Customer Reviews

The New Machine

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The previous reviewer is correct, Tony Carey is both unnown and under-rated in the US. For those new to Tony Carey's music, he considers himself a folk singer, but his live performances have more of a bluesman's feel to it. Unlike other musicians of the genre, he is primarily a piano player (well, an organist), not a guitar man. Unlike other great piano men of note, he is not a showman, like Elton John, his emphasis being stories told in song as opposed to catchy music. He sings about the working man, but he is a sophisticated a songwriter, unlike Billy Joel, who sang of the working class and really WAS blue collar. In his syle, Tony carey is more similar to Bruce Hornsby and Richard Marx. And that is the reason that Tony carey never became famous - he never went for making hit singles or formulaic pop rock, instead writing songs about spacemen, nuclear war, politics, society, outlaws and poor people. That, which made him great also made him unsuitable for heavy play on the Top 40 radio stations.

This particular album contains Tony Carey's unreleased work from 1984 to 1992. This album gets three stars because The New Machine is not the best introduction to his work. The unreleased material in this album does not explore anything new for Tony Carey, and the new listener is better off starting listening to those other albums first. Tony Carey has explored a number of intreesting themes in his songs and these themes keep resonating and form the core of his work. Tony Carey is primarily a balladeer, but his ballads are not just for lost love. When he does write about women, it's mostly about girls from small towns running away from dead end lives. His best album for that would be The Boystown Tapes Reissued, it also has a good sample of his live music. Another theme of Tony Carey's music is the street life. His songs are not as hardboiled as the outlaw foolklore of Steve Earle or Johnny Cash, rather more like Simon and Garfunkel's Boxer. The feel of his streets echoes the late 1970s films like Vice Squad (with Wings Hauser) and the Death Wish series. The best songs would be "Something For Nothing" and "Vigilante" off the "I Won't Be Home Tonight". This and the "Some Tough City" are Tony Carey's most street heavy albums.

Before leaving te US for Germany, Tony Carey released two science fiction themed concept albums in the US. The style of music was electronic fusion. Planet P was ostensibly about space travel, but the themes were loss, lost love, and loneliness (and redemption in the end). Pink World was an album about the second coming, salvation, and the nuclear war. It was coming off Tony Carey's strongest points - first person tales told from points of view of the witnesses and participants, and it was more coherent a story than his subsequent Palnet P albums.

After releasing Pink World in 1984 (and the more traditional album of ballads, "The Blue Highway") Tony Carey stopped making albuks in the US. He re-emerged at around 1992 with the help of the internet. TC seemed to have re-invented himself as a bluesy folk musician (a separate genre of music in Germany, not quite the American Country)
The themes of the vagabond, the working and the downtrodden became more prominent, but they were nothing new, they were present in all of his earlier work, and his later street album Bedtime Story (Soundtrack to Der Joker) released in 1987 and set in aermany, had the same 1970's street sleazse feel and notions of organised crime from his earlier works. Best albums dealing with these themes would be "Storyville" amd "Islands and Deserts".

Tony Carey's subsequent Planet P albums became more alien and more political. Gone the dark space, mystical miracle workers and any notions of love or hope. His linked Planet P albums 1931 and Levittown will never get played on commercial radio because they music is too heavy (as in depressingly serious) and the songs are too album specific. Tony Carey claims to be the poet laureate of the Baby Boomers, and based on these albums he might be. 1931 is supposed to cover the rise of dicators and WWII, but the content of the album is mostly about the rise of fascism (in Germany) and the subsequent genocide (Holocaust). This is Tony carey's most political album and the key to his politics is the notion that modern society is a thin veneer, clamoring behind which there is the intolerance and rage of the barely suppressed lunatic fringe, which threatens to destroy the world. Somethign best seen from Europe and bourne out by all the little civil wars in the post communist world. Tony Carey is anti war (no duh, can anybody say s/he is PRO-WAR???), except that unlike anti war/anti death-pnalty activism of the 1960's flk musicians, Tony Carey's pacifism is more abstract and more cerebral, his views similar to E.M. Remarque's views of war as senselessely destroying and crippling people. His best anti-war song is probably "Midnight Wind", not available on any his major CD. His second Planet P album is about post-war America of Baby Boomers' parents
Levittown has the haunted, twilight zone feel to it, haunted by the fear of THE BOMB. Tony Carey drops the ball on Levittown and ends it with a nuclear war, like he did te Pink World, and that wasn't necessary. The key to understanding Tony carey's music is to understand that his themes run trough his work across the specific albums. Often his themes overlap, prime example would be his song "20 Days of Rain" (off the Retrospective 1982-1999 CD); it can be construed as either the end of the world or "throw in the towel and get out of the rat race" song.

Having given this introduction to his work, here is the overview of the New Machine and how the material in it fits in. Unlike the Retrospective, The New Machie has the power-ballad feel to it, with the heavy-metal like, but decidedly not, screaming guitars and synthsized drums. It's no wonder, in the early 1990s Europe you had mostly older (East) European musicians using eelctric instruments associated with heavy metal to play what they always did - I wanna hold your hand style of love songs deeply rooted in their own musical tradition. Hence, the power ballad, used derisively by the stuck up British journlaist chicks to disparage the modern music of the Balkans, but then again, Tony Carey seems to be a European musician playing for the European baby boomers.

Anyway, Tony Carey opens The New Machine with (1)The Eagle Flies Alone and (2)Run With the Lions, both thematically belong to Levittown CD. (3)Person to Person is a power ballad a la Scorpions and Mr. Mister, an abstract cry for help. (4) Tears is one of the ges on this CD and it should have been included with the 1931. Better late than never. (5) Red Door is another gem, straight from the Pink World. Incidentally, to all you Planet-P aficionados, The spiritual sequel to Pink World, is not the 1931 or Levittown, but is soundtrack, Gefangen Im Jemen! Listen ti the music and you will see the continuation of the Pink World theme, with desert echoing with desolation, wateland, and mystery. And his final tour de force in that akbum, the Sun Got in My Eyes, is on par with What I See and One Star Falling on the Pink World! (6) The New Machine (the soul of)? Too abstract, a bit glib song about te new generation taking over the politifcal system with none too much compassion. Not the best song that didn't find a home in a concept album. (7) Veteran's Day is a ho-hum anti-war song, again, not the best, not HIS best, not original and just a tad too preachy. (8) Valery, anoter TC ballad about a girl, (9) Sins of the Fathers, This is Good!!! One of the best songs on the album. Would have made 1931 less abstract and so much more vivid. Too bad it didn't get there. (10) 90 Miles from Eden, another small gem, belongs on Levittown, seems to be about immigrants lost in Camelot (10) Wonderland, loos like TC's attempt at a pop song. (11) The Whip. This is an instrumental piece, part of the Street theme. Very good, once you put it in that context.

Anyway, as you can see, anyone new to TCs music won't make sense of it or appreciate it, however, to anyone who follows TCs work, tis will be like a missing piece ina jigsaw puzzle!

Just received this cd, it is older music that Tony has re-mastered. Most of it has never been heard by the fans. It is a steal, Tony Carey is a very underated artist & this music needed to be heard, if U are a Carey fan U won't be disappointed.

Man- this album is great! It sooooo took me back to some of my favorte Planet P and Tony Carey's work from the 80's. I've enjoyed his newer Planet P albums, but I grew up with the 2 original science fiction albums, and I love them the most. It was great to hear some classic keyboard and fantastic guitar! This truly captures Tony's brillance at his best. I love his Rainbow material too, and this album carries on the tradition of prog-rock, science fiction, social commentary all to the sound of great music and cerebreal lyrics. Bravo Tony!