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Monthly Archives: February 2012

Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Brian Auger, Julie Driscoll, Julie Tippets

Recorded in 1968, this record would sound contemporaneous to any era, although, it would depend on the era whether you would find it in the jazz or rock bins of a record store. These incredibly tight and well structured songs feature Brian Auger on keyboards including a Hammond B, Clive Thacker on drums, Dave Ambrose on base, and an uncredited guitarist (possibly Vic Briggs or Gary Boyle). These virtuosic players improvise with such tasty sophistication, this music is truly for all times. Notably, this album was produced Giorgio Gomelsky, impresario of the Manifestival of Progressive Music (which I will tell you about some other day).

You wouldn’t know Julie Driscoll was in the band, and her image on the album jacket would seem to be just cheesecake, if all you heard was the first side of the record. But on the second side, her aculeate voice drives the music, and she and Brian find the latent jazz in “Season of the Witch” that makes this the dispositive version of this song. More recently she is known as Julie Tippets, and in addition to her work with her husband Keith Tippet (without the “s”), she has become an important outre vocalist, working with some of the greatest experimental jazz-classical creators including Robert Wyatt and Carla Bley.

Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger and the Trinity, Open, Atco Records, SD 33-258 (1967).  Album Design – Paragon Publicity, London.

The Roches

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Barbershop Quartet, Folk Music, Maggie, Robert Fripp, Suzzy, Terre, The Roches, women's music

Another album I cannot pry off the turntable. How annoying and irresistible it is! I love the black and white images on the cover. Maggie, Suzzy, and Terre. They look so smart and mean and free. Which is the one with funny low voice? And what a surprise, in “Hammond Song,” to hear that unmistakable fuzzy Fripp guitar – the first time I heard it I said, Wow it can’t be! Such complex harmonies and counter points. Like a barbershop trio. There’s Robert Fripp again.

At the Buffalo Folk Festival, I said to Suzzy, The way you sing together reminds me of the complex harmonies in barbershop quartet songs. And she was way shorter than me but she came up to me right in my face and said LIKE WHAT??? And I was taken aback by her effrontery, her strength. I did not say I had sung the baritone lines in many a barbershop song – “Ida, sweet as apple cidah” – I was shy. How much fun they must have had as kids wailing gospel songs and folk songs and the Alleluia Chorus at the top of their lungs.

The Roches, The Roches, Warner Brothers Records, BSK 3298 (1979).  Photography – Gary Heery; Album Design – Brad Kanawyer; Art Direction – Peter Whorf.

Girlschool

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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1980s, Denise Dufort, Enid Williams, Girlschool, heavy metal, Kelly Johnson, Screaming Blue Murder

I think the early 1980s metal groups, especially the ones out of England, were riding on the shoulders of the punks.  The punks brought us back to real rock’n’roll.  And the new metal groups like Iron Maiden and Motorhead, and this great group, Girlschool, were jumping off that sensibility with faster rhythms, shorter songs, and a sexier streetwise lyrics than the old school metal.  Girlschool further supports this hypothesis because their second album, Hit and Run, came out on the Stiff Record label, the same label that gave us Elvis Costello, Wreckless Eric, Ian Dury, and most relevantly, Motorhead.

By any standard Hit and Run is a fantastic album.  Shut your eyes.  Would you believe this is an all girl metal quartet?  Well the fact that I ask that question, and the fact that you’re even a little bit surprised shows us exactly how screwed up our parents made us, and affirms exactly what Girlschool set out to prove by being an all-girl group in the first place:  that girls can play rougher than boys.  I don’t think they do a single ballad or remotely spiritual tune.

Check out this song:  “Flesh and Blood” from their third album, Screaming Blue Murder.  WHAM Kim McAuliffe’s driving power chords.  And WHAAAAAAA Kelly Johnson screaming her pure self through each guitar solo.  And WHOMP the shockwave pounding foundation laid by Denise Dufort on Drums and Enid Williams thumping bass.  They do rawer-and-hotter-than-the-original versions of songs by boys, like Gun’s immortal “Race With the Devil” and ZZ Top’s “Tush.”

Girlschool, Screaming Blue Murder, PolyGram Records, SRM 1-4066 (1982).  Photography – Fin Costello; Album Design – not credited.

Rosalie Sorrels

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Archie, Folk Music, Mehitabel, Rosalie Sorrels

Well I am always a lady Archie, always a lady. I did not do anything vulgar.  I simply removed his right eye with my left claw.  And the next floor flusher who mentions marriage to me, I may lose my temper and slice him from gahena to duodenum!!

It is hard to imagine anyone more full with life wisdom than Rosalie Sorrels.  The pictures of her face, the whine of her voice, and her worldly songs of sorrow and peace and resignation and joy, she seems to have been through all ways and all things.  She is also a noted collector and preserver of traditional American folk songs.  Now we are listening to her sardonic humor, a riff on Don Marquis’ tales of Archie the literary cockroach and Mehitabel the alley cat.

Rosalie Sorrels, “Mehitabel’s Theme,” no publisher (1979).  From Rosalie Sorrels, Always a Lady, Philo Records, PH 1029 (1979).  Album Design – Margot Zalkind-Schur; Photography – Marion Ettlinger.

Otis Rush

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Blues, Cold Day in Hell, frank zappa, jeff beck, Otis Rush, You're Breakin' My Heart

One of my A-Number One favorite blues musicians is Otis Rush and this album, Cold Day in Hell is the one that did it. My father used to tell me how Harry James could make a trumpet talk. And that’s how I feel about Otis and his guitar. He sings “You’re Breakin’ My Heart! . . . . .” . . . . . but his guitar tells you what he is saying before he sings a single syllable. Along with Frank Zappa and Albert Collins and Jeff Beck, he’s one of the few guitarists who plays with a human voice.

Otis Rush, “You’re Breaking My Heart,” no publisher (1975).  From:  Otis Rush, Cold Day in Hell, Delmark Records, DS 638 (1975).  Album design – Charles Templeton; Photography – Jean-Claude Le Jeune, Steven Thomashefsky.

Thanks to The Guy in the Groove for having a wonderfully tasty selection of vinyl, including this jem, on Record Store Day 2012, no less!

Gram Parsons

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Chris Ethridge, country music, country rock, Gram Parsons, She

They say this was the guy who told all those acid rockers about the true beauty of American country music.  The Byrds were one of the first big groups to make the move and he was with them when, in 1968, they released one of their greatest albums, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, perhaps the first country rock album ever.

What a life he lived – his troubled rich-kid upbringing, his time as a folky with the Shilos, how seeing Merle Haggard smacked him awake, landing with the Byrds, forming the Burritos, his collaboration with Emmylou Harris, all those drugs, his O.D., the theft and cremation of his body.

How little the gossip matters.  He was the muse, godfather, path crosser, founding member, band member, stand-in, sit-in, jam-in, song writer, song collaborator, celebrant, and partner-in-crime for an ever-expanding spiraling galaxy of musicians.  Whose musical life has he not touched?:  International Submarine Band, Dillard and Clark, Flying Burrito Brothers, Country Gazette, Manassas, Eagles, Emmylou Harris, Byron Berline, Souther-Hillman-Furay Band, Buddy Emmons, Delaney and Bonnie, Rolling Stones, J.J. Cale, and every single other mother who put some country and some rock in the same song.

This song, “She,” seems to me to be a portrait of a slave or indentured worker in the Old South.

The music is sentimental, reminiscent of a Great Songbook song, like “They All Laughed,” (George and Ira Gershwin) or “Blue Moon” (Rogers and Hart), until the refrain soars in:

Ooh, but she sure could sing.
Ooh, she sure could sing.

And then you know this is a tale about the transcendent power of music.  An unidentified “he” – her owner?, her boss? – looks down upon her, pities her, and loves her.  But the point of the story, I think, is that her music leaves her wanting for nothing and allows her to give joy to others.  She seems to be utterly without guile, to be complete and fulfilled, and yet oblivious of the cause of her inner peace:

She never knew what her life had to give her,
And never had to worry about it for one single day.

Gram Parsons is kind of out of tune on some of the high notes, and his voice is uneven and lonesome sounding.  With this rough singing, he leaves to our imagination the perfection of the voice he celebrates.

Gram Parsons & Chris Ethridge, “She” Irving Music, Inc./House of James (BMI) (1973).  From Gram Parsons, GP, Reprise Records, MS 2123 (1973).  Photography – Barry Feinstein; Album design – Vicki Hodgetts, Camouflage Productions.

Vieux Diop

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Africa, afropop, Senegal, Vieux Diop, World Music

Warm blithesome textures, exquisite vocal harmonies, melange of traditional instruments – kora, xalam, talking drum – with synthesizers, guitars, and electric bass.  He wonders if he “can still hope for a better world.”  Such music promises a better world here and now.

Vieux Diop, Afrika Wassa, Triloka LLC/Gold Circle Entertainment, TR 8069-2 (2000).  Art Direction – Lisa KIng; Photography – Kvon.

Gordon Bok

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Folk Music, Gordon Bok, Peter Kagan and The Wind

In the liner notes they call it a cante-fable – a combination of song and story-telling. “Peter Kagan and The Wind” by Gordon Bok is one of the most strange and beautiful recordings I have ever heard. It is a myth about a fisherman who marries a seal. He is caught at sea by the cold North Wind.

The Wind says: Listen, I got something to tell you.
Kagan, rowing: I don’t want to hear it.

Gordon Bok worked among the fishermen off the toast of Maine, he is a poet and plays one of the most singing ringing acoustic guitars on record.

Kagan is freezing dying until . . . . . . he dreams his wife comes down the smoking sea and she climbs into the dory with him . . . . .

Gordon Bok, “Peter Kagan and the Wind,” Machigonnne Music (BMI) (1971).  From Gordon Bok, Peter Kagan and the Wind, Folk Legacy Records, FSI-44 (1971).  Album design – not credited.

Busi Mhlongo

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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afropop, Busi Mhlongo, South Africa, World Music

She is exuberant, crazy, sweet – how can she sound so happy when she sings “My money is all gone“?  Listen!  She is so tough, insouciant, and completely inspiring!

Busi Mhlongo, Themba Ngcobo, Mkhalelwa Ngwazi, “Yaphel’Mali Yami,” M.E.L.T. 2000 Publishing Ltd. (2000).  From Busi Mhlongo, Urbanzulu, EMI Records, 7243 5 35130 2 3 (2001).  Sleeve Design – Swifty; Photography – Peter Williams.

Iron Maiden

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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1980s, classical, Eddie, heavy metal, Iron Maiden, Killers, Paul Di’Anno

Like many other groups with great album covers – such as Miles Davis, Blind Faith, Yes, King Crimson, Little Feat, Herb Alpert, Alan Parsons, Santana, Duran Duran – this group might not have enjoyed half the notoriety it received if it did not have thought-provoking iconic album art. There’s something about Derek Riggs’ images of the cadaverous maleficent Eddie, a/k/a/ Edward The Head, that raises as many questions as are answered by the stories they tell. You just gotta look and look. Most notable is the cover of the single, “Flight of Icarus,” in which Eddie careens away on bat wings, having just used a flame thrower to incinerate the wings of the beautiful son of Daedalus.

And then while you’re looking at the album art, you notice the music. Each musician is a wonder because musicianship is a huge part of what this band is about. Thus, many of the songs have long instrumental introductions or instrumental interludes that diverge in rhythm and key signature from the song of which they are a part. Individual songs have segments that differ from one another in melody and tempo – and I do not mean they merely have a verse, chorus, and bridge – rather they have different movements. Steve Harris on bass occasionally rises above the tumult to take over from the driving dominance of the lead-guitar duo, Adrian Smith and Dave Murray. At times the bass, guitars, and drums, are slamming along in unison. Paul Di’Anno growls like Alberich in Das Rheingold and then he soars and squeals like a banshee. And the subject matters of the songs are gothic, mythological, religious, literary. In a word, the forms of Iron Maiden’s music are classical.

The brilliance of Di’Anno’s singing is spectacularly represented by the song “Purgatory.” Barking words so fast they can barely be sung then suddenly he glissandos a scream an octave high.

The protagonist of the song is trapped in a doldrum. His incorporeal self reaches out to past lives, past memories of love, while his corporeal body holds him back.

My body tries to leave my soul.
Or is it me, I just don’t know.
Memories rising from the past, the future’s shadow overcast.
Something’s clutching at my head, through the darkness I’ll be led.

He is caught in a purgatory between long dead pleasure and present living pain. The song ends with a hopeless begging refrain:

Please take me away, take me away, so far away.

I note the influence of the punks on the 1980’s new wave of British metal. The metalists adopted the drive, the frenzy, the rage. But they rejected a huge part of the punk sensibility – the folk ethos – the philosophy that ANYONE can do this music. So it is with Iron Maiden. Only the few, the chosen, the spectacular virtuosos, can play this music.

Steve Harris, “Purgatory,” No publisher (BMI) (1981).  From Iron Maiden, Killers, Harvest Records Limited, Capitol Records Inc., ST-12141 (1981).  Illustration – Derek Riggs; Album design – Not credited.

Julian Bream

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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classical, Francesco da Milano, Guitar, Il Divino, Julian Bream, Lute

One of the most extraordinary things about Julian Bream is the way in performance, during a demanding passage, he bugs his eyes and sticks out his tongue in a manner that would terrorize a gargoyle.  Every time I see him do it I nearly jump out of my seat and run screaming out of the auditorium.

Here he is boys and girls.

The greatest guitarist that ever was.

Greater than Segovia.  Greater than Jeff Beck.  Greater than Chet Atkins.  Greater than John McLaughlin.  Greater than Steve Vai.  Greater than Jimi Hendrix.  Greater than Doc Watson.

But guitar ain’t enough for the greatest that ever was.

Here he is not playing guitar, but rather lute.  You can hear him play a piece by Francesco da Milano who died in 1543.  They called Francesco “Il Divino”, so consummate was his skill on the lute.

What other names are there for Bream but “Bream”?

Francesco da Milano, “Fantasia I in C minor,” No publisher (No date).  From Julian Bream, The Woods So Wild, RCA Records, LSC-3331 (1972).  Album design – Not credited.

Public Enemy

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Chuck D, flavor flav, giant clock, Hip Hop, It Takes a Nation, Poetry, Public Enemy, Rap, Terminator X

You would think it couldn’t happen more than once in a lifetime.

When I first heard “Don’t Believe the Hype” it was like the first time I heard “Whole Lotta Love.” Just as Led Zeppelin showed what rock’n’roll sounds like when it is played by gods, Public Enemy revealed the same for rap.

That basso molto profundo of Chuck D counterpoised with that biting jocose tenor of Flavor Flav laughing at you with that giant clock around his neck.

There is hardly a naughty word on this album and they don’t trash women. But that doesn’t mean they were insipid. The poetry. The poetry! Urgent righteous menacing raging thundering revolutionary!

And how could Terminator X twirl those turntables so they roared such horrible terrifying sirens and squeals and explosions?

And how could they all transform such sounds into the Music of the Spheres?

Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Def Jam Recordings, 314 527 358-2 (1988).  Album Design – Glen E. Friedman; Photography – Glen E. Friedman.

King Crimson

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Bill Buford, David Cross, Jamie Muir, John Wetton, King Crimson, Larks Tongues in Aspic, Progressive Rock, Robert Fripp

This incarnation of the King was comprised of David Cross, Robert Fripp, John Wetton, Bill Buford, and Jamie Muir. I am enthralled by “Larks Tongues in Aspic, Part I.”

A kalimba close to the ear, pretty patterns over and over, grindings, ringings, scrapings. It is like moving through a pleasantly working galaxy of atoms and molecules all going about their business. Menacing enormity is near.

When I was a child, I would at night be clutched by a simultaneous sensation of absolute universal hard round enormity and absolute sharp brittle minuteness. This terror was called The Bigs and The Littles.

This music is like that. Horrible buzzing guitar, very distant. Gradually, a tribal beat takes over, drums like tin cans and garbage lids, wicked war drums, drums of ritual. Unconscious deep unnoticed bass solo. Like a spindly creature or a dry weed the violin spins a tale which is shouted away by pulsing guitar and voices from a soap opera, and the violin is frantic with melodrama. Sudden huge whirling of brilliant things and then it is dying dying tinkling tinkling softly tinkling dying. Shhhhhhhhh.

King Crimson, Larks Tongues in Aspic, Atlantic Records, SD 7263 (1973).  Album Design – Tantra Designs, London.

Baaba Maal

29 Wednesday Feb 2012

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Africa, afropop, Baaba Maal, Missing You, Senegal, World Music

Beloved Baaba Maal. Collaborating with dozens of musicians. Warp and weft of guitars and voices and drums interweaving exquisite peaceful beauty.

Baaba Maal, Missing You (Mi Yeewnii), Palm Pictures, LLC/Rycopalm, PALMCD 2067-2 (2001).  Design – Michael Nash Associates; Photography – Eddie Monsoon.

Leo Kottke

05 Sunday Feb 2012

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acoustic guitar, Dreams and All That Stuff, Kottke, Mona Ray

Is there a greater acoustic guitar miraculist anywhere? How do the five fingers of the human lump and wires on a box of wood become at once so insouciant and inscrutable and incandescent? “This is the most beautiful name I ever heard,” he says of “Mona Ray” in the liner notes. Jeeze, I don’t think it’s such a great name. But, by god, this is one of the most beautiful guitar pieces I ever heard. Monstrous twelve string finger picking in beautiful duet with Mike Johnsen on a six string (at least that’s my guess at the instrumentation). Here we have an almost Elizabethan appoggiatos, and then a delicate descending folk melody, and now there a resplendent strumming air. And it returns again and again to the melody, and each turn is more unspeakably – well, beautiful – than the preceding. And then suddenly it ends, and we are. . . just here, in the silence.

Leo Kottke, Dreams and All That Stuff, Capitol Records, St-11335 (1974).  Album Design – John Van Hamersveld.

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