{"id":41276,"date":"2008-12-18T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-12-18T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/menlove-ave\/"},"modified":"2008-12-18T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-12-18T00:00:00","slug":"menlove-ave","status":"publish","type":"review","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/reviews\/menlove-ave\/","title":{"rendered":"Menlove Ave."},"content":{"rendered":"

One can understand the demand for unreleased tracks from John Lennon following his murder in 1980; the posthumous album Milk & Honey<\/i>, which Lennon was working on as the follow-up to Double Fantasy<\/i> prior to his death, in some ways should have satiated the masses.<\/p>\n

But in 1986, Menlove Ave.<\/i><\/st1:address><\/st1:street>, a collection of studio out-takes, hit the market, and the record-buying public, for the most part, turned up their collective noses at it. Good thing, too, because this disc, while it has a few enjoyable performances, proves that not everything on the cutting room floor should be dusted off and released to the general public.<\/p>\n

Comprised mostly of leftovers from the Walls & Bridges<\/i> and Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll<\/i> projects (as well as one leftover track from Mind Games<\/i>), these ten tracks sometimes truly do scrape the barrel of leftover Lennon music. Three particular tracks, left over from the Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll<\/i> sessions, show the worst of it. Lennon just does not seem like the right person or voice to tackle \u201cAngel Baby\u201d or \u201cTo Know Her Is To Love Her\u201d (the latter a gender-changed cover of The Teddy Bears\u2019 classic), and both tracks feature a delivery like Lennon really didn\u2019t want to do either song. (True story: when I put \u201cTo Know Her Is To Love Her\u201d on prior to writing this review, my six-year-old son ran to the bathroom and puked. I think that was really a case of the stomach flu \u2013 but after repeated listens to this track, I\u2019m not terribly sure.) What is even more stomach-churning is that these three tracks were tacked onto the remastered version of Rock \u2018n\u2019 Roll<\/i> as bonus tracks \u2013 proof positive you can<\/i> have too much of anything.<\/p>\n

The other track from sessions Lennon did with Phil Spector, \u201cHere We Go Again,\u201d does not start the album out on the greatest note. Now, I\u2019m well aware that the albums Lennon recorded from \u201973 to \u201975 were more introspective and darker in nature, these being the discs recorded while he was separated from Yoko Ono, and I know I shouldn\u2019t be expecting a party atmosphere from this stuff. But this track flat out sucks<\/i>, meandering back and forth from the chorus to barely-there verses. <\/i>This track dares to suggest that it was left off of Rock\u2019n\u2019Roll<\/i> for a damn good reason \u2013 namely, the track wasn\u2019t nearly as developed as it could have been. (Could more work on this one have saved the song? Honestly, I don\u2019t know.)<\/p>\n

The second half of Menlove Ave.<\/i><\/st1:address><\/st1:street>, while better in terms of song quality, seems kind of pointless, as all these tracks had alternate versions released on Walls & Bridges<\/i>. Now, I\u2019m not saying these are bad by any stretch of the word (and I will plead pure ignorance as to the difference between these versions and the ones released \u2013 I have yet to listen to Walls & Bridges<\/i>), but it really seems odd that different versions of five previously released songs would be thrown out to the general public for mass consumption. (And, yes, I guess I\u2019m a heretic on this call, too \u2013 seeing that I probably wouldn\u2019t have been bothered had these come out in a box set. I guess that one man\u2019s shit really is another\u2019s shinola.)<\/p>\n

That said, I do somewhat enjoy listening to these five, possibly because they were the more developed tracks on this disc, and tracks like \u201cSteel And Glass,\u201d \u201cOld Dirt Road\u201d and \u201cBless You,\u201d while still of the darker mindset that Lennon had at this time, are quite listenable and fairly enjoyable.<\/p>\n

The leftover from the Mind Games<\/i> era, \u201cRock And Roll People,\u201d is one that, honestly, does make me wonder why it didn\u2019t make the cut. There\u2019s no question that this song was ready for prime time, so I guess its exclusion was just a judgment call. This one does prove to be a diamond in the rough that is Menlove Ave.<\/i><\/st1:address><\/st1:street><\/p>\n

I realize that saying anything negative about anything even remotely related to the Beatles \u2013 the solo career of Paul McCartney being a glaring exception \u2013 is cause enough for the blasphemer to be tarred and feathered. But I can\u2019t, in all honesty, say that Menlove Ave.<\/i> is one that is worthy of your time, and the weaker tracks have regrettably found their way onto other releases to weaken their foundations. If you absolutely have to have this disc, then \u201cRock And Roll People\u201d and the alternate takes from Walls & Bridges<\/i> will satiate you, but chances are you\u2019ll still walk away feeling like this disc was released more to cash out on Lennon\u2019s ghost.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29676,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"artist":[7187],"rating":[11204],"class_list":["post-41276","review","type-review","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","artist-john-lennon","rating-rating-c-minus"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/review"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/review\/41276\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29676"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"artist","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artist?post=41276"},{"taxonomy":"rating","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rating?post=41276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}