Tacoma proto-rockers the Ventures, aka the Fabulous Ventures, have been nominated to be in the next batch of Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductees for 2008, along with...(ahem)...um, Madonna.

Even with local Seattle roots, the Ventures are often lumped into the "surf" craze of the early '60s (There was NO Dick Dale action, not in 1960)!! In fact, they were just playing what ALL the other contemporary Northwest bands were playing--simple, danceable, R&B-based instrumentals and Top 40 instrumental cover versions! However, they lucked out in 1960 when they hit nationally with their version of "Walk Don't Run." From there they charted multiple times and issued LPs hand over fist...about 40 LPs in about 12 years!

That said, knowing the NW had plenty of great instrumental bands (The WAILERS! The VICEROYS! etc.), the rest of the world was generally lacking of whip smart instro-rock (the Shadows be damned!) and with national radio and record distribution EVERY (pre-Beat invasion) aspiring guitar player had a handful of Ventures LPs. It was the Ventures' catchy, stripped-down ROCK approach to guitar playing/sound and arranging that made them the perfect band to TEACH rock guitar basics to budding guitarsonists...and yeah, yeah, yeah, they even issued a handful of "play guitar/bass along with the band" albums to encourage the process!

By, say, '64/'65, after the English invaded, most instrumental bands either split or added a vocalist and changed names. The Ventures did not. Instead they continued (ahem) Venture-fying (!) pop hits, and some not so hits, and with that they sorta dissolved into an easy listening/go-go/exotica/exploitation outfit and lost relevance with the hip younger (long hair) record buying set.

But MAYBE they were reaching out to the (youngish) adults who might not wanna hear the Yardbirds, but dug the Ventures less threatening Yardbirds covers--but just maybe. (That said, those records have actually aged very well!) And then, they slowly faded from view--in the US. By the '70s they'd shifted focus to Japan, where they were, as they are now, fucking HUGE! They're still at too...

When I was a kid, I was in love--L-U-V--with the Ventures' Hawaii Five-0 LP as that was my favorite TV show. AND their Christmas album. I've always HATED Xmas songs so when I found a ROCK 'n' ROLL LP of Xmas songs with THAT guitar sound--well, it's STILL the only Xmas LP I ever liked.

There are so many folk singers in the ‘70s who just missed making a bigger splash. Pretty good songwriting, nice voices and good production work, but the public just seemed to be overloaded with them. So they made their choices. There was Neil Young, CSN, and the ever popular Dylan.

But for every one of them there was an Eric Anderson (forever to be thought of as the “poor man's Dylan”), a Richard Farina (never too popular while alive), and to a lesser extent guys like Ian Matthews.

Ian Matthews started his career in none other than Fairport Convention. This was at the beginning, when Fairport was more inclined to cover sunny California pop, then olde English folk tunes. He appears on the first album as vocalist, duetting with Judy Dyble and on What We Did On Our Holidays sharing vocals with Sandy Denny.

As the band's direction changed it seemed eminent that the man that brought the sunny West Coast style would be let go. It seemed to fit everyone, for Matthews went on to create a solid solo career, recording for many different labels, all the way through today. The singer/songwriter even had a stint here in the rainy climes of Seattle for four years in the ‘70s.

He managed to stay pretty close with his former bandmates, however, as they tend to show up on his albums pretty regularly. He started his solo career fronting the band Ian Matthews’ Southern Comfort, with some highly respectable albums, but the focus today is on his output from 1971-1974. During those years he put out two albums for British psyche/prog label Vertigo, and three albums for Elektra, at the time THE American label for West Coast rock, pop, and soul.

Continue reading "Ian Matthews British Folk Also-Ran" »

The Numero Group label, famous for its ongoing releases that delve deeply into the far reaches of "eccentric soul," has been quietly releasing some primo rare disco 12" singles lately.

They range from full-blown Caribbean funk/disco to early rap. Some of the releases are master tapes that have been found with no identifying info on them except band names and song titles. Releasing them like a dove into a recently dry world, Numero hopes to shed more light on a genre that has its dissenters--very admirable for a label whose cool crate-digger reputation has led it to also release amazing CDs of little-known folk singers and genre-specific Caribbean dance music.

The latest single, Numero 006 in the series, is a fantastic example: Jackie Stoudemire's "Invisible Wind." Originally released on the TAP label in 1981, the song obviously suffers from a weird title (Invisible Wind? As opposed to the wind you can see?), but the slap bass, hand clapping, and great background singing give it a yearning lift that is nearly spiritual.

Not to be outdated, Numero has been adding on some classy re-edits to these packages. The Shoes re-edit of the above track is perfectly done, adding layer on layer, extending the track from just over four minutes to an epic-feeling eight.

I can't recommend all the singles in the series. Numero 005, Jay Mitchell's version of "Mustang Sally," didn't hold any interest to me (and besides, I hate the original). But the incredible Numero 003, "Man For My Lady" by Sabata, has a righteous synth line that screams "Party!" (And I think it was lifted by Jellybean Benitez for his work with early Madonna.)

And the early hiphop sound of the Fabulous 3 MCs (totally unknown rappers, master tape found at a garage sale in Florida), Numero 004, is reminiscent of the best of Grand Master Flash.

Search 'em out. Find 'em all. But whatever you do, don't miss out on 'em.

Samples, of course, are here at my blog.

MP3's and vinyl of all the Numero Disco releases can be found at the Numero website and your local independent record store.

It's weird. I'm a total muso-geek, but sometimes you see something and think, "Next time. Not today. I'll see it again."

That's what I thought years ago when I first saw these remixes of U2's New Years Day/Two Hearts Beat As One by disco progenitor Francois K. What a strange meeting of talent, but I'll see it again, it can wait.

In 1983 Francois Kevorkian had ended his job as a mixer, engineer and A&R guy for Prelude records, a job he'd held for nearly five years. He was looking to get into more pop music, using his connections to do remixes of artist as varied as Arthur Russell and Yaz (or Yazoo as they were called in Europe). He was also DJing at some of the biggest, craziest, renowned clubs in New York--Paradise Garage, Studio 54, The Loft. As he grew tired of the nightly grind, he looked to friends in the record industry to throw him some remixing work. He wanted to be in the club, not working the club.

In 1983 U2 was ready to put out their third album, War. Already a success in the U.K., they were beginning to break on our shores after the first album, Boy, but had stalled out with its follow up October and it's disapointing sales. Island Records execs were looking for ways to expand the market for a band they thought deserved more attention, especially on the eve of a new "landmark" album which would raise their visibility in a time of the burgeoning MTV era.

Some person at Island (were they on acid?) thought it would be good to do some dance remixes of two of the singles from the album. One can only have imagined the dread of U2 band members at the time, who were already very disappointed in their contract with Island. A contract that left them without the rights to their songs, and paid them very little upfront to create their music. But what are you going to do when you're at the mercy of your label.

Thank god it was Francois K. who got the job. The man behind Yaz's "Situation" and Dinosaur L's "Go Bang" was an inspiration. The mixes--especially the opening of "New Year's Day" with it's piano line and reverbed guitar before the drums crash in with a less known four-on-the-floor beat and remixed vocal--are great. They hold the tenuous line between rock and disco tightly. One can only imagine pogoing on the floor at Studio 54.

Of course, U2 went on to become "U2." Francois K. went on to produce, mix and arrange amazing, classic work by Kraftwerk (Electric Cafe, Tour De France), Depeche Mode (Violator), Jody Watley (Don't You Want Me) and more recently LCD Soundsystem (Disco Infiltrator)

The single is probably not a "rare" find to U2 fans, but to disco lovers, who may pass up on their chance to own a copy, like myself, it is a jewel.

The songs can be found here.

So, let me start by saying, I'm not dumb. I know enough about Johnny Thunders to get me through a conversation about The Dolls and Heartbreakers etc....

But I'm obsessed with this song right now and I can hardly find any information about it at all!

The track is by a european disco group called Skyline. It's off a self-titled album from 1978. Incredibly, it sounds like something The Rapture might be putting out now. It's so contemporary feeling, that I was blown away when I discovered its date.

Here's the track: (forgive the flange, it's from a DJ set)

Skyline - I Think I'm Gonna Fall In Love

Here's the thing. The group's guitarist is none other than Johnny Thunders. But I can't find any mention about this project on any Thunders related website or wiki.

Are there any Thunders fans out there who can shed some light on this track.

In 1979 Tim Stahl and John Guldberg formed the duo Laid Back in Copenhagen, Denmark. It wasn't until 1982 that they had their first hit, "Sunshine Reggae", which was actually a b-side to one of the singles off of their first, self-titled LP.

The next album, 1983's ...Keep Smiling, proved to be their greatest success in the U.S. spawning the monster club hit "White Horse". The album has other great moments, though, like "High Society Girl", a remake of "Sunshine Reggae" and the totally chill cosmic closer "Fly Away/Walking In The Sunshine".

Largely seen as one-hit wonders in the U.S. Laid Back managed to put together a number of European Top 40 hits through the '80's and '90's, most notably with the song "Bakerman", which spawned a brilliant video by a very young, pre-Dogme95, Lars Von Trier. The video was shot in one take with multiple cameras as the band and friends jumped out of an airplane. It was covered in 2006 by the cheeseball handbag house DJ Shaun Baker and charted a second time throughout Europe.

Since then Laid Back have mostly worked on movie and TV soundtracks, winning the Danish equivalent of an Oscar for their work in 2002.

Laid Back - White Horse (Original LP Version)
Laid Back - Fly Away/Walking In The Sunshine

...And here's the brilliant, funny video to "Bakerman".

In the little village of Gourin, in the Bretagne region of France, Alan Cochevelou was born to play the Celtic harp. The year was 1944.

When he was a young boy, his father moved the family to Paris, where they lived until Alan was a teenager. As a teen, he became interested in his Breton background, its language, culture, and most importantly, its music. He studied the native language and practiced on the bombarde, an instrument native to Breton that's a cross between a whistle and oboe that has a very distinct sound.

In 1956, his father made a Celtic harp in the Breton style. Alan began practicing and playing out in local folk clubs and became famous for his rock-leaning style. He changed his last name to Stivell, which means “fountain” in Breton, as a way of recognizing the growing resurgance of Breton folk music.

In 1971, Stivell released an album called Renaissance De La Harpe Celtique, which took the folk music world by storm. The A-side had five traditional songs all arranged by Stivell, and the B-side was a suite of 11 folk songs from Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man. The side starts out with harp only, but by the end an orchestra of traditional Celtic instruments joins in to jam. It’s a fascinating and monumental work that changed the way many traditional instrumentalist were playing folk music at the time. (Incidentally, one of the tracks on the album is called "Ys", the same name as the recent album by harp-playing freak-folkist Joanna Newsom.)

Of course, it didn’t hurt that this was during the heyday of the British Acid Folk scene. Groups like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span topped the charts and vocalists like Anne Briggs and Shirley Collins were being rediscovered. The addition of an instrumentalist into the proggy vein of the scene seemed totally natural.

In 1975, Stivell’s rock-oriented Celtic/Breton folk was so popular in Ireland that he recorded a live album from the National Soccer Stadium in Dublin, aptly called Live In Dublin. The sell-out crowd, very audible in the recording, totally loves Stivell and is heard singing along throughout the concert. (Around this same time Alan Stivell came to Seattle for a performance for the Seattle Folklore Society.)

Stivell used his rock arrangements to his advantage with his 1976 Celtic Rock release on the highly influential prog/psyche label Vertigo. The album is a collection of some of his folk-influenced acid rock gems. It became the blueprint for many prog and folk musicians, combining ancient folk textures with rock's heavy language. It’s a stunning album and includes some of his biggest and most influential tunes. Just listen to "An Dro Nevez" and see if you can’t hear it in a number of songs by artists like Kate Bush (who has both had Alan as a guest on her Sensual World album, and guested on his album Again), Steeleye, and Fairport Convention--not to mention the lilting solo albums by Sandy Denny. ("An Dro Nevez" was also used on the recent Andy Votel compilation of Vertigo records called Vertigo Mixed. It’s mixed into tracks by Affinity and Beggars Opera.)

In 1980, Stivell wrote his Celtic Symphony--a dangerous prospect, as any well-known prog-rocker who went down this road in the ‘70s usually ended up ridiculed for their pretention (see Rick Wakeman). Miraculously, Stivell succeeds in his own way. The album includes a more rounded world beat arrangement, including sitars, African drummers, and chanting from the Algerian Berber women’s group Djur Djura. It roughly tells of the search for the mythical Celtic island of eternal youth, Tir Na n’Og.

In the Celtic myth, Oisin convinces the fairy Niamh to take him to Tir Na n’Og. After a few years on the island, Oisin misses his family and asks to go back. Time has stopped on Tir Na n’og, but on the mainland, 300 years have passed. Niamh agrees to let him go, but warns him not to touch the ground: If he does, time will catch up with him instantly. While back on the mainland, Oisin can’t help but dismount from his horse, with the expected consequences.

The album is a thinly veiled protest against nuclear destruction and was one of the first to combine many world influences, a trend that would lead to a larger world music community in the following years.

Since that time, Stivell has worked to bring the traditions of Breton and Celtic Music to larger and larger audiences, regularly selling out huge stadiums in Europe with tours that rival anything by Pink Floyd.

His most recent album--his 22nd--Explore includes his standard Breton and Celtic folk mixed with rock, but also throws in reggae and hiphop for the first time.

To hear what Alan Stivell has brought to the world of Rock, go to my blog for downloads.

It’s been a long time since I’ve even heard the words “the Pastels” spoken.

In the late ‘80s and early ‘90s so many bands were coming out of the UK with “influenced by the Pastels” or “sounds like the Pastels” or “the next Pastels” (that last one always followed by either an exclamation point “!” or question mark “?”), that as a teenager from a small town with one little tiny indie record store, I was envious of those who could find their records at all, and curious as to what the hell the Pastels even sounded like.

The confusion came from the fact that bands as diverse as the girl fronted Talulah Gosh, Primal Scream, the Wedding Present and Age Of Chance were all being lumped under the banner of Pastels inspired “indie” thanks to NME and their wave of passion for new DIY groups on the C86 smapler.

Then in 1987 I got my first Pastels album, Up For a Bit With the Pastels. Slightly dark, not quite goth, but with intense guitars and some little synth splashes that gave the album this odd sort of Lee Hazlewood sound, I was hooked. The single "Crawl Babies" was intriguing and the electro drum driven "Baby Honey," which sounded like the kind of murder ballad I was into at the time, made me an instant fan.

But then grunge happened. NME moved on, and all those wonderful C86 bands were left in the dust.

Honestly, I don’t think that bothered the Pastels at all. They never wanted to be lumped in with all the indie bands of the day in the first place. They were such a loose collective of players that when it came time to record they all just seemed to pick up instruments they’d dropped the year before and make a few more hits.

45 after 45 was released, eventually culminating in a collection of sorts with the 1994 album Truckload Of Troubles. A de-facto “Greatest Hits” with some older tunes re-recorded by the core trio of Stephen (guitar, vocals), Aggi (bass, vocals, artwork) and Katrina (drums) and lots of help from friends. With the release of this album I finally got to hear some of the songs that made the Pastels legends, even if in new ways with new band members. With the beautiful duet on "Nothing to be Done," the love song (I mean, what indie group was writing love songs at that time?) "Thank You For Being You," "Speeding Motorcycle," and "Speedway Star" (their paeans to motorcycle racing) I finally got a glimpse into the lives and minds of one of the most obscure and sometimes obtuse acts to come from that time.

A year later came Mobile Safari, the trio’s tightest work to date. The great vocal arrangement on "Yoga" (bah bah baaaaaaah bah bah baaaaaaah) the jazzy tones and syncopated rhythms of songs like "Worlds Of Possibility" made the album simultaneously loose and tight. Such a great listening experience!

At that time The Stranger hired its new editor, Emily White. Her husband, Rich Jensen, was the head of a new little indie label here in Seattle called UP Records. This was how I first heard 764-Hero and Modest Mouse. One day Rich told me they’d signed a distribution deal with a band from Scotland called the Pastels. My mouth hit the floor.

The upcoming album was the amazing Illumination. Produced by Kevin Sheilds of My Bloody Valentine fame, this album had all the hallmarks of a classic. (It also had contributions from just about every Glaswegian musician of the day, including most of Belle And Sebastian). The production was full of lazy guitars that had this weird sonic background, and lyrics delivered in a style that would lead one to believe Stephen and Aggi were prone to serious drug binges. It’s an incredible album. I think one could use the term “Masterpiece” for Illuminations.

I’d just had a baby, so when they came through town on their one and only trip to Seattle, ever, I missed them. I was pretty upset, but seeing as my little family would be traveling to Glasgow the following summer, Rich helped me out by telling me where Stephen held down a day job.

In Glasgow I forced a friend who had no interest in tracking down a long lost indie star (he was way into Madonna--the antithesis of the Pastels vibe) to take me to the city's University area to a little bookstore that had a second floor record shop. I started looking through the CDs and found every single Pastels single and album that I’d always wanted, including strange one offs with Jad Fair and a collaboration with friends called “Sandy Dirt”. I picked them all up and went to the front counter. As I laid them down the guy behind the counter turned to me and started to get them ready to ring up, removing their security cases. He had this smirk on his face and I realized Stephen Pastel was going to sell me his own CDs. The moment felt so “meta” that I didn’t know what to do or say. Apologize for being a big fan? Ask him if it was really him? What the hell do you say in that situation?

So I politely asked him, "Are you Stephen Pastel?" He answered yes. I told him I was on mission to find all these CDs, that I’d come to Glasgow partly with this in mind, that they were so hard to find in Seattle. Then I asked if he would give me, my partner, and our child a tour of what he thought was cool Glasgow. To my surprise he said “Yeah. Sure.”

The next day we all met in a little coffee shop, had tea, and discussed Glasgow with the quintessential Glasgow band. He told me he actually had a degree in library science and wanted desperately to become a librarian, but there weren’t too many library jobs out there. Then he walked us over to Aggi’s apartment to meet her. They shyly regaled us with tales of motorcycle races, and told us the band actually sponsored motorcycle racers. They’d give some of their little profits to a guy who’d put “The Pastels” on his racing jacket. It was so funny and strange. It was the highlight of my trip.

The band have recently released a soundtrack album to The Last Great Wilderness which includes a cover of Sly and the Family Stone's "Everybody is a Star" and a duet with Jarvis formerly of Pulp. Stephen runs his own record label, Geographic, which distributes quality independent music from around the world (Nagisa Ni Te, Barbara Morgenstern, Appendix Out, Maher Shalal Hash Baz to name a few) and owns a little record shop in Glasgow’s downtown, and Aggi does her graphic art thing and helps out with Geographic. I’m not sure what Katrina is up to.

As genres come and go, get rehashed and become the “new” retro; even though it’s been awhile, you can expect to here the words “The Pastels” in some way in the coming years. I guarantee. They’re just that cool.

Never heard the Pastels? It's okay, just go here.

In 1978 Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder released the disco epic I Feel Love. The song totally threw dance music for a loop, sending it in a new direction for iot's future. Gone were the days of symphonic "hustles", the new disco would be edgy, dark and sexy.

At the time a young DJ in San Francisco was experimenting with synths at home and in his DJ sound booth at The Legend, the largest gay disco in the city. Patrick Cowley loved the original, but wanted a longer version for his night. He knew just extending the instrumental bits would be a bit monotonous, so he completely remixed the track and gave it a hard-core electro middle that was totally different than the original. He released a demo copy of it which took off like wildfire and became the definative version at all west coast discos.

Cowley would go on to start work on solo projects of his own and produced Sylvester's biggest hits.

Eventually word of the remix got back to Moroder who loved what he heard. The improvised middle section expanded on themes in the vocal line at the beginning, and the mix seemed even more razor sharp. It took a few years, but eventually Moroder and Summer convinced her label, Casablanca Records, to release a special 12" of the mix with a special edited version as the b-side. It is the only Casablanca Record with the catalog # FEEL.

Cowley died soon after of AIDS.

The record has become a collectors item. It's highly influential. Even New Order claims it showed them the direction they should move into after the death of Ian Curtis.

The 12" is, by no means rare, but because so few are willing to give up their copies, prices hover around $30 to $40 with mint copies going for up to $80. I found my mint copy (not even any ringwear!) last night at Jive Time in Fremont. $4.

Donna Summer - I Feel Love (Patrick Cowley Mega Mix)

Most likely, if you know multi-instrumentalist Mike Oldfield it would be for his instro-prog masterpiece Tubular Bells (Incidentally his first album, and the first album on Virgin Records), which was used as the main theme of The Exorcist.

Next up for Oldfield came Hergest Ridge, a modest effort at the genre, expanding on a central theme in variation, but it didn't have the melodic power that Tubular Bells carried off so well. Then from Oldfield came the imaginative, complex, rhythmic and original Ommadawn. Vocals were used to perfection on this album and many thought Oldfield could do no better.

He spent the next two years touring the shit out of those albums. Incredibly performing these 20+ minute songs live night after night. So by the time 1978 rolled around and Oldfield was getting ready to release his next album fans obviously wondered where it would go, what it would be.

Incantations was his answer. A different animal altogether. Not just stylistically, but it was a double LP in four parts (incidentally named "Incantation 1-4"). It was twice the length of any of his previous work, coming in at roughly 80 minutes. Oldfield had taken the time and given his audience something quite large to digest.

Critic and fan reviews run the gamut of "over-long", "boring" and "only for the big fan", to "hypnotic", "genius" and "essential". More directly, Incatations is Oldfields most controversial early work. Next would come the '80's, and nobody really liked what he would get up to at that point. So of his early and most influential work, this is the one that people argue over the most.

If you've never heard a whole Oldfield album, let me start by describing what he does. Take Tubular Bells. If you've heard the theme to The Exorcist, then you know what a basic theme Mike works with will sound like, but if you haven't heard the whole 50 minute version, then you don't know the variations this theme goes through. From haunting theme to moog workout then full blown funk/rock out with satanic sounding vocals being shouted at you. By the end your being lulled to sleep by a quite organ accompanying a girls choir in hymn like reverie that inexplicably turns into a picolo lead ho-down at the very end. That's what Oldfield does. He gives you a theme and variations that lead you on little journeys through emotion (Ommadawn), or literal space (Hergest Ridge), or genre (Tubular Bells).

Incantations might be said to be variations on the theme of strong women. "Incantation 1" is an ode to the Roman god Diana the goddess of the hunt. It starts out with womens voices creating an arpegiatted chord, rhythmic strings come in under a flute solo - and we're off. The theme is as jaunty as a horse ride through the forest, it's very "green" sounding, and even thought there are some synths used it sounds very natural. The stacatto rhythm at once will remind you of work of classical composers like Reich or Glass, one might be led to believe that Oldfield wishes to be taken seriously as someone of their ilk. But prog is Oldfield's domain and this is where his cloth is cut. And what a tailor! As the variations start, there are lots of scale and chord progressions that eventually lead you back to the original theme, before trumpets come in to call and answer in baroque flourishes that fade into some exquisite african drumming by frequent Oldfield collaborators Jabula underscoring The Queens College Girls Choir chanting the name "Diana" with other latin phrases. It's absolutely wonderful. And I'll say it again, the rythmic phrasing is totally reminicent of some of the work by his classical contemporaries, it is hypnotic and moving.

"Incantation 2" starts with an arpeggiated synth underscoring a sweet flute melody. The whole thing sounds like water rippling in a stream, before it becomes still as a pool in the woods. Tom-toms start a heartbeat rhythm, the Diana theme the girls choir sings comes back in, and Maddy Prior of Steeleye Span fame starts singing the poem Hiawatha by Longfellow. It's totally mesmerizing.

"Incantation 3" is a prog rock jam. Mike Oldfield is a talented guitarist and he works it like crazy on this track. The energy on this is great.

"Incantation 4" is where fans seem to part. Some seem to think it could have been left off the project all together, I count myself with the other camp in that a) you can't have 3 parts on a double album, and b) it fittingly closes the circle that has been woven in the the first three themes. The original theme comes back in again, as does the "Diana" vocal theme and more of Hiawatha is sang by Ms. Prior. One fantastic aspect of 4 is the vibraphone and tuned percussion playing of Pierre Moerlin of Gong. His trance-like playing is incredible and worth listening to alone. I love this track. I don't understand anyone thinking this kind of hypnotic playing is boring or unemotive. At it's very core is a heartbeat rhythm which powers us along. It's wonderful.

As a full symphony closes out the last "Incantation" I'm left a bit sorry it's ended. At eighty minutes it's not easy to find time to just breathe in music like this, so when it's over you can't help but feel elated, if not a little melancholy. When's the next time you'll get to sit and play a complete work alone, imagining in your head the pictures and scenes that Oldfield (and Longfellow, Jabula, Prior and Moerlin) have painted for you.

The naysayers are wrong. Incantations (all 4!) is a masterwork sitting nicely next to Tubular Bells and Ommadawn. A work of original hypnotic genius.

Mike Oldfield - Incantations 2

Am I the only one who recalls the infamous lawsuit* against Stephen Tyler's friend-in-rehab, the late Rick James, wherein Mr. James' record label took him to court over poor album sales, alleging that James' rampant drug use had led him to produce albums of inferior quality? And the defense's successful counter-argument, which offered up albums by the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, among others, as evidence that artists could indeed be out of their goddamn minds on all manner of potent high-quality drugs and still produce hit records? If I remember right, James' side eventually prevailed with the Axis, Bold as Love defense.

I was thinking about this ruling the other day while listening to Amy Winehouse. It made me wonder if a label has ever made the opposite argument—that excessive sobriety resulted in an inferior product. Because I honestly wonder what Ms. Winehouse will sing about if and when she ever sobers up. Looking at that picture of Tyler in the previous post and thinking about Aerosmith's post-rehab musical output sends a cold chill up my spine.

*If anybody has the details on that court case (or can offer conclusive evidence that I dreamed the whole thing) I'd be interested in hearing it.

So Aerosmith is stuck between their late 70s heyday and late 80s resurgence. Meanwhile, the band is recuperating (read: drying out) in a castle in Europe and working on an ill-fated comeback. As the band is chilling, a record plays in the background. A song catches the ear of frontman Steven Tyler, and he says that the band should cover it. Who is this magical band?

"That's you, fuckhead," guitarist Joe Perry says.

"No way," Tyler replies.

"Who the fuck do you think it is? It's that song you made us get a 109-piece orchestra for."

Now THAT'S intoxication!

Sound artist Steve McLaughlin has compressed all of The Beatles' UK albums (meaning no EPs such as "Magical Mystery Tour," singles like "Paperback Writer," or later releases such as the embarassingly-named "Past Masters") into a single, sonically jumbled hour.

The WFMU page also has some of the Beatles tracks de-compressed by others; I like the sonic interpolations (a nice term for glitchy, scarred sonic artifacts), especially in "Tomorrow Never Knows" and "Revolution."

This is an example of how a technique, in this case digitally time-stretched audio, can birth a genre. For other examples, see Leif Inge's 24 hour extension of Beethoven's Symphony No. 9, 9 Beet Stretch, R. Luke Dubois' time compression of several decades of Billboard hits (which I reviewed last year), or Mark Bain's stretched translation of seismic data from the attack of September 11, 2001, STARTENDTIME.

The Hacienda in Manchester, England is famous for a lot of things: New Order, Happy Mondays, Factory Records parties. But one of the best things to come out of The Hacienda was DJ Greg Wilson.

Greg Wilson was a DJ doing his own edits during the '80's, before there was Ableton or Final Cut. Greg would sit down with a reel to reel and a razorblade and cut apart tape, carefully resplicing songs bits together to create long, energetic and astonishing remixes of black dance and house music from America for the sweaty "e"-taking masses that would swarm the busy club every weekend.

His residency at the Hacienda was legendary for the crazy cut up style of some of the songs he would put together. His versions of Yello's Lost Again and Raw Silk mixed with the DMX Krew are still standards in many clubs and record collections to this day.

In the mid-'80's as The Hacienda was really heating up, and trouble seemed to follow the patrons out of the club, Greg called it quits.

The other day while noodling around at Platinum Records I came across a smudgey, ignored 12" called Teenage DJ Disco Best. It's a series of disco edits, popular now, but the style was fast and furious. There were no huge introductions, there was no looping of opening beats; these were simple and as energetic as anything you'd here in disco's heyday.

Essentially a white label, I took it home and looked it up on discogs to find out who did it. To my shock and surprise i found out it was non-other than Greg Wilson, back after a two decade hiatus from dj-ing.

He seems to be having a resurgence lately, with mixes of Ilija Rudman, 1gnition and a collection of his original Hacienda edits now available on CD.

If you're a fan of disco, new wave, freestyle, and edits you should definately pick up his work! The mixes sound as fresh now as they must have sounded 20 years ago. Totally futuristic and fantastic.

Check out some Downloads of his "Teenage DJ" stuff at my blog here.

Also check out Greg's homepage for some great mixes, including a "Best of '83" mix from the Hacienda. Incredible.

It's still funny. Oh yeah, and really NSFW.

This is my favorite The Who album right now.

With an album cover that flashes back to Tommy (this time the wizard plays video games) and heavy usage of synths throughout, It's Hard has never really been very popular.

But then if you just listen to the few great songs on the album, "Athena" and "Eminence Front", it's all made up to you.

"Athena" was originally named Theresa after Theresa Russel, but they changed it at the last moment.

"Eminence Front" is just the best song (I know, this is totally debatable...) in the second half of The Who's career. It's starts off so mellow that after 5 minutes and Townsend wailing "Come. And. Join. The. Party. Dressed. To. Kill." Your amped for another listen through. This song kills me everytime.

Here they are in the Seattle Kingdome circa 1982 performing "Eminence Front".

I've written about him before. Daniele Baldelli is the King Of Cosmic.

The man basically invented the genre with his friend DJ Moz Art at the Baia Degli Angeli Disco on Italy's Adriatic Coast. Here's what music historian Tim Lawrence had to say about seeing Baldelli DJ last year in Manchester.

Baldelli kept on moving the music around, and was now bringing in full-on disco, rock 'n' roll, rock and techno-sounding dub. Even more impressive than the range of music was the way in which Baldelli connected the tracks together. I've heard truckloads of DJs play "mixed" sets, only for the records to sound like a jukebox is selecting them, with no intelligible connection (sonic, generic, linguistic, temporal…) between them. But with Baldelli, the barely traced links between disco, African music, dub and rock all became clear, just as they had done, at an earlier moment, with David Mancuso at the Loft and Larry Levan at the Garage. The experience of hearing this kind of programming was hallucinogenic.

I was awed by the mixing, to the point where I felt like I'd never heard anything like it. The combinations were extraordinarily complex and often quite surreal, but somehow or other they always worked. Harmonic cocktails that should have ended in catastrophe took us onto another plane, while impossibly bizarre rhythmic fusions took us higher and higher.

By about 10:30, a group of us were wondering where Baldelli came from, because it didn't seem to be the Adriatic Coast in Italy, and it didn't seem to be Planet Earth.

By the end of the night, it got a little out of hand. Baldelli was playing tracks that sounded like they were running backwards ? something he was famous for at Cosmic ? but weren't. He also played some anthemic pop, the kind of stuff I normally hate, and I was yelling out words that might have been the chorus at the top of my lungs, as if this was my last chance to dance to music. Baldelli even convinced me that I should start to listen to prog rock. It was all too much. After each selection and each mix, we'd just turn to each other, shake our heads, and wonder where this guy had come from, and then dig deeper into the dance. At every point when it seemed he couldn't get any better, he did.

I'm gasping for air just reading that!

Here are a couple new-ish tracks by Daniele Baldelli.

Daniele Baldelli - Cosmic Tune This first track uses the infamous sample, "Cosmic Cosmic Cosmic Cosmic...Melody", that Baldelli first used in his sets at the Cosmic disco in Italy, way before sequencers were even invented. He made a tape loop that he would play on reel to reel and loop it around when he needed to drop it into the song. Genius.

Daniele Baldelli - Explore Pretty much classic Baldelli. Nice electronic intro that fades out, leaving you with african chanting and drums.

To read a fascinating interview with Daniele Baldelli, where he talks about his methods of speeding up and slowing down records and dropping Pink Floyd samples into Ravel's Bolero at sunrise on the Italian coast, check out The Red Bull Music Academy site. It's a must read for any Dj. Period.

Finally, I'm leaving you this Friday with a mix of some of the tracks from the last week. Download it. Get stoned after work, and take off. Enjoy.

The Cosmic Mix

Patrick Cowley - Primitive World This track is a Cowley original from his concept electro-disco album Mind Warp. This song was first introduced to me by the amazing Dutch DJ I-F. Lots of electro sounds, chanting and jungle drum rhythms. A fantasic song that still gets worked into sets today.

Frank Zander Und Zazu - Captain Starlight Okay, this is perhaps the weirdest, most left-field track I'm going to post under "cosmic" this week. I first learned about this track from Kaos and Sal P's Danse, Gravité Zéro Mix from last year. It starts out with this beautiful violin solo, then quickly turns into a glam rock work out, á la Bowie, about a man in space. This is the original uncut/unmixed version of the song. It's crazy good. I would go so far as to say this man is a genius, except I know nothing about him. He's german. I think he now writes music for children. And this is his most recent world-wide hit. (The actual video has even been featured here on Slog. Go Megan!) Craaaaaazy!

Voyage - Point Zero Yesterday I gave you their alter-ego Arpadys. Today you get the real thing. Point Zero is more hi-nrg then you would usually hear in a "cosmic" song, but it works on almost every level. Spacey, chanting and highly rhythmic. Catch that groove.

Johnny Harris - Odyssey Pt. 1 If you can't envision this guy playing the shit out of his strap on synth then you are nuts! Listen to this guy go all fuckin' rockstar on your ass! He rules! You can just see him in the studio by himself rocking out to himself! Well guess what? Remember the Buck Rogers TV show? In one episode there was a rock band in space...remember...THIS IS THAT SONG! Originally released on K.C. And The Sunshine Band's label. How "cosmic" is that?

The RAH Band - Electric Fling The RAH band is super-producer Richard Hewson. Yes, after producing and arranging work by The Beatles, Herbie Hancock, James Taylor, Supertramp, Leo Sayer... he decided to put out music of his own. This song is so weird and perfect. It's all about scales in the bridge section. Then there's that dorky guitar/synth line through the whole song. And bongos. Cosmic is putting it mildly.

Love International - Dance On The Groove (And Do The Funk) This whole song is one giant keychange progression. Seriously. It goes an entire octave with only one line through out: Dance on the groove....And do the funk. Totally nutty and addictive.

Kongas - Dr. Doo-Dah Cerrone's first outing is more famous for the drum-centric cover of Gimme Some Lovin'. But this b-side has all the afro rhythm it needs be considered a classic on it's own. The man is a genius.

Arpadys - Monkey Star Original pressings of this album on it's French label, Decca, go for hundreds of dollars. Thank heavens for the internets! Arpadys is a sidegroup of the more traditional disco band Voyage. But where Voyage was all about love and dancing, Arpady is all about space, robots, chanting and funky ass grooves. Check out that bass line, and the totally spacey synths mixed with french horns, not to mention the animal noises shot through with laser guns.

Cosmic is a term given to music that was popularized in the slo-mo discos of the Italian east coast. Clubs like Baia Degli Angeli and Cosmic (where the music really gets its name) became famous for playing totally disparate songs and styles together, often at different speeds then intended (45's at 33 and vice-versa), swirling the sound of early electronic music with African drumming records, then throwing in some '70's jazz/funk into the mix. The sound became popular along the coast, then worked it's way up into southern Germany where even today clubs program and promote popular "Cosmic" nights.

Recently even Berlin DJ/producer Kaos put out a mix, Danse, Gravité Zéro, with former member of the '70's no-wave group Liquid Liquid, Sal Principato.

Traditionally the stoned out beats of "cosmic" records would be under 120 bpm, and have a definate rythmic groove, usually based on african or latin drum loops, and sometimes they even rock out in prog-y bliss.

Every day this week I'm going to give you some tracks to send you away from your day to a stoned, blissed-out cosmos of your own.

Dr. Buzzard's Oringinal Savannah Band - Sunshower The easy breezy chanting and lilting tempo make this a great place to start your cosmic trip. Dr. Buzzard's... was a project put together by August Darnell (aka Kid Creole) and Andy Hernandez (aka Coati Mundi). Patti Austin contributed vocals on this track. Incidetally, if you are an M.I.A. fan, this is the track that is sampled on her song, also called, Sunshower.

Sylvester - I Need Somebody To Love Tonight Not really a "Sylvester" song, this track was written and performed by early synth-disco wiz kid Patrick Cowley. There are now vocals on the track, just Patrick's methodical, hypnotizing work.

Traeskø - Cubacumba A little known Italo track that has heavy latin rythms. I know very little of this group at all other than the fact that it is the only record to come out on the Madison Production label in 1983. What starts out as a synth druym track soon devolves into rockin' electric guitar lines and latin chanting. All to 112 bpm. Seriously. Check out those guitars!

Eberhard Schoener - Why Don't You Answer? From the 1978 album Video-Magic, which can actually be called the first album by The Police. Sting and band-mates all sing and play on this album, and toured for it, before the first official Police album came out in the same year.

In 1985 Tangerine Dream released their new-style album Le Parc. Meant to be an accompaniement to different "parks" around the world, it enraged many TD loyalist, who were not ready for the new, streamlined version of TD. "Songs!?!? Who wants songs from Tangerine Dream?" People wanted experiences, trips, emotional journeys.

In retrospect the album is actually pretty good, Le Parc works (that is, if your visit to Yellowstone doesn't last for more than 8 minutes...) as a brief musical introduction to famous national parks around the world, whether your in the Tiergarten in Berlin, or the Tuilleries in Paris.

The only song on the album that had nothing to do with parks was the song Streethawk.

Streethawk was the theme to the brilliant short-lived american TV show of the same name. Don't remember it?

To recap: A streetwise cop is injured on duty. A secret government agency hires him to ride a proto-type motorcycle which can go speeds up to 300 mph(!!!!) and shoot missles. But the guy doesn't really control the motorcycle, it's controlled by a guy in a room somewhere else, who has a hard time getting the ex-cop to do what he tells him to. Comedy and Drama ensue (as well as action and some romance!).

Streethawk the song had nothing to do with parks, and everything to do with silly Americans.

Please enjoy the download, the accompanying video and the memories!

Tangerine Dream - Streethawk (Radio Remix)

Ah lesbians!

What would the world be without 'em.

We'd be missing these sweet tracks!

The sweet Laura Nyro-esque Bebe K'Roche - Kahlua Mama.

And the totally hilarious (read: terrible, bad, trainwreck) Sue Fink - Leaping Lesbians.

I don't know who said it, but Jan Hammer is the bomb. Yeah that's right, The Bomb!

Well before he donned the white suit of Miami Vice instrumentalist, which made him more famous than I think he wanted to be, Jan was a talented jazz synthesist (is that what you call someone who plays the synthesizer as their main instrument?). In 1977 he released his breakthrough album, Melodies.

Now I'm going to be honest with you here and tell you that I like a lot of music, but I really don't like jazz. I like some, but I'd say for the most part I could do without it. Period.

This album definately falls into the "pop/rock jazz" camp. I'm not convinced of the album as a whole. Some tracks are "funky" some are "rock" with little blues licks thrown in. Although there are some interesting tracks, like What It Is, which has the blues line taken up by an electrified violin, with nice soulful keyboard chord progressions behind it, layered over a funked out drum beat. Reverbed vocals by Tony Smith make the track sound more like a psych/rock jam. But for the most part the album dilly/dallies with tracks in an endless circle of noodling on songs that would be better if they were cut down to their basics.

Then there is the track, Don't You Know. Last summer I was rifeling through some stuff at Jive Time and this track was playing. I was blown away. What is this? Jan Hammer? Wow.

It's like chillout music, before there was chillout music. It's perfect, they didn't take it and go off on any progeressions, they just kept it real simple. It is just right. I put it on hold, and they were nice enought to keep it all summer for me. So now I'm passing it on to you.

I'm also passing along a recent cover of the song by a group called Beauty Room. It's from a 10" series called the Vanity Project, where bands get to cover one of their favorite tracks, then have it remixed. Hefner does the remixing and it's a nice little minimalist techno take. The vocals still float, though slightly distorted, but the song is cut apart and re-assembled into a new structure altogether.

You can check them out at my blog, T.M.L.

In 1998, just after Belle & Sebastion released The Boy With The Arab Strap, Jeepster Records would release the first ground-breaking album by another band trying to tow the wistfull, twee indie-pop line.

That band, Salako, and their first album, Reinventing Punk.Tu!At?Ion>:, would not CHANGE ROCK MUSIC FOREVER.

No. They were quiet. From the sleep town of Hull. They preferred to produce songs in their bedrooms. They were lost in the afterglow of Belle & Sebastion. I mean if a star is shining that brightly, it’s impossible to see the meek planet coming to creation right behind it. But their they stood, forever in the shadow of B&S.

Fortunately they left behind 3 albums (one I've never found) and 2 EPs, to soothe our ears (which would be needed once we heard anything that B&S came up with after TBWTAS). Each one growing in style and production value (something B&S, to my mind, refused to do) until the band would vanish, like mist, like magic, into thin air.

Reinventing Punk.Tu!At?Ion>: sounded like a mellow acoustic version of The Stone Roses. Lyrics were I little psychedelic, and delivery was whispered at times and lilted back and forth through sleepy nights and headphone speakers. But the band wasn’t afraid of technology either. Sometimes they used little synth lines that would become prominent in B&S off-shoot Looper (I’d say they ripped them off, but that would be going easy on Looper). Songs often didn’t make it past the 2½ minute mark, but that was okay. That was all they needed to be.

In 1999 Salako released Musicality. A giant leap forward for them, the album was as twee and light, but much lusher, with a higher standard of production work. They started including songs with dueling harmonies that left you feeling like you were listening to something akin to stoned, blissed out Beach Boys, singing songs Simon & Garfunkel would have written on ecstasy. Smoke was blown in your face and you floated away on clouds of swirling, spiraling, soft guitar lines. Lyrically they were becoming bolder, with songs that stretched out to the 3 minute limit. They asked you with flutes whistling like Pied Pipers to Come! Follow Me.

Late in ’99 and early 2000 they released a pair of EP’s called Mappleton Sands 201298/Ventimiglia 120899 which added some fun hokey guitar/banjo elements to a “louder” and “lazier” sound. One of the tracks cheekily called (Have You Heard) Musicality plays spead up snippets from the previous album for a few minutes to give you a flavor of what you’ve missed.

Then, as far as I know, the band vanished. I know they released another album, but I’ve never found it. So this is the legacy I’m left with. It’s a legacy I’m hopefully going to leave you with too.

And I’ll leave it like this. If you at one time liked early Belle & Sebastian, but wish they’d lived up to their potential as pop tricksters and charlatans, pulling the fuzzy wool over your ears and eyes, then do, please, check out Salako.

I don’t want to sound like a total geek.

But when your in a record store, and you spot an album called ABBA Our Way by a group called Nashville Train for only 99¢, the only logical thing to do is buy it.

That done, you then go home and dutifully play it through once. Hey, it’s not to bad. So you play it through a second time, this time being the obsessive you are, you read through all the production notes on the back of the record.

Wow. I mean. WOW. You are not just holding a country and western tribute to ABBA in your hands. You’re holding a country and western tribute to ABBA performed by a Swedish country and western band made up of ABBA’s contemporaries and even some of ABBA’s own backing band members.

Like I said. Wow.

But wait it gets better. The album contains the only known version of an ABBA song, Please Change Your Mind, previously only heard in the background in ABBA: The Movie. The band even performed it for the movie soundtrack (The only song, btw, not performed by ABBA in the movie!). Are you hyperventilating? I was.

Nashville Train members Rutger Gunnarsson , Roger Palm, Hasse Rose and Lasse Westmann were all members of ABBA’s band according to this website devoted to all things ABBA.

In a note on the back of the album Westermann writes:

Special thanks to: Benny Andersson, and Bjorn Ulvaeus and Stig Anderson. They are a fabolous (sic) songwriter team and without their songs this record wouldn't exist. I was a hard job to pick twelwe (sic) songs out of the rich porduction of great ABBA hits. We've tried to give the songs a shape of Country style and we really hope you will enjoy this album.

It treads lightly by being not quite “pop” enough to be a hit, and not quite “country” enough to be taken very seriously that way either. But it is a fun listen through, showing, once again, that regardless of what you think of ABBA, there music transcends both genre and time to still sound remarkably corny and fun in any decade.

Samples can be found at my site, T.M.L., here.

Other than the fact that this is a Paul Sabu production, not much is known about Sister Power. The vocals are by the group Hot Fudge who Sabu used on most of his late '70's productions, including the self-titled Sabu. Since then Paul Sabu has gone on to work as an arranger and poroducer for lots of pop and aor artists (Shania, Madonna, Bowie, ...), and he's got some hilarious hair!

The single from this album was Gimme Back My Love Affair, but for my money the best song is the second side opener "Love Potion."

Samples from Sister Power can be found at my blog, T.M.L.

Lately I've been listening to a playlist of songs that remind me of my parents. Who are now divorced. They're songs you haven't heard in forever, but the second you hear them--the opening notes of "Leather and Lace," the opening bass clef piano of "Easy"--they take you right back. Or at least they take me right back. I'm sitting in the back of a station wagon, and my mom is driving around the California highways, crying. The folds of my brain were formed around these songs. (People who know more about music than I do/grew up in Detroit/etc: Don't beat me up!)

Here's the playlist:

1. "California Dreamin'," Mamas and the Papas
2. "A Horse with No Name," America
3. "Carolina in My Mind," James Taylor
4. "I Can't Go for That [No Can Do]," Hall & Oates
5. "Rosanna," Toto
6. "The Joker," Steve Miller Band
7. "Easy," Lionel Richie
8. "Leather and Lace," Stevie Nicks
9. "Every Breath You Take," The Police
10. "Don't Worry Be Happy," Bobby McFerrin
11. "Time After Time," Cyndi Lauper
12. "Baby I'm-A Want You," Bread
13. "Say You Love Me," Fleetwood Mac
14. "Here Comes the Sun," The Beatles
15. "Light My Fire," The Doors
16. "In My Room," Beach Boys
17. "True," Spandau Ballet
18. "Wrapped Around Your Finger," The Police
19. "Colour My World," Chicago

I bold number 17 on this here playlist because two days ago I was in Hot Mama's on Pine Street and just as I was taking off my iPod, I heard the opening burps and beeps of "True," a song that I don't much ear outside the confines of my earbuds.

The girl behind the counter--surprised, recognizing the song immediately--said, "I love this song. I haven't heard it in forever."

Enjoy.

And finally, Young Buck: The Complete Pre-Capitol Recordings (Audium Entertainment, 2001).

Before the Bakersfield sound, before Carnegie Hall, before Hee Haw, Owens was trying to find his voice, and in the mid-to-late ’50s he produced some excellent music, collected here in the 21-track anthology Young Buck: The Complete Pre-Capitol Recordings. The songs here are extremely stripped down compared to his recordings just a few years later; he hasn’t got that amped-up shuffle going on yet, so these songs are all in the vein of traditional country like Webb Pierce and Hank Williams, with a couple rockabilly numbers thrown in. And there’s no Don Rich. That’s not to say that the songs on this album are bad, they’re just different from what a fan of Owens might be used to. I personally cherish this album. I love it.

This was the only Owens album I had for years, so getting into his more freight-train-style ’60s stuff was difficult for me at first. Unfortunately, I just have a copy of the CD, so I don’t have the liner notes, nor can I find much information about the songs on the album. From Owens’s website I’ve learned that in 1956 he recorded for Pep “It Don’t Show on Me,” "Down on the Corner of Love,” “The House Down the Block,” and “Right After the Dance” in L.A., and "Sweethearts in Heaven," "There Goes My Love," "Hot Dog," and "Rhythm and Booze" in Bakersfield. “Country Girl (Leavin' Dirty Tracks)” was recorded for Chesterfield in 1957. But who’s playing with Owens on these songs? When and where were the other tracks recorded? I have no idea.

The best on the CD: “It Don't Show on Me” tells of Owens hiding his hurt from his gal; “The House Down the Block” is his family home that he longs for but is too disgraced to enter; “Country Girl (Leavin' Dirty Tracks)” has a pleasantly painful steel-guitar lick and great lyrics (“You should’ve know that country feet/were never meant for city streets”); “Honeysuckle” is a fantastic upbeat instrumental; “Blue Love” ends with the line “My life was only meant for misery” (yes!); in “Right After the Dance” Owens says he’s going to “make love to you right after the dance” (I think “make love” had a different meaning back then); “Sweethearts in Heaven” is good, but the premise is kind of creepy, as the title suggests; “Down on the Corner of Love” has a sweet, soaring chorus; “There Goes My Love”; “Please Don't Take Her from Me”; “Why Don't My Mommy Stay with My Daddy and Me?” These are all first-rate honky-tonk tunes, and all the songs on this CD are good, some better than others. The rockabilly stuff (“Hot Dog” and “Rhythm and Booze,” originally recorded under the name Corky Jones) isn’t as good as the honk tonk.

There’s lots of fiddle and some piano, and an alternate take of “Blue Love” features trumpet, à la Bob Wills, and studio chatter of Owens telling his “fellas” how the song’s gonna go. (“I want piano, but I don’t want too much piano. Run a little piano, and a little trumpet, and a little bit of everything, but don’t run too much of one thing. And make it short.”)

These songs show that Owens is already an excellent songwriter—musically and lyrically—writing and performing heartfelt, hurtin’ tunes.

And now I see, hot off the presses from cmt.com, that Owens pupil and collaborator Dwight Yoakam is going to release an Owens tribute album, Dwight Sings Buck, on October 23, with the magnificent “Close Up the Honky Tonks” as the first single. My sister’s going to be pumped.

Previously discussed: Together Again/My Heart Skips a Beat, I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail, The Instrumental Hits of Buck Owens and His Buckaroos, and Carnegie Hall Concert.

Today in Buck Owens it’s 1966’s Carnegie Hall Concert (Capitol).

I bought this accidentally; it was inside the Together Again LP sleeve I bought at Bop Street, and while I looked at the condition of the record before buying it, I didn’t look at the labels on the disc, so I was rather surprised when I got home and put the record on. When I brought it back, Bop Street was kind enough to let me grab an actual copy of Together Again and keep this sleeveless Carnegie Hall Concert, too.

I like Carnegie Hall Concert, but it’s a little disappointing, mainly because Owens and the Buckaroos group 13 great songs into three short medleys. Fuck medleys! While they do play seven songs in their complete forms (although Doyle Holly’s version of “Streets of Laredo” is abbreviated, and “Waitin’ in Your Welfare Line” is one of my least favorite Owens songs), the fact that so many more could’ve been played all the way through hurts. And I know the concert is edited on my LP version; there’s no way they played that short of a show at Carnegie Hall.

So, I wondered if it had been rereleased in its entirety, and sure enough, in 2000 Sundazed Music put out a complete, unedited version. Mostly what’s been added back, however, is banter—an introduction by DJ Lee Arnold of WJRZ in Newark and segments called “Fun ’n’ Games with Don & Doyle” and “Buck Talks to the Audience”—and the song “Twist and Shout.” The banter on this album is supremely goofy, but I love the between-song talking on live albums, so more of it is sort of a blessing and a curse (though I like the sound of “Fun ’n’ Games with Don & Doyle”). I guess what I really want out of this album is for most of the songs in those medleys to be in their full-length form, and that’s just not going to happen for me.

That said, it’s a fun album, and I do enjoy it. Buck and the Buckaroos play well, they play all their hits, and they’re having a really great time. The banter is silly and awkward, but in a mostly endearing way, although some of Owens’s corniest jokes make me wince. I can see why Hee Haw wanted him as host.

At one point, while talking about how he and the Buckaroos had been to New York, but hadn’t actually played there, he slips up and says, “We never got to pick and sing for you; we’re gonna change that. We’re gonna do it to you tonight—er—for you tonight.” And the audience laughed. Was that on purpose, or a slip of the tongue? Who knows, but I like it either way.

Here’s “Act Naturally,” the concert opener:

Previously discussed: Together Again/My Heart Skips a Beat, I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail, The Instrumental Hits of Buck Owens and His Buckaroos . Up next, the final installment: Young Buck: The Complete Pre-Capitol Recordings.

My copyediting duties have kept me from my promised Buck Owens posts for the past two days, but now they’re back. Today, it’s The Instrumental Hits of Buck Owens and His Buckaroos (Capitol, 1965).

The extremely danceable Instrumental Hits of Buck Owens and His Buckaroos is absolutely wonderful. It really shows off all the Buckaroos' talents. That’s something I love about Buck Owens: He lets all his players shine equally; it’s not all about him.

The album notes helpfully outline who’s featured on each of the songs, and we get plenty of Don Rich on fiddle and guitar. Oh, and did you know that Rich was originally from Tumwater? Way to go, Washington! And, when Rich died tragically in that motorcycle accident north of Bakersfield, he was only 32. This means that he was only 18 or 19 when he first started playing with Owens, and in his early to mid 20s when he made all these great records we’ve been talking about. Goddamn. The album notes rightly describe Rich’s fiddling as “handsome,” and it’s particularly handsome on “Orange Blossom Special” and Bob Wills’s “Faded Love” and “A Maiden’s Prayer.” He also plays a handsome guitar on “Buckaroo,” Owens’s theme song. Hell, he plays handsomely throughout the whole album. And just look at that ever-present smile.

Owens adds his “rousing” guitar work, according to the album notes, to four cheerful polkas, which give props to the influence that Southern California Latino music had on Owens. Three of the polkas—“Buck’s Polka,” “Raz-Ma-Taz Polka,” and “Country Polka”—are essentially the same song with a few variances in each one; “Country Polka” is my favorite because it’s the fastest and it has a sweet piano solo. “Mexican Polka” appears to be a faster, reworked version of the excellent “Honeysuckle” off Young Buck: The Complete Pre-Capitol Recordings (more on this album later in the week). And steel guitarist Tom Brumley really rips it up on the fun “Bud’s Bounce” and “Steel Guitar Rag.”

Here’s “Buck’s Polka,” with Owens on guitar:

And “Cajun Fiddle,” featuring Rich on fiddle and Brumley on steel guitar (this isn’t on the album):

Previously discussed: Together Again/My Heart Skips a Beat, I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail. Up next: Carnegie Hall Concert (1966).

Next up in my continuing series on excellent Buck Owens albums is 1965’s I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail (Capitol).

This was the first Buck Owens LP I acquired, and it was the impetus for my buying up as many as I can. It’s solid.

The title track, and album opener, is a fun, upbeat number—it’s goofy, but it’s so great. It was cowritten by one of my favorite country songwriters, Harlan Howard (“Pick Me Up on Your Way Down,” “I Fall to Pieces,” “Life Turned Her That Way,” “Busted,” “Heartaches by the Number,” “Streets of Baltimore,”—can you believe this guy?). Turns out, Owens recorded a few more Howard songs over the years: what might be my favorite Owens song, “Excuse Me (I Think I've Got a Heartache)”; “Foolin’ Around”; and “Above and Beyond.” In fact, Owens recorded an entire album of Howard songs: Buck Owens Sings Harlan Howard. I imagine it’s a good one. Incidentally, Howard also wrote the second song on Tiger, “Trouble and Me.”

Side A’s “Let the Sad Times Roll On,” a sorrowful, slow one, is countered on side B with the upbeat “We’re Gonna Let the Good Times Roll.” And the last song on side A, “Falling for You,” is a near-exact replica of the title track, but with different lyrics; it’s an all right song, but it’s odd to have it positioned on the record so close to its clone.

I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail only has one song I tend to skip, and it’s the last one: “Memphis,” a Chuck Berry cover. This song was unfortunately spoiled for me years ago by Johnny Rivers’ cover version that my hometown oldies radio station insisted on playing constantly. However, preceding “Memphis” is one amazing four-song stretch.

It starts with “The Band Keeps Playing On,” a typical but excellent honky tonker: “Before you reached the door/my teardrops hit the floor/and my world stopped—pause—/but the band keeps playing on.” It’s followed by the beautiful cowboy classic “Streets of Laredo,” sung solely by bassist Doyle Holly. Holly has a terrific voice, cracking in all the right spots, but he shocks the listener by bringing his vocals way, way down on the choruses—and it works; it’s not just a novelty. Next up is one of the best country songs ever, written by Owens himself, “Crying Time,” which lets us know, painfully, that it’s not just “crying time,” but it’s “crying time again.” After that is an instrumental, which Owens and the Buckaroos are experts at, a cover of Bob Wills’s “A Maiden’s Prayer.”

Here’s “Crying Time”:

And “I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail.” These guys are having a good time:

Previously discussed: Together Again/My Heart Skips a Beat. Up next: The Instrumental Hits of Buck Owens and His Buckaroos (1965).

All this talk about pedal steel guitars has me thinking about country music—though I guess I’m always thinking about country music—which has me thinking about Buck Owens, whom I’ve been obsessively listening to for months now. The more I listen to him, the more I love him, and the more I realize how awesome and important he was to country music. And, he has a ripping steel guitarist, Tom Brumley. Observe Brumley’s magic in this video of Owens and his Buckaroos playing their hit “Together Again.” Also note how funny and awkward this performance is, especially with Owens and right-hand man Don Rich sharing a mic (and a strange discussion of pies between the show's cohosts).

I’ve seen Buck Owens live three times (he played "Orange Blossom Special" on the fiddle in complete darkness and rocked a Dobro), slow-danced with him once onstage (to “In the Palm of Your Hand”), and more recently I’ve been buying Buck Owens and His Buckaroos’ Capitol LPs. So far I’ve got Together Again/My Heart Skips a Beat (1964), I’ve Got a Tiger by the Tail (1965), The Instrumental Hits of Buck Owens and His Buckaroos (1965), Carnegie Hall Concert (1966), and Open Up Your Heart (1966).

The more albums I buy, the more I realize that, unlike many country artists at the time, Owens made a lot of albums that contain mostly excellent songs, with little filler. Buck Owens is high quality.

Owens put out over 30 albums in almost as many years; a good place to start is the early to mid-’60s. It’s also a good place to end: In 1969, Owens hurt his popularity and credibility when he began hosting Hee Haw, and in 1971, bassist Doyle Holly left the band. But, the biggest blow to Owens came in 1974, when Don Rich, Buckaroo guitarist, fiddler, vocalist, and Owens’s best friend, died in a motorcycle accident—Owens has said that ended his interest in making music, sinking him into a deep depression.

But back to his prime. Around the late ’50s, commercial country music began to take a nosedive away from its hillbilly roots and into a sea of crappy pop music, when countrypolitan, or the Nashville sound, started taking over. Songs were overproduced and glossy, with strings, background singers, and crooning vocals (though, it should be noted, early pop country is certainly not all bad). Owens came along and said, to hell with that and to hell with Nashville, and instead put out straight-up honky-tonk albums from Bakersfield, California.

It was in the early ’60s that Owens and his Buckaroos perfected and unleashed his Bakersfield sound, which he and Rich dubbed “freight-train style.” I can best describe it as an amped-up Ray Price shuffle, complete with prominent drums and walking bass lines, a wandering fiddle, and, on the weepers, the saddest steel guitar you’ll ever hear. The music was full, driving, explosive, but stripped-down, clean, and crisp, bursting with sound and energy. His more upbeat numbers were bouncy and fun, and his sad, slow songs were a complete throwback to—or a continuation of—that original aching honky tonk. A key ingredient was Rich’s harmonizing vocals; his higher-pitched voice dominated any verse or chorus he belted out, and Rich’s and Owens’s voices blended seamlessly, making it sometimes difficult to distinguish the two.

So let’s discuss 1964’s Together Again/My Heart Skips a Beat (Capitol).

It’s a typical, but excellent, Owens album, with only a couple misses. The real highlights are the weepers: “Close up the Honky Tonks,” “I Don’t Hear You,” “Together Again,” “A-11,” and “Getting Used to Losing You.” Vocally, Rich and Owens pour their hearts out, and Tom Brumley destroys all with his sobbing steel guitar. But that’s not to pooh-pooh the album’s more upbeat songs, which are for the most part superb, particularly: “My Heart Skips a Beat,” the rollicking “Truck Drivin' Man,” and “Hello Trouble.”

Right now, superslow “I Don’t Hear You” is my favorite on the album. Owens lets loose some excellent inflection on the drawn-out “window” at the end of the line “I hear/the rain on my window-oh-oh,” and Rich lends his strong pipes to the chorus, overpowering Owens’s lower-pitched voice. I love a song with either a bit of talking or a monologue, and “Getting Used to Losing You” gives me a little spoken word: In the chorus, Owens sheeplishly says, “For I lie when I say…” then sings “I’m getting used to losing you.”

Here’s a video of “My Heart Skips a Beat” from the Jimmy Dean Show (yes, the sausage guy). Rich fires off some impressive guitar playing throughout, and Brumley shows off his stuff on the steel at the end of the video.

Stay tuned for more Buck Owens album examinations in the coming days.

Last Week one of my favorite blogs, Best Foot Forward, offered Space Rock by Rockets for everyone to download. But they didn't offer much more info about the group, so here's a brief history.

In 1972 producer Claude Lemoine produced a single called Future Woman for a band called Crystal. With the single's poularity the band decided to change it's name and look, so in 1974 they became The Rocket Men (or Rocketters in France). They shaved their heads, wore matching "space age" outfits and painted themselves with silver make-up. They didn't quite have the formula right though, unitl 1976 when they changed their name to Rockets. They did a dancier, spacier remake of thier hit Future Woman which brought them, once again, popularity throughout Europe. It didn't hurt that their live shows were full of lasers, smoke, exploding cannons of fire and a tripped out light show.

In 1976 they released their self titled album which brought them to the attention of America's premier disco label, Salsoul. Salsoul signed them onto their offshoot label Tom 'n' Jerry Records for Rockets only american album, On The Road Again.

The first side of this album is amazing! The Canned Heat cover, On The Road Again, lays down the blues/funk in a propulsive chugging mix by Tom Moulton. Vocoder lyrics and talk box guitar riffs accentuate the feel of aliens out on a road trip. Surreal and special. Then there's the instrumental break down in the b-side hit Space Rock. Also mixed by Tom Moulton, this tripped out guitar inflected synth song never fails to get an ass or two shaking. Imagine Gino Soccio mixed with ZZ Top. Interstellar Rock!

The band consisted of Zeus B. Held on Vocoder, Christian Le Bartz on Vocals, "Little" G. L'Her on Bass, Alain Maratrat on Guitars and Synths, Fabrice Quagliotti on Syths and Alain Groetzinger on Drums.

Zeus B. Held would eventually go on to record a couple of sick solo albums then become Europe's uber-producer of the '80's, producing the likes of Gina X and Nina Hagen.

Producer Claude Lemoine would go on to produce on of the early '90's biggest throw-away dance hits, Jordy's Durr Durr D'etre Baby! with Rockets band member Maratrat.

Fabrice Quagliotti would join New Wave band Sal Solo in the '80's.

The second side of On The Road Again, is a kinda space-y new age-ish effort, which doesn't have as much spark or soul as the first side, so I'll just ignore it.

But you should definately grab this little piece of French Disco/Rock history by the samples at my blog, here!

This week I've been spending time in my hometown, Spokane, WA. It's totally distressing. I'm here to help out family members that are ill, but I've brought my son along, who's on summer break now. If you ever wonder why people leave small cities and head for larger metropoli, it could be:

A: The 12-year-olds at the skatepark I take my son to that talk like truckers and smoke like chimneys.

B: The meth addicts in the local mall parking lot that proceed to drag each-other out of a car and fight right in front of us.

C: The parents who bring a pellet gun to the local playground where my son is riding his bike through the trees, and proceed to target practice into the tree area, where said son is riding, while ignoring their two young children begging for pushes on swings.

Oh well, at least i was able to fill my tank for $2.95 a gallon!

It gets pretty depressing. The only thing that has saved me from utterly flattened feelings, is my reading of Homer's The Odyssey and listening to The Iliad on CD during the long drive here.

My son recently finished a childrens version of The Odyssey and got me thinking about how much of it was cut out to be palletable for kids. The childrens book actually did a remarkable job of relaying Odysseus' original Job-like travails, mostly just taking out sex and all out gore. But the originals of both are stunning, the language, the metaphores, the beautiful descriptions of battle.... Especially in times like these. Reading and hearing what war looks like and sounds like seems overly relevant in our media censored world.

So I am also reading this during what for many will be Gay Pride Week, and The other day I listened to a beautiful passage that described Achilles love for his cousin and friend Patroclus after Patroclus is killed in war. Insantly my "gaydar" started to ring, and I was almost moved to tears at how the god-like Achilles (after all he is the son of the immortal sea nymph Thetis) grieved for his beloved "friend". Tearing his hair out, pouring sand on his head, wallowing in ashes on the ground while crying and writhing in pain for his slain friend.

Before that, he had been angry at the other Acheans (Odysseus, Agamemnon, Menolaus, Ajax...) who had allowed Agamemnon to take a girl from Achilles spoils without proper payment. So he refused to fight the Trojans with the other Achean warriors. When his friend Patroclus begs him to fight, because the Acheans are being slaughtered, Achilles relents a little and lets his beloved Patroclus wear his "unbreakable" armour out into battle to help defeat the Trojans.

The armour was only unbreakable to mortals, and Apollo, who was on the side of the Trojans, was not happy at Patroclus' luck in fighting against him, so he broke the armor, opening him up to a fatal blow from the Trojan leader Hector that killed Patroclus.

Says Achilles:

But what delight to me in all of this,

When now Patroclus, my own dearest friend,

Hath perish'd? Him - him whom of all my host

I honour'd most, loved as I love myself -

I have lost him!

Incidentally I've also been listening to this album by Wishbone Ash lately. Argus is a masterwork of the early '70's. The amazing thing to me is how "Indie" it sounds, while predating "Indie" music by decades. It's slightly unpolished, yet highly listenable sound is what distinguishes it from it's contemporaries. Well, that and the unique duo-guitar sound of the band.

Wishobone Ash had two lead guitarists, Andy Powell and Ted Turner, who used dual guitar lines to weave really beautifully intricate lead solos that are elvated by the interwoven melodies. The vocals, mostly by Ted and bassist Martin Turner are very young sounding, kind of reminding me a little of Built To Spill. They weren't the overdrenched blues-y vocals that were so popular back in the '70's. They're a little more sunny and naive sounding. All of this gives the album a really light feel, even though some of the themes are pretty heavy.

Why does this all seem to be affecting me this week? Well there's the theme of second comings and renewals in The King Will Come, which even though it's a more about biblical themes, leaves me feeling a little less overwhelmed at the amount of emotional work that is called for when helping sick family members.

And Warrior, which aptly conveys how I felt crowing up in this small town hell hole. Whether you are fighting for justice, peace, ar just to keep your head above water, growing up gay in a small town, the lyrics:

I’m leaving to search for something new,

Leaving everything I ever knew.

A hundred years in the sunshine

Hasn’t taught me all there is to know.

Time will pass away,

Time will guard our secret.

I’ll return again

To fight another day.

I’d have to be a warrior -

A slave I couldn’t be -

A soldier and a conqueror,

Fighting to be free.

And the final song on the album, with the amazing guitar solo at the end, Throw Down The Sword.

Throw down the sword,

The fight is done and over,

Neither lost, neither won.

To cast away the fury of the battle

And turn my weary eyes for home.

It aptly sums up the War in Iraq, the political/moral fight for the conscience of the U.S., the fight for my own feelings of independence, both from home and from oppression of growing up different in Spokane.

Anyways, can you see why someone with all this swirling through his mind can attach themselves to an album like this?

Happy Pride. End the War in Iraq. Samples, of course, are at my blog.

Ps. Incidentally, the cover for Argus has the greek soldier looking over a field, and in the distance you can barely make out a flying saucer in the golden air. The cover, by Hipgnosis is pretty famous. So why on the Remastered CD version I have do they leave off the U.F.O.? Is it a mistake? On purpose? Seriously, that seems like a major fuck up in the CD's design!

I love women who can't sing. I don't mean the mute, or the tone-deaf, but the type of artist the French politely call a diseuse, i.e. a performer who recites lyrics over music, rather than flat out singing (although when they sing, it is flat). Vocalists who do not even attempt to carry a tune – even when it may be as close as the piano accompaniment – because it is just too cumbersome, and, really a girl can't be expected to hold anything heavier than a cocktail in these shoes.

Terry has written before about my very favorite diseuse, Cristina. But in the madcap '80s, Ms. Monet Zilkha was but one of a clutch of like-minded dramatic dames who cut sought-after albums. Not long ago, LTM Recordings reissued the work of Hermine, a former tightrope aerialist and colleague of The Flying Lizards. Now they continue delving into this dubious tradition with expanded editions of the work of Swedish oddball Virna Lindt.

Lindt recorded two albums, Shiver (1983) and Play/Record (1985), for the Compact Organization. Like New York's ZE label, Compact was all about mixing sophistication and kitsch (their best-known artist was Northern soul torch singer and beehive model Mari Wilson). And Virna Lindt epitomized that mix. Her songs are ripe with allusions to international espionage and Bergman films, her vocals whispered atop backing tracks of cool jazz, sound collage, and vintage soundtrack gestures. If you are the sort of music lover who can name every Bond girl, this is the stuff for you.

LTM is also rolling out a remastered edition of the compilation A Young Person's Guide to Compact, featuring the non-LP Lindt singles "Model Agent" and "Young & Hip," as well as ditties by Wilson, Tot Taylor (who wrote and produced with Lindt), Shake/Shake, and others. All three of these releases hit stores on August 20. Something to sing about? Hardly. And that's the beauty of it.

It’s better! It’s Pete Townsend in the tightest white pants ever!

Last night, thanks to a gnarly allergy attack and a lot of Benadryl, I was stuck on the couch drifting in and out of sleep. KBTC, was showing the Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus with Marianne Faithful, John Lennon, the Who, and of course the Rolling Stones, and as you may or may not already know, it’s way better than Rockstar. (Well, almost. The whole Lennon/Clapton jam session would’ve been so awesome if it weren’t for Yoko’s drunk/tortured/dying bird shrieking. I’ve never really understood Yoko. Sorry, Ari.)

Besides that, though, there are just so many awesome things going on during the whole concert (especially when half sleeping and half awake and the concert becomes a part of a dream that involves being lost on a cruise ship and weird robots), which made me wonder, why doesn’t shit like this happen anymore? Why doesn’t someone like, I dunno, Thom Yorke or someone everyone in the music world respects on some level, throw together a bunch of amazing musicians and host a rock and roll circus of their own, where everyone gets to just rock out and jam and just fucking rule?

It kept being interrupted by the station’s pledge drive ($60 got you a CD, $90 got you the DVD, and $125 got you both), so I eventually opted to watch Borat and add the Rock and Roll Circus to my Netflix queue. Anyway. I dunno. Maybe there’s still Bendadryl in my system that’s making me loopy, but I really think someone needs to work a circus of their own. I'll even help, I can bring the ponchos and floppy hats.

We cannot let it turn into what Woodstock 1994 was to Woodstock 1969, however. That means Red Hot Chili Peppers, you’re out. Sorry.

Pleasure Forever, briefly known as Slaves, formed from the remains of forward-thinking San Francisco synth punks VSS. Pleasure Forever abandoned the noisy, Screamers-inspired discord of the VSS, replacing it with moody, gothic piano balladry more reminiscent of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds. They released two full-lengths on Sub Pop, Pleasure Forever and Alter, before going on "indefinite hiatus." When Pleasure Forever was active, I was pining for the VSS, and I never really got into them. But looking back now, I can better appreciate their nuance and more tempered weirdness. Conspiracy Records has released a posthumous collection of their rarities and b-sides, titled Bodies Need Rest, that should serve as a good refresher course on the oft-overlooked band.

Pleasure Forever - "Miles Underneath"

Pleasure Forever - "The Bars (Black Flag Cover)"

I'm now correcting an egregious lapse in the musical knowlege of a select few writers on staff here.

A few weekends ago, while carpooling to Sasquatch with a number of Stranger writers and bloggers, I came upon the unfathomable gap in our understanding of prog, when I got blank stares from everyone in the car to my query:

"Don't you guys love the Aphrodite's Child album 666!?!?"

Who?

"Aphordite's Child! You've never heard of Aphrodite's Child?!?"

Aphrodite's Child: A pre-666 history.

Original Band Members: Vangelis O. Papathanassiou, Demis Roussos, Lukas Sideras and Anargyros Koulouris

Formed in Athens in 1967 Aphrodite's Child recorded a two song demo and sent it to the Philips label, then a bastion of European prog and psyche bands. Philips invited the band to London to record and album, but due to Koulouris needing to fulfill his military service requirements and due to general unrest in Paris, en route, the band decided to stay put in the city of light and record their first album, End Of The World. Part Psyche-Pop and part Symphonic Pop in the vein of Procol Harum.

The hit off the album was a rock reworking of Pachabel's Canon called Rain And Tears.

Aphrodite's Child - Rain And Tears

In 1969, growing in popularity the band was invited to London's Trident Studios to work on their second album, once again without Koulouris, It's Five O'Clock. The album spawned lots of pop songs and ballads most notably the Moody Blues / Procol Harum sound-alike title song.

Aphrodite's Child - It's Five O'Clock

The band went on tour, without Vangelis, who didn't like how the band sounded live. He holed himself up in his Paris studio and started work on what would become one of the most monumental monoliths of Prog Rock, 666.

666

Working in Paris with a different lyricist, Costas Ferris, the band began to fall apart as the album was being recorded. The rest of the band wanted to head in a more pop vein and try for world domination, but Vangelis had come up with his most psychedelic work to date. 666 is a modern re-working of the Book Of Revelations. Koulouris, was able to join the band again and his crazy rocking guitar work is all over the album. And lyrically the album is more a set of mantra's or short poems then anything resembling "songs". Upon delivery, the record company executives were aghast at how different the album was. From the odd "live" tune, to songs like Do It which wholly consists of amped up drum solos and fuzzy guitar reverb, and tracks of nothing but an old man speaking bizarre gobblety-gook.

The track that really made them scared was Infinity, in which famous Greek actress Irene Papas repeats the mantra, "I am. I am to come. I was." over and over as she has an orgasm. (Myth has it that the original track is almost 40 minutes and was cut down to just over 5 minutes for the album.) The grunting, moaning and audible thrashing (in awesome stereo, mind you) was nearly too much for the exec's to take.

They delayed the album. Roussos, Vangelis and Sideris had all released solo projects in 1971, and due to their popularity the last Aphrodite's Child album was finally released. Even though, by now, the band had totally broken up.

Post Aphrodite's Child:

Demis Roussos would go on to become one of Europes most famous crooners, eventually working on a few tracks with Vangelis later in the '70's.

Vangelis, of course became, VANGELIS. He would release one more prog album before becoming one of the worlds best selling artists. He would also go on to virtually create the genre we now call New Age. He worked again, twice, with Irene Papas on albums of Greek Odes put to music.

Koulouris worked with both Vangelis and Roussos during their solo careers.

Sideris tried to have a solo career, but his never really took off.

So. There you go, music staff.

For samples from 666, go to my blog here.

Today's history lesson:

It was Halloween night, 1981. John Belushi was making a cameo appearance on Saturday Night Live, and to mark the occasion he had the honor of selecting the evening's musical guest. He chose Fear.

To liven up the performance, SNL wanted to bring in some dancers. They called Ian MacKaye for the hookup. New York hardcore and punk kids showed up, as did a bunch of D.C.'s crew. To get into the show you had to say the password, "Ian MacKaye."

When Fear went on, anarchy ensued—moshing, circle pitting, stage-diving—all the kids allegedly caused many thousands of dollars in damages to the show's set, including the destruction of one of the video cameras (although MacKaye says it was just a little plastic piece that got broken). Afterward, they were all locked in a room; SNL wanted to sue.

Enjoy!

The best part, if you listen closely at the end... that "Fuck New York" you hear is supposedly hollered by none other than a teenage Ian MacKaye. He tells the whole story in this 2001 Nardwuar interview.

(BTW, is this a mark for the "pro sax" column?)

I went to Sasquatch reluctantly this year, my sole reasons were to see Bjork and The Arcade Fire. I honestly didn't think I would like much else on the bill, though, so I was perfectly happy to sit back and accost people at The Stranger's booth (Yeah, I was the one making all the cute boys take their shirts off!...and thanks to that wonderful girl who passed us the doobie, telling us she loved us...hope you enjoyed that Babeland gift bag!) and listen to bands playing the Wookie Stage all afternoon.

The Blow

Eric pulled me, somewhat reluctantly, to The Blow's show at the Yeti Stage. The moment she started I turned to Eric and said, "Wow she's like a funky Meryn Cadell!"

"I don't know Meryn Cadell, but she's definatley funky." Eric replied.

Well this is Meryn Cadell.

Mind you, that song, from her Angel Food For Thought album, is nearly 15 years old now, but can you see what I mean? The sampled beats, the snarky, slightly ironic, but sweet nouveau-feminist storytelling. It's all there.

Meryn Cadell release 3 albums inthe '90's, then faded into obscurity. Her albums are back in print now however, and she's recently come out as a female-to-male transexual as well. Taking all the ideas in her past work to completely different levels of meaning.

Bjork's Brass Band

In 1997 my friend Jeremy Deller, got the idea that rave music was not that far removed from the music of the working class "company" brass bands that are familiar to many in Great Britain. He started working with one in particular,The Williams Fairey Brass Band, eventually putting out an album called Acid Brass.

In the liner notes to this album there's a description of Bjork dancing in the front aisle of their concert, going crazy over the brass arrangements of the classic acid house tunes.

Below are two samples:

808 State - Pacific 202
Jeremy Deller Presents The Williams Fairey Brass Band - Pacific 202

The KLF - What Time Is Love?
Jeremy Deller Presents The Williams Fairey Brass Band - What Time Is Love?

This has got to be the historic genesis of the idea of putting a 16 piece brass band behind her in her current arrangements.

What do you think?

As for her concert as a whole, I thought the brass band ended up too much in the background during the first 30 minutes, but the second two-thirds of the show slayed me. Those lasers formed this weird fake roof over the concert which seemed to pull everyone in a little tighter and make the Gorge seem like a real tribal gathering. Absolutely brilliant.

Quick Note:

Things I Loved: Arcade Fire, Electrolane, Grizzly Bear, free PBR behind The Stranger booth, straight volunteer fire fighters from Idaho telling me to "never change that gay thing, dude! You're awesome bro'!"

Things I Didn't Like: Citizen Cope, Manu Chao, part-timers working Crowd Management, having no fresh air in a fucking open air venue, where the fuck was Sarah Silverman?, and that horrible comedian at the wookie stage: "Do you guys wanna here my rape jokes?" and "I used to hate MTV...." Yeah, right up until they started paying you for your crap-tastic show!