Rebel Songs

Although he created a decadent glam rocker image through early albums like The Human Menagerie and The Psychomodo, Steve Harley soon revealed a romantic heart beating beneath all the artsy sleaze on singles like "Judy Teen" and "Make Me Smile (Come up and See Me)." This 1976 album, the last studio outing Harley would record under the Cockney Rebel banner, allowed him to give full vent to his romantic thoughts via lushly crafted songs about the travails of love. Love Is a Prima Donna features two of Harley's finest songs in the title track, a bracing song that features the writer waxing comical about the pitfalls of love over a briskly paced pop tune that fleshes out its pub-piano melody with flamenco guitar and a choir, and "(Love) Compared With You," a delicately orchestrated love ballad that manages to be touching and heartfelt without lapsing into sappy sentimentality. This album also produced one of Harley's biggest hits with an arty, synthesizer-laced cover of the Beatles' classic "Here Comes the Sun".

Indulging for the first time in Cockney Rebel's debut album – and one uses the word "indulging" deliberately, for like so much else that's this delicious, you cannot help but feel faintly sinful when it's over – is like waking up from a really weird dream, and discovering that reality is weirder still. A handful of Human Menagerie's songs are slight, even forced, and certainly indicative of the group's inexperience. But others – the labyrinthine "Sebastian," the loquacious "Death Trip" in particular – possess confidence, arrogance, and a doomed, decadent madness which astounds. Subject to ruthless dissection, Steve Harley's lyrics were essentially nonsense, a stream of disconnected images whose most gallant achievement is that they usually rhyme. But what could have been perceived as a weakness – or, more generously, an emotionally overwrought attempt to blend Byron with Burroughs – is actually their strength.

Indulging for the first time in Cockney Rebel's debut album – and one uses the word "indulging" deliberately, for like so much else that's this delicious, you cannot help but feel faintly sinful when it's over – is like waking up from a really weird dream, and discovering that reality is weirder still. A handful of Human Menagerie's songs are slight, even forced, and certainly indicative of the group's inexperience…

If The Human Menagerie, Cockney Rebel's debut album, was a journey into the bowels of decadent cabaret, The Psychomodo, their second, is like a trip to the circus. Except the clowns were more sickly perverted than clowns normally are, and the fun house was filled with rattlesnakes and spiders. Such twists on innocent childhood imagery have transfixed authors from Ray Bradbury to Stephen King, but Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel were the first band to set that same dread to music, and the only ones to make it work. The Psychomodo was also the band's breakthrough album. The Human Menagerie drew wild reviews and curious sales, but it existed as a cult album even after "Judy Teen" swung out of nowhere to give the band a hit single in spring 1974. Then "Mr Soft" rode his bloodied big top themes into town and Rebelmania erupted. The Psychomodo, still possessing one of the most elegantly threatening jackets of any album ever, had no alternative but to clean up. Harley's themes remained essentially the same as last time out – fey, fractured alienation; studied, splintered melancholia, and shattered shards of imagery which mean more in the mind than they ever could on paper.

Rolling Stone Magazine released a list of "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" in November 2004. It represents an eclectic mix of music spanning the past 50 years, and contains a wide variety of artists sharing the spotlight. The Rolling Stone 500 was compiled by 172 voters comprised of rock artists and well-known rock music experts, who submitted ranked lists of their favorite 50 Rock & Roll/Pop music songs. The songs were then tallied to create the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. The Magazine is included.

Rolling Stone Magazine released a list of "500 Greatest Songs of All Time" in November 2004. It represents an eclectic mix of music spanning the past 50 years, and contains a wide variety of artists sharing the spotlight. The Rolling Stone 500 was compiled by 172 voters comprised of rock artists and well-known rock music experts, who submitted ranked lists of their favorite 50 Rock & Roll/Pop music songs. The songs were then tallied to create the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

When Waylon Jennings passed away in 2002, he was rightfully hailed as one of country music's first true "Outlaws" alongside such artists and fellow Highwaymen as Johnny Cash, Willie Nelson, and Kris Kristofferson. But Jennings paid his dues on the Nashville scene before "crossing over" to superstardom with such landmark records as Dreaming My Dreams (1975), Are You Ready for the Country (1976), Ol' Waylon (1977), and I've Always Been Crazy (1978). Cherry Red's country-focused Morello label has already released two collections of four albums apiece chronicling Jennings' pre-outlaw days at his longtime home of RCA Victor. On February 11 (in the U.K.) and February 18 (in North America), the label will turn the clock back to the singer's first four RCA long-players on one 2-CD set: Folk-Country (1966), Leavin' Town (1966), Nashville Rebel (1966), and Waylon Sings Ol' Harlan (1967). It affords a great opportunity to revisit these early recordings in which Jennings was still developing his true voice.