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Opening rhetorical: Did you ever consider where you might end up if you turn off your mind, relax, and float downstream?
What strange days we live in. As I write this there's talk of a military draft for the first time since I was a babe in swaddling clothes. Seems they've plucked the chicken from every pot and replaced it with a monster in every closet. Turn on the tube and there's darkness on the edge of town, a bad moon rising everywhere at once. Burt was right; what the world needs now is love, sweet love, it IS the thing that there's just too little of. So, like many, I find myself turning off the news and hiding in music. At least there hope survives, bent and questioned perhaps, but sustained through active engagement. It may be an ephemeral fix as such things go but it does the trick. To wit, our two top contenders this time out...
Album of the month #1:
University of Errors: Jet Propelled Photographs
With a switchblade smile, U of E, led by Gong man Daevid Allen, tear into Soft Machine material from 1966-67 and transform the Brit psych into some of the most aggressive, melodic rock this side of the millennium mark. Imagine if someone sent Buffalo Springfield a copy of Killing Joke's first LP thru a cross-temporal portal and then left those ideas to gestate for a few decades. The wild haired, great leaping thang to leap from that egg is this University, a place of higher learning in the sativa sense, that employs bits from the whole spectrum of rock history with real care. Anchored to a maelstrom of giddy guitars and Allen's gasping-for-air croon, Photographs moves with assured abandon. From the opening ballad-with-a-backhand on through, there's compelling shifts in dynamics, all Sabbath Sturm und Drang one minute then clean as a bell the next. Yet, it never feels artificial or premeditated. To borrow a line from "Hope For Happiness" (the new version amazingly bettering the magnificent S.M. original), it's "a sound that is clear and true." Listen for the Duane Eddy in a compactor moan of "When You Don't Want Me" with sad verses like "I know you're tired, maybe you're tired of my fear." Their pronounced humor, both lyrically and musically, bears a distant resemblance to Ween, a quiver of quirks keeping everything pleasantly off-kilter. The decision to let guitarist Josh Pollock handle all the six-string duties this time was a swell one. He reminds us on cut after cut of all the power that instrument holds in the right hands without ever paying undue homage to anyone. And freed to concentrate on his singing, Allen is his best voice in years. If there was any single element that kept me at bay from Allen's earlier work it was a sense that he was consciously trying to be strange. That quibble is gone with this wind. University of Errors is by turns tender and turbulent, and never where you might expect. They renew one's faith in the over flogged word "Psychedelic" by genuinely taking us somewhere. Aces that.
Runner-up:
Future Pilot AKA: Salute Your Soul
This will make you happy. Happier than the headlines and the war cries and the dark clouds being stirred up by bombers above our heads. Future Pilot's first release, Tiny Waves Mighty Sea, dropped out of the sky, a gift from Glasgow redolent with tiny captured moments, cumin, and dreams. That same sense of warm summer reverie permeates this sophomore effort but with a political tinge that name checks George W. Bush in the opening samples. One has to go back to John and Yoko's peace-love experiments for something similar. Thankfully, this loses their screech and self-indulgence. It is all the quiet that The Polyphonic Spree lacks plus an absence of their contrivance and winking post-modernity. In a word, this is sincere and thus infinitely more powerful. "The Land of Love" is a nod to Burt Bacharach followed by a smoking cover of the Staple Singers' "If You're Ready (Come Go With Me)." In spots, they sound like the 5th Dimension singing protest songs or gypsy soul-movers jamming with the Stranglers, Alan Parsons and the Specials. Ringleader Sushil K. Dade again demonstrates a gift for capturing spontaneity on tape. Guests include Sandinista-era Clash collaborator Mikey Dread, Philip Glass, soaring Indian vocalist Vinita Dade, and Norman Blake from Teenage Fanclub. The cumulous-lovely "Heaven Celebrated on Earth" is a nearly 12-minute prayer for peace, piano to make you catch your breath, and "Great Gig In The Sky" vocalizing. As shock and awe replace quiet and reflection, this release stands as a celebration of the true value human beings bring to the universe, our ability to rise above violence and want and stand together instead of apart.
Bob Dylan: Live 1964 (The Bootleg Series Vol. 6)
It's tough to imagine a time when "The Times They Are A-Changin'" wasn't around. Dylan is part of the cloth that makes up America now, a fiber threading its way into our clothes and thoughts, so subtle at times we don't know we've cozied up to him until he's all over us. When this Halloween performance, a frequently traded bootleg before this release, took place, Dylan had only been a going proposition to most for a couple years. He was the new Woody Guthrie, the hammer that would build a new day. That's a lot of weight to lay on a kid in his twenties and you can hear how its pressing on him throughout this show. His voice is embryonic, less croak and smoke than we know today. He was on the eve of morphing his forthright politics into the ambivalent introspection that would mark his work for the next three decades, the finger pointing giving way to the plank removal from his own eye. Much as I always want to hail the work of The Master, this is a slog. We can hear how tired he was of some of these songs, how ready he was to change and change again as he did soon afterwards. The stoned photographs give you a visual premonition of the rambling heard between songs. He's messing with the audience, flashing his diamond smile between cracked country lips to a room full of screaming flannel dwarves. The super serious, cynical tone is too dense, too dark for frequent company and with the exception of "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" there's nary a definite version in earshot. Sad to hear him sing that "war is the American way" knowing that's still painfully true. Bob explicates the consequences of such behavior so nakedly, so accurately, that you leave feeling we're over, finito, the end. His latter day faith and the natural humbling living have taken the edge off some. But here, the young man whose eyes saw too much just says it like it is. Adding to the overall negativity is Joan Baez, who sings with him on the last five cuts. I'll confess that Joan's voice crawls on my last nerve, every folky cliché embodied by one person. Her sparring with Dylan is nothing less than excruciating. As a historical document Live 1964 is enlightening but like reading the Book of Numbers in the Bible it may be something you only make it through once and then set aside as a lesson learned.
Mark Olson and the Creekdippers: Creekdippin' For The First Time
Rough and warm as a workman's shirt, the Creekdippers invite you to take a spot on the porch and watch the sky change. When Mark Olson left the Jayhawks in 1995 it seemed to many that both he and that band would disappear like a sweet daydream. Not so. With his wife, singer-songwriter Victoria Williams, Mike "Razz" Russell and a few friends (including former Black Crowe and current Ben Harper sparring partner Marc Ford) he's quietly produced five records of sonorous, gently haunting music. France's Fargo Records has culled the cream off the top for this beautifully assembled anthology. As the Jayhawks have become louder and more obvious with each record, the Creekdippers feel more achingly true each time out. They plumb emotional depths most resort to bombast and easy signposts to achieve yet keep things low and lean; Fred Neil transported from Greenwich Village to dry flatlands full of cactus and memories. Another touchstone might be acoustic Neil Young reaping his Harvest, though far less self-pitying, more oblique in their musing. Olson's voice slices past one's defenses, an arrow shot straight and true to your heart. Mingled with Williams' quirky cornpone chipmunk warble, it sometimes feels like we're hearing a new incarnation of Johnny Cash and June Carter, unabashedly romantic but earned with chores and dirt spattered everyday living. The slow strum does blur distinct lines between songs, creating a common haze so one needs to lean in to hear what's really being said. Often the Dippers won't just come out and tell you what's on their mind. It's gotta filter to the surface in its own time. Wonderful music recommended without reservation.
Twinemen/Orchestra Morphine: Live Cambridge, MA 10/23/03
Rock rarely has this much slack, loose goose honking or Middle Eastern slink. Rising from the ashes of cult favorite Morphine after leader Mark Sandman's fatal heart attack in Rome in 1999, Twinemen is saxophonist Dana Colley, drummer Billy Conway and new singer/guitarist Laurie Sargent. Like Morphine, they produce a solid studio sound but truly come alive in front of an audience, that extra element, the splash of grenadine that brings out all the flavors in the glass. Disc one of this performance put out by Kufala is really satisfying as they move through Funky Broadway strolls, hookah huffin' drones, and Creedence-esque bayou saunters. Sargent's voice is round, dark chocolate and her guitar work reminds one of '70s Bonnie Raitt. Colley is a one man horn section, husky and engaging like longtime Prince foil Eric Leeds or soul jazz godfather Rusty Bryant though Colley sounds like he listened to more John Cale than John Coltrane. Adding to the taking-our-time vibe are Conway's spacious drums, which leave pregnant gaps between crisp whacks. The second disc finds the same musicians joined by a small army of collaborators who explore the possibilities of Morphine's knack for "getting your head unzipped." As someone intimate with the originals it's strange to hear them rendered with such expansive gusto. Morphine optimized lean trio brilliance. Given this first listen, it may take some time for those familiar with this music to fully digest it. Still, it's nice to see them keeping Sandman's catalog alive especially dressed in such different clothes. The final track, "You Look Like Rain" has all the honest come-on of the original but with the smoldering sass of Peggy Lee's "Fever" as Sargent sings, "I can tell you taste like the sky because you look like rain." The Twinemen set is a tad more compelling if only because it's less haunted by the darkness of a man's untimely passing, but taken together they are a poignant, lively testament to the power of music to help one survive and perhaps even thrive.
Various artists: Zen CD: A Retrospective
Ninja Tune always comes across as more organic than their electronica peers. There's still the sense of human beings involved in their holodeck of beats and bleeps. Their label helped set the stage for this music's current omnipresence in advertising and movies by releasing effervescent, lightly challenging forays. This two-disc set is often quite clever, the warm druggy rush of the first moments of a new high. "Tasty" is a word that sticks nicely to Ninja Tune acts. It fits the flute on Bonobo's "Pick It Up," the country air of Fog's "Check Fraud," Mr. Scruff's "Shrimp" with its Martian Latin hustle, and Kid Koala's ska-jazz tea pad cut-up "Skanky Panky." The second disc is heavier on vocal cuts, less amorphous, with juicy grooves talking about revolution and not just the dance floor variety. The killers are both by the Herbalizer who offer up mix tape bomb "The Blend" (with a curvaceous rap from What What aka Jean Grae) and the Roy Ayers-inflected glider float of "Something Wicked." To be fair, with Ninja Tune there's little of the outside-of-time spark that true pioneers like Kraftwerk or Neu brought to dial turning exploration but it is consistently fun and it has a good beat you can dance to.
Denise James: It's Not Enough To Love
Inviting favorable comparisons to Dusty Springfield and Holly Golightly, James possesses an air of '60s brand authenticity, a girl in the garage layering on club sandwich-high layers of vocals, chiming guitars, and sprightly organ for a super saturated colour wheel spin. She's more soda shop gal than hot rod mama, reverb-a-licious singing in service of such telling titles as "Absolutely Sad" and "No More Goodbyes." She splits her time between hip shaking choruses and slow walk montages. James feels like the real deal, someone who's absorbed Phil Spector and Joe Meek into her blood and opens a vein for all to hear. Kudos to producer/primary instrumentalist Matthew Smith (of Outrageous Cherry, one majorly swell Detroit psych-pop band) for his quivery silver guitar lines and skill at recreating the button punching, reel-to-reel atmosphere of the music that clearly inspired this love affair.
The Bevis Frond: New River Head
Originally released in 1991, this Rubric Records reissue finally gathers up the complete version, the full waterway from head to outpouring tail, onto a double album, further expanded by nine bonus tracks including demos, a zine-only cut, and other fine flotsam. Nick Saloman, who is the Bevis Frond, plays everything except the drums (ably thumped by Martin Crowley) and memorable turns from British folk violinist Barry Dransfield (he played the blind fiddler in Mel Gibson's The Bounty) and Current 93's David Tibet. Imagine Jimi Hendrix (the usual reference when speaking of things Frond... sorry to use it but apt it is) gene spliced with Nazz-era Todd Rundgren. Feed this heady hybrid some blue-tinged mushrooms and voila! River is a close second to his all-time best, Any Gas Faster, showcasing a startling array of guitars, electric pianos and pieces of memory lodged inside his head. His lyrical acumen has always placed him in the pantheon with wordsmiths like Elvis Costello and Billy Bragg but without their need to have his cleverness constantly acknowledged. A scratchy Gramophone crackles to life at the start before quickly hauling ass into the Sabbath-meets-John Surman Valhallan crunch of "Motherdust." Saloman has more fun tweaking sound than just about any solitary artiste I've ever heard. He doesn't let you get bored because he won't let himself get bored. Other bright spots include the roughshod majesty of "Stain On The Sun" and the eloquent punk of "Undertaker." He's moved by both Hawkwind and Pentangle, showing equal facility with folksy thought balloons as he does on the haywire rockers. Hearing this album a decade plus on is a joy of rediscovery and a fine entry point to Bevis' wonderful muse driven planet for those not already residents.
Grey Does Matter: How To Make Millions In Real Estate
Like Honeycomb this has a big big crunch, it's not small no no no. It also has the brass bollocks to quote a Burger King jingle in the first chorus. Jason Crawford, who is the one-man-seven-nation army Grey Does Matter, knows that taglines and slogans are the modern form of communication, the consumer shorthand that infiltrates our emotional as well as our public lives. He's more Queen's English (that which helps keep ourselves alive to ride our bicycles another day with fat bottom girls) than THE Queen's English (where one shares high tea on the veranda whilst speaking of the situation in the Congo). With radioactive girls and powder blue memories he rattles you awake with twitchy keyboards and Mission-of-Burma-meets-the-Cars buzz saw guitar bravado. This Trouser Press dance maker conjures up visions of the Peanuts kids, wearing skinny black and white checker ties, pogoing furiously. This is what Guided By Voices might sound like if they hadn't settled for a career built around fragments of ideas. It could benefit from a few more slow ones like "Looks Like Nothing" and "You Love Me" to break up the short, sharp shock but mainly it's good songs sung in a creamy voice ruminating on things pissed off and sugar sweet.
Vinicius Cantuaria: Live at Skirball Cultural Center 8/7/03
Cantuaria is one of the only modern Brazilian musicians one can stack up next to legends like Gilberto Gil, Os Mutantes, and of course the grand master himself, Caetano Veloso. This is his finest outing yet, taking the inventive instrumentation and subtle arrangements of his studio work and letting it soar for 90 minutes of lively interplay that compares favorably to Bill Withers' classic Live At Carnegie Hall. Sure, for the non-Portuguese speaking lot there's some meaning shaved off the top but the sheer musicality of that language is a bird song, hips on vocal chords, a soothing string of garbled iambic pentameter to bounce around the ear. Percussionists Paulo Braga and Nanny Assis are a pulse below the skin, integral to every function, balancing out the sharply plucked notes and sidelong glances. Violinist Jenny Scheinman (who also plays with Carla Bozulich and Bill Frisell) sits on the opposite end of the stage from Cantuaria, a solo voice to balance his wickedly smart guitar flights. She possesses the same lyrical soar as Ellington orchestra mainstay Ray Nance, both able to swing with tears in their eyes; though Scheinman also brings some avant textures a la Billy Bang or Jean-Luc Ponty in his King Kong stompin' Zappa days. This is smooth, almost deliriously so, but never bland. The second disc shifts exploratory pitch of the first to a more song-centric focus including fine takes on Jobim, Veloso, and "Rio," his own composition penned with David Byrne. Carried along by the liquid bass of Sergio Brandao, this is sunshine and smiles and sweet ache distilled down to a thick nectar.
Alfie: Do You Imagine Things?
Wow! My how Alfie has grown. This is not the dainty flower of their debut If You Happy with You Need Do Nothing, which had all the transitory glow of a good weed nap. On this, their third long player, you can really hear them evolving, the hairy knuckles and pronounced brow ridge of youth dropping away. What emerges is a summery, gooey treat. "Stuntman" is an afternoon in the studio with Led Zeppelin and ELO vying for supremacy. "Mollusc" and "My Blood Swells Like Thunderstorms" have enough experimental cheek to make a Beach Boy blush. "Winding Roads" could fit in nicely on the Steve Miller Band's great, underrated Number 5. Of more modern vintage one can find sympathetic vibrations in the Beta Band but with some thick Peter Hook (New Order, Joy Division) bass thump. There's nitrous oxide ooze, some piano stolen from Penny Lane's flat and Martian hillbilly stomp on this new friend to recreational chemistry. Not quite as epic as it thinks it is but a wondrous ride nonetheless.
Vintage Stash selection of the month:
Shuggie Otis: Here Comes Shuggie Otis/Freedom Flight
Shuggie epitomizes the phrase "child prodigy." This frighteningly talented guitarist was a professional recording artist at 12, played bass on Frank Zappa's infamous "Peaches En Regalia" at 13, and was invited to audition for the lead guitar spot in the Rolling Stones when Mick Taylor split. Growing up around his father jump rocker Johnny Otis' orchestra surrounded him with blues, jazz, and the first stirrings of rock. Shuggie digested that meaty dish and emerged preternaturally confident with a distinctive sound that's still daisy fresh today. Here Comes Shuggie Otis and Freedom Flight (originally released in 1970 and 1971, respectively) have been unavailable for years. Australia's Raven Records has put the two albums together on a single CD with crisp sound, informative liner notes and thoughtful packaging. God bless them. I mean that. The first track "Oxford Gray" takes us on a Hendrix worthy journey towards the first rays of the new rising day. And then there's 68 minutes more to blow your mind. The 16-year old Otis constructs his records from elements of the Spencer Davis Group, soundtrack composer Michel Legrand, and Isaac Hayes, as well the aforementioned Jimi. Funky, delicate and wholly original, these sessions exist outside of time, a breath of creation captured for future generations. His father co-wrote and co-produced the first LP but by the next year Shuggie was doing all the arrangements and writing or co-writing six of the seven tunes on the follow-up. You may find yourself lost in the utter warmth of these recordings, adrift on clouds of reverb until you start shouting about the solo that just snapped your head open. His sense of history, even as he made new chapters, is deep. On "Shuggie's Boogie" he walks us thru the blues perfectly mimicking T-Bone Walker, B.B. King, and others. His original version of "Strawberry Letter 23," later a hit for the Brothers Johnson, is just one of a half dozen should-have-been-chart-busters. Expect your ears to prick up when you hear the heavily sampled "Sweet Thang" who's snapping twang has been used by Dana Bryant and the Wu-Tang's RZA amongst many others. Shuggie Otis made only one more record, the unanimously praised Inspiration Information, and then lay silent for nearly 25 years until the Luaka Bop label reissued that record in 2001. A disastrous live appearance at The Fillmore in SF sent him back to the quiet life but thanks to Raven we again can marvel at what might have been. A major re-release by a label quickly distinguishing themselves by their remarkable good taste.
And if you really get the Shuggie bug then seek out the Ace two-fer that includes the seriously funky Cold Shot album with the Johnny Otis Show and his blazing twelve bar work on the nastiest blues album EVER, Snatch and the Poontangs, featuring language so raw it'd make Too Short say, "Damn, that's rude!" Less shocking, though also less fierce, is Otis' official recorded introduction on an Al Kooper super session.
Next time out we'll have reviews of Sufjan Stevens' spiritually charged Seven Swans, more from Josh Pollock and Daevid Allen as they collaborate with Japan's Acid Mothers Temple in a new incarnation of Gong, the new Patti Smith, former Frog Brigader Eenor's solo debut, the Essential Kris Kristofferson, and Lou Reed's fifth live release Animal Serenade. We also plan to bring back pepper and other exotic spices from the East as long as there's enough wind in our sails and a star to guide us home...
Allen zeggen wij geven vrede een kans is!
Dennis Cook
JamBase | California
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