Reissue CDs Weekly: Biz Markie, Iron Maiden, Wendy Rene

Biz Markie: The Biz Never Sleeps

Joe Muggs

There are plenty who talk about hip hop's “golden age” as being circa mid-1980s to mid-1990s. This tends to be done out of snobbery or nostalgia and ignores all kinds of incredible musical developments that have taken place since. However, while this 1989 album is playing it's extraordinarily easy to get sucked into feeling like it is as good as it got. It's such a good-natured, infectiously joyful and straight-up funky gem, you may very well find yourself wondering why all rap albums can't be like The Biz Never Sleeps.

Biz Markie is possibly the most genial rapper of all time, a winning combination of avuncular wise-guy and excitably puerile teen, and he can make the simplest material engaging. As we demonstrated on The Arts Desk's Radio Show this week, he can turn even the intro track consisting of nothing but “shout outs” to his friends and family into a performance, and on every other track his slurred singsong rhymes (a gentler precursor to the more sinister and sophisticated lisp of Biggie Smalls) and gruff, barely-in-tune singing are delivered with the utter assurance of someone who has honed his craft working hard crowds over the years.

The subject matter veers from cheeky boasts and party tales to straight, unsentimental romanticism, and from worldly advice (avoid crack, brush your teeth, stay in school) to nonsense rhyme pile-ups that would bring a smile to Edward Lear's face. Musically, it's all about slow, loping funk sample collage co-produced by Biz himself, with occasional quirky twists - his trademark beatboxing on a couple of tracks and, on the utterly startling “Biz in the Harmony”, a fusion of doo-wop with slowed-down Kraftwerk that has to be heard to be believed. Rap music has achieved greater sophistication and force in the decades since this was made, and has had many creative peaks that equal or exceed this in one way or another. But for sheer fun and force of personality it's hard to think of anything that could match it. A treasure. 

Iron Maiden: En Vivo!

Thomas H Green

Once upon a time Iron Maiden sat alongside Saxon and Tygers of Pan Tang amongst the iron-on patch collections of teenage Eighties head-bangers. Nowadays the denim rocker look isn’t so popular but Iron Maiden are still there in metal teenager T-shirt drawers, screwed up alongside Sepultura and Mastodon. Along the way they’ve become one of Britain’s highest-earning globally touring bands and their last album went to Number One in 28 countries. En Vivo! is a recording of a gig at the Estadio Nacional in Santiago, Chile, in April last year and it’s a bravura showcase.

Opening with a corking, bass-addled, psychedelic take on “Satellite 15”, the band are on rampaging form in front of a loudly partisan 50,000 fans who roar the guitar melodies, notably to the 1992 single “Fear of the Dark”. Six songs come from their last album, The Final Frontier, and hold their own surprisingly well against classics such as “Number of the Beast” and “Iron Maiden”. OK, I admit I’ve developed a small but potent Maiden habit over the last decade. If you don’t have one, this album may sound like a man who needs a laxative fronting a galloping guitar overdose. However, to my “new ears”, their unlikely combination of prog-rock musicianship, twee folk, punk drive and a preposterous sense of the epic carries the day - “Scream for me, Santiagoooooo!”

Wendy Rene: After Laughter Comes Tears: Complete Stax & Volt Singles + Rarities 1964-65

Mark Kidel

For those of you who relish the pared-down sound of classic Stax and Volt recordings - delicately embellished by minimalist guitar touches from Steve Cropper, the warm tones of Booker T’s Hammond organ, honeyed chords on the horns, and intense ballads in 6/8 times - this collection of songs by Wendy Rene, on her own and with the Drapels, the vocal group she emerged from, is a very welcome addition to the material already available on the Complete Stax/Volt Singles. It includes some unreleased gems, every bit as good as her minor hit “Bar-B-Q”: “Deep in My Heart”, with echoes of Little Jerry Williams’s classic “Lover Man", is a revelation. With a plaintive voice, Otis Redding protégée Rene has something of Carla Thomas’s teenage sweetness, but she’s more than a mere sound-alike, belting out her lyrics with a passion learned in church and packing a punch full of soul.