Richard & Linda Thompson - A Little Night Music - Nocturnes BBC 1981

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Part 2

 

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

It’s nearly 55 years since Richard Thompson began his career in music. A pioneer of folk-rock, hugely influential singer-songwriter and one of Britain’s most astonishing guitarists, he was only a month out of his teens on the morning of 12 May 1969 when all promise was nearly stopped short. His band, Fairport Convention, had been signed on the spot in 1967 when producer Joe Boyd saw his talent with a guitar at 17, and their mission to reconnect British rock with the older, beautiful songs of their home country was well under way. He’d already jammed with Jimi Hendrix and supported Pink Floyd; now Thompson’s band had recently finished their third album, Unhalfbricking, with singer Sandy Denny. A work full of ambitious originals and covers that still regularly appears in best British album polls.
That morning they were driving back to London from a Birmingham gig, approaching the last service station on the M1. Guitarist Simon Nicol was trying to sleep off a migraine, stretched out on top of the speakers in the back. Thompson’s girlfriend, fashion designer Jeannie Franklyn, was asleep. Thompson was dozing between her and roadie Harvey Bramham, who was driving. “It was starting to get light. Nearly dawn, nearly home,” Thompson writes in Beeswing, his forthcoming memoir. Thompson noticed the van, travelling at 70mph, suddenly veering towards the motorway’s central reservation. In those days there were no crash barriers. He turned his head to Bramham – his eyes were closed. Thompson grabbed the wheel to avoid hitting a pole. The van came off the road. In one of the most arresting passages of the book, he describes crawling over to Jeannie a few yards away. He is bleeding, with broken ribs; he finds her upside down on a sloping embankment. They had been together a fortnight: he didn’t really know her at all, and then she died. Martin Lamble, the band’s 19-year-old drummer, also didn’t survive. Remarkably Nicol got out and walked down the road, flagging down a passing car. He is still the leader of Fairport Convention, 52 years later.
But Thompson left in early 1971, still shell-shocked by the crash, to pursue a solo career that flew well beyond British folk. Ever since, he’s lovingly explored and excavated genres from rockabilly to flamenco, music-hall to pop. A favourite of both Robert Plant and Elvis Costello, Thompson has also been covered by acts as varied as feminist punks Sleater-Kinney, REM, David Byrne and, most recently, Mark Ronson, who covered the 1974 title track of Thompson’s album with first wife Linda Thompson, I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. Ronson tweeted how much the song had given him comfort during lockdown. “It’s the ultimate song about a messy weekend night out. I miss that all very much.”
That period of Thompson’s career is especially rich: he met Linda in 1969, and they married in 1972, then made fantastic music together for the next decade. Linda is one of Britain’s greatest, but most overlooked, singers, possessed of a bold, beautiful voice that carried the songs Richard wrote for her, and accompanied dramatically with his guitar. Their story outside music is dramatic too. It involves Richard’s conversion to Sufism, a move with their two young children to a rural commune without hot water and electricity, subsequent adultery during pregnancy, and a traumatic tour after their breakup where Linda kicked Richard in the shins while he played guitar solos (it’s known by their fans as The Tour from Hell). From: https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/mar/14/richard-thompson-beeswing-fairport-folk-rock-interview

Richard Thompson left Fairport Convention after 1970’s Full House, his reputation secured as an excellent songwriter and guitarist. He released a spectacularly unsuccessful solo album, Henry the Human Fly, in 1972. He then married Linda Peters and they released six albums between 1974 and 1982; their relationship broke down before an ill-fated North American tour in 1982. The duo’s music is often melancholic, and it’s a common trick of Richard Thompson to pair upbeat music with depressing lyrics. They often play acoustic folk-rock, especially on their early albums, but 1978’s First Light uses an L.A. rhythm section and 1982’s Shoot Out The Lights has few vestiges of folk remaining. Linda and Richard share the vocal duties – while Richard’s gruff voice is limited, Linda’s pristine voice is able to capture a range of moods, from joy on ‘I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight’ to resignation on ‘Walking on a Wire’. The pair’s first album, 1974’s I Want To See The Bright Lights Tonight and their 1982 swan song Shoot Out The Lights are generally considered as their strongest. In between they spent time in a Sufi Muslim commune, taking three years away from music. Richard has stated that he considers their late 1970s albums as weak, as he didn’t have his mind on the job.  From: https://albumreviews.blog/reviews/1970s-album-reviews/richard-and-linda-thompson/

Four decades after Richard and Linda Thompson released 1974’s I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight, their beautiful and terrifying first album as a duo—after their music failed to attract significant commercial interest; after the conversion to Sufism, the three kids, the arduous years spent living on a religious commune; after he left her for another woman just as mainstream success seemed within their reach; after she clocked him with a Coke bottle and sped off in a stolen car during their disastrous final tour —after everything, Linda was working on a new song about the foolishness of love. It was a lot like the songs Richard used to write for them in the old days: Despairing, but not hopeless, with a melody that seemed to float forward from some forgotten era, and a narrator who can’t see past the walls of his own fatalism. “Whenever I write something like that I think, ‘Oh, who could play the guitar on that?’” she recalled later. “And then I think, ‘Only Richard, really.’”
Can you blame her? Though both Thompsons have made fine albums since the collapse of their romantic and musical relationships in the early 1980s, there is something singular in the blend of her gracefully understated singing and his fiercely expressive playing, a heaven-bound quality that redeems even their heaviest subject matter, which neither can quite reach on their own. As lovers, they could be violently incompatible, but as musicians, they were soul mates. The existence of latter-day collaborations like Linda’s 2013 song “Love’s for Babies and Fools,” one of a handful of recordings they’ve made together since the 2000s, proves the lasting power of a partnership that seemed doomed from the start.
The Thompsons met in 1969, while Richard was working on Liege & Lief, the fourth album by Fairport Convention, the pioneering British band he’d co-founded when he was 18. With his bandmates, he envisioned a new form of English folk music, combining scholarly devotion to centuries-old song forms with the electrified instruments and exploratory spirit of late-’60s rock. The misty and elegiac Liege & Lief was their masterpiece, but it had come at a price. Months earlier, Fairport’s van driver fell asleep at the wheel on a late-night drive home from a gig, and the ensuing crash killed Martin Lamble, their drummer, and Jeannie Franklyn, Thompson’s girlfriend at the time. According to Thompson, the decision to press on and record Liege & Lief was driven in part by a desire to “distract ourselves from grief and numb the pain of our loss.”
The folk-rock musicians who orbited Fairport in London comprised a hard-drinking scene, where money was usually tight, and revelry and song took precedence over talk about feelings. “They didn’t send you to therapy in those days - we didn’t grieve properly,” Richard Thompson told a podcast interviewer this year. The losses would keep coming. Nick Drake, an ex-boyfriend of Linda’s and occasional collaborator of Richard’s, who struggled to find an audience during his short life, was sliding toward oblivion by the early 1970s. And Sandy Denny, the radiant and mercurial former singer of Fairport, as well as a close friend of both Thompsons, was not far behind him. The fading spirits of fellow travelers like these haunt I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight. Its songs treat drink, festivity, and even love as fleeting escapes from life’s difficulties, staring through the good times to the black holes that often lie behind them.
Richard lasted for one more album with Fairport, then left the band with hopes of making it as a solo artist. Legend has it that Henry the Human Fly, his 1972 debut, was the worst-selling album in the history of Warner Brothers at the time. He was working steadily as a session and touring musician, but at the ripe old age of 23, he couldn’t help feeling a little washed up. Linda’s career as a folk singer, despite the arresting clarity of her voice, had been only moderately successful, and she was entertaining thoughts of cashing in, going pop. She was only a “weekend hippie,” she has said. And though he was still a few years away from embracing Muslim mysticism, he was already something of a monastic: declining to cash checks for his session work, and following a devotion to modernizing English folk that was so intense it led him to turn down invitations to join several high-profile bands because their styles were too American. Despite their differences in approach to life and career, something clicked. She moved into his Hampstead apartment, and they married in 1972.
Their reason for starting a musical duo was practical, but also sweetly romantic: They wanted to spend more time together. They began touring the UK’s circuit of folk clubs, humble institutions that mixed socialist idealism with commercial enterprise, often operating in the back rooms of local pubs, where Richard and Linda would share stage time with whatever barflies wanted to belt out “Scarborough Fair” or “John Barleycorn” on any given night. Audiences were receptive, but it was a rugged and unglamorous way to make a career, even compared to the modest success Richard had seen with Fairport Convention. After about a year on the circuit, they were ready to graduate to bigger stages, and to make an album.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/richard-and-linda-thompson-i-want-to-see-the-bright-lights-tonight/

Trigger Hippy - The Door

 #Trigger Hippy #blues rock #hard rock #Americana #roots rock #Southern rock #ex-Black Crowes #music video

I love bands that bring a melting pot of styles to the table to generate a sound all their own. The Nashville-based band Trigger Hippy exemplifies that aesthetic. This is one of the most anticipated listens (to review) of the year for me. Trigger Hippy is back with “Full Circle & Then Some,” available in your virtual and analog record stores as of Friday, Oct. 11, 2019.
The Trigger Hippy story is unorthodox, but genuine and interesting. The band is the brainchild of longtime Black Crowes drummer Steve Gorman, and Nashville-based bass player and songwriting extraordinaire Nick Govrik. When Gorman and Govrik jammed with former Crowes guitarist Audley Freed in the mid-2000s, they all conspired to start a band. Trigger Hippy has had several incarnations over the years, with its lineups including Freed, Jimmy Herring, Joan Osborne, Jackie Greene, Tom Bukovac and Will Kimbrough. Trigger Hippy’s self-titled debut was released in 2014, and featured Greene, Bukovac and Osborne throughout. However, that lineup didn’t last. The new and reformed lineup includes singer/saxophonist Amber Woodhouse and Band of Heathens guitarist and vocalist Ed Jurdi.
The new lineup is excellent, and the results are right in line with the previous album’s efforts, which I already thought might be the best record by a Black Crowes band member in this millennium. Jurdi and Woodhouse scratch all the same itches that Greene and Osborne provided vocally, along with Jurdi’s exceptionally precise guitar playing, coupled with Govrik’s rock ‘n’ soul songwriting and Gorman’s best-of-the-modern-era deep pocket rock backbeat. Jurdi and Woodhouse sound, feel and vibe like Greene and Osborne, but it doesn’t seem like a knock off at all. Still feeling fresh and exuberant, it is a testament to the care taken with these songs, along with the recording and production process — and the new chemistry of the current ensemble. I don’t know of many bands founded by the rhythm section, where the frontline can get switched out and the results are steady-as-she-goes, a continuation of the spirit of the band without missing a beat.  From: https://tahoeonstage.com/album-reviews/trigger-hippie-full-circle-then-some/

Music Mecca: So can you talk about the origins of Trigger Hippy and how y’all came together?

Steve Gorman: So Nick Govrik, the bassist and I, started jamming together right when I moved to Nashville in 2004. That fall we put together a weekly jam at a friend’s bar. We would just set up a tip jar and play. It was me, Govrik, and whatever two guitarists were available that night and we called it Hey Hey Hey, originally. It was literally just an excuse to play on Wednesday night somewhere. But right from the jump when I first met Nick, we felt like our playing was right in sync with each other; we were super copacetic. And before long, literally within a few times playing together, we would say, “Man, let’s do something for real,” whatever that meant. That conversation meandered around for years. I would leave and go on tour with The Black Crowes and come back, then Nick and I would hook up and talk about doing stuff. Around 2009, after this sporadic four-year conversation, Kirk West, who works with the Allman Brothers, asked if I wanted to do something in Macon, Georgia to put on a gig for a fundraiser for the Big House Museum (the Allman Brothers museum). And I said “Yeah, let me put a band together for the night and we’ll do it.” So it worked out that Nick and I, along with Jimmy Herring from Widespread Panic and Audley Freed just put together a set list of covers to play. And for that gig, I came up with the name Trigger Hippy. Jimmy and Audley were soloing nonstop and I was like, “We should call the damn thing Trigger Happy with the two of you guys.” (laughs.) And as soon as I said that, I thought, Trigger Hippy was pretty funny. It’s not hippy/peace signs; it’s more hippy get-your-hips-moving. I like the duality of those two words together. So we called that gig Trigger Happy, a one-off/one-night-only thing. It was me, Nick, and a revolving door of other musicians. In 2013, we made a record, and put it out in 2014. That version of the band was more of a weekender band, and we wanted it to be more of a primary band. When that version of Trigger Hippy stopped in 2017, we found Ed [Jurdi] and Amber [Woodhouse] and then here we are.

MM: So Trigger Hippy’s latest album Full Circle and Then Some came out this past fall if I’m not mistaken. Where did you record it and who was involved in production?

SG: The production was me, Nick, and Ed. We did it ourselves. We have a studio here in Nashville that we just built for our purposes. It’s a house on Love Circle: we call it The Treehouse. It’s a rental property that Nick owns and we set up shop and write and record demos there, and ultimately made the record there.

MM: What’s the primary influence and inspiration behind this particular album?

SG: The short answer is all the same stuff we’ve always listened to; which is the gamete of all-American music forms. And all of which are southern music forms: rock n’ roll, jazz, bluegrass, and all of that stuff is in the mix. But one thing we did discuss in this album was that we really wanted a certain groove-thread. Just one of those records where everyone knows it, but they don’t even know they love it. Like Little Feat records, or the Meters. When those records are on at a party, the whole room is just moving, whether they even know it. We wanted this record to have that vibe. You can put the album on at the beginning and go all the way through. There’s a groove and vibe that holds together. So a song like, “Long Lost Friend,” “Butcher’s Daughter,” and “Paving the Road,” they’re all very, very different songs, but they all have a continuity, and it just works in a certain way.  

MM: Do you sometimes have certain artists in mind when recording certain songs as maybe kind of an ode to them? Like your song “Goddamn Hurricane” to me is very reminiscent of The Band.

SG: When Nick wrote that song he wasn’t necessarily thinking of writing a Band-type song, but when you write that song and that’s the expression - his vocal approach is somewhere between Levon Helm and Lowell George. Their bastard lovechild would be Nick Govrik. Everything he does is swimming in that end of the pool. But we don’t have to discuss what kind of tune it is, they usually just speak for themselves.

MM: How does the songwriting process work within the band? Do one or two of you do most of it, or is it more of a regimented and group collaboration?

SG: If you look at the liner notes on both Trigger Hippy albums, at least half the songs say Nick Govrik by himself. And if another member contributed just a few lines of the lyric, Govrik would give them credit, but they were pretty much Nick’s tunes. He’s very prolific. There are times when he comes in with a song, and he’s like, “Hey, I got this song! Listen!” And it’s done. Like the song is full circle and done, like “Goddamn Hurricane” was just finished. But then there are songs like “Born to Be Blue,” and it’s just the three of us sitting in the room and throwing ideas at the wall. And we realized, “This should just be a meditative number. Like, this thing should just simmer.” I think, right away, we all could hear something similar.

From: https://musicmecca.org/steve-gorman-talks-new-nashville-supergroup-trigger-hippy-and-more/

Psychedelic Porn Crumpets - Bubblegum Infinity

 #Psychedelic Porn Crumpets #psychedelic rock #garage rock #psychedelic pop rock #music video

Like all the best inventions, Perth’s Psychedelic Porn Crumpets were born out of a simple idea that soon got out of control. Of course, most simple ideas don’t usually result in a group of humble musicians touring the world, rubbing shoulders with iconic artists, and kicking goals most lifelong tunesmiths could only dream of, do they? That, however, is exactly where we find Psychedelic Porn Crumpets in 2021. The Porn Crumpets’ (as brevity dictates) origin story is one that countless artists around the world could relate to, with English-born Jack McEwan launching the group as a solo bedroom project during a period of procrastination between uni studies.
Having performed in a Radiohead-inspired indie-rock outfit with drummer Danny Caddy beforehand, it was a chance meeting through connections that brought Golden Slums guitarist – and former semi-professional skateboarder – Luke Parish into his life.
“Me and Luke actually met through a mutual drug dealer,” McEwan recalls over Skype, his south-eastern English accent offering up a hearty laugh as he does so. “I’d end up bringing my little amp and guitar around there, because I think we spent most weekends there. The dealer had an electronic drum kit, and then Rish came around, and he started playing drums, or something like that, and we just kept going. I’d play drums, Rish would play guitar, and then we’d keep swapping.” Even today, many years later, Parish is still saved in McEwan’s phone contacts as “Luke Jams”. After all, the idea of forming a new band with his new musical mate wasn’t quite on the cards yet. A few months after they first jammed together, McEwan showed Parish an early demo of “Cornflake”, with the guitarist so taken by what he had heard that he met with McEwan the very next day to record the guitar parts for what is now the track “Cubensis Lenses”. Thus the Psychedelic Porn Crumpets were born, with the full lineup being rounded out by the addition of Caddy, guitarist/keyboardist Chris Young, and bassist Luke Reynolds, who departed in 2020.
At the time of Psychedelic Porn Crumpets’ arrival into the world in late 2014, the Perth scene they were born into was a perfect breeding ground for their type of music. “It was this real bubble of guitar-based bands, like blues and psych,” Parish recalls, raising his voice to be heard over a neighbour’s exceedingly-loud gardening routine. “There was a real explosion at that point.” “Everybody had a Cry Baby Wah and a facemelter fuzz pedal,” quips McEwan, as he professes his love of local groups such as Red Engine Caves, the Love Junkies, or even Parish’s Golden Slums. “We just managed to get the tail-end of the psych scene after Tame Impala and Pond,” he adds. “The door was still open for that style of music. For us, it was like Australia had sort of died down a bit, just as Europe and America was getting wind of it.” While acts such as the aforementioned Perth locals Tame Impala and Pond had served as influences upon the entire Australian music scene, McEwan notes that he had been fond of bigger names like Karnivool, The Mars Volta, Wolfmother, and Tool before Kevin Parker’s brand of music helped to kick things off.
The local Perth music scene was undergoing a few changes when the Porn Crumpets entered the fray. Major festivals such as the Big Day Out and Soundwave had just held their final events in the city, leaving only Laneway (held in Fremantle) and Southbound (held in Busselton) as the big draw cards on WA’s musical lineup. Instead of imploding, the local scene thrived, with countless artists springing up to fill the Perth stages which rarely played host to as many international acts as some fans would have liked. “It was like, ‘Well there’s no jazz fusion band here’, and then you end up with Grievous Bodily Calm, and, ‘There’s no other bands trying to do punk music, and we don’t have that’, so Boat Show came out of that,” McEwan recalls. “There was a big gap for people to be able to do their thing and not have the battle of competing with international artists.” It was this fertile ground that allowed bands like Psychedelic Porn Crumpets to fulfill a musical need and find their feet. Relentless live shows allowed the group to hone their talents on the live stage, growing their profile as a presence on the local scene. Behind the scenes though, the group worked tirelessly at becoming a force to be reckoned with in the studio.  From: https://au.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/the-perpetual-rise-of-psychedelic-porn-crumpets-25341/

Sisters Ov The Blackmoon - Haunt

 #Sisters Ov The Blackmoon #heavy metal #doom metal #heavy blues rock #stoner metal #occult rock #music video

Blood Cauldron is an EP you need to own, an EP that promises so much for the future and an EP that actually blew a speaker on my PC. To be honest I think the speaker was on its way out anyway but never mind this is still a super EP. The band who created this superb EP go by the name of Sisters Ov The Blackmoon and play a blend of gritty bluesy stoner and occult doom-ish rock. Exploding  out of Los Angeles the band consist of Josh Alves – drums, Andrew Vega – guitar, Dan Schlaich – guitar and Jared  Anderson – bass, but it is  the powerful bluesy tones of Sasha Wheatcroft on vocals that sets this band apart from others ploughing a similar musical furrow.
Blood Cauldron sets the tone for the EP with “Haunt”, a barnstormer of a track that opens with the sound of cicadas chirping and an owl hooting and segues into a rolling guitar riff with a  horror movie soundbite over its top, then the guitars pick up the volume, drums crash and pound just as it gets gnarly everything drops down for the verse. Here is where you first get the “Wheatcroft” experience. With a voice that mixes Beth Hart’s bluesy holler with Miny Parsonz’ (Royal Thunder) smokey stoner howl, Ms. Wheatcroft is a revelation, her voice dripping with passionate power and control making every phrase and inflection count. One person does not make a band though and the other “sisters” more than prove their worth on this collection of songs. Vega and Sclaich complement each other perfectly on guitars coming on with earth shattering riffage and sublime solos and every now and then breaking into Lizzy-esqe twin melodies. The bottom end is held up just as well too with Alves and Anderson locking in as tight and creating a solid base for everything going on above them.  From: http://stonerking1.blogspot.com/2015/06/sisters-ov-blackmoon-blood-cauldron-ep.html?m=0

Cat Stevens - Father and Son

 #Cat Stevens #folk rock #pop rock #album rock #singer-songwriter #1970s #music video

This song is a conversation between a father and son, with the father counseling his son to stay home, settle down and find a girl, telling him this is the path to happiness - after all, it worked for him. The son, though, feels compelled to leave and is frustrated because his dad makes no effort to understand why he wants to go or even hear him out.
Stevens made up the story, but his relationship with his own father, Stavros Georgiou, was an influence on the song. His dad owned a restaurant in London, and Cat (known to his dad as Steven Georgiou) worked there as a waiter right up until he signed a record deal at age 17. Stavros was hoping his son would join the family business. When he appeared on The Chris Isaak Hour in 2009, Stevens said: "He was running a restaurant and I was a pop star, so I wasn't following the path that he laid out. But we certainly didn't have any antagonism between us. I loved him and he loved me."
Stevens veered away from his upbringing again in 1977 when he rejected Christianity and became a Muslim, changing his name to Yusuf Islam.
The generational divide that plays out in the lyric can apply to many families, but Stevens had a specific storyline in mind, writing it from the perspective of a father and son in a Russian family during the Russian Revolution (1917-1923). The son wants to join the revolution but his father wants him to stay home and work on the farm. Stevens, a huge fan of show tunes, wrote it in 1969 for a musical he was working on called Revolussia, which is set during the Russian Revolution. The song is part of a scene where the son feels it is his calling to join in, but his father wants him to stay home. The musical never materialized, so the song ended up being the first one written for Stevens' Tea For The Tillerman album. The song has a very unusual structure, which owes to its provenance as a number for a stage musical. There's no chorus, but the son's part is sung louder, providing a kind of hook. The dialogue is an interesting lyrical trick with the father and son expressing different perspectives on the situation.
This is the song that got Stevens signed to Island Records. His first two albums were issued on Deram, a division of Decca. Stevens met with Island boss Chris Blackwell to talk about the musical he wrote this song for, but when Blackwell heard the song, he set his sights on getting Stevens on his label as an artist. Stevens' first Island release was Mona Bone Jakon earlier in 1970; it was not just a new label for Stevens, but a new producer as well, with former Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith taking the helm from Mike Hurst (ex-Springfields), who helped Stevens get his deal with Decca.
In 2020, Stevens released a re-recorded version of "Father and Son" for Tea for the Tillerman 2, a re-imagining of Tea for the Tillerman 50 years later. The revamped rendition brings together his smooth vocals from when he was just 22, and the seasoned voice of the 72-year-old Stevens. Chris Hopewell's top-frame animated video for the new version of "Father And Son" nods to the original release with groovy clips from the original 1970 video.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/cat-stevens/father-and-son

Let's Eat Grandma - Rapunzel

 #Let's Eat Grandma #art rock #pop rock #dream pop #experimental #avant-pop #electronic

The project of lifelong friends Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth, Let's Eat Grandma's boundary-breaking pop stems from their intuitive creative connection. Featuring songs they wrote in their early teens, their 2016 debut album, I, Gemini, felt equally inspired by chart-topping acts, Grimm's fairy tales, and the likes of Björk and Kate Bush. The luminous synth pop of 2018's acclaimed I'm All Ears, which found Let's Eat Grandma collaborating with cutting-edge producer Sophie, was more sophisticated but no less exuberant, while the heartfelt songwriting on 2022's Two Ribbons reflected the changes and losses that reshaped - but didn't break - Hollingworth and Walton's bond. Similarly, the duo's work on the score to the Netflix series Half Bad: The Bastard Son & the Devil Himself expressed Let's Eat Grandma's continued creative growth with its eerie fusion of electronic and traditional instrumentation.
Growing up in Norwich, U.K., Hollingworth and Walton became best friends at age four, when they bonded during a kindergarten art class. From there, they embarked on creative projects that ranged from building tree houses to making short films and, eventually, music. They made their first song at age ten, and by the time they were 13, they were writing in a rehearsal space in Walton's home. Taking their name from a joke from the humorous punctuation book Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Let's Eat Grandma began recording songs for their album at the local music college when Hollingworth and Walton were 14 and began playing shows soon after. Around this time, they caught the attention of Manchester singer/songwriter Kiran Leonard, who saw their name on a poster for the 2014 Norwich Sound & Vision Festival. The pair soon shared management with Leonard and signed to Transgressive Records, which released a trio of singles - "Deep Six Textbook," "Eat Shiitake Mushrooms," and "Rapunzel" - in early 2016. Featuring the duo on every instrument, Let's Eat Grandma's first full-length, I, Gemini, arrived that June consisting of songs Hollingworth and Walton wrote several years earlier and earning critical acclaim for its clever songwriting and whimsical instrumentation.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/lets-eat-grandma-mn0003481701/biography

Dälek - Classical Homicide

 #Dälek #experimental hip hop #industrial hip hop #electronic #glitch hop #noise #avant-garde

Forged in the fires of the East Coast underground music scene in the 90s, Experimental Hip Hop pioneers Dälek have spent decades carving out a unique niche fusing hardcore Hip Hop, noise and a radical approach to sound. Founded by Will Brooks (aka MC Dälek) and Alap Momin (aka Oktopus), Dälek debuted in 1998 with Negro, Necro, Nekros; a sonic tour de force built upon thunderous drums, blissful ambient sections and gritty, insightful lyrics. From the very beginning, Dälek came out the gate, following in the footsteps of their predecessors Public Enemy while drawing from influences as varied as My Bloody Valentine and German experimentalists Faust, Dälek have succeeded in adding completely new textural and structural dimensions to rap music. After signing with Mike Patton’s renowned label, Ipecac Recordings, Dälek went on a virtually unparalleled run throughout the 2000s releasing a string of ambitious and challenging albums including From Filthy Tongue of Gods and Griots (2002), Absence (2005), Abandoned Language (2007), and Gutter Tactics (2009). A visceral and powerful live act, Dälek spent over a decade touring and bringing their raucous and blistering performances to audiences around the world.  From: https://deadverse.com/artists/dalek/

This avant-garde hip-hop stuff is spreading fast. You know the stuff of which I speak; hip-hop built from samples harder to grasp than a wall of Jell-O, whose time signatures change faster than a 15 year-old girl's fashion sense, all strung around beats dirtier than the old man asleep at the bus stop. Innovators like cLOUDDEAD, El-P, and the Anticon Crew have been redefining what hip-hop is for years now, so it's nice that people are finally starting to take notice. If you've been paying any attention, you know what's bound to happen next: the market will glut, and innovation will make way for imitation. But first, Dälek returns to the scene, fresh off collaborations with Faust, Techno Animal and Kid606, with a sophomore album inventive enough to extend avant-garde hip-hop's stay in the limelight for, at the very least, a few more weeks.
So what is it that makes Dälek - alongside producer Oktopus, and turntablist/producer Still - stand out amongst a seeming onslaught of original, challenging hip-hop? Namely that their songs are set to moody musique concrète backdrops that sound like something out of a David Lynch nightmare. Yes, there are rhymes set to hand-drums and cowbells. Yes, the lyrical content would feel more at home in a lit hall than in some trash-ridden alley. Yes, there are times when Dälek opts to speak his vocals rather than rap them. And yes, he's more sensitive than your average bear. But what really separates Dälek from the rest isn't his rabid experimentation as much as the way he builds a bridge between the avant-garde and the traditional.
While his contemporaries experiment with slant-rhyme and abstract poetics, Dälek takes a comparatively standard lyrical approach, setting forcefully delivered rhymes to some of the strangest soundscapes that will ever be labeled 'hip-hop.' Pleas for understanding, cries of frustration, and even the occasional ray of hope weave in and out of music that owes more to 80s Western European industrial music a la Psychic TV and Nurse with Wound than it does to Grandmaster Flash or Public Enemy.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/2148-from-filthy-tongue-of-gods-and-griots/

Sheila Chandra - Ever So Lonely

 #Sheila Chandra #world music #world fusion #worldbeat #Indian music

Born in South London to a South Indian immigrant family, Sheila Chandra discovered her voice at the age of twelve and whilst at Theatre Arts school. From this moment her chosen path was to be a singer. Lacking any real contacts or access to the music business, she nevertheless honed her vocal skills as a labour of love, spending up to two hours a night throwing her voice into the tall, drafty and uncarpeted stairwell of the family home: “I didn’t know how to manufacture an opportunity, but I was determined that when a chance came my way I would be ready.”
A chance did come her way, perhaps drawn by the weight of such unshakable belief. Steve Coe, a writer and record producer, was about to form a band, Monsoon, as an outlet for his increasingly Indian influenced material. He came across Chandra’s voice on an old audition tape, lying in a box at Hansa Records and knew that he had found his singer: “The richness, fluidity and quality of her voice struck me immediately. And then when I requested a photo from the file and found that Sheila was Asian, everything else seemed to fall into place.” Monsoon put out an EP on Steve Coe’s newly formed Indipop label and were signed by the far sighted Dave Bates at Phonogram. The band’s first single ‘Ever So Lonely’ took a song written around a raga and, utilizing the new production techniques available, came up with an irresistible but radical modern pop fusion sound.
Eventually, Chandra walked away from it all, frustrated by the increasing lack of communication between Phonogram and Monsoon over artistic direction. She went back to the Indipop label to learn her craft as a writer and musician. Free from business constraints and in complete control of her creative life, there followed a remarkable and prolific two-year period. Her first four solo albums for the label chronicle a profound transformation in the quality and depth of her work, both as a singer and increasingly as a writer, in her then chosen field of Asian fusion — learning from the very structures she had ignored throughout her childhood.
Her new found ability to cross continents in a single vocal line and weave seamlessly the vocal styles of the Arab world, Andalucia, Ireland, Scotland, India and more ancient structures such as that of Gregorian plainsong made for a true fusion within one mind and one voice. Weaving My Ancestor’s Voices established Chandra as a spiritual heir to a ‘whole world’ vocal tradition, whilst Coe’s sensitive and painstaking production enhanced this further and acted as an integral part of the recording, particularly on the virtuoso vocal percussion pieces ‘Speaking In Tongues’ I and II. After touring the USA with Peter Gabriel’s 1993 WOMAD tour, there followed The Zen Kiss and ABoneCroneDrone. The latter was a daring minimalist strategy to lure the listener out of long accustomed passivity to hear, as Chandra does, the living symphony of harmonics within the simplest of drones.
In 2001, Sheila released a one-off collaboration album with The Ganges Orchestra called This Sentence is True (The Previous Sentence Is False) on the tiny Indipop Records; a project she said helped her break out of her voice and drone box. In the meantime, Sheila’s transcendent vocals from the Real World trilogy had became a staple ingredient of unauthorized dance remixes.  From: https://realworldrecords.com/artists/sheila-chandra/

Silly Wizard - Glasgow Peggy

 #Silly Wizard #Andy M. Stewart #Phil & Johnny Cunningham #Scottish folk #Irish folk #Celtic music #traditional

Silly Wizard were pioneers in developing the modern Scottish folk group blueprint, popularizing Scottish music around the world through playing traditional music with a never-before-heard energy, spirit and spontaneity and introducing original songs and tunes written from within the tradition.
Formed in 1972 by guitarists Gordon Jones, Bob Thomas and Bill Watkins and named after a character who shared their Edinburgh flat, Silly Wizard began playing at the capital’s Triangle Folk Club. Soon after singer Chris Pritchard replaced Bill Watkins they added a teenager who would go on to play a crucial part in the band’s image as well as their music, Johnny Cunningham. A tremendously exciting, virtuosic fiddler, who was still at school and often had to be picked up from and returned to the school gates after overnight drives from gigs, Johnny energized the band’s live performances and helped to generate a new young following for folk music.
By the time they released their first album, Silly Wizard in 1976, the band had become a sextet, including Andy M. Stewart, a singer and songwriter with the tradition in his soul, and bass guitar powerhouse Martin Hadden, and were touring regularly throughout the UK and Europe. They were shortly to add a second virtuoso named Cunningham, with Johnny’s younger brother, Phil, replacing Freeland Barbour on accordion, and went on to break into the American market in the most spectacular manner.
Booked to play an opening twenty-minute spot in front of an audience of thousands at Philadelphia Folk Festival in 1979, Silly Wizard, now in its classic five-piece line-up (Bob Thomas having left) won a standing ovation and almost instantly created a huge demand in the US for a brand of folk music that could be as passionate in the low gears as it could be rousingly intense at full tilt and was always presented with wit and an infectious sense of fun.
So began a golden era as Silly Wizard not only headlined folk festivals on both sides of the Atlantic and were capable of selling out the 3000-plus capacity Playhouse in their home town but also branched out into theatre work with the Everyman Theatre in Liverpool and composed and performed the theme tune for Scottish Television’s Take the High Road as well as releasing a succession of consistently high quality, strong-selling albums.
Silly Wizard continued working at a frenetic pace until 1988, when the band that had also included singer Maddy Taylor, bassists Neil Adam and Alastair Donaldson and Dougie Maclean deputising for Johnny Cunningham on fiddle left a gap in Scottish music that has never been filled.
Gordon Jones, Bob Thomas and Martin Hadden went to achieve success in the production side of the recording business.  Andy M. Stewart formed acclaimed duos, first with Manus Lunny then with Gerry O’Beirne. Phil Cunningham remains at the forefront of traditional music in his partnership with Aly Bain and his role at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Johnny Cunningham, after settling in New York, died tragically young in 2003.  From: https://projects.handsupfortrad.scot/hall-of-fame/silly-wizard/

MoeTar - Confectioner's Curse

 #MoeTar #Moorea Dickason #progressive rock #crossover prog #avant-prog #art rock

US band MoeTar was formed back in 2008, with vocalist Moorea Dickason and bassist Tarik Ragab the initial core of the band. They released their debut album back in 2010, and in a fairly short amount of time they had managed to create enough of a buzz around them that they were signed to US label Magna Carta Records, who reissued their debut album in 2012. "Entropy of the Century" is their second full length production, and was released in 2014.
The bands self-description mentions that their aim is to "create catchy, yet complex, music that attempts to make sense of our confusing world." That is a most apt description I think, a concise summary of what this band is truly all about. The catchy factor mainly boils down to one element though, in my point of view at least, and to be able to enjoy this quirky potpourri of multiple stylistic traditions a certain affection for that element is needed.
In terms of style this band has been labelled in an intriguing manner of ways, and when listening to an album’s worth of material by them deciding just where to place them isn't the easiest of tasks you might get. Just about all the songs tends to revolve around alternating accessible and challenging sections, where the former can be in a myriad of different styles while the latter tends to revolve around a jazz or avant-oriented approach, at times combining both of these elements. With everything from gentle piano ballads to majestic guitar and organ combinations bordering hard rock for the accessible parts of the compositions, the idiom of "the only rule there is no rule" seems to apply, and as for the challenging escapades they typically involve challenging instrument movements and more of a dissonant and sometimes chaotic expression. A touch of Zappa might be present here and there, possibly a slight taste of free jazz tinged elements may appear from time to time, but whether it's any of those or sections beyond the scope of both, they are just about all challenging to get your ears and brain around.
The key element that binds this all together, and most often impressively so, is the vocal talent of Moorea Dickason. She has a strong, powerful and emotional laden voice, one that at the most impressive is so spellbinding that you don't really take too much notice about anything else happening. This may be at least part of the reason why I find the opening half of this album to be fairly flawless, as I am, even after numerous listens, just so floored by the sheer talent of the lead vocals in those first half dozen compositions. My notes and memory tries telling me that it's also because the more challenging escapades weren't quite as challenging or not taking up quite as much play time in those compositions, but that may just be a side effect of finding the vocals so mightily impressive in that initial half.
It probably goes without saying that I wasn't quite as enthralled by the second half of this disc of course. My notes and my memory conveys that these compositions, starting with We Machines, came across as a bit more stilted, not quite as powerful on an emotional level, arguably a tad more technical and with more numerous or elongated sections of escapades of a more challenging nature. This is probably much more a subjective experience rather than an unbiased fact of course, and while not quite as breathtaking these are still creations that are highly charming in their own right as well. It is, for the most part, the difference between great and brilliant.
At the end of the day my impression is that MoeTar is a band that will have a finite appeal, as their compositions tends to feature sections that are rather challenging and that do take some time getting used to. The big draw are the vocals of Moorea Dickason; she is a dominating presence throughout, and you truly need to like her vocals to be able to enjoy this band. In fact, I suspect that quite a few people enjoy this band despite their music and because of her vocals, as she is a top notch vocalist on just about any level you can imagine. If you have an affection for challenging music combined with quality lead vocals in general and female lead vocals in particular, MoeTar is a band that merits a check, and this second album of theirs is as good a place to start as anywhere else really.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=6171

Bent Knee - Live at Big Nice Studio

 

 Part 1

 

Part 2

 #Bent Knee #progressive rock #art rock #industrial #baroque pop #avant-garde #music video

New music rarely can surprise today but, once in a while, artists emerge whose works are as accessible as they’re intellectual, and it doesn’t take any effort to be charmed and mesmerized by such creators. Boston’s Bent Knee belong to this category: unlike many of their perceivably alternative peers, the sextet’s exploration of ethereal and noisy extremes isn’t “for the sake of it” kind of exercise, just because the result feels so organic – never more so, perhaps, than on the band’s latest album, their third full-length studio offering. There are almost-hits on “Say So”; the audience only has to embrace the record. Too bad, then, Bent Knee sometimes play to a very limited, if utterly captivated, crowd. Still, one may sense it’s just a matter of time before they hit the big time. While it’s happening, it’s tempting to tap into the ensemble’s collective conscious; that’s why, before the group’s Toronto gig, this scribe sat on a near-venue lawn with guitarist Ben Levin, singer-keyboardist Courtney Swain, bassist Jessica Kion and violin player Chris Baum for an engaging conversation.

– Guys, you are clearly getting traction now. Is it because the band are backed by a label now or vice versa: you got a record deal because audiences started paying attention?

Ben: Having the label deal has definitely helped us get traction because it’s enabled us to reach a new audience and gave as a sort of a seal: “Hey, these people are working hard and they’re serious!” The listeners know that Cuneiform wouldn’t sign bands that aren’t very active and trying to make the best music they can as much as they can. In terms of what came first – the traction from Cuneiform or us getting traction and then the deal with Cuneiform – it’s a mix of both, because we’d just finished a three-month tour last summer before Cuneiform approached us, and I think just the fact that we had been out for so long – it was our tenth tour or something – and that we already worked so much was important for the label in their decision to sign us.

– So having Cuneiform backing you gives you validation in the listener’s eyes?

Everyone (at the same time): Absolutely!

Ben: I don’t think labels in general will be that important or around much longer because things are just changing so much that the stuff that makes money in music is more based around live performance now, so unless labels start to play a bigger role in that economic stream… There’s not enough money coming in from recordings themselves, and a big part of why a label is useful these days is that seal of approval. But a lot of people still hold on to the idea that labels are the tastemakers and doorkeepers.

– But from a purely financial standpoint, would it be easier for you to operate now?

Chris: Yes and no. With Cuneiform, because of how much we tour, we’re actually our label’s bigger customers as we wind up purchasing our own records from them, wholesale, and then go out and sell the CDs at shows. It’s hard to say because we’re gaining a larger audience thanks to Cuneiform and, like we’ve been saying, the seal of approval has also helped us validate claims and propel our music forward, but at the same time, we’re making less per record.

Ben: That they do all that fulfillment, that’s huge. While we’re out on the road, we can’t be sending our records out to people who buy them; that’s something the label does that’s useful.

– The music that you play and that pulls people to the band is characterized as “avant-garde pop”; but what’s so avant-garde about it in your eyes?

Courtney: There’s a lot of experimentation in how we’re putting together different forms of the song, but I guess it’s a mindset more than a product. We’re most interested in creating something new: that’s the whole idea of being “avant.” There is a genre and a market for music right now where people are essentially creating the same thing to fill the specific needs of filling a silence in a cafe, people dancing; essentially, commercial music. And I think the whole idea of being avant is that we’re trying to create what’s new. Certainly, if we wanted to be imitative it could be imitative as a byproduct, but we’re trying to create something that’s more than just a regurgitation of what’s happened before.

– Do you have to somewhat restrain your experimentation to retain a pop aspect?

Jessica: I don’t think so. We’re going as far as we would like to go, and that’s both as weird as we get and as normal and acceptable as we get. Every new song kind of steers the ship in a slightly different direction with regards to genre or techniques that we’re tying together into our world, and we are always going in a new place.

Chris: Basically every genre label that has been given to Bent Knee has not been coming from us. We’re not composing music to fit into any kind of genre box; we’re composing music that we like, and the only barrier for a song entry into the repertoire is that all of us in the band have to really love it and be behind it. (“Yeah” and nods from everybody.) We’ve never writing to make sure we’re in the pop box or the experimental box; we’re just writing music that we really would like to exist in the world, and then, after the fact, it gets labelled in a box as we have to figure out where to send it off to, but that’s not at all a part of our writing process, this consideration of genre.

– Many of your pieces are comprised of a few sections, and I think you could easily make a separate song out of each of those. How hard it is to construct such a piece, and how do you decide where to stop and not add or subtract anything from it?

Chris: With every detail you add to a song you’re either helping to create momentum or you’re destroying momentum, and I think a good song carries you through the whole way, so throughout the whole song you’re engaged as a listener, and it takes you on a journey to the end. When we’re creating sections, we’re trying to further the story and push the momentum forward, so sometimes if things are very secular and the same thing is happening over and over again, it can be helpful to make a sudden change to very new territory, and that’s why we can sometimes fit maybe two songs into one of ours. But then, when we draw the line, we’re not going any further and not adding any more sections because, eventually, if you keep adding too much stuff you blur the whole experience so it doesn’t feel like a journey anymore – it feels like you’re lost in the abyss. That’s how we gauge it – is this furthering the momentum of the song or is it hurting it? – and then we consider what to add.

– Is your Berklee background helpful in this process or is it restricting creativity?

Jessica: When I studied songwriting at Berklee, we learned a lot of songs with really strict forms, and so I feel, after writing songs at Berklee, I always have what a song should be according to people who study songs in the background. But when we’re writing in a rehearsal, I don’t think it changes how we feel about the song we’re working on. Maybe as a principle we prefer not taking to a normal musical form like A-B-A-B-B, B, B, B forever (laughs) which is very popular right now. In general, we all like to have more sections than just A and B, or at least have a reason why the song winds up being whatever it becomes.

– But isn’t a simplification to call your composition “a song”?

Ben: The quote I like to call on all the time is: “Lyrics make you think a thought. Music makes you feel a feeling. Songs make you feel thoughts”. Our goal is to make you feel the thoughts, so calling it “a song” is appropriate as long as there are lyrics.

Chris: If there are lyrics and the piece itself holds its own outside of a larger structure, that’s the only requirement I see for a song.

– Did it take you long to learn to collectively construct a song? I feel seams on your debut album but sections flow into one another seamlessly now.

Chris: It’s getting quicker. When we first started doing this, having six people with creative ideas and strong opinions and different backgrounds in the same room, there used to be a lot of butting of heads, so especially with “Shiny Eyed Babies” when we were hashing all that out, it was like pulling teeth because we couldn’t all come to agreement on anything, but we were committed to this idea that everyone needed to agree on everything, so it took a very long time to actually finish that record and turn it in. But since that process happened and we’re all very happy with the outcome, things have gotten much quicker just because we trust each other a lot more and we can validate each other’s ideas. So, it’s getting faster but it still takes a while, and part of our process is: someone will bring in a core of a song and then we all hammer away at it, and once it’s in a playable format we play it out, and we play it in front of an audience to see how it feels to us and see how the audience reacts, and then we take it back to the workshop and continue working out the kinks. Then we get it to the studio, and the last step of our writing process is sitting down with it and continue to reshape it so it takes on its final recorded form.

– Going from quiet to loud section and back again is an assault on the senses. Is it vital for you – especially from the vocal perspective?

Courtney: Is moving dynamically necessary? Oooh, it’s a good question. I was talking before about how we want to do something new, and that idea applies to what we do ourselves, but at a certain point it’s really hard not to repeat yourself, and one thing that we do repeat or we do rely on is that everyone’s playing loud, because there’s a certain visceral feeling to just being hit with that wash, that assault on the senses as you described it – there is something to that. But we’re trying to keep it up there and not use it too much, so that when we do use it it’s because we want to conjure a really intense feeling in a listener, but also because we want to express something within us. Most of the music we write is based on something that happened in our lives, although sometimes we write it like a story that we made up, but even if it’s someone else’s experience that we’re all performing, it’s because we all think of ourselves as introspective people and we need that relief of playing loud and playing hard: it’s just the way that we cope with life… at least I’m speaking for myself. When we get back from touring and stop playing out for a while, we’re emotionally constipated in a way. I think I’m more of a performer than a writer and, for example, Ben’s more of a writer than a performer; but my medium – one that I’m most connected with – is performing in front of people. So in that sense assault on the senses is sort of a need.

Jessica: Just to add to that, I think that a cathartic experience for us, and for the audience more importantly, is playing really loud and then playing really soft or stopping. It’s something that a lot people don’t expect. It’s a very interesting thing to do to an audience, because I feel like a lot of dynamics are flattened with a lot of bands who play loud or soft for their entire performance. But to abruptly go from really loud to really soft is magical!

– So you consciously put an element of surprise into every song, right?

Courtney: That is a byproduct of our method. Sometimes we’re being surprising on purpose, but sometimes it’s just what we feel the songs need, and it might be surprising but it does happen. (Laughs.)

– Is there also an element of synesthesia in the thing that you do?

Ben: There is definitely a sense of imagery that we all get from what we hear in some form or another, but since none of us has synesthesia full-on, and none of us agrees, “Hey, let’s make music that’s the color red!” or “Let’s make music that reminds me of water!” we don’t go and do that, so I don’t know if it translates very strongly in that way.

– Orchestral scope of your pieces like “Little Specks Of Calcium”: do you use it for the best sonic expression or for theatrical presentation?

Ben: For sonic expression, for sure: we’re looking for a sound first and foremost. An original electronic version of “Little Specks Of Calcium” that existed before the band worked on it was not dynamic; it was pretty flat – it was kind of neat flat! But when we started playing it didn’t really feel great; it was part of where we got that exploding sound from, it worked live – it was working.

– Would you like to work with a real orchestra at some point?

All at once (laughing): Yeah. Yes. Sure. It would be awesome.

Ben: I’m scared of brass in arrangements, but yeah, bring it on, bring an orchestra.

Jessica (laughing): Tell them!

Ben: Tell them to give us an orchestra! (Everybody laughs.)

Chris: We’ll make good use of it.

From: https://dmme.net/interviews/interview-with-bent-knee

 

 

Alice Cooper - Elected

 #Alice Cooper #hard rock #heavy metal #glam rock #art rock #classic rock #glam metal #garage rock #1970s #music video

Alice Cooper’s truly hilarious promo film for Elected, features everyone’s favourite shock-rocker cruising the streets on his fictitious presidential campaign, ‘meeting’ the public (including one lady who appears to think he’s an actual candidate) and planning his next senatorial move with the aid of a suited-up chimp. It’s hard to convey in words just how expertly assembled this bit of irreverent comic nonsense is, from the moment a limo pulls up to reveal him grinning out of the window, to the madcap rally invaded by someone in a sub-Banana Splits elephant suit at the end, but if you’re familiar with Elected and know how good it is, then saying that it’s a perfectly judged visual accompaniment should get the manifesto across just fine. What’s particularly interesting is that while this may all seem like a two-fingered response to America’s political establishment in the wake of Watergate, the actual scandal was still some months away from breaking when the song was recorded and indeed released as a single, and this promo film will almost certainly have in fact been filmed while the initial attempt at covering up was taking place. Nothing ever hits quite so hard as inadvertent satire way before the event.  From: https://timworthington.org/2020/08/07/were-all-gonna-rock-to-the-rules-that-i-make/

Forget Marilyn Manson, forget the Sex Pistols; when it came to shocking the self-appointed guardians of international morality to the core, Alice Cooper pretty much wrote the handbook. Flaunting a sketchy past swathed in urban legend and cunningly fabricated falsehoods concerning witches, ouija boards, dismembered chickens, blurred genders and necrophilia, Alice Cooper succeeded in outraging the forces of decency to an unprecedented degree over the course of his casual early-70s transition from cult notoriety to mainstream ubiquity. Cooper’s infamy was such that in May 1973 Leo Abse, the incumbent Labour MP for Pontypool, spluttered in the House of Commons: “I regard his [Cooper’s] act as an incitement to infanticide for his sub-teenage audience. He is deliberately trying to involve these kids in sado-masochism. He is peddling the culture of the concentration camp. Pop is one thing, anthems of necrophilia are another.” The nation’s leading censorial nanny figure, Mary Whitehouse, head of the National Viewers’ and Listeners’ Association, offered eager support to Abse’s campaign to ban Alice Cooper from returning to the UK. But as public reaction veered in the general direction of hysteria, sales of Billion Dollar Babies (Cooper’s most provocative recording to date) soared stratospherically; then, as now, controversy sells, and in 1973 nobody was selling more than Alice Cooper. Of course, back in those days Alice Cooper were a band; five individuals who had translated a shared fascination for the mop-tops and the macabre into a million-dollar industry that had not only brought them universal vilification as depraved, corruptive pariahs, but also celebrity beyond their wildest dreams.
The quintet’s story begins innocently enough in Phoenix, Arizona, when track athlete Vincent Furnier is volunteered to organise the Cortez High School’s autumn 1964 Letterman Talent Show. Unfortunately no one seems to boast any discernible talent, so Vince encourages some friends to take the stage as The Earwigs where they mime along to Beatles records while wearing Beatles wigs. Guitarist Glen Buxton can actually play his instrument. And while drummer John Speer fumbles his way around the rudiments of percussion, bassist Dennis Dunaway hones his craft with the benefit of some valuable lessons from Glen. The Earwigs metamorphose into The Spiders; they play local Battle Of The Bands shows; and they replace their departing rhythm guitarist John Tatum with ex-Cortez High football star Michael Bruce of The Trolls. Following a move to LA in spring ’67, the fledgling Coopers, now known as The Nazz, replace John Speer with fellow Phoenix emigré Neal Smith and set about endearing themselves to the Sunset Strip in-crowd by hosting regular séances.  Soon enough – now that they’re mixing in a social circle that includes The Doors’ Jim Morrison and Love’s Arthur Lee – Miss Christine (of The GTOs) arranges for the band to audition for Frank Zappa’s Straight label. The somewhat over-eager Coopers famously turn up for their 6:30 pm appointment at 6:30 am, but find their naive tenacity amply rewarded when Zappa offers them a record deal. Two days after changing their name to Alice Cooper they are taken on as the house support band at the 20,000-capacity Cheetah Ballroom, where they gradually build a following in spite of the fact that their vocalist – having ditched the name Vince in favour of the infinitely more noteworthy Alice – had taken to wearing full make-up and a pink clown costume.
Gradually, the winning Alice Cooper formula takes shape, and after recording a brace of feet-finding collections on Zappa’s Straight imprint (1969’s Pretties For You and ’70’s Easy Action) the band sign to Warner Brothers and, with Canadian whiz-kid producer Bob Ezrin at the controls, hit the peak of their form with three set-piece collections released in rapid succession: June ’71’s Love It To Death (the album that shocked America), December ’71’s Killer (the album that conquered America) and July ’72’s School’s Out (the album that conquered the world). School’s Out, bolstered by the enormity of its anthemic title track, quickly attained the accolade of being the biggest-selling album in Warners’ history and, thanks to a frenzied tabloid press virtually foaming at the mouth with a level of hyperbolic vitriol unseen since the advent of the Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper became the most newsworthy and controversial band on the planet. But now came the difficult bit. In the face of blanket condemnation from the great, the good, the humourless, the pious and the post-pubescent, the band needed to consolidate their position. Specifically, they needed to make the greatest album of their career: an over-inflated Grand Guignol masterpiece; an ostentatiously offensive, flashy, crass and unbelievably expensive combination of Herschel Gordon Lewis and Busby Berkeley positively guaranteed to expand the generation gap to Grand Canyon proportions. In short, they needed to make Billion Dollar Babies. Following School’s Out was always going to be a daunting task, but with band morale at an all-time high no one involved harboured a shred of doubt that they could not only do it, but also do it in style.  From: https://classicrockreview.wordpress.com/2021/07/27/the-scandalous-story-of-alice-coopers-billion-dollar-babies-1973-2020/

Laboratorium Piesni - Karanfilče Devojče

 #Laboratorium Piesni #world music #European folk #Eastern European folk #traditional #polyphonic chant #Slavic folk music #a capella #white voice #Polish #music video

Things you can learn from traditional folk music: You know what’s the least cool thing on Earth when you’re a teenager in Poland? Traditional folk music, that’s what. Only village grandmas would perform it when I was a kid, they sang in regional dialect which sounded weird and archaic, and the lyrics never made any sense. “A rose grew in my garden, tell me dear Marysia if you’ll marry me. How can I tell you this, how can I know if my mom will agree.” Totally relatable for a kid who’s not going to marry anyone for at least the next six hundred years, and is certainly not going to ask her mom for permission if she finally decides to do so.
But the worst thing of all was “Marysia”. In Polish and other Eastern European languages every name comes in several different forms. There’s an official version for adults you don’t know very well, there’s a “naughty kid” version which in my days was the only acceptable form to be used among teenagers, and there’s Marysia. This is a form of my name Maria used either when speaking to little children or to someone you’d like to be tender with. When you’re a teenage punk rebel it almost sounds like an insult. Somehow in the old times people weren’t as creative in naming kids as they are now, so literally every traditional Polish song had a Marysia or Kasieńka in it. Being the only Marysia in class that had a lot of such songs assigned in the school curriculum was a great opportunity for all other kids to make fun of you. It took me many years to find traditional music pleasant to listen to, or even acceptable.
The first band that did this for me was Arkona, who sneakily smuggled traditional folk influences into their heavy metal songs. They sang in Russian, so even if the lyrics were still ridiculous and archaic it didn’t bother me at all cause I only understood a few words. I fell in love with Arkona because of their incredible lead singer, a five foot blonde girl with the most Earth-shattering voice. She could start with a touching, lyric melody and change it into a demonic growl a few seconds later. I hadn’t thought I would find female growl attractive, but Masha carries such power in hers it’s fucking unbelievable.
With time I got to enjoy other traditional Eastern European songs, even if they didn’t come together with growl and heavy guitar riffs. I learned to appreciate the ancient wisdom in these ridiculously archaic lyrics that puts my remarkably modern life in perspective. Yes, I’m an independent, self-sufficient woman who can choose whether or whom to marry, but this simply wasn’t the case for my female ancestors. Life in a village used to be incredibly hard, and making a living independently wasn’t an option for anyone, not only women. No one would think about independence when they struggled to survive. Even my own grandma got married at the age of eighteen to a 30-year-old she just met, as she explained, mostly to escape from her abusive stepfather.
It also serves as a guiding anchor through different stages of life. This is not a kind of music you would create as a masterpiece to be performed on stage. These were ordinary songs sung by ordinary people as they went through different events in their lives. There were at least a few for every occasion. Birth and death, love and heartbreak, work and rest, joy and sorrow, marriage and pesky in-laws, sowing and reaping, there was a song that could help you make sense of any of these experiences, and process the emotions that arise with it.
Music creates a kind of emotional resonance that words alone will never do. Singing together synchronizes minds and souls in a way that is difficult to describe, as I learned in traditional music workshops. If you’re going through childbirth, death, marriage, or breakup, everyone singing with you validates your experience, shows you that they understand what you’re going trough, and that what is happening is a normal part of life. It integrates your emotions into the whole community, and helps you heal the challenging ones.
I have my own wedding coming soon and I want a ceremony that won’t be just a government official talking about civil rights and obligations. Even if they prepared the most touching speech, it would still be processed through the rational parts of the brain first. I’d rather go directly into the hearts and souls. So though the irony is not lost on me, I’m going to bring some of the ancient wedding ritual songs I used to despise so much as a kid to guide us and all of our guests through the most important moment of our lives so far. I even put a “Marysia” on our wedding invitation cards.  From: https://madeincosmos.net/things-you-can-learn-from-traditional-folk-music/ 

Ouzo Bazooka - Clouds of Sorrow

 #Ouzo Bazooka #psychedelic rock #neo-psychedelia #Middle Eastern rock #garage rock #Middle Eastern psych rock #desert rock #psychedelic surf #Isreali #music video

Ouzo Bazooka was formed in Tel Aviv, a city with its own unique lifestyle, where one can feel that the vibrant urban scene is driven by cultural coexistence and vigorous creation. Drawing influences from this melting pot and exotic Middle Eastern feel, along with classic hard rock, psychedelic art, garage rock and surf – Ouzo Bazooka’s sound is a dizzying concoction of east meets west.
Leading the pack is renowned musician and local guitar hero, Uri Brauner Kinrot, who grew up on the sunny shores of the Mediterranean sea, absorbing surf culture and playing a mean rock guitar. Uri has been active in the music scene for over a decade, throughout which he has played with, recorded for, and helped shape the influential sounds of big names such as Balkan Beat Box, Shantel, Firewater and Kocani Orkestar. Uri is also the leader of the critically acclaimed Mediterranean surf band Boom Pam, who are currently collaborating with Turkish psychedelic-folk legend Selda Bağcan. His unique sounds have made their way to far corners of the world, rocking out major music festivals such as Roskilde, Glastonbury, Fuji Rock, Lollapalooza and many more.
After roaming the globe and spreading his mediterranean-chic love, Uri felt the urge to pursue a new project using earlier influences that had always echoed in the back of his mind. He returned to the sounds and artists that have shaped him since his teens; Cream’s blasting energies, Link Wray’s surfed-up style and The Sonics’ soulful garage feel. Uri’s kaleidoscopic vision exemplifies good ol’ rock n’ roll with an oriental tinge, which is undoubtedly heard in his latest endeavor, Ouzo Bazooka. Recorded with local giants such as Adam Scheflan on bass and Kutiman on drums, the album consists of several catchy hits granting a melodic-pop feel that brings a sweet sound to the ears with a tangy middle eastern twist. Ouzo Bazooka’s self-titled debut album was released in 2014 and kicked off the bands career with a brilliant start.
Uri then decided to team up with drummer, Ira Raviv (Monti Fiori, Boom Pam) and keyboard player Dani Ever Hadani (Rami Fortis, Boom Pam) to form the present band and create the second album, Simoom. The album is an elegant demonstration of Uri’s ability to combine all of his influences and experiences together in the smoothest way possible. The album takes you on a dreamy psychedelic journey through heavy fuzzed guitars, colourful synthesisers, roaring drums and “garage-esque” fun. This well-performed blend can easily be heard throughout the album, from the spacey psychedelic keys and vocals on Look Around, to the traditional heavy dabke groove of Clouds of Sorrow, and up until the swinging thundering drums on Black Witch.  From: https://www.stolenbodyrecords.co.uk/ouzo-bazooka

Avatarium - Boneflower

 #Avatarium #doom metal #heavy metal #heavy psych #prog metal #folk metal #metal supergroup #Swedish #animated music video

Here we have the debut from the Swedish doom super-group that are calling themselves Avatarium. At the helm is bassist Leif Edling (Candlemass, Krux), along with guitarist Marcus Jidell (Evergrey, Royal Hunt), drummer Lars Skold (Tiamat), keyboard player Carl Westholm (Jupiter Society, Carp Tree) and pop-rock vocalist Jennie-Ann Smith. The band mixes the crushing, epic doom style of Black Sabbath and Candlemass with the classic metal influence of Rainbow, the psychedelic hard rock of Blue Oyster Cult, the prog of early Genesis, and the bluesy folk of early Jethro Tull. Sounds like an interesting combination right? Well, it most certainly is. Smith has a lovely voice, and lends her gorgeous vocal passages to songs that are brimming with doomy might, classic rock sophistication, and the occasional pastoral prog touch.
"Moonhorse" kicks things off in fine fashion, as angelic vocals supported by folk guitars give way to behemoth doom riffs and scorching lead guitar work. The mysterious "Pandora's Egg" once again combines the folk with some psychedelia and massive riffing, as Smith just soars here over symphonic keyboards and some of the biggest riffs you'll hear this year. Absolutely crushing doom meshes with tasty prog rock keyboards on the melancholy title track, an epic, memorable number that also features some splendid lead guitar & slide work from Jidell, who at times on this CD reminds a bit of Ritchie Blackmore from the Rainbow Rising album. And, if you can imagine Heart's Ann Wilson singing in a doom band, well, that's kind of what you get with Smith and her amazing vocals. "Boneflower" is more of an upbeat psych/hard rocker (for fans of Ghost & Blue Oyster Cult) filled with tasty keyboards, riffs, and Smith's alluring vocals, while ominous Mellotron from Westholm permeates the doom laden dirge that is "Bird of Prey", a venomous number driven by huge Uriah Heep inspired Hammond organ & Sabbath styled guitar riffs. Rainbow-meets-Black Sabbath on the grandiose "Tides of Telepathy", with Skold delivering some amazing drum fills alongside Edling's massive bass grooves, and Jidell & Westholm layering in plenty of thunder to support Smith's emotional vocals. This amazing album ends with the folky prog of "Lady in the Lamp", a tranquil meeting of Heart, Rainbow, and Genesis, as lush Mellotron, lilting guitar chords, soaring slide guitar, and those incredible vocals just grab at your heart and refuse to let go.
For a debut, this is astounding material from Avatarium. They could have easily gone the safe route and created a straight doom record, but thankfully they wanted to do much more than that. Any fan of '70s heavy rock, psych, folk, doom, and prog will find lots to love here, and hopefully this is the first of many releases from this very fine ensemble. The musical pedigree of the members goes without saying, and Jennie-Ann Smith is truly an incredible singer.  From: https://www.seaoftranquility.org/reviews.php?op=showcontent&id=15550

Poco - A Good Feelin' To Know

 #Poco #Richie Furay #Timothy Schmidt #Jim Messina #Randy Meisner #country rock #folk rock #ex-Buffalo Springfield #pre-Eagles #1960s #1970s

For Poco – or Pogo, as they were initially called – the presence of George Harrison, Doug Dillard and Janis Joplin at their shows was surely a sign that they were going to join that aristocracy. On their debut gig they supported the well-established Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and blew them off stage. A banjo player and wannabe comedian called Steve Martin became their regular warm-up act as Hollywood flocked to catch this new sensation. Influential LA Times rock critic Robert Hillburn said Poco were destined for the top and, with Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt offering their congratulations, they believed him. But Poco didn’t become the next big thing. Or the one after that. Their story is one of temptation and corruption, thieving managers who doubled as drug dealers, openly internecine hostilities, and a side order of rampant ambition and green-eyed jealousy.
Poco were formed from the ashes of Buffalo Springfield after Neil Young effectively quit that group for the last time following a drugs bust in March 1968. During a noisy jam session at Stephen Stills’s Topanga Canyon ranch, irate neighbours called the cops. Hearing the patrol cars, Stills escaped through a back window, while the Malibu sheriff rounded up Cream’s Eric Clapton and three Buffalos – Young, Richie Furay and Jim Messina – and hauled the brain-mushed stoners off to the LA County jail, where they spent a weekend in the cells with a bunch of Black Panthers who admired their shiny hair and pink boots. Severely traumatized, Young stuck around merely for a farewell show then got out of Springfield in the same Pontiac hearse with Ontario number plates on it that he’d arrived in – and with the master tapes for his solo album. Cut adrift, Furay and Messina immediately began rehearsing a new band, with the Springfield’s nominal guitar tech Rusty Young, a pedal steel ace who could play anything with strings on it, and his drummer friend George Grantham.
“Me and Jimmy started Poco,” says Furay. “I’d been the frontman in Springfield but it was Stills’s band. Neil was restless; he had too many agendas. We bossed places like the Whisky, the Palladium and the Troubadour, but there were too many Canadians with immigration problems in the group and it just fizzled out.” Or as Young said: “We thought we’d be together forever. But we were just too young to be patient.” Everybody knew that was nowhere. Rusty Young recalls the early days: “I came from Denver to play on a Richie song called Kind Woman for the Springfield’s Last Time Around sessions, only to find they’d broken up. Richie and Jim had this concept – to mix country and rock with banjo, mandolin and dobro. It was a new idea. We searched Los Angeles for recruits.
"We tried out Greg Allman on organ, and Gram Parsons way before he joined The Byrds. They released Sweetheart Of The Rodeo using our sound, which Gram took from us and taught them. It was typical that they beat us to the punch so everyone thought we were copying them. Gram was into George Jones; there was no rock in his country at all. It’s a myth that Gram invented country rock. Chinese whispers. It became the truth, but it was an absolute lie. Sure, he formed the Flying Burrito Brothers. But only because he’d played with us." Furay, originally a pleasant farm boy from Ohio, had more reason to admire Parsons: “I knew him when we were folkies in New York City. He played me The Byrds’ first album and prompted me into that music. But I’m definitely a pioneer, because it was Poco who broke down barriers between hippies and rednecks. Country clubs, even in California, were real intimidating places. Watch out if you had moderately long hair."
With Buffalo Springfield’s accounts in disarray, and the Troubadour’s Doug Weston paying absolute bottom dollar, action was necessary. “We had no money at all,” says Rusty Young. "Our manager, Dickie Davis [Springfield’s road man], had dozens of airline tickets spread on a table. One was for Neil Young, who never turned up for gigs half the time. The name said ‘Mr. N. Young’, and since my middle name is Norman - Neil got our band off the ground.” Having enlisted bassist Randy Meisner, Poco were slow off the mark as a recording act, and had trouble settling on a band name after running into a legal battle with Walt Kelly, the creator of the wildly popular Pogo The Possum newspaper cartoon character. They flirted with calling themselves RFD (standing for Rural Free Delivery), before returning to the Troubadour in their new guise, wearing cowboy gear stitched by wives and girlfriends. Stardom seemed but a step away.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-poco-invented-a-brand-new-sound-only-to-have-it-stolen-by-the-eagles