No comments
Posted in ,

Quill (1970)


This one came as a total surprise package to this reviewer. On reading their unexpectedly extensive Wikipedia entry I found that they’d played at Woodstock despite being an unrecorded act; that they were a popular regional attraction around Boston and the northeast; and that virtually all of them were multi-instrumentalists with a penchant for swapping the instruments around onstage: guitarists and keyboardists switching to horns, woodwind or cellos at the drop of a setlist.
The Woodstock slot came courtesy of a well-received appearance in NYC, and on hearing of their impending festival appearance with its film and live album potential, Ahmet Ertegun signed Quill to Atlantic’s Cotillion subsidiary in the summer of ’69. The non-appearance of the band’s set in the Woodstock movie contributed to the label losing interest and the band’s insistence on producing the debut album themselves didn’t particularly help their cause with Ertegun either. Although it was released the following year it received next to no corporate support and quickly stiffed. Like many another unsuccessful opus of the period it lay doggo for decades until resuscitated for CD reissue by the excellent Wounded Bird imprint in 2010.
The music itself is also surprising, distinctively and wilfully strange, somewhere between the Doors and early British prog-rock. The band members are all credited under wigged-out pseudonyms, Beefheart-style, and the compositions themselves have similarly wacky titles. Sonically, it’s sparsely realised despite the multifarious talents of the musicians, populated by barely-audible organs and pianos and mixed-back guitars and drums – the most prominent instrument is often the bass guitar. The arrangements are of the apparently loose, adlibbed type that can only result from the most meticulous orchestration and rehearsal. The lyrics are far from the usual hippie abandon of the day, laden with social commentary, and the backings are full of irregular chord sequences and modulations. There’s no telling where it’s going from one track to the next, or sometimes within any given track.
After an unpromising raggedy-ass intro, the opening “Thumbnail Screwdriver” builds around a catchy Hendrixoid guitar riff and features a chiming solo by harmonised guitars. The nine-minute “They Live The Life” is a minimalist shuffle with warped Moody Blues harmonies and a sparse drum solo which builds into a collapsing cacophony of chanting and percussion, apparently a favourite concert closer. “BBY” showcases the alternative horn skills of the players and comes over like Zappa bowdlerising Chicago, while “Yellow Butterfly” uses only flanged, wah-ed guitar and sparse bass and has ghostly vocals redolent of Syd Barrett. The closing “Shrieking Finally” opens with a droll mock Gregorian chant which leads into a fragmented prog workout with distinctive piano trimmings. Although all the musicianship is excellent, it’s probably Roger North’s inventive and technically adroit drumming that stays longest in the memory.
It’s all wacky and it all works. You won’t whistle the melodies as you walk down the street, but without doubt this is another rarity that deserves its rediscovery.

(source)
2 comments
Posted in , , ,

Merkin - Music From Merkin Manor (1972)


Music From Merkin Manor is a strangely interesting album, as might be expected from a group of young longhairs playing a combination of psychedelic, country, and hard rock in smalltown Utah in the early 1970s. The album opens up with "Ruby," a song on which Merkin sound something like the Association on acid singing harmonies that sound slightly off-kilter while being backed by Blue Öyster Cult. Odd, to say the least. There are many recognizable influences on the album, but many of the influences wouldn't seem as if they should be within miles of each other. As a result, a song such as "Take Some Time" has the druggy ambience of early-'70s stoner rock moving into pop verses, before it somehow evolves into a jazz jam. "Todaze" again sounds not unlike the Association (a comparison that consistently holds throughout the album) in terms of the vocals, but only if that pop act was backed by a groovy hard rock band fronted by Carlos Santana that was capable of shifting rhythms at the drop of a dime. "Sweet Country," just as the title implies, tries on country-rock without batting an eye, and many of the songs graft similarly across-the-board influences together, and somehow generally do so in a tidy pop song framework of three to four minutes. It is terribly intriguing to listen to at least once, but unfortunately, the influences simply do not jibe well enough most of the time to sustain any sense of enjoyment or appreciation for the music. The album showed promise, but was far too haphazard to make much of an impression. Rocky Baum showed a nice flair for quirky songwriting, and when it worked, it worked well, but sonically Music From Merkin Manor is only half-baked.---Stanton Swihart


1 comment
Posted in , , , , ,

L - Holy Letter (1992)


L is (was) a project of Hiroyuki Usui, who in some very distant past used to drum for (Fushitsusha), although I don't think there's any recordings with him on it. He was also in some very early incarnations of Ghost, (Kyoaku no Intention) and Marble Sheep, apparently, but again I can't find any albums featuring Usui. Later he popped up in Landfall (whom I don't know anything about) and Ken'ichi Takeda's political 'anti-pop' group A-Musik. The first tangible trace of his art that I'm aware of is this lost little gem, 'Holy Letters', which was released in 1992 on his own label Holy Castle Records, as an 11-track CD + 7" package. Presumably it didn't do much back then - in fact it wasn't until a decade later, when some copies somehow ended up at Aquarius Records, that this album got noticed, and even got an elegant reissue (with bonus track from the same sessions but without the nice over-sized packaging) on VHF Records (in 2004). New linernotes were provided by Ben Chasny (Six Organs of Admittance), who didn't stop at that but formed a duo with Usui named August Born (their only, untitled CD was released on Drag City in 2005). In 2009 Six Organs released a split-LP with Azul, yet another of Usui's projects (with - among others - Masaaki Motoyama, who already played the 'cello on 'Holy Letter') on PSF. Usui also seems to be part of a band called (Gendai Sokkyo, or simply 'contemporary improvisation') these days. So yeah, he seems to know his way around the hip & freaky side of the Japanese underground.

Mention of Fushitsusha, Ghost etc. might have given you the wrong idea though. This is in fact a very relaxed folk album, intimate and moving, featuring gentle bluesy guitar (the opening track is Blind Willie Johnson's 'Cold Was the Ground!'), drones, field recordings, throat singing, didgeridoo... and a surprise guest appearance of Taku Sugimoto on 'Troll'. An album that I've often returned to over the years, one you can't afford to let slip under your radar. Gorgeous. (source)
1 comment
Posted in ,

Wacław Zimpel Quartet - Stone Fog (2013)


Wacław Zimpel jest klasycznie wykształconym klarnecistą oraz kompozytorem. Głównym źródłem jego inspiracji jest sakralna i rytualna muzyka różnych kultur. W swoich kompozycjach często odnosi się do dorobku dawnych kompozytorów, tworząc współczesne polemiki bądź komentarze do muzycznych tradycji. Jest liderem zespołów: Wacław Zimpel Quartet, Hera, Undivided. Wchodzi w skład założonej przez Kena Vandermarka orkiestry Resonance. Współpracuje z Hamidem Drake, Joe McPhee, Mikołajem Trzaską, Michaelem Zerangiem, Giridharem Udupą, Stevem Swellem, Bobbym Few, Markiem Tokarem i Perrym Robinsonem. Eyal Hareuveni – rezenzent prestiżowego “All About Jazz” napisał- “Wacław Zimpel jest jednym z najbardziej obiecujących muzyków europejskiego kontynentu”. “Stone Fog” to pierwsza płyta autorskiego kwartetu Wacława Zimpla. Powstanie Wacław Zimpel Quartet było w zasadzie nieuniknione – czwórka instrumentalistów, których zbliżyły muzyczne fascynacje, wspólne występy w różnych konfiguracjach, a także horyzont europejskiej tradycji: Klaus Kugel z przestrzenną perkusją, przywołującą na myśl muzykę liturgiczną; Christian Ramond, którego kontrabas idealnie koresponduje z abstrakcyjnym i intuicyjnym rytmem Kugela; Krzysztof Dys czerpiący inspirację z pianistyki Prokofiewa czy Skriabina; oraz Wacław Zimpel na klarnetach – chwilami liryczny, chwilami słowiański. Całość osadzona w bardzo europejskim, freejazzowym kontekście. Wacław Zimpel Quartet - to nie tylko spotkanie czterech muzycznych osobowości, to również wspólne korzenie, poszukiwania, oraz rozmaitość osobistych inspiracji każdego z muzyków. (for-tune)


Wacław Zimpel - clarinet Krzysztof Dys - piano Christian Ramond - double bass Klaus Kugel - drums Wacław Zimpel is a classical clarinetist and a composer. Church music and ritual music of various cultures are the main source of his inspiration. His compositions often refer to the works of old-time composers; he either engages in a contemporary polemic with the latter or comments on musical traditions. He is a leader of Wacław Zimpel Quartet, Hera, and Undivided ensembles, and a member of Ken Vandermark’s Resonance orchestra. He collaborates with Hamid Drake, Joe McPhee, Mikołaj Trzaska, Michael Zerang, GiridharUdupa, Steve Swell, Bobby Few, Mark Tokar and Perry Robinson. Eyal Hareuveni, a reviewer for the prestigious “All About Jazz” magazine, wrote: “Wacław Zimpel is one of the most promising European musicians”. “Stone Fog” is the first album recorded by Wacław Zimpel Quartet the forming of which was quite inevitable as its four members were brought together by music fascinations, mutual performances and a horizon of European traditions: Klaus Kugel brings in his “spatial drumming” reminiscent of liturgical music, Christian Ramond’s bass playing perfectly corresponds with abstract and intuitive rhythms produced by Kugel, Krzysztof Dyś draws his inspiration from Prokofiev and Scriabin, Wacław Zimpel clarinets are once lyrical, once Slavic in tone. The whole set of pieces is set in a very European, free jazz context. Wacław Zimpel Quartet is not just four music personalities engaged together, it is also a group of people with common roots, on a common quest, with a variety of inspirations brought in by individual musicians. (for-tune)
1 comment
Posted in , , , ,

Hiro Yanagida - Milk Time (1970)


Exactly the dawn of Japanese improvised organ-based psychedelic progressive rock! (I believe 'another' dawn of Japanese organ-based psych-prog should be The Happenings Four.)
Their core storm gets started with the second track Running Shirts Long ... don't be deceived by the beauty of Hiro's keyboard solo in the short opening Love St. ... each instrumental solo gets exploded heavily and rampantly. And please carefully listen to Hiro's keyboard play especially - although his solo play goes forward at a moment on the latter part, basically Hiro should support the other solos with his strict (and deep) rhythm on the background. Their terrific heavy improvisation on the middle part absolutely, absolutely reminds me Acid Mothers Temple Speed Guru's exploded guitar solo in the song Acid Takion. Makoto Kawabata might be much influenced by Hiro's improvised heavy keyboard play (here's a difference of instruments between them though) I imagine? Kimio Mizutani's crazy guitar solo can make their sounds more aggressive, and Hiroki Tamaki's sharp-edged electric violin can season their style with extremely dry and bitter soundspice. Just in the song can we feel such a greatness of all instruments, all players.
Anyway dart a glance around - in this album is flute-based soft and graceful fairy-tale song like When She Didn't Agree and Yum, a short instrumental track Love T with plaintive violin sounds blended with solemn keyboard ones, or a jazzy freaky flexible jam session Happy, Sorry. And another peak of this album is, I'm sure, the miracle suite Fish Sea Milk / Fingers Of A Red Type-Writer. Based on such a weird keyboard rumble, Kimio's crushed guitar, Hiroki's keen electroviolin, Nozomi's loud flute, Kenji & Hiro Tsunoda's deep rhythm section can fall one upon another. We cannot close our mouth and close our eyes till the end of Me And Milk And Others, the song characterized as a slow percussion and violin inferno.
A great stuff, able to be defined as one of the dawn(s) of Japanese Progressive Rock. Recommended!

(source)



1 comment
Posted in , ,

Furekåben (1971)


FUREKÅBEN were a very obscure Danish Acid Folk outfit, that seem to have been formed in 1968 around the head Hans Vinding (guitar, voices) in Copenhagen and disbanded in 1972 without any notification. It is said that they, as a music commune called 'Røde Rose', which later got to be another title of their second self-titled album, have lived together and had some sessions and recordings. As a result, they released two albums - 'Prinsesseværelset' (1970) and 'Furekåben' (1971) - both are currently thought as eccentric (and remarkably rare) Acid Folk gems. The leader Hans formed Hyldemor with some of ex-FUREKÅBEN members later.


Although I cannot know that under what condition they did sessions and recordings, there is extraordinary weird atmosphere with some religious speckles - discrete from the "real" world methinks. Guess they always have raised their morale in a transcendental meditation or in smoke of pot around Hans the Guru in sessions or recordings (sorry if it's not correct). Certainly it's magic I know ... in the first track "Instrumental", male and female scat carries the sunflower song toward the top of heaven with heightening their (and the song's) spiritual power. All instruments including voices are completely whacked out, as if they should have been under mind-expanding condition, but mysteriously there is something rigidly united around them. We can find just the same flavour in the following "Mandsang", with a drunken (but comfortable) flute solo. Only for me Hans' voices can sound something of incantation cursed (because he sang in indistinct Danish? Exactly addiction to freak-out acidity I suggest. Even the last "Christine" can keep this weirdness in core mind. These three incantations drug ... err ... drag on fortunately.
Even Acid Folk freaks may be divided into two - like and dislike. Cannot find any artists similar to them easily ... and I love them of course.

(source)

1 comment
Posted in , ,

Furekåben - Prinsesseværelset (1970)


Danish psychedlic rock band formed in 1968. Originally playing folk music based on free improvisation they became more electrified with time and recorded their debut album Prinsesseværelset between Feburary and April 1970. The covers of the original LP version were hand decorated by the group members and all different. The second album, Furekåben was released the following year on their own label. Around 1973 they permuted into Hyldemors Grønsaligheder.




3 comments
Posted in , , ,

Freddy Lindquist - Menu (1970)


Back in the 60's, Freddy Lindquist was known as one out of two super leadguitarist in Norway. The Other was Terjie Rypdal. Freddy was hailed as the Hendrix of Norway. Freddy started out his rock path as a member of Gibbons in the early 60's. In 1965 he was offered the job as the new lead guitarist in one of the leading band at the time, The Beatnicks.The band was changing their musical style from a Shadows inspired band to a proper beat-band then. Freddy stayed with them for a couple of singles, until he was headhunted to play lead guitar in an even more popular band, The Vanguards, in 1966. Their former lead guitarist, Terje Rypdal, then went to play the organ, until he quit, diving into psychedelia with The Dream. In addiction to some singles, they both played on both LP's released by The Vanguards. The first best forgotten, but the latter of those, Pnooole, was quite a good popbeat album, both by the standards of that time, and even today. It was released in different sleeves to the Norvegian one, in both Sweden and Italy. After some more singles, Freddy quit the band in 1969, to join his old mates in The Beatnicks/New Beatnicks. One more single followed before Freddy left again, and the rest of the band transformed into Titanic.


Hardrock was then the new formula and Freddy formed the supergroup Jumbo, inspired by the likes of Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin. Two singles was released, again one lousy and one great, the great one being U.F.O. The band then started recording an album, but in the midst of that the band fell apart, and the remaining members fulfilled the album and released in under the name Finjarn/Jensen. An underrated album it is, although not hardrock, but more rock/pop-psych. Some of Freddy's guitar takes was kept and he co-wrote two of the best song on it. A rare album today, and strangely still not released on CD.

Freddy on his side felt that the time was right for a proper soloalbum now, and his Menu was recorded and released in 1970. Freddy played a lot of the instruments in the album, but was joined by among others Freddy Dahl (Junipher Greene, George Keller Band, Ruphus, Saluki) and his mate from Jumbo, Leif Jensen. The album did not sell to well, and soon went into oblivion. Hard to understand why when listening to it today! The album, or some tracks from it, was later released in Mexico. Freddy have since then had his own band, and he have played in numerous bands and recordingsessions, in various musical styles. When collectors in Norway, and then abroad, in the late 1980's rediscovered Menu, the demand for the LP soon was a lot bigger than the supplies, and the prices for a mintish original quickly went skywards. The album was then re-released by Pan on vinyl in 1991, and later bootlegged by some italian gangsters. Now it's finally released on CD for the first time, remastered and sounding fresh as ever. Menu by Freddy Lindquist is for ever established not only as one of the rarest albums from Scandinavia, but also as one of the very best. Thanks to Freddy for sharing his delicious Menu with us all! Skien, october 2004:jarun

No comments
Posted in , , ,

Gabriel Garcia Márquez - Cien Anos De Soledad (1967)


One Hundred Years of Solitude (Spanish: Cien años de soledad) is a 1967 novel by Colombian author Gabriel García Márquez that tells the multi-generational story of the Buendía family, whose patriarch, José Arcadio Buendía, founds the town of Macondo, the metaphoric Colombia.

The widely acclaimed book, considered by many to be the author's masterpiece, was first published in Spanish in 1967, and subsequently has been translated into thirty-seven languages and has sold more than 30 million copies. The magical realist style and thematic substance of One Hundred Years of Solitude established it as an important, representative novel of the literary Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s, which was stylistically influenced by Modernism (European and North American) and the Cuban Vanguardia (Avant-Garde) literary movement.

Gabriel García Márquez was one of the four Latin American novelists first included in the literary Latin American Boom of the 1960s and 1970s; the other three writers were the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, the Argentine Julio Cortázar, and the Mexican Carlos Fuentes. One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967) earned García Márquez international fame as a novelist of the Magical Realism movement within the literatures of Latin America.

As a metaphoric, critical interpretation of Colombian history, from foundation to contemporary nation, One Hundred Years of Solitude presents different national myths through the story of the Buendía Family,[6] whose spirit of adventure places them amidst the important actions of Colombian historical events — such as the Liberal political reformation of a colonial way of life, and the nineteenth-century arguments for and against it; the arrival of the railway to a mountainous country; the Thousand Days' War (Guerra de los Mil Días, 1899–1902); the corporate hegemony of the United Fruit Company ("American Fruit Company" in the story); the cinema; the automobile; and the military massacre of striking workers as government–labour relations policy.

One Hundred Years of Solitude is the story of seven generations of the Buendía Family in the town of Macondo. The founding patriarch of Macondo, José Arcadio Buendía, and Úrsula Iguarán, his wife (and first cousin), leave Riohacha, Colombia, to find a better life and a new home. One night of their emigration journey, while camping on a riverbank, José Arcadio Buendía dreams of "Macondo", a city of mirrors that reflected the world in and about it. Upon awakening, he decides to found Macondo at the river side; after days of wandering the jungle, José Arcadio Buendía's founding of Macondo is utopic.

Founding patriarch José Arcadio Buendía believes Macondo to be surrounded by water, and from that island, he invents the world according to his perceptions. Soon after its foundation, Macondo becomes a town frequented by unusual and extraordinary events that involve the generations of the Buendía family, who are unable or unwilling to escape their periodic (mostly self-inflicted) misfortunes. Ultimately, a hurricane destroys Macondo, the city of mirrors; just the cyclical turmoil inherent to Macondo. At the end of the story, a Buendía man deciphers an encryption that generations of Buendía family men had failed to decode. The secret message informed the recipient of every fortune and misfortune lived by the Buendía Family generations.

A dominant theme in One Hundred Years of Solitude is the inevitable and inescapable repetition of history in Macondo. The protagonists are controlled by their pasts and the complexity of time. Throughout the novel the characters are visited by ghosts. "The ghosts are symbols of the past and the haunting nature it has over Macondo. The ghosts and the displaced repetition that they evoke are, in fact, firmly grounded in the particular development of Latin American history".[8] "Ideological transfiguration ensured that Macondo and the Buendías always were ghosts to some extent, alienated and estranged from their own history, not only victims of the harsh reality of dependence and underdevelopment but also of the ideological illusions that haunt and reinforce such social conditions."

The fate of Macondo is both doomed and predetermined from its very existence. "Fatalism is a metaphor for the particular part that ideology has played in maintaining historical dependence, by locking the interpretation of Latin American history into certain patterns that deny alternative possibilities.The narrative seemingly confirms fatalism in order to illustrate the feeling of entrapment that ideology can performatively create."

García Márquez uses colours as symbols. Yellow and gold are the most frequently used colors and they are symbols of imperialism and the Spanish Siglo de Oro. Gold signifies a search for economic wealth, whereas yellow represents death, change, and destruction.

The glass city is an image that comes to José Arcadio Buendía in a dream. It is the reason for the location of the founding of Macondo, but it is also a symbol of the ill fate of Macondo. Higgins writes that, "By the final page, however, the city of mirrors has become a city of mirages. Macondo thus represents the dream of a brave new world that America seemed to promise and that was cruelly proved illusory by the subsequent course of history." Images such as the glass city and the ice factory represent how Latin America already has its history outlined and is, therefore, fated for destruction.

Overall, there is an underlying pattern of Latin American history in One Hundred Years of Solitude. It could be said that the novel is one of a number of texts that "Latin American culture has created to understand itself." In this sense, the novel can be conceived as a linear archive. This archive narrates the story of a Latin America discovered by European explorers, which had its historical entity developed by the printing press. The Archive is a symbol of the literature that is the foundation of Latin American history and also a decoding instrument. Melquíades, the keeper of the historical archive in the novel, represents both the whimsical and the literary. Finally, "the world of One Hundred Years of Solitude is a place where beliefs and metaphors become forms of fact, and where more ordinary facts become uncertain."

Technically, use of particular historical events and characters narratively renders One Hundred Years of Solitude an exemplary work of magical realism, wherein the novel compresses centuries of cause and effect whilst telling an interesting story.
1 comment
Posted in ,

Ed Askew (1968)


One of ESP-Disk's true acid folk classics, up there with their Pearls Before Swine and Fugs albums, Ed Askew's Ask the Unicorn is one of the most unique singer/songwriter albums of the '60s. Rather than the usual guitar, Askew plays the tiple, a Latin ten-stringed instrument that's sort of a cross between a lute and a ukulele. It's a loud, trebly instrument with a lot of sustain and some interesting harmonics created by the way the strings resonate together, and it adds an intriguing instrumental texture to the album. Askew has said that the tiple also affects his vocal style on this album; because the instrument is so difficult to play, there's a strained quality to his vocals. Indeed, on the opening, "Fancy That," Askew sounds like the Violent Femmes' Gordon Gano trying to sing North African rai. Lyrically, Ask the Unicorn is nowhere near as hippie-dippy as the title suggests. Askew is a gifted, confessional lyricist, and the songs are emotionally engaging in a way that many psychedelic records are not. In a particularly interesting element of the album considering its pre-Stonewall recording date, Askew's lyrics address his homosexuality in an admirably matter-of-fact way, neither ducking the point nor focusing on it exclusively. Other tracks use a number of floral metaphors in a way similar to Georgia O'Keefe's codedly erotic flower paintings. The simply produced live-with-no-overdubs feel of Ask the Unicorn gives the album a folk-like immediacy even on the most out-there songs, like the seven-minute drone "May Blossoms Be Praised." Askew never did another commercial release after Ask the Unicorn, although a 1970 follow-up on ESP-Disk made it as far as a test pressing. In the decades since, the New York-based Askew has pursued a relatively successful career as a painter and poet, and has self-released several cassettes of new material that can be found on the fringe music tape-trading underground. --- Stewart Mason

alternative cover



1 comment
Posted in , , ,

Gorō Yamaguchi - A Bell Ringing in the Empty Sky (1969)


Goro Yamaguchi is most probably the greatest Japanese shakuhachi player of the second half of the 20th century. He was recognized by the Japanese government for his artistic contributions and was designated "National Living Treasure" in 1992. He passed away on January 3, 1999, at age 65. Yamaguchi was born in 1933 to a musical family. His father was a famous shakuhachi performer and his mother a shamisen and koto player. His father taught him the Kinko style, one of the two major shakuhachi styles of the 20th century. During the postwar period, Yamaguchi quickly became one of the most respected shakuhachi players in Japan. He received many awards and was often sent abroad by the Japanese government as cultural ambassador. He also produced numerous LPs, CDs, and video teaching tapes and appeared regularly on radio and television. Until his death, he taught shakuhachi at the Tokyo University for the Arts, the only national university in Japan with a traditional music department. Goro Yamaguchi was a gentle, private person with little desire for publicity, yet his influence was felt around the world. His music demonstrated a balance between the elements needed to play sankyoku ensemble and honkyoku solo music. In his teaching, he continually stressed that music cannot be divorced from everyday life -- otherwise the music becomes soulless. His philosophy of shakuhachi playing could be summed up in the following statement: One's life must become musical and one's music must become one's life...(Bruno Deschênes)

1 comment
Posted in , ,

Elliott Randall - Randall's Island (1970)


Elliott Randall (born 1947) is an American guitarist, best known for being a session musician with popular artists. Randall played the well-known guitar solos from Steely Dan's song Reelin' in the Years and Fame. It was reported that Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page said Randall's solo on Reelin' in the Years is his favorite guitar solo of all-time. The solo was ranked as the 40th best guitar solo of all-time by the readers of Guitar World magazine and the eighth best guitar solo by Q4 Music.

Randall began taking piano lessons at age five. At nine, in 1956, he switched to guitar. He attended New York City's High School of Music & Art, where he was classmates with Laura Nyro and Michael Kamen. In 1963, at sixteen, Randall met Richie Havens in Greenwich Village and began gigging. Randall did some early work behind The Capris and The Ronnettes, and by 1964 was recording "small-time" demos.

Between 1966 and 1967, he taught music in Ohio. Returning to New York, he began working as a staff musician for the Musicor record company. He began recording with friends around 1968, including Tim Rose, and made demo recordings with Donald Fagen and Walter Becker—who at the time were with Jay and the Americans. In 1969, he joined the band Seatrain, opting for that band rather than joining Wilson Pickett in Muscle Shoals. In 1970, Randall signed with the Robert Stigwood Organization, which managed Cream, The Bee Gees, John Mayall, and The Staple Singers. He formed a band called Randall's Island, which recorded a few albums on Polydor.

In 1972, The Stigwood Organization bought the rights to Jesus Christ Superstar and produced the show on Broadway. They hired Randall's band to perform the music. There, Randall met guitarist Vinnie Bell, who was experimenting with various electronic effects. Randall began to dabble in electronics as well, and whenever Bell couldn't make a gig, he recommended Randall.


In 1972, Randall left New York for California. He reunited with Becker, Fagen, and childhood friend Jeff 'Skunk' Baxter, and recorded the first Steely Dan album, Can't Buy a Thrill. Randall's guitar work on Reelin' in the Years became popular as the song became a chart success, and soon, as the solo gained fame and respect, Randall began getting calls from other artists.

Randall has had a history of turning down permanent gigs, instead favoring session work. He did become a touring member of ShaNaNa in 1974, exiting amicably in 1975. Becker and Fagen asked Randall to become a permanent member of Steely Dan, but Randall politely declined, as he felt that the band's dynamics would make the band dissolve after the third album—which happened. Later, Randall played with Steely Dan on their fourth and fifth albums, Katy Lied and The Royal Scam. In 1980, John Belushi asked Randall to be musical director for The Blues Brothers, a position he also turned down. Jeff Porcaro and David Paich offered Randall the chance to be a founding member of Toto, and he rejected that too.

As a session player, Randall played with artists such as The Doobie Brothers, Tom Rush, Elkie Brooks, Carly Simon, Carl Wilson, Peter Wolf, Peter Frampton, James Galway, Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra, and The American Symphony Orchestra, among many others. He was also a music consultant for Saturday Night Live and Oliver Stone and did projects with producers Gary Katz, David Kershenbaum, The Tokens, Steve Lillywhite, Eddie Kramer and Jerry Wexler. A full list of artists and producers with whom Randall has recorded can be found at elliott-randall.com.

In addition to artistic projects, Elliott has also played, produced, and composed myriad advertisements (jingles) for television, radio and cinema, for clients including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Miller Beer, Budweiser, Cadillac, Ford, McDonalds, Burger King, Wendy's, CitiBank, General Mills, Nabisco, Procter & Gamble, MTV, ESPN, CBS, ABC, BBC-TV and countless others. Since the advent of midi in the early 1980s, Randall has worked as independent consultant for a wide range of companies—including Akai, Roland, Korg, and Yamaha—in musical instrument and amplifier development, recording and sampling technology, software design, and education.

Randall's recent projects include recording, production, and consulting on streaming Internet content. He is currently recording a new CD in London, New York, and Ireland that blends Celtic, Afro-Cuban, and other global musical influences. He recorded and plays with his London-based band Posse and NYC-based Randall's Rangers.

Randall appeared as a guest at London's Hammersmith Apollo on July 1, 2009 with Steely Dan to play lead guitar on Reelin' in the Years. Many clips of this performance are on YouTube.

Randall plays a 1963 Fender Stratocaster. The neck pickup is a 1969 Gibson Humbucker. He often plays through a Fender Super Reverb. He was listed as an endorser for Dimarzio pickups in the company's product brochure circa 1981.

In an article in Guitar Player Magazine (July 2007) Randall was asked what rig he used to record the solo on Reelin' in the Years. He states, "That was my '63 Fender Stratocaster with a PAF humbucker in the neck position, straight into an Ampeg SVT bass amp. The SVT wouldn't have been my first choice for an amp--or even my fifth choice--but it worked a storm on that recording!" (wikipedia)
1 comment
Posted in , , , ,

Dead Moon - In The Graveyard (1988)


Dead Moon was a United States punk rock band from 1987 to 2006, formed in Portland, Oregon. Fronted by singer/guitarist Fred Cole, the band also included bassist Toody Cole, Fred's wife, and drummer Andrew Loomis. Veterans of Portland's independent rock scene, Dead Moon combined dark and lovelorn themes with punk and country music influences into a stripped-down sound. Fred Cole engineered most of the band's recordings and mastered them on a mono lathe that was used for The Kingsmen's version of "Louie Louie". Their early records, such as In the Graveyard, were released on the Tombstone Records label, named for the musical equipment store Fred and Toody operated at the time. Soon they caught the attention of the German label Music Maniac Records, and toured Europe successfully. Not until the mid-nineties did they tour the United States. Much of their following is in Europe.

A U.S. filmmaking team (Kate Fix and Jason Summers) produced a 2004 documentary, Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story, which played in independent theaters around the U.S., New Zealand, and Melbourne International Film Fest, and was released on DVD in the fall of 2006. Dead Moon has recorded for labels such as Empty Records, but most releases are on Music Maniac abroad and Tombstone in the U.S. The Tombstone label has also provided cheap mastering and duplication for other bands, serving more as a cooperative than a promotional vehicle. Though Fred and Toody are in their fifties, they showed no signs of slowing down on their 2004 release Dead Ahead, continuing to tour the globe until 2006, which saw the release of the Echoes of the past compilation.

In December 2006, near the end of the Echoes of the Past tour, Dead Moon announced their disbandment. Their last gig was at the Vera club in Groningen on November 26, 2006. Fred and Toody currently own the Tombstone General Store in Clackamas, Oregon, and are building a shopping center nearby.

Pearl Jam covered the song "It's Okay"; they often segue it with their song "Daughter" in live performances. Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam has also covered "Diamonds in the Rough" and "Running Out of Time" with C-Average.

Fred and Toody formed a new band called Pierced Arrows with Portland punk musician Kelly Halliburton, whose father played in a band called "Albatross" with Fred in 1972, of Severed Head of State, Defiance and formerly Murder Disco X. Pierced Arrows played their first show debuting on May 18, 2007 at Portland’s Ash Street Saloon with the reformed Poison Idea. Andrew Loomis now plays drums for a band called The Shiny Things from Longview, Washington, along with Terry French (vocals) Becca D. (lead guitar) and Marc Nelson (guitar).


Folks often like to laud the most remarkably enduring of rock music’s veterans by dubbing them ‘immortal’, and if you generate enough money that people are willing to pay for your blood to be changed in a private Swiss clinic, that illusion is more likely to be prolonged. At some point, though, cold reality is going to kick in. In the case of Fred Cole, singer and guitarist of Oregon’s Dead Moon, his fifty years of writing and releasing music – all the more astonishing for never having a bloated paycheck as motivation – were put on ice in March this year, when he needed emergency open heart surgery. A diagnosis of 80-100% arterial blockage sounds a bit hairy, to say the least, but true to form, Fred recovered faster than expected; the business of being a brilliant, singular and enormously admirable totem of underground rock can continue from its paused position.

Formed in the late Eighties by Fred and his wife Toody, who married in 1967 and have played in bands together since the early Seventies, Dead Moon are no longer a going concern, although the couple’s current band Pierced Arrows is along similarly anthemic, stripped-to-a-skeleton lines. They maintained a fierce release rate in their time, however, starting in 1988, ’89 and ‘90 with the three albums tackled here, on account of their CD reissue on Portland punk label M’lady’s (they’re also available on esteemed archive imprint Mississippi, should you prefer vinyl). Fred and Toody, plus Dead Moon drummer Andrew Loomis, would never have claimed to have invented a new rock’n’roll language – time-honoured imagery, which some might call clichés, are embraced here with passion – but at no point on these albums does it feel like a superfluous Xerox of the past.

A Dead Moon song, typically between two and three minutes long, might call back to blues, country, rockabilly, the mid-Sixties garage explosion that kickstarted Fred’s career in 1964, and the autonomous DIY punk scene (which the band managed to be a glowing example of, while largely existing outside of it). Greg Sage, of Portland’s occasionally brilliant Wipers, heartily endorsed Dead Moon early on, and the band’s debut LP In The Graveyard has a Wipers-y feel at times. Less instrumentally deft and lower of fidelity, sure, but ‘Graveyard’ and ‘Don’t Burn The Fires’ combine a yearning sweetness and a punky forward momentum with a determination to present electric guitars, bass and drums in as un-manipulated a fashion as possible. (source)

1 comment
Posted in , ,

François Couturier - Nostalghia - Song for Tarkovsky (2006)


Zaczyna fortepian. Samotny, zawodzący, uwodzący, tęskny. Kilka powtarzanych formuł, zawieszonych, jakby bliskich. Skąd? Gdzie? Dołącza akordeon. I wtedy wszystko jest już jasne. Początek arii "Erbarme dich" z "Pasji Mateuszowej" Bacha. W dźwiękach akordeonu ta muzyka brzmi ulicą, codziennością, zwyczajnością, Mahlerem, "Braćmi Karamazow" w reżyserii Krystiana Lupy ze Starego Teatru (mogłaby być muzyka do tego spektaklu)...

Tak, Couturier ma w sobie to wsysanie teatru Lupy, tę leniwość, zatrzymanie czasu, uświęcenie czasu, to snucie, kiedy wydaje się, że nie ma nic, a jest wszystko. I jeszcze więcej... Poza tym Couturier, jak Lupa, lubi Tarkowskiego. Ta płyta jest tego najlepszym dowodem. Jej tytuł główny, tytuły poszczególnych części (choćby Solaris I i II,­ Andrei, Ivan, Stalker), lead pod tytułem ("muzyka inspirowana filmami Andreja Tarkowskiego, grą jego ukochanych aktorów i sposobem operowania przez niego kolorem i dźwiękiem"). Jak to brzmi?

Brzmi muzyką w muzyce. Prócz Bacha ("Pasja" pojawia się także w ostatnim fragmencie - L'éternel Retour), słyszymy jeszcze - dwukrotnie (Nostalghia, Andrei) - temat z trzeciej części "Sonaty na wiolonczelę i fortepian" Alfreda Schnittkego oraz fragmenty "Amen" ze "Stabat Mater" Pergolesiego (Toliu). Poszczególne części mają też swoje dedykacje: m.in. dla operatora Svena Nykvista (Crépusculaire), scenarzysty Tonino Guerry (Nostalghia), kompozytora Edwarda Artemiewa (Stalker), aktorów - Erlanda Josephsona (L'éternel Retour) i Anatolija Sołonitsyna (Toliu).

Brzmi nieziemsko, zmysłowo, sennie. Prosto, bezpretensjonalnie, a jednocześnie z tym rodzajem grawitacji, że zostajemy przygwożdżeni do krzesła, ale unosimy się - wysoko, wysoko... Lecz co można robić innego, kiedy słucha się gry kwartetu, w której czuć każdy nerw muzyki, każdą jej zmianę, tę wspólnotę przeżyć, która zaraża wszystko i wszystkich, pozostawia przestrzeń, ale nie pozwala odejść. Każe współuczestniczyć. Wieść niesie, że Couturier ma na jesień przyjechać z "Nostalgią" do Polski. Zaczynam tęsknić... (Tomasz Cyz)

***

“What kind of world is this if a madman tells you you must be ashamed of yourselves? Music now!”

So espouses Erland Josephson as Domenico in Andrei Tarkovsky’s 1983 masterpiece Nostalghia, of which this album by pianist François Couturier takes the name. Domenico is, in many ways, himself a musical figure. As the very madman he admonishes, one who shackled his family in their own home for seven years as protection against an imperfect world, he is constantly refolding his own psyche in a leitmotif of fixation, building reality from blocks of fanciful impulses, each more poetic than the last. Yet as Tarkovsky himself once averred, art exists only because the world is imperfect. Music thrives on insanity.

That said, the even keel of Nostalghia presents the listener with such an expressive compass that even the most elemental sound becomes a northward tug. Anyone who has followed Couturier’s ECM travels will know that he is a musician of many directions. From the taut classical forays of Poros to the border-crossing trio recordings with Anouar Brahem (see Le pas du chat noir and Le voyage de sahar), he is anything but predictable. Counting cellist Anja Lechner, accordionist Jean-Louis Matinier, and saxophonist Jean-Marc Larché among the present company, he darkens Tarkovsky’s blueprints with the press of every key until they are ashen with wayfaring.

The album’s outer circle is inscribed by way of “Erbarme Dich” from Bach’s St Matthew Passion, which seeds the opening and closing tracks by way of profound lament. In the absence of words, “Le Sacrifice” (Bach’s aria appears in the Tarkovsky film of the same name) holds on to the text of the moment. In the absence of the cross, one feels the intersection of piano and accordion as a sacrifice in and of itself. The feeling of decay is palpable—surely, if imperceptibly, approaching disappearance—as was Tarkovsky’s play of color and shadow. The concluding “L’éternel retour” unravels by way of piano alone. Like a lost entry from Vassilis Tsabropoulos’s The Promise), its hand closes the lid of a box that houses creative spirit. That the song bears dedication to Erland Josephson indicates Couturier’s attention to detail in paying tribute not only to the artist of interest, but also his brilliant actors and collaborators.

“Crépusculaire,” for instance, honors Sven Nykvist, Ingmar Bergman’s right-hand cinematographer (who also filmed The Sacrifice) and moves accordingly by the touch of Lechner’s picturesque bowing. Her feel for notecraft and harmony is matched only by her attention to atmosphere. Couturier blends pigments with charcoal-stained fingers, each a pontiff reduced to a smudge across gray sky as the accordion finds its peace in the waters below. The combination aches with dew, trembling on grass stems when the three instruments at last share the same breath in focus.

“Nostalghia” is for screenwriter Tonino Guerra, with whom Tarkovsky co-wrote the screenplay for that very film. It opens us to the affectations of the full quartet and takes its inspiration from Schnittke’s Sonata No. 1 for violoncello and piano. This gentle music is a wish turned into stone and laid in stagnant water. The most obvious dedication, “Andrei,” also incorporates the Schnittke. A steady pulse in the left hand frees the right to orbit the keyboard, while the accordion fits like wind to wing over barren plains of consciousness.

“Stalker” gives proper attention to Eduard Artemyev, who wrote the soundtracks for that film and Solaris, and meshes bucolic and hypermodern impulses in kind. Its impactful pianism gives up many relics, each more sacred than the last. Anatoly Solonitsyn, lead actor of Andrei Rublev, is the final dedicatee. With its allusions to the “Amen” from Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater, “Toliu” multiplies shades of night.

Although Couturier consciously avoided the evocation of specific Tarkovsky scenery (this is more than a concept album), the feeling of pathos is so visual that one might as well be watching a film by the great director. The pianism shines like the water so prevalent in Tarkovsky’s cinema, if not swimming among many artifacts strewn below the surface. And in any sense, Couturier is very much the director of all that one hears throughout the program, as borne out most directly in the freely improvised “Solaris I” and “Solaris II.” In these the soprano saxophone turns the sun into a pilot light, and the world its oven, even as the rest of the ensemble hangs icicles from the eaves. Still, the overall effect is more literary than filmic, picking up words and turning them into actions that grow with listening.

“Ivan” references Ivan’s Childhood, Tarkovsky’s first feature. Its declamatory beginning spawns an almost theatrical feeling in distorted fairytale gestures before the quartet rejoins to finish off strong. In the wake of such confluence, Couturier’s solo “Miroir” wipes the slate clean, leaving superbly engineered ambience as the only evidence of an inner world to be discovered. Each step taken on this Escherian staircase walks a path of light.

Perfection may be an impossible ideal, but this album almost touches it. It’s a sheet of paper curling into its own insecurity for want of inscription. Don’t let it slip through your fingers, no matter what kind of quill you wield. (ecmreviews)
1 comment
Posted in , , ,

Salvador Dali & Igor Wakhevitch - Etre Dieu (1974)


Igor Wakhevitch's score for Salvador Dali's audio visual « opera poème » (initialy written in 1927 but recorded in 1974). This is an obsessional, decadent, surrealist, provocative, grotesque, mystical, erotic musical comedy with Salvador Dali narratives, improvisations (in French). The music perfectly serves Dali and others actors' voices with a medley of strange synthesiser loops, creepy lysergic ambiences, expressionist string orchestra arrengements, percussive abstractions. This is clearly a visual work for the ears and gorgeously impregnated of mental pictures and dreamlike suggestions. An intriguing, ambitious audiovisual exhibition that remains really avant gardist with many ideas and a different atmosphere for each scene. Not a progressive rock classic but a historical phenomenon with a rather unique eccentric abstract musical painting. (source)

This is no conceptual, pranksome shenanigan but a serious, pharaonic musical coup de maitre charged with a cornucopia of  progressive ideas and practices respecting sound architecture and theatrical composition. One of the most adventurous, defiant, dynamic, ethereal, ghastly, religious music I’ve ever heard. Think of Ghédalia Tazartès deeply bedded in the tradition of european avant-classical music. I believe I went through the multidimensional poundings of Varèse, Xenakis glissandi, VIP-seat operatic grace and purity, the sublime mystique of near-heretical chants, the stream-of-consciousness eloquence of french dissidents, early-electronics burblings, Hadesian drones, a horde of crazy people (including Ghédalia Tazartès) and deranged sounds,  all manner of inclement weathers, and most shockingly, proggy guitar licks that stretch long enough to form a psychedelic rock number reminiscent of Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats. That was my word. (source)


1 comment
Posted in , , ,

Laurence Vanay - Galaxies (1974)


Laurence Vanay is the pseudonym for Jacqueline Thibault, wife of producer and musician Laurent Thibault (Magma). Her debut album “Galaxies” (1974) is pure genius: almost all instrumental, with gorgeous keyboards of many types, acoustic/electric guitar, even a little Zeuhl bass. There are wordless vocals on many of the tracks, although she occasionally sings in a soft, seductive manner. Incredible, spacey “avant-garde progressive chanson,” a Holy Grail for most collectors of 70’s underground French music. Rivaled only by the early work of Brigitte Fontaine for pure inventiveness. Sublime compositions: unique, melancholic and very powerful.

“Sounds have always been of special significance to me. Since childhood, I improvised and composed songs and instrumental music… it seemed to me that music was the true language of emotions. It was with great difficulty that I managed to record the albums “Galaxies” and “Evening Colours” in very limited time with the means at hand, and with the help of faithful musician friends.” —Jacqueline Thibault

No comments
Posted in , ,

The Savages - Black Scorpio (1973)


The Savages is a Rock N Roll band from Bombay (now Mumbai), formed in 1960 and the starting point in tracing the history of rock music in India was of course the musicians that they have played with and watched concerts of. Strangely enough, they kept ending up at Rock Machine/Indus Creed. Everyone story led back to, "It all began with Rock Machine..." There were passing statements along the lines of, "Of course, there were bands before that but they did covers. They played club gigs but no one remembers." Founded in 1967 by Bashir Sheikh, the Savages went beyond playing cover versions, and started writing their own material. Back in the days, there were earlier variants of the rock competitions that we see today. One of these was the Simla Beat contest, sponsored by Simla cigarettes, an ITC brand. The Savages won the 1967 edition of the Simla Beat contest. Another prestigious Bombay festival was the Sound Trophy. The Savages won the Sound Trophy for Best Composition and Best Band in 1968, and in the process snagged a recording deal with Polydor India Ltd. The most consistent and well-remembered line up of the band was stabilizing at this point of time with Bashir Sheikh (drums and vocals), Ralph Pais (bass guitar), Hemant Rao (lead guitar), and Prabhakar Mundkur (keyboards and vocals). Various line up changes happened in the years after this with Hemant Rao leaving for Dubai and replaced by Russell Perreira. However, one of the crucial line-up changes featured the inclusion of a young architecture student, originally from Goa, named Remo Fernandes. Remo played with The Savages for a year and a half during his architecture course in Bombay. Featuring some of the first few original compositions by Remo, the album sounds like a delicate blend of retro rock, folk rock, and early acid rock. After Remo left the Savages, another line-up shuffle found Joe Alvares singing for the band. Notable for his booming tenor voice, Joe sang on the next Savages album, titled Black Scorpio. Though the album itself was mostly populated by cover versions, Prabhakar Mundkur had also taken to songwriting and the Savages frequently performed 7-8 instrumental originals, and 3-4 originals with vocals in the many shows that they played during these years. Joe Alvares left the band in 1974 for personal reasons and the band briefly tried to recruit another vocalist. At about the same time, Nandu Bhende's band, The Brief Encounter, was also faced by the prospect of some members leaving. Sensing an opportunity, the two combined to form The Savage Encounter. (source)


No comments
Posted in , , , ,

Maki Asakawa - Darkness II (1996)


Jazz and blues vocalist, lyricist, and composer Maki Asakawa was born in 1942 in Ishikawa Prefecture.  After a short stint working at the town office in her small village, she headed for Tokyo to pursue music.  She started by playing at United States military bases and cabarets, where she refined her style, which was largely informed by Billie Holiday and Mahalia Jackson.  Asakawa released her first EP, Tokyo Banka, on the Victor imprint in 1967.  In 1968, Asakawa got her big break when she appeared for three days running at the Shinjuku underground theater known as Sasoriza, a project of underground playwright Shuji Terayama.  Shortly thereafter, she signed with Toshiba (currently EMI Music Japan), making her official major label debut in July 1969 with Yo ga aketara / Kamome.  Since then, Asakawa has consistenly released music and appeared live, garnering praise for her unique interpretation of jazz and blues. She has collaborated with Yosuke Yamashita and Akira Sakata, and composer Ryuichi Sakamoto among others.  Asakawa died on January 17, 2010. (source)

1 comment
Posted in ,

Glaxo Babies - Put Me on the Guest List (1980)


Glaxo Babies were a post-punk band based in Bristol, England. The foursome was initially vocalist Rob Chapman, guitarist/vocalist Dan Catsis (ex-Pop Group), drummer Geoff Alsopp, and bassist Tom Nichols. They released the This Is Your Life EP in 1979; by the time of the Christine Keeler single months later, a few changes to the lineup were made. Most significantly, Charles Llewelyn took over for Alsopp on drums and Tony Wrafter (another ex-Pop Group member) added saxophone. Chapman then left, and the remaining members recorded the entirety of 1980's Nine Months to the Disco, their debut LP for Heartbeat, within the span of a single day. For the following Limited Entertainment EP (also released in 1980), Glaxo Babies temporarily hooked up with the Y label. And finally, Put Me on the Guest List, yet another 1980 release, collected demos of the band's Chapman era. They apparently broke up at some point after its release; Catsis and Wrafter became part of Maximum Joy. In the mid-'80s, Chapman and Catsis re-formed Glaxo Babies with Llewelyn on drums. They were together for several years, the results eventually appearing on the compilation The Porlock Factor: Psych Drums and Other Schemes 1985-1990. (Andy Kellman)


A somewhat ramshackle collection of songs drawn from Glaxo Babies' original, and possibly superior incarnation -- ten songs drawn from the band's debut EP This Is Your Life, and the session for what would have been their debut album, had frontman Rob Chapman not been jettisoned midway through. And it has to be said that, when lined up alongside Nine Months to the Disco, Put Me on the Guest List is the stronger offering, song for song. The difference was, as Tony Wrafter pointed out, the band wasn't into songs any longer. Cast firmly in a mold that would now be compared to Gang of Four if they weren't so precious, the likes of "This Is Your Life," the frenetic "Police State," and "Who Killed Bruce Lee" are effortlessly danceable, twitchy, itching numbers that hang around for just the right amount of time, and then make way for the next convoluted stomp. The smoothly flowing "Avoiding the Issue," meanwhile, packs one of the most contagious choruses of the age -- "can I leave the table, mummy?," and really should have been out as a single. The absence of what was then the band's best-known number, "Christine Keeler," does somewhat defuse the album's attempts to turn the historical clock back. But still, anybody mourning the death of this most dramatic incarnation of the magical Glaxos wasn't going to allow that to stand in the way of what ranked among the most eagerly awaited albums of the year. (Dave Thompson)
No comments
Posted in , ,

Brian Auger & The Trinity - Definitely What! (1968)


This was Brian Auger's proper solo debut album. It's billed to Brian Auger & the Trinity, but Julie Driscoll, who sang with Brian Auger & the Trinity on the act's most popular and best late-'60s recordings, is not present. Auger dominates the record not just with his organ, but also as composer of most of the original material, and as the vocalist. Auger was a good organ player, but not up to the level of the best British rock electric keyboardists of the 1960s, like Alan Price, Rod Argent, Graham Bond, and Vincent Crane. He's also no more than adequate as a singer and songwriter, and the record is only adequate, sounding like a more progressive-minded Georgie Fame. Auger's principal influences are obvious in the songs he covers by Booker T. & the MG's, Wes Montgomery, and Mose Allison, although there's also an odd version of "A Day in the Life" that is bolstered by an orchestra's worth of horns and strings. He gets into a Roland Kirk vibe on the title track, which is the longest, most ambitious, and not necessarily best cut. The CD reissue on Disconforme has a bonus track, "What You Gonna Do?," of undisclosed origin; it's a standard Brian Auger soul-rock original, taken from a vinyl source by the sound of things, as surface noise can be heard --- Richie Unterberger

1 comment
Posted in , ,

Ike & Tina Turner - Don't Play Me Cheap (1963)


Tina Turner has been ‘beaten bloody.’  It is July 1976.  The assailant of the African-American singer is her husband, Ike Turner.  Their act, The Ike And Tina Turner Revue, has come to Dallas, Texas, to begin a tour.  The couple travel in the back of a hired car to their motel.  “In the car he was real edgy,” Tina begins.  “And I was holding some chocolates and I made him angry and I was wearing a white suit…So…we started to fight in the car…”  Ike Turner has been physically abusing his wife for the last sixteen years.  This time something is different.  Tina fights back.  “We fought all the way back to the motel.  It was like something came over me.”  Once Ike Turner falls asleep in the motel room, Tina makes her escape.  Wearing sunglasses to conceal her bruised face, she exits with thirty-six cents and a Mobil gasoline credit card in her pocket.  “I had to go out the back way.  I was running,” Tina recounts.  She is given refuge in a nearby Ramada Inn.  From there, she makes her way to Los Angeles, California.  “I’m gone and I’m not going back was the attitude,” says Tina Turner defiantly.

Tina Turner is born Anna Mae Bullock on 26 November 1939 in Haywood Memorial Hospital, Tennessee, U.S.A.  She is raised in the nearby town of Nutbush.  “In Tennessee where I grew up, there were animals, farms, wagons, mules.”  Anna Mae is the child of Floyd Richard Bullock and his wife, Zelma Priscilla Bullock (nee Currie).  “My parents were church people; My father was a deacon in the church.”  The child is raised in the Baptist faith.  Floyd Bullock works as an overseer of sharecroppers.  Anna Mae has an older sister, Ruby Ailene.  Less often mentioned is that Anna Mae has two half-sisters: (i) Mary Ann Buck-White who is taken away when Anna Mae is born; and (ii) a mysterious, unnamed half-sister who dies in a car accident in Ripley, Tennessee, when Anna Mae is 14.  This girl is the ‘oldest sister.’  While her parents are Baptists, young Anna Mae is also exposed to a different brand of spirituality.  “I heard stories from my mother’s mother who was an American Indian…She used to tell me stories of the rivers.”  Anna Mae grows up believing she has ‘significant Native American ancestry’, but a D.N.A. test in 2008 reveals she is only one percent Native American and thirty-three percent European.  Of course, her main genetic background is African-American.

During World War Two, the parents of Anna Mae Bullock (Tina Turner) go to work at the defense plant in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Anna Mae is separated from her older sister, Ruby Ailene, and sent to live with her paternal grandparents.  Her father’s mother is “strict…I was always getting spanked.”  Anna Mae starts to sing in the church choir at Nutbush’s Spring Hill Baptist Church.  While still a pre-teen, she is employed as a domestic worker for the Henderson family.

After the war, the Bullock family is reunited, but Floyd and Zelma have an ‘abusive relationship.’  “My mother and father didn’t love each other so they were always fighting,” Tina Turner remembers.  Zelma runs off when Tina / Anna Mae is 13.  “When a mother leaves, it leaves some kind of loneliness for a girl,” Tina says wistfully.  Floyd Bullock remarries before his daughter turns 14.

The teenage years bring new awareness to Anna Mae Bullock.  “As I grew up, I learned what worked for me.  That’s where the short dresses came from.  And you can’t dance [like I do] in a long dress.”  Despite being only five feet, four inches, the girl notes, “I always had long legs.  When I was young, I used to think, ‘Why do I look like a pony?’”

Anna Mae Bullock graduates from Sumner High School in 1958.  “I’m self-made,” she later says.  “I always wanted to make myself a better person because I was not [highly] educated.  But that was my dream.  To have class.”  Anna Mae Bullock works as a nurse’s aide at Barnes-Jewish Hospital.  She gains her first boyfriend, a fellow named Harry, while living in Brownsville, Tennessee.

With her sister Ruby Ailene, Anna Mae Bullock moves to St Louis, Missouri, in the hope of finding a career as a professional singer.  “After I moved to St Louis, my older sister and I went to see Ike Turner, who was the hottest then.  His music charged me.  I was never attracted to him, but I wanted to sing with his band.”


Ike Turner (5 November 1931 – 12 December 2007) is born in Clarksdale, Mississippi, U.S.A.  He grows up in an area steeped in blues music.  Ike works as a disc-jockey and forms his own band, The Kings Of Rhythm (a.k.a. The Delta Rhythm Kings).  Ike Turner plays guitar and piano and also acts as a talent scout for the Los Angeles-based record labels Modern and RPM.  In 1951 he plays on ‘Rocket 88’ by Jackie Brenston.  This is one of a handful of contenders for the title of the first rock ‘n’ roll record.  Jackie Brenston is a saxophone player in The Rhythm Kings but, because he takes the lead vocal on ‘Rocket 88’, the song is credited to him on the record label.  Ironically, the sax solo on the track is not played by Brenston but by Raymond Hill, another one of The Kings Of Rhythm.  Ike Turner’s prototypical dirty guitar sound is due to his amplifier having a patchwork repair after it was damaged falling off the truck on the way to the recording session.  After this seminal recording, Ike Turner’s work as a talent scout is attributed with the discovery of such recording artists as Howlin’ Wolf, B.B. King and Bobby Bland.

Ike Turner tours with ‘a revue-style show, featuring him on guitar and piano, and spotlighting various vocalists.’  This involves an open-mike section of the show where members of the audience are given an opportunity to sing with The Kings Of Rhythm.  One night in 1958, the future Tina Turner is in the St Louis audience.  “Many times other girls had stood to sing [with Ike] and I knew they couldn’t sing as well as I could,” Tina recalls.  When her turn comes, Anna Mae Bullock turns in an impressive performance.  The 18 year old becomes part of the touring show as a backing vocalist.  She is billed as Little Ann.  She becomes romantically involved with Raymond Hill (the saxophone player who was featured on ‘Rocket 88‘).  Anna Mae Bullock bears him a son, Raymond Craig (born 29 August 1958).  She describes her relationship with Ike Turner in the late 1950s this way: “He was a very nice person at the time and we were really friends, like brother and sister.”  Within a year, Raymond Hill has left Anna Mae Bullock and Ike Turner’s attention turns to her.  “The first time Ike actually touched me, I felt ashamed because he was my friend.”  Nonetheless, in January 1960 she finds herself pregnant by Ike.  Complicating the situation is that Ike Turner is already married to a woman named Lorraine. (source)
1 comment
Posted in , ,

Julian Cannonball Adderley - Cannonball's Sharpshooters (1958)

Julian (Cannonball) Adderley - alto saxophone
Nat Adderley - trumpet
Julian Mance - piano
Sam Jones - bass
Jimmy Cobb - drums

Excellent bebop comes from the great altoist Cannonball Adderley and his original quintet (which co-starred cornetist Nat Adderley and pianist Junior Mance). Strange that this group was on the verge of breaking up for their renditions of such standards as "Our Delight," "Straight No Chaser," "If I Love Again" and "I'll Remember April" are often quite exciting.--- Scott Yanow

No comments
Posted in , , ,

Emiter - Odzyskane (2015)


Emiter i jego „Odzyskane” to trzydzieste drugie wydawnictwo w Pawlaczu Perskim. Muzyka zawarta na albumie funkcjonowała najpierw jako ścieżka dźwiękowa do spektaklu Ludomira Franczaka.

„Przeniesiona na pawlaczową taśmę, zwraca uwagę swoim minimalizmem i opartą na repetycjach formą, które są punktem wyjścia do tkania rozmaitych elektronicznych faktur. „Odzyskane” to hipnotyczna podróż pod powierzchnię dźwięku” – czytamy w opisie wydawniczym.

Album dostępny w formie cyfrowej lub w limitowanym nakładzie 40 sztuk na kasecie.

Emiter porusza się w obszarze elektroniki, muzyki improwizowanej. Emiter łączy różne jakości – lo-fi/ hi-fi, czy też dźwięki powszechnie uznawane za zakłócenia oraz nagrania terenowe. Szuka możliwości syntezy analogowego/ cyfrowego brzmienia i organicznych połączeń w samym dźwięku eksplorując różnorodne pejzaże dźwiękowe.

Tworzy instalacje dźwiękowe, słuchowiska radiowe, muzykę do filmów, spektakli i przestrzeni publicznych. Gra do filmów niemych. Prowadzi autorskie warsztaty dźwiękowe oraz działania mające na celu propagowanie field recordingu. Współpracował z artystami wizualnymi i tancerzami m.in. Anną Baumgart, Joanną Rajkowską, Anną Witkowską, Ludomirem Franczakiem, Risą Takitą, Jackiem Krawczykiem oraz poetą Marcinem Świetlickim i pisarzem Danielem Odiją. Gra także w projektach: niski szum, emiter_franczak audio video performance, Flora Quartet. Członek Polskiego Stowarzyszenia Muzyki Elektroakustycznej.

Pawlacz Perski to prowadzone przez Mateusza Wysockiego (Fischerle) i Lecha Nienartowicza wydawnictwo zajmujące się rozpowszechnianiem muzyki eksperymentalnej i nowoczesnych odmian techno. W swoim katalogu zawiera nagrania artystów, takich jak Porcje Rosołowe, Promieniowanie, Arszyn / Duda, Au79, Emiter, Dot Dot, Duy Gebord, Michał Wolski, Jesień, Umba, Hubert Wińczyk, Ilia Belorukov, Paweł Paide Dunajko, Tomasz Wegner czy Konrad Gęca. (80bpm)


Musician, improviser. Emiter moves within electronics, and improvised music. He experiments with sound, transforming sound present in our life. He uses and combines different qualities – lo-fi/hi-fi or sounds commonly seen as interference. He creates sound installations, radio plays, soundtracks for films, performances and public spaces. He plays for dumb films. He conducts audio trainings and promotes field recording. He works with visual artists and dancers, such as: Anna Baumgart, Joanna Rajkowska, Anna Witkowska, Ludomir Franczak, Risa Takita, Jacek Krawczyk, poet Marcin Swietlicki and writer Daniel Odija, with whom he creates literary-musical form North Lines and "Listen with your ear" project – a cycle of live radio plays. He plays in such projects as: niski szum, emiter_franczak audio video performance, voice electronic duo...(emiter)

The music on the album 'Odzyskane' [PL: Recovered] functioned initially as a soundtrack for a play by Ludomir Franczak. While transferred into a Pawlacz Perski tape, it draws attention by its minimalism and based on repetitions form, which is the starting point for weaving a variety of electronic textures. 'Odzyskane' is a hypnotic journey beneath the sound's surface.
No comments
Posted in , , , ,

Carmen Maki - Adam And Eve (1970)


Adam And Eve is arguably her best album. The material is stunning, ranging from female psyched out vocals underscored with fuzz burnouts and erotic moaning, to feel good harmony Pop ala a Japanese Dusty Springfield via a journey through a sleazy lounge or '60s French film noire. On this disc, Maki does it all, still trying to pin down her trademark style. Almost every song is a winner on this varied album. One of the nicest female Psych influenced vocal albums to seep out of Japan. (amazon)


1 comment
Posted in ,

The Incredible String Band (1966)


The Incredible String Band is the debut album by the band of the same name, released in 1966 by record label Elektra. It is the only one of the band's albums to feature the original trio line-up with Clive Palmer as well as Robin Williamson and Mike Heron.

The trio had been signed to Elektra Records by Joe Boyd, who had seen them play in Glasgow.[citation needed] They recorded the album at the Sound Techniques studio in Chelsea, London in one afternoon in May 1966, with Boyd as producer. Boyd insisted on focusing on the group's own self-written material, rather than the traditional songs and tunes which they had also been performing, and with each performer singing his own material. This had the effect of marginalising Palmer, who had only one of his own songs featured on the record and only played on five songs in total. Less than half of the album featured collective performance. Nine of the album's sixteen songs were solo performances (five by Williamson, three by Heron and one by Palmer). Of the remaining seven songs, four were duets and only three featured all three musicians together.

The album showcased the trio's abilities on a variety of instruments, although the instrumentation is relatively orthodox compared to the band's later work. All three members played guitar and sang, with Palmer also playing banjo and kazoo and Williamson playing mandolin, banjo, tin whistle and fiddle/violin. The psychedelic imagery for which the band would become known is less prevalent on this album than on their later albums, although the liner notes, by Heron, include a surreal tale of the band's encounter with a magic blackbird. However, the album does contain unconventional tunes and singing styles.

The album was released in Britain in June 1966, and in the USA the same year. The original LP sleeve used in the UK featured a photograph of the band holding up obscure musical instruments in Boyd's office in London. For the US issue, a different photo was used, showing the three musicians posed on what appears to be a rusting bus.

The Incredible String Band did not chart when released, but in the UK following the Top 5 success of The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter it went to number 34 during a three-week run in the summer of 1968.

The trio broke up immediately after recording the album, but Heron and Williamson reunited after a few months to continue the band's name as a duo, later augmented by other musicians.

The Incredible String Band won the title of "Folk Album of the Year" in Melody Maker's annual poll, and in a 1968 Sing Out! magazine interview Bob Dylan praised Williamson's "October Song" as one of his favorite songs of that period. Heron would later describe this album as his own favourite of the band's releases.

In their retrospective review, Lindsay Planer of AllMusic praised the album, calling it "their most simple [album]. It is this minimalism that allowed the natural radiance of the band's (mostly) original material to be evident in the purist sense, and likewise without many of the somewhat intricate distractions and musical tangents that their future work would incorporate". Andrew Gaerig of Pitchfork called it "a mostly guitars-and-voices affair that openly aped Bob Dylan and Donovan. Heron and Williamson would grow to be legitimately adventurous songwriters, but neither is an overbearing personality, and the debut is understated." (wikipedia)
No comments
Posted in , ,

Ariel Ramirez - Misa Criolla (1965)


Ariel Ramírez (ur. 4 września 1921 w Santa Fe w Argentynie, zm. 18 lutego 2010 w Buenos Aires) – argentyński pianista i kompozytor.

Światową sławę przyniosła mu napisana w 1964 Misa Criolla (Msza Kreolska) – msza oparta na motywach ludowych tańców latynoamerykańskich, stworzona wkrótce po decyzji soboru watykańskiego II, umożliwiającej odprawianie mszy świętej w języku ojczystym. W Polsce wykonana po raz pierwszy przez Warszawski Chór Międzyuczelniany. W sumie kompozytor napisał ponad 3000 utworów.

Przy pisaniu tekstów do swojej muzyki Ramirez współpracował z wieloma osobami, m.in. z Atahualpą Yupanquim czy Miguelem Brascó. Najwięcej utworów powstało we współpracy z Felixem Luną – historykiem, dziennikarzem, dyplomatą, prawnikiem. Jednym z ich pierwszych i głównych wspólnych projektów było Navidad nuestra (Nasze Boże Narodzenie), powstałe w roku 1964.

Jego utwory (Mujeres argentinas – kobiety argentyńskie) wykonywała m.in Mercedes Sosa, zwana Głosem Ameryki Południowej. Pieśni na chór wykonywane były przez Los Fronterizos, ogromnie popularny w Argentynie kwartet mężczyzn, zastąpiony później przez Zamba Quipildor, a także polską grupę Sierra Manta. Przy nagrywaniu swojej płyty, w końcu lat osiemdziesiątych, Ramirez współpracował z tenorem José Carrerasem.

Kompozytor posiadał także swój własny zespół, w którym grał muzykę fortepianową.(wikipedia)


Ariel Ramírez composed the Misa Criolla in 1964 as one of the first masses in the national idiom. Ramírez not only used the language of his country but also the musical rhythms of Argentina, partly played by local instruments. It is a Creole Mass indeed. Creole means: native, which is not the same as indigenous. The Argentine Creoles are descendents of many peoples, such as Europeans and  Indians. New immigrants are called gringos. The Argentine rhythms and instruments also descend from many places.

The first recording of the Misa Criolla took place in 1964, sung by the choir of the Basílica del Socorro and the folkloric male quartet  'Los Fronterizos', who sang the soloist parts either one by one or together. The first live performance took place in Colón Theatre in Buenos Aires in 1965 (you can read a critic about this concert on the Ariel Ramirez website), the first European performances were in March 1967 in Germany.

The score was edited  in 1965 in Buenos Aires, together with the score of the Christmas cantata Navidad Nuestra. The Misa Criolla became extremely popular. It was sung all over the world and its recordings were sold in huge amounts.  Almost 25 years after its birth, millions of  CD's of the piece were sold when the famous classical tenor José Carreras recorded it (1988).  At the end of 1998, Ramírez performed the mass  in Buenos Aires with the three main folkloric singers that sung the mass in its 35 years of existence: Gerardo López ( Los Fronterizos, he died in 2004), Zamba Quipildor and Javier Rodríguez. The mass was more recently recorded by Mercedes Sosa (1999) and by Javier Rodríguez (2002).


1 comment
Posted in , , , ,

Liquid Liquid (1997)


Grupa Liquid Liquid powstała w Nowym Jorku w 1980 roku. Działała jedynie trzy lata i za swego żywota nie wydała ani jednej dużej płyty. A jednak dziś jawi się jako jeden z najbardziej wizjonerskich i wpływowych zespołów nowofalowego funk-punka. Muzycy bazowali na zimnych, surowych i neurotycznych groove'ach, nawiązujących do ówczesnej brytyjskiej postpunkowej awangardy - PIL czy też Pop Group. Wzbogacili je jednak o elementy buzującego na ulicach Wielkiego Jabłka multikulturowego dźwiękowego tygla.

W minimalistycznych, acz podanych z punkowym pazurem rytmicznych kawalkadach Liquid Liquid, słychać było więc nie tylko funk, ale i dub, afrykańskie czy latynoskie polirytmie, a nawet odwołania do transu gamelanów (indonezyjskich rytualnych orkiestr). Zespół korzystał z licznych instrumentów perkusyjnych - charakterystycznego cowbella, kong, marimby - które nadawały muzyce iście plemiennego kolorytu (...)

Potęgę wizji Liquid Liquid najlepiej określa liczba i format - mniej lub bardziej bezpośrednich - spadkobierców. Linia basu z utworu, pt. "Cavern" wykorzystana została w jednym z fundamentalnych dla rozwoju hip-hopu kawałków - "White Lines (Don't Do It)" Grandmaster Flasha z 1983 roku. 10 lat później grupa inspirowała postrockowców, z Tortoise i UI na czele (w 1997, na fali popularności tegoż gatunku nakładem Mo'Wax i Grand Royal wydana została poprzednia składanka podsumowująca jej dorobek, zatytułowana po prostu "Liquid Liquid"). Dziś echa dokonań Nowojorczyków pobrzmiewają w twórczości niezliczonych funk-punkowych, disco-punkowych, a w pewnym stopniu także coraz modniejszych, odwołujących się do afro-beatu formacji. Ascetyczna muzyka Liquid Liquid pozbawiona jest co prawda przebojowości reprezentujących te style gwiazd, niemniej swym hipnotycznym nerwem deklasuje ówczesną i aktualną konkurencję! (Łukasz Iwasiński)


The minimalistic funk of New York's Liquid Liquid consisted almost entirely of percussion grooves with a smattering of bass, plus congas, marimba, and the occasional vocal thrown in. The quartet consisted of Scott Hartley (drums, percussion, talking drum), Richard McGuire (bass, percussion, piano, guitar), Salvatore Principato (percussion, vocals), and Dennis Young (percussion, marimba, roto toms). The band released three EPs during its existence -- 1981's Liquid Liquid and Successive Reflexes, and 1983's Optimo. The latter contained the track "Cavern," which became the basis for Grandmaster Flash's "White Lines (Don't Do It)." In 1997, Grand Royal Records released a collection of those three EPs, plus a 1982 performance, Live from Berkley Square.

The angular, bass-propelled funk grooves of Liquid Liquid laid the groundwork for post-rock bands like Tortoise and Ui more than a decade before the fact -- stripped of all excess and artifice, their hypnotically dub-like sound offered a starkly minimalist counterpoint to the prevailingly lush production of the concurrent disco movement, in the process impacting the development of everything from hip-hop to drum'n'bass. This superbly packaged, 18-track retrospective collects the sum of Liquid Liquid's official output, recorded between 1981 and 1983, and all things considered, it's remarkable just how prescient and modern the group's music really was. Although only the standout, "Cavern" (the basis for the Grandmaster Flash rap classic "White Lines"), is even remotely familiar in any strict sense, the remaining material, with its thickly fluid basslines and circular rhythms, will undoubtedly strike a chord of recognition in anyone versed in the sonic motifs of post-rock and electronica. Ui's Sasha Frere-Jones is thanked on the sleeve, but in truth he's the one owing the debt -- for all intents and purposes, post-rock (and a whole lot more) starts here. (allmusic)

    Serpent.pl