The first thing you notice about Greg Kihn live on CD is what a masterful power pop songwriter and showman he was. But the first two things you notice on either of Greg Kihn's mid-1990s solo studio albums is that he's no longer a power pop artist, but still a great songwriter.
In the mid-1980s, Kihn was at the top of his game and the height of his success. He had Top 10 hits on the radio, an appealing and refreshing image of self-parody in his videos on MTV, and album titles that endlessly punned on his name (_Next of Kihn, Kihntinued, Citizen Kihn, etc.) His name recognition at the time was the payoff for more than 10 years of dues-paying, from his native Baltimore to his adopted San Francisco bay area home, as his cross-country tours saw him graduating from clubs and college venues to arenas.
Kihn's strengths come to the fore in the King Biscuit Flower Hour concert recorded April 22, 1986 in Philadelphia and just recently remastered and released from the KBFH archives. Numerous surprises await a 1997 listener; let me spoil them for you:
-> The tour for Kihn's final Beserkley album, Love and Rock and Roll, featured a then-unknown lead guitarist named Joe Satriani, whose solos lift the show well beyond the arena-rock standard and into the stratosphere.
-> The opening "Another Girl, Another Planet" is a fiery pop song that bears striking resemblance to the recent No Doubt hit "Spiderwebs." (There goes my chance to sum up this then-and-now review with "they don't write 'em like that anymore.")
-> 10 years later, it's still safe to say Kihn made some of the most danceable songs of the post-New Wave era, from "The Breakup Song" and "Reunited" to "Jeopardy" and "Little Red Book." The latter must have had the audience bobbing like a sea full of corks.
-> Kihn does two Bruce Springsteen songs, the wordy 1972 rocker "For You" and "Rendezvous," an uptempo love song from 1976, never recorded by The Boss and originally covered by Kihn on a 1982 LP. Performed with power and passion, Kihn makes them his own.
-> Kihn shows his sense of humor, and acoustic roots, on a one-time-only performance of "Imelda Marcos Talking Blues," and his rock and roll heart (rivaled only by Springsteen at his 1976-78 peak) on two rocking bonus tracks, "Happy Man" and "Testify," from a 1982 college show in New Jersey. The liner notes manage to cover Kihn's career in a minimum of words, and he is quoted describing his approach to rock and roll and songwriting.
King Biscuit has so far released 12 remixed and remastered shows by different artists, at a bargain price of about $12.98 - and the Kihn disc is superlative.
Like 1994's Mutiny before it, Kihn's latest, Horror Show, fits the mold of a solo effort by a mature popsmith who once ruled the charts - foregoing commercial aspirations for a personal vision, he hews to artistic truth and yields beauty.
That praise sounds pretty high-minded, I know, especially for a guy who's folksy enough to seem to be saying "here's my latest bunch of songs, folks, hope you like 'em" - but the artist formerly known as "the one who did 'Jeopardy'" is that good at what he does. But no more arenas for him - he'd rather play the coffeehouse (or take a regrouped Greg Kihn Band back to the clubs).
Art and literature and history inform Kihn's recent work. Horror Show opens with Eric Von Schmidt's "Kay is the Month of May," comparing (like a true poet) a woman to a list of famous painters. In "JFK," Kihn tries to make sense of the experience he shared with a nation in 1963. The title track equates love with a monster movie. (And "Vampira" extends the theme in a humorous country vein, absolutely no pun intended.) "Noa Noa" continues a romance with the sea he previously set out on Mutiny.
The album is direct, honest and heartfelt. From the evocative, moody original love song "Beam the Light" to a cover of the bouncy Cajun two-step "Alligator Man," Kihn kindles a warm connection with the listener. The acoustic arrangements (recorded with nearly the same cast of Baltimore supporting players used on Mutiny) amble from contemporary folk to country to rock and back again, and the recording is clean and crisp.
As with his earlier tributes to Springsteen, Kihn continues to pay his musical influences back, with covers in context with his new songs - this time with a nice version of Ray Davies' classic "Waterloo Sunset" and an arrangement of the traditional song "Trials, Troubles, Tribulations." (_Mutiny also included sea shanties and covers of the Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly, the Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan and others, along with acoustic Kihn originals.)
First and foremost, though, the man is a writer to be trusted - and incidentally, his first novel, also titled "Horror Show," has been published by Tor Books concurrent with the album.
