XTC - Respectable Street

 #XTC #new wave #post-punk #progressive pop #art rock #pop rock #baroque pop #art punk #power pop #psychedelic pop #orchestral pop #1980s #1990s

The 1980 release Black Sea represents the last stand of the punchy, angular new wave that had won XTC strong critical and college radio support. Still arranging with an ear toward the stage they'd soon retire from, they continued working in the Drums and Wires style that had christened their previous release. Black Sea brims with XTC trademarks: engaging guitar hooks, cleverly rendered lyrics, and frenetic, creative melodicism. The material represents the pinnacle of XTC's early incarnation - a counterpoint to contemporary punk imbued with style, rhythmic punch, and melodic charm.  From: https://www.roughtrade.com/us/product/xtc/black-sea-1/vinyl-lp

Respectable Street

Andy Partridge: “Actually inspired by my neighbour who spends half her life banging on the wall should I so much as sneeze. Not knocking people who have ‘respectable’ ideals (I know I must have a few), more of a song of people with double or hypocritical values. You know the sort, blind drunk one night, church the next. Or the mother who urges her daughter to go out and have fun dear, isn't abortion wonderful. If their daughter got pregnant they would beat her senseless.”

Andy: “The BBC felt the lyrics on the song on Black Sea would upset people. They asked if I could rewrite it and, being a good boy, I did. Contraception became ‘child prevention’ and abortion became ‘absorption’. Still they wouldn't play it. Here's that old peoples, pre-chewed version.”

Andy: “The A&R man decided the BBC wouldn't play this with words like ‘abortion’ and ‘contraception’, so he took out all the words he didn't like. It wasn't a big hit, though, because the BBC still didn't play it. A couple of bands have covered it, and they always get the chords wrong. The second one's a seventh, formed from the E-string up. They always miss it.”
Dave Gregory: “It's not really a guitarist's chord, that one.”
Andy: “Nope, but it's a Partsy one.”

From: http://chalkhills.org/reelbyreal/s_RespectableStreet.html

Blind Faith - Sea of Joy

  #Blind Faith #Eric Clapton #Steve Winwood #Ginger Baker #blues rock #hard rock #psychedelic rock #supergroup #1960s

Not long after Cream broke up late in 1968, Eric Clapton had started to jam frequently with Steve Winwood, formerly of Traffic (who disbanded shortly after Cream), and soon the thought of forming their very own band was tempting. Somehow former Cream drummer Ginger Baker caught notice of this and was eager to be involved. In short, he joins the band, they invite Ric Grech to become the bassist, and the group is officially formed. Rumors of this 'supergroup' start to spread like wildfire (to the point of them actually being called a 'Super Cream'), and thus this group of lads (unnamed at first; the name Blind Faith allegedly comes from the cautious optimism Clapton felt about the band) are now usually recognized as the first act to be christened with the tag of 'supergroup'. An album is quickly written and recorded (these guys liked to jam more than actually make crafted songs, even though the songs on the album are quite good), and they make their debut at Hyde Park in June 1969 (well received). A quick tour of Scandinavia follows, as a 'warm up' for the bigger gigs to come in the US. By the time their US tour finished up in August 1969, Blind Faith as a band were no more. Like any normal supergroup, they simply collapsed under the pressure that most supergroups succumb to.  From: https://rateyourmusic.com/release/album/blind-faith/blind-faith/

The Zombies - She's Coming Home

 #The Zombies #Rod Argent #Colin Blunstone #psychedelic rock #blues rock #pop rock #baroque pop #psychedelic pop #British invasion #1960s

Q: Since the Zombies were formed so early on in the ’60s, do you think that allowed you to form a more distinct sound that was not as heavily influenced by other British Invasion bands?
Colin Blunstone: Well, in 1961, we were 15 years old. You know, we weren’t professional musicians at that time, but that’s when the band first got together. The very first rehearsal, I was the rhythm guitarist and Rod Argent was the lead singer, but we swapped ’round very early on. I heard him playing piano, and even at 15, he was sensational as a keyboard player, and I said to him, “You have to play keyboards in the band.” And then he heard me singing a Ricky Nelson song and said, “Well, okay, I’ll play keyboards if you’ll be lead singer.” So right from the beginning, we were a keyboard-based band, which was quite unusual in those days, when you think of it. It was a time of three-guitar bands, but we had a keyboard-based band. And also, we always tried to include harmonies in everything that we did, which again, was quite unusual for bands, and that was from the time we were 15.
We were very aware of the Beatles and thought they were absolutely fantastic, but up until our first recording session, we played the same thing: rhythm and blues classics. In fact, the Zombies were at one time called the Zombies R&B. But just before the first session, which was at Decker Studios in West Hampstead in London, our producer, who’s called Ken James, he was having a chat with us and just said, “You could always write something for the session if you wanted,” and then went on and talked about other things. It wasn’t a big speech. Quite frankly, I’d forgotten he even said it. But Rod just went away and wrote “She’s Not There” and came back about two days later and said, “Guys, I’ve got a song. Listen to this.” And I think we all knew that it was special as soon as we heard it. And Chris White wrote the B-side, “You Make Me Feel Good.” I didn’t know either of them could write songs. I was in deep, deep shock when they came back with these songs written. And so, from then on really, we sort of trod our own path because, up until then, we’d been using the same influences that most of the other bands of the British Invasion were using. The Beatles, the Stones, the Yardbirds, the Animals: they were all using rhythm and blues classics as the basis of their songs, and we were doing the same thing, but in a very amateurish way. We were still very young. But as soon as Rod and Chris started writing, that really was our musical identity. Whether you like the Zombies or not, we weren’t like anybody else because we had these two prolific and quite sophisticated writers in the band, and we followed their songs.  From: http://www.rebeatmag.com/colin-blunstone-and-the-odessey-of-the-zombies-part-two/

Folknery - Vyplyvalo Utenia

 #Folknery #Ukrainian folk #dark folk #world music #folk rock #roots music #neofolk #ethno #Ukrainian folk rock

Folknery describe themselves as 'Ukrainian free folk,' which sounds as if the band from Kiev, Ukraine, are about to blow your head off Albert Ayler-style. On Folknery's album Useful Things, the band does expand the palette of Ukrainian folk music: there's plenty of structure to their music, but a gleeful kitchen-sink abandon so that experimentation and genre-clash unite in soulful grooves. The story of Folknery mirrors the music's off-kilter approach: this is a band whose name emerged as a mash-up between William Faulkner and folk music, the idea for which came straight out of a dream. Volodymyr Muliar and Yaryna Kvitka founded Folknery in 2009. Muliar was fresh out of his experiences drumming for various Ukrainian rock bands, and he was delving into folk singing with another Ukrainian group called "Rozhanytsia." The two enjoyed not only music, but also bicycling – and in fact, they continue to conduct wide-ranging cycling trips that have evolved into excursions across Ukraine, and other countries, in order to find folk music and record living singers. Augmented by another member of Rozhanytsia, vocalist Yulia Sovershenna, the group continued to incorporate world music influences and diverse instrumentation. Together with percussionist Roman Sharkevych and guitarist Dmytro Sorokin, Folknery also utilizes accordions, African djembe, field-recorded sound effects, and hurdy-gurdy.  From: https://www.rootsworld.com/reviews/folknery-16.shtml

Andy Shauf - The Magician

 #Andy Shauf #folk rock #baroque pop #indie rock #jazz rock #indie folk #chamber pop #singer-songwriter #Canadian #animated music video

Hailed as “a gifted storyteller” (NPR Music) for 2016’s 'The Party' and 2020’s 'The Neon Skyline', Andy Shauf writes albums that unfold like short fiction, full of colorful characters, fine details and a rich emotional depth. With 'Norm', however, Shauf has slyly deconstructed and reshaped the style for which he’s been celebrated, elevating his songwriting with intricate layers and perspectives, challenging himself to find a new direction. Under the guise of an intoxicating collection of jazz-inflected romantic ballads, his storytelling has become decidedly more oblique, hinting at ominous situations and dark motivations.
Shauf had planned to be touring around 'The Neon Skyline' but, like many of us in the early days of the pandemic, he spent a lot of time alone instead. He sequestered himself in his garage studio, self-producing and playing every instrument on 'Norm', a collection of more conventional songs written predominantly on guitar, piano and synths. The latter was essential to creating the more spacious and tactile sounds he sought. Shauf’s goals were uncomplicated: create something melody-driven rather than chord-driven, and make it modern. Shauf recruited Neal Pogue (Tyler, the Creator, Janelle Monae, Outkast), a prodigious shaper of genre-and-time-defying tracks, to mix the album, further building on the gently levitating, synth-laden atmospherics.
During this period, he was captivated by David Lynch’s ‘Mulholland Drive’, which seemed to validate Shauf’s instinct to mix perspectives and tinker with shadowy narratives. He even rewrote all of the album’s original lyrics, recreating the story, and enlisting Nicholas Olson as a story editor - it was only after writing the title track that Shauf decided to build a narrative around the character Norm. "The character of Norm is introduced in a really nice way," Shauf says of the pleasant songs that precede the album's centerpiece. "But the closer you pay attention to the record, the more you're going to realize that it's sinister."  From: https://www.anti.com/artists/andy-shauf/  

Vanilla Fudge - You Keep Me Hangin' On

 #Vanilla Fudge #psychedelic rock #heavy psych #acid rock #hard rock #proto-metal #Supremes cover #1960s

It's fair to say nobody had heard anything quite like Vanilla Fudge when the band burst onto the scene in August 1967 with their cover of The Supremes’ hit You Keep Me Hangin’ On. In contrast to The Supremes’ sparkling, syncopated rhythms propelling the song at a gallop, the Fudge version begins with a single organ note that appears to be struggling to hold its pitch against unseen forces. Gradually, the note is joined by other notes – it would be stretching things to call it a chord - which are also being buffeted by the elements. Just as you’re beginning to wonder whether it may be some musical code trying to tell you something - a bit like that sequence in Close Encounters - what sounds like the noise of a drumstick splintering against a hi-hat jolts your senses, and suddenly you’re engulfed in a clattering musical cacophony that finally erupts into the classic You Keep Me Hangin’ On riff. Except that it’s played at a quarter of the speed and with a fearsome, heavyweight, pile-driving intensity. The vocals come in at the same crawling tempo, and the singer is clearly desperate to keep hangin’ on. Indeed when he gets to that throwaway line in the original "And there ain’t nothing I can do about it", he sounds like he’s in the throes of a full-scale nervous breakdown. After he’s finished pleading for release - “Set me free why don’t you babe" - the instrumental introduction is repeated, except this time the riff gets a bludgeoning quality that threatens grievous aural harm, before a sweeping organ cadence brings sudden, and merciful, relief.  From: https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/5067836177008380097/612365453995572163

Conspiracy of Owls - Raving Mad

 #Conspiracy of Owls #psychedelic rock #pop rock #baroque pop #space rock #alternative rock #indie rock #retro-1960s

Conspiracy of Owls is actually the side project of the legendary underground Detroit garage heroes The Go. After letting some psychedelia seep into a few of their previous albums, the band decided to indulge in the sound completely, and formed Conspiracy of Owls as a way to deliver it. And by psychedelia, I don't mean a reinterpretation of the '60s style a la garage filter like Ty Segall or The Fresh and Onlys. No, this album is a complete recreation of the stuff that was pouring out of a car's stereo set on AM radio in the '70s. In fact, if this music came on randomly somewhere, you would be asking who turned on the classic rock station.  From: http://thecreativeintersection.blogspot.com/2010/12/album-review-conspiracy-of-owls-st.html

Cadillac Sky - U Stay Gone

 #Cadillac Sky #newgrass #progressive bluegrass #contemporary bluegrass #folk #country

Nashville-by-way-of-Texas-based bluegrass quintet Cadillac Sky are led by singer/mandolin player/guitarist/violinist Bryan Simpson and feature Matt Menefee (banjo, upright piano, drums, glockenspiel), David Mayfield (guitar, percussion), Ross Holmes (mandolin, Mellotron), and Andy "Panda" Moritz (piano, percussion, bass). The group signed to the Skaggs Family label and released its debut album, Blind Man Walking, on January 23, 2007; it made the country charts. Gravity's Our Enemy followed on August 19, 2008, and Cadillac Sky switched to Dualtone Records for Letters in the Deep (June 8, 2010), produced by Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/cadillac-sky-mn0000614288/biography

Cadillac Sky’s brief tenure in the newgrass world generated a lot of passion. Traditionalists disliked them intensely, while more open-minded (and typically younger) audiences ate them up. Much of the early bristling may have come from a poor audience/entertainer match, with the band being booked at bluegrass festivals where their brand of aggressive, modern string music might not be well appreciated. That popped up quickly in 2007, when on-site disagreements between Cadillac Sky and a promoter in Arkansas accelerated into them being asked to leave a festival where they had been booked for three days. But they did eventually find their niche and released 3 albums between 2007 and 2010. Just as quickly as they appeared, though, the band fell apart in 2011, shortly after primary vocalist and songwriter Bryan Simpson decided to leave the group.  From: https://bluegrasstoday.com/cadillac-sky-reunion/  

In This Moment - As Above, So Below

 #In This Moment #alternative metal #metalcore #hard rock #gothic metal #industrial metal #music video

Initially conceived as a metalcore counterpart to Evanescence, In This Moment moved into more melodic territory with its fantastical 2008 breakthrough album The Dream. Though capable of throat-scraping screams, vocalist Maria Brink shone brightest on mature and atmospheric material, putting In This Moment in the running as a promising goth rock band. The Los Angeles-based act also widened its exposure by touring with the like-minded Lacuna Coil as well as metal veterans Megadeth and Ozzy Osbourne.  From: https://open.spotify.com/artist/6tbLPxj1uQ6vsRQZI2YFCT

For the uninitiated, an In This Moment concert is part rock show and part high-concept performance art. The visuals are tantalizing, challenging and occasionally confusing—but never dull. The band’s opening track on the night was a percussive and warlike cover of Steve Miller Band’s “Fly Like An Eagle.” Brink took center stage, towering over everyone in a robe and ornate headdress, and flanked by a pair of acolytes in a ritual-like ceremony. The band churned out the riffs as Brink held court, each passing song feeling like its own act in a play. The individual performances were so ornate and detailed that In This Moment fit only about eight songs into its 70 minutes.  From: https://riffmagazine.com/reviews/in-this-moment-black-veil-brides-20211003/

Tool - Prison Sex

 #Tool #alternative metal #art rock #progressive metal #progressive rock #experimental rock #post-metal #animated music video #stop-motion

“When we got signed by Zoo Records in 1992, the most important thing for us was to have creative control,” Tool guitarist and art director Adam Jones emphasized in a 2008 interview. “We went, ‘OK, if we take less money can we have control of the music?’ And the label went, ‘Yeah, no problem!’ And we said, ‘If we take even less money can we have final say over the videos.’ And they went, ‘Sure.’” At the time, Adam was working in Hollywood on set design, make-up and special effects for big-budget movies, including Terminator 2: Judgment Day and Jurassic Park. He wanted to be able to use his movie-making acumen to create strange, imaginative clips that were more like short films than conventional music videos.
The stop-motion animation in the band’s weird and wonderful second video, Sober, turned many MTV viewers on to Tool, but it was the even more unsettling follow-up, Prison Sex, that truly showcased Adam’s cinematic skills. But the creation of the clip was far from effortless. When people from Zoo first saw the treatment, they asked Adam not to make another thematic stop-motion video, especially if it didn’t star the band members. “There was a lot of banging heads with the record company, because they still wanted to do things in the traditional way,” Adam said. “They’d go, ‘Well, if you’re not gonna be in your video, we’re not gonna pay for it.’ And we’d say, ‘What do you mean? We’re supposed to have creative control.’ It was typical, slimy shit, but in the end they gave in.”
Frontman Maynard James Keenan wrote Prison Sex about the tragic cycle of domestic abuse; people who are sexually molested when they’re young are far more likely to become abusers themselves later in life than those who were never abused. In the first verse, Maynard sings, ‘I’ve got my hands bound, and my head down and my eyes closed/And my throat’s wide open’, introducing the topic in no uncertain terms. In the lines after the bridge, the victim becomes the assailant: ‘I have found some kind of temporary sanity in this/Shit, blood, and cum on my hands/I’ve come round full circle.’
Adam, who directed the Prison Sex video, captured the menacing and horrific tone of Maynard’s lyrics by using dark visual metaphors about being physically and mentally dismantled and then abandoned. The clip contained no graphic violence or sex. Instead, the stop-motion animation used monstrous creatures, which wouldn’t be out of place in a Tim Burton film, to convey manipulation, confinement, abuse and hopelessness. The Prison Sex video features a sinuous, sadistic female black leather creature that taunts, terrorizes and maims a legless marble robot she keeps in a cement drawer. At one point in the video, the robot sees a wasp buzzing around and traps it in a bottle, suggesting that he, too, is now capable of cruelty.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/tool-prison-sex-story-behind-song 

Patti Smith - Frederick

 #Patti Smith #art punk #proto-punk #art rock #hard rock #new wave #alternative rock #singer-songwriter #1970s

Punk rock's poet laureate Patti Smith ranks among the most ambitious, unconventional, and challenging rock & rollers of all time. When she emerged in the '70s, Smith's music was hailed as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan's heyday. With her androgynous, visual presentation echoing her unabashedly intellectual and uncompromising songwriting, Smith followed her muse wherever it took her, from structured rock songs to free-form experimentalism. Her most avant-garde outings, such as 1975's Horses and the following year's Radio Ethiopia, borrowed improvisation and interplay from free jazz, but remained firmly rooted in primal three-chord rock & roll. A regular at CBGB's during New York punk's early days, the artiness and the raw musicianship of her work had a major impact on the movement among contemporaries and followers alike. As boundary-pushing as her music could be, Smith nevertheless scored a hit in the Bruce Springsteen collaboration "Because the Night" from 1978's Easter, which, like 1979's Wave, offered a slightly more polished version of her sound. When she returned to music following a lengthy hiatus and the death of her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, her work was sometimes subtler and more meditative, as on 1996's Gone Again, but rock was still a fiery, vital part of albums like 2000's Gung Ho and 2012's Banga.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/patti-smith-mn0000747445/biography

By 1979, Patti Smith was in a relationship with Fred “Sonic” Smith of Detroit garage rock legends The MC5, and “Frederick” is one of the most beautifully pure love songs of its era; a sense of euphoric joy leaping from the speakers set to a classic rock melody that clings to the memory magnetically. It’s so vivid, the fact that Smith turned her back on music for a decade afterwards, choosing blissful domesticity and motherhood over life on the road, should have come as no surprise.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/patti-smith-every-album-ranked-from-worst-to-best  

The Jeff Beck Group - I Ain't Superstitious

 #The Jeff Beck Group #Jeff Beck #Rod Stewart #blues rock # hard rock #British blues rock #British R&B #heavy blues rock #proto-metal #classic rock #1960s

Despite being the premiere of heavy metal, Jeff Beck's Truth has never quite carried its reputation the way the early albums by Led Zeppelin did, or even Cream's two most popular LPs, mostly as a result of the erratic nature of the guitarist's subsequent work. Time has muted some of its daring, radical nature, elements of which were appropriated by practically every metal band (and most arena rock bands) that followed. Truth was almost as groundbreaking and influential a record as the first Beatles, Rolling Stones, or Who albums. Its attributes weren't all new - Cream and Jimi Hendrix had been moving in similar directions - but the combination was: the wailing, heart-stoppingly dramatic vocalizing by Rod Stewart, the thunderous rhythm section of Ron Wood's bass and Mickey Waller's drums, and Beck's blistering lead guitar, which sounds like his amp is turned up to 13 and ready to short out. Beck opens the proceedings in a strikingly bold manner, using his old Yardbirds hit "Shapes of Things" as a jumping-off point, deliberately rebuilding the song from the ground up so it sounds closer to Howlin' Wolf. There are lots of unexpected moments on this record: a bone-pounding version of Willie Dixon's "You Shook Me"; a version of Jerome Kern's "Ol' Man River" done as a slow electric blues; a brief plunge into folk territory with a solo acoustic guitar version of "Greensleeves" (which was intended as filler but audiences loved); the progressive blues of "Beck's Bolero"; the extended live "Blues Deluxe"; and "I Ain't Superstitious," a blazing reworking of another Willie Dixon song.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/truth-mw0000262744

Ginger Baker's Air Force - Early in the Morning

 #Ginger Baker's Air Force #Chris Wood #Graham Bond #Denny Laine #jazz-rock #afro-fusion #blues rock #afrobeat #hard rock #R&B #supergroup #1970s #ex-Cream #Beat-Club

For a change, the late 1960s yielded up a supergroup that lived up to its hype and then some. Ginger Baker's Air Force was recorded live at Royal Albert Hall in January of 1970 - in fact, this may be the best-sounding live album ever to come out of that notoriously difficult venue - at a show that must have been a wonder to watch, as the ten-piece band blazed away in sheets of sound, projected delicate flute parts behind multi-layered African percussion, or built their songs up Bolero-like, out of rhythms from a single instrument into huge jazz-cum-R&B crescendos. Considering that this was only their second gig, the group sounds astonishingly tight, which greatly reduces the level of self-indulgence that one would expect to find on an album where five of the eight tracks run in excess of ten minutes. There aren't too many wasted notes or phrases in the 78 minutes of music included here, and Steve Winwood's organ, Baker, Phil Seamen, and Remi Kabaka's drums, and the sax playing by Chris Wood, Graham Bond (on alto), and Harold McNair, all stand out, especially the sax trio's interwoven playing on "Don't Care." Additionally, Denny Laine plays louder, flashier, more virtuoso-level guitar than he ever got to turn in with the Moody Blues, bending notes in exquisite fashion in the opening of Air Force's rendition of the Cream standard "Toad," crunching away on rhythm elsewhere, and indulging in some more introspective blues for "Man of Constant Sorrow."  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/ginger-bakers-air-force-mw0000202606

Thundermother - Revival

 #Thundermother #hard rock #heavy metal #heavy psych #blues rock #Swedish

The quintessential hard-rocking sound of Sweden's Thundermother takes cues from AC/DC and Motörhead but sees the group add a modern twist, as heard on acclaimed efforts like Heat Wave (2020) and Black & Gold (2022). The brainchild of Sweden's Filippa Nässil, Thundermother first came about in 2010 after she moved to Stockholm to start a classic rock band. Nässil teamed up with Italian guitarist Giorgia Carteri, who had also found herself in Stockholm, and they started to put together a band, finally settling down with drummer Tilda Stenqvist, bassist Linda Ström, and Irish vocalist Clare Cunningham in 2013. With the group a solid collective, they embarked on national tours, peddling their own modern brand of classic '70s rock before issuing their debut album, Rock 'n' Roll Disaster, in 2014.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/thundermother-mn0003244561/biography

Q: I would be silly to ask about Thundermother’s influences, so I’m just going to start with how did you come up with the band’s name and what have been your personal music heroes.

A: Filippa came up with the name when she founded the band, in 2010. She was just brainstorming and the name appeared in her head, like a miracle haha. She is a big AC/DC fan, and their sound has always been a core sound for Thundermother. My personal musical heroes are Iron Maiden, since I was a teenager, and as a drummer my main hero is John Bonham. And you can hear that in my drumming on our songs. People used to say that if John Bonham and Phil Rudd had a baby, that would have been me, haha!

Q: As a Runaways/Girlschool/Vixen worshipper myself, how do you girls really do with the guys? On 2020 AD how can a girl gang survive without receiving criticism about her looks and just focus on the music?

A: Well, we often feel that we need to over-prove ourselves, because people underestimate us only because we are women. But we love to be underdogs and we are confident in ourselves. We will always be judged but we decide to not care. And we take care of each other and support each other through tough situations. We need to get this world equal for real now, and if we can help by playing music we are super happy to do that!

Q: What has been the highlight of your career so far?

A: We’ve had many highlights - to play at Wacken was definiteley one of them! Also to play in the USA on the Kiss Kruise. To be able to have the band as our only job is also a really big highlight. We feel so lucky to have this band as our only employment, its a dream come true!

Q: How has coronavirus affected Thundermother and what can a fan do apart from streaming and buying merchandise during quarantine?

A: The only thing that has affected us is that we had to cancel a lot of shows, and that is of course a big deal for us. But otherwise we have just been going on as much as possible, and thank god we had already finished our album in February before everything closed down. I guess the best thing a fan can do right now is to support us by buying our new album, and help us reaching the charts and get us to the next level, so that whenever we can tour again, it will be like a big explosion!

From: https://metalinvader.net/interview-with-thundermother/

The Seldom Scene - California Earthquake

#The Seldom Scene #John Starling #Mike Auldridge #bluegrass #folk #progressive bluegrass #Americana #alt-country #contemporary bluegrass #1970s

The Seldom Scene was established in 1971 in a basement in Bethesda, Maryland. The original line-up, our Founding Scene Fathers, was John Starling on guitar, Mike Auldridge on Dobro, Ben Eldridge on banjo, Tom Gray on double bass, and John Duffey on mandolin. Charlie Waller, a member of the Country Gentlemen, can be credited for the band's name. Expressing his doubt that this new band could succeed, Waller reportedly asked Duffey, "What are you going to call yourselves, the seldom seen?" The band performed weekly at the Red Fox Inn before getting a residency at the Birchmere Music Hall in Alexandria, Virginia. The rest is history.
The progressive bluegrass style played by the Seldom Scene had become increasingly popular during the 1970s. Their weekly shows included bluegrass versions of country music, rock, and  pop. The band's popularity soon forced them to play more than once a week - but they continued to maintain their image as being seldom seen, and on several of their early album covers were photographed with the stage lights on only their feet, or with their backs to the camera. Though the Scene remained a non-touring band, they were prolific recorders, producing seven albums in their first five years of existence, including one live album (among the first live bluegrass albums).
Since forming, the band has gone through numerous lineup changes. The last big shakeup happened in 1995, when Duffey and Eldridge, the two remaining original members, recruited dobro player Fred Travers, bassist Ronnie Simpkins, and guitarist Dudley Connell to join the band. Mandolinist Lou Reid returned the following year and in 2017 Ron Stewart joined as the new banjo player. The current band has been together the longest in Seldom Scene history, and for good reason. With an inventive take on bluegrass, the Seldom Scene has displayed both their original material and their interpretations of songs from limitless genres.  From: https://www.seldomscene.com/band

Black Sabbath - The Writ

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

"The Writ" is one of only a handful of Black Sabbath songs to feature lyrics composed by vocalist Ozzy Osbourne, who typically relied on bassist Geezer Butler for lyrics. The song was inspired by the frustrations Osbourne felt at the time, as Black Sabbath's former manager Patrick Meehan was suing the band after having been fired. The song viciously attacks the music business in general and is a savage diatribe directed towards Meehan specifically ("Are you Satan? Are you man?"), with Osbourne revealing in his memoir, "I wrote most of the lyrics myself, which felt a bit like seeing a shrink. All the anger I felt towards Meehan came pouring out." During this period, the band began to question if there was any point to recording albums and touring endlessly "just to pay the lawyers". Thematically, "The Writ" and "Megalomania" are intertwined, according to drummer Ward, as they both deal with the same tensions arising from these ongoing legal troubles.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabotage_(Black_Sabbath_album) 

Tony Iommi – identified by engineer Mike Butcher as Black Sabbath’s “unofficial leader” – has stated that Sabotage was in part a reaction to the complex style of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, on which the band had combined their signature heavy metal with elements of progressive rock, aided by Yes keyboard player Rick Wakeman and even an orchestra. “We could’ve continued getting more technical,” Iommi said, “using orchestras and everything else. But we wanted to do a rock album.” Iommi was also reacting, on a deeper level, to the ongoing litigation with Patrick Meehan. “We were in the studio one day and in court or meeting with lawyers the next,” the guitarist said. And his anger and anxiety fed into Sabotage. “The sound was a bit harder than Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,” Iommi explained. “My guitar sound was harder. That was brought on by all the aggravation we felt over all the business with management and lawyers.”

Am I Going Insane (Radio) is essentially a pop song written by Ozzy on a Moog synthesiser, which he played on the finished track. “Oz drove us all nuts with that Moog thing,” Ward recalls, “but the song was great. And in hindsight, it was kind of a precursor for his solo career. His personality was blooming on this song.” The ‘Radio’ in the title was British rhyming slang: Radio Rental – mental. Ozzy’s lyrics were “definitely autobiographical”, Butler says. Even better, and even more pointedly autobiographical, were Ozzy’s lyrics for the album’s heavyweight final track, in which he poured scorn on Black Sabbath’s tormentor, Patrick Meehan. ‘You bought and sold me with your lying words,’ Ozzy sang, before threatening a curse on his enemy. The song was named The Writ, a title that was suggested by Mike Butcher after Meehan’s lawyers arrived unannounced at Morgan Studios. “Some guy walked in and said: ‘Black Sabbath?’” Butcher recalls. “And Tony said: ‘Yeah.’ The guy said ‘I have something for you,’ and gave him a writ.” Adding to the threatening vibe of The Writ was a sinister intro mixing laughter and cries of anguish. The laughter was that of an Australian friend of Geezer’s. “He was a complete nutter,” the bassist says. “We invited him into the studio when he was visiting London.” The cries were those of a baby, recorded on an unmarked cassette tape that Mike Butcher found lying on a console at Morgan. When he played it at half speed, the baby’s crying took on an eerie quality. “It was so weird,” he says, “that it worked perfectly for that track.” Butcher never found out whose tape it was. For Ozzy, writing and singing the words to this song had a therapeutic effect. “A bit like seeing a shrink,” he said.  And yet, for all the vitriol in The Writ there was a note of hope, and defiance, in its closing line: ‘Everything is gonna work out fine.’ And, in the short term at least, those words would ring true. Patrick Meehan would not break Black Sabbath.

From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-black-sabbath-made-sabotage

Guerilla Toss - Dose Rate

#Guerilla Toss #neo-psychedelia #art rock #noise rock #experimental rock #space rock #indie rock #electronic #no wave #post-rock #music video

GT Ultra is the second full length album by Guerilla Toss on DFA Records. The album demonstrates a remarkable shift in sound, musicianship and songwriting, without ever giving up the unhinged quality that made their earlier recordings so exciting. The album title GT Ultra is a clever nod to ‘Project MK Ultra’, the government sponsored experiments using new experimental drugs to explore mind control, torture and forced confessions, often with LSD as their drug of choice. These tests lasted from the mid 1950’s-1960’s, but with a new administration in the white house, government sponsored torture is fresh again on many minds. The songs on the album ricochet back and forth between hyper bouncy pop and deeper darker longer, more nuanced tracks. Peter Negroponte’s drumming, always a major highlight for the band, are in full force once again, this time bringing a Nassau/Compass Point feel to many tracks, like the classic recordings of Grace Jones and Talking Heads.  Kassie Carlson’s vocals and lyrics are both more personal and more cryptic than ever. But you can hear every word this time, and there is a lyric sheet. As preferred, the meaning is within the listener. It is a dream state record for sure, meant to take you along on a similar vibe that the band has been tripping on these past few years, filled with an insistence to “hydrate, gyrate, think straight, no weight”, all the while under the influence of golden beams of orange sunshine, glimmering glitter and kaleidoscopic bursts. It is no mistake the album is wrapped in vintage blotter acid, created by legendary LSD archivist and artist Mark McCloud and The Institute of Illegal Images, based out of San Francisco.  From: https://guerillatoss.bandcamp.com/album/gt-ultra

Hedwig & The Angry Inch - Midnight Radio

 #Hedwig & The Angry Inch #John Cameron Mitchell #Stephen Trask #rock musical #movie soundtrack #hard rock #punk rock #glam rock #1970s retro

This song, to me, is about the fleeting thrills and glory of "ecstatic events" in one's life, be it becoming a rock star, playing a new record for the first time, winning a contest, or findng a perfect lover. "Midnight Radio” is a classic Rock & Roll Anthem for those of us that are, as Hedwig so eloquently states, "the misfits and the losers.” The pace and tempo of this song are as important to the meaning as the lyrics. "Midnight Radio" starts out slow and brooding, like that uneasy moment of anticipation before stepping out onto a stage, or that hesitant second before piercing the cellophane on a new LP (does anyone other than me even buy vinyl anymore?). Then the pace picks up a bit at the first chorus, and a hint of the "anthem" nature of this song starts to become apparent in the climbing scales and soaring sustains. Then the "Here's to" verse, really belts it out in true anthem spirit, ending with Hedwig practically growling out the word "tonight". And the "Yea, you know" harmony line is one of those rare musical moments that sends shivers down my back every time I hear it. This build to the climax of this song is, of course, representative of that glorious moment when those ecstatic events in one's life are peaking - the house lights come up to a roaring crowd, that first passionate kiss, the moment when the needle first drops in the groove of a new record and those first notes come from the speakers. And of course the finale "Lift up your hands,” repeating over and over again, is the trailing end of those ecstatic events, when the adrenaline rush is starting to taper off. The song gets louder, and then, although it still tingles with energy and power, it slowly fades out. Just like "real life.”  From: https://songmeanings.com/songs/view/68464/

The Beatles - Cry Baby Cry

 #The Beatles #John Lennon #Paul McCartney #George Harrison #British invasion #pop rock #psychedelic rock #blues rock #classic rock #British psychedelia #folk rock #1960s

"A piece of rubbish!" This was John Lennon's reaction in 1980 when asked about his "White Album" composition "Cry Baby Cry." Why would he react so negatively about this song? Those who take the time to examine the writing style of John Lennon through the years will easily notice the changes within the context of the time period. For instance, his output in 1967 generally used imagery to paint a picture that didn't necessarily make sense but sounded as if it did, such as with “Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds” and “I Am The Walrus.” By 1968, he put this aside for the most part and dealt much more with real occurrences in his own life and/or his interpretations of real events, such as with “I'm So Tired,” “Sexy Sadie” and “Revolution.” It is within the context of his 1968 output that we experience a “throwback” of sorts with “Cry Baby Cry,” a song which started to take shape the previous year and exuded the obscure but effective lyrics Lennon was known for at that time. Concerning John's negative opinion of the song in 1980, Beatles writer David Quantick offers the explanation that he “might have dismissed the song for not being about anything concrete.” This appears to make sense in light of the fact that, when looking back at his career as a songwriter, he would cite autobiographical songs, such as “Help!” and “Strawberry Fields Forever” as his best work. If that was the criteria he used in his later life, songs about imaginary characters involved in nonsensical activities could be seen as useless to him, or “rubbish.” Most Beatles fans and authors would wholeheartedly disagree, however. Ian Mac Donald, in his book "Revolution In The Head," describes "Cry Baby Cry" as “one of the most evocative products of that creative channel.” “An underrated Lennon royalty satire; it's his most accomplished Lewis Carroll pastiche,” writes Tim Riley. “A song with an air of a particularly dreamlike ghost story - one of the strangest and most beautiful lyrics on the 'White Album,'” writes David Quantick. “Alice trips gently through Lennonland for just about the last time. It ranks among his most magical,” writes Nicholas Schaffner.  From: http://www.beatlesebooks.com/cry-baby-cry

Queen Adreena - Suck

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

Queen Adreena’s music is clearly unwholesome and conveys a feeling of gruesome schizophrenia. In my review of their excellent previous album entitled Drink me, I depicted the ex-Daisy Chainsaw’s music as, let me quote myself and have a swollen head, “on the one hand, urgent, noisy, fast and visceral punk songs in which Katie Jane Garside yells, shrieks and gives the impression of scarcely waking up from a terrible nightmare; and on the other hand, slow, poisonous atmospheric songs in which KJG’s unhealthy voice spreads its wings of depression. If you’ve never heard her voice, try to imagine Bjork performing ‘Army of Me’ completely stoned and trying to imitate Lydia Lunch. Add a punctual raucous tone due to helium inhaling and alcohol abuse,and you might have an idea of what her voice sounds like.”
What else other than drug addiction, unstable re-habs, alcohol abuse, and twisted minds can have possibly led Crispin Gray and Katie Jane Garside to play such a dubious music which really epitomize schizophrenia? When she stops yelling, shrieking and venting her rage or madness upon the listener, when she whispers or pants or just sings, KJ Garside’s changing child-like voice offers insane deliveries which, backed up by cryptic lyrics, sound like little girls’ nightmares (‘Pull Me Under’, ‘Join The Dots’, ‘Childproof’). There is certainly a child related theme in the lyrics but I do not dare analyse it, lest I become completely mad.  From: http://onlyangels.free.fr/reviews/q/queen_adreena/the_butcher_and_the_butterfly.htm