Rod Stewart's Never a Dull Moment continues and solidifies the tradition of the picaresque in rock music that he established with Every Picture Tells a Story. A booking that is completed on a GDS but never ticketed. ASFT - A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.ACRONYM - A Completely Random Order Never Yields Meaning :-).NKABOTFD - Never Kill A Boy On The First Date.NLAGHITM - Never Look A Gift Horse in the Mouth.NPOASR - Never Part of A Stable Release.NEK1 - Never in Mitosis Gene A-related Kinase 1.NGASAEC - Never Give A Sucker An Even Chance.Abbreviations or Slang with similar meaning
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