The Coctails - Long Sound

As an homage to the KCMO -> Chicago connection that permeates & infuses the FROXX, here's one from some of both cities' best-loved sons. KCAI grads and Chicagoland transplants (KCMO can, admittedly, get a bit, um, provincial at times) The Coctails hat-tip a handful of jazz genres and do so formidably, with precision, chutzpah and academic chops.

This here cooks.

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All Music: On Long Sound, Chicago's Coctails continued their offbeat style of jazzy lounge music. Throughout their career they were somehow able to recruit their fan base from indie rock circles, and this album played a large role in their development. It was during this era of the band that the quartet's sound moved more to jazz and away from the band's poppier efforts on albums like Early Hi-Ball Years. The disc starts off with "Steam," a subdued song that moves at a crawling pace. Throughout the disc, the band experiments with a variety of horns, including saxophone, clarinet, vibraphone, trumpet, and fluegelhorn. The pace picks up on "China Song," which is followed by the jumbled and inventive "Monkeys and Seals," which includes Ken Vandermark on bass clarinet. "Tenement" includes an extended solo by soprano saxophonist Hal Russell. The simplest song is "Twilight for Henry"; it's also the only song that is absent of horns. The song simply consists of guitar and bass, serving as a sort of musical intermission in the middle of the mostly horn-based album. The piano intertwines gracefully with Dave Crawford's fluegelhorn on "Waterlogged," leading to the chaotic blend of piano and horns on "Clown's Coffee." The album concludes with the longest song on the disc, the almost seven-minute-long "Gripper Bite," which consists of the core group of four and the simple mix of saxophone, bass, drums, and guitar. The songs on the album were recorded at Acme Studios in Chicago in August 1992. Seven of the ten songs included guest musicians, as the band began to extend their musical reach beyond the quartet of John Upturch, Mark Greenberg, B. Norman Phipps, and Archer Prewitt.

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Nelson Angelo E Joyce - Nelson Angelo E Joyce

rocky says:

this was a loan from Gallo a while back,

and it was a real revelation to me.

othermusic.com: Nelson Angelo is a great, if somewhat overlooked Brazilian songwriter and arranger mainly known outside of his homeland for his appearance on Milton Nascimento's classic Clube da Esquina (the present record is practically its sister album). By 1972, when this album was cut, Joyce had been gaining renown as a bossa nova interpreter with a couple of albums and some singles under her belt. Just prior to this record the couple were part of a short-lived quartet called A Tribo which experimented with the conventions of bossa nova. After the dissolution of that group, Angelo and Joyce teamed up for the recording of this very, very beautiful album of hushed atmospherics and sweet melodies. The emphasis is on space, with songs constructed around Joyce's delicate acoustic guitar and Angelo's moody string and woodwind arrangements. The songs are given so much room to breathe that even a bit of fuzz guitar seems unobtrusive. A very subtle masterpiece, and one of the finest and most successful explorations into Brazilian song following the initial heyday of the Tropicalia movement. [MK]

loronix: Nelson Angelo e Joyce (1972), for Odeon, the third Joyce LP from Joyce, a Brazilian singer with several fans at Loronix. Joyce was married with Nelson Angelo when this LP was recorded in 1972. I think this makes the difference on this nice album with both playing and making several duets together as they were rehearsing on their living room. People say that this is a classic album from Brazilian MPB (Musica Popular Brasiliera) in the 70's.

dustygroove: Amazing! This album is one of Joyce's truly hip albums, and it's a beautiful set of tracks written and performed with Nelson Angelo (who was Joyce's bandmate in the group A Tribo) -- with a sound and feeling that's slightly different from her other work as a leader. The music has an extremely haunting quality, and Angelo's presence adds a lot to Joyce's usual mix of lovely vocals and guitar playing. Many of the tracks on here have been extremely hard to find over the years, and very little of the album was issued on the Essential Joyce compilation. It's all fantastic, and the record's a truly essential chapter in Joyce's career!

Joyce website

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The Jazz Butcher - A Scandal in Bohemia / Sex & Travel

this is partial repayment

of a long-standing debt owed to the gozzer

(still working on "rain," my friend)...

(november 1984)

Butch says: The Albatross. Since the recording of Bath Of Bacon (almost two years before this one) we had become a "proper" group. For all that, we still pooled our skills in the studio, and this isn't a bad two weeks' work.

I think that, lyrically, a lot of the songs are a bit trite and immature, and our inability to take ourselves seriously is much in evidence. A record, I feel, of its time. We were young(ish) and cocky and I think it shows. I still haven't learned to sing on this one, which bugs me too. Still, it was cheap and cheerful, and it helped us to meet an awful lot of people.

I was told, incidentally, that if we released this on Glass we could expect a top global sale of 2,000. We released it on Glass and sold about 25,000 copies.

(may 1985)

Butch says: One day's rehearsal in Kevin Haskin's living room, five days' recording and two days' mixing was all it took for us to make my favourite of the Glass records.

Now that the band had done a few dates with decent p.a. systems and stuff, I was beginning to have some sort of a bead on this singing business. Also, having exhausted the initial stick of JB songs (several of the A Scandal In Bohemia tunes had actually been written at the time of Bath Of Bacon, but were rejected back then as needing further development), I was obliged for the first time to write about my life as it was at the time, which was very different to the way I lived when writing the first two records.

Now I was "in a band", had left my day job, had been to Europe... I even started to write songs that were not self-consciously deferential and mocking. Hence, I guess, the arrival of the first recorded "big ballad" in Only A Rumour, where David J. harmonies at the end STILL give me the shivers.

I think that now we had started to learn about actually creating recordings rather than just recording the sound of a bunch of pals fooling around, and the disc does have a nice, unified feel. Credit John A. Rivers for his high-speed mixing job. When I think about it, this l.p. doesn't really have any "great" tunes, in the sense of numbers that people request or whatever, but it has a nice totality, a good, atmospheric vibe. This one I'd actually defend at length if I had to.

rocky says... There are five irrefutable reasons for spending some time with this. They are: "Southern Mark Smith," "Just Like Betty Page," "Girlfriend," "The Human Jungle," and last but not least, "Big Saturday" -- these are all simply buttery good slabs of pure pop confection. Pristine.

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Lorraine Hunt Lieberson - Neruda Songs

Classical not your gig? I tearfully direct sceptics to tracks 5 and 4, though I think they're all brilliant. Each composition is adapted from the love poems of Pablo Neruda by the composer Peter Lieberson, who created these settings for his wife, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson.

Been driving all night / my hand's wet on the wheel. The first time I heard these (played by some Indianapolis public radio station as we were driving back from West Virginia to Chicago at 2am), I was stunned out of my listless drivezone. Even eM, drowsing at my side, awoke to ask, what is this?

Death giveth back. The arrangements are modern yet classical, beautiful though brutish, restrained but powerful, dramatically understated. And Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's voice is just so achingly effing poignant. Makes it hard to forget the fact that she knew she was dying when she sang these.

"Lieberson's orchestral writing is both opulent and sensual, highly selective and invariably effective in its use of colour...Each of the five settings is distinctive, while as a unified work the piece works brilliantly. Lieberson has here turned something deeply personal into something of much wider significance. The cycle deserves many more performances." George Hall, BBC Music Magazine, 01/02/2007

"Inevitably, these are deeply personal as well as public utterances, and in this sense, Lieberson's 'cycle' of five sonnet settings have a Mahlerian impact on the listener, a sense of being witness to something essentially intimate, almost an invasion of privacy...These are, indeed, life-enhancing, uplifting songs, rejoicing in the joys and passions of a love that death cannot destroy. Lieberson wrote memorably singable lines for his wife's unique voice, and his orchestrations are rich and inventive, evoking the sultry, hot-house atmosphere of Latin-American ardour." Hugh Canning, International Record Review, 01/02/2007

Peter Lieberson’s Neruda Songs — a setting of five love poems on deep and wrenching subjects such as passing delight, memory, fear of separation and transcendence beyond death — is one of the most extraordinary affecting artistic gifts ever created by one lover to another... The score is achingly lovely, a genuine mixture of modernism and romanticism that has been sumptuously orchestrated and charged with the same appreciative ripeness that pervades Richard Strauss’s Four Last Songs... I hope the Neruda Songs are recorded, for they are just as universal as they are shatteringly personal. Tim Page, Washington Post, 01/03/2006

link to the above reviews and more here

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Dinosaur Jr - BBC In Session

I won't pontificate on the importance of Dinosaur. What I like about this recording is the fully fleshed version of tracks from their first record - a record I consider horribly mixed. If the first one had the tech skill behind it that propelled "You're living All Over Me" the Dino legend would be that much more enhanced and arrived that much earlier. In many ways the songs on the first record are much more developed. Anycrap, this BBC In Session recording features a few from the first one in full on, well-mixed big bottom Dino-roar... The Leper gets accessed in my head wikipedia whenever someone says, "power trio."

The bulk of these recordings occurred 1988 - 1989, so yes with the original lineup and near the summit of the J v Lou passive-aggressive psychological war. Two of the tracks (7 & 10) are from 1992 (therefore, I skip them).

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Allmusic: More than any of its peers from late-'80s indie rock, Dinosaur Jr. seemed to completely embody the lo-fi/slacker ethos. His amplifier cranked to 11, singer/guitarist J. Mascis directed the trio with unkempt guitar sludge that buried everything in sight, including his own cracked, sleepy tenor. In interviews, he sounded like he was perpetually on the verge of dozing off and his vocal style left a similar impression. The BBC Sessions collects ten live-in-studio recordings, the bulk of which date from the early years of the group. Although the music benefits from a less claustrophobic sound, the performances themselves rarely stray far from their studio counterparts. Early songs like "Bulbs of Passion" and "Does It Float" (from the 1985 debut Dinosaur) mix late-'80s indie rock with bloodcurdling metal. The group hit its stride two years later, however, settling on the sound explored over the next several years: a combination of early, amelodic Sonic Youth; the forceful, driving rock of Hüsker Dü (both labelmates on SST); and Mascis' bursts of Neil Young-style guitar leads. "Keep the Glove," "In a Jar," and "Raisins" are all fine selections from this period, which produced their underground triumph, You're Living All Over Me (1987), and its acclaimed follow-up, Bug (1988). Mascis' approach to writing and recording didn't so much evolve, however, as mellow with age. By the time of 1993's Where You Been, with Dinosaur Jr. essentially his solo vehicle, the clouds of distortion had thinned, and the guitar explorations expanded. "Get Me" and "Keeblin" (the only material on BBC that dates after 1992) are given acoustic-heavy readings that highlight Mascis' underrated songwriting gifts but reveal his shortcomings as a performer. With very little differentiating individual Dinosaur Jr. albums, most listeners will be satisfied with a single studio collection. BBC Sessions should be reserved for the rare die-hard fan.

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Animal Collective - Hove Festival, Norway, June 23, 2008

"Summertime Clothes" At Hove

Setlist:

1~ Dancer
2~ Comfy in Nautica
3~ Summertime Clothes (formerly 'bearhug')
4~ Daily Routine
5~ Peacebone
6~ House
7~ Fireworks/essplode
8~ Song for Ariel
9~ Brother Sport

More on Hove Festival

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The Nazz - Open Our Eyes (An Anthology)

This one was buried deep in the basement but the diggin commenced in response to Bay's Rungren ass grab.

So, here is - for a taste of history...a two-parter.

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Allmusic: An anthology is usually understood to be a selection of material, but Sanctuary's compilation of recordings by the Nazz, Open Our Eyes: The Anthology, actually collects all of the band's legitimately released tracks on two CDs with a running time of over two hours and ten minutes. That's the 34 songs that made up the albums Nazz, Nazz Nazz, and Nazz III, plus an outtake cover of "Train Kept a Rollin'" first released on the 1985 LP Best of the Nazz and making its CD debut here. But if compiler Kieron Tyler exercises no judgment about what to include, he does take it upon himself to provide a new sequence rather than just running one album after another in the order they were released originally in 1968-1970. There is some justification for this. Nazz Nazz was first intended to be a double album but truncated into a single one, with the extra material being released as Nazz III 20 months later. So, Tyler, after extracting the novelty song "Loosen Up" (a parody of the Archie Bell & the Drells hit "Tighten Up") from Nazz III to lead off the compilation, takes a shot, in the last seven tracks of the first disc and all of the second disc, at assembling a version of that never-released double album. This does not explain, however, why he also finds it necessary to re-sequence the ten songs from the first album. The new sequencing is not an improvement on the old, and for Nazz fans accustomed to the running order of the old LPs after 30 years, it will sound odd. But in whatever order, the package contains all of the group's recordings on one album. Tyler's liner notes, detailing the band's history with the help of Todd Rundgren, are excellent and contain new information.

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Hear Part 2

The Figgs - Banda Macho

Liz_Noise nudged me toward these dudes sometime ago. A tight, linear and determined pop/rock quartet shamefully overlook while artistically inferior artists such as The Goo Goo Dolls or The Beatles take baths in gold bouillon and women's underwear.

Here's their 1996 Capitol debut.

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Allmusic bio: The Figgs formed in 1987 in Saratoga Springs, NY. Mike Gent (guitar, vocals), Pete Donnelly (bass), Pete Hayes (drums), and Guy Lyons (lead guitar) were power pop and brash punk freaks, recklessly mixing elements of each but rarely losing sight of a solid hook. The combo issued 7" and cassette releases on the area indie Absolute-a-Go-Go before making their official debut with the 1994 Imago LP Low-Fi at Society High. The Hi-Fi Dropouts EP followed that same year; both received solid notices from critics and college radio. Imago's sudden loss of financing and distribution left the Figgs and material for their follow-up high and dry, but the band landed on its feet at Capitol, which issued Banda Macho in 1996. However, despite some touring and promotion, Capital wasn't really sure what to do with the ambitious Banda or the guys who made it, and the Figgs were kicked to the curb. Their next opportunity came as the backing band for Graham Parker, who tapped them for a tour after hearing their version of "Passion Is No Ordinary Word." The jaunt spawned a live set called The Last Rock N Roll Tour (Razor and Tie, 1997), but it was mostly a great excuse for the Figgs to play with one of their heroes. The Couldn't Get High LP appeared from Absolute-a-Go-Go in 1998, followed by an EP for Hearbox a year later. 2000 saw issue of both the vinyl-only Rejects (Philthyrex) and Sucking in Stereo (Hearbox), which emphasized the early new wave side of the Figgs' engaging, bratty pop. Stereo was hailed by some as a return to stripped-down, happily rocking form for the group, which by this point had endured its unfair share of label woe and teasing success. The 2001 EP Badger built on Stereo's success, as did the Hearbox full-length Slow Charm a year later. Touring for that album included a stint with Tommy Stinson; the ex-Replacement returned the favor in 2004, guesting on the Figgs' self-released double album Palais. Two years later the Bloodshot label released 103 Degrees in June, a mail-order and download-only live album with the Figgs backing Graham Parker at Chicago's Double Door. By the end of the year, the new album Follow Jean Through the Sea appeared.

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Rites Of Spring - End On End

So I learnt recently this is the germ, the patient zero of "emo." I don't really know what emo is so I had to wikiwiki it. I know this record is a boiling, tons of heart and spit, rip your guts out and roll around the floor in some intangible psychic angst type awesome. So I guess, yes, it's emotional, so does that make it emo? Isn't all music emotional (Kraftwerk excluded)? And I always thought "emo" was a haircut and a white belt.

So their first one has been in heavy rotation for about 20 years and now, based on this recent "emo" discovery I'm a wee bit embarrassed to admit how comfy I feel with this long player. Where else was a hardcore kid sposed to go? Metal? Pshaw!

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Allmusic: Because the term emo has come to define a sensibility more than a particular sound, it can be difficult to pin down even if you're not an outsider. Yet there's a general consensus — by no means universal, but fairly solid — that Washington, D.C.'s Rites of Spring were the first true emo band. Their music epitomized emo (or emocore, as it was then more often referred to) in the original sense of the term: an emotionally charged brand of hardcore punk marked by introspective, personal lyrics and intense catharsis.





While Rites of Spring strayed from hardcore's typically external concerns of the time — namely, social and political dissent — their musical attack was no less blistering, and in fact a good deal more challenging and nuanced than the average three-chord speed-blur. Although they didn't exist for long or record that much (two releases in just under two years), and didn't attract much attention outside of D.C. during that time, their influence was tremendous and far-reaching. Not only did they map out a new direction for hardcore that built on the innovations of Hüsker Dü's Zen Arcade, they spawned a host of imitators, first locally, then elsewhere; these descendants in turn gradually brought emocore to a wider underground audience, from which point it mutated into varying strands that often bore no surface resemblance to Rites of Spring, but owed them a great debt nonetheless. Additionally, half of the band went on to join Fugazi, whose status as punk icons helped shed light on Rites of Spring's small but still-potent recorded legacy.Rites of Spring were formed in March 1984, with a lineup of lead vocalist/guitarist Guy Picciotto, guitarist Eddie Janney, bassist Mike Fellows, and drummer Brendan Canty. Canty had played in the local hardcore band Deadline from 1981-1982, while Janney was a seasoned veteran of the D.C. scene, having been a member of the Untouchables (1979-1981), the short-lived, Ian MacKaye-led Skewbald/Grand Union (1981), and the Faith (1981-1983), which some credit with laying the groundwork for the early emo sound. Breaking free from hardcore's stylistic straitjacket, their music was powered by melody, tuneful (if hoarse) singing, guitar solos, and compelling instrumental interplay. Frontman Picciotto's lyrics were by turns nostalgic, heartbroken, confused, and desperately searching, expanding hardcore's range of subject matter into territory rarely covered (save for Hüsker Dü). Owing in part to the draining intensity of their shows, Rites of Spring didn't play live very often, but when they did, their gigs were full-fledged events, inspiring fierce devotion among fans and usually ending with the stage covered in flowers and smashed instruments. Rites of Spring signed with Ian MacKaye's Dischord label and recorded their self-titled debut album in early 1985. Eventually hailed as a landmark in some quarters, at the time it didn't receive the kind of widespread critical attention that Zen Arcade had the year before.





In January 1986, the band returned to the studio and cut a four-song EP, upon which point they disbanded; the EP was released posthumously the following year as All Through a Life. Picciotto, Janney, and Canty promptly regrouped as One Last Wish, which moved Janney to bass and put ex-Faith member Michael Hampton on guitar. They disbanded by the end of the year, and in 1987, the entire original lineup of Rites of Spring reunited under a new name, Happy Go Licky, and played a more experimental brand of post-punk influenced by Gang of Four and Mission of Burma. Again short-lived, the group's only recordings were live, but gave Canty the connections to join up with Ian MacKaye in Fugazi later that year; Picciotto would follow him several months later. Mike Fellows, meanwhile, formed Little Baby with ex-members of Soulside, and went on to play with Government Issue and Royal Trux. In 1991, Dischord compiled all of Rites of Spring's recorded output — the Rites of Spring album, one unreleased song left over from the sessions, and the All Through a Life EP — onto the CD release End on End, which was remastered in 2001.

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Richard Buckner - The Hill

I lost touch with Buckner after this one. Maybe because I didn't need any more. Whenever I went to see Buckner play live, usually a matinee show in a very smoky, grimy place right on Main St KCMO, I was on the verge of some illness. Typically, at a show with a fever rising throughout, this fever would break at some apex and for the remainder of the set I'd stand shivering in sweat, hallucinatory, used. This happened more than oncewhile seeing him & after I'd miss a few days of work for the flu or bronchitis or something. So maybe it was for my health I ended my Buckner fascination.

And it was with The Hill that I got two birds done kilt with one effort -- Buckner and Edgar Lee Masters. I'd never put the two together. Thought never occurred to me they speak the same lengua. I'd read Masters first in 1988 in a mid-Mo college classroom and was wayleighed, flummoxed I'd never heard of this guy. WTF world! He exhausted me.

So here's Buckner doing Masters' Spoon River Anthology and me in a cold sweat on The Hill.

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Allmusic's sketchy review: Edgar Lee Masters' Spoon River Anthology, a series of poems originally published in serial form in 1914-1915, provided the subject matter for nomadic troubadour Richard Buckner's 2000 release The Hill. In the poems, the dead in an Illinois graveyard relay details from their lives in matter-of-factly haunting tones. When originally published, Masters' believable characters tore away at the strict moral facade of small-town life through their tales of adultery, casual murder, and morphine addiction. Who better than Buckner to interpret these lost souls' voices in his growling, plaintive murmur, accompanied most often by sparse acoustic guitar and stark accompaniment. Through this earthy channeler, the names from ragged gravestones almost float in front of the listener while hollowed eyes reveal the details of their own deaths.

Unfortunately, while the subject matter and the musician are an ideal match, the album as a whole falls short of Buckner's famous heartfelt intimacy and inventive songwriting. Fans who have come to appreciate his snapshot imagery and dark wordplay may be disappointed at this interpretation of someone else's work, as appropriate as it may be. The 18 individual poems are recorded as one continuous 34-minute track, making it difficult to tell when one woman's childbirth death travels into another man's drunken despair, and the warm acoustic guitar, mandolin, and violin are on occasion jarringly interrupted by misplaced electronic sweeps and buzzes. Still, the haunting charm of "Oscar Hummel" and "Emily Sparks" show the familiar passion and honesty the singer is known for. Buckner continues to distance himself from the limiting country-folk label with increasingly ambitious projects, all of which are interesting but some of which fail to fully utilize his talents.

Blogger's note: Wrong. They didn't read Spoon River before writing this, obviously.

Blogger's Admission: Emily Sparks at min 24 is still an instant weeper here.

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New Order, Palace, Uilab (Give Thanks For EPs!)

Because so many of my favorite records of all time aren't even proper records per se (and by "proper records" I mean, well, you know the type: twelve-inch, BLACK, thirty-three-and-a-third-Long-Playing-LPs, with two count'em sides), No, rather, some of my favorite records are these odd dribs and drabs, these tour singles, or one-off collaborations, or mail-order marbled-wax novelties.

Call it Kindling. So I was out there gathering firewood, and I found a couple of sticks floating around the Forest, and I've bundled them up here for loving burnage.


rocky says: this 5-song EP is the missing link from old New Order (Movement) to new New Order (PC&L and beyond). My copy was taped from Processed and provided constant walkman accompaniment during those morning walks to LTHS South Campus in the Fall of 1984. Simply Beautiful stuff. Man meets machine and they discover they have more in common than they thought possible, and the twain shall never part.

New Order: Singles 1981-1982

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rocky says: oh. wow. ow. 1993. timeless. I'll leave this one to the professionals...

allmusic: Notably more defined and robust than previous Palace outings, the "Come In"/"Trudy Dies" single captures the polarizing emotional extremes of Oldham's singular vision, juxtaposing fragile, poignant sincerity against punishing, overripe morbidity. After so many tales of incest, alcoholism, and hellfire, "Come In" proves positively revelatory — never before (or arguably since) has Oldham's high, fractured voice seemed so truly gentle and empathetic as on this brief and deceptively simple final farewell. "Trudy Dies" is conversely so grim, so relentlessly melancholy, that its portrait of a widower's torment verges on the ridiculous — it's probably a masterpiece, but just try washing the acrid taste from your mouth after it's done.

Palace: Come In / Trudy Dies
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[Tsk Tsk! -- this link removed as of 12/03/2008

per gently firm email received from the Drag City record label.

You can purchase the PALACE MUSIC LOST BLUES AND OTHER SONGS

compilation, which includes these two songs, from the Drag City record label, here].

rocky says: incredible. no, actually, quite thoroughly credible. This joint juice between Stereolab and Ui resulted in the best ever "cover" (is too poor a word to describe this radical reimagining) of the canonical, archetypical Brian Eno uber-tune, "St. Elmo's Fire."

Uilab: Fires

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Harry Nilsson & John Lennon - Pussy Cats

Title says it all, comrade. Have a drink and a listen.

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Allmusic: The relationship between Harry Nilsson and John Lennon is legendary. They were notorious booze hounds and carousers, getting kicked out of clubs for misbehavior and generally terrorizing L.A. during Lennon's "lost weekend" of 1974. They wanted to make an album together — hell, anyone working at such a peak would — and the result was Pussy Cats, a Nilsson album produced by Lennon. Almost immediately, Nilsson got sick, resulting in a ruptured vocal cord. Not wanting Lennon to stop the sessions, Nilsson never told his friend, stubbornly working his way through the sessions until he lost his voice entirely. These are the sessions that make up Pussy Cats, an utterly bewildering record that's more baffling than entertaining.

Like many superstar projects of its time, this is studded with contributions from friends and studio musicians, all intent on having a good time in the studio — which usually means hammering out rock & roll oldies. In this case, it meant both Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" and the children's song "Loop de Loop," which gives a good idea where Nilsson was at. Through its messiness, Pussy Cats winds up showing how he and Lennon violently careened between hedonism and self-loathing. Of the new songs, the inadvertently revealing "All My Life" is the strongest, followed by the sweet "Don't Forget Me," yet this is more about tone than substance. It's about hearing Nilsson's voice getting progressively harsher, as the backing remains appealingly professional and slick. It doesn't quite jibe, and it's certainly incoherent, but that's its charm. It may not be as wild as the lost weekend itself, but it couldn't have been recorded at any other time and remains a fascinating aural snapshot of the early days of 1974.

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Magic Sam - West Side Soul

Howling good or hollering fine.

I don't think I stole this one.

Like real butter on real hot corn.

And I can hardly tolerate the blues.

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Allmusic: To call West Side Soul one of the great blues albums, one of the key albums (if not the key album) of modern electric blues is all true, but it tends to diminish and academicize Magic Sam's debut album. This is the inevitable side effect of time, when an album that is decades old enters the history books, but this isn't an album that should be preserved in amber, seen only as an important record. Because this is a record that is exploding with life, a record with so much energy, it doesn't sound old. Of course, part of the reason it sounds so modern is because this is the template for most modern blues, whether it comes from Chicago or elsewhere.


Magic Sam may not have been the first to blend uptown soul and urban blues, but he was the first to capture not just the passion of soul, but also its subtle elegance, while retaining the firepower of an after-hours blues joint. Listen to how the album begins, with "That's All I Need," a swinging tune that has as much in common with Curtis Mayfield as it does Muddy Waters, but it doesn't sound like either — it's a synthesis masterminded by Magic Sam, rolling along on the magnificent, delayed cadence of his guitar and powered by his impassioned vocals. West Side Soul would be remarkable if it only had this kind of soul-blues, but it also is filled with blistering, charged electric blues, fueled by wild playing by Magic Sam and Mighty Joe Young — not just on the solos, either, but in the rhythm (witness how "I Feel So Good [I Wanna Boogie]" feels unhinged as it barrels along). Similarly, Magic Sam's vocals are sensitive or forceful, depending on what the song calls for.


Some of these elements might have been heard before, but never in a setting so bristling with energy and inventiveness; it doesn't sound like it was recorded in a studio, it sounds like the best night in a packed club. But it's more than that, because there's a diversity in the sound here, an originality so fearless, he not only makes "Sweet Home Chicago" his own (no version before or since is as definitive as this), he creates the soul-injected, high-voltage modern blues sound that everybody has emulated and nobody has topped in the years since. And, again, that makes it sound like a history lesson, but it's not. This music is alive, vibrant, and vital — nothing sounds as tortured as "I Need You So Bad," no boogie is as infectious as "Mama, Mama Talk to Your Daughter," no blues as haunting as "All of Your Love." No matter what year you listen to it, you'll never hear a better, more exciting record that year.

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Francis Lai - Un Homme Et Une Femme (Soundtrack)

I've been searching hi and low for this digitized for months (despite having two sealed LPs in the basement). So good to cook to, eat too, make delicious cakes and tarts to...

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Todd Rundgren - Something / Anything?

I think I'm gonna

because it's beautiful.

and because classic roxx

deserve a place in the forest.

PS: this be the sweet Rhino re-ish.

You want Super Hits? Go straight to "I Saw The Light" or "Couldn't I Just Tell You" or, and most especially, "Hello, it's Me" (the best mouthfeel of all Seventies Rock, right here in this bit of groove).

Me? Hey, I love those tunes. But I say fuck all that, and maintain yr indie street cred by skinny dipping straight into "Cold Morning Light" -- no shame there, my brother, sister. And "Breathless" ain't too shabby, neither. Oh, and, um... "One More Day", anyone?

This record is proof positive that vibe and groove will trump pyrotechnics every time.

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Hear disc 2

Beck - Sea Change

Baby I'm A Lost Cause. This album, i been avoiding, largely b/c it came out at a very difficult time for me, and echoes of that time resurface even now occasionally, and I tend to associate it with then (e.g. why i don't listen to Stereolab anymore). But my pal Gallo put it on tonight, and i was refreshed by the equal parts Gordon Lightfoot and Serge Gainsbourg that it embraces, and suddenly, i found it essential. No. i always found it so. But now i'm good on that. So Pls Dig Hearty.

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John Oswald - Grayfolded: Transitive Axis

As one who lived in a flophouse for several years populated by obsessive heads, this is welcome therapy for that PTSD. Sorry Sponge. Admittedly, once removed from that petri dish, appreciation for the Dead began to blossom. A huge fan of John Oswald's brilliant Plunderphonics, I wet myself with joy when I discovered he set his sites on the archived Dark Star jams... and with the consent of Lesh no less.

This is only disc one (Transitive Axis) of the two-disc set.

_____________________

Wikipedia: Using over a hundred different performances of the song "Dark Star" between 1968 and 1993, Oswald built, layered, and "folded" all of them to produce one large, recomposed version spanning sixteen minutes short of two hours.

In essence, it is the only Grateful Dead or Grateful Dead-related record that features participation by every person who was ever in the group between 1965 and 1995.

Grayfolded was released 1994/5 in two parts on the Swell/Artifact label. Out of print by 2000, Oswald's fony label reissued the Grayfolded 2cd disc set (fony 68/95), which includes an essay by musicologist Rob Bowman, 2 timemaps of Dark Star, as well as several interviews, in August 2004.

In an interview in 1995 Oswald described how the project came about:

Phil Lesh called me up and talked me into doing it. At that point, I hadn't listened to any Grateful Dead music in about twenty years. I did think I was qualified, because I do think it's often a good idea to come into a project without a lot of prior knowledge and get kind of an alien's overview of what the music seems to be, and then put in your own two cents of what you think it should be. And I think that was the case for this. During the course of working on it, I went to a couple of Grateful Dead concerts, but other than that, I haven't listened to anything except these hundred versions of "Dark Star" that I found in the vaults.[1]

On another occasion Oswald said that he had been asked (by David Gans) to produce something very short, he explained his response to this suggestion:

What interested me most about the Grateful Dead was their extended playing style. I wrote a counter-proposal to David saying, 'Well, I've been thinking about it and all I can hear is the opposite - something very long.[2]

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Charles de Goal - Algorythmes

Who does not love French punkrocknewwave? For real! And from 1981!

________________________________

TrouserPress's tepid words: Stylish but awkward, this French artist is at his best on weird, moody synthesizer workouts — those songs that rely on choppy guitar and weak singing aren't as effective. A version of Bowie's "Hang on to Yourself" (on Algorhythmes) is skittish and tense.


Not sure why I posted that 'review.'


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Minutemen - November 30, 1985 - Atlanta, GA. WREK 91.1 FM. Georgia Institute of Technology

Hey dudes, as we approach the sad anniversary of the lategreat D Boon's death (12/22/85), I'd like to throw a few econo boots at you all over the next month as a testament to what I consider a monumentally important outfit. To me, probably the most important. So indulge this month-long homage/foist and you'll be the better for it.

Can't help but think D would've been so stoked about the Obama win.

Check this homage from the HuffPost that nails it for me.

This here artifact was collected less than a month before D's death and is one of the most quality live captures of the group.

From the liner notes of the "Live from WREK" compilation: Revered as a seminal California band that fused genres as diverse as country, jazz, punk and classic rock, their set at WREK was performed in between opening slots for REM at the Fox Theatre. Unfortunately, this show was to be their last full length performance, as vocalist / guitarist D Boon was tragically killed in an automobile accident less than a month later. While some of the WREK set was released on the album Ballot Result, "Political Nightmare" was not on that album and is released in this form for the first time.

36 scorchers for ya earhole

Hear Part 1

Hear Part 2

Boredoms - Wow 2

Tsk. Tsk.

on a related note

it's with real joy that I

recollect the lack of shame

experienced when I swiped this

from Sacto Tower Records in 1994

allmusic: Released on Avant, run by Yamatsuka Eye's Naked City bandmate John Zorn, and recorded by him with help from Martin Bisi [Recorded live at B.C. Studio, Brooklyn, Oct. '92], Wow 2 surfaced around the same time that Pop Tatari made its initial Japanese bow on Warner Bros.

Saying the first album is more experimental and uncommercial than the second is pushing it — it's not like the Boredoms were going to release catchy pop ditties all of a sudden. Rather, Wow 2 is just another wiggy slice of what makes the Boredoms' sound such a great, unpredictable experience. If anything, this release is actually more straightforward than Pop Tatari.

There's a lot of echo at points, especially noticeable on the scraps of unaccompanied vocals. Still, it's presumably intentional, as is the feeling that everything was recorded in single takes without overdubbing. Eye is the predominant vocalist throughout, and compared to the near Bomb Squad levels of musical interplay on Soul Discharge, the songs here are blunter and much more direct, with crunching lead riffs quite obvious at points.

Various flute and sax noises crop up in the usual tumult of sound; whether it's Zorn having fun is left unclear in the liner notes, but it's equally likely that the Boredoms simply tackle wind instruments the same way they do electric: with gusto. The spacy guitar on "Rydeen!!" sounds great — a nice indication of the semi-prog sense that creeps further into their music on later releases.

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The Goats - Tricks of the Shade

it's a real shame to admit that

it was a real joy to steal this

from Chicago Tower in 1992

allmusic: One of the more overlooked groups in the early-'90s alternative rap movement, the Goats were an interracial Philadelphia trio who featured a live backing band before fellow hometowners the Roots shot to acclaim with a similar format.

The Goats sounded a bit different, though, mixing intelligent, Public Enemy-influenced political raps with good-humored Native Tongues positivity, plus a bit of aggressive, hard-partying funk-rock. Oatie Kato (born Maxx Stoyanoff-Williams), Madd, and Swayzack first got together in 1991, and became the first signing for the Philly-based hip-hop label Ruffhouse (which would soon land a distribution deal with Sony).

The group released its debut album, 1992's Tricks of the Shade, to strongly positive reviews, and shortly thereafter put together an in-concert backing band which took their sound in a rap-rock direction. However, Oatie soon left the group, dissatisfied with the behind-the-scenes excess; he went on to form Incognegro, and took much of the Goats' political perceptiveness with him.

The Goats' quirky 25-track 1992 debut bears the stylistic influence of hip-hoppers like De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest; their juxtaposition of rock, funk and rap rhythms also recalls the heady eclecticism of the Beastie Boys.

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Masta Ace Incorporated - Slaughtahouse

Once upon a time

it was 1993 in Chicago.

I was alone in my car at 3am.

Then WNUR started playing this.

Chills down my spine and I was hooked.

allmusic: After three years on the hush, Ace returned to the fold in 1993 this time with his crew as Masta Ace Incorporated (Lord Digga and Paula Perry) and dropped Slaughtahouse.

The album broke new ground by taking the synthesized West Coast Sound and filtering it through an East Coast mentality. The memorable "Born to Roll," with its tweaked Moog/Kraftwerk bass line, brought Ace some serious commercial attention. In 2000, De La Soul used this classic beat on a remix of "All Good" featuring Chaka Khan. The album also produced a few hits for undergrounders including "Jeep Ass Niguhz" and "Style Wars."

allmusic: Five years after making his name as a member in Marley Marl's legendary Juice Crew (he was one of the featured MCs on the classic 1988 posse cut "The Symphony" from Marl's In Control, Vol. 1) and three years after recording his buoyant, artistically on-point (though commercially stillborn) debut album, Take a Look Around, with its memorable hit "Me and the Biz," battle-scarred Brooklyn underground star Masta Ace returned for his second album with a newly tweaked name and his own supporting crew (Masta Ace Inc.), a new sound and sharply honed style, and a cynical new outlook on the entire rap game.


In fact, a disgusted new outlook might be a more appropriate characterization, as a controlled abhorrence oozes from every pore of SlaughtaHouse, lashing out not only at easy outside targets (bigoted police, for instance) but also at those shady characters inside the "SlaughtaHouse" whose violence is enacted physically (Ace himself places the part of a mugger on "Who U Jackin?") rather than lyrically, bringing the entire community down in the process.


A loose concept album, it is at once an intense exposé and a roughneck paean to the hip-hop lifestyle that broke new ground by merging the grimy lyrical sensibility, scalpel-precise technique, and kitchen-sink beats of East Coast rap with the funk-dripping, anchor-thick low end of West Coast producers. The classic "Jeep Ass Niguh" was one of the quintessential cruising singles of the summer of 1993.


Its unlisted remix, "Born to Roll," with its subsonic gangsta bass, is an equally thumping highlight and (with its sample borrowed from N.W.A's "Real Niggas Don't Die") can be seen as the most explicit bridge between East and West. But other hectic, relentless tracks like "The Big East," "Rollin' wit UmDada," and "Saturday Nite Live" are just as excellent, and Ace's crew — particularly Bluez Brothers Lord Digga and Witchdoc — really shines.

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Vincent Gallo - When, So Sad

this stuff really hits the spot.

allmusic: Vincent Gallo's first full-length album, outside of his various indie film scores, is a remarkably subtle and delicate collection of songs from the usually fiery, iconoclastic auteur.

Where the soundtrack to Buffalo 66 raged with prog rock abandon, When never sees Gallo working his acoustic guitars and analog percussion with anything other than graceful restraint.

Those who know Gallo mostly as a bizarre, mesmerizing thespian will be surprised to discover that his vocal stylings are as gentle as they are throughout When. The title track and the four other songs with vocal turns find Gallo sounding like a cross between Jimmy Scott, Pale Saint's Ian Masters, and Yo la Tengo's Ira Kaplan.

The five instrumentals that comprise the remainder of the album are primarily minimalist, moody, and jazzy. Gallo frequently conjures a fractured atmosphere of tender, uneasy bliss, strumming every guitar himself and layering each melodic element into an off-kilter look into the slow-burning emotional underbelly of modern existence.

Trip-hop shuffles start, stutter, and stop; malevolent buzzing crops up and dissipates; and a guitar ratchets and moans like an electrified Etch-a-Sketch. When is entirely accessible, but it works its charm in dark ways that might be unsettling for some listeners.

With its smart, confident arrangements, consistent tone, and fascinating personal themes, the album sees Gallo making a bold, confident, and mature musical step of considerable relevance.

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(incl. So Sad single)

Pharoah Sanders - Karma

czarth says: "Blaring from the top of a Holy Mountain."

allmusic: Pharoah Sanders' third album as a leader is the one that defines him as a musician to the present day. After the death of Coltrane, while there were many seeking to make a spiritual music that encompassed his ideas and yearnings while moving forward, no one came up with the goods until Sanders on this 1969 date.

There are only two tracks on Karma, the 32-plus minute "The Creator Has a Master Plan" and the five-and-a-half-minute "Colours." The band is one of Sanders' finest, and features vocalist Leon Thomas, drummer Billy Hart, Julius Watkins, James Spaulding, a pre-funk Lonnie Liston Smith, Richard Davis, Reggie Workman on bass, and Nathaniel Bettis on percussion.

"Creator" begins with a quote from "A Love Supreme," with a nod to Coltrane's continuing influence on Sanders. But something else emerges here as well: Sanders' own deep commitment to lyricism and his now inherent knowledge of Eastern breathing and modal techniques. His ability to use the ostinato became not a way of holding a tune in place while people soloed, but a manner of pushing it irrepressibly forward.

Keeping his range limited (for the first eight minutes anyway), Sanders explores all the colors around the key figures, gradually building the dynamics as the band comps the two-chord theme behind with varying degrees of timbral invention.

When Thomas enters at nine minutes, the track begins to open. His yodel frees up the theme and the rhythm section to invent around him. At 18 minutes it explodes, rushing into a silence that is profound as it is noisy in its approach. Sanders is playing microphonics and blowing to the heavens and Thomas is screaming. They are leaving the material world entirely.

When they arrive at the next plane, free of modal and interval constraints, a new kind of lyricism emerges, one not dependent on time but rhythm, and Thomas and Sanders are but two improvisers in a sound universe of world rhythm and dimension. There is nothing to describe the exhilaration that is felt when this tune ends, except that "Colours," with Ron Carter joining Workman on the bass, was the only track that could follow it. You cannot believe it until you hear it.

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Brigitte Fontaine & Areski Belkacem - Vous Et Nous

czarth says: "Brilliant collaboration between Brigitte Fontaine, one of the most important voices in the Chanson Française and multi-instrumentalist Areski Belkacem. Haunting. ...and, um, Stereolab."

allmusic: French singer Brigitte Fontaine made a series of increasingly strange and eclectic art-pop in the 1970s that gathered a lot of acclaim in France, although she remains obscure to an international audience.

Initially she was an eccentric but accessible pop singer, presenting melodic and orchestrated material a la a more daring version of late-'60s/early-'70s Francoise Hardy. On her first album, she worked with arranger Jean Claude Vannier, who had also done arrangements for Serge Gainsbourg.

On subsequent records she got jazzier, and then into more difficult directions of avant-gardism and art song. Her albums were commendably wide-ranging, and undeniably erratic. She could employ African tribal rhythms, discordant progressive jazz, pretty folky melodies, throat-stretching a cappella vocals, spoken poetry, and pious classical arrangements, sometimes with a stoned recklessness.


allmusic: Brigitte Fontaine and Areski Belkacem's final release before a retirement that lasted nearly 20 years, 1977's Vous et Nous is a remarkable album. A 33-track double album (song lengths range from barely 30 seconds to nearly seven minutes), Vous et Nous often sounds like nothing so much as what Stereolab would be doing two decades later. (The members of Stereolab are acknowledged fans of Fontaine, and the band's lovely "Brigitte" was written in tribute to her in 1995.)

The instrumentation alternates between bleeping synthesizers and rattlingly primitive electronic drums on some songs and acoustic guitars and hand percussion on others. For the first time, Fontaine and Belkacem split the vocal duties about evenly; his gruff, mumbled vocals contrast nicely with her much sweeter tone, and the North African and Eastern European influences he had brought to her previous few albums are much more in evidence here.

The two versions of the title track, one with a minimal electronic background and the other featuring the same Balkan-style melody played on authentic instruments, are representative of the two stylistic poles of the album. Artistically challenging yet surprisingly accessible (at least more so to a contemporary audience than it might have been upon its initial release), Vous et Nous is an endlessly fascinating cross-cultural experiment.

Hear partie une

Hear partie deux