All the Street Angel bashing
 

I've noticed a lot of bashing of the Street Angel album in various threads. There is a lot of general negativity about the album, but nothing specific. There's a lot of "it just sucks", and then there's comments about the time of Stevie's life that it was released and what she was going through at the time (Klonopin); the focus seems to be on Stevie's personal life at the time and not the songs. There's not a lot of comments about the actual songs themsleves, or what specifically is wrong with these songs.

I personally like most of the songs, and, IMHO, I think if you remove all the ones that Stevie didn't write (which are very, very trite), it's a good album. I even think Stevie and Thom Panunzio made huge improvements with the production, compared to what Glynn Johns did.

So I'm interested in finding out what everybody thinks. What specifically does everyone not like about the songs ?

Well actually I like the album, it was one of the first Stevie albums (actually think it was the second after Timespace) that I bought, so I never hated it like some do.

The title track is one of my favourite Stevie songs...

Plus she covered Dylan - maybe not so well but at least the gal tried...

I don’t know whether it is a bad album or not, I have heard worse. But in comparison with Stevie’s other work, it sounds inferior to me. On the occasions that I want to listen to her, there isn’t anything really outstanding or musically interesting that encourages me to play Street Angel instead of say Bella Donna or Trouble in Shangri-La. I’m afraid it is just pretty bland for me. Unconditional Love wouldn’t get on her other albums, it is musically & lyrically weak I think and the Dylan cover was a bad mistake. I think the album could have been improved with a stronger producer. She should have been encouraged to do a bit more work with the lyrics on her own tracks. A lot of the words sound more appropriate for demos rather than the finished article. For example, on Greta, that whole ‘she’s got her bags packed etc…’ just sounds a bit silly to me. However that is just my view, I recognise that others like Street Angel and I can understand why the title track and Jane are well received.

Sorry, but who exactly is Glynn Johns?

I've been playing SA a lot recently (I have to be in the mood for it) and always find myself pondering its pros and cons. Overall, I do enjoy it and think it has a certain charm, though it's far removed from Stevie's prior work. As Stevie said herself, she doesn't "twirl" on this record . There are a few songs (Jane, Kick It, Listen to the Rain) that I feel need to go. Aside from that, the major problems that I detect are the flat production, sluggish arrangements, and the emotionless vocals. Neither Stevie's voice or the music inspire any sense of the drama, mystery, passion or heartbreak that we've come to expect. However, there are a few bright spots, at least for me. I adore Destiny and feel it's the only song where Stevie does show some emotion. I love listening to Greta, though I'm not sure what the appeal is. I think it's probably the lyrics. Rose Garden is excellent because it is stripped down and doesn't sound like everything else on the record. I wish she would put this song back in her solo set. Love is like a River is a great song, and could be a great recording if she had redone the vocals and stepped up the beat a bit. It sounds way too slow for a potential rocking song.

Yes, i completely agree. Lyrically, the songs sound incomplete. In my mind, they feel like demos that she just threw together, and then called it an album. There's just too many fragments within the songs, and collectively they don't fit together on the same album.

"the forgotten chimpanzee" sums it up pretty well for me... and not just regarding that one song.

Seriously, though, it was a half-assed effort by all involved- from the record company (I've seen better packaging/liner notes in bootlegs) on down to the producers (already been discussed) and Stevie herself (in full-on zonked out defeatist mode).

I'm glad this was brought up, because I was just defending Street Angel in another thread. I think because Stevie herself trashes the album so, that her fans do the same. I absolutely believe she wants to disassociate herself with the album because of what she was going through/coming out of at the time, not necessarily because of the content of the album. I think she feels ashamed she found herself addicted and in rehab again, and that's why she disowns this period of time. Are there some bad songs? Absolutely... but not more so than any of her other albums.

I hold steadfast to my belief that Street Angel is a solid little album, and the right album for the times. It was a straight forward back to basics rock album that she badly needed to make after Other Side of the Mirror, given what was going on musically in the early/mid 1990s (grunge: Nirvana, Pearl Jam, etc). She needed to put away the shawls and airy fairiness for this album, and show she was a legit rock artist, and I think she accomplished that mostly. I put Blue Denim up there with any of her songs she's recorded... it's a real foot tapper, it has great Stevie lyrics, and a rather timeless production. Greta is a really fun, whimsical little song. The title track is really haunting to me... it's one of her most visual songs of her career to me. There are some great rock tracks on the album too including: Love Is Like a River, Listen to the Rain, Blue Denim, and Kick It. Agreed, there are some stinkers. Unconditional Love and Jane make the top of my list. But again, I even think there are some clunkers on her self proclaimed masterpiece, Trouble In Shangri La (as well as Bella Donna, Wild Heart, Rock a Little, and Other Side of the Mirror).

The great thing about Stevie's albums is they all have a distinct flavor. Street Angel is just another link in that chain for me, and I for one am so glad we have it :nod: .

He was the original producer on the album. He & Stevie didn't enjoy working together, & he split before she was satisfied with the album. So she hired another guy to repair what they could of it, but that didn't get very far, either.

Listen to the OFF THE RECORD with Mary Turner from 1994 for additional information.

You express more eloquently the point I was trying to make.

And on what tracks exactly did you pick up that Nirvana/Pearl Jam, 90's vibe? Rose Garden?:shrug: I struggle with the concept that this album had any edge.

No, I'm not saying the album was in any way comparable to Nirvana or had any particular kind of edge. I'm just saying that the fluffy pop and escapist 80s were long gone when Stevie came around to record Street Angel. The music of the mid 90s was much more about hard reality vs the fantasy of the 80s, and was much more straight forward. People had put away the synthesizers in favor of much more back to basics electric guitar rock too. That's essentially what Stevie did with Street Angel in my eyes. She went from a heavily synthesized fantasy album with Other Side of the Mirror, to a back to basics straight forward rock album with Street Angel. Nirvana's music was never terribly groundbreaking either mind you, it was just the poster child for musical taste taking a sudden left turn. They may have helped pioneer a cultural shift, but they certainly didn't pioneer anything in music that hadn't already been done by the Who or Led Zeppelin a quarter of a century earlier.

Several songs are cumbersome and lack any real passion or melody. Take away 5 songs and you have a better album.

Using the word chimpanzee has got to be one of tha all time worst lyric choices of any writer. This alone is enough to write off the entire work.

Umm...my pet chimpanzee was quite happy and proud that Stevie made that reference.:blob2:

For me personally the album sounded like it was missing Stevie's mystic ways. The albums release date kept getting pushed back (starting in 1993) until it was finally released in 1994. I had the single for "Maybe Love" and wasn't overly impressed with the song but I did like "Inspiration" (the b-side) and figured that the rest of the album should be pretty good. So when the album finally did get released I ran out to get it that afternoon and listened to it when I got home. I was not impressed at all. I thought that I must have outgrown Stevie's music. Then a few months later when I heard the Off The Record interview and found that Stevie herself hated the album, I was releaved.
It's not her best, but it has aged better than "Rock A Little". I love RAL, but that album is very dated. It sounds like your typical mid 80's pop album. That's what make "Rumours" and "Bella Donna" classics, they weren't recorded to sound like what was current at the time.

Chimpanzee and also LAUNDROMAT. WTF?

Actually I always figured Bob Dylan's use of "tax-deductible charity organisations" was the worst!

Which funnily enough is I think what happened to Stevie - she tried and failed to be dylanesque. Sure I find Dylan meaning under every rock, but...

Oh and don't knock the Stevie cover of Dylan, she tried. Lots of people try and lots of people fail, but most people need to try once in a career to give a nod to Bob. If they didn't try we wouldn't have Hendrix doing All Along The Watchtower...

Well I give her credit for the sentiment of the song. Lots of credit. But she should have used a different approach to the subject matter. Maybe just made the song about Jane Goodall and most of us would know about the monkeys.

Do you really have a chimp?

I forgot about laundramat. LOL. When I first heard that word I was like what? did she just say laundramat? stevie nicks the mystical chantues using such an unromatic word? oh the humanity! :-)

I think a lot of Stevie's dislike for this album is down to the fact it wasn't much fun for her making it. For me it has some fantastic moments and some of the lowest points of her career. She sounds completely fed up and lifeless throughout the songs too, which is odd because on the tour that followed it she was great vocally.

I sure agree with that. I've seen a few youtube clips of the SA tour in '94, and her voice was very strong. However, people were snarky about her weight, and that had to hurt. :(

To be honest I don't think I have listened to the complete SA album straight through from beginning to end in at least 10 years. It is just awful. I recall getting the album the day it came out in 1994, rushing home to my basement, cranking up the stereo and preparing to savor every note. I was really excited when "Blue Denim" got the album off to a rocking, smoldering start... but then it fell off a cliff as soon as the first few notes of "Greta" started up. My immediate impression was that the album sounded sloppy overall and that many songs just seemed to begin arbitrarily with some kind of instrumental noodling. While the song "Street Angel" was interesting, the production was just a mucking fess- the way it just began with that random guitar part, etc. And I really wanted to like "Docklands" because it was such a drastic foray into experimental territory for Stevie... after all, Trevor Horn was in the Buggles, produced Grace Jones and was a member of Yes. But it was just all kinds of wrong.

Still, despite my distaste for the songs and the production, I must admit that vocally SA is one of Stevie's finest moments.

Yeah, Stevie is known for her symbolism. So, she could have other things stand in for the monkey. I mean, she could still pay homage to Jane Goodall without being as direct. Talk about a forsaken spirit in the song, but tell Jane, "it's all about that monkey in the second stall who threw his feces at me!"

Michele

Did you read the liner notes about Stevie meeting Jane Goodall?

Stevie traveled to meet Jane Goodall at one of her research centers.
And she really was inspired to write the song after this happened:

STEVIE: "I stopped to look at the monkeys, when all of the sudden I
am hit in the face with a banana peel. I turn and look and there is this
monkey really laughing it up. Then Jane tells me that he (the monkey)
did it. Well, I pick up the banana peel and I wait for that monkey to
turn around. And then I *whap* let him have it."

JANE: "It's a monkey, Stevie!"

STEVIE: "Well, he pushed my buttons, I coudn't help it, Jane".

JANE: "Well, I still think it was wrong to do that Stevie".

STEVIE: "Alright fine, you take the monkey's side".

I think we can all agree that Stevie was quite lucky that this particular monkey chose a *banana peel* to throw at her, instead of, um, something else.

My favorite song on Street Angel is "Kick It" for all its literally allusions to Oscar Wilde's "The Happy Prince." I love all her songs that draw from short stories, poems, and other literary works.

ok, I know Ledgies are humorous people, so tell me - how much of it is true? :)

Name dropper!

I like JANE except that the lead vocal is pretty crappy. What is everybody's problem with the word "chimpanzee"? Why shouldn't Stevie put this word in a song dedicated to all the chimps of the world? She once dedicated RHIANNON to "all the witches of the world."

Stevie was touched by Goodall's work in behalf of (not "on behalf of") chimpers being poached or sold on the black market or used in research labs. Stevie herself once told an interviewer that she had to buck up & do a lot of her own strenuous dancing in STAND BACK -- "or be a CHUMP." It isn't that far from chimp to chump in rock 'n' roll.

I love DOCKLANDS. Who cares about a laundromat. The song describes alienation & loss better than any song she herself was writing at the time. And it's a great song musically, too, with a killer hook chorus. The thing actually moves -- unlike 99 percent of her 1989 album. It sizzles. I wish she had done it onstage in California.

"Stevie Nicks sang DOCKLANDS live back East, but all I got was this crappy bootleg."

P.S. Stevie & her pals sang JANE live at the GOODALL Tribute in 1991. No recording of it has ever surfaced. I think we'd go bananas for it if it ever did.

imnotafraid is pulling the drawstring on your jammies.

Yeah, but she doesn't throw "witch" into the lyrics.

So, can you like imagine Stevie in a laundromat?

She did their laundry and I doubt they had a washer/dryer in their apartment, so she must have gone to the laundromat. Poured in too much detergent, bubbles all over the place, the washer overflowed, when hundred dollar bills started floating out of the pockets of their jeans, everyone in the place began stampeding towards the sodden money. Riot in the Clean & Fluff! Michele

Docklands is one of my favorite songs off Street Angel and definitely a highlight of the tour IMO. For those who have not heard a live performance of Docklands, check out the Houston, TX show from 1994. This is my favorite show from the tour although the quality of the audience recording is not the best. Maybe Love Will Change Your Mind is also REALLY good from this show...and she even dedicates the song to Sandy Stewart who was apparently at the show that night.

Tim

Docklands is one of my favorite Stevie songs. There is a particular live version that I really love.

Not really into Docklands or any of the other goofy songs that play next the ones Stevie wrote, which are a lot better than what her management served up. Production-issues aside, all Stevie really needed to do was delay the album another two years and just re-record the vocals and it would have been fine. :)

Has anybody heard the original version of "Docklands" by Betsy Cook? I personally think its a wretched song, but I am so curious to hear the original.

Remy, that's not all there's much more to the Stevie "monkey" story than I posted on page two of this thread (for those who haven't read it please see my post about Stevie meeting Jane Goodall at her research center on page two of this thread).

As for the rest of the story, or at least the way it was reported at the time:

After the incident with Stevie and the monkey, Stevie was asked to come
into the research center's main office to meet with Mr. Pless (director of
the Jane Goodall research center). This is the converstaion that took place:

Mr. PLESS: "Ah, Ms. Nicks?"

STEVIE: "Yes."

Mr. PLESS: "Thanks for coming."

STEVIE: "So, uh, what did you want to see me about?"

Mr. PLESS: "Well, Ms. Nicks, to get right to the point, we're having a
bit of trouble with Barry."

STEVIE: "Barry?"

Mr. PLESS: "The chimpanzee."

STEVIE: "Oh. Well, what's the problem?"

Mr. PLESS: "Well, he's not functioning the way he normally does. He
seems depressed. He's lost his appeitite. He's even curtailed his autoerotic
activities. And we think this is directly related to the altercation he had with
you this morning."

STEVIE: "So what do you want me to do?"

Mr. PRESS: "Well, frankly we'd like you to apologize."

STEVIE: "Yeah, well he started it."

Mr. PRESS: "Ms. Nicks, he is an innocent primate."

STEVIE: "So am I. What about my feelings? Don't my feelings count for
anything? Oh, only the poor monkey's important. Everthing has to be done
for the monkey!"

:D lovely storytelling, iamnotafraid.

I like about half of the SA tracks. In no particular order:

Blue Denim
Kick It
Greta
Jane
MLWCYM

I like 'Inspiration' too, which of course was not part of the album but the flip side to MLWCYM. I spoke about the song about two weeks ago, and posted it the other day. I was in a mushy, sentimental mood and it was sort of therapeutic to talk it out...


http://planet-john.blogspot.com/2008...day-vol-8.html

I think Docklands is a fairly decent song but again, I think the production and the "ooh ooh ooh" middle part really drag it down. It just sounds so "heavy", part due to production and part due to the vocal. It does have a killer hook, though! This was one of the SA songs that was eventually cut from the set during the '94 tour.

It's funny how this always comes up...I remember talking about this same topic awhile ago (I think it was on a different board) ... anyway, I do think Street Angel is, in my opinion, Stevie's weakest album, however, having said that, it is still Stevie, and so I still love it...

It does have the most Stevie songs that I really don't like out of all of her albums (actually, the only Stevie songs that I don't at least like : Listen To The Rain & Love Is Like A River...

But it also has some of my very favorite songs : Blue Denim, Street Angel, Rose Garden...and I do love Stevie's version of Just Like A Woman...and Maybe Love is cool...

Greta had to grow on me, but it went from Don't like to really like over the years..

the rest of the songs are ok not among my favorites, but totally listenable...

Jane I'm kind of iffy on...sort of like it, sort of don't...

I love the Japanese edition songs (Inspiration is one of my very favorites... God's Garden is beautiful, if a tad too long...

Having said that, I also feel that this album for some reason brought in alot of younger fans, and so for that reason alone, it deserves major props...

SA isn't a favorite of mine much either.....I also don't think its Stevie's best work by far. It could've been better...but I also say that about RAL too. Its kinda choppy really. Not crazy about the song selections much either. I think more of Stevie's own songs should've been used for this record but weren't. Maybe Love & UL are ok songs....average (not written by Stevie)....JLAW the Dylan song isn't my favorite either....I do like SA/BD/LILAR/Inspiration-not written by Stevie again/RG.....I love the 'original' Listen To The Rain...with the original lyrics --I think it was done in '91....I don't like the changed lyrics at all....Docklands is ok but it would've been cooler if was called 'Darklands' as some of the old 'demo' tapes had it listed as....sounds more mystical or something....don't like Jane....no chimps for me.....Gods Garden is ok too but I don't like her voice on this track....she almost sounds sleepy and her voice is really deep too.....the tracks music is lack luster and it tends to drag way too much for me.....too long as well. Kick It is ok......I've probably missed something.....but overall I don't listen to it that much. Just like RAL it could've been a better LP/cd...but its not. Mirror is better than RAL & SA to me..but BD & WH are still the best ones....that is IMO though but to each his/her own......its all good.....really.....:shrug:

IMHP, Stevie is not a great singer of other people's songs. Her songwriting and voice are unique, but whatever magic she has is usually only in her own songs. For me, Bella Donna is far and away her masterpiece, with Wild Heart and Trouble in Shangri-la next in line, if for no other reason than they contain more songs written or co-written by her. Once she started letting other people write songs for her, the overall quality of her discs went way, way down. Take Rock a Little. I love Rock a Little, I Sing for the Things, No Spoken Word, and Has Anyone..., but for the most parts, the other songs, well, how can I put this gently...suck. I just can't listen to Sister Honey, or Some Become Strangers, or The Nightmare.

So, with that said, I think that the songs that Stevie wrote on Street Angel are really good. I like Blue Denim, Destiny, and Rose Garden a lot, and I'll even go out, way out, on a limb, and say that Kick It is one of my all time favorite Stevie songs. The other songs, however, like Docklands, Listen to the Rain, and Maybe Love are pretty unremarkable.

I guess I just feel like Stevie talks a lot about being a songwriter first and foremost, but then puts so many songs written or co-written by other people on her CDs that it's hard to take that seriously. I remember hearing in one interview that she asked Tom Petty to write songs for her for TISL, but that he said no, that that was what she does, and it motivated her to write more songs. It's a great story, but then you look at the credits for That Made Me Stronger, and you see that even there she asked someone else to write the music.

I know that I've gone off on a tangent here. Sorry. I guess my point is that I don't think Street Angel is any better or worse than Rock a Little or The Other Side of the Mirror. They all have too many songs written by other people, but in general, I really like Stevie's songs from those efforts.

Also, it must be hard to be a recording artist. I mean, we all have bad days/weeks/semesters at work, but with most jobs, there's not much that lasts from those bad times for people to see. But when you put out a CD, or any other form of art for that matter, it's around forever. So if it's not something you're happy with, you have to figure out a way to live with that. That would be pretty damn hard, I think.

Man, I really rambled. Sorry.

Kevin