JIMMY WEBB Â 
 There is a strong feminist stance in women's music, however; and that was largely absent from the music scene in the mid-1970's, Helen Reddy's "I Am Woman" (1972) notwithstanding. Jimmy Webb is not a songwriter where one would expect feminist sensibilities, but Meg Christian reworks his song "The Hive" as a tale of female oppression – not at all the way that Richard Harris performed the song several years earlier.   (January 2014)  *    *    *  Although it took me a while to warm to Kill City, it has become one of my favorites among Iggy Pop’s albums – even with the truly wonderful first album by the Stooges, The Stooges (1969) that is in the same current album stack.  Considering Iggy Pop’s state of mind at that time – he had checked himself into a mental institution in an attempt to clean himself up and become functional again – the demos that he and James Williamson put together at the home recording studio of Jimmy Webb (!) in 1975 that became Kill City are remarkably self-assured and remind me of the feel of his triumphant solo album, Brick by Brick (1990).  (December 2017)  |