Black Sabbath - Live Brussels 1970

 Part 1

Part 2

#Black Sabbath #Ozzy Osbourne #heavy metal #hard rock #classic rock #heavy blues rock #British blues rock #doom metal #1970s #live music video

Black Sabbath - Live in Paris 1970 Directed by Jacques Bourton. This footage was originally shot at Théatre 140 in Brussels, Belgium on October 3rd, 1970 for Yorkshire Television. Bootleggers have long repeated a fictional claim that done in Paris, but that has long since been debunked. In any case, this is the earliest footage of a complete concert of Black Sabbath in existence. Here they perform many songs from their most recent album at the time, Paranoid, as well as several from their debut. Interestingly, many of the songs from Paranoid feature their original pre-album lyrics - or Ozzy had simply forgotten the new ones! The original show was split into two halves and includes some behind-the scenes clips of the band before the show.  From: https://letterboxd.com/film/black-sabbath-live-in-paris/

In Finland, it is customary to yell "Soittakaa Paranoid" ("Play Paranoid") at a live band. It's a riff on the bizarre American tradition of yelling "Play Freebird" (a heckling practice the late comedian Bill Hicks referred to as "the mantra of the moron") at a live band. And this is merely one of many stories related to Black Sabbath's 2:48 second metal masterpiece "Paranoid." The band's biggest hit of their entire career which, according to members of Sabbath, only came to be because they needed to make the album a bit longer. According to drummer Bill Ward, whipping the head-pounding jam together took less than 30 minutes. Other members of Sabbath have varied recollections. When listening to the recording, Geezer Butler (who wrote the lyrics), along with Ozzy were both unsure about "Paranoid," as it sounded very similar to Led Zeppelin's "Communication Breakdown." In a 2018 interview, Ozzy reiterated he wasn't even entirely sure what the word "paranoid" even meant at the time. Eventually, Ozzy asked Butler (much to the bassist's surprise) to explain the definition of the word to him in 1971. Oh, how the mythology and legend of Ozzy Osbourne never, ever disappoints – much like the history that went into making "Paranoid" and its enduring influence in metal, popular culture, and beyond. So, in no real particular order, let's get to the time Frank Zappa almost joined the band on stage in 1976 to perform three songs with Sabbath that he had previously learned to play. One of the songs was allegedly "Paranoid," a jam the band saved for their encores.
Frank Zappa was on team Black Sabbath early on, praising the band and specifically the song "Supernaut" from the group's 1972 powered-by-cocaine album Vol 4. As far as Sabbath goes, Geezer Butler was a Frank Zappa superfan whose life was "changed" after hearing Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention when he was still a teenager. Tony Iommi spoke about Zappa's love for Sabbath's "Snowblind" (also Vol. 4), and detailed the events of the show at Madison Square Garden in December of 1976 – the night Zappa was set to take the stage with Sabbath (after learning three of their songs). The plan was devised during Zappa's annual Thanksgiving dinner which was quite the rock and roll shindig. Frank had invited Geezer and Ozzy to his special Thanksgiving dinner in 1976 during which conversation turned to Zappa joining Sabbath on stage to perform two songs, "Iron Man" and "Paranoid" during the band's encore.
Unfortunately, Sabbath wasn't at the top of their game that night. In addition, Zappa hadn't been summoned for the show's soundcheck. Zappa told his version of the night's events to Sounds journalist Hugh Fielder saying when he showed up, Tony Iommi was having issues with his guitar strings and, at the last minute, changed them out. At this point, the crowd of 20K had been milling around for over an hour waiting for Sabbath to get going. And though there was a stack of sweet Marshalls waiting for Zappa on stage, he would only end up introducing Sabbath that night. Iommi recalled things a bit differently, echoing the notion Sabbath was not in top form and advised Zappa that joining them would've been "disastrous." Recordings of the show exist and at least one unofficial release, where you can hear Zappa's banter including describing Sabbath as the "rockin' teenage combo known to the universe as Black Sabbath." Understandably, the crowd went fucking bananas. Later, Iommi would take in Zappa's show in Birmingham, during which Zappa and The Mothers launched into a cover of another of Frank's favorite Sabbath songs, "Iron Man."  From: https://metalinjection.net/editorials/back-in-the-day/black-sabbaths-paranoid-almost-didnt-make-the-record-the-compelling-history-behind-their-biggest-single

 

Queen Adreena - Taxidermy

 #Queen Adrena #Katie Jane Garside #alternative rock #noise rock #indie rock #art rock #punk metal #gothic rock #music video

Where once she shallowly proclaimed to love your money, Katie Jane Garside now wants more intangible things. These days she wants to haunt your dreams too. It’s been a torrid affair getting from there to here. After Daisy Chainsaw ripped apart, Garside was left close to breakdown and retreated to the hills as far away as possible from musical partner Crispin Gray. Reunited, and based on that frisson, Queen Adreena were always going to be a little out of the ordinary. Their return heralds a subtle, but fundamental, change in dynamics. Now writing her own lyrics instead of being Gray‘s mouthpiece, this time it’s personal. Sometimes disturbingly so. Because ‘Taxidermy’ is an apt title – this is about stuffing and mounting the psychological monsters that lurk under the bed. So, while carrying on Daisy Chainsaw‘s predilection for rock as infantile nightmare, here the scope is much wider than a one-track take on banshee pop. There are some obvious precedents, notably Bjork and PJ Harvey, but much more than either of those two reference points, this debut album is frequently akin to eavesdropping on psychotherapy. Veering between absolutes like love/hate, black/white, logic/madness, these songs walk a tightrope between serrated guitar lines and moments of twinkling repose. So ‘Yesterday’s Hymn’ is a genuinely beautiful, barely-there twist into trip-hop minimalism, while ‘I Adore You’ and ‘X-ing Off The Days’ grate with pain and churning guitars. With everything else straddled somewhere between these extremes, it’s uncomfortable listening, but raises ‘Taxidermy’ far above the simple world of sub-goth moves and ripped-up antique dresses of their past. ‘Are The Songs My Disease?’ inquires one title. Not on this showing – they might just turn out to be Garside‘s saviours from the footnotes of indie infamy.  From: https://www.nme.com/reviews/reviews-nme-2087-340874

 

Los Lobos - Kiko And The Lavender Moon

 #Los Lobos #roots rock #tex-mex #country rock #Americana #cowpunk #blues rock #folk rock #Mexican #1990s #music video

On their sixth album, 1992’s Kiko, Los Lobos alternately distilled and deconstructed their music by embracing studio experimentation. After two decades together, the East Los Angeles band’s multicultural influences remained audible, crossing state lines and national borders to draw from regional Mexican and American styles: mariachi, ranchera, and Norteño music, Chicano rock ’n’ roll and R&B, Tex-Mex and zydeco, electric blues and country percolated through their playing. New to the equation were raw sonic textures, layered overdubs and outboard studio effects that reflected their sound in funhouse mirrors. Mood and musical color brought wonder as well as menace to fables, dreams and visions evoking the magical realism of 20th century Latin-American literature with a hallucinatory glow.
Up to that point, their records had hewed to the scale of their live performances, documenting an ensemble honed since high school garage band adventures. For David Hidalgo and Louie Peréz, later to emerge as the band’s primary songwriters, the gateway into traditional Mexican folk styles came not from the neighborhood but from American and British folk-rock records by Ry Cooder, the Band, and Fairport Convention. Just as the Band had inspired Fairport to explore traditional British music, Hidalgo and Peréz immersed themselves in traditional regional styles and Mexican stringed instruments.
Together with guitarist Cesar Rosas, bassist Conrad Lozano, and mandolinist Frank Gonzaléz, multi-instrumentalist Hidalgo and percussionist Peréz launched Los Lobos del Este de Los Angeles in 1973, winning eastside audiences with their authentic mix of Mexican styles. Following Gonzaléz’s departure, the surviving quartet built a home turf audience before turning their sights to Los Angeles’ burgeoning punk and roots rock scene, culminating in their triumphant debut at the Whisky a Go Go in January 1982, opening for the Blasters, who quickly became crucial allies, sharing stages and lobbying their label, Slash Records, to sign Los Lobos.
Blasters saxophonist Steve Berlin then teamed with T Bone Burnett to co-produce the quartet’s label debut EP and the full-length that followed in 1984 before leaving the Blasters to join Los Lobos full-time. By 1987, the band seemed at a commercial tipping point, thanks to their faithful covers of Chicano rock ’n’ roll pioneer Ritchie Valens’ hits for the soundtrack to La Bamba, the Valens biopic that scored at the box office as well as on album charts where the soundtrack album reached #1.
By 1991, however, Los Lobos was grappling with frustration over disappointing album sales and an ambitious tour’s cost overruns. Refocusing their creative process, Hidalgo and Peréz rented an office for songwriting sessions, with the band demoing new songs at a small studio near downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row. When Lenny Waronker, president of Slash’s distributor, Warner Bros. Records, heard the new songs, he recommended they reunite with Mitchell Froom, who had produced their hit single of “La Bamba” as well as a standout
In Froom and engineer Tchad Blake the band found hands-on partners whose recent clients included Crowded House, Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello and Richard Thompson. The duo was at a turning point in using the studio to actively shape the music rather than merely document it. Waronker’s instinct that they would push the envelope was on target.
That the band and Froom were unlocking a new sonic palette was apparent from the opening track, “Dream in Blue.” Rattling percussion, terse bass pulses, handclaps and jangling guitar bob and weave beneath Hidalgo’s giddy vocal as he recounts a dream where “I flew around with shiny things, when I spoke I seemed to sing, high above, floating far away…” Steve Berlin overdubs octave choruses and single lines on multiple reeds while electric guitars respond to Hidalgo’s playful command to “sock it to me one time” with blasts of distortion. The track’s raw edges and hurtling momentum are part of a conscious design that Froom and Los Lobos, sharing production credit, devised to preserve the gritty, abstracted feel of their demos, five of which would be kept for the finished album. Leaning into studio manipulation, they elevated noise and distortion from sonic taboos to creative tools.
Thematically, dreams and visions generate moments of mood-altering surrealism. “Wake Up Dolores” is a brooding lament for travelers on a stony, endless trail, haunted by ancient Aztec images of “quetzal plums, of dying suns, and purple moons,” set to a nervous, syncopated arrangement in which guitars and voices answer the lead vocal like chanting supplicants as Hidalgo lapses into the pre-colonial Nahuatl tongue. (The album’s focus on percussion is bootstrapped by a strong cohort of guest percussionists to buttress an already full court press by all five members of the band.)
“Angels With Dirty Faces” slows to a methodical pace, suspending Hidalgo’s voice in a percussive clockwork haze as he bears witness to homelessness: As biographer Chris Morris would later report, the song was inspired by the band’s experiences during its demo sessions near Skid Row, translating to images of the “broken window smile, weeds for hair” of one lost soul and a brief elegy for a brother lost “to the howling wind.”
The atmospheric sound treatments and off-centered meter of these tracks give Kiko a mesmerizing impact without entirely eclipsing Los Lobos’ earlier instincts. Cesar Rosas animates an easy blues shuffle in “That Train Don’t Stop Here,” handily working a time-honored erotic metaphor in a lament for a lover who’s abandoned him for another, delivered with sly humor and a simmering arrangement warmed by soulful organ accents, darting rhythm guitar and Rosas’ taut, blues-drenched electric guitar. Rosas’ spry vocal and two lively instrumental breaks reinforce the suspicion that however heartbroken he is, he’s having a good time.
Mitchell Froom’s role in enabling Los Lobos to shift sonic shape isn’t confined to the control room and the toy box of technical effects at hand. He augments Steve Berlin and David Hidalgo’s keyboards and accordion with his own array of vintage keyboards, including Chamberlin and Optigon, both distant, pre-digital cousins of the Mellotron. Credit him with the distinctive “horn chorus” that serves the album’s most enchanted piece, “Kiko and the Lavender Moon,” a dream that creeps into view against a three-chord vamp that suggests an Ellingtonian riff on “Three Blind Mice,” easily mistaken for a cluster of Berlin sax overdubs—a Froom emulation on Chamberlin conjuring the retro glow of an old radio. In its title character, a dreaming child, the song achieves a bewitched, playful gleam cast by its fanciful imagery and a spare, circular conversation between “horns,” Hidalgo’s button accordion and a doubled guitar and piano phrase.
Los Lobos taps into traditional folk textures and a spirit realm tagged in Catholic imagery on “Saint Behind the Glass,” a rare solo vocal by Louie Peréz set against a lacy backdrop of guitarron, acoustic guitars and Veracruz harp that brings a religious relic to life, if only in the singer’s mind. Elsewhere among the set’s generous 16 songs, they echo early heroes: “Arizona Skies” is a lush acoustic border serenade on stringed instruments underpinned by rippling, treated percussion and slide guitar figures worthy of Ry Cooder, while “When the Circus Comes” is a rustic ballad that evokes the Band.
Kiko, released on May 26, 1992, was rightly acclaimed as the band’s studio pinnacle for its thematic breadth and sonic innovation, but commercially it fared no better than its predecessors. However discouraged they might have been, the five veterans in Los Lobos would persevere to survive intact as one of the longest-running American rock band sextant as of May 2022, touring constantly and releasing 18 more albums and compilations to date.  From: https://bestclassicbands.com/los-lobos-kiko-review-11-1-21/

Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing

 #Jane's Addiction #Perry Farrell #Dave Navarro #alternative rock #hard rock #heavy metal #alternative metal #funk metal #neo-psychedelia #psychedelic rock #1990s #music video

A Deep Dive Into Jane’s Addiction’s Video For Been Caught Stealing

Heroin is a hell of a drug, and Jane’s Addiction really, really liked heroin. Not all of them – the drummer stayed off it – but three out of four of them really got heavily into heroin. Miraculously, considering how many of their contemporaries in the early '90s alternative music world ended up dead, they all made it, but the band didn’t. At their peak, in 1991, they split up – drugs, madness, egos and partying took their toll and they called it a day. If they hadn’t, the '90s rock world could have looked very different – so many bands were influenced by Jane’s Addiction that it’s hard to wonder what might have happened if they’d stuck around. That’s all in the future though. Right now it’s 1990 and an LA supermarket doesn’t know what’s about to hit it… Let’s dive on in.

0.02
Dave Navarro has looked extremely different over the course of his career. These days he’s the impeccably-groomed host of a tattoo show, with millimetre-perfect facial hair and flawless eyeliner, but in the early Jane’s Addiction days it was all scruffy dreadlocks and loads of drugs.

0.07
A shot of the band sat unenthusiastically on these rides was on the front of the single.


0.13
Here’s the star of the video, whose identity has sadly been lost to time (or would take more research than we have been able to do).

0.14
That barking is Farrell’s dog Annie. "I'd got her from a dog shelter and she was quite needy, so I brought her down to the studio that day rather than leave her at home,” Farrell later recalled. “I'm singing in the booth with the headphones on and Annie gets all excited and starts going, 'Ruff! Ruff! Ruff!' The fact that she ended up on the track was just pure coincidence."  

0.21
Perry Farrell with a bank robber-esque stocking on his head, there. Farrell has also had a lot of looks over his career – this is the pre-neckerchief days, the pre-three-piece-suit days, the pre-looking-a-bit-like-Dot-Cotton-off-EastEnders days.

0.24
This was filmed on location in Royal Market, a supermarket on Washington Boulevard in LA. Not long after this video came out, it was demolished and replaced by a 99-cent store.

0.32
Security cameras were still fairly newly common in 1990 – the price of them had dropped dramatically in the late ‘80s – which must have been a real buzzkill for shoplifters. Farrell claims the song is autobiographical, and that stealing is just one of the many vices he enjoys.

0.42
That’s drummer Stephen Perkins on the rob. The only member of the original line-up to evade hard drug addiction, Perkins has played with everyone from Infectious Grooves to Rage Against The Machine to Nine Inch Nails, as well as on Perry Farrell’s solo project and side-band Porno For Pyros.

0.46
Eric Avery doing some half-inching. The bassist was the only member of the original lineup not to rejoin Jane’s Addiction when they reformed, with a drunken incident involving one of Farrell’s ex-girlfriends thought to be part of why.

0.52
The pineapple-up-the-dress moment is what this video is all about really, so let’s talk about the director. This video was directed by Casey Niccoli, an extremely important figure in the Jane’s Addiction story. Born in Bakersfield, California and named after Yankee skipper Casey Stengel, she was the girlfriend and muse of Perry Farrell for a while, and appears in sculpted form on the cover of Nothing’s Shocking (as an on-fire pair of nude Siamese twins) and Ritual De La Habitual (as part of a threesome also involving Farrell). Niccoli has also been credited with nailing the band’s early onstage visual aesthetic and use of Santerian and Catholic imagery. She also appears in the documentary Soul Kiss and the video for Classic Girl (a song inspired by Farrell’s nickname for her), in footage from the docudrama Gift that Niccoli and Farrell co-directed.

1.10
It’s all making sense now. The dude has a fake pregnant tummy and uses it to shoplift. Fun!

1.16
Even at their peak, Jane’s Addiction were a polarizing band. Rolling Stone put it this way: “The band is great and full of shit - often at the same time.”

1.22
We can’t find this performer’s name anywhere online. Jane’s Addiction continue to feature pole dancers in their live shows though.

1.31
Textbook “shocked bystanders” there. Excellent. Niccoli all but vanished from the music industry when her relationship with Farrell dissolved. According to a YouTube comment thread – so it might be complete nonsense – she is now living happily in the Mojave desert, drug-free and raising a family. Her daughter Poppy Jean Crawford is a musician.

1.51
No idea who this is either. People in the '90s just didn’t put enough material online, you know? The blame lies somewhere between the rudimentary nature of early internet technology and the fact everyone was out of their nuts on smack.  

2.31
In these joyous-sounding moments, it’s odd to think that when Jane’s Addiction were recording this album, they pretty much hated one another. Only on one song were the whole band in the studio at the same time: Three Days, a sprawling track about the 72-hour heroin sex binge Farrell and Niccoli had with an ex of Farrell’s, Xiola Blue. This was immortalized in the cover art after Blue died of a heroin overdose shortly afterwards.

2.48
The band hanging out shirtless, something they were all reasonably keen on – three of the four of them have at least one bare-torsoed image on their Wikipedia pages. Farrell and Navarro in particular seemed to go for decades at a time between shirts.

2.56
During these bits of band choreography, it’s fun to think how many goes it probably took. Remember how much heroin was going around? If there’s one thing heroin fucks with, it’s the ability to perform choreographed routines.

3.16
Farrell does a great job of mustering his ridiculous rock star charisma even through a stocking. His voice is reverbed to hell on the album, something they replicated live as well.

3.31
What a joyous ending, a big celebration of disguising yourself as a pregnant woman in order to shoplift. Massive laugh. When this won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Alternative Video, unimpressed awards presenter Billy Idol announced it as “Been Caught Wanking”, pretending the spaceman statue was his penis for a while. Only Niccoli and Navarro were there – Farrell was smoking crack – and both were extremely un-sober, and during Niccoli’s speech, Navarro tried clumsily to kiss her. Three months after receiving the VMA, the band split up. Their farewell tour was Lollapalooza, founded by Farrell and still going as an annual event.  So, madly, are the band – they reformed first from 2001-4, and again in 2008, after which, despite a few problems and line-up changes they’ve never definitively split up. Nearly thirty years after pratting about in a supermarket.

From: https://www.kerrang.com/a-deep-dive-into-janes-addictions-video-for-been-caught-stealing

DakhaBrakha - Little Hare/Mermaids

 #DakhaBrakha #folk #Ukrainian folk #world music #Eastern European folk #folk rock #music video

Until you hear the music, the most striking thing about funky Ukrainian folk band DakhaBrakha is the headgear. Made of coarse, black lamb’s wool, the group’s towering hats evoke a faraway world of Cossacks and shepherds, dramatically complementing the traditional lace wedding dresses, thickly draped beaded necklaces and embroidered tunics that make up their costumes. The band’s music is just as captivating. DakhaBrakha’s sound, which the group calls “ethno-chaos,” is an anarchistic reinterpretation of traditional Ukrainian folk songs blended with eclectic influences like Middle Eastern sounds and a touch of R&B. “There’s nothing like it out there,” says Bill Smith of Riot Artists, DakhaBrakha’s North American agent. (The group’s members speak very little English.)
The four musicians — Nina Garenetska, Olena Tsibulska, Iryna Kovalenko and Marko Halanevych — play a variety of instruments, including cello, piano, bass drums and darbuka, accordions, jew’s harp and the didgeridoo. Even more impressive are the vocals: harmonies layered with riotous birdcalls, eerie whistles and wails, and Halanevych’s falsetto, Smith says. The quartet came together in 2004 as the house band for Kiev’s experimental theater company DAKH, but has only recently made inroads on this side of the Atlantic. After its North American debut at Toronto’s Luminato Festival in 2013, the group gave rousing performances last year at New York’s globalFEST and at Bonnaroo, with Rolling Stone singling out the band as the Tennessee festival’s “best breakout.”
DakhaBrakha, which means “give/take” in Old Ukrainian, draws on a repertoire of songs that the band’s three female performers — all of whom trained in folklore and ethnomusicology — have spent years researching in rural Ukrainian villages. Yet DakhaBrakha’s thoroughly contemporary compositions represent such a departure from the original Eastern European melodies and styles that their sound can seem as unfamiliar (and intriguing) to native Ukrainians as it can for American listeners. “It’s difficult to describe what they do; you’ve got to see it,” Smith says. “And then people just get hooked. It’s mesmerizing.”  From: https://www.washingtonpost.com/express/wp/2015/04/02/get-to-know-funky-ukrainian-folk-band-dakhabrakha/

Black Moth Super Rainbow - Windshield Smasher

 #Black Moth Super Rainbow #Tom Fec #psychedelic rock #electronic #indie/alternative rock #experimental #folktronica #synthpop #music video

Tom Fec is quietly building a tiny, twisted religion. Like the KISS Army and Misfits Fiend Club before him, the mastermind behind the psychedelic synth projects Black Moth Super Rainbow [often shortened to “BMSR”] and Tobacco has started his own “Rad Cult.” This past summer, Fec used a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for the release and distribution of his latest album, Cobra Juicy. He named the hypothetical record label that would carry it “Rad Cult.” The money pledged by fans also funded the ancillary packaging and artwork Fec wanted to produce. Most notable among the BMSR accoutrement was a specially designed full-head latex mask of a terrifyingly mutated orange face. The Kickstarter was a roaring success, so there’s now a small army of BMSR-devotees running around with identical orange head masks. Ominously, the first music video from the album, “Windshield Smasher,” depicts a group of similarly orange-masked hoodlums accosting a young couple with baseball bats, ultimately forcing frosting-covered cake down their mouths and chopping off their hair while pinning them to the hood of a car. Beneath all this scruffy bravado, however, there’s an artist who truly believes giving his unvarnished id free reign is the best way to satisfy his fans. Before BMSR head out on a nationwide tour this spring, Fec talked with us about the making of Cobra Juicy and where his brand of lovably leering weirdness comes from.

I’d like to talk about the “Windshield Smasher” video. It’s such a fun but weirdly disturbing clip. Where did all that come from?

It started off being a bigger-budget idea, and we kind of had to compromise to it being what it is. It’s the first video from the new album, so I wanted to come out baseball bats swinging [laughs]. I thought it was the perfect visual idea for that.

For me, this video typifies the vibe you’ve got in a lot of your work wherein there’s this sinister or leering feeling. There’s the offbeat violence of this video, song titles like, “I think I’m Evil,” etc.

I think mainly what I’m going for is, I don’t like music that’s all one thing, because I think it’s corny no matter what you’re doing. Like a dark metal band: “Everything is evil.” To me that comes off as corny, and a lot of other music that’s just happy, whether it’s indie stuff or pop music or just happy or whatever, it just comes off as corny. It just needs to be more complicated than that. We’re not that simple, especially now in 2013, and we shouldn’t be listening to stuff that’s so straightforward and simple.

It’s interesting you say that because I noticed Cobra Juicy has some of the most structured and pleasant pop songs you’ve ever written, but the “Windshield Smasher” video is probably the most directly threatening and unsettling visual piece you’ve put out.

I always like having fun with what I do and what I put out there because, from the second people started listening, like when Dandelion Gum came out, they had expectations for what the video should be. Everyone figured it would be this sunny valley trip with people in fields with weird colors. That shit is so predictable and so stupid and it’s been done so many time. I remember when the “Sun Lips” video came out, so many people were so upset, like, “This isn’t what we expected! This isn’t what we wanted!” But that’s just how it is, that’s what entertains me, and that’s why I make this stuff. “Windshield Smasher” was violent, but it wasn’t too mean. I still think it was kinda good spirited, but it was a lot of things at the end of the day.

From: https://www.tinymixtapes.com/features/tom-fec-black-moth-super-rainbow-tobacco

The Honey Pot - Light Splinters

 #The Honey Pot #psychedelic rock #classic rock #neo-psychedelia #psychedelic folk rock #retro-1960s

The Honey Pot are a psychedelic/pop 5-piece band, steeped in a musical fantasy time-warp where they groove among their most revered bands, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors and The Small Faces to name a few, but totally modern in every other way. Had they been around back then, they would be riding high with the rest. They are happy, though, to be playing to the crowd who 'were there' and those who groove anew whenever they can.
What is the connection between talented Theremin player and founder member of the Buggles Bruce Woolley and psychedelic pop band The Honey Pot? Well, in the autumn of 2008 Bruce kindly listened to Icarus Peel's newly-completed album "Tea At My Gaffe" and suggested that he should stay on the psychedelic journey. Soon after, Icarus met DJ Marrs Benfire of Bay FM, who featured the album on one of his "Smart Set" shows. The challenge from Marrs was for Icarus to write a "Revolver" style album with shorter songs, and thus "To The Edge" was composed and produced with Wayne Fraquet on drums and Jacqueline Bourne and Iain Crawford on vocals. The album was so well received that a performing band needed to be formed to play the songs live, at which point Tom Brown was welcomed in to play bass. Their first gig was a local festival in 2013. Since then they've played at many groovy festivals and venues with different line-ups, and are looking forward to many more live performances in the future.  From: https://www.thehoneypotcollective.com/newpage


 

 

Nil Lara - Baby

 #Nil Lara #indie/alternative rock #singer-songwriter #Latin rock #rock en Español #world music #1990s

Nil Lara accomplishes an innovative lyricism rooted in traditional, Latin rhythms in this self-titled follow-up to his debut album My First Child. His Cuban heritage serving as catalyst, Lara weaves English and Spanish lyrics to communicate universal themes. From the first song, "Money Makes the Monkey Dance," which reflects upon the struggles and suffering of selling out, to the celebratory last, "Mama's Chant," the track titles consistently allude to the passion embedded in the melodies and words. The album's highlights -- "Baby," "Fighting for My Love," and "Vida Mas Simple" -- each distinctly explore love and liberation. Lara's incorporation of the Cuban three-toned tres guitar, the cuatro (a small, Venezuelan four-stringed instrument), the electric guitar, and various percussion instruments -- congas, chants, beads, and a pandeiro -- enhances his music's originality and eclecticism sprung from Cuban roots. Whether or not listeners comprehend Spanish is irrelevant; Lara's style is compelling and understandable in any language.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/nil-lara-mw0000183498

Nil Lara (born 1964) is an American musician from Miami, Florida who is a singer, guitarist and songwriter, playing the tres, the six-stringed Cuban guitar, and the cuatro, a Venezuelan guitar. Lara was born in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Cuban immigrants, but much of his childhood was spent in Venezuela, moving to Caracas at the age of 7. At 8, he had mastered cuatro - a four-string Venezuelan instrument from which he graduated to the guitar. He moved with his family to Miami when he was in junior high. While studying electrical engineering at the University of Miami in Florida, he rediscovered his Cuban roots in guajiro, the Cuban equivalent of country, and "Son" - Cuban music's answer to the blues. This led him to the tres, a Cuban instrument with a unique sound and with the status of a grassroots instrument in Cuba.
Lara's music is based on Cuban and Venezuelan folklore, with inspiration from Western musicians like Stevie Wonder and Pink Floyd. He formed a group called K.R.U. while at the University of Miami, with whom he released two albums before they disbanded, after which he became a teacher at New World School of the Arts. In December 1993 Lara released My First Child with his new band, Beluga Blue. He signed to Metro Blue/Capitol Records in 1995, releasing Nil Lara in 1996, produced by Susan Rodgers. He wrote little new material for the next few years,[4] finally releasing Testimony and Da in 2004.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nil_Lara

Kitchen Witch - Slip Stream

 #Kitchen Witch #stoner rock #heavy blues rock #hard rock #desert rock #Australian

Australian red-dust desert rock outfit, Kitchen Witch liken themselves to the alcoholic baby if John Lee Hooker, Kyuss and Janis Joplin had hooked-up and had a kid. The quartet of Georgie Cosson (vox), Ed Noble (drums), Simon Elliott (bass), and Conor Kinsella (guitar) have been selected, alongside 21 other SA bands, to perform as part of the inaugural One12 Festival in Adelaide, a five concert series supporting local and emerging talent. Georgie was lovely enough to answer a few of our questions.

Firstly, let's start with the cracking band name; how'd you settle on Kitchen Witch?

Kitchen Witch is kind of self-titled, but a band.

Those new to the music stylings of the band, what's your elevator pitch of what people can expect to hear?

Guitar heavy, bubbling grooves, banshee wails, hip-swinging basslines to a heavy, heart-palpitating beat.

We're already in winter; the year has flown by, but what have been a couple of feel-good moments for the band so far?

Playing in the Cranker band room again! We had some great jams where we challenged ourselves to write a song in a night, with one idiot in the band being the boss and getting the rest of us to bring their idea to life. It's been great to be writing new tunes. New tunes feels is like a brand new day. A good one.

What does it mean to be selected to perform as part of the inaugural One12 Festival?

Wow, well we are stoked as a band and are really looking forward to playing with such an amazing line-up of bands.

Part of the gig includes the band's performance being filmed, recorded and streamed – that must be a super-dope opportunity to access?

Yes. It is super-dope. My Dad can watch. He is 1,500kms from Adelaide and hopefully people all over the world.

You're playing alongside Dirty Pagans, Sons Of Zoku and Rocky's Pride & Joy; can we expect you in the mosh for these bands?

I cannot stress how much awe I feel for these three bands. They are all different and top quality musicians. What a line-up!

Adelaide's local, indie music scene; who else has caught your attention lately; who's playing on Kitchen Witch’s local playlist?

We would have some Smoke No Fire, Hiatus Coyote, Planet Of The 8s, All Them Witches, C.W. Stoneking, Emergency Rule, Athletic Teenage Joggers, King Gizz of course, Indian classical, Bessie Smith.

The band released an album ('Earth And Ether') last year; when can fans expect more new tunes from Kitchen Witch?

Kitchen Witch are conjuring tunes from the ether as we speak. Keep your hats on; hopefully we get into the studio in a few months time.

What sort of skills does each band member have in the kitchen? And who takes responsibility for the BBQ tongs when you're all together for a backyard party?

You know what? We mostly just jam together and stay in shitty hotels eating baked goods. I do love to make festival-related treats on the sabbaths for the group. If you call a band a 'group' it makes it sound like you are in the '70s.

What else is on the cards for the band in 2021 (interstate tours)?

Yep, Kitchen Witch a taking this show on the road at the end of the year. Stay tuned to the socials and stuff for more info.

Best local takeaway joint for a 2am feed that will leave you with a food coma?

My house.

Which fictional character best describes your personality?

Tiabeanie from 'Disenchantment'. A princess who likes beer.

Last show you binge-watched?

I watch too much TV. Okay, 'Letter Kenny'.

Crows or Power (and no sitting on the fence!)?

What?

From: https://scenestr.com.au/music/kitchen-witch-purveyors-of-bubbling-grooves-banshee-wails-20210604

Jack O' The Clock - How Are We Doing... And Who Will Tell Us

 #Jack O' The Clock #progressive rock #art rock #progressive folk #avant-garde #chamber folk #avant-prog #Americana #prog folk rock

Jack O' The Clock is fronted by Damon Waitkus who has been a progressive rock fan since the first wave, but also a fan of more melodic and poetic music of that time. Their sound is not your typical folk music, or typical music at all for that manner, being a surprisingly accessible blend of avant garde and Americana, and has been compared to Henry Cow, Gentle Giant, Sufjan Stevens, Frank Zappa and others. They have released 3 critically acclaimed albums as of 2013, with more in the works. A band that is hard to characterize, they have found a home in prog folk because of their inherently folk instrumentation and timbre, their profound take on storytelling, and, well, the tendency for folkies to be an inclusive lot anyway.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=8552

Jack O’ The Clock continues its exploration of the dark underside of the American psyche on The Warm, Dark Circus. Released 10 years after All My Friends solidified the group’s unique position as a twisted mirror to recent history as well as current events, this new effort is another immersive experience – like a fiction anthology that picks at reality with poignancy and disturbing insight.
Now a virtual band split between the East and West coasts, the lineup features familiar names and a number of new performers. Multi-instrumentalist Damon Waitkus is the ostensible leader and contributes vocals, guitars, hammer dulcimers, piano, and flutes. Emily Packard is on violin and viola, while Kate McLoughlin is on bassoon. The rhythm section is Jason Hoopes on bass and Jordan Glenn on drums (both from the Fred Frith Trio). A number of guests contribute vocals, guitars, sax, clarinets, piano, and cello.
Waitkus’ lyrics do not hold back. The subject of The Ladder Slipped is considering suicide to escape pain and medical debt… or is he actually considering murder? And then there is Dürer’s Rhinoceros – a haunting 13-minute semi-autobiographical slice of life about a human feeding data to computers. It is named after a famous woodcut of a rhinoceros made 500 years ago by Albrecht Dürer, who never saw the subject of his artwork. This is perhaps a fitting analog to how the models of our current AI revolution are able to generate mimicked images and text without truly understanding the content of what they create. Waitkus approaches these topics with empathy rather than judgment – a refreshing approach in our hyper-opinionated socio-political landscape.
Musically, Jack O’ The Clock has always been a treat, and The Warm, Dark Circus stands out as one of their best. An amalgam of folk, rock, experimental, and classical, their being lumped into “progressive rock” is a disservice. There is no other set of musicians with quite the same sound. It is as if they have captured the characteristics of the last 75 years of Western music and reprocessed them into a new genre.
Case in point, Dürer’s Rhinoceros has passages that combine unconventional percussion with a prominent bassoon line and pseudo-chanted vocals, gentle flute melodies, and sophisticated art rock. The piece is heavily composed and yet has a loose and very human feel. There are moments of finger-picked beauty tempered with storm clouds on the horizon.
How We Are Doing… includes aggressive – almost mechanical – drumming overlaid with an angular sax solo. The assertive rhythmic structure continues through a flute interlude, then violin and guitar solos. A short polyphonic excursion leads to the main melodic structure underlying singing. Waitkus’s voice seems to talk to us from a distance as a variety of instruments busily come together and move apart in accordance with unusual timing. Indeed, this is the track that most clearly evokes historical avant-rock, such as Henry Cow, in its complexity and mashup of styles. The lyrical content is obscure but rich in imagery. It seems to be building on a number of themes, including those of humanity’s coexistence with nature and the passage of time, while touching on notions of technology and spirituality.
The music of Jack O’ the Clock is like the weather in Chicago – if you don’t like it now, wait a couple of minutes and it will be very different. But all attempts at humor aside, The Warm, Dark Circus is a stellar release with abundant eclecticism that can be enjoyed on multiple levels. This is a group that explores the human condition through their sounds and words. While melancholic, their approach is also evocative in its honesty, illuminating our shadows with a nod toward what we project on the surface.  From: https://avantmusicnews.com/2023/10/17/amn-reviews-jack-o-the-clock-the-warm-dark-circus-2023-bandcamp/

Buddy Miles - Them Changes

 #Buddy Miles #soul #R&B #funk #classic rock #funk rock #psychedelic soul #1960s #1970s #ex-Electric Flag

Best known as the drummer in Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, Buddy Miles also had a lengthy solo career that drew from rock, blues, soul, and funk in varying combinations. Born George Miles in Omaha, Nebraska, on September 5, 1947, he started playing the drums at age nine, and joined his father's jazz band the Bebops at a mere 12 years old. As a teenager, he went on to play with several jazz and R&B outfits, most prominently backing vocal groups like Ruby & the Romantics, the Ink Spots, and the Delfonics. In 1966, he joined Wilson Pickett's touring revue, where he was spotted by blues-rock guitarist Mike Bloomfield. Bloomfield had left the Paul Butterfield Blues Band earlier in 1967 and was putting together a new group, the Electric Flag, which was slated to be an ambitious fusion of rock, soul, blues, psychedelia, and jazz. Bloomfield invited Miles to join, and the band made its debut at the Monterey Pop Festival; unfortunately, the original lineup splintered in 1968. With founder Bloomfield gone, Miles briefly took over leadership of the band on its second studio album, which failed to reignite the public's interest.
With the Electric Flag's horn section in tow, Miles split to form his own group, the similarly eclectic Buddy Miles Express. Signed to Mercury, the group issued its debut album, Expressway to Your Skull, in 1968, with Miles' fellow Monterey Pop alum Jimi Hendrix in the producer's chair. In turn, Miles played on Hendrix's Electric Ladyland album, and later took part in an all-star jam session that resulted in Muddy Waters' Fathers and Sons album. Hendrix also produced the Miles Express' follow-up, 1969's Electric Church, and disbanded his backing band the Experience later that year; shortly afterward, Hendrix, Miles, and bassist Billy Cox formed Band of Gypsys, one of the first all-Black rock bands. Bluesier and funkier than Hendrix's previous work, Band of Gypsys didn't last long in its original incarnation; Miles departed in 1970, replaced by Experience drummer Mitch Mitchell, but not before his powerhouse work was showcased on the group's lone album, the live Band of Gypsys.
After backing John McLaughlin on 1970's Devotion, Miles returned to the role of bandleader and recorded his most popular album, Them Changes, in 1971; it stayed on the charts for more than a year, and the title cut became Miles' signature song. From December 1971 to April 1972, Miles toured with Carlos Santana, which produced the CBS-released concert document Carlos Santana & Buddy Miles! Live!; recorded inside an inactive volcano in Hawaii, the album sold very well. Miles cut a few more albums for CBS, participated in a short-lived Electric Flag reunion in 1974, then moved to Casablanca in 1975 for a pair of LPs.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/buddy-miles-mn0000943936#biography

The Rolling Stones - Child of the Moon

 #The Rolling Stones #blues rock #hard rock #classic rock #British blues rock #rock & roll #folk blues #garage rock #R&B #1968 music video

The promotional film for the Rolling Stones’ 1968 track “Child Of The Moon” has been newly restored in 4K resolution. The clip, again directed by the group’s frequent collaborator of the time, Michael Lindsay-Hogg, is the latest in ABKCO’s series of restored clips from the band’s 1960s era. “Child Of The Moon” is perhaps one of the lesser-known songs in the Stones’ canon, largely since it was the non-album B-side of their May 1968 smash “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.” It was recorded at Olympic Studios with producer Jimmy Miller that March, as sessions began for what became the classic Beggars Banquet LP. Miller’s voice is heard at the beginning of the track, which was sufficiently rated by the band to earn its own promotional video, recently described by Mojo as “an early semi-narrative work” by British director Lindsay-Hogg. The visually striking clip was filmed, in monochrome, in the Surrey countryside. “‘Child Of The Moon’ plays like a British sci-fi/horror short,” wrote the magazine, “seemingly referencing Italian giallo, Village Of The Damned and J. Lee Thompson’s 1966 pagan horror (and Wicker Man forerunner) Eye Of The Devil. The film possesses the dusk-light glow of a peaking acid trip, magic-hour euphoria tinged with a chilly unease, yet also tunes into the darker subtext of the Stones’ occult dalliances.” The song featured keyboards by Stones alumnus Nicky Hopkins, with the saxophone played by Brian Jones. It went on to be included in the More Hot Rocks (Big Hits & Fazed Cookies) compilation in 1972. Allmusic’s review notes that it “was indicative of their slide toward a slightly more laid-back, funkier rock sound than they’d pursued on their more pop- and psychedelic-influenced 1966-1967 releases.” The Elsewhere website describes the song as a “droning little gem” and “certainly the last gasp of the Stones in psychedelic mode.”  From: https://www.udiscovermusic.com/news/watch-restored-promo-film-rolling-stones-child-of-the-moon/

At end of the European tour in 1967, the Rolling Stones found themself in huge troubles. The tension inside the band was really high. The failure of their new psychedelic Lp “Their Satanic Majesties Request” few months later put them into a limbo, that paradoxally spurred the Stones to record one of the best rock’n’roll singles of all the times. “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” was a karma: an anthem never heard before. It came out May 24th, 1968, in England and the 1st of June in Usa, with a strange B side called “Child of the Moon”. As with “Jumpin Jack Flash”, “Child of the Moon” was recorded during the session for the seventh studio album of the band “Beggar’s Banquet”, on March 28, 1968, at the Olympic Studios in London. Unlike the “A side” of the single, “Child” has a gothic sound, introduced by a country blues riff and by a chilling scream sang by the the producer Jimmy Miller just like apocalypse was nearly done. A strange mix for a single that is still recognised as one of their best records ever. “Child of the Moon” was a love letter from Mick Jagger to Marianne Faithfull, fixed with a lot of references to pagan rituals: a gloomy vision in the dark side of love. The band thought enough of the song to accompany it with a promotional video. Directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg, this video was inspired by “Village of the Damned”. A sort of horror movie to give emphasis to the obscure mood of the Stones, according to their colder and satanic soul, in which a band of five men blocking the path to three figures: a child, an elder and a young woman. Maybe it’s the representation of most rebel side of The Stones or maybe it was the representation of the future in the middle of the Sixties for the youngest generations. A decade in which very soon things would have changed and everything would not have been the same again.  From: https://medium.com/@massimilianoleva/child-of-the-moon-the-psychedelic-vision-of-the-rolling-stones-65d932f61604

Grant Lee Buffalo - Mockingbirds

 #Grant Lee Buffalo #Grant Lee Phillips #alternative rock #folk rock #Americana #psychedelic folk rock #1990s #music video

They were one of the hardest 90s bands to pin down to a specific genre. One reviewer would call them psychedelic and the next would call them rootsy. Perhaps it’s somehow fitting then that “Mockingbirds,” the song that can probably be considered the most memorable of Grant Lee Buffalo’s career, is a sui generis chamber-pop piece.
As Grant Lee Phillips, the band’s lead singer and songwriter, recently told American Songwriter, the song was a last-minute addition to the band’s second album, 1994’s Mighty Joe Moon. “By the time we got to the second album, we had been on the road almost every day the previous year,” Phillips explains. “We sort of looked at each other and said, ‘It feels like it’s time to make a record. What are you doing next week?’ And we dove into it. That being the case, there were songs that were still coming along, songs that I had written, some out on the road, some on the odd day off.”
“But ‘Mockingbirds’ wasn’t one of those songs. I began to introduce all the new material. And we had gotten through most of the recording process when a massive earthquake struck Los Angeles. This was the Northridge earthquake. And it was out of that that I wrote ‘Mockingbirds,’ when the record was almost basically done. I said, ‘Whoops, I got one more here that we might want to consider.’”
Phillips lost his home in the earthquake. “My wife and I lived up in the high desert, maybe a 15-minute drive from the epicenter of Northridge, so we felt it really strong,” he recalls. “We spent the next number of weeks at my parents’ house, then managed to fly back into LA and slept on a friend’s floor for several weeks as Grant Lee Buffalo worked on the final stages of the album. I didn’t have much with me. My wife and I had our cat, and I had my guitar and my banjo. I was sitting on the floor as the aftershocks rolled and I began to write ‘Mockingbirds’ on the banjo.”
If you’re looking for a play-by-play of Richter scale readings and people diving for cover, look elsewhere. Phillips took a metaphorical approach, which made the song feel universal, even as it stayed true to a very personal experience. “The sentiment of the lyrics is that I’ve done everything I can possibly do to stay on the straight and narrow,” Phillips explains. “I tried to toe the line and yet life has caught up to me anyhow. And I suppose that’s a feeling that all of us can relate to regardless. Pick the cataclysm of your choice. That’s where it’s coming from. Although, when you stop and consider lyrics like ‘Devastation, at last, finally we meet,’ that is indeed very much the feeling one had as they walked out into the rubble of what was their home.”
By personifying this disaster, Phillips created a mindful and vindictive force that harries the narrator throughout the song. He rendered the anguish unflinchingly: “Woke from a dream where I was in a terrible realm/All my sails were ablaze, I was chained to the helm/Now I’m overwhelmed.”
The music, which includes an ingenious downward key change into the final verse and somber cello played by Greg Adamson, adds to the mournful feel. So too does Phillips’ falsetto in the chorus, which makes the narrator seem even more vulnerable to terrible fortune. “I’m known to go into the falsetto when it comes naturally,” he says of the technique. “I think it’s a case of growing up in the 60s and 70s when all of the singers would launch into falsetto at some point.”
Phillips initially had to convince his bandmates of the song’s worth. “To tell you the truth, that song very nearly didn’t make the record,” he says. “I brought that song in and I was told, ‘We’ve already got 13 songs and a few of them aren’t going to make the record because it’s going to be too long. Do we really have to bother with recording one more?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, we do. I feel really strongly about this one.’ I had made a 4-track recording of it at that point in time. I pushed for it.”
Once they did lay down “Mockingbirds,” the entirety of the band loved the idea of releasing it as a single, even as it bucked the grungy musical trends of the times. “I think we recognized that it was unique,” Phillips remembers. “Even though this was only two records in, we had encountered so many situations where it seemed as though the most obvious song to us in terms of being artful and interesting would be relegated to the backburner in favor of something that was quote-unquote more up tempo, more catchy, more memorable. All of those hallmarks that robots can achieve at this point in time.”
“We were always up against that wall. How do we fit into this world that demands something instantaneous, a song that achieves its goal within the first minute, that hits the chorus, and all of that stuff that we were less interested in? I was less interested in that stuff as a writer. And we were just trying to make albums that excited us, stuff that was like the weird records that we grew up with.”
In this case, not following the obvious fads paid off in the timelessness of this particular song, even if that tendency kept Grant Lee Buffalo somewhat uncategorizable and may have damaged their commercial prospects in their relatively brief time together. Grant Lee Phillips has continued on from the dissolution of the band to become one of the most intriguing and affecting singer-songwriters on the scene; look for a new album from him later this year. Meanwhile, he continues to be humbled by the demand for “Mockingbirds.”
“It amazes me that I still get so many requests for it,” he says. “I would have thought that even among our fans, who are so loyal and wonderful, that they would have tired of it by now. But there are always a few more that haven’t heard it or long to hear it. And I must say it’s a satisfying song to play.”  From: https://americansongwriter.com/mockingbirds-by-grant-lee-buffalo-behind-the-song/

BraAgas - Live World Music Festival, Bratislava, Slovakia 2019

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

#BraAgas #Balkan folk #medieval #Scandinavian folk #world music #Sephardic folk #traditional #ethno #Czech Republic #live music video

BraAgas is an all female quartet created in 2007 after the split-up of the band Psalteria. The first two albums were hard to define genre-wise. “The first album called No.1 was a mix of everything – medieval and folk songs as well,” says Katka Göttlich (Katerina Göttlichova). The four members of BraAgas have been playing for a long time. In addition to the previously mentioned Psalteria, the musicians played in other bands. “Our experiences from other bands have merged here – for me and Karla it was the Psalteria band, for Beta it was Gothart. Michaela had been sometimes the guest in different groups (e.g. Krless) before BraAgas originated,” says Göttlich.. The fact that the band was formed by professional musicians helped them record albums immediately and also with touring. Live playing is one of those things BraAgas can do really well. Their third CD, Tapas, is the result of their live concert art. The band won the music competition Česká spořitelna Colours Talents at Indies Scope Festival organized by Indies Scope Records and the Colours of Ostrava Festival supported by Česká spořitelna. The recording of an album was part of the Česká spořitelna Colours Talents prize. “The second one called No.2 – Media Aetas was purely medieval long single and the album Tapas has already nothing to do with ‘medieval times’. It’s an album containing songs which we have discovered and adapted and also those few ‘hits’ which we’ve taken the liberty to modify; those that the listeners of world music will definitely recognize.“ The four musicians play mostly ethnic instruments and historical replicas. Many guests helped them at the studio and there were also some electronic elements. Thanks to the electronics, a new modern sound was developed for Tapas, which was produced by David Göttlich and Petr Koláček. Tapas includes songs from various parts of Europe, including Spanish, Balkan, Nordic and Italian sources, originally dating back to anywhere within a thousand years time span, interpreted in a very modern way. Current members include: Katerina Göttlichova on lead vocal, cittern, guitar, bagpipes, shawms; Alzbeta Josefy on vocal, davul, darbuka, duf, riq; Karla Braunova on vocal, flutes, recorders, clarinet, shawms, chalumeaux, and bagpipes; and Michala Hrbkova on vocal, fiddle, cittern.  From: https://worldmusiccentral.org/2017/01/09/artist-profiles-braagas/

The Czech band BraAgas traveled all the way to India to perform at a respected world music show. Honza Hrbek entrusted us with the experiences of this for us exotic country. During the first seven years, a number of top world music bands from many countries performed at the Sur Jahan festival in India, but there was no Czech performer among them. BraAgas and I were lucky enough to be the first.
To play in India at a festival with such a good name as Sur Jahan (formerly Sufi Sutra) is an opportunity that can be refused, but the reason for such a refusal is very hard to find. Especially when in the Czech Republic the thermometer is determined to stay around minus fifteen, while in Goa it is a tropical thirty and small. So we went to the airport on a frosty Prague morning, expecting the perfect care of Qatar Airways for a music festival in a much more favorable climate.
The journey was not as easy as we had planned, but in the end we reached Calcutta in the same six pieces in which we left Prague. And that certainly wasn't the only departure, because if you've never been to India, Calcutta will probably leave you breathless. From the way cars, animals, people, motorbikes and rickshaws move on local roads, ants could learn, the luxury hotels that grow from the tin sheds of local slums, to the hundreds of thousands of Calcutta's special breed dogs, all under the unrelenting haze of smog, Calcutta is not easy to believe.
In Calcutta, the stage was set up in a park in front of the Queen Victoria Memorial. About eight meters next to the stage was the main road, which (thanks to the very specific Indian traffic) somewhat disturbed the listeners, especially in the back rows, which the sound engineer solved by turning up the volume. The equipment on the stage and the general conditions for playing were otherwise exemplary, and the festival itself, with its organization, boldly competes with the most famous European counterparts of a similar rank. Carefully selected bands from Europe and India, excellent transport and facilities at the festival, with the added value of the organizing team, who showed immense willingness and a positive attitude, whether it was a wish to see a temple dedicated to Kali or to visit musicals.
The move from Calcutta to Goa brought another culture shock. From a bustling metropolis that could fit all the inhabitants of the Czech and Slovak Republics, to a former Portuguese colony that resembles a Caribbean paradise and evokes an atmosphere of absolute calm that even the ever-present cockroaches trying to get into your drink cannot disturb. Goa is an oasis of everything you need on vacation, beautiful beaches, nice people who don't hesitate to take you home, and low excise taxes. So we weren't there on vacation, but some details can be appreciated even in a limited period of time.
At Sur Jahan, bands met enthusiastic music fans not only at concerts. Workshops were part of the festival - in Calcutta we performed with an Indian band, then in Goa alone, and we explained to the audience what life is like in our homeland, the history of our instruments and other details about our life in Europe.  Translated from: https://www.ireport.cz/clanky/rock-blog/rockblog-rejzi-nechci-ani-videt-aneb-po-indii-s-kapelou-braagas

Maria McKee & The Jayhawks - Precious Time - Live 1993

 #Maria McKee #The Jayhawks #alternative rock #alt-country #folk rock #roots rock #singer-songwriter #1990s #ex-Lone Justice #music video

Maria McKee – You Gotta Sin To Get Saved Tour 1993
November 21st 1993 – Leicester University
I had no interest in the support band on this day. This gig had been a long time coming. I’m fairly sure I went on my own to this one, as I don’t recall anyone else being interested in the singer of “Show Me Heaven” from the Tom Cruise film “Days of Thunder”. That wasn’t why I was there, good job too, because in the true spirit of rebel rock and roll, she didn’t play it anyway - in fact, she very rarely plays it at live gigs as the audience is not demanding of it’s playing and doesn’t really fit with her music generally. No – we had unfinished business here. I was a big fan of her band, Lone Justice and had been so looking forward to seeing them supporting U2 back in 1987. Things didn’t go to plan that day, due to Wembley’s inability to open gates on time and get us into the stadium in time for the first band, which Lone Justice were. So we only caught a couple of tracks that day. Unfortunately, Lone Justice also split up later in 1987, so this would be a new band, but Maria was the leader, so this was still a very good thing. Much as I love a good male singer in a band, I do have a penchant for a brash, full on female singer, who mixes passion, anger and softness into their music and Maria Mckee is probably the greatest of these (Listen to the albums and live music before you try and debate this with me). Obviously a few years had passed since the brash 18 year gave us the superb country/rock and roll debut album “Lone Justice” and then later the classic album “Shelter”.
I was looking forward to seeing this loud, confident, talented, maybe arrogant LA Girl coming strutting on stage, but she just walked on with her band, waved and spoke really quietly and politely thanking us all for coming and hoped we enjoyed the show. Well, no need to worry, first song was the powerful Lone Justice song “East of Eden” so the quiet Maria immediately turned into the stage persona I’d been expecting - brilliant start! What you get with Maria McKee is a great voice, with a mix of anger, passion, melody and fun behind it. I hate comparing singers, so I will: Maria is a strong Dolly Parton type singer with that strong edge of the anger and passion coming through. A mix of Country, Blues, Rock and Gospel - a great mix! Reckon this could be called Country Punk (my own genre). I love small venue concerts and the Uni is the perfect venue for this sound. We get “Shelter” during the set, but sadly, no “I Found Love”. Things slowed down for “Panic Beach” and the start of cover of Patti Smith’s “Free Money” (I’d never heard this before), but the beat gets strong towards the end and a brilliant MC5 cover of “Sister Anne”
Fact: Maria McKee wrote the hit song “A Good Heart” when she was 18 which, became a hit single for Feargal Sharkey - true! The brilliantly titled “Soap, Soup and Salvation” off the first album is so full of energy you can’t help but dance! You need to hear that too! A mesmerising concert from a band of exceptionally talented musicians. The mix of country, blues, rock and roll was brilliant, maybe even a little bluegrass in there too. The stage energy from the whole band turned it into more of a dancehall than a gig. On my top ten gig list.  From: https://fanclubyears.home.blog/1993/11/21/maria-mckee-you-gotta-sin-to-get-saved-tour-1993/

Gene Vincent & The Blue Caps - Be-Bop-A-Lula

 #Gene Vincent & The Blue Caps #rock & roll #rockabilly #classic rock #1950s #music video

When a music critic wants to indicate that a song lacks lyrical sophistication, he or she will often refer to its lyrics as being of the “moon in June” sort. It’s a label left over from the Tin Pan Alley era, when even great composers like Irving Berlin churned out a hundred uninspired Moon/June tunes for every highly original classic like “Blues Skies” or “Puttin’ On The Ritz.” If rock and roll has an equivalent in the area of clichéd lyrics, it is probably “Baby” and “Maybe”—a rhyming pair made most famous in the smoldering early-rock classic “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” which was recorded in Nashville, Tennessee, by the rockabilly legend Gene Vincent in 1956. The story of how the decidedly un-complex lyrics of “Be-Bop-A-Lula” got written is shrouded in a certain amount of controversy. Officially, Gene Vincent’s business manager credits Bill “Sheriff Tex” Davis, a savvy 40-year-old songwriter from Connecticut, as the songwriter. However, others credit a young man named Donald Graves — a buddy Gene Vincent made in a Portsmouth, Virginia, Veteran’s Hospital. Vincent — born Vincent Eugene Craddock in 1935 — had just reenlisted in the U.S. Navy in the spring of 1955 when he suffered a devastating leg injury in a motorcycle accident. That injury would land him in hospital for more than a year, where a fellow patient remembers Vincent and Graves tooling around the facility working out the song that would eventually become a classic. By the time Gene Vincent’s demo tape reached Capitol Records the following spring, however, Graves had been bought out of his share in “Be-Bop-A-Lula” by Sheriff Tex, reportedly for just $25. It wasn’t the obvious brilliance of “Be-Bop-A-Lula,” but rather the uncanny resemblance between Gene Vincent’s voice and Elvis Presley’s that explains the speed with which Capitol snapped Vincent up and got him into the studio. In fact, when Vincent and his Blue Caps recorded “Be-Bop-A-Lula” on May 4, 1956, it was as a “B” side to a now largely forgotten tune called “Woman Love.” As soon as disk jockeys began “flipping” Vincent’s debut single, however, “Be-Bop-A-Lula” became a smash, selling more than 2 million copies in its first year of release.  From: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/gene-vincent-records-be-bop-a-lula

The Flaming Lips & Erykah Badu/Amanda Palmer – The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

 

 #The Flaming Lips #Erykah Badu #Amanda Palmer #psychedelic rock #alternative/indie rock #neo-psychedelia #experimental rock #noise rock #music video

The Flaming Lips and Amanda Palmer invite you to experience Heady Fwends track “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” again — for the, uh, first time. Erykah Badu, you might recall, sang on the original version of the song, an out-of-this-world highlight from the Lips’ recent collaborative album. She then appeared nude, along with her sister Nayrok, in an NSFW video — a video which Badu immediately slammed and Lips leader Wayne Coyne later removed (though not without suggesting the dustup was part of Badu’s plan all along).
Dresden Dolls singer Palmer ably fills in on vocals for the song’s latest, still-NSFW video. Once again in slow-motion, once again running about five minutes, and once again centering around a nude woman in a bathtub, the new clip blessedly ditches the shots of female body parts covered in questionable foreign substances and is, on the whole, a more toned-down affair. Palmer, who previously made a video in support of pubic hair freedom, certainly seems less likely to turn around and repudiate this one. That’s particularly true considering that Coyne is directing the forthcoming visuals for Palmer’s “Do It With a Rock Star,” which, tweets suggest, will be both literal and, one more time, NSFW. If there was anyone who thought the Flaming Lips might start acting a little less zany now that a multiple Tony Award winner is about to debut the long-awaited Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots musical, well — was there anyone who really thought that?  From: https://www.spin.com/2012/08/naked-amanda-palmer-replaces-nude-erykah-badu-in-flaming-lips-video/

Last week, The Flaming Lips released a video for their collaboration with Erykah Badu, “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face”. Directed by George Salisbury, the rather explicit clip featured Badu’s sister, Nayrok, naked and covered in various strange substances. As it turns out, however, Erykah did not approve of the video’s release and has since penned an open letter to the Lips’ Wayne Coyne. In it, she claims, among other things, that Coyne misled her from the start, promising a “concept of beautiful tasteful imagery” that would “take my shots (in clear water/ fully covered parts - seemed harmless enough) and Nayrok’s part (which I was not present for but saw the photos and a sample scene of cornstarch dripping) and edit them together along with cosmic, green screen images (which no one saw) then would show me the edit.” Instead, Erykah says Coyne “disrespected me by releasing pics and rough vid on the internet without my approval. That is equivalent to putting out a security camera’s images of me changing in the fitting room. I never would have approved that tasteless, meaningless, shock motivated video.”  From: https://consequence.net/2012/06/erykah-badu-doesnt-like-the-flaming-lips-video-for-the-first-time-i-ever-saw-your-face/

One of the more continually fascinating musicians out there (and by out there, we also mean “out there”) is Wayne Coyne, frontman for The Flaming Lips. Recently, Co.Create spoke to him about his latest creative endeavor, involving a whole mess of artists in a massive caravan through Mississippi, part of an attempt to break the Guinness World Record for Most Live Concerts In 24 Hours (Multiple Cities). The title is currently held by Jay-Z. It’s part of the O Music Awards. More on all of that here shortly. In the meantime, we got to the bottom of a more recent Flaming Lips flare-up - the Twitter war that erupted between Coyne and Erykah Badu after the video for her cover with the Lips of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” appeared online (Video in link is NSFW). If you followed her Twitter feed, you know Badu claimed to be blindsided by the butt nekkid nature of the piece, in which Badu (or, maybe her sister as her body double) can be seen writhing bare-skinned in gold glitter, fake blood, and something that looks like … let’s say - heavy whipping cream. Reached for this story, a Badu rep said only that she had provided all she wanted to say on her Twitter feed @fatbellybella and added, “Wayne knows exactly what happened and why this became a problem. The video was unfinished and unapproved.” On that Twitter feed, Badu told Coyne to “KISS MY glittery ASS” and worse.
Coyne has apologized publicly to Badu for any confusion and partially explained his version. But the whole thing got worse before it got better, with both sides accusing the other of seeking publicity with the now-notorious video. With a little more time to mull it all over, Coyne offered Co.Create even more perspective on what it’s like to find himself a player in such a modern drama involving personal brands, guerrilla PR, and technology that fanned the whole flame war.
“I think part of it, this Twitter war, a lot of it I thought was just entertaining, but part of it, I think, plays into Erykah has a side to her audience that isn’t aware at all of who the Flaming Lips are and what we’re about, and I can say almost certainly that just about everybody in the Flaming Lips audience knows who Erykah Badu is. It gets to be a little bit of Erykah playing into this very conservative portion of her audience and sort of defending herself against what they thought about the video, which I thought was kind of funny and kind of absurd after a while. But I didn’t want to and I would never tell people what really happened. There’s a little bit of a sacred obligation to working with people. I knew going into working with Erykah Badu that she’s a freak - that’s why I wanted to work with her. You know. Usually it’s a freak in a good way, but it can be a bad way, and I accept that. I would say she’s inherently interesting, she’s unpredictable. A lot of it to me is funny. But I know to a lot of her audience, that she is important; what she thinks about something like this, it’s important to them that she say something about it. So I kind of let that go, and I would just chime in on the things I thought were entertaining and funny and not really try to stop the things that were mean and vicious and racist or whatever. That’s just the nature of Twitter, and I think that’s what’s cool about Twitter. There’s no referee and there’s no restrictions. As far as the video, I can’t imagine anybody who knows how videos are made, if we really do believe that Erykah Badu is her own woman and she is a presence and she’s in control and she’s powerful and she’s important, that she could really allow her, or her sister, and her manager, and her lawyer to be in a room for two days straight with us and not know what kind of a video we were making. It’s absurd. I could show you exactly the footage of us all laughing and laughing and laughing and going, “This is crazy, this is funny.” Of course, I mean, how am I going to get her and her sister to do a video like that if they didn’t want to do it? I’m just a dude making a video; I think it would be great. So if we really think about what’s happening, it would seem like ‘Really? You didn’t know we were making this video?’ So, I mean part of it to me is I just play along with whatever Erykah says is the story. I play along and say I’m sorry if that’s the way it’s perceived. I mean, I’m not going to tell everybody exactly the blow-by-blow truth of it. But I mean, it’s a Flaming Lips video: I made it, we paid for it, we arranged it, we did all the editing, everything about it. Erykah and her sister literally showed up to do the thing and said ‘Good luck, see ya later, sounds like fun.’ That’s the way that we approached everything that we’ve done. And I thought, yeah, Erykah might make it into something. She gave me a little bit of a warning like ‘Get ready this thing’s gonna blow up.’ And I was like, ‘What do you mean?’ And then ‘All right, here we go.’ So I’m a little bit at the mercy of her machine like everybody else is. I’m playing shows in Europe and she’s doing all this stuff. I try to just laugh at the things I think are funny and try to ignore the things that I think are mean and stuff like that. But that’s my take on it.”  From: https://www.fastcompany.com/1680966/anatomy-of-a-twitter-war-flaming-lips-wayne-coyne-speaks-on-feud-with-erykah-badu