Michael Bolton ~ Everybody's Crazy (album review) ... Everybody making this album was crazy!

Style: hard rock
Label: Sony
Year: 1985
Home: n/a

Members: Michael Bolton ~ vocals/guitar

Larry Fast ~ synthesizer programming
Randy Goodrum ~ keyboards/synthesizer programming/b. vocals

Bruce Kulick ~ lead guitar

Kevin Dukes, Paul Pesco ~ guitar

Mark Mangold, Neil Kernon, Lloyd Landesman, Mark Radice, Allan St. John, Jan Mullaney, Doug Katsaros ~ keyboards

Dennis Felman ~ bass/b. vocals

Schuyler Deale ~ bass
Chuck Burgi ~ drums

Mark Rivera ~ sax

Joe Cerisano, Terry Brock, Peppy Castro ~ b. vocals

I often tell folks I like the early rocker Michael Bolton, when he played guitar, wore leather pants, was known as a songwriter who did anonymous jingles on the side, versus the smooth suited R&B crooner. Yes, you read all those things & the pictures here verify its true. I also highly recommend reading his autobiography that goes into details on his homeless pot-smoking hippie youth where he couldn't make a music career happen for the life of him. He jokes in the book that his early solo albums, now out of print, sold amazingly well ... among family members & a few friends. That's likely less of a joke than not, as it actually took over a decade before his name was recognized beyond a small circle of peers. His first solo albums in the 1970's, under the name Michael Bolotin, are light-weight forgettable pop affairs. Throughout the 70's he would focus on being an in-house on-the-clock songwriter for other performers, recording jingles anonymously to pay the rent, & fronting the hard rock band Blackjack. Yup, you read that again: hard rock band. The band went nowhere fast, but has since become famous for its membership, which included former Meat Loaf guitarist Bruce Kulick before he joined Kiss, Cyndi Lauper's future drummer, & the future bassist of the Yellowjackets jazz group. Entering the 1980's Bolton tried again at a solo career, with former band mate Kulick trading guitar parts with Bolton. If you are reading this in disbelief, I really do recommend checking out his book. I already knew this history, but I came away having more of a respect for him & the long journey he's had in music. His first solo album in the new decade, self-titled & under the the name Bolton, had the minor hit "Fool's Game" along with a bunch of over-stuffed forgettable hard rock songs of variable quality. You'll likely forget most of the songs soon after you hear them. I've reviewed it on this blog. Everybody's Crazy was the follow-up in 1985, with the title track getting in a soundtrack but no other hits. It sold just as wildly among family members & friends & soon dropped off the edge of the earth. The limited success of the first album should have made the label want to try something different ... but, that's not how the music business works. Thus, one must assume the title of this second outing is a reflection of the players involved. Everybody's Crazy goes for the same generic non-distinct rock sound. To its credit there is more variation & chances taken, but to counter that the guitar solos are cranked up. Bolton comes off as a minor player on his own album, fighting to be heard under a synthesizer & guitar onslaught. One wonders if the producers were competing for the Aldo Nova or future Joe Satriani & Eric Johnson crowd. This feels more like Blackjack might sound if they reunited. It sounds like a band, not an album for a singing known for strong pipes & a distinct tone. Actually, I should rephrase this. At times you wonder if this is a Bruce Kulick solo album as the guitar parts have such a strong & prominent stamp on all the songs. I don't even want to know who mixed this album. The lyrics are actually not bad, & with different arrangements or a mix it might actually have been successful. Turn the guitars down & turn Bolton up, & dump the backing choir that makes it feel like Bolton doesn't have the pipes to do it on his own. Bolton shouldn't be backed up by new wave-esque pumping synthesizers & slashing rock guitars leading to wild solos better suited for Kiss. That's a cardinal sin, all of it. The effects on his voice on the title track don't help. Yes, synthesizing Bolton's voice .... cardinal sins doth multiplieth. What is really interesting is the fourth track "Call My Name" which slows things down, the guitars are delegated to a rhythmic role & there is a couple soaring sax solos. It easily could have been heard on the next album The Hunger, which had the chart-topping hit "(Sittin' On The) Dock Of The Bay" approved by Otis Redding's widow, & no one would have known it was from a different session. "Call My Name" has hit written all over it, even more than "Fool's Game" from the earlier album, but is lost on an album trying to push away listeners. Do nobody think: this is the sound we want, let's scrap the rest of the album & re-record it? Likely, no, because that's how the music business works where everybody is crazy. "Everytime" & "Stop Breaking My Heart" are also really really good, & with a different less guitar-oriented mix would be great to revisit. For the record, the follow-up re-invention album The Hunger features even more musicians, but the arrangements are allowed to breath & Bolton is allowed to be the focus, finally. For those that want to know what came next, it was luck. According to his book, Bolton would record his demos for other songwriters with just his vocals & acoustic guitar. The tapes were traded around the label's office with adoration, until they landed in the right hands. After Everybody's Crazy Bolton would move to a new label & with it would come a complete change of looks & sound. Kulick was also off to Kiss, so he wouldn't be around, which might be a good thing as it allowed his former band mate to properly move on. Bolton had no reputation & nothing to lose, so nobody would criticize him for selling out. The irony is that his first hit, "(Sittin' On The) Dock Of The Bay)", was criticized not for selling out but for stealing & desecrating Otis' music. Soon after Bolton would be sitting at the top of the charts & the the rest is love ballad history.

Michael Bolton ~ Michael Bolton (aka self-titled) (album review) ... The music business is a fool's game!

Style: hard rock
Label: Columbia
Year: 1983
Home: New York

Members: Michael Bolton ~ vocals/lead guitar
Bob Kulick ~ rhythm guitar
Bruce Kulick ~ guitar
Scott Zito, Craig Brooks ~ guitar/b. vocals
Michael Braun, Chuck Burgi ~ drums
Mark Clarke, Scott Zito ~ bass
Mark Mangold ~ keyboards/b. vocals
Jan Mullaney, Scott Zito, Doug Katsaros ~ keyboards
Lloyd Landesman ~ b. vocals

Guests: Aldo Nova ~ lead guitar/keyboards
George Clinton ~ keyboards/b. vocals

For fans of Journey & Foreigner ... for fans of fringe or early 80's hard rock where guitars & keyboards rule & hairspray has yet to become the sixth member of the band ... for fans of seeing where an artist was musically before they became famous ... for fans of guitarist Aldo Nova, if there are any ... for 80's era Kiss fans or those interested in brother guitarists Bob & Bruce Kulick ... & lastly for fans of liking to hear an artist they're familiar with do something entirely different. If any of the above fits then you will probably get a lot of delight out of the now forgotten, deliberately helped to be forgotten by the artist himself, third solo album by MB ... the first under the name MB having previously released two albums as Michael Bolotin & two albums with his now truly forgotten hard rock band Blackjack with Bruce Kulick. For those that only know MB as the blue-eyed soul crooner this early release should come as a shock. There's no crooner here but instead a leather pants, Jim Morrison-esque blouse wearing hard rocker who sings & plays rock guitar solos. Yes, MB once was a quite competent rock guitarist who was trying for a adaptation of a guitar wielding Robert Plant not Ray Charles or Englebert Humperdinck. It was an image that didn't last long as it found little success on its own or with Blackjack. The tour for this album, supporting the minor single "Fool's Game", only lasted a literal handful of shows before being cancelled, though it did include future stars Bruce Kulick, who left to join Kiss, Bruno Ravel of Danger Danger, keyboardist/songwriter Mark Mangold & future Megadeth/Trans-Siberian Orchestra guitarist Al Pitrelli. Another hard rock album would be released before MB changed labels & was given one of the most extensive musical & physical facelifts one could image with the rest history. Oddly, I can't recall anyone ever calling MB a fake though he's as much a label creation as the Monkees or Britney Spears. "Fool's Game" is a guitar light rock song that's so far from what would eventually come from MB's lips & pen it's an enjoyable surprise. It's really a bit too polished, cliched & tame to be a real long-lasting rocker, compared to what else was coming out at the time, but its faults are made exciting by hindsight of what would later follow from MB. It's almost a shock that MB would become as big as he did after listening to this album, not to mention his work with Blackjack & as Michael Bolotin. There are only a few clues of what he was capable of once he traded in the leather for a suit. The closest might be in closer "I Almost Believed You" which is a mix of Todd Rundgren-era Meat Loaf & future MB that comes out of nowhere. Though MB does cover of the Supremes "Back In My Arms Again" which hearkens a bit of the same spirit he'd draw more fully from in the decade ahead, but it's still in a rock mold. MB has got the voice, no doubt, but its undeveloped as he stays far away from the Ray Charles ballads that push him vocally, instead going for a Journey or Foreigner-esque pop rock ballad feel(for example "Carrie") that is more about the feel than the voice. Once the image changed he'd put down the guitar, while Kiss would pull Bruce Kulick away within a few albums, so that element got toned down if not largely removed. Before the tides turn one can enjoy three guitar solos by MB (i.e. "Fool's Game", "Hometown Hero", "Fighting For My Life") with the rest of the guitar parts taken up by Bruce Kulick (i.e. "She Did The Same Thing", "Can't Hold On, Can't Let Go"), the now forgotten chart topper Aldo Nova (i.e. "Can't Hold On, Can't Let Go", "Back In My Arms Again"), with five songs featuring 1970's Kiss co-composer & under-rated session man/producer & Bruce's brother Bob Kulick on rhythm guitar. The album is a high energy rock'n'roll affair & it's almost too bad the songs have been, deliberately, removed from the Bolton repertoire. They're not bad & certainly not embarrassing, albeit largely cliched love songs, & some of them could even be successfully reworked with the later MB sound to find renewed life. This is far from an album to shy away from. There's certainly an addicting appeal to it because the songs are so unheard, whereas the later MB catalog has been ingrained into anyone's soul who grew up in the 80's/90's that they've become stale. This is fresh, naive & genuinely fun. That's what rock'n'roll is all about.

Henry Lee Summer ~ Way Past Midnight (album review) ... Way past commercially slick for its own good!

Style: country rock, hard rock
Label: Epic Records
Year: 1991
Home: Indiana

Members: Henry Lee Summer ~ vocals/rhy guitar/keyboards/bass
Tim Pierce, Tony Bowles ~ guitar
Kenny Aronoff ~ drums
John Pierce ~ bass
John Cascella ~ sax/keyboards
Doug Sizemore ~ keyboards

Additional: Danny Miranda, Gene Boccia, Toby Myers ~ bass
Rich Tancredi ~ keyboards
Michael Organ ~ drums
Kenny Greenberg, Danny Torrell, Michael Landau ~ guitar
Kim Fleming, Vicki Hampton, Micky Thomas, John Batdorf, Myrna Matthews, Maxine Waters, Julia Water-Tillman, Joe Turano, Chris Rodriguez, Shaun Murphy, Terry Wood, Jean McClain ~ b. vocals

Guests: Joe Walsh, Al Pitrelli ~ guitar
Robbie Buchanan ~ keyboards
Joe Franco ~ drums
Michael Bolton, Stan Bush ~ b. vocals

There's a growing trend amongst musicians who either charge out the door with a modest hit or are seeking one ... & happen to be unlucky enough to know an L.A. producer ... they become incredibly more commercial & over-produced which kills their individuality along with their career in the eyes of many fans. This is particularly the case of acoustic focused rockers, such as Cheryl Crow, Jewel & Keb Mo' who all started as rough coffee house-esque folk rockers like nobody had seen only to be glossed up & lacking future hits. The third album with Epic Records found Mellencamp-esque heartland rocker Henry Lee Summer, famous for his mullet & his 1987 hit "Wish I Had A Girl" following the commercial route to find a bigger audience & in the process becoming less heartland, less HLS & more bland FM friendly rock. Way Past Midnight was essentially the beginning of the end for HLS who'd fall into heavy drug addiction & a complete collapse of his career for many years. Once described as having a "sandpaper voice" & the "homeless man's John Mellencamp" HLS always had a particular at ease passion in his music that made up for his lack of originality. He was always best with homespun ballads with the commercial gloss usually being his weakest moments ... given the poor response to Way Past Midnight the logic behind this observation becomes quickly obvious. It's one thing to sound like John Mellencamp but it's another to sound like Michael Bolton but without the soft croon. But, that's the transition that's occurred here ... considering the album opens up with a song HLS co-wrote with Michael Bolton. The clichéd outcome isn't so bad but it's a false high followed by a series of songs demonstrating that Bolton-esque keyboards don't always gel with sandpaper. Many of the songs (i.e. "I Don't Want To Live This Lie", "So Desperately", "Little By Little") end up becoming unrecognizable as part of the HLS catalog. They might be lyrically perfect for HLS but are transformed into sappy overproduced commercial songs. But, for those who can stick through half the album the 'side B' reverts back to the traditional HLS sound with "Anytime For You," "Medicine Man" & "Turn It Up", though none have the memorable flare of "I Wish I Had A Girl". Elvin Bishop's "Fooled Around & Fell In Love" & the Rolling Stones Exile-esque "I've Got The Fire" are the two best tracks on the album, though few will have the patience to listen that far. On the album are guest guitarists Joe Walsh of the Eagles & Al Pitrelli of Alice Coooper/Megadeth, drummer Joe Franco of Twisted Sister, bassist Danny Miranda of Paul Rodgers & a reunited Queen, plus members of John Mellencamp's band & Los Lobos.