One Saturday afternoon in October 1976 I rode my bicycle round to Rod Amberton’s place to watch a total eclipse. It seemed like a friendly thing to do, given that this sort of solar phenomenon only occurred every few decades and Melbourne was, apparently, a prime location from which to view it. Assuming the clouds gave permission, of course.

Arriving a few minutes before the big yellow orb was due to be blanked by the dark side of the moon – yes, I know it’s more like the sun being followed by a moonshadow, but some poetic Floyd-licence please, we weren’t into Cat Stevens – I dropped the bicycle on the grass and knocked on the screen door at the back of the house. Silence. Hm. It hadn’t occurred to me that they might be out. When I say ‘they’ I guess I meant Rod, as the family was not really one that did stuff together. The older brother was indeed quite a bit older, Rod’s Father worked all the time and his sweet Mum mostly kept things ticking over at home. But not today.

I could see into the glassed-in porch cum family room off which Rod’s bedroom lay, far enough away from the proper adult living areas that we could play records up to distortion point – in those days somewhere around 15 watts per channel, don’t you know – until quite late. Maybe half-past eleven.

But in the singular present it was half-past four and a decision point. No time to ride home to watch the eclipse in my own back yard so, feeling just a little uncomfortable about occupying the Amberton patch on my own, I sank down onto the grass and waited.

What was memorable was the silence. It was quiet. It was still. Though there was some cloud haziness, a dark scimitar clearly crept across the shining disc, carving light into shadow. Then it wasn’t quiet. Birds. Raising confused voices to this unexpected evening. Chirruping their outrage at being robbed of four hours of daylight and crankily preparing for sleep like a banished child.

Then before they could get properly settled the twilight began slowly departing and, like a curtain pulled back, the bright afternoon stage was once again revealed. The birds cheered. I rode home.

Later, having dutifully deposited my 20 cents in the designated money box on top of the fridge, I phoned the Amberton residence and ascertained that Rod was now in residence. So I rode over there again. It was after the real actual twilight by this time, and getting chilly. After watching a news report of the eclipse we repaired to his room and I once more sank earthwards, this time onto a cushion against the wall. A stack of LPs were slouched against the wall next to me so I leafed through them, extracting a cover that seemed truly apposite after the afternoon’s entertainment. No, not the prism one; Santana’s Caravanserai.

“Pass it over, I’ll put it on,” said Rod.

The needle thunked onto the vinyl and a moment later, emerging from the background crackles came the quintessentially summer sound of crickets, their phased whistlechoir being joined by a keening sax sounding an evening call to prayer. The bass and percussion entered, building very slowly with carefully placed guitar notes then sustained electric piano chords like ancient temple bells. I was entranced.

Forty years later, I put on Caravanserai again and once more I’m transported.

Australian, US, and Japanese Quadraphonic. Oh yeah.

After the introduction of ‘Eternal caravan of reincarnation’ the energy picks up with rolling, soaring glory in ‘Waves within’, powered by the transcendental guitar of Carlos Santana but given a solid grounding by the percussion section of Michael Shrieve and James ‘Mingo’ Lewis.

The segue into ‘Look up (to see what’s coming down)’ provides a change up to a Latin soul-funk groove of hip-swinging potency. Greg Rolie’s organ adds smouldering urgency echoed by Santana’s guitar lines. This in turn flows into the first song, ‘Just in time to see the sun’, delivered in impassioned rock style by the organist.

Things settle down for the spacious ‘Song of the wind’, a superb showcase for the leader’s six string stylings. The incorporation of jazz fusion textures and exploratory solos into the band was the defining feature of Caravanserai, making it a perhaps little harder for fans of the first three albums to access, but ensuring its timelessness. Side one concludes with ‘All the love in the universe’ where, after an attention capturing introduction, a human chorus introduces the second vocal, an uplifting lyric that seeks to share Santana’s commitment to his spiritual growth. (See also the Santana/McLaughlin collaboration from the following year, 1973’s Love Devotion and Surrender).

New thoughts will purify my mind

And clean my body

New lives will fall together

Like an endless story

Now I’m an unbeliever and sceptic of eye-rolling insistence, yet by the end of this side – with the voices, pumping organ, ebullient bass lines and soul-piercing guitar – friends, I’m ready to convert, to don the white robe and eshew all worldly pollutants of the spirit. Except my four copies of Caravanserai. Hm. Perhaps a little way short of full Enlightenment as yet.

‘Future primitive’ opens the second side with atmospheric strokes of sound before pattering percussion enters, stage left (and right). Congas bongos and timbales are prominent in this piece. No surprise: it was written by percussionists Jose Areas and Mingo Lewis. Michael Shrieve, a prince amongst drummers, is highly audible too. The spacey opening flows into the third (and final) song ‘Stone flower’. This Latin-infused ballad combines human wonder with the natural environment in a way that is implicit throughout the album, including the wonderfully evocative cover photo (by Joan Chase).

Just like a ship out on the sea

floating alone no one around me or beyond me

the sun is on me,

Then suddenly I felt a kiss out of the breeze

that did caress me and possess me

oh it astounds me

Although I labelled ‘Stone flower’ a ballad, that is not strictly accurate. There is more rhythmic movement and melodic spark in this piece than most gentle songs. Still, you notice when the percussive pace picks up for instrumental ‘La fuente del ritmo’ where second guitarist Neal Schon plays some lovely harmonised lines with the leader. Again we have that exciting combination of Latin groove – a fast one here – with flowing, dancing jazz-rock guitar lines. In this piece the addition of a Tom Coster electric piano solo is just the cherry on top. Or perhaps chilli.

The final piece, ‘Every step of the way’ is the longest on the album, beginning pensively with a pulse bass (Tom Rutley) and spare stabs of guitar. A tension builds, it is dramatic music that utterly transcends mainstream rock music (and much fusion too!) while being entirely recognisable. Subtle orchestral textures add to the cinemascope vision of this rich instrumental climax to a very special album.

Caravanserai belongs in the bright constellation of progressive rock albums that transcend categories. Like the Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Birds of Fire, it will not be eclipsed, no matter how many decades pass. Though we would do well to remember the warning of Omar Kyham who reminds us that although art and earth may endure, for humans, all things must pass…

Think, in this batter’d Caravanserai

Whose Doorways are alternate Night and Day

How Sultan after Sultan with his pomp

Abode his hour or two, and went his way

Following the recent departure of Yes co-founder and bass supremo Chris Squire, it seems fitting to revisit the music of a band central to 70s ‘Prog’ who continued to make music through every subsequent decade. Who would have thought that the song-writing partnership that began when Jon Anderson and Chris Squire hit it off in Swinging London circa 1968 would spawn a band who have achieved such longevity. It is sad that Chris Squire did not.

Here, in ascending order, are my favourite Yes albums and a possible pathway for the less familiar. To keep things simple, I’ve omitted live albums (even though Yes Songs would be in my Top 5 otherwise).

There are sure to be alternative views, just as there will be those remain untouched by the music, period. That’s OK; other views are welcome and you can always enjoy the cover art. This article was a labour of love.

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10

Going for the One [1977]

Some shorter songs, the return of Rick Wakeman, even a single. This is a solid Yes outing, often overlooked – maybe due to the way the title track can grate after a few listens. Yet ‘Parallels’ is as good as anything from the ‘classic’ years.

Key tracks: Parallels, Wondrous stories.

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9

Yes [1969]

It’s often instructive to know how a band launched. Here, Yes offer a blend of well-chosen covers (exploratory Byrds, a rip-roaring Beatles) and originals that sound transitional between the 60s and 70s in an entertaining and fresh way.

Key tracks: Survival; Every little thing.

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8

Union [1991]

Arising from cautious détente between Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman, Howe and the Chris Squire / Trevor Rabin / Allan White / Tony Kaye putsch, Union was a compilation of songs from two camps unionised by Jon Anderson’s vocals. Still, there is some good songwriting, spiffing production and remarkably few low points.

Key tracks: Shock to the system; Miracle of Life.

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7

Tales from Topographic Oceans [1973]

Maligned by many (including the keyboard player) and frequently derided by ignorant music press hacks (and the sheep who followed their lead), TFTO is an expansive, sometimes unfocussed, but always enjoyable listen as broad and varied as the titular oceans. Embedded in the oceanic sides are several quality songs and much instrumental variety. You don’t have to be a wafty New Age-er to be elevated and carried along by the scope and ambition of these Tales.

Key moments: Side 2 – second half; Side 3 – first section.

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6

Drama [1980]

From the short-lived line-up that included Buggles Trevor Horn and Geoff Downes, Drama is an edgy and inventive entry into the 80s for a band lazily associated with 70s prog-ishness. Much better than the descriptor applied by smug critics – ‘the Yuggles album’. (I always thought ‘Bes’ a neater amalgam name anyway). A Yes album for people who don’t like Yes?

Key tracks: Does it really happen?; Tempus Fugit.

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5

The Yes Album [1971]

This is where it starts to bloom: the compositions stretch and flex, shooting for the stars and showering instrumental sparkles far and wide. Gloriously potty lyrics and fantastic playing that may surprise with the abundance of killer riffs.

Key tracks: Starship trooper; Perpetual change.

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4

Fragile [1971]

Many people’s favourite Yes album due, at least in part, to the accessibility of the melodic single ‘Roundabout’. Perhaps a little more polished than its predecessor (above) with cute little solo cameo pieces punctuating the longer tracks.

Key tracks: Long distance runaround; Heart of the sunrise.

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3

90125 [1983]

Great singles, tight arrangements, vigorous rock-infused playing. The resurgence of Yes via a strong album full of concise songs. An excellent place to start for the uninitiated.

Key tracks: Owner of a lonely heart; Changes.

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2

Relayer [1974]

The only studio album featuring Patrick Moraz on keyboards, Relayer is demanding and often startling fusion of beauty and brutality. Previously featured at Vinyl Connection here.

Key side: The gates of delirium.

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1

Close to the Edge [1972]

The pinnacle of Yes-music. Ambitious, complex and enduringly engrossing. Previously explored in depth at Vinyl Connection (here).

Key tracks: The complete album.

What a strangely captivating album is Starfire, the 9th from Norwegian band Jaga Jazzist. I stumbled across this recent release, took a punt on the album after auditioning a track on youtube (below) and… got excited.

The grooves are inescapable though far from standard issue. Often the melodic lines seem to be layered on top of rhythms – both acoustic and synthesised – that shift and jump through time signatures like a virtuoso garden gnome on ice. The shifting colours and textures of diverse instrumentation leap out of the tracks like an exploding aurora borealis.

The title track sets things in motion with trippy drums of a vaguely acid-jazz sensibility while over the top weave melodic lines seasoned with electronic dabs and dashes. When the choppy riff enters at the 3 minute mark, you know that this is a band whose invention cannot be contained in short, song-based compositions. It’s wonderfully exciting even though, at the end of the piece’s eight minute length, you would be hard-pressed to put into words what you have been listening to. Imagine a post-modern Scandinavian mid-70s Zappa blended with a 21^st Century Drama-era Yes and you’ll still have no idea.

‘Big City Music’ is certainly huge in scope, confidently embracing the grandeur of a film soundtrack, but what sort of film? This fourteen minute widescreen piece evoked landscapes and alien terrain for me, I didn’t get urbanised at all. Instead the journey traversed open vistas, crossed ice floes surprisingly warm to the touch, sighted lumbering behemoths suddenly performing dainty pirouettes, glimpsed strange mechanical birds swooping low and soaring towards chartreuse clouds, as it all built towards a melodic climax dripping heroics from synthesised brass.

The second side opens with ‘Shinkansen’, conveying a gentle, spacious feel with spirals of melody – flute, synth – over a strummed acoustic guitar base. There is a discernible folk flavour reminding me of Swede Bo Hansson’s melodies. But the mood shifts as an insistent bass pulse enters, overlayed with electronic blips and bounces. The flute returns (synthesised this time?) to tie the parts together as the percussion builds like an off-kilter marching band who skip across the finish line.

‘Oban’ has prominent electronic lines over a stuttering rhythm. Once again the layering of parts adds a sumptuous complexity to this groove, and again the voices shift and pass so frequently that the listener reaches a state of bemused delight.

The last of the album’s five pieces is ‘Prungen’, which opens with brooding, sinister tom-toms and edgy ‘What was that sound?!’ effects. But the flute helps reassure us that everything is OK. A second melody enters – sort of Eastern but also Scandinavian folk if you can imagine that – interspersed with rhythmic percussion that is, frankly, straight jazz-rock fusion. But nothing is straight here – the piece and the whole album are for adventurous folk with open ears and a thirst for bendy music. I love it even though I’m quite tense by the end.

So delighted was I with Starfire, that I was moved to contact Jaga Jazzist’s record company to request an email interview. After a couple of tries, I was told that my email had been forwarded. That was a month or so ago and I have not heard anything, though one odd thing happened. The day after the band completed their North American tour and (presumably) returned to their Norwegian homes, a significant spike appeared in the Vinyl Connection stats from – you guessed it – Norway. Co-incidence?

If there is a reply, I’ll post it. In the meantime, here are the questions I sent to the founder and main composer of Jaga Jazzist.

Questions for Mr Lars Horntveth

• Your music is rich with atmospheres and textures. Is the Norwegian heritage expressed in the music? (If so,) How?

• The music of Starfire is expansive, complex and inventive. Over what period were the pieces written/assembled?

• How do you generally compose? In private, in rehearsal, or in the studio?

• People love labels – it helps them locate music that may be less familiar. Which of these would you tolerate as descriptors of Starfire andJagaJazzist generally?
  • Jazz
  • Progressive
  • Electronica
  • Space Fantasy Soundtrack
  • Futuristic psychedelia
  • All of the above
  • None of the above

• Do you like the term ‘post-genre’?

• The instrumental playing is extremely tight. Does the band rehearse regularly?

• A couple of instruments that I do not recognise are credited: ‘Typatune’ and Swarmatron’. Care to explain?

• No less than three Horntveths are listed. Blood relatives or Ramones-style melding?

• What distinguishes Starfire from the Jaga Jazzist albums preceding it?

• The LP packaging really quite extraordinary. I even learned a new word, ‘Anamorphic’. How did it come about?

• Which of the flashy-eyed wobbly beard faces are you?

• Any chance of touring Starfire in the Southern Hemisphere?

A final puzzle is how to pronounce the band’s name. Below are all the combinations I could think of. Vote if you like, or please educate me if you actually know.

1. Jay-Ga Jazz-ist
2. Yay-Ga Yazz-ist
3. Yay-Ga Jazz-ist
4. Jay-Ga Yazzist

They’ve produced a startling album, however you say it.

Starfire was released on June 1^st 2015.

Of course they have an official Jaga Jazzist website.

The sleeve was designed by Martin Kvanne. See it in action here.

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THE MUSIC OF TANGERINE DREAM, PART TWO

After Electronic Meditation, Klaus Schulze moved on from Tangerine Dream, leaving band leader Edgar Froese in need of a replacement.

There was a young musician Froese had encountered in the Berlin scene as the drummer of Agitation Free (a brilliant, inventive band I hope we’ll get to at some stage). Chris Franke was very interested in the emerging electronic music scene and had his own VCS 3, an early synthesiser built by UK company EMS. As soon as the new line-up was completed by the addition of organist Steve Schroyder, Ohr Records supremo Rolf-Ulrich Kaiser booked studio time for the band to begin their second album.

That’s where we^ take up the Tangerine Dream story again, exploring the other three quarters of the output from the band’s ‘Pink’ years (named after the colour of the Ohr label organ of hearing).

ALPHA CENTAURI [1971]

Personnel: Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, Steve Schroyder

The psychedelic Alpha Centauri was a heady brew of wasted droning voices, eerie organ and drifting flute that creates a hazy, shifting atmosphere. Here the band offers exploratory collages with a rough-around-the-edges quality; there is grit, some edginess, a hint of danger even. A frequent (though somewhat lazy) comparison is the music of Pink Floyd in their late 60s/early 70s concerts: lots of spaced-out, often sparse improvisations. But Tangerine Dream here are less bounded, deeper in space, darker. The tone is gothic, eerie; particularly in the side long title track. Alpha Centauri may be the closest star to our Sol but this is far from celestial music.

ZEIT [1972]

Personnel: Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, Peter Baumann

(This line-up was mostly stable until 1977)

Guests: Steve Schroyder, Florian Fricke, The Cologne Cello Quartet (all on “Birth of Liquid Plejades”)

1972’s sprawling double LP Zeit is a monumental and deeply affecting album. In some ways a prototype for dark ambient music, this divisive album comprises four lengthy abstract compositions totalling 76 minutes of music that can be terrifyingly unrelenting one moment and immersive the next. Large stretches of it are simultaneously deeply isolating and suffocating, yet it’s also oddly engrossing and enveloping.

Opening side “Birth of Liquid Plejades” creeps into the room like a swarm of gigantic cosmic mosquitoes, moving inexorably towards you to suck out your soul. It is a chilling introduction to the world of Zeit where time moves differently, glacially. Phased synthesisers and sombre organ drones glide through a macabre quadrille with the groaning choir of cellos. This movement – for there is movement – slowly gives way to an organ-synth section that evokes some sort of twisted folk melody, the sort of tune that arises from a foetid swamp populated by unquiet ghosts. For Lord Of The Rings devotees, picture Gollum guiding Frodo and Sam through the noisome swamp in the approach to Mordor; the hobbits crawl through the ooze, staring down at the dead faces of warriors long long gone… this is music for that scene. The ghostly atmosphere and sense of isolation intensifies with electronic blips and alien textures, before more assertive organ starts to dominate alongside moaning winds that sound like souls in torment. There is a beauty here, like flowers for the damned.

The second movement is “Nebulous Dawn”. Waves of electronics pulse like an other-worldly heartbeat, disturbed by harsh, shuffling electrical static that sounds like a predatory presence scratching at your door. Don’t answer. After deep saw-tooth cello notes straight from the galactic version of Psycho, we’re eventually transported to a bubbling ocean world, immersed in an alien floatation device. But there is nothing peaceful here, only tension, paranoia. This bath does not rejuvenate but leech away your being; less nebulous dawn than cosmic disintegration.

After a stiff drink and a couple of prozac cookies, we launch into side three, “Origin Of Supernatural Probabilities”. A thick humming washes in and out, joined by waves in middle and upper registers; nearby is a slowly strummed electric guitar, creating a despondent mood suitable for the beach bar at the end of the world. The next section has echoing, keening notes like the cry of some extinct leviathan. Burbling synths are pierced by shards of noise and a wild warping rumbling alien heartbeat pulses through a swirl of cold electronics. The music is beyond time, born of a primal landscape staring up at infinite space, belligerent and terrified.

The final movement is “Zeit”, the German word meaning time. This piece does not so much begin, as insinuate itself into the room. You may only notice its effects when you start at a flickering shadow or find yourself hugging a cushion. Then again, maybe you’ll lie on the carpet and watch the ceiling dissolve into nebulous clouds of floating, whispery synth lines, revealing a vertical panorama as deep and mysterious as anything a BBC doco about the universe can deliver. “Zeit” is the most sparse of the four movements; moments of near-silence are punctuated by distant ghostly wails, muted machine-like buzzing and chittering alien voices – all softened by interstellar star-dew.

Devoid of melodic structure – and for that matter, of melody itself – Zeit is brooding, uncompromising, inaccessible, and totally alien. It is a monolithic album and an extraordinary achievement and while this is not music to spin constantly, it has that rare capacity to alter the environment around you. Consuming, compelling, and never experienced the same way twice.

Michael: Zeit is probably one of the unhappiest and darkest albums I’ve ever heard, yet there is something oddly enveloping and gripping about the music as it takes hold of you with icy fingers that refuse to let go.

Bruce: This is a lonely, austere universe aching for an atom of humanity to crush in a dark-matter embrace. A powerful and unique album that was unlike anything else (and still is). It is thrilling and unsettling to visit, but you wouldn’t want to live here.

Julian Cope: Aaaaaah… the harmony of Zeit is the greatest of any rock ‘n’ roll lullabies. Its soothing medicating soporific tones are an exquisite flying carpet that takes you ever so gently up into the Land of Hyper-nod. Music that hangs in Deep space. Songs the size of planets with titles the size of cities. 80 minutes of utter Kosmische beauty. [Krautrocksampler, p.132-3]

ATEM [1973]

Personnel: Edgar Froese, Christopher Franke, Peter Baumann

The first contrast leaping out of the grooves of Tangerine Dream’s fourth album is the return of percussion. The title track announces itself with massive pounding tom-toms which herald the arrival of warriors and lumbering war-mammoths at Jupiter’s city-sized colosseum. Or so it seems. But things are rarely as they seem in this inter-planetary realm. A waterfall cascade of aluminium jets giving way to tortured organ begs for science-fiction imagery featuring reptilian soldiers who may just eat your brain. Then it all suddenly quietens down. It’s rather tranquil, in a blue-green misty sort of way. That the violence of the opening does not return is something of a relief, even though the synthesiser undulations become more urgent in the final few minutes.

The second side of Atem has three pieces. “Fauni-gena” is like pre-dawn in a night-bird sanctuary, all twittering flutey bleeps and slow stately waves of mellotron. This is possibly the only piece from ‘Pink Years’ Tangerine Dream that could be described as pretty, building tension in an agreeable way as it moves towards a chirping, thrumming almost-climax. “Circulation of events” delivers what it says on the box and follows nicely from what has preceded. Final track “Wahn” (mania, delusion) has deranged echoing voices attacked by punishing drums, providing a circularity with the opening of the album that makes for satisfying, if uneasy listening.

Eerie dreamy ambient passages giving way to unnerving primal drama are a feature of Atem. It means breath, or breathing. Maybe because there is a tendency to forget to breathe as the atmospheres seep into your cortex. This album is a world away from the electronic atmospheres and melodic washes that the band would embrace over the next few albums following their re-location to the Virgin label. Atem marks the end of an era. Though there are few passages containing actual tunes, Krautrock fans and lovers of experimental lost-in-space music should consider buying a ticket. But try not to get lost; it could be a very long way back.

CREDITS

^ Thanks to Michael Hodgson for his enthusiasm about the idea of collaborating on a TD post and for his insight and substantial input. The idea may well have germinated while queuing for entry to the Melbourne Tangerine Dream concert late last year and although it has taken a while to reach fruition, it has been fun to exchange ideas with a fellow lover of progressive music on this seminal electronic band.

Michael has been an enthusiastic fan of all things prog for over twenty-five years. Spurred on by the invention of early Queen albums he rapidly embraced the major ‘prog’ bands (Pink Floyd, Yes and Genesis) and was soon taking chances on albums by artists as diverse as Eloy, Renaissance, Gong and Focus. Having embraced all things musically progressive, Michael now works for the Prog Archives website as a collaborator under his prog-de-plume Aussie-Byrd-Brother, where he has written an astounding 374 reviews covering a wide range of prog related sub-genres.

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What do you do when you have the entire catalogue of an artist, the ‘Best of’ albums, most titles on at least two formats, plus a goodly selection of bootlegs? If you answered, ‘See your therapist’, you get points plus that special superior feeling that attends the suspicion a fellow music lover may just be more deranged than you. If you said, ‘Buy anything with the artist’s name on it’ you get points as well, but the superior feeling might be a bit tenuous.

Recently I reviewed Discoballs: A Tribute to Pink Floyd, a 1980 curio by studio outfit Rosebud, and was delighted to find several readers promptly endorsing the purchase and even expressing mild envy. Today we feature two further discs in the Vinyl Connection Collection with the words Pink and Floyd on the cover, yet neither are by the band.

Keyboard player and orchestral arranger Dee Palmer (formerly David Palmer) made a first appearance in popular music arranging for Bert Jansch on his 1967 album Nicola. A little later a connection was formed with Jethro Tull, Palmer filling the role of arranger on nine albums beginning with debut This Was and concluding with the ghastly Too Old To Rock ‘n’ Roll in 1976. But that was not the end of the Tull connection as Palmer became a full-time member for four albums beginning with Songs From The Wood.

Some time in the late 80s Palmer decided to employ those well-developed arranging skills making over classic rock music. Fittingly, Jethro Tull was the first target, A Classic Case being released in 1986. The one we are interested in here is

Objects of Fantasy: The Music of Pink Floyd, released on classical label RCA Victor in 1989 (credited to David Palmer and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra).

Now you may have read bad press about orchestral albums of rock music. Indeed, you may have heard it from me. Yet overall, I’d have to say that Objects of Fantasy isn’t bad at all. The arrangements are varied and clever, highlighting those aspects of each song that most reach out to the listener. On “Goodbye blue sky” for instance, the use of a small choir (including Floyd alumnus Clare Torry) polishes up the pretty melody nicely, while the orchestral fade-in (and studio effects) on “Money” are grand. When the drums kick in, accompanied by horn stabs, it’s all rather exhilarating. It is also fair to say this track also shines a light on one of the main weaknesses of orchestral rock. String sections just aren’t punchy enough to grab you by the collar and shake. Still, this one tries pretty hard and Phil Todd’s sax solo is great – respectful without being entirely slave-ish – leading into a tasty guitar solo. Guitarists, incidentally, are listed as Mitch Dalton and Steve Hackett^#.

For those interested in arrangements, Objects provides an object lesson. In “Hey you”, for example, the melody is introduced all sweet and gentle before a build-up that references “Another brick in the wall” and integrates the guitar-work with the orchestra very neatly. Indeed, the guitar solos are uniformly fantastic, especially on “Another brick in the wall” and the vocal rich “On the turning away”. The vocal version of “When the tigers broke free” is probably the most I’ve enjoyed anything connected to The Final Wall, ever. The way it segues into closer “Eclipse” provides a suitably dramatic climax. (Listen here)

“Wish you were here” is a funny one. It uses brass to state the main theme, then the horns offer counterpoint to the strings recapitulating the same phrase. It all sounds very Magical Mystery Tour and brings a smile below a slight frown that someone is messing around with this classic, melancholy song. The brief synth voicing is lovely… then the bloody French Horns charge back for another tilt at the melody. Perhaps this track demonstrates both best and worst of this type of project – part new light through old windows, part velvet-wrapped brick through plate-glass. Anyway, it’s exhausted me. Time for a lie down.

Somewhere around the time that the boy was conceived, some bright musician on the other side of the world came up with the idea of turning rock ‘classics’ into lullabies. The Rockabye Baby series of CDs was duly born in 2006, transforming (the cover asserts) “timeless rock songs into beautiful instrumental lullabies”.

How do they sound? Well the blurb tells you. “The soothing sounds of the glockenspiel, vibraphone, mellotron, and other instruments will lull your baby into a sweet slumber”. Sure, but not real glocks, vibes and synths. Just voices on a modern electronic keyboard, one that blends all timbre and melody into a tinkly mush. This is aisle music for the Baby Heaven Supermarket.

You think it’s gonna be good, a bit funny, a bit tongue-in-cheek. That’s why I snapped up the Pink Floyd one when I saw it just after the boy turned one. Anything that helped the afternoon nap was worth a whole lot more that the price of a CD. And the blurb! Get a load of this bottle of breast-fed wryness…

“Using Pink Floyd’s gorgeous melodies and imagery, this musical journey takes baby to the bright side of the moon and beyond. While your child is comfortably sleeping (they just couldn’t bring themselves to say ‘numb’), these gentle recordings are sophisticated enough for everyone to enjoy. Your crazy little diamond is going to shine on in a dreamland courtesy of Baby Rock. You’re gonna wish you were there.”

How many Floyd references did you pick there? My, now those copywriters must have chortled at their own cleverness. Pity they couldn’t work “Us and Them” into the pitch.

Again, how does it sound? Like tinkly New Age massage music, of course. Glance back at those featured instruments: all upper register, all blessed with celestial sustain, all as edgy as mashed banana. Structurally, the arrangements are relatively faithful to the original songs, but with Pink Floyd songs the melodic range is pretty limited anyway so when you add in the sameness of the tonal palette, the result is just bland. Which is, perhaps, the whole point.

“Hey You” stood out due to the triplets used in the accompaniment while “Mother” caught my attention mainly due to the contrast between the plaintive whining of the original version (veteran readers will know that we are not overly fond of The Wall here, unless it’s being used as a form of attack) and this ostensibly soothing rendition. Final track is “Brain Damage” from Dark Side. Just what you want for your child, really.

So Lullaby Renditions of Pink Floyd was not on high rotation in our nursery, nor anywhere else. Yet it still sits on the shelf in the section marked ‘Floyd Oddities’ (or Floyditties for short). What is more, if I saw certain other titles in the Rockabye Baby series at the right price, temptation would flutter. Thinking I really must be brain damaged? Maybe. But if you could resist lullaby versions of the Ramones or Black Sabbath you’re a stronger person than me, baby.

^# For those less obsessed with prog than Vinyl Connection, Steve Hackett was an integral part of the classic Genesis line-up and has a string of interesting solo albums to his credit. This is also the point where I sheepishly own up to buying this disc purely because of Hackett’s name in the credits.

It was well after leaving High School that I acquired my first stereo. Sure, the family home had several devices capable of emitting music: a Bakelite mantle radio in the kitchen, my Father’s Elcon reel-to-reel tape recorder, the sideboard sized stereogram in the lounge, all polished wood and frowning classical records. But all of these were controlled by the adults and closed to anything but serious music. For a number of mid-teenage years, the only aural space I could occupy was provided by a tiny transistor on which I listened to AM pop radio or the late night ebb and flow of the cricket beamed from England. All this changed when I sold my extensive slot car set and purchased a small cassette player, entering – for the significant sum of forty-five dollars – a world of recording and playing music I chose… but still no records.

But I had friends with records. Or at least, I had one friend. Rod – no stranger to these pages – lived a couple of miles away, a hot bicycle ride in summer sure enough, but the rewards were great. Not only was his mum lovely and always ready with a cold drink, but Rod’s large room was semi-detached from the rest of the house, meaning that we could sit around and play records on his powerful HMV stereo to our hearts’ and ears’ content.

Two speakers and 8 watts per channel. What power! The windows shivered in fear as we blasted out his LPs. And no record was blastier or shiverier than Black Sabbath Vol 4.

From the moment you picked up the record it shouted POWER. A timeless solid-rock typeface framing the mustard coloured high-contrast photo of a wild-winged raven man, arms and feathers aloft in salutary greeting. In stark symmetry, the back cover had the tones reversed and the songs listed sideways next to the album title. If you turned it sideways to read the songs, the raven was on its back, broken-winged and spread-eagled.

After an opening lick of electric blues, the sound rumbles forward like a smoke-belching steamroller grinding heavy sludge under “Wheels of confusion”. An up-tempo middle section whirls like carrion birds over a putrid dump before descending to the riff again. The final section has some wicked guitar work over an insistent, catchy base. Although quite unfocussed across eight minutes, “Wheels” is an arrestingly addled heavy prog overture to the album.

“Tomorrow’s dream” is more focussed, having a strong vocal and another pounding riff. This is also the point you realise that whilst the twin barrels of Black Sabbath are undoubtedly Ozzy Osbourne (wailing and gnashing of teeth) and Tony Iommi (demonic riffery), the rhythm section of Geezer Butler (low throbbing stuff) and Bill Ward (smashing things, hard) are the elemental foundation.

The piano and mellotron ballad “Changes” is a striking change of pace and tone. Sure, the lyrics are dreadfully clichéd and adolescent, but back then we loved the pathos of it all. If only we clichéd adolescents had the chance to love and lose like that.

God knows why they included the piss-weak experimental snippet “FX”; perhaps to build expectation for “Supernaut”, one of the Sab’s finest moments. Fantastic riff, great vocal, driving rhythm. Grab a cushion: there is black magic here that forces your head to bang.

Side two is sonically fascinating. Though Rod and I probably didn’t notice at the time, there is an increasing signal-to-noise ratio throughout the twenty minutes of distressed vocalising and frantic guitar-straffing that presages space-rock, stoner-rock, and any number of metal sub-genres.

Back then (and now) I love “Snowblind” despite (then and now) having no personal experience of the white substance at its centre.

My eyes are blind but I can see

The snowflakes glisten on the tree

The sun no longer sets me free

I feel the snowflakes freezing me

Class As notwithstanding, it’s an exciting slab – or perhaps line – of addictive rock music.

After that we have a song that was the template for the entire genre of doom metal, “Cornucopia”. Hm. I fear I might well get assassinated for straying into the treacherous maze of metal sub-genres, where hatchet-wielding men in ragged black tour t-shirts glare with bloodshot eyes from behind every bush. Better make a run for the exit…

The pretty pastoral interlude of “Laguna sunrise” amply demonstrates what sensitive souls these Birmingham lads are cursed with. Thank Hades the crunch returns in “St Vitus dance”, the closest thing on Vol 4 to a straight ahead up-tempo rocker. Final song “Under the sun” could well have been the template for the entire Spinal Tap oeuvre, and I mean that in the nicest possible way. It also showcases a psycho-emotional confusion that played out in Ozzy’s lyrics. Am I alone? Is there meaning or a higher power?

Well I don’t want no preacher telling me about the god in the sky

No I don’t want no one to tell me where I’m gonna go when I die

I wanna live my life, I don’t want people telling me what to do

I just believe in myself, ’cause no one else is true

These existential musings are accompanied by scorching guitar explosions from Tony Iommi, though I always find myself wincing at the repeated upwards riff. The massive elegiac final section, however, is hugely, absurdly magnificent. Ozzy may have staggered under the crushing wheels of philosophical confusion but Tony thunders on…

It’s oppressive in Sabbath-land, but also comforting. Like being wrestled by an overweight, somewhat dim giant who really wants you to have a good time – as long as you don’t mind a few bruises or perhaps a couple of broken bones. At the end you might well find that the thumping has demolished your blues with the cathartic cudgel of heavy rock.

At the time, Tom Clark in had this to say in Rolling Stone (December 7^th, 1972; read the whole fabulous review here):

Molten rocks hurtling across space imitating the origin of the universe, you dig? Ah, lay those chord slabs on my grave… whew. The Sabs are genius.

For those of an adjectival bent, here are the ‘Album Moods’ associated with Black Sabbath Vol 4 by the Allmusic Guide:

Cold

Angry

Bitter

Bleak

Druggy

Gloomy

Hostile

Intense

Malevolent

Menacing

Ominous

Paranoid

Sombre

Visceral

Wintry

It was pummeling fun revisiting Black Sabbath Vol 4. And while we’re talking about dense and dark, sometime I must tell you about the first LP I ever bought. It was another favourite spin in Rod’s room and has a title redolent with both existential power and heavy prog potency. Be afraid, boys and girls, for Death Walks Behind You.

*

I’ve just woken from a fitful doze, 34,000 feet above the Caspian Sea. Not that it is visible as we hurtle through an orange-pink upper altitude cloud carpet at 578 mph, but it’s down there somewhere below the crumpled sheets of puffy stuff. That is what the animated map tells me, anyway. What a clever little screen that is, the one on the back of the seat in front. TV shows, pretend radio stations, over a hundred films; video games, trivia competitions… and I’ve used none of it. Except this: the new David Torn album Only Sky is featured in the Jazz section. Has there ever been a better album title for ‘in flight’ entertainment? How could I not listen? Especially as just last week I was enjoying Polytown, the 1994 album by Torn, Mick Karn and Terry Bozio. So out come the noise-cancelling headphones —ceaseless roar to persistent rumble for forty dollars, thank you Aldi— and plug meself in.

For those unfamiliar with the New York based guitarist, Torn has delivered his astringent chops to a clutch of famous chaps including David Bowie, Don Cherry and, er, Madonna. Here, applying his instrument’s whammy bar and making extensive use of a loop pedal, Torn steps out into his own space, solo and alone.

Opening piece “At least there was nothing” creeps forward just like a sky blown dawn; hesitant, hopeful. Slow sustained notes like rays of sound arc through the ether; low sighs and piercing cries. So little air but so much atmosphere. After almost six minutes a surprising new voice enters —is that an electric oud?— drifting into the piece from another place, another time. Then it has gone and the eight minute opening is over.

“Spoke with folks” sounds just like you would expect, a wistful folky slice of melody full of quiet rivers and fishing poles laying unregarded in a midday torpor. Yet this roots-infused piece, evocative of Daniel Lanois, paints the backwoods scene rather than actually inhabits it. Like a remembered summer in a half-forgotten land, unsettled by a few agitated images.

The next piece flows downstream beautifully. “OK, Shorty” has another spacious melody presented simply with lots of reverb and discreet noise-breath. After two long pieces, “Shorty”’s brief three minutes provide a welcome note of concision.

Noise steps forward in no uncertain terms in “Was a cave, there…”. Again, huge hollows for the distortions to explore on this massive twelve minute canvas that seems to expand the further you venture in. It is not entirely comforting to gaze out into the very early, very empty sky with this piece as soundtrack. There’s an ominous repetition, an almost Hitchcockian build-up of tension. Is that a mechanical space-falcon attacking off the port wing? Or just the sun glinting on another aeroplane tracking its stratospheric path to who-knows-where? Two words intersect: experimental and unsettling.

The cloudscape has changed; handfuls of pink-topped bath foam make a cheery high altitude carpet. I want to jump out and play dodgem on a rainbow-powered cumulo-scooter. “Reaching barely, sparely fraught” has a persistent low pulse —the closest thing to rhythm so far— while over the top drifts a beautiful melody. But not pink fluffy pretty, more ice-shard needle-beautiful. Another long eight minute excursion, this one oscillates along a noise—melody trajectory full of the same grandeur and mystery I see out the porthole. I’m loving this album. So spacious yet at a molecular level, so dense.

“I could almost see the room” creeps forward then lashes out with swipes of industrial thrum. Coming after 38 minutes flying Torn’s sky, another exploratory thirteen minute piece was almost too much, especially one that could soundtrack “Revenge of the Psychotic Cyborgs” or “Angst in Space”. Or maybe, after 38 hours awake, I’m a tad impressionable. No. This is a singularly scary dystopian chunk of fucked-up experimentalism.

Seventh track is “Only sky”. I wonder if the title is a Lennon reference or if David Torn wrote this while cruising the stratosphere like your correspondent.

Imagine there’s no heaven

It’s easy if you try

No hell below us

Above us only sky

We’re passing over Constantinople just now. I think of troubles in Turkey and Greece, the overwhelming waves of refugees exploding towards Western Europe. It’s hard not to imagine a hell below us.

This London front page was published today, several days after penning the above paragraph

But Torn’s title track leaves dystopia a bruised memory as the guitar —always echoing into space— layers melody on wisps of silence.

This is a solo album that aches with yearning, screams for solace, weeps with resignation. It is stark and sensitive, terrifying and tremulous.

There are two further pieces; the eastern tinged “So much what” and mischievous, quirky closer “A goddamned specific unbalance”, but we’re approaching Budapest and breakfast so it is time to wrap up the air miles. I’ve listened to Only Sky three-and-a-half times in the past twenty hours and I find myself thinking of the title of the Dave Eggers novel that lies unopened in the bag at my feet. Could Only Sky be A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius? Perhaps; it is certainly a singular statement. But I’d need to hear it with my feet on the ground before deciding.

David Torn “Only Sky” [ECM, July 2015]

*

This video of the first concert of his 2015 tour in support of Only Sky was posted on youtube by the artist.

“I’ll be in meetings all day but you can take the car and go exploring.”

My friend Jo was zooming down the M3 from London towards the coast, expertly nipping in and out of traffic and dodging belching lorries as I sat in the passenger seat feeling very much on the other side of the world.

It was a few days after my arrival in England; first time outside Australia, no longer wandering inside the jet lag fog, but still hemispherically off-balance. I’d arrived a day after Jo’s house had been burgled; apparently this was a regular enough occurrence that Jo was not overly perturbed. Although not a huge quantity of goods had been stolen, one unscheduled departure was her stereo. Knowing my passion for music, Jo insisted that the first thing we did was drive out to buy a replacement music system. “You know about stereos, don’t you? You can help choose,” she said. “And we’ll go past Buckingham Palace en route.”

Really, that’s all you need to know about Jo. Thoughtful, practical, immensely hospitable, she helped this confused, timorous Aussie find his travelling feet with her warmth and generosity. So we bought a modest stereo system and I was able to be slightly useful by setting it up in her lounge. One CD to have avoided the burglar’s sack was The Road To Hell, Chris Rea’s album of the previous year, so we enjoyed Chris’s husky blues-tinged songs over a glass of red. To check out the tape function we played one of the travelling cassettes I’d compiled to sustain me on adventures. The familiar Australian music and a further glass or three of vino rosso helped the acclimatization process enormously.

Back on the M3, I did have qualms about borrowing the flash company car for the day while my host was working in Poole, but I didn’t let on. What was I to say? “Thanks, but I’m too scared to drive in a strange country (that uses the same side of the road and most of the same traffic conventions)?”

Having provided a hand-drawn map to ensure I knew where we would reconvene at six that afternoon, Jo trotted off to her business meetings and I sat for a few minutes in the vacated driver’s seat contemplating (a) the controls of this unfamiliar European vehicle, and (b) what to do with the day. Concluding that a good start would be (c) getting out of the multi-story car park, I eased the vehicle towards daylight and adventures.

The first excitement came rather sooner than I’d expected, in fact before I’d gone more than a few hundred yards. At the first roundabout, as I broke into a cold sweat trying to navigate across two busy lanes to the exit I wanted, the car stopped. Actually, the engine stopped and the car sort of lurched to a standstill. Assuming my tentative and incompetent driving was to blame, I tried to start the motor. Nothing. Drivers accumulating behind me communicated their concern via restrained use of their horns as I concluded that if the car wasn’t moving by itself, then I’d better move the bloody thing myself.

Round the roundabout just far enough to no longer block traffic I panted to a stop and collapsed against the boot to review the situation. A loitering pedestrian who appeared to have enjoyed my efforts pointed to the yellow line by the curb. “Better not stay there,” he advised, “You’ll get booked.” Thanks mate.

As I was catching my breath another interested party arrived: a local policeman. After I’d explained the situation he kindly wrote me a note aimed at shielding me from the wrath of Poole parking inspectors, known for their steely-eyed adherence to the rule of the yellow line.

Because nothing ensures one’s enthusiasm for pushing broken-down motor cars like being on holiday

These interactions having taken some time, I wondered if perhaps the car might have recovered it’s energy too. Turned the key… Brmmm! Hooray!

Driving cautiously into the countryside I started to relax and look around. The sun was breaking through fitful cloud and I caught a glimpse of some water in the distance. As I crested a hill and saw fields daubed with morning sunlight, I took a deeper breath and loosened my grip on the steering wheel fractionally. That’s when the motor died again. Thinking quickly (or at least, thinking a tiny bit) I pushed the gear selector into neutral, turned off the key, and coasted downhill. It was a hill of sufficient length that, unhurried by any vehicles behind, I had a couple of minutes to contemplate the options as we took the long decline in serene silence. Just as we hit the lowest point and the road began to rise again, I muttered a quick prayer to the gods of internal combustion engines, turned the ignition key and voila! the engine started. But that brief meditative coast had been enough time for a decision to be made; back to Poole I’d drive, surely no more than five or six miles away at most, find a garage where I could leave the car and make contact with Jo. A plan.

Suffused with renewed determination I drove towards one of those enormous British roundabouts where the central grassed area is the size of a football field, indicating my intention to turn left. The car indicated its disagreement by dying for a third time. Rolling to the road edge, just off the carriageway, I felt my resources drain away into a slushy pool of misery and sat for quite some minutes without thinking at all.

In these days of ubiquitous communication devices and constant connectivity it’s easy to forget how isolated you can feel stranded in the middle of nowhere with a bung motor and no idea what to do. I can remind you: pretty fucking miserable.

Eventually I flagged down a friendly van driver and together we nutted out a plan. The car’s manual indicated that there was a dealership in nearby Bournemouth. As that was his destination, he offered me a lift to town and directions on how to get to the dealership. Once there, the corporate card Jo had cleverly left tucked into the manual ensured their co-operation. They dispatched a tow truck — with me along for directions — to collect the dead motor. After hooking up the car and returning to Bournemouth it was a doddle for me to catch a bus back to Poole — or, as I had now re-named it, Fucking Poole — and ensconce myself in the appointed bar with a mere hour to wait until Jo joined me at the end of her working day. How time flies when you’re having fun. I used the space to rehearse various ways to divulge to my friend that not only had I managed to kill her car but that I was not even in possession of it any more. But I needn’t have worried. Jo is a person of formidable resources and after being appraised of the key features of the problem, she sprang into action. Within a remarkably short time a replacement hire car had been arranged, the next day’s work schedule re-arranged, and a decision made that we would stay the night at Brighton, a hundred miles east along the coast.

A couple of hours later, as evening became a memory to ultramarine night, we were zooming along the M27 towards a smart hotel (that famous one on the Brighton foreshore, don’t you know) and it seemed that, at long last, I could exhale. Perhaps Jo would be OK with me playing one of my travel tapes? No need to even ask.

Into the cassette player it chunked. Side one, opening with “Rosanna”, an instrumental piece by Australian band Sebastian Hardie. As the delicate ascending guitar phrase crept out of the speaker I felt something start to unclench inside. The plaintive melody kicked in, soaring on a wave of romantic melancholy that triggered a softening inside that was only going in one direction. “Jo,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster, “Would you mind if I had a little cry?”

“Not at all,” she assured me, turning up the volume to provide a vestige of aural modesty.

*

Sebastian Hardie’s Four Moments is the debut album of one of Australia’s most European-sounding 70s progressive bands. They formed in Sydney in the late 60s but changed members and styles quite regularly. By 1973 they had evolved their own sound based around the compositions and guitar skills of Mario Milo. Signed to Polydor, they toured with Osibssa and Lou Reed (?!) and released their first album in August 1975. The country’s first symphonic progressive band did rather well with their debut; it got to #13 on the Aussie charts, aided by the single “Rosanna”. There were reports that when Sebastian Hardie supported Focus on their Australian tour they blew the Dutch band off the stage.

The music is rich, orchestral prog, full of deft synthesiser washes and keening guitar. There is variety and melody, delicacy and grandeur. Fans of Camel, Mike Oldfield and mid-70s Yes would be certain to appreciate Four Moments. It is one of only a handful of albums that can sit next to Tales from Topographic Oceans and hold its own, in no small part because it is more focussed and concise. Side one is a suite of four inter-connected pieces (“Glories shall be released”, “Dawn of our sun”, “Journey through our dreams”, “Everything is real”, all written by Mario Milo except the third, a group composition). Although there are occasional vocals, the voice is so well-integrated that I tend to think of the album as instrumental. The lyrical themes convey a sort of humanistic striving, full of non-specific but positive sentiment.

The second side comprises two instrumental pieces, the six-minute “Rosanna” and “Openings”. I love the way “Rosanna” opens with the exact same phrase that ends side one, transposed down a couple of tones. A nice touch that helps integrate the sides. The melodic strength results in these pieces sounding like songs even though there is no human voice.

Hearing Four Moments again after so long reminded me of both its prettiness and essential safety. Yet at its best, the music soars. I also recalled how music, at its best, can ground you too.

*

An occasional series featuring LPs boasting ‘fine art’ on their covers, with commentary on the music and something about the art.

#3

JETHRO TULL – Minstrel in the Gallery [1975]

THE MUSIC

After the patchy but commercially successful Warchild (#2 in the US), Jethro Tull’s eighth album was an energetic and consistently excellent return to form. Combining ballads, tasteful application of strings, lashings of English folk and some of the most piquant guitar-work in recent memory, Minstrel in the Gallery is an unfairly overlooked dish on the Tull menu. Probably the only thing missing for world-wide acclaim and mass consumption was a killer single.

It’s all there in the opening title track: a folky preamble dripping with caustic observation then a kick up with some searing Martin Barre guitar. Add in a couple of time shifts and a rocking reprise of the verse and you have a great opening to the feast.

“Cold Wind to Valhalla” shows that you can engage in Norse mythology without bombast (cf “Immigrant Song” from LZ III) while “Black Satin Dancer” croons, sighs and rocks its ballet shoes off. On side two, extended suite “Baker Street Muse” evokes aspects of Thick as a Brick with shifting tempos and moods and a returning melodic theme that ties it together effectively.

There is an attention to detail here that rewards repeated listening. Probably the only quibble is the somewhat muddy production; the drums are soggy and Ian Anderson’s voice lacks the cut-through clarity that draws you into his story-telling. This aspect is improved on the 2002 CD remaster, which also includes three interesting bonus tracks (two with strings) and a brief live performance teaser of two Minstrel songs.

Overall, a terrific addition to the Jethro Tull larder.

Diary Note: Minstrel in the Gallery was released on 5 September 1975

 *

THE ART

This lithograph comes with several names along a common yuletide theme:

Christmas is Coming

Christmas Revels, Hadden Hall

Twelfth Night Revels in the Great Hall

When published in The Mansions of England in the Olden Time in 1912 it bore the caption seen above, perhaps suggesting that they revelled like this not just for Christmas, but the whole year round.

The artist, Joseph Nash [1809 – 1878] was an Englishman who, in addition to being a lithographer, was a painter of watercolours. His architectural works, often enlivened by people occupying the spaces, were very popular.

I love this lithograph. There’s an energy of celebration and fun, unless of course you are the monkey in the ball and chain or the miserable Yeti. Would your six-year-old self be brave enough to ride a crocodile? Look closer…

On the left a persistent suitor is being firmly rebuffed (“I believe you may be inebriated, Mr Weathercock!”) while on the right (of course) stand the Lord and Lady, observing the revels from a safe distance. “Bravo, peasants. Party like it’s 1839!” I rather like that Tull edited out the aristocrats while just squeezing in the chap on the table toasting the band.

Meanwhile, behind and above, as the jests, japes and capers unfold, stand the minstrels in the gallery.

 *

Art Link

Haddon Hall, Derbyshire: The Banqueting Hall

Joseph Nash [1809 – 1878]

LP/CD

Jethro Tull – Minstrel in the Gallery [Chrysalis/EMI 1975/2002/2015]

In May of 2015, Tull released a “40th Anniversary La Grande Edition” of Minstrel, featuring a new stereo mix (and a 5.1 surround mix) by Steven Wilson. In addition, a bonus CD includes a contemporaneous concert (Paris, July 1975) and a short live film. The album also includes some BBC versions of Minstrel songs. Full details at the band’s website here.

Title Song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PMQNqBB7Am4&feature=youtu.be

*

The previous  Art On Your Sleeve posts were:

#1 Procol Harum – Exotic Birds and Fruit

#2 Osibisa – Osibirock [with JDB]

*

While we love celebrating album cover art here at Vinyl Connection, it’s worth remembering that those sleeves contain records (or, ahem, CDs). So for this first edition of (yet another) occasional feature called “Listener’s Digest” I have chosen four albums that appeared in Album Cover posts over recent months.

Variety being the ear-spice of musical life, we have one album from each of the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Plus four diverse genres: Electronic, Progressive, Singer-songwriter, and Alt Pop. Something for everyone, with any luck.

*

A collaboration between legendary synthesiser wiz Klaus Schulze and Rainer Bloss, Drive Inn sounds very much of its time — mid-80s sequencers providing a bright palette of synthesised sounds. Bloss had recently toured with Schulze, appearing on the latter’s 1983 Dziekuje Poland double live album; clearly the collaboration was a positive experience for both musicians.

Side one has four shorter pieces that motor along – nothing really zooms, nothing crashes. Opening piece “Drive Inn” sets off at a smart clip, cruising through the suburbs until – with a burst of Fairlight orchestral flashes – it warps into the distance. “Sightseeing” has those twittering flutey calliope voices that scream “New Age”, though this is undercut by the vigorous percussion. Fairly tedious, though. “Truckin’” is not the Grateful Dead live staple, but a brooding piece that strongly evokes the contemporaneous film music of Tangerine Dream. Creepy synthesised strings make this my favourite track on the album.

Side two shows more variation, though still travelling comfortably along a pre-planned route. First up is “Racing”, unsurprisingly a fast-paced, percussion heavy ride with odd strangled vocalising that, frankly, sounds more like someone experiencing gastro-intestinal pain than anything automotive.

At just over 11 minutes, “Road Clear” is the centrepiece of the album and quite satisfying. Several melodic threads weave in and out of the traffic, changing lanes now and then – but never dangerously. Rather like and updated “Autobahn” but without the wit and retro-wink of the Kraftwerk classic. Sign-posting the destination is “Drive out”, a mid-sized van of a piece rolling down the highway towards the final truck stop.

Bloss went on the make two further volumes in the Drive Inn series; I don’t feel a pressing need to take those trips. But this one is fine. Why is it here? Its’ cover provided the feature image for the initial ‘Car Covers’ post.

Rating

Vision and Innovation: 18/30

Playing and Composition: 22/30

Listener Enjoyment: 18/30

X-Factor [eg: cover design, genre bonus, reviewer bias] 6/10

Total: 64/100 (3 stars)

*

I have to confess that I am not a big Barclay James Harvest fan. If you are, best to skip the next couple of paragraphs to the other James. At various times I’ve owned (and listened to) a dozen BJH albums but rarely have I been excited. Even the earlier stuff has less interest than you’d expect from a band who first released their ‘progressive’ music in 1970.

Baby James Harvest is their fourth album, from 1972. Four long-players in two years. That might just tell you all you need to know. Frankly, I bought this for the album sleeve, having been searching not-very-hard for a decent baby cover to use in a long-planned Birth to Death album cover project. The project realised, I thought I’d better give the LP a spin. Sadly I cannot report a bountiful harvest of interest. It’s all so nice, so safe, so late-70s Moody Blues.

Only one song stood out in two attentive listens: “Summer soldier” is an interesting arrangement with some well-assembled sound effects contributed by the producer, Peter Tattersall.

The Allmusic guide generously summarises Barclay James Harvest thus:

Purveyors of pastoral chamber-prog, rife with surging rock energy, boasting a unique mellotron-driven sound.

Here is an uncharitable alternative:

Long-haul perpetrators of somnolent prog-lite, sweetening pedestrian songs with stings-by-numbers mellotron while grinding out a vast catalogue of predictable, anodyne MOR rock.

Rating

Vision and Innovation: 10/30

Playing and Composition: 15/30

Listener Enjoyment: 12/30

X-Factor [eg: cover, design, x-less factor, reviewer bias] 4/10

Total: 41/100 (2 stars)

*

James Taylor having provided the backbone of the 9 Lives cover story, it seems only fair to visit one of his albums.

Young James was amongst the initial wave of singer-songwriters. His first, self-titled album was released in December 1968, nine months after Joni Mitchell’s Song To A Seagull and a month after the first solo release by Neil Young. That it was recorded in London and released on the Beatles’ Apple label adds groovy historical context to what is a very strong debut.

Produced by Peter Asher, James Taylor consists of an interconnected suite of a dozen acoustic songs, some enriched by subtle strings and linked by sweet little instrumental interludes. From the opening ‘Don’t talk now’ where the simple, catchy tune is accompanied by bluesy harpsichord (true!), if you let yourself be drawn into this beguiling land of whimsical observations and puzzling relationships you will emerge at the end with a quiet, satisfied smile on your face.

It all fits together so well it is not especially helpful to trawl through the songs — either you enter this gentle chamber pop kingdom or not — but let me highlight a couple of favourites.

Taylor’s song relating his time in a psychiatric institution, ‘Knocking ‘round the zoo’, is both self-aware and angry.

There’s a chick who’s paid to be my slave

But she’ll hit me with a needle

If she thinks I’m trying to misbehave

‘Something in the way she moves’ and ‘Carolina in my mind’ have become classics of the singer-songwriter genre and with good cause. Both are strong, timeless songs. Paul McCartney plays bass on the latter, which was released as a single. I’ve sung along to it many times…

Can’t you see the sunshine

Can’t you just feel the moonshine

And ain’t it just like a friend of mine

To hit me from behind

It’s the hurt in that final line that adds depth. Shadows and light.

Check the song titles:

‘Night owl’ versus ‘Brighten your night with my day’

‘Sunshine sunshine’ versus ‘Rainy day man’

Welcome to the cloudy sunny world of James Taylor, terrific in 1968, still going strong in 2015.

Rating

Vision and Innovation: 26/30

Playing and Composition: 25/30

Listener Enjoyment: 23/30

X-Factor [eg: cover, design, sartorial bonus, reviewer bias] 8/10

Total: 82/100 (4 stars)

*

The Mutton Birds were a 90s New Zealand band based around the song-writing prowess of Dan McGlashan. Rain, steam & Speed was their final studio album, released in 1999 and chock full of songs that might have been written by a less satisfied Neil Finn, sung in a voice like an antipodean Joe Pernice.

The carefully crafted alt-pop songs gently pulse with resigned humanity as they amble along sighs of melody. The opening verse of ‘Last year’s shoes’ encapsulates McGlashan’s vision perfectly:

There’s a thin strand of winter inside

This long summer hillside

No matter how hot it gets

But there is a consistent self-mocking humour that prevents McGlashan’s songs descending into bathos. In ‘Goodbye drug’ he takes a recent ex- to the airport.

I got you coffee from the machine

It was a grey and it smelt like kerosene

But you took it and you left town

Along with everything that wasn’t nailed down

The wonderful cover photo is credited as “Airborne biker, 1940” by Hulton Getty and appeared in the post 10 MORE MOTORISED ALBUM COVERS.

If you don’t know New Zealand alt-pop, check out The Mutton Birds. I recommend starting with the marvellous Envy of Angels.

Rating

Vision and Innovation: 20/30

Playing and Composition: 24/30

Listener Enjoyment: 20/30

X-Factor [eg: cover, design, hemispheric bonus, reviewer bias] 7/10

Total: 71/100 (3.5 stars)

*

Tell me this cover doesn’t earn bonus points for style. Go on, I dare you.

*

Jazz has nearly as many sub-genres as metal, and that is really saying something. Having stumbled across the jazz-funk of The Crusaders in the early 80s, I began exploring this laid-back but groovy territory, finding it an enjoyable late-night adjunct to the frantic fusion I’d been fuel-injecting for nearly a decade. So I accumulated albums in much the same way as I’d explored progressive music; noting regular players, logging instruments, dipping into catalogues.

Sometimes it seemed that jazz-funk albums in the mid-70s used a recipe that went something like this…

Prepare a base of funky (but not too funky) rhythm, preferably using either Steve Gadd on drums or Ralph MacDonald on percussion or both;

Fold in some Bob James;

Add strings for sweetness (avoiding excessive use or syrup will result);

Drop in a popular film or TV theme, or if desperate, a pop hit;

Season with exotic textures to taste;

Record cleanly and mix well.

(All ingredients sourced in the USA)

Here is a slice from the collection, all chosen —for no justifiable reason— from 1977.

*

Maynard Ferguson – Conquistador  [CBS 1977]

The silver-haired trumpeter turns in a solid if unspectacular effort that offers ballads and more up-tempo numbers bedded down on sheets of brass. Opening with “Gonna fly now (Theme from Rocky)” amply demonstrates the populist nature of this album — Ferguson’s most successful — though I will own up to enjoying the similarly mainstream-courting “Theme from Star Trek”. George Benson guests stylishly on “Mister Mellow” while Bob James adds a nice solo to an arrangement of his own “Soar like an eagle”. The “Rocky” theme was released as a single and helped the album to Gold status.

6 / 10

*

Bob James – BJ4  [CTI 1977]

Mr James may well have been the hardest working man in pop-soul-jazz-funk during the 70s. Employed as a producer/arranger for CTI, he also found time to guest on many albums and release nine of his own. That’s just the 1970s, mind. His role in popularising “smooth jazz” might alienate him to some, yet his influence is undeniable. BJ4 is pretty standard BJ fare, cross-over pop-jazz pieces that have plenty of jazz stylings while often sounding like TV music (and I don’t mean that as an insult. Probably). All the usual suspects are present and correct; Eric Gale on guitar, the leader on keys, the Gadd/MacDonald rhythm combo, well-arranged strings/brass. I like the romantically filmic “Where the wind blows free” and “Treasure Island” for Art Farmer’s clipped trumpet and Gale’s guitar solo. Nice. Like a warm bath.

6 / 10

*

Eric Gale – Ginseng Woman  [CBS 1977]

Jazz-funk albums of this era often include a cast of thousands and Eric Gale’s second solo outing is no exception. I blame Creed Taylor myself, though the infection clearly spread to labels other than CTI. Strings, vocal choruses, phalanxes of brass (here including the ubiquitous Brecker brothers) and tag-team percussionists are the go. Many of these players will be well-known to fans of the genre: Bob James turns in an interesting synth solo on the opening title cut, as does Grover Washington Jr on sax. The drum/percussion team of Steve Gadd and Ralph MacDonald is exemplary as always. Gale’s solos are lively and interesting, especially if you like a range of effects being employed, yet the album doesn’t quite achieve lift off. Calypso tinged “Red ground” is pleasant and sees Washington breaking out his tin whistle. A dash of reggae and slurp of vocals don’t lift the Hall & Oats hit “Sara Smile” above ho-hum. Highlight is the title track.

6.5 / 10

*

Ramsey Lewis – Love Notes  [CBS 1977]

Stevie Wonder guests on two tracks from this instrumental album by pianist/keyboard player Ramsey Lewis. His big hit of 1965, “The In Crowd” was long gone but Ramsey’s popularity continued as he maintained connection with the prevailing trend of soul infused jazz-funk. After a strong opening with “Spring high”, things get a bit too blandly ballady with the syrupy “Love theme from ‘A Star is Born’” and nondescript with “Shining”. The four songs on side two are stronger, two composed by the wonderfully monikered multi-instrumentalist Derf Reklaw Raheem. Despite its vocal chorus —a regularly deployed device in this genre that regularly adds very little, vocals without actual singing being pretty naff— I especially enjoyed closer “Stash dash” that ups the funk quotient from foot-tapping to booty-shaking.

6.5 / 10

*

Jimmy Ponder – White Room [ABC 1977]

A popular side-man, guitarist Jimmy P has appeared on over 80 albums by other artists. His tally of more than 15 solo albums isn’t too shabby either. Unfortunately the opening song on this album is neither funky nor particularly jazzy. It’s pretty much a straight ahead soul tune, sung by the leader in a pleasant baritone over oh-so-smooth strings. Things improve thereafter with Ponder’s fluid guitar well to the fore. His sound is reminiscent of George Benson —perhaps the vocal number was an attempt to emulate Benson’s cross-over pop success— with hints of Grant Green. “Easy” is a good tune, and probably didn’t need string sweetening, while “Bro’ James” is the funky stand-out on side one. Cream’s “White Room” works rather well in a jazz-funk arrangement; I definitely prefer Sonny Burke’s synthesised Arp strings over the real thing while Ponder wisely chooses wah-wah soul-groove lines over Clapton-esque licks.

6.5 / 10

*

Billy Cobham – Magic  [CBS 1977]

After the Mahavishnu Orchestra folded, Billy Cobham produced a string of first rate solo albums (covered here) of which this, sadly, is not one. It’s not the fault of poor playing; musicianship is excellent, particularly the rhythm section of Cobham, bassist Randy Jackson and percussionist Shiela E. Joachim Kuhn is fine too, whether on piano or synths while guitarist Pete Maunu has good chops (though his solos seem to prize speed over emotion). It is mainly that the material is simply not strong enough, and no amount of vigorous playing can hide this. The tendency to mellow out into smooth jazz territory (“Leaward winds”) or add clarinet (chirpy “Puffnstuff”, complete with dreadful vocals) does not help at all. Highlights are the sparky “AC/DC” and part one of the title track before the wet vocals appear. Opener “On a magic carpet ride” is good too, meaning that this is half of an excellent album where the non-excellent parts are pretty dire.

7 / 10

*

Spyro Gyra – Spyro Gyra  [Amherst/MCA 1977]

The long and successful career of jazz-funk-pop instrumentalists Spyro Gyra began here. In fact the whole thirty-album catalogue is basically contained in the opening cut of this, their debut. “Shaker song” has a bright bouncy rhythm, a catchy melody presented via the sax of founder Jay Beckenstein, and tight ensemble playing. Keyboard player Jeremy Wall shares compositional credits with Beckenstein pretty much 50:50, his contributions being a little more exploratory and atmospheric. I especially enjoy the dewy prettiness of “Mallet ballet” followed by fractured bounce of “Pygmy funk”, both Wall compositions. The latter has some terrific marimba by David Samuels. This is a strong debut with a level of invention and variety that faded somewhat as the band found their formula.

7.5 / 10

*

Crusaders – Free As The Wind  [MCA 1977]

Let’s cut to the chase. Free As The Wind is not only the best album in this list, it is arguably the best in the Crusaders extensive catalogue and one of the finest examples of this sub-genre, period. Bubbling with strong tunes, effervescing with great playing, this deliciously tight ensemble shines throughout the eight original pieces.

Highlights are many; the opening melodic smooch of keyboard maestro Joe Sample’s title track, Wilton Felder’s sax work on “I felt the love”, the infectious loping groove of bass player Robert “Pops” Popwell’s “The way we was”, the tight-ass funk of guitarist Larry Carlton’s “Nite crawler” featuring terrific electric piano from Sample. And that’s just side one.

As I’ve mentioned before (“Nice Sample, Joe”), this album was responsible for my getting into jazz-funk. That none of the above albums reach the heights of FATW says more about the quality of this one than any particular lack in the others. Yes, there are strings, but deployed with restraint so that they subtly fill out the background rather than divert attention away from the tunes. And yes, Ralph MacDonald appears on percussion.

9.5 / 10

*

Even if the music is not especially to your taste, enjoy the rich diversity of album covers on display here. I was going to caption the photos but decided it would undermine the reviews. But here they are anyway, as a kind of footnote:

Chasing the poo-coloured clouds away  [Ferguson]

Boring  [James]

Intriguing or disturbing?  [Gale]

What a brilliant photograph  [Lewis]

Jimmy pondering his stereo self  [Ponder]

(Not quite) Magic  [Cobham]

Love the design even though it is totally unconnected to the music  [Spyro Gyra]

There is something deeply soothing about this picture  [Crusaders]

Feel free to comment on the music or the covers, or both.

*

Man, I’m tired. this lecture better be interesting. where’s a seat out of the firing line. yeah up there, two-thirds back on the right…

Please find a place as quickly as you can as I am about to begin. There are some up there at the back, and a few down here. Don’t be anxious, I won’t bite. Though I will talk. This is Minimalism so if that is not what you were expecting, you are free to leave. Otherwise, I hope you will hear something of interest, and not just the drone of my voice.

It is generally agreed that ‘minimal music’ appeared in the mid-60s, arising out of the US avant-garde scene in which John Cage was a principal figure. Most writers and commentators, Sitsky for example, list La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass as the key composers. You will find, by the way, a list of references and suggested further reading at the conclusion of the lecture notes.

Although a glance at the discography —an appendix to your notes— will immediately reveal that La Monte Young produced but a modest number of recordings, this lack of ‘catalogue’, if you will, should not suggest a concomitant lack of importance. Alex Ross lays it out clearly at the beginning of his section on West Coast Minimalism:

“Minimalism proper begins with La Monte Young”.

We’ll hear more about Young later, but for now let us stay on the West coast, specifically California, where Terry Riley was born in June 1935. Ah, the murmur I hear informs me that some of you have heard of Mr Riley. His is a much less sparse discography. Which brings us to our first listening experience, an excerpt from Riley’s best known, and in terms of popular culture, most influential work, A Rainbow In Curved Air.

If we accept, for a moment, the assertion of John Cage that music can be described by four characteristics,

pitch

loudness

timbre

and d u r a t  i  o   n …

needle drop, head droop, I’m falling into the swirling doodle expanding over the faint blue lines of my open notebook…

organ notes dripping like rivulets from a broad-leafed tropical plant. quite suddenly, a spray of fast notes hits my face like a shower of rain. i’m wandering a forest of tall swaying ferns, feet crushing vegetable matter to release heady earth aromas, warmth, damp warmth, sensual and mysterious. a bird flits past, chirping a brief ecstatic welcome… the air shimmers with energy, humidity bends the light… under all, through all, the pulsing mid-range throb of the organ flurries… to a sudden stop. Silence punctuates and startles. [0:00 — 6:45, “A rainbow in curved air”]

Terry Riley met Young in the late fifties. “What La Monte introduced me to,” Riley said, “was this concept of not having to press ahead to create interest.” [Ross, p.539] This was in stark contrast to the European tradition.

Are there commonalities amongst the works produced by an array of composers? David Cope (1997) suggests qualities that may characterise minimal music:

•  Silence

•  Concept music

•  Brevity

•  Continuities: requiring slow modulation of one or more parameters

•  Phase and pattern music, including repetition

…the repeated circular pulse is present but subdued. a patter of tiny feet like benign millipedes scampering over a hollow log, this dream unfolds strangely as a half-unseen path opens into a clearing where a long-haired vicar wearing love beads is playing a church organ, tribal stops fully extended, while a dozen naked maidens with painted faces dance around tapping bongos. the organ cascades, the hair swirls, synapses connect. it sounds frenzied but is more ecstatic than primal; a short organ sermon exhorts us to rise up into the air, swoop and roll on the rainbow curves, higher, higher, gone! [6:50 — 18:40, “A rainbow in curved air”]

Now if you are not sure about this music, perhaps even discovering a negative response, you are not alone. Robert Fink (2005) quotes composer Pierre Boulez as suggesting minimalism “can be understood as a kind of social pathology, as an aural sign that American audiences are primitive and uneducated.” In the vernacular one might respond, “Ouch!”

Another unimpressed European was respected British writer Ian MacDonald —who many of you will know for his seminal work on the Beatles songbook Revolution in the Head— who claimed that minimalism is the “passionless, sexless and emotionally blank soundtrack of the Machine Age, its utopian selfishness no more than an expression of human passivity in the face of mass-production and The Bomb” [2003]. One can only wonder what it was about this music that angered him.

There is a quaint story associated the the piece that occupies side two of Riley’s 1969 album, “Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band”. Edward Stickland, author of Minimalism: Origins, relates it in the extensive booklet accompanying the excellent compilation, OHM+: The early gurus of electronic music, 1948—1980.

Terry’s baby daughter Colleen (now a physician) used to call him “Poppy”, adding “Nogood” when she was piqued. The piece developed from Terry’s tape experiments of the early 60s… [Having learned the rudiments of saxophone, the resultant piece…] later evolved into “Poppy Nogood”, which appeared in various incarnations and various “All-Night flights” with dancers, light shows, mimes, and so forth.” [p. 56]

Note the different feel of this piece.

…something is fading into my brain, a quiet, slow, crescendo of quivering organ, creeping forwards in phased atonal waves like a dream of darkwater oceans. a repetitive, subdued squawking suggests a barn-full of large disconsolate birds, shuffling around seeking something they only vaguely recall. disruption. discontinuity. awake.  [0:00 — 4:20, “Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band”]

Unlike side one, where Riley is credited with playing “electric organ, electric harpsichord, rocksichord, dumbec and tambourine, “Poppy Nogood” is for soprano saxophone and electric organ. There is also lots of reverb and echo, giving the piece a shifting, dream-like quality.

… some rolling waves of organ pulse, further chirruping fades away to a drone… drifting harmonics; a plaintive brass-like call echoes over misty hills. shaman bagpipes croon to wheeling stars, it’s midnight, not dawn. echoes bounce in slow motion, the calling voice rises over but never obscures the ever-present drone. occasional low tones add a basso profundo croon… space for slow deep breaths, breath of earth and endless space…  [5:40 — 11:10, “Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band”]

There is no question that Terry Riley courted and was embraced by the alternative culture of the 60s and 70s, performing extended concerts to chemically transported hippies and immersing himself in eastern teachings. Although it appears almost unbearably twee today, the sentiments embedded in the story on the back cover should not be despised for their naivety:

“The energy from dismantled nuclear weapons provided free heat and light / World health was restored / An abundance of organic vegetables, fruits and grains was growing wild along the discarded highways”

…a call, a chorus, a new dawn. hands aloft in praise, in supplication, salute. dissonant yet melded, the pace quickens with circular organ and saxophone flurries like time elapse of an unfolding flower, like an accelerated dawn that reaches midday in minutes… the pace varies, like the natural world varies, insects buzz, birds dart, cubs gambol, foliage grows before your eyes in this most psychedelic of nature documentaries.  [11:10 — 21:40, “Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band”]

Denying the organic siren-call of this music is as pointless as donning a wetsuit to take a shower. Doing so will make you frown and twitch. I wonder if Ian MacDonald might have had a different experience of minimalist music if he had taken John Lennon’s advice.

“Turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream, it is not dying”

MUSIC

Riley, Terry (1969) A Rainbow in Curved Air. Columbia Masterworks.

Various Artists (2000) OHM+: The early gurus of electronic music, 1948—1980. Ellipsis arts, 3CD/DVD

REFERENCES

Cope, David. 1997. Techniques of the Contemporary Composer. New York, New York: Schirmer Books.

Fink, Robert (2005) Repeating ourselves: American minimal music as cultural practice. Berkeley: University of California Press, CA.

MacDonald, Ian (2003) The People’s Music. Pimlico Publishing, London, UK

Ross, A (2007) The rest is noise: listening to the twentieth century, Picador, NY.

Sitsky, L. (2002), Music of the twentieth-century avant-garde: a biocritical sourcebook, Greenwood Press, Westport, CT.

If you have got this far, then it is time to reveal that, other than the Ross book which resides on the VC music bookshelf, partially read but fully endorsed, the other quotes were sourced from a succinct and very helpful Wikipedia article (here).

Over the past two-and-a-half years, Vinyl Connection has avoided writing about many of its long-term favourite albums. How to put the love into words? Can something fresh be discovered? Steely Dan’s sixth album is a case in point. It has long been a favourite —as seen in those troublesome ‘Best’ lists— yet I have baulked at the prospect of trying to share something of its enduring magic. Well, the baulking is over, friends. I offer you (Steve Gadd drumroll, please)… Aja.

Sue me if I play too long.

From its striking cover —timeless in its enigmatic simplicity— to the fadeout of the final song, this record resides comfortably in classic album territory despite sharing few similarities with other 1977 commercial monsters such as Fleetwood Mac Rumours or The Eagles Hotel California. Where Fleetwood Mac simply fizzed with positive energy when they thought about tomorrow (‘Don’t Stop’), one of Steely Dan’s protagonists dreamed of dying behind the wheel (‘Deacon blues’). While the Eagles’ Jesus people sought salvation at ‘The Last Resort’, the Dan’s pagan Josie ‘prays like a Roman with her eyes on fire’. Recorded primarily in sunny California, it set Raymond Carver-esque stories of wanderers and misfits in a heartless Gotham city that seems shadowy, no matter how bright the sun. But then, the fire in her eyes is most clearly seen at night.

♥

BLACK COW [A1]

The first song and already I’ve hit an impasse. Which copy of Aja should I listen to for this article? Perhaps the vinyl re-issue by Back on Black. It is a nice job and the record is new. Somehow the red vinyl Canadian pressing I picked up in suburban Melbourne years ago must also be included. The re-mastered CD was pretty good —better, anyway, than the muddy sound of the disappointing Citizen Steely Dan CD box set. Or that Original Masters copy purchased only last year —bloody expensive for ‘not great’ condition but outstanding clarity. Better audition them all with ‘Black Cow’, Aja’s opening song of alcoholic dissipation and relationship disintegration.

Five spins later, here is the assessment of each version in descending order.

1. Mobile Fidelity Original Master vinyl (1977). Warmth, detail, immediacy. The way the cymbal splashes hang in the air. A fully three-dimensional soundstage. Worth every penny, despite the surface noise.
2. CD Re-master (1999). Great detail, open sound. Horns sound great; full and rich. Perhaps a smidgen less presence than MFOM.
3. Vinyl Re-issue (2008). Excellent sound. Vocals seem slightly more forward, for some reason. The ‘Black Cow’ Fender Rhodes solo sparkles like groovy tinsel.
4. Box set CD (1993). Soundstage quite two-dimensional; less detail than 1–3, though surprisingly warm sound, especially the backing vocals.
5. Coloured vinyl (1977). Least detail; a bit flat all round. Looks great though.

AJA [A2]

The March 2000 edition of Mojo magazine boasted a cover photo of the Sex Pistols: ‘Nauseating, filthy, obscene’. Inside, as well as an entirely un-erotic full-page photo of Sid Vicious licking Nancy Spungen’s nipple, was a substantial feature on Steely Dan. It is easy to imagine that Messrs Fagen and Becker found the irony delicious. Much more tasty than Sid’s snack, anyway. But I digress. A side-bar article chose six of the band’s ‘most succulent cuts’ and Aja’s title track was among them.

Their masterpiece. Eight minutes of densely arrange fusion-pop with vivid and exotic themes, a pervading sense of oriental yearning and a breathtaking instrumental passage featuring a multi-climactic duet between drummer Steve Gadd and saxophone legend, Wayne Shorter.

Fagen: ‘We went for the whole eight minutes in one take. It was the only sensible way to do it. We played the musicians some kind of piano demo —piano and guitar and us stamping our foot— and we had long charts made up. Steve Gadd taped it up on his drum kit, we did a couple of takes and that was it.’ [MOJO, p.89]

If you say so, Donald. I love the cool, spare guitar solo of long-time collaborator Denny Dias and the 50s sci-fi synth under the closing drum solo.

DEACON BLUES [A3]

An unlikely single (US #19), the song completing Aja’s first side is a tale of yearning not for love, but for some kind of artistic transcendence. The protagonist sees himself living out the dream of the doomed jazz musician. There is a sense of sincerity, of vulnerability, when he sings,

I cried when I wrote this song

Sue me if I play too long

This brother is free

I’ll be what I want to be

But wait on, throughout most of the song he is observing, ‘I gazed through the glass’, or looking towards a future, ‘I’ll learn to work the saxophone’, not living the present. Perhaps it’s all a delusion, ‘a world of my own’. This is the enigmatic story-telling of Steely Dan at its absolute best, enriched by the jazz chops of saxophonist Pete Christlieb.

‘We wanted a hard bop player who could just come in and burn through a bunch of unfamiliar changes without having to screw around,’ says Fagen. Christlieb navigated the song’s harmonically intricate landscape in a single take… and true to the songwriters’ plan, he brought an authenticity to the track. [Breithaupt, p. 51]

1001 Albums finds the song ‘as tender as it is bleakly humorous’ [p. 380]. While ‘Aja’ is the spiritual core of the album, ‘Deacon Blues’ is its bruised heart.

PEG [B1]

A ‘solid party tune’ according to 1001 Albums, ‘Peg’ is also ‘irresistibly funky’, largely due to Chuck Rainey’s bass joyously shagging Rick Marotta’s drums. They are one sexy coupling. Perhaps that was part of the problem when it came to the guitar solo.

Many of the hottest guitar players in Los Angeles tried to play the legendary guitar solo in ‘Peg’ to Becker and Fagen’s satisfaction. In all about eight different guitarists attempted it in what Becker and Fagen described as a ‘pantonal 12-bar blues with chorus’. Larry Carlton tried it, Robben Ford tried it, Walter Becker tried it himself twice, but in the end it was Jay Graydon who nailed what they were looking for. [Sweet, p. 146]

Not that employing different players concerned Donald and Walter. Over thirty were used during the Aja recording sessions, a continuation of the practice they had developed over past albums. You might think that this annoyed the session musicians, but not so.

‘Amongst players in LA, working on their stuff was a very big deal,’ confirms Lee Ritenour. ‘You’d see guys at other sessions, and they’d be asking, “Did your solo make it?”’ Chuck Rainey says his ‘presence on the recording of Aja has done more for my career than all the other projects put together.’ [Breithaupt, p. 55]

Frustration? Maybe. Dissatisfaction? Nup. Peg, it will come back to you.

HOME AT LAST [B2]

Perhaps an update of Homer’s odyssey, or maybe an observation on wandering geographically while being immobilized emotionally, the wistful quality of ‘Home at last’ makes it my favourite moment on Aja. Even Michael Phalen, who provided acerbic liner notes to the original release, liked this one; ‘Beneath the attractive, effortless flow of words and music, one discovers a lyric presence and finesse of perception that is a rare thing on disc nowadays.’

Well the danger on the rocks is surely past

Still I remain tied to the mast

Could it be that I have found my home at last

Home at last

Is that repeat of the final phrase an echo or a sigh? Or perhaps the fantasy of the eternal exile? Meticulous attention to detail in the lyrics contributes much to the timelessness of the songs; Cole Porter is both hero and model. Alliteration, assonance and metaphor are deployed extensively. By polishing the language but not nailing down meaning, Fagen and Becker leave inviting portals in their stories for the listener to move in and out of at will.

I GOT THE NEWS [B3]

The liner notes to the original release became infamous due to writer Michael Phalen complaining about this song’s ‘pointlessly obscene lyric’. If you are curious (and who wouldn’t be), look up ‘Spanish kissing’ in the Urban Dictionary. Becker and Fagen remained sufficiently pissed off twenty years later to use much of their 1999 CD booklet essay to poke fun at the hapless journalist. Written originally for The Royal Scam sessions [Sweet, p.150], the song itself jumps and bounces with wicked energy. Doobie Brothers fans will enjoy Michael MacDonald’s contribution to the backing vocals.

JOSIE [B4]

The other danceable and sing-along-able song on Aja closes out the album. It seems like a fast-ish R&B groover but, as Breithaupt [p.48] observes, ‘why use three chords when eight will do?’ Interesting structures were never the goal of Steely Dan songs, they just emerged from the composers desire to create something different that would entertain them (and hopefully others too). Here is Breithaupt’s breakdown of the structure of ‘Josie’.

INTRO [8 bars]

VAMP [8 bars]

VERSE [16 bars]

CHORUS [8 bars]

VAMP [4 bars]

VERSE 2 [16 bars]

CHORUS [8 bars]

INTERLUDE [8 bars]

GUITAR SOLO [16 bars]

CHORUS [8 bars]

RE-INTRO —3 extra beats [8 bars]

TAG W/ GUITAR FILLS [approx. 27 bars]

Knock yourself out following this chart as you listen. Or just bop along to a great minor key blues song energised by R&B groove and jazz stylings. Because the point is this: Becker and Fagen made rock albums filled with songs they found interesting to write and play. The criticisms of coldness, intellectualism, elitism or contrariness were (and are) empty carping. Lee Ritenour said, ‘They were the singer-songwriters who loved jazz’. Some may have a problem with that, but I do not.

Let’s give the last word on Aja to an unlikely fan:

“Up-full and heartwarming… it’s a record that sends my spirits up” — Ian Dury [1999]

♥

REFERENCES / SOURCES

Breithaupt, Don [2007] Aja. 331/3 Series, Continuum, NY/London.

Dickson, Jamie. “Steely Dan – Aja”, in 1001 Albums You Must Here Before You Die [ABC Books, 2001]

Ingham, Chris. “Joined at the hip”, in MOJO – The Music Magazine [#76, March 2000]

Sweet, Brian [2008] Steely Dan. Omnibus, London UK.

Classic Albums: Steely Dan – Aja. Eagle Vision DVD, 1999

Cover photo of model/actress Sayoko Yamaguchi by photographer Hideki Fujii

♥

TOWARDS A TYPOLOGY OF VINYL HUNTER-GATHERERS

While admiring the melodic pop savvy of Paul McCartney, I’ve never felt compelled to follow his solo career that closely. I was always a Lennon man.

Yet you cannot help picking up info and vibes about an album —a magazine article here, an on-line mention there— which eventually resulted in McCartney II becoming lodged in the ‘Look out for at the right price’ section of my vinyl hunter-gatherer brain. Now this ‘Completist’ section is often running as a sub-routine whilst browsing, yet can be quickly overwhelmed by the category of ‘open-mouthed astonishment that you are holding a record in your hands that you’d never ever thought you’d see’, sometimes expressed as ‘Holy Shit, it’s a Grail Record!’

Hang on, you say, there must be more than two categories, surely? And of course, there are. A number of distinct sub-personalities operate when the Vinyl Hunter-Gatherer is out and about. What is more, movement between these disparate ‘selves’ is not only possible, but likely. Interviewing a vinyl disciple using the standard Voight-Kampf [Vinyl] Test should yield results falling into these Top Ten categories.

A.  Collector: ‘This has made my day. Possibly my month! Quick, examine it…Original press, no cover damage… no visible surface scuffs, some light spindle marks on the label. Yes! Yes, yes, yes!’

B.  Enthusiast: ‘Excellent — a very satisfying find. Wonder if I can swing a discount.’

C.  Explorer: ‘Looks interesting and I’m feeling adventurous. I like this label/producer/cover/instrument/sexy coloured vinyl.’

D.  Researcher: ‘Read about this on-line/at a blog/in a magazine. It’s on the radar.’

E.  Glutton: ‘I’ll have that. And this. Yes, that one too… Still need a few more to make a decent haul…’

F.  Completist: ‘This will plug a hole. Not a vital hole, but a good album to have.’

G.  Desperado: ‘Not very interesting, possibly not very good, but I simply must take home something. Preferably several somethings.’

H.  Scrooge: ‘It’s cheap. Better buy it even though I’ll listen once then file for eternity.’

I.  Hint-Master: ‘Oh look, my beloved wife/partner/mother-in-law, they’ve just (re-)issued ……. (insert name of favoured artist or album here). And it’s my birthday/Father’s Day/Hogmanay next week. Fancy that!’

J.  WebCrawler: ‘Almost bedtime, but I might just have a quick browse at Amazon / Discogs / ExpensiveRecords / eBay.’

How to detect the various expressions of Vinyl Hunter-Gatherism? Well, the subject will always manifest physical changes that the trained eye can detect and interpret (such as the ‘Blush’ response associated with being seen with, say, a Wings album) but as there are very few Blade Runners operative, it is only perceptive long-term partners and spouses who can gather and interpret this data reliably. Which is why most Vinyl Hunter-Gatherers suggest their mates +/- children check out ‘that nice little cafe down the street’ when they are aiming to score. Or, for the money-haemorrhaging Category J, wait until they’ve all gone to bed.

This particular Vinyl Hunter-Gatherer had, as noted above, been on the look-out for a clean copy of McCartney II for a while. Not because it is essential or even particularly desired but mostly out of curiosity. A sensible person would simply listen on some web streaming service, but then ‘sensible’ and ‘record collector’ are rarely sighted in the same sentence. In fact a number of copies of this album have passed under our fingers in the past year, but due to the low level of importance/interest, it had not been purchased. Until a month ago when the pickings were slim but the hunger measurable and Paul’s second self-titled album made the journey from shop to music room.

Opening with the album ‘Coming up’ is a strong beginning. The single is both catchy and quirky and although McCartney sounds like he’s on helium (it’s actually a vari-speed tape recorder) and the lyric doesn’t quite challenge ‘Imagine’ —or even ‘Watching the wheels’ (also 1980)— for profundity, it is a lively and positive start. Others must’ve liked ‘Coming up’ too, as it hit #1 in the US and Canada and #2 in Australia and the UK. The ex-Beatle seems to have employed a Casio keyboard (or similar) as the sound of the entire album is characterised by a thin electronic bleepiness that evokes Kraftwerk’s Computer World in a knocked-this-up-at-home DIY sort of way.

And that is because home is exactly where Paul recorded McCartney II. It was —apart from some extra vocals from Linda— an entirely solo effort. Surprisingly the simple cheesy synth sounds and battery-driven percussion work well. There are a couple of instrumentals whose rustic electronica evoke a kind of demo Yellow Magic Orchestra but there is also the melodically sumptuous McCartney ballad ‘Waterfalls’, whose beauty is only enhanced by the minimal setting. It’s one of those moments that remind you that McCartney really could write a good tune. Remember that scene in Douglas Adams’ Life, the Universe and Everything?

From somewhere at the back of the crowd a single voice started to sing a tune which would have enabled Paul McCartney, had he written it, to buy the world.

Well, ‘Waterfalls’ is one of those.

Mr M must have been feeling relaxed and jovial residing in the bosom of his family as there is a streak of mischievous humour through the record. I really like the sequencer-driven ‘Temporary secretary’, a distant cousin of ‘Paperback writer’, without the desperation.

She can be a belly dancer

I don’t need a true romancer

She can be a diplomat

But I don’t need a girl like that

She can be a neurosurgeon

If she’s doin’ nothin’ urgent

If you can ignore the hubris of fantasising about a highly trained surgeon abandoning her profession to nip over to Paul’s place for some dictation, that last couplet is quite amusing.

Less successful is ‘Bogey music’, inspired, Paul tells us, by Raymond Briggs’ classic graphic story Fungus the Bogeyman. Great idea, but whereas the book is a clever and sardonic exploration of existential meaning, the song is a weak and tedious formulaic rocker. Could’ve done much better. ‘Nobody knows’ is another of the standard bluesy rock songs that McCartney can knock out in his sleep, while ‘On the way’ is a sparse blues; a simple song with a strong Paul vocal and a competent guitar break.

Overall, McCartney II —despite its weaknesses— is an entertaining record that I can imagine dragging out now and then, as much for the dawn-of-the-80s synth sounds as anything else. In a phrase, slight but satisfying. And definitely Category F.

Recognise yourself in any of those Categories? 

Go on, share a story…

NEXT: Enthusiasts, Desperados and Scrooges

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Sometimes reading blogs can be expensive: you read, you like, you must have… the purchase is a direct result of reading a particular post. Other times, I’ve noted indirect references to an artist rated highly by the writer and somehow added a pencil note to the old cerebral cortex. An example is the band Earth, alluded to by Victim of the Fury on a couple of occasions in recent months. Knowing his liking for the guitarier end of the musical spectrum, I sort of assumed Earth were a metal band of the, er, earthy variety. Nevertheless, when I saw one of their albums during a recent browse, I opted to take a punt. On reflection, I think this had as much to do with appreciating Victim’s posts and an interest in the writer as any particular vibe about the music, but I bought it anyway and felt quite a thrill as I loaded CD into player; it’s been a while since I’ve played something totally new and unknown. So, in honour of Mr VotF, currently walking like an Egyptian, Vinyl Connection ventures into the genre Allmusic calls ‘ambient metal’ and ticks off both ‘Explorer’ and ‘Researcher’ categories in one fell swoop.

Earth – The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull [Southern Lord Records, 2008]

It is all there in the initial seconds as the first elemental chord crashes out of the speaker and you lean forward, waiting for the second chord, for the resolve, the tension release, the skull-cracking blow. This is big. Huge. And very, very slow.

Not slow like a street sweeper or slow like that boy in Grade 5 who struggled writing his name, but slow like the inexorable grinding of continents. It is Link Wray on a rumbling Mogadon bender, funereal Tony Iommi mourning Ozzy’s absence. Like thunderclouds rolling across a blasted landscape, the waves of guitar chords and feedback brook no argument, bow to no human protestation. Mortals are insignificant to the well-ordered chaos of the hurricane. Those who venture across this Earth would do well to recall Lear’s bitter puncturing of the illusion of human agency…

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; they crush us for their sport”

Yet painting a picture of gloom and brutality is neither fair nor accurate. In “Miami morning coming down II (Shine)” —there are no words in the songs but plenty in the titles— a brief guitar figure showers notes like gargantuan crystal bells while organ adds fluid flow underneath. (Listen) It’s a giant stirring to greet this warm Spring morning and the ground trembles in anticipation… he’s in a good mood.

“Engine room” opens with deep piano notes, which is quite surprising given the amped up guitar accompanying the keys, but amply demonstrates the beautiful mix on The Bees Made Honey. This is also one of three pieces that feature Bill Frisell on extra guitar. As if Earth needed more guitars. But Frisell is in terrific form, blending notes, effects and noise into a stew that is always thick but never glutinous.

It is a lot of noise for a trio, especially considering that percussionist Adrienne Davies clearly graduated from the Moe Tucker school of minimalist drumming. But when you think about it, the whole band is a rhythm section: guitar, bass, drums, keyboards. No soloing as such, more shifting, chiming sheets of sound based around the “electric guitars and amplifiers” of Dylan Carlson. It is utterly fitting that the amps are given instrument status.

A word about the CD package of The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull. We vinyl tragics can be quite sniffy about the poverty of the visual experience with little silver discs but Earth have done a thoughtful and creative job here. The none-more-black outer slipcase promises relentless darkness, yet removing the jewel case reveals Arik Roger’s striking cover art, a riot of fecund decay. It manages to be both beautiful and slightly disturbing.

Although I was a little weary of the lumbering key largo waves by the end of seven substantial tracks, I enjoyed this album very much. It may be all adagio ponderoso but there is an authentic commitment to uncovering beauty in these deep roiling oceans of sound. In the right mood, you can immerse yourself in a monumental unfolding. There is life on Earth.

And now, to complete a Grand Day Out, we’re leaving Earth for the moon.

At the beginning of this piece I referred to direct purchases: albums sought and obtained as a direct result of reading a fellow blogger’s review. A case in point was when I read Mr 1537’s account of the Moon Duo album Mazes. Sounded interesting to me. So much so that when I encountered the CD — with a bonus disc of remixes to boot! — I snapped it up. Liked it too, though I spent little time with the remix album. You have to know the originals pretty damn well to derive much pleasure from these (often indulgent) spin-offs, don’t you?

You’ll notice I said that I ‘liked’ Mazes, as compared with, say, fell madly in love with it and played it constantly for 7 nights and days. The latter is a pretty rare reaction these days, not due to jaundiced ears, more the sheer quantity and variety of different music that mysteriously appears at the Vinyl Connection bunker. Even the most exciting new arrivals tend to get spun then shelved. Anyway, something positive must have piqued the old musical pleasure centres, as I did not hesitate a lunar second when I saw a vinyl copy of Mazes on special earlier this year. I liked it a lot when I span the vinyl and I liked the huge orange maze too. Though I’ve kept the latter hidden from the boy and his pen.

So I decided to write about another purchase influenced by a fellow blogger (as distinct from further exploration of those Vinyl Hunter-Gatherer Categories) and I was drawn to something beamed from 1537-land. This is the one I chose.

It’s spinning on the turntable now, in all it’s garage-psych lowish-fi glory. Churning out simple but infectious grooves, it’s cut-price Velvet Underground aesthetic daring you to put up yer dukes and fight it out, then winking and cheekily pinching your bum. Perhaps it was the grinding glory of Earth that somehow infiltrated my cranial music library, or maybe the long-distance motorik beats of Neu! playing in the car today, because there is a relentless quality to Moon Duo too. Even Ripley Johnson’s voice is droney. The guitar sound —grungy and nudging distortion— varies little across the album, though Johnson’s solos are marvellous; extended workouts that soar like home-made rockets and remind me of Nick Saloman, who, as Bevis Frond, has been building guitar-based psychedelic rockets in his UK garden shed for years. I enjoy Bevis Frond songs more (Nick has a fine ear for both melody and hook), but that takes nothing away from Mazes. The phrase ‘jaunty claustrophobia’ was used by Joe and an apt description it is too. I really enjoyed Moon Duo this time around. They’ve got a niche and they scratch it.

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NEXT
Enthusiasm, Desperation, and enduring Scrooge-ness — 3 further categories examplified.

*

Having had a crack at describing categories of record collectors (called Vinyl Hunter-Gatherers around these parts), this post continues looking at further case studies, your correspondent once again being the mandated patient. Sorry, that should read ‘volunteer’.

Enthusiast (B): ‘Excellent — a very satisfying find. Wonder if I can swing a discount’.

Chicago — Live in Japan [CBS 1972]

This double live album had been on my ‘want’ list for years.

After the monster that was Chicago IV —a four LP live album recorded at New York’s Carnegie hall— you’d think that enough was more than enough. But that quadruple album has a thin sound and performances that run hot and cold; it just wasn’t the grab-you-by-the-scruff-of-the-neck ‘in concert’ document that you’d hope for from a band whose surge of brass-driven rock-jazz creativity started in 1969 and, at this stage, showed little sign of tapering off. (It did, quite soon afterwards, but that’s another story). So when I heard about this Japan-only release, recorded the year after IV while the band was in the land of the rising sun, I was more than curious. Rare and good and live. That’s a combination to hit the Vinyl Connection sweet spot every time.

But I only ever saw it once, and it was prohibitively expensive so I passed. And guess what? I regretted not digging deeper into my pouch of Yen. Passed over now and regretted later — every record collector knows the story.

And so, a couple of Sunday’s ago while on a visit to an eastern suburbs den of vinylity, I saw it again. Yep, it was still expensive. Boo hiss, it had a significant scratch at the beginning of side four. The cover was excellent, clean and straight, though the OBI (those paper strips on Japanese pressings that collectors get so excited about) was missing. My response was not quite, ‘Big fucking deal, I’m buying it so there’, it was more furrowed brow and fretful wavering, but the result is what counts. And as everyone knows, you gotta listen through the surface noise, man.

Actually, after a good clean, the scratch isn’t too noticeable and the recording is terrific.

With each side of this double album clocking in between 24 and 26 minutes, there’s a lot of music. Side one is particularly strong, with the edgy punch and spirited blowing on ‘A hit by Varese’ being a highlight. That all but one song on this side are from the album Chicago V, still a month from release at the time of recording, says much about the band’s confidence in the material.

The second side is dominated by James Pankow’s ‘Ballet for a girl in Buchannon’ (Chicago II), a suite I enjoy for it’s varied patchwork of pieces. This is where the hit ‘Colour my world’ comes from, a pretty ballad that unfortunately indicated where the band would position itself by the mid-70s.

A couple of unreleased songs spice things up for attentive fans (Terry Kath’s ‘Mississippi delta city blues’ was a live favourite that later reappeared on Chicago XI; ‘A song for Richard and his friends’ appeared on IV) while devotees of the debut album (your correspondent amongst them) are well catered for with four songs, including Chicago’s boisterous encore version of the Spencer Davis hit, ‘I’m a man’. Chicago III, often ignored when the band’s early recordings are considered, contributes two songs (‘Lowdown’ and ‘Free’) and there is a barnstorming version of ‘25 or 6 to 4’ from the second album. It’s exciting ensemble playing full of energy and momentum, just what a live album should be. If you think of schmaltzy ballads when Chicago is mentioned, check out albums I, II and V, and grab this ripper rarity if you see it.

In sum, an excellent Category B acquisition, despite the scratch not resulting in a discount.

*

Desperado (G): ‘Not very interesting, possibly not very good, but I simply must take home something. Preferably several somethings’.

Wetton – Manzanera — Wetton Manzanera [Geffen 1987]

I like Phil Manzanera a lot. He’s appeared at VC before, and just recently I enthusiastically purchased an upgrade copy of the excellent Primitive Guitars. During a recent lunchtime record store trawl, I found myself clutching Wetton-Manzanera despite several clear indicators that I shouldn’t.

One: Phil’s 80s jacket on the front cover. Yuk. Poor taste in clothes = poor music, doesn’t it? At least, that’s the sense I make of that entire decade of pop music.

Two: John Wetton was much closer to the tragedy of Asia than his sterling work with King Crimson.

Three: The titles suggest a slew of mainstream boy-girl songs. Put this together with JW’s bleached blonde LA rock star look and it spells trouble.

On the plus side, Alan White is on drums and Kevin Godly on backing vocals.

Three votes against and one half-hearted vote in favour. I bought it of course.

You will not be surprised to hear that the album lived down to expectations. Pedestrian AOR with that brittle, two-dimensional production typical of aspiring radio-friendly rock in the second half of the 80s. To be honest I cannot find a highlight. Sadly, this one fits Category G perfectly.

*

Scrooge (H): ‘It’s cheap. Better buy it (even though I’ll only listen once then file for eternity)’.

Tony  Banks – Bankstatement [Virgin 1989]

Of course I grabbed this for fifty pence when it turned up in a Charity Shop dig in the UK not long back. I mean, it’s a solo album by Genesis keyboard maestro Tony Banks, isn’t it? With a clever title, too. Can’t be all bad, surely? Just look at the back cover photo.

Allmusic puts Bankstatement in three categories: Album rock, Contemporary Pop/Rock, Prog-rock (note hyphen). I’d proportion the musical content thusly: 20%, 75%, 5%. As a serious prog-head (note hyphen), this was a cheap but  unsatisfying purchase. I could, of course, listen a few more time and extract some highlights for you, but I’m not going to. 50p was too much. It is likely my time would have been better spent snoozing, as this purchase proved the record-collector adage, ‘You Scrooge, You Lose’. Another Category H record ready for filing.

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If you have a category story to share, please do. It’ll help me feel more normal.

It is a funny thing, the vinyl hunter-gathering lifestyle. Although I have a number of tasty records in transit from exotic locations world-wide (all right, you got me; from the US and UK), the prospect of a record fair last Sunday was too good to miss. A leave pass negotiated, off I trotted, returning home a few hours later with a very pleasing haul of additions for the bulging Vinyl Connection shelves. There were acquisitions in Categories B, C, D and F, indicative of good variety and a satisfactory expedition. Also pleasing was the absence of Desperado behaviour (Cat. G). By the way, if you want a refresher on the categories, they can be found in the post ‘Digging’, here. Suffice to say, the unbleached calico tote bag — I’m an environmentally conscious consumer of polyvinyl chloride products, you know — was as satisfyingly full as my wallet was resoundingly empty I exited the Northcote Town Hall.

I won’t list every purchase here — it would be tediously long and much too revealing of the depth of my addiction — but perhaps a few highlights might entertain.

♠

Zombi – The Zombi Anthology [Relapse 2005]

Zombi – Cosmos [Relapse 2004]

Got interested in this electronic soundtrackesque duo when some enthusiastic postings on a FB Vinyl group coincided with an inviting blog article on their latest release by J Hubner. That’s yer genuine Category D at work, that is. So finding their first two albums, new but at reduced price, was very pleasing.

So far the first album has been spun several times and enjoyed. A simplicity of concept and presentation could risk the music sounding a bit too ‘bedroom studio’ but fortunately there is also enough invention to hold interest. The 2001 self-released debut EP is the better, showing more evidence of thoughtful development of fairly simple ideas. The second EP has that ‘tossed off quickly to ensure we had something to sell at gigs’ feel, which is OK because that is exactly what it was. Looking forward to album two, on muddy green vinyl!

♠

This Mortal Coil – It’ll End In Tears [4AD 1984]

I have owned this 4AD collaborative effort on CD forever, but have never seen a clean copy on vinyl at a price I was willing to pay. There’s a story to be written about this album (or at least its key song) but will have to wait for another post. Suffice to say, this was pure Category B.

♠

John Sangster – Lord of the Rings, Volume 2 [EMI 1976]

The love affair between Mr Sangster, an Australian jazz legend, and Mr Tolkien’s magnum opus was long in duration and prolific in progeny. This is the second double album in a series of three (double albums) followed by a fourth (double album) called Landscapes of Middle Earth. As I really only listen to Landscapes — it has fine playing by members of fusion band Crossfire — this was a classic ‘plug the gap’ Category F purchase.

♠

Larry Young – Lawrence of Newark [Perception 1973]

A couple of weeks ago I flogged the CD of this album in the car for two days straight commuting. It was Buzz of the Week. So I was very excited to see it on vinyl, new and sealed, at the fair. The fact that I totally do not need to double up all these CD titles on vinyl is entirely beside the point, OK?

♠

Miroslav Vitous – Infinite Search [Embryo 1970]

Another interesting jazz purchase. Young Master Vitous gathered a stellar band for this, his debut as leader. In addition to Miroslav’s bass, we have:

Joe Henderson – Tenor sax

John McLaughlin – Guitar

Herbie Hancock – Piano

Jack DeJohnette – Drums

Some will know Vitous as the foundation bass player in Weather Report. I love early Weather Report so I have high hopes for this record. A slightly unusual purchase due to the careworn cover.

♠

Yellow Magic Orchestra – Yellow Magic Orchestra [Horizen 1979]

First album by the Japanese electro-pioneers. Bleepy, chirruping synths, real drums plus brittle rhythms squeezing out of tiny boxes, unfamiliar melodies and oriental humour. Ryuichi Sakamoto’s band started here. Sure, there’s a perfectly serviceable CD of this on the shelf, but look at the cover. And look at the back cover. Case closed.

♠

The final LP I want to share here is one of those exploratory Category C purchases that are a little hard to explain. Let’s start with the evocative burnt sunset cover and go from there.

Original Motion Picture Soundtrack – Phase IV [Waxwork 2015]

What made me pluck this new, sealed LP out of the box? I suspect that multiple stimuli danced across the VC neurones like, er, something light and shiny that catches the eye and totally by-passes the bits of the cortex labelled ‘Sensible’.

The orange landscape and angular henge dwarfing the silhouettes of the human figures spoke of sci-fi leanings, as did the title. It was a nice heavy LP to hold — love those thick cardboard sleeves.

Turning the album over, the first name that caught my eye was David Vorhaus. Under the moniker White Noise, Vorhaus produced several innovative albums of progressive electronic-suffused music starting with the (in)famous An Electric Storm in 1968. Promising.

The next name to connect was that of percussionist, electronic composer and all-round interesting dude, Stomu Yamashta. Here he is credited with ‘Montage music’, whatever that means. But the last LP of his I got, I really liked a lot. Freedom is Frightening was released in 1973 with a fabulous cover painting by Saul Bass. Hang on just a moment! Who directed Phase IV? None other than Saul Bass. And hang on another moment, I have a vague memory that the Brian Gascoigne who composed this soundtrack also provided keyboards for that Yamashta album. Curiouser and curiouser.

But there were more stalls to visit and a diminishing wedge of cash, so I returned the LP and moved on and ultimately out, leaving the premises happy with my haul but still with this niggling niggle about Phase IV. So I sat on a chair and extracted the mobile internet device. Research on the run — gotta love it.

Turns out, Saul Bass made his name as a designer of movie posters and film titles and this was his only film as director. It’s a b-grade sci-fi horror/thriller about ants getting rid of humans, or something like that; made in 1974 and largely forgotten. As was the soundtrack, until Waxworks announced its first ever release in any format earlier this year.

It was enough. Back I went, offered the stall-holder my remaining cash ($30, in case you are wondering) and squeezed a final record into the bag.

So there you have it. Well actually, there you have about half of it. But it will suffice: a selection of new arrivals that spans the 70s, 80s, 00s and 10s and embraces Electronica, Jazz, Jazz-rock, Prog, Alt Rock and Soundtrack music.

So what will I listen to? For that matter, what would you listen to first?

I

We tended to play Dungeons and Dragons without music in the background. Distractions could be dangerous — while you were tuning in to Bauhaus or Tangerine Dream, the chances were you’d get smeared by a troll or jumped by some pesky hobbit thief. But during the refreshment breaks (food, drink, mind altering substances, as per individual choice), a record would inevitably be spun. At Anne and Craig’s place, that often meant a strange and captivating 12” single unlike anything I’d ever heard. Such an other-worldly voice, it somehow fitted the mystery and wonder of our role-playing adventures perfectly; alluring, unfamiliar, perhaps dangerous.

Long afloat on shipless oceans

I did all my best to smile

’Til your singing eyes and fingers

Drew me loving to your isle

II

When I tracked down the CD a couple of years after the album’s release, I was slightly disappointed at first. It wasn’t all sung by that ethereal siren who the cover notes told me was Elizabeth Fraser from a band named Cocteau Twins. Still, there was much to like on the CD, ensuring it remained esteemed for more than simply alerting me to Cocteau Twins (whose fine album Treasure, released the same year as It’ll end in tears, is featured here).

There was something heartbreaking about ‘Song to the siren’ and I was curious to uncover the words carried upon Ms Fraser’s captivating keening.

And you sang

Sail to me

Sail to me

Let me enfold you

III

The infatuation was so powerful it hurt. Lucy had been away on extended leave when I started in the job. Away, I later learned, in rural New South Wales putting space between herself and a long-standing addiction. It did not take long for me to become enthralled by her lazy sensuality and to offer myself as a substitute medicament. Or was she my drug? Whichever, the music started and an intricate dance around intimacy began. Yearning for something within reach yet utterly unavailable provides a rich score for inner turbulence.

Here I am

Here I am

Waiting to hold you

I worked harder on unearthing the words, but Elizabeth Fraser was as elusive as quicksilver.

Perhaps I could track down the song performed by its creator, Tim Buckley. But no-one I knew owned the impossibly rare Starsailor and this was long before the internet.

IV

A change of jobs provided everyday breathing-space from Lucy but did little to dampen my ardour. At night I returned to the urban cottage I rented and sang ‘Song to the siren’ in a wracked, unaccompanied baritone.

Did I dream you dreamed about me?

Were you here when I was falling?

Now my foolish boat is leaning 

Broken lovelorn on your rocks

The second line is really a mondegreen, a recreation made by a listener desperate to complete the lyric but guessing, guessing. What rhymes with rocks? Locks? Lucy, please free me from this desperate prison of infatuation. Mocks? Elizabeth Fraser was mocking my desperate attempts to complete the song; I believed, I needed to believe, that some alchemy of the heart would ensue if only I could sing the lyric in its entirety. Surely the suffocating desire, once exhaled on the breath of melody, would draw Lucy towards this foolish sailor?

For you sing, ‘Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow’;

O my heart, O my heart, shies from the sorrow.

V

I am as puzzled as the newborn child

I am troubled as the tide

Restless nights, shiftless weekends.

At the new job, a mentor became a friend. Soon she was travelling to the United States on holiday and yes, she would try to get me the Tim Buckley album. You see, I’d found that Enigma Retro (a truly great name for a rarity re-issue label) had released Starsailor on CD for the first time. The Aussie dollar was low against the greenback yet I set a gulp-inducing upper limit in order to gain one line of one song.

My friend delivered.

Were you hare when I was fox?

Ah.

I guess the reveal was satisfying, though I truly felt more road-kill rabbit than scheming Reynard.

VI

Alchemy is an unreliable science on which to pin hopes for happiness; the treasure is mostly fool’s gold. Knights and maidens belong in mythic tales of high romance not in suburban Melbourne, where fantasy role-playing games are the safest path to wish fulfilment. Desire was infiltrated by despair, curdling hopeless devotion into something more desperate, more threatening.

Should I stand amid the breakers?

Should I lie with Death my bride?

Hear me sing. ‘Swim to me. Swim to me. Let me enfold you.

Here I am, Here I am, Waiting to hold you’

VII

Travel, adventure; the classic circuit-breaker. It is not the pursuit of glory that draws the foolish hero forth, it is flight; escape from an everyday that has become intolerable. Away, not towards.

And so to the old country first, visiting modern record shops and touching ancient stones, but also exploring the musical present.

At WOMAD in Cornwall, I sat in a marquee amongst bedraggled festival goers while a pretty troubadour sang ‘Song to the siren’. To my delight, she had a number of lines wrong. Afterwards, I casually rushed towards her and engaged in conversation about this most elusive and iconic of love songs. ‘You know all the lyrics? Tell me’. But between the babble of the crowd, the distraction of other music, and the confusion of talking to an attractive woman radiating post-performance glow, my brain could not order those words. Or perhaps the song refused to endorse this betrayal of Lucy.

Silence would enable recall, I was sure. A meet was suggested, later that evening, by the notice board. And later came, and I came, lyric-filled parchment in hand, and later stuck around for quite a while but she did not come. I pinned the words to the notice board, no closer to her, or anyone, than a forgotten name scrawled in smudged pen.

VIII

To Greece, treading the mythic earth of gods and heroes and sucking in the salty air of liberation. No, I did not sail a boat past siren-draped islands nor rescue anything precious from a possessive cyclops. But I did take a ferry south from Athens, carving through absurdly blue Aegean waves, rumbling over the eon-washed bones of Atlantis to Crete, where I met a lovely German doctor who invited me to travel with her for a while.

Both aided and undermined by a half-world commute, the relationship lasted a number of years. Language skills of a different kind were required, and the misses and confusions taught me something of the chastening self-awareness demanded by true intimacy. No fault need be apportioned, the bond just slowly weakened then broke. Yet the lessons stood me in good stead for the next and last union. Stirring the oatmeal of the everyday is, perhaps, the true adventure, the quiet quest.

IX

As I listen to ‘Song to the siren’ I am again transported by its melancholy beauty. I also hear that Ms Fraser appears to have made up the elusive line too. Somehow, that is comforting. All understanding is misunderstanding.

X (CODA)

Ivo Watts, co-founder of the 4AD label, conceived This Mortal Coil as a studio outfit comprising artists/musicians attached to his label playing a combination of their own music and cover versions of favourite songs. But not straight covers; all pieces are given the ‘4AD treatment’. There are layers of reverb, oceans of echo, everything is coated in a gothic ambience made transcendent by the vocals of Elizabeth Fraser (Cocteau Twins) and Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance). Although Tim Buckley’s ‘Song to the siren’ is the obvious standout track —bracketed by the two Alex Chilton (Big Star) songs— the second side flows with a dreamy beauty that is both captivating and timeless. A cover of Roy Harper’s ‘Another day’ flows into the gorgeous instrumental ‘Waves become wings’ (a very Cocteau’s title!) and thence into ‘Barramundi’, another ethereal instrumental by Cocteau’s Simon Raymonde and Lisa Gerrard that dissolves into ocean waves. Lisa plays the yang t’chin, a Chinese stringed instrument that evokes an oriental  balalaika, and sings with microtonal eastern-tinged mystery in ‘Dreams made flesh’, making the cut to Colin Newman’s ‘Not me’ —as close to 80s alt-rock as the album offers— quite an eye opener. Things quieten down for final song ‘A single wish’ whose pastoral, chamber-psychedelic textures evoke late 60s Pink Floyd. The final sung words, ‘It’ll end in tears’, are a fitting epitaph for an album dripping with limpid beauty and transmuted melancholy.

Listen/Watch via the link (I can never get those freaking youtube vids to embed successfully)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HFWKJ2FUiAQ

Having been doing the single parent thing for well over a day now, our appreciation of Ms Connection’s contribution to the good life at chez Vinyl Connection is shooting up the charts with a bullet. Amongst the chores, errands, boy-wrangling and general infrastructure maintenance there has, nevertheless, been space for spinning a few discs. Here are the highlights.

Paul Jacobs – Arnold Schoenberg Piano Music (Nonesuch 1975)

This morning’s first spin was a recent acquisition. That the complete piano music of Arnold Schoenberg fits on one album tells you that keyboards were not a major focus for the controversial Austrian. (Yes, another one). But, as the cover notes tell us, he turned to the piano at key stages in his development as a composer, making this small canon very interesting listening. Now I won’t pretend that I can adequately decipher —let alone explain— all that is going on here, but within reason, I enjoy being stretched and challenged. What I find is this. By listening to an ever-expanding diversity of music, my aural horizon extends and new territory opens up to explore. That’s particularly true of composed music of the twentieth century, an area I’m actively seeking out at present. These piano pieces have great variety of tone and mood though all explore —to a greater or lesser extent— serialism. I’d like to spend time with this record (but probably won’t).

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Focus – Focus 3 (Polydor / Sire 1972)

Dutch band Focus were a group I enjoyed a lot early in my progressive rock explorations. So when I saw a US copy of their 1972 double album, named with admirable language-busting simplicity, I thought it would be nice to have it join its Aussie cousin on the shelves. Especially as the Sire version has this lovely colour-shifting holograph thing that cannot be properly seen in the rubbish photo.

Sadly, I have to report that although I enjoyed 3, there was less invention and exploration here than I recall. Perhaps that is the peril of extending the boundaries over decades — you end up a long way from where you started. Still, an album that has both ‘Sylvia’ and ‘House of the King’ isn’t one to disparage. Though I really do wonder about two copies, even with different covers.

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The Presidents of the United States of America – II (Columbia 1996)

There are albums you regularly see in bargain bins, flicking past them countless times until one day, on a whim (or in a Scrooge kind of mood), you take pity on the disc and buy it. Such was the Op Shop purchase of the second number-titled album of this post (hey, maybe that is a theme worth revisiting!) by absurdly named American power-pop-punks The Presidents of the United States of America. It’s full of moderately hooky guitar based songs that zoom past the windscreen without ever out-staying their welcome. Rocky, a bit funny (I mean, look at the cover), I liked half the songs quite a lot. Stand out was ‘Mach 5’, which is also fun on the bonus live disc. Recorded in Melbourne too! ‘Twig’ on the live CD is good too (Canberra, in case you were wondering). Overall, a bit like Weezer, but not quite as focused. I’d probably pay a couple of dollars for their debut on the basis of this 1996 sophomore effort.

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Larry Young – Lawrence of Newark (Perception 1973)

Got the vinyl at a recent record fair (and posted it in the Vinyl Hunter-Gatherer report) and very happy I was too. It is a wonderful, loose but soaring jazz album that bastes Larry Young’s organ with lashings of percussion and has a terrific contribution from an uncredited Pharaoh Sanders on sax. Contrariwise, you could say that the squawks and yelps of Larry’s organ season the saxophone and percussion meanderings. This is exploratory but not alienating, tribal but with its own identity, distorted —sometimes tortured— yet earthy too. The binding effect of the organ and bed of percussion mean that it sometimes sounds like Amon Düül I and sometimes like Hawkwind goofing off in a tent with a couple of serious guests. If you like the jazz-funk trip-outs of Miles in the 70s, this album is highly recommended. You may be stretched, but in a good way.

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The Sea and Cake – Car Alarm (Thrill Jockey 2008)

When Ms Connection and I saw Tortoise live in Melbourne a few years back I also saw a number of people I recognised from around the record collector circuit. One was a dude who works in the town’s largest second-hand music shop and with whom I got chatting about the excellence of the concert next time I was browsing there. Hearing my lament that I had acquired the entire Tortoise catalogue (not all on vinyl, alas) he recommended The Sea and Cake, the drummer for whom is none other than John McEntire from the band of the afore-mentioned slow-moving herbivorous dome-shelled land dwelling but sea-friendly reptile. (Ah, the lengths we’ll go to to avoid repetition. Shit. Two times to. Damn).

Back to The Sea and Cake. I have several, and this one, 2008’s Car Alarm, was both on turntable and in CD player today. I guess you’d call them post-rock in that this is clearly a band, but not with the usual tropes and modes. There is pervasive and very subtle use of electronics, great drumming from McEntire and a guitar sound that has more of the subtlety of jazz than the bombast of rock. Now, to enjoy The Sea and Cake you have to be able to embrace the whispery, breathy voice of main man Sam Prekop. As with Eric Matthews, it imparts a somewhat effete feel to the songs and how you respond to the band will depend entirely on how you react to Sam’s singing. In the right mood, I like the cool detachment and echoey intimacy. And, hey! the CD version has a bonus Australia and New Zealand track too!

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Anything tickle your earbuds here? Or something you already know and like? Do tell.

Over a decade ago my friend BB introduced me to The Bevis Frond. This was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing part was simple: enjoying Nick Saloman’s psychedelic-infused, guitar-driven songs has been no chore at all. In fact, my respect for his extensive songbook has grown steadily over the years. Which leads us to the curse part: it is a very substantial catalogue of albums. Starting with 1987’s Miasma, The Bevis Frond released no fewer than eighteen albums up to 2004’s Hit Squad, at which point he called a halt.

Although I have a respectable number of titles (BB has a few more besides), I always check out the B section of the racks wherever I’m browsing in the hope of augmenting the collection. Do I need more? Probably not. The Bevis Frond sound is well-defined and rarely strays from the established path of good tunes, broad lyrical interests entering around the human condition and loud guitars, interspersed with introspective English folk-rock reflections. But on every Frond album you are guaranteed at least a couple of moments of either air-punching joy or soothing melancholy or, more often than not, both. And that is why I’ll buy any Bevis Frond album I encounter.

It is also why I was quite excited to learn that Saloman had re-ignited The Bevis Frond in 2011, releasing the excellent The Leaving of London. Production was a little cleaner, recording a trifle crisper than the early days, but the spirit was intact. Hooray!

Since then there has been a studio album every couple of years. A quick bit of mental arithmetic will tell you there was one in 2013, White Numbers, and another just recently released. I took delivery of 2015’s Example 22 last week and quite a buzz it was too, but that is not the focus today. With a bit of luck we’ll have a special Vinyl Connection post on the new album soon.

The Leaving of London opens with the sound of a stylus dropping onto a vinyl record and a posh BBC voice enquiring, ‘Everybody has a favourite tune. Is this yours?’ Then we are off with the mid-paced rocker ‘Johnny Kwango’ which introduces us to several classic Saloman characteristics: a minor chord melody, lyrics that prize humanity over posturing, and a chorus that is eminently hummable. Oh, and a guitar solo. Make it a double? Sure. Here there are two solos multi-tracked so that they interweave and dance. ‘Speedboat’ has backwards guitars and a quiet opening before exploding with wah-wah guitars and a thumping insistent beat nailed by Dave Pearce. We are most definitely off and running.

I love a short song and ‘More to this than that’ delivers a rollicking rocker in 1:45 that even includes the trick of a brief… stop! then continuing. Love it when it’s done well. What follows this raucous 100 seconds is the piano based title track, a melancholy ballad showcasing Nick’s modest pianistic abilities and his oh-so-human voice in the most engaging and endearing way. It’s what I love about this songwriter: there is no artifice or pretence. What you get is what you are willing to hear.

‘Hold the Fort’ is one of those air-punching moments. The riff and refrain work fabulously, rolling with an ocean-deep groove where the sea-themed lyric melds fluidly with the music.

Though this is undisputedly a rock album, plenty of light and shade ensures the ears don’t wear out. ‘The Divide’, for instance, is a gently reflective waltz-time ballad over delicately picked guitars, reminding us that nothing is permanent —especially in the perplexing world of relationships. There are plenty more good songs on the album, but for fear of wearing out your eyes, I’ll leave The Leaving of London here with the observation that, as returns to the fray go, this is a beaut. What is more, it would make a fine introduction to Bevis World.

When I read that there was a new album coming out in 2013, I started looking for pre-order options. Being deep into my vinyl revival, naturally I wanted it on the black stuff and Amazon obliged. Let me tell you comrades, when a new album by a favourite artist arrives in the mailbox and you unwrap a three LP set of spanking new vinyl, that is a damn good day. But you don’t need me to remind you because that is exactly why you are here. So we have White Numbers, two LPs of songs and a third that spreads a 42 minute instrumental jam over two psychedelic sides. Phew!

According to my research, Nick Saloman released White Numbers in the year he turned sixty. I mention this because there are few albums in the entire Vinyl Connection collection that charge out of the gate with the bullish energy and sneering power of ‘Begone’. Forget going gently into that good night, Nick is rocking his orthopaedic socks off with a song that would not be out-of-place on a punkish heavy rock album. Guitars, distortion, ripper bass line. And what a great lyric.

There’s a certain time of life, when you start to see

The things that once were blurred, with clarity

Your planes of thought will leave no vapour trails

And strangely this occurs as your eyesight fails.

“Begone,” she cried, “I can’t take your weight,

We’ll subdivide, we’ll relocate,

I’ll book your ride, I’ll help you pack,

Begone,” she cried, “And don’t come back.”

Things ease back for ‘Opthalmic microdots’, another in a long line of songs where Saloman explores the mystery of how we struggle to understand each other, failing constantly but always coming back for more. The pretty ballad ‘She’s just like you’ covers the same territory with more resignation, deeper sadness. From the personal to the global, the refrain of ‘Cruel World’ reminds us that ‘this is a cruel world’ but here is a beautifully weighted song of endurance, and maybe, just maybe, more than mere survival. It reminds me of a James Branch Cabell quote I’ve often fantasised as an epitaph. The optimist proclaims that we live in the best of all possible worlds; and the pessimist fears this is true. Or, in Nick’s words, It’s the excrement floating on the sea, makes it beautiful to me (‘Beautiful to me’). Yes, he’s angry, but he’s funny too (in a wry, darkish sort of way).

A characteristic of Bevis Frond albums that takes some getting used to are the sudden changes of pace. On White Numbers, for instance, the 85 second punk thrash of ‘For Pat (On the chaise longue dreaming)’ is followed by the folk-tinged Beatlesque gem ‘This one’ which in turn ushers in the churning psychedelic guitar-blast of ‘Neverwas’. Given the limitations of the Frond aural palette (guitars, bass, drums, a little keyboard mostly back in the mix), it is the variety of pace, volume and  tone that holds interest.

BB came up with an apt summary of Nick Saloman’s music: power and poignancy, honesty and humour. Though I cannot improve on that, I’ll throw in a few more adjectives.

Heartfelt

Resigned

Outraged

Wondering

Vulnerable

Acerbic

And deeply human.

If those attributes appeal, buy a Bevis Frond album. Either of these will do just fine as a starting place, knowing the huge back-catalogue awaits if you fall under Nick Saloman’s unique lo-fi spell.

Intrigued by the Bevis Frond story? Here is an excellent interview from The Quietus (August 2013). In it Nick talks entertainingly about gigging with Hawkwind, auditioning for Procol Harum, and the long and winding Frond.

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