Little Feat - Rock and Roll Doctor

 #Little Feat #Lowell George #blues rock #country rock #Southern rock #roots rock #1970s

By 1974, when Little Feat’s Feats Don’t Fail Me Now was released, tensions within the band were starting to surface. The band’s leader Lowell George had begun collaborating with non-band member Martin Kibbee (credited as Fred Martin) and the pair penned the album’s lead cut, “Rock And Roll Doctor.” George and Kibbee, who had attended Hollywood High School in Los Angeles together, had also co-written “Dixie Chicken” for Little Feat’s 1973 album of the same name. After high school, they formed a garage-punk outfit called The Factory, penning goofy songs like “Lightning Rod Man,” equal parts zany-Zappa and fast-and-loose Stones. On “Rock And Roll Doctor,” George and Kibbee employ a similar technique as the trucker anthem “Willin’,” name-dropping cities like Mobile, Moline, Nagodoches and New Orleans in the song’s verse. As to the musical side of the song, in an interview last year with American Songwriter at MerleFest, Little Feat member Paul Barrere discussed how George often used tape splicing in the studio as a compositional tool, a trick he learned from Frank Zappa. “Lowell used to do this thing with cassette tapes where he would take the tape and cut and splice it together, not knowing what was going to happen,” recalled Barrere. “[On ‘Rock And Roll Doctor’] there was like a couple of measures that were 3 1/2 beats instead of 4 beats and he would hand the tape to [keyboardist] Billy [Payne] and say, ‘Normalize this.’ I think within the framework of the verse there’s a 6/4 measure, which is probably why we didn’t get a whole lot of airplay on jukeboxes. If people try to dance to it, it’s like they’re on the wrong foot!” Sadly, arguments over the direction of Little Feat eventually led to the band’s demise in 1978, and George died in 1979. “He was fantastic, an incredible songwriter. A wonderful singer, great player. And, just an enigma of a man,” recalled Barrere. “It was always this sort of love-hate relationship going on, mood swings that I attribute to the times, and what we were doing in those times.”  From: https://americansongwriter.com/little-feat-rock-and-roll-doctor/

Though they had all the trappings of a Southern-fried blues band, Little Feat were hardly conventional. Led by songwriter/guitarist Lowell George, Little Feat were a wildly eclectic band, bringing together strains of blues, R&B, country, and rock & roll. The band members were exceptionally gifted technically and their polished professionalism sat well with the slick sounds coming out of Southern California during the '70s. However, Little Feat were hardly slick - they had a surreal sensibility, as evidenced by George's idiosyncratic songwriting, which helped them earn a cult following among critics and musicians. Though the band earned some success on album-oriented radio, the group was derailed after George's death in 1979. Little Feat re-formed in the late '80s, and while they were playing as well as ever, they lacked the skewed sensibility that made them cult favorites. Nevertheless, their albums and tours were successful, especially among American blues-rock fans.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/little-feat-mn0000313284/biography

Red Hot Chili Peppers - Mellowship Slinky in B Major

 #Red Hot Chili Peppers #alternative rock #funk rock #funk metal #hard rock #nu metal #rap rock #1990s

The Riverside Ballroom, Green Bay, Wisconsin. November 26, 1989: the Red Hot Chili Peppers stroll quietly into the ballroom and sneak a look around. The crowd is fairly small, strangely restless, buzzing and hurting for relief from the sexual frustrations of a Midwestern farm town winter. Perfect. For the first time on the Mother’s Milk tour, the Chilis decide to give them the sock. Backstage, tour manager Mark Johnson produces a fresh pack of white tube socks. The Chilis rush from the cold dressing room into the friendly, swarming heat of the auditorium wearing tennis shoes, hats and the socks stretched over their cocks - a costume they save these days for stifled places like Green Bay. The Chilis rear back and launch into “Out in L.A,” the traditional show-opener of a band thick with rituals. The crowd erupts in an ass-grabbing frenzy. Too-sexy, 19-year-old guitarist John Frusciante lays back, stretching his washboard stomach, his shoulders hunched, the Jimmy Page smirk on his lips. Singer Anthony Kiedis and bassist Flea are simply a blur, a pair of martial arts contenders gone mad, Flea’s eyes glowing green and his tightly-wrapped skull shining. Given the intensity of the onstage fray, the Chili Peppers are only tempting fate. Eventually, one of those socks has to fly off. Well into the set, jazz horn virtuoso and childhood homeboy Keith Chapman Barry - known only as Tree - joins the Peppers onstage. During his sax solo Tree’s sock almost immediately falls off - but, a true Chili, he “rocks out with his cock out” and finishes the song. There is no way to salvage the crowd. Boys are doffing their shirts. Virgins are crying. Guitar roadie and backup singer Robbie Allen darts onstage and “does a helicopter with his dick” right in the spotlight. We have, indeed, come a long way since Jim Morrison.  From: https://www.spin.com/featured/red-hot-chili-peppers-mothers-milk-1990-cover-story-physical-graffiti/

Rush - Xanadu

 #Rush #progressive rock #hard rock #heavy metal #art rock #blues rock #progressive metal #1970s

"Xanadu" is a song by the Canadian progressive rock band Rush from their 1977 album A Farewell to Kings. It is approximately eleven minutes long, beginning with a five-minute-long instrumental section before transitioning to a narrative written by Neil Peart, which in turn was inspired by the Samuel Taylor Coleridge poem Kubla Khan. In Peart's lyrics, the narrator describes searching for a place called "Xanadu" that will grant him immortality. After succeeding in this quest, a thousand years pass, and the narrator is left "waiting for the world to end", describing himself as "a mad immortal man". The song is based on the poem Kubla Khan written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Although the song does not explicitly state where "Xanadu" is, references to Kubla Khan imply that it is a mythical place based on Shangdu, the historical summer capital of the Mongol Empire.
"Xanadu" is the first Rush song in which synthesizers play an integral part. Unlike the previous albums, 2112 and Caress of Steel, "Xanadu" uses both guitar and synthesizer effects. "Xanadu" requires each band member to utilize an array of instruments to affect the performance. Alex Lifeson used a double-necked Gibson electric guitar (one twelve-string, the other six-string) as well as synthesizer pedals; Geddy Lee made use of a double-necked Rickenbacker 4080/12 guitar (bass and twelve-string guitar), as well as extensive synthesizer arrangements (through both pedals and keyboards) in addition to singing; and Peart took on various percussion instruments (temple blocks, tubular bells, bell tree, glockenspiel, and wind chimes) in addition to his drum kit.
Despite its complexity and length, Xanadu is a rare "one take wonder" song. Guitarist Alex Lifeson said, "Xanadu was well rehearsed before going to Rockfield (Studios), I remember that. On the day we recorded it, Pat Moran, the resident engineer, set all the mics up and we ran the song down, partially to get balances and tones. Because it was a long song, we didn't need to complete that test run. "We then played it a second time from top to bottom and that's what you hear on the album. Needless to say, Pat was shocked that we ran an 11-minute song down in one complete take. Practice doesn't always make perfect, but it sure helps!"  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xanadu_(Rush_song)

The New Respects - Trigger

 #The New Respects #alternative rock #indie rock #blues rock #soul #R&B #funk #folk rock

The New Respects are a high-energy throwback rock and soul quartet comprising siblings Alexandria, Alexis, and Darius Fitzgerald, and their cousin Jasmine Mullen. The children of a Nashville preacher, twins Alexandria (guitar) and Alexis (bass) and their brother Darius (drums) grew up on gospel music, and while Mullen (vocals) heard a wider range of influences in the house, her parents were both songwriters in the Christian music industry, with her mom, Nicole C. Mullen, having established herself as a prominent recording artist in the early 2000s. Forming in high school as the John Hancock Band, the quartet was initially based around more of an indie folk sound. As they became more established, the influences of early rock, R&B, blues, and soul began to inform their sound, and their music became more dynamic. By 2016, they'd signed with Capitol CMG and changed their name to the New Respects. Following a pair of singles later that year, they made their debut in early 2017 with the Here Comes Trouble EP.  From: https://www.isrbx.me/3137661009-the-new-respects-before-the-sun-goes-down-2018.html

Richard & Linda Thompson - Hokey Pokey

#Richard & Linda Thompson #folk rock #British folk rock #contemporary folk #singer-songwriter #ex-Fairport Convention #1970s

From 1973 to 1982, British folk legend Richard Thompson (having quit Fairport Convention in 1971) recorded as a duo with his wife Linda Thompson. This period saw a great amount of critical praise for Richard’s songwriting and Linda’s voice, though not much popular success. Following their divorce, both pursued solo careers.
The Thompsons recorded three albums: I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight (1974), Hokey Pokey (1975) and Pour Down Like Silver (1975) before they decided to leave the music business and moved to a Sufi commune in East Anglia. Songwriting was by Richard throughout, lead vocals generally by Linda, and backing by a consistent core band of English folk-rock stalwarts
I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight showed a clear development from Richard Thompson’s first solo effort Henry The Human Fly with Linda’s vocals adding grace, as well as the opportunity for Richard to write from a female perspective. Although Thompson’s trademark gloom is already evident, the lightness and beauty of the arrangements counterbalances this to produce moments of great beauty. The use of brass, from the renowned CWS silver band in particular takes forward Thompson’s continuing crusade to find a more contemporary and ordinary expression of Englishness in music (as opposed to, say, the forays into the Morris form of his Fairport contemporary Ashley Hutchings; solo and with The Albion Band). The next year’s release, Hokey Pokey, to some extent repeats the formula, although it is improved in production values, and is stylistically more adventurous still. A Heart Needs a Home is a minor miracle of songwriting, expressing the longing for love without cynicism and has a standout multi-tracked vocal from Linda.  From: https://thevogue.com/artists/richard-linda-thompson/#bio

Beth Orton - She Cries Your Name

 #Beth Orton #folktronica #folk rock #trip-hop #contemporary folk rock #electronica #singer-songwriter

Beth Orton is the rare vocalist who exists between disparate worlds; she is a singer with a folkie soul who is as comfortable accompanied by an acoustic guitar as by electronic rhythms. Indeed, most people first heard her on William Orbit's Hinterland album and on the Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust. Likewise, her slightly askance vocal style seems to betray naiveté, while lyrically there is a world-weary depth that the latest spate of tough-talking Lolitas cannot muster. Each song's closely observed details create small ripples that grow to substantial emotional waves by album's end; this very promising debut (Trailer Park) should be the harbinger of great things to come from Orton, with or without the help of a Lilith Fair or anything beyond the integrity of her songs and the wise lilt of her voice.  From: https://www.amazon.com/Trailer-Park-Beth-Orton/dp/B000003RSF

As if being the poster girl for a convoluted sub-genre like folktronica weren’t bad enough, Beth Orton of Norfolk, England has also tried to live down (so far unsuccessfully) a phenomenal debut that was evidently a case of sheer timing — and quite possibly a baldfaced fluke. Her world-weary yet somehow still ingenuous voice — a seamless patchwork of the best Carole King and Rickie Lee Jones have to offer — has continued to be a pleasure.
Orton entered the scene through the agency of artist-producer William Orbit, a man able to make even Madonna sound cool. Calling themselves Spill, the duo put out a single in ’92 (a cover of cult guitarist John Martyn’s “Don’t Wanna Know ‘Bout Evil”), with plans for a full-length album that evolved into Beth’s SuperPinkyMandy. A limited release for the Japanese market, the album collects ten Orbit-influenced soundscapes, including the Spill single and the first version of Orton’s signature tune, “She Cries Your Name” (which would resurface in different form on Orbit’s Strange Cargo series). After Spill was spent, she continued working with Orbit, and added memorably to tracks by the Chemical Brothers and Red Snapper, undertakings that made her something of a traveling big beat/acid jazz diva.
In ’96 she slowed down her guest-spot rotations to put out the introductory She Cries Your Name EP (re-released the following year with different songs) and the remarkable Trailer Park. Despite the sun-drenched cover shot, this is music for cloudy days. A unifying tone — as strong as any concept album around — makes even pretty ear candy like “Don’t Need a Reason” and “Sugar Boy” sound as perfectly sad as the mandolin-trimmed “Whenever” and the simple retelling of the Ronettes’ “I Wish I Never Saw the Sunshine.” For those in line for the trip-hop Beth’s known for, you’ll have some time to kill: producer/DJ Andrew Weatherall (Primal Scream, the Orb) steps in for three tracks of lingering beats (“Galaxy of Emptiness” being the best), but it’s delicate pop like “Someone’s Daughter” that fills the gaps. A new take on “She Cries Your Name” is the album’s apex, a faultless blend of acoustic picking, lush strings and Red Snapper’s Ali Friend on double bass.
From: https://trouserpress.com/reviews/beth-orton/

Jefferson Starship - I Want To See Another World

 #Jefferson Starship #Grace Slick #Paul Kantner #Marty Balin #folk rock #hard rock #psychedelic rock #progressive rock #album rock #1970s #ex-Jefferson Airplane

Spawned from the dissolution of Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship became one of the more successful arena rock draws of the 1970s and early '80s and enjoyed more commercial viability than its predecessor in large part due to the greater pop sensibilities of the new incarnation. Jefferson Airplane, a seminal psychedelic rock band popular for songs like "Somebody to Love" and "White Rabbit", began to fragment when lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen and bassist Jack Casady delved further into their side project Hot Tuna, while the other creative half of the band, rhythm guitarist and singer Paul Kantner and singer Grace Slick became more isolated as a romantic couple who had their own musical interests and desires. In addition, Marty Balin, who originally founded the band, grew fed up with conflict and quit the band in 1970. With Airplane's breakup inevitable, Kantner focused his efforts on his solo concept album Blows Against the Empire, a record that saw the first use of the Jefferson Starship moniker, although the band that would later take on the name had yet to take a definable shape. Blows saw contributions from members of the Grateful Dead, Crosby, Stills, & Nash, as well as Grace Slick and Quicksilver Messenger Service's David Freiberg, both of whom would be fixtures of the Jefferson Starship's official formation. When it was clear to Kantner that Kaukonen and Casady were in no mood to continue on with Jefferson Airplane, he decided to create a permanent touring band that would become Jefferson Starship. Along with Kantner, Slick, and Freiberg the Starship lineup included Papa John Creach on violin, Kaukonen's brother Peter on bass, John Barbata on drums, and Craig Chaquico on lead guitar.  From: https://www.wolfgangs.com/jefferson-starship/

Sleater-Kinney - Words and Guitar

 #Sleater-Kinney #Carrie Brownstein #indie rock #punk rock #riot grrrl #alternative rock #1990s

Arguably the most important punk band of the 1990s and 2000s, with feminist songwriting matched by taut melodicism and jaw-dropping sonic complexity. Like many a great band, Sleater-Kinney inhabited their time so thoroughly it took an extended hiatus to realize the extent of their legacy. In many respects, they were the defining American indie rock band of the second half of the '90s, the group that harnessed all the upheaval of the alt-rock explosion of the first part of the decade and channeled it into a vigorous mission statement. It was not incidental that Sleater-Kinney were an all-female band - prior to S-K, co-leaders Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein both started playing music in Northern Pacific riot grrrl bands and their feminism and queercore roots were deeply embedded in their rock & roll - but calling them the best female rock band of their generation is too confining. By every measure, Sleater-Kinney were one of the best bands of their time, capturing the tenor of their era and then expanding at a rapid clip, delivering record after record that redefined their music without abandoning their punk rock (or political) ideals.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/sleater-kinney-mn0000026164/biography

Sleater-Kinney [Chainsaw, 1995]
Heavens to Betsy's warbly wailer Corin Tucker joins Excuse 17's solemn screamer Carrie Brownstein for ten songs in twenty-two minutes, and voice-on-voice and guitar-on-guitar they figure out love by learning to hate. Three different lyrics reject the penis soi-même with a fervor that could pass for disgust, and while their same-sex one-on-ones aren't exactly odes to joy, they convey a depth of feeling that could pass for passion. In these times of principled irony and shallowness for its own sake, that's enough to make them heroines and outsiders simultaneously.

Call the Doctor [Chainsaw, 1996]
Like the blues, punk is a template that shapes young misfits' sense of themselves, and like the blues it takes many forms. This is a new one, and it's damn blueslike. Powered by riffs that seem unstoppable even though they're not very fast, riding melodies whose irresistibility renders them barely less harsh, Corin Tucker's enormous voice never struggles more inspirationally against the world outside than when it's facing down the dilemmas of the interpersonal - dilemmas neither eased nor defined by her gender preferences, dilemmas as bound up with family as they are with sex. As partner/rival/Other Carrie Brownstein puts it in an eloquently tongue-tied moment: "It's just my stuff." Few if any have played rock's tension-and-release game for such high stakes - revolution as existentialism, electric roar as acne remedy. They wanna be our Joey Ramone, who can resist that one? But squint at the booklet and you'll see they also want to be our Thurston Moore. They want it both ways, every which way. And most of the time they get it.

Dig Me Out [Kill Rock Stars, 1997]
One reason you know they're young is that they obviously believe they can rock and roll at this pitch forever. Whatever the verbal message of their intricate, deeply uptempo simplicity - less sexual angst, more rock-as-romance - it's overrun by their excited mastery and runaway glee. Like a new good lover the second or third time, they're so confident of their ability to please that they just can't stop. And this confidence is collective: Corin and Carrie chorus-trade like the two-headed girl, dashing and high-stepping around on Janet Weiss's shoulders. What a ride.

From: http://robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=Sleater-Kinney 

Fotheringay - Nothing More

 #Fotheringay #Sandy Denny #Trevor Lucas #folk rock #British folk rock #singer-songwriter #ex-Fairport Convention #1970s

Fotheringay was formed in 1970 by singer Sandy Denny upon her departure from Fairport Convention, together with her future husband, Australian singer-songwriter Trevor Lucas and Gerry Conway, both from the band Eclection, and two former members of Poet and the One Man band, Jerry Donahue and Pat Donaldson. Fotheringay played folk-rock similar to Fairport Convention, introducing Jazz elements like The Pentangle. The band drew it's name from Fotheringay Castle, where Mary Queen Of Scots was imprisoned in England; a name that Denny had already used for one of her finest compositions on the second Fairport Convention release What Did We Do On Our Holidays (1969). In 1970 the band recorded their lone self-titled album with producer Joe Boyd. The record mixed Rock, Folk and Jazz-elements and sounded similar to Fairport Convention with a less rockier side; Trevor Lucas’ rhythm guitar work giving the record an overall lighter feeling. The record contains two traditional songs, among them the outstanding "Banks Of The Nile", a Gordon Lighfoot composition "The Way I Feel", a Dylan cover "Too Much Of Nothing" and original songs by Denny, (among them "Nothing More" and "The Sea"), Lucas and Dave Cousins of Strawbs. Although the album and the group was well received, the band broke up in 1971. Sandy Denny embarked on a solo career (some songs for a projected second Fotheringay record surfaced on Denny's first solo album "The Northstar Grassman and The Ravens"), Donaldson and Conway began session work, while Lucas and Donahue rejoined Fairport Convention.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=2384

The Tea Party - Inanna

 #The Tea Party #hard rock #progressive rock #experimental rock #middle eastern music #blues rock #psychedelic rock #1990s #Canadian 

The Tea Party is a Canadian rock band with industrial rock, blues, progressive rock, and Middle Eastern music influences, dubbed "Moroccan roll" by the media. Active throughout the 1990s and up until 2005. The band re-formed in 2011. The Tea Party was formed in 1990 by Jeff Martin, Stuart Chatwood and Jeff Burrows after a marathon jam session at the Cherry Beach Rehearsal Studios in Toronto. Each member had previously played together during their teenage years in a number of different bands in Windsor, Ontario, where they were originally from. They had decided to name their new group The Tea Party after the infamous hash sessions of famous Beat generation poets Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac and William Burroughs. The Tea Party released their eponymous debut album in 1991, distributing it through their own label Eternal Discs. The album drew influences from psychedelic rock and blues, and was produced by Martin; album production was something Martin would continue with for all of The Tea Party's albums, as a way of giving the band complete artistic control. In 1993 The Tea Party signed to EMI Music Canada and released their first major label recording, Splendor Solis. The band employed open tunings and goblet drums (Dumbek) to create Indian-style sounds, something they continued to employ throughout their career, while continuing in a blues influenced style.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tea_Party

Crosby, Stills & Nash - Guinnevere

 #Crosby, Stills & Nash #David Crosby #Stephen Stills #Graham Nash #folk rock #country rock #hard rock #acoustic #ex-The Byrds #ex-Buffalo Springfield #ex-The Hollies #1960s

In a Rolling Stone interview, Crosby remarked: "That is a very unusual song, it's in a very strange tuning (EBDGAD) with strange time signatures. It's about three women that I loved. One of whom was Christine Hinton - the girl who got killed who was my girlfriend - and one of whom was Joni Mitchell, and the other one is somebody that I can't tell. It might be my best song." According to Robert Christgau, the song was based on a three-note motif from the 1960 Miles Davis album Sketches of Spain. The album CSN (box set) contains a demo version of the song played by Crosby on guitar, Jack Casady of Jefferson Airplane on bass, and Cyrus Faryar of Modern Folk Quartet on bouzouki. In the liner notes, Crosby says of the song: "When all my friends were listening to Elvis and 1950s rock 'n' roll, I was listening to Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan and West Coast jazz. Later I got involved with the folk music scene. After getting kicked out of the Byrds I didn't have a plan, but I went back to my roots, and "Guinnevere" is a combination of these two influences." The song also deals with the importance of freedom. It may have been written about Queen Guinevere from the perspective of a man addressing a woman; it has been speculated that Crosby wrote about her from the perspective of Sir Lancelot of ancient Welsh lore. "Guinnevere" could also be referring to Nancy Ross, who lived with David Crosby and (according to author David McGowan) drew pentagrams on the wall. She would leave Crosby in 1966 for Gram Parsons, the grandson of a citrus fruit magnate. These facts correlate to the "Nancy Ross" theory: in the song, Crosby sings that Guinnevere "drew pentagrams," and that "peacocks wandered aimlessly underneath an orange tree.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guinnevere

The Smile - Thin Thing

 #The Smile #Thom Yorke #Johnny Greenwood #alternative rock #art rock #post-punk #experimental #progressive rock Radiohead spinoff #animated music video

When Thom Yorke introduced his new band at their first gig a year ago, he took a moment to explain their name. “Not the Smile as in ha ha ha,” he said, his faux laugh echoing eerily, “more the Smile of the guy who lies to you every day.” Of course, no one figured that the most uncannily accurate doomsayer of the modern age was taking a sharp left to clown town with his latest project, but the Smile are not just aimed at shifty politicians, either. Their pearly grins are myriad, taking inspiration from smiles of love and deceit, bloody smiles and blissful ones, smiles that mend and smiles that destroy. At 53, Yorke has seen them all. And once again, he’s battling the absurdity of existence the only way he knows how: by offering a salve for his anxieties without letting anyone off the hook for turning everything we hold dear into one big joke.
This bid for transcendence amid chaos isn’t the only thing that’s familiar about the Smile. The trio also includes Yorke’s main songwriting partner in Radiohead, Jonny Greenwood, along with drummer Tom Skinner, whose eclectic resume includes work with jazz-funk explorers Sons of Kemet, electronic fusionist Floating Points, and UK rapper Kano. It’s the first time Yorke and Greenwood have collaborated on a major project outside of their main gig, and, not coincidentally, A Light for Attracting Attention sounds more like a proper Radiohead album than any of the numerous side projects the band’s members have done on their own.
We’ve got Greenwood’s lattice-like fingerpicking and saintly electric guitar tone. There’s Yorke’s voice, still in pristine form, wailing like an angel in limbo and gnashing like a punk who woke up on the wrong side of the gutter. There are synths and Greenwood’s sidelong orchestral flourishes signaling end times. Longtime producer Nigel Godrich is in the control room, giving each sound an immense and terrifying and beautiful glow. How about some wonky rhythms that keep your mind from slipping into passive mode? Yep, lots of those too. All due respect to the guys from Radiohead who are not in the Smile, but if A Light for Attracting Attention were presented as the triumphant follow-up to the group’s last album, 2016’s A Moon Shaped Pool, I’d bet that most people would have happily been fooled.
From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-smile-a-light-for-attracting-attention/

The Smile are an English rock band comprising the Radiohead members Thom Yorke (vocals, guitar, bass, keys) and Jonny Greenwood (guitar, bass, keys) with the drummer Tom Skinner. They are produced by Nigel Godrich, Radiohead's longtime producer. They incorporate elements of post-punk, progressive rock, Afrobeat and electronic music. The Smile worked during the COVID-19 lockdowns and made their surprise debut in a performance streamed by Glastonbury Festival in May 2021. In early 2022, they released six singles and performed to an audience for the first time at three shows in London, which were livestreamed. In May, the Smile released their debut album, A Light for Attracting Attention, and began an international tour.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Smile_(band)

Lithium X-Mas - Hip Death Goddess

 #Lithium X-Mas #psychedelic rock #art rock #indie rock #rock #psychedelic punk #1980s #Ultimate Spinach cover

Psychedelic art-rock pioneering band from Texas, Lithium X-Mas,was formed in Dallas, Texas, in 1985. They emerged from the punk scene that included the likes of Nervebreakers, Butthole Surfers, Vomit Pigs, and Horton Heat. The band played a diverse array of venues, from seedy warehouses to psychedelic theme parties to Dallas' legendary, upscale Starck Club. Lithium's first forte was the excavated cover song, bringing their own twisted spin to tunes such as Nilsson's 'Jump into the Fire,' Lemon Pipers' 'Green Tambourine,' and Ultimate Spinach's 'Hip Death Goddess.' Forward looking, but still informed by deep excavation of eclectic record collections, Lithium's fans included Sonic Youth, with whom they shared bills and who advertised them on their guitars; Nirvana, who were inspired by the name for some of their source material; the Butthole Surfers, whose drummer King Coffey signed them to his record label; and many others.  From: https://www.forcedexposure.com/Artists/LITHIUM.X.MAS.html

Indigo Girls - Kid Fears

 #Indigo Girls #Amy Ray #Emily Saliers #folk rock #contemporary folk #singer-songwriter #Michael Stipe #1990s

Amy Ray: "'Kid Fears' is about the difficulty of growing up, getting into a world where people know where your hiding places are and what your secrets are. In the third verse, when I say 'Skipping stones/We know the price now,' that's specifically about the music industry. I used the image of skipping stones because the flatter and smoother the stone is, the better it skips and the more spin you put on it the farther it goes. When I say smooth, I'm talking about being polished and dressing right. 'We know the price now/Any sin will do' - there's a lot of things you can do to get further in the industry, and a lot of them, to me, are sins, because they're compromises. I stick to principles too much. I have a real short temper and tend to be outspoken. It's like, one person says something like 'Oh, when the paychecks start rolling in you'll change your mind about that,' can make you say 'Well fuck you, because I'm never going to change, I'm always going to feel this way and I know I am.' You have to be really strong, and remember that you're getting to play and that's really what you want to do."  From: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/49044/

The Indigo Girls are an American folk rock duo consisting of singer-songwriter/guitarists Emily Saliers and Amy Ray (who has also released six albums as a solo act). After meeting in grade school and beginning their musical collaboration in college, they have been performing together since the late 1980s and as of 2019 are embarked on an international tour with the University of Colorado Symphony Orchestra. They are known for their complementary vocal and guitar arrangements and popular songs "Closer to Fine", "Galileo", and "Power of Two", as well as for their activism both on behalf of and apart from the lesbian community.  From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/IndigoGirls

Gaate - Foelgje

 #Gaate #folk rock #folk metal #progressive rock #electronica #progressive metal #Norwegian

Gaate was founded by the Sundli siblings, Sveinung and Gunnhild, in 1999. Their unique combination of traditional Norwegian folk music and explosive progressive rock soon took them from a basement rehearsal room to many of the biggest stages in Scandinavia. The sibling’s profound passion for traditional Norwegian folk music has always been the base of Gaate’s sound and vision, and they continue to create vibrant new music on a foundation of traditional material. At the same time they have an urge to create and compose original songs, and they are producing new material which is allowing them to explore their sound and vision differently but still with roots in the traditional.  From: https://gaate-music.com/about-gaate/ 

Gaate is a band from Trøndelag, Norway, playing Norwegian folk music bred with metal, electronica, sometimes called progressive folk-rock. While some songs are original, many come from traditional Norwegian folk songs. Some songs are based on the poems of the Norwegian poet Astrid Krogh Halse. These include "Følgje" ("Companion") and "Stengd Dør" ("Closed Door"). The music consists of guitars, violins, synthesizers/keyboards, drums, and the distinctive voice of Gunnhild Sundli.  From: https://sonichits.com/video/G%D0%B5te/Jygri

Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac - Rattlesnake Shake

 #Fleetwood Mac #Peter Green #blues rock #British blues revival #heavy blues rock #psychedelic blues #1960s

Peter Green formed Fleetwood Mac with Mick Fleetwood in 1967; the pair had met playing in bands in 1960’s London. They played in Peter B’s Looners and then the subsequent Shotgun Express, a short-lived R&B group that featured a young Rod Stewart as the vocalist. In addition to this, Green played guitar in John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, an iconic band that has featured some of Britain’s best musicians — he had joined to replace none other than Eric Clapton himself. Clapton had become a superstar with Cream, and Green wanted to replicate that for himself.
The long and highly mythologised history of Fleetwood Mac was to start when Bluesbreakers drummer Aynsley Dunbar left the band to join the new Jeff Beck Group, a band that would become legendary in itself. Without a drummer, Green suggested Fleetwood join, and Mayall agreed. The line up of The Bluesbreakers then consisted of Green, Fleetwood, Mayall, and bass player John McVie. Mayall had given Green some free recording time as a gift, and so he, Fleetwood and McVie recorded five songs. The fifth of these was an instrumental named ‘Fleetwood Mac’, after the instrumental section of The Bluesbreakers, “Mac”, being short for McVie. After this short recording session, Green proposed to Fleetwood that they form a new band. The pair headhunted McVie as bassist and attempted to entice him by using the name Fleetwood Mac. Unsurprisingly, rather than risk it with a new band, McVie opted to keep his steady income, and declined. Forgetting about McVie for the meantime, the duo hired slide guitarist Jeremy Spencer and bassist Bob Brunning; Brunning joined the band on the fairly harsh condition that if McVie agreed to join, he would leave. Brunning would only play a handful of shows with the new band, and this first iteration of many would debut live on 13th August 1967 at the Windsor Jazz and Blues Festival as ‘Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, also featuring Jeremy Spencer.’ Within a few weeks of this show, John McVie agreed to join the band in what is now a legendary lineup change.
This second iteration of the band would have hits with Green’s compositions of ‘Black Magic Woman’, ‘Albatross‘, ‘Man of the World’, ‘Oh Well’ and ‘The Green Manalishi’. They remain fan favourites, cherished particularly among Mac purists. Along with these hits came international recognition, and of course, excess. The band released their second album, Mr Wonderful, in August 1968 and went on their first of many American tours. In an anecdote stereotypical of the time, they hung out with The Grateful Dead in San Francisco and were offered LSD, amongst other things, by the Dead’s now-legendary purveyor of psychedelics, Owsley Stanley. By December things had changed. At the start of a 30-date tour in New York, the band finally succumbed to Stanley’s pervasive products. This was the start of the end for Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, including Jeremy Spencer. It is well documented that Peter Green’s unselfish nature allowed the then-members of Fleetwood Mac to thrive musically, and without him, they would not be the band we know today. This is true, regardless of how third guitarist Danny Kirwan felt; he had joined as an eighteen-year-old in 1968 and didn’t connect personally with Peter Green.
It is interesting to note though, that both Green and Kirwan’s mental states visibly started to change after the release of 1969’s single, ‘Man of the World’. Both were taking large doses of LSD, and Green had adopted a form of Buddhism influenced by Christianity — Green started wearing white robes and a crucifix around his neck. The frontman also became concerned with accumulating wealth, and Fleetwood recalls: “I had conversations with Peter Green around that time, and he was obsessive about us not making money, wanting us to give it all away. And I’d say, ‘Well you can do it, I don’t wanna do that, and that doesn’t make me a bad person.'” In a story as old as rock and roll itself, tension and drug use finally engulfed the band.  From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-peter-green-quit-fleetwood-mac/

Brother Dege - Hard Roe To Hoe

 #Brother Dege #Dege Legg #folk #Americana #alt-country #alt-roots #delta blues #Southern folk-rock #psychedelic country #singer-songwriter

Brother Dege Legg is one of the best-kept secrets in Louisiana; a musician, writer, outsider artist, and heir to a long line of enigmatic characters birthed in the slaughterhouse of the Deep South. It’s a been a wild ride for this boy. Like the mad love child of Son House and William Faulkner, Legg has burned a colorful trail through the Promised Land, working odd jobs, hitchhiking, studying philosophy, writing books, and experimenting with psychedelics - all while passionately championing the Deep South, but also clashing with its pecking orders, prejudices, and parochial narrow-mindedness.
Growing up, there were few promising opportunities for young man of Legg’s stripe in Cajun country and things eventually got difficult and strange: chronic bouts of depression, habitual drug use, small town drama, and arrests soon became routine. During one gloomy episode - deflated, broke, and strung out - Legg climbed the Mississippi River Bridge in Baton Rouge, determined to dive into the next life, but after a last minute change of heart, humbly climbed back down and vowed to find a better way to exist. He immediately drove himself to rehab in a stolen Camaro and rededicated himself to his creative pursuits, namely songwriting. He formed the southern tribal rock band, Santeria who had a 10-year run of chaos and bedeviled kookiness (1994-2004). After four albums, they disbanded in an anarchic heap of bad luck, poverty, exhaustion, and voodoo curses they suspected were cast on the band to hasten their demise.
Legg spent the next year living in low-rent motels and trailer parks, writing new songs that tapped into the haunting style of the Delta Blues greats. With an odd ease, the songs poured out, spitting new life into the genre, not by hackneyed imitation, but by infusing original Delta - slide songs with his own experience of growing up in the Deep South - young, white, alienated, and lost. Legg’s Robert Johnson-on-Thorazine-style slide work paired with his droning-rural psychedelia brought the backwoods sounds of Louisiana (hurricanes, cows, cicadas) to life while remaining firmly rooted in the troubled and death-obsessed masters. This batch of songs became the first Brother Dege release, the now critically-acclaimed Folk Songs of the American Longhair (2010) - a record that Quentin Tarantino later referred to as “almost like a greatest hits album” of new Delta blues.
Home-recorded in Alan Lomax-like austerity, the album delivered postmodern tales of desperate southerners, apocalyptic prophecies, midnight angels, hippie drifters, burning barns, and the endless ghosts that haunt the history of the Deep South. Quietly self-released with no distribution, no representation, and absolutely no hype, Folk Songs of the American Longhair quickly earned 4-star reviews and gained the attention of numerous tastemakers in film and TV, scoring sync placements on Discovery Channel’s After the Catch, Nat Geo’s Hard Riders, women’s cycling documentary Half the Road, Netflix’s The Afflicted, and most notably hand-picked by Quentin Tarantino for inclusion in the movie and soundtrack to Django Unchained.  From: https://www.last.fm/music/Brother+Dege/+wiki

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Codine

 #Quicksilver Messenger Service #psychedelic rock #acid rock #folk rock #blues rock #psychedelic folk #San Francisco sound #1960s

One of the first West Coast groups, Quicksilver Messenger Service formed in San Francisco in 1965 and built up a big reputation in that area from their free concerts. The original line-up comprised John Cipollina, Jim Murray, Gary Duncan, Greg Elmore and Dave Freiberg (who would go on to join Jefferson Airplane). Jim Murray left the group not long after they performed at the Monterey International Pop Festival in June 1967. The band then began a period of heavy touring on the West Coast of the US where they featured many times at both the Avalon Ballroom and the Fillmore West
Of all the great bands in San Francisco’s cosmic hall of fame, Quicksilver were the last to sign a record deal. Tired of waiting for singer Dino Valenti to get out of Folsom prison following a drug bust, they signed without him in late 1967 and recorded a decent but strangely subdued self-titled debut that only hinted at the majesty of the dual guitar work conjured by John Cipollina and Gary Duncan at their live shows.
The band decided to record the follow-up LP live at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West in San Francisco, although Capitol also recorded gigs at the Fillmore East. Half a dozen performances recorded in November 1968 at both venues provided the spine of the album that became Happy Trails. At the time, Quicksilver were living across the Golden Gate Bridge on a ranch in Mill Valley, where they staged acid-fuelled ‘cowboys and indians’ fights with The Grateful Dead. These shoot-outs inspired the artwork for the album and George Hunter of The Charlatans came up with the perfect image of the Old West for the front cover. The back featured pen-and-ink cowboy portraits of the band, like extras from a Wild West show.
Naming the LP after the Roy Rogers theme tune, they tricked drummer Greg Elmore into singing it in a cowboy drawl. Yet what preceded this campfire coda couldn’t have been more different. Side one featured a 20-minute psychedelic work-out on Bo Diddley‘s Who Do you Love? spliced together from different live shows, with two free-flowing guitars cross-stitching soaring arpeggios and stinging feedback. Side two offered more of the same, opening with a tumultuous version of Diddley‘s Mona, while the screaming lead guitar lines on the album’s only studio cut, Calvary, represented the band’s interpretation of the crucifixion. The track ends with the coming of the angels, before the spirit of Roy Rogers takes over. “We were really swacked out when we conceived that one,” Cipollina later confessed.  From: https://nostalgiacentral.com/music/artists-l-to-z/artists-q/quicksilver-messenger-service/

Toni Childs - The Woman's Boat

 #Toni Childs #alternative rock #folk rock #world music #contemporary folk rock #pop rock #art pop #singer-songwriter #1990s

After the less successful critical and commercial fortunes of her second record, House of Hope, Toni Childs jumped labels from A&M to Geffen for her third release, The Woman's Boat, in 1994. She also enlisted a new producer in David Botrill, with whom Childs shares production credits. Recorded at Peter Gabriel's Real World Studios, The Woman's Boat features an impressive array of musicians including David Rhodes, Robert Fripp and Trey Gunn. The album itself is an ambitious song-cycle exploring the female perspectives from the heartbeats of the opening track "Womb" through the ten-minute confessional epic "Death," which closes the record. In between, there's the sonic rush of "Welcome to the World," which gracefully juxtaposes a mother's expression of fear and optimism to her unborn child, and the ominous tone of "Predator" expressing the darker side of human nature. The music edges Childs deeper into world music territory with its exotic instrumentation and rhythms. The Woman's Boat is a rich, complex and rewarding listen.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/the-womans-boat-mw0000113374

Skrillex - First Of The Year (Equinox)

 #Skrillex #Sonny John Moore #dubstep #EDM #electro house #post-hardcore #house #music video

Skrillex First Of The Year – Music video analysis
00:00 Close-up shot of a seated man, wearing a trench coat, holding a candy between his fingers. The music does not start yet. We can hear a kind of wind noise. The camera makes a slow bottom-to-top panorama shot, revealing the torso then the man’s face: around 35-40 years-old, ordinary shirt, a few day’s stubble, glasses, head going bald. He watches the camera in a vaguely hostile way.
Characterization: this description of a “man with a candy” works straight away as a metaphor by metonymy (that is, the candy stands for what this man could do with it – seducing a child?), the first hint of pedophilia as the main theme, which will get confirmed hereafter.
False track: we understand just after that the look from the man to the camera was actually not aimed at us (the audience), but at some children playing in front of him. At the same time, this ambiguity has a function: to let the audience, from the very beginning, try to guess and to figure out the soul of this pervert man (one says that the eyes are the mirror of the soul)
00:17 Shot in the counter-position, framing the man from the back and revealing in front of him the scene he is watching: children playing.
Progressive revelation of the world of the plot: the world of the pedophile in our contemporary world.
00:23 A strike of drums launches the music in sync with the pictures that frame a concrete ground while zooming out and travelling with a backwards movement. The shadow of a little girl enters the frame. She hops in rhythm with the music.
Characters: first appearance of this little girl who is going to become the Hero. The progressive revelation of the pedophile, then of his potential victim, allows this information to dynamize the action and to make the theme of the plot easy to understand: the fight between a hunter and its prey.
Media: the synchronization between the pictures and the soundtrack (frequent in music videos) also helps here to mark the steps of the plot and to catch our attention at the key moments.
00:36 Shot of this blonde little girl, around 6-8 years, skipping alone in a narrow street. The picture is slower than real time. We now can distinguish a human shape a few dozen meters away from her.
00:40 Shot of the man in the same street. We understand that he is following her and the next shot confirms it by framing both of them in the one picture. Around them are industrial buildings.
Structure: now the data is clear, this event is the catalyst of a plot in which a little girl will have to defend herself against a pedophile who wants to abuse her. Note the smartness of the montage, which proceeds in a dialectic way: thesis (the little girl), antithesis (the pedophile), synthesis (both of them united in the same picture).
00:50 The little girl takes some stairs down to a basement floor. The man follows her, while taking glances around as though to make sure there are no witnesses.
Structure: the development, Act II, begins as a chase.
01:07 The man walks in the darkness underground. His glasses shine in a threatening way. He pulls a little bottle containing some green liquid out of his pocket, which he seems to be pouring onto his hand over something. Zoom-on now on a pocket from which the plastic arm of a doll is protruding.
Themes: until now, it has been a juxtaposition of cliches and archetypes: the pervert man, alone, vaguely disgusting and gloomy, the little girl happy and innocent, the doll a symbol of this innocence. Those cliches automatically generate some expectations in terms of scenario-standards: the pervert man will probably attack her, the little girl will probably be unable to defend herself, etc. These expectations need to be set up so that they can be better contradicted later on.
01:20 The little girl holds a red telephone handset to her ear. The man comes closer to her. They are alone in a large underground room. Only a few meters separate them.
Structure: this mise en scene obviously builds a feeling of imminent danger and we thus expect that the man carries out the attack, which would make us enter the crisis of Act III.
01:27 In sync with the music, the little girl suddenly screams “Call 911 now!” The lips movement is in sync, but the voice does not match. It’s not a little girl’s voice but the voice of a man with a rather high pitch or the voice of an older woman.
False track: this sudden and spectacular situation twist comes to contradict everything that the beginning of the video made us believe: that the little girl was defenseless and on the point of being aggressed by a man stronger than her. The terrifying power of her voice takes us totally by surprise and also contradicts the information we had about her: her youth, her sweetness, her candor.
01:29 In reaction to the aforementioned screaming, the room is disrupted by an explosion of smoke. The little girl now looks like a witch and she agitates her fingers in front of her face while staring at the man in front of her. He gets violently projected into the air, flying and landing several meters away. The little girl seems to be generating and controlling this incredible indoor storm.
Structure: against all odds, we witness a crisis of Act III, but not at all the one we expected, which means that we followed a false track: the little girl has become the super-powerful aggressor of this pedophile treated as a simple toy!  From: https://www.storyanddrama.com/skrillex-first-of-the-year-music-video-analysis/