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

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

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

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

Buddy Miles - Them Changes

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

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

The Rolling Stones - Child of the Moon

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

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

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

Grant Lee Buffalo - Mockingbirds

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

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

BraAgas - Live World Music Festival, Bratislava, Slovakia 2019

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Part 2

Part 3

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

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

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

Maria McKee & The Jayhawks - Precious Time - Live 1993

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

Maria Muldaur - Don't You Make Me High (Don't You Feel My Leg)

 #Maria Muldaur #folk #blues #country #jazz #folk rock #Americana #pop rock #1960s #1970s

Blue Lu Barker was a New Orleans singer married to the guitarist Danny Barker. They wrote this very sensual song, with Blue Lu singing, "Don't you feel my leg 'cause if you feel my leg you're gonna feel my thigh, and if you feel my thigh, you're gonna go up high." This was pushing the limits in 1938. The song was produced by J. Mayo Williams, who was one of the biggest blues music producers of the '30s and '40s. For Barker, this was her first single after signing with the Vocalion label, and it became a national hit, leading to appearances with Cab Calloway and Jelly Roll Morton. The Barkers appeared at the New Orleans Jazz Festival in 1989, and in 1998, this appearance was released as the album Live at New Orleans Jazz Festival. Danny died in 1994 and Blue Lu in 1998.
Maria Muldaur brought new life to this song when she recorded it for her 1974 self-titled album, with the title altered to "Don't You Make Me High (Don't You Feel My Leg)." That same year, Muldaur had her big hit "Midnight At The Oasis," and when she rose to stardom, she stopped performing "Feel My Leg," as she didn't want to be known for her sexuality. In her interview with Rolling Stone that year, she explained: "It's a funky song, fun to do, but I had to stop doing it. That's my concession to avoid being typecast as a sexy singer, period. I dropped it after I saw a Marilyn Monroe TV special early this year. I saw her entertaining the troops in Korea, up there singing 'I Can't Give You Anything but Love' to acres and acres of horny GIs. Shelley Winters was on the show and she said something about how far Marilyn might have gone if she hadn't let herself get stuck with an image as a sex symbol who couldn't do anything else. That shook me. You can't rely on physical image alone. That's sure as shit gonna fade. The shape of your tits and butt ain't always going to be so good. I want to be a singer long after I'm not so hot to look at."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/blue-lu-barker/dont-you-feel-my-leg


Humble Pie - I'm Ready

 #Humble Pie #Steve Marriott #Peter Frampton #hard rock #blues rock #classic rock #British blues rock #ex-Small Faces #1960s #1970s

Humble Pie were an English rock band formed by Steve Marriott in Essex during 1969. They are known as one of the late 1960s' first supergroups and found success on both sides of the Atlantic with such songs as "Black Coffee", "30 Days in the Hole", "I Don't Need No Doctor" and "Natural Born Bugie". The original band line-up featured lead vocalist and guitarist Steve Marriott from Small Faces, vocalist and guitarist Peter Frampton from The Herd, former Spooky Tooth bassist Greg Ridley and a 17-year-old drummer, Jerry Shirley, from The Apostolic Intervention.

1969–1970: Humble Pie Formation and Chart Success
In January 1969 Steve Marriott, having just left Small Faces, got together with Greg Ridley, Peter Frampton and Jerry Shirley. Marriott had brought together Shirley and Ridley as a possible band for Frampton, then ended up joining the band himself. They chose the name Humble Pie and were signed to Andrew Loog Oldham's record label Immediate Records. Their debut album, As Safe as Yesterday Is, was released in August, 1969, along with the single, "Natural Born Bugie", which reached No. 4 hit in the UK Singles Chart; the album peaked at No. 16 in the UK album charts. As Safe as Yesterday Is was one of the first albums to be described by the term "heavy metal" in a 1970 review in Rolling Stone magazine. Their second album, Town and Country released in the UK during 1969 while the band was away on it’s first tour of the US. This album featured a more acoustic sound and songs written by all four members. Humble Pie concerts at this time featured an acoustic set, with a radical re-working of Graham Gouldman's "For Your Love" as its centrepiece followed by an electric set. Recent tape archives show that the band recorded around 30 songs in its first nine months of existence, many of which remained unreleased for decades, including an interpretation of Henry Glover's "Drown in My Own Tears".

1970–1971: Humble Pie Early Success
During 1970, Humble Pie switched to A&M Records and Dee Anthony became their manager. Anthony was focused on the US market and discarded the acoustic set, instigating a more raucous sound with Marriott as the front man. The group's first album for A&M, Humble Pie, was released later that year and alternated between progressive rock and hard rock. A single, "Big Black Dog", was released to coincide with the album and failed to chart, however the band was becoming known for popular live rock shows in the US.
It was during this period that Peter Frampton acquired his famed "Phenix" guitar, the black 1954 Les Paul Custom which became his signature instrument and his favourite guitar for the next decade. Humble Pie was playing a run of shows at the Fillmore West in San Francisco in early December 1970, and during the first show Frampton was plagued by sound problems with his then-current guitar, a semi-acoustic Gibson 335, which was prone to unwanted feedback at higher volumes. After the show he was approached by fan and musician Mark Mariana, who loaned him a modified 1954 Gibson Les Paul, and by the end of the second show Frampton had become so enamoured of the guitar that he offered to buy it on the spot, but Mariana refused payment. Frampton played it almost exclusively for the next ten years. It was featured on the cover of Frampton Comes Alive and was thought to have been destroyed in 1980 when a plane carrying Frampton's stage equipment crashed in Venezuela during a South American tour, killing the crew, but with the guitar in fact surviving the accident with some minor damage. It was eventually returned to Frampton in 2011.
On 9 July 1971, Humble Pie opened for Grand Funk Railroad at their historical Shea Stadium concert, an event that broke the Beatles record for fastest selling stadium concert, to that date. Also in 1971 Humble Pie released their most successful record to date, Rock On, as well as a live album recorded at the Fillmore East in New York entitled Performance Rockin' the Fillmore. The live album reached No. 21 on the US Billboard 200 and was certified gold by the RIAA. "I Don't Need No Doctor" was a FM radio hit in the US peaking at No. 73 on the Billboard Hot 100, propelling the album up the charts. But Frampton left the band by the time the album was released and went on to enjoy success as a solo artist.

1972–1975: Clem Clempson, The Blackberries and Further Success
Frampton was replaced by Clem Clempson and Humble Pie moved towards a harder sound emphasising Marriott's blues and soul roots. Their first record with Clempson, Smokin', was released in 1972, along with two singles "Hot 'n' Nasty" and "30 Days in the Hole" (the latter of which became one of their best-known efforts). It was the band's most commercially successful record, and reached No. 6 on the US charts, helped by a busy touring schedule. After the success of Smokin' the band's record label A&M released Humble Pie's first two Immediate albums in one double album, as Lost and Found.
Looking for a more authentic R&B sound, Marriott hired three female backing vocalists, The Blackberries. The trio consisted of Venetta Fields, Clydie King and Sherlie Matthews who was later replaced by Billie Barnum. They had performed with Ike and Tina Turner as The Ikettes and with Ray Charles as The Raelettes. This new line-up included Sidney George on saxophone for the recording of Eat It, a double album released in 1973 made up of Marriott originals (some acoustic), R&B numbers, and a Humble Pie concert recorded in Glasgow. The album peaked at No. 13 in the US charts. Thunderbox was released in 1974, and Street Rats a year later. In 1975, Humble Pie conducted their Goodbye Pie Tour before disbanding.

From: https://www.ronnielane.com/steve-marriott-and-humble-pie.html

Gaate - Sjaa Attende

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

Hailing from Trondheim, Norway, Gåte ("riddle" in Norwegian) blended traditional folk melodies from their native country with powerful, fuzzed-up hard rock and electronica. The band was formed in 1999 by two siblings with a strong musical training, singer Gunnhild Sundli and her brother Sveinung. Gunnhild's distinctive vocals, together with Sveinung's playing of the traditional Hardanger fiddle, successfully bridged the gap between Norwegian folk music and harder-edged rock sounds. Many of their songs were based on lyrics by contemporary poet Astrid Krog Halse and folk musician Knut Buen, while others were modern interpretations of traditional melodies. After their first, independent EP in 2000, Gåte were signed by Warner Music Norway, and in early 2002 released the commercially as well as critically successful "Gåte EP". By that time the two Sundli siblings had recruited the band's other members: Magnus Robot Bormark (guitars, synths), Martin Viktor Langlie (drums, percussion) and Gjermund Landro (bass, vocals). Their debut album, "Jygri", also released in 2002, reached platinum status in Norway, as well as winning Spellemanprisen, the local equivalent of a Grammy Award. Its follow-up, "Iselilja", came out in the autumn of 2004. After the release of "Iselilja", Langlie quit the band, and was replaced by Kenneth Kapstad. There were plans of launching the band in Europe, and they even played a few concerts in Germany in the summer of 2005, but by autumn the same year Gunnhild Sundli felt exhausted and needed a break, and the band went on an indefinite hiatus. In 2006 a live album, simply titled "Liva", and featuring some of the band's most representative songs, was released on CD and DVD. On October 24, 2009, the band made a comeback at the cultural festival UKA in Trondheim. What was supposed to be a one-off, led to a small summer tour (5 concerts) in 2010, culminating with a performance on the roof of the Oslo Opera House on August 20, which marked the end of the band. That end would prove to be only preliminary though, as the Sundli siblings suprisingly resurrected the band, with new members, and released a short EP, "Attersyn", in 2017, with more new music and touring to come in 2018.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=4263

BeauSoleil - Kolinda

 #BeauSoleil #Michael Doucet #Zydeco #Cajun music #traditional #world music #folk

The formation of BeauSoleil, one of the best known and most highly respected Cajun bands in the world, is due to fiddler Michael Doucet's desire to keep the unique southern Louisiana culture and music from extinction. But while BeauSoleil originated to help preserve his Cajun musical heritage, over the years it has also been known for its innovation. They are continually adding spice from other musical genres including jazz and Caribbean. In this way, BeauSoleil keeps the music vital and contemporary.
Doucet was born and raised in Cajun country surrounded by the old French songs that comprise the basis of the music. But from the time of his birth to his adulthood in the 1960s, Cajun culture began to disappear. Young Doucet, thinking Cajun music antiquated and passé, began his musical career playing rock with New Orleans influence. He began getting into folk-rock towards the end of the '60s and even tried singing a few of his numbers in French. It was a song from the British folk group Fairport Convention and their song, "Cajun Woman," that re-sparked his interest in his native music. He went to France and England in 1973 just before he was to enter grad school in the U.S. He ended up staying many years studying with Scottish fiddle great Barry Dransfield, who eventually introduced him to his idol Richard Thompson. Later, Doucet credited Thompson for influencing his own compositions. The young fiddler's stay in France also had a profound influence. There he saw that the roots of Cajun were still very much alive. The old songs were still sung, and he heard their centuries-old influence in newer folk songs. It made him realize how modern Cajun music was in comparison. In the mid-'70s, Doucet joined Coteau, an improvisational folk-music based French group that was known as the Cajun equivalent to the Grateful Dead. After a time with them, he returned to the U.S., determined to immerse himself in Cajun musical history. A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts supported him as he located the nearly forgotten early composers and performers of Cajun music.
Armed with many traditional Cajun songs, Doucet formed BeauSoleil with some of the finest Cajun musicians, Dennis McGee, Dewey and Will Balfa, Varise Connor, Canray Fontenot, and Bessyl Duhon. Their band name literally means "good sun" and is a reference to a fertile region in Nova Scotia. In the 17th century, French speaking Acadians lived in the Canadian province until conflicts with the French and British forced them to migrate down to Louisiana where they became called Cajuns. BeauSoleil cut its first record in 1976 and released it only in France. They made their American debut the following year with The Spirit of Cajun Music. It was an eclectic work illustrating the many musical styles from which Cajun music is derived. Since 1985, the band has been nominated for (and won) numerous Grammys. They have played on movie soundtracks such as The Big Easy, Passion Fish, and Belizaire the Cajun. They have played at jazz and folk festivals around the world and have also appeared on numerous television shows ranging from CNN's Showbiz Today to Austin City Limits to Late Night with Conan O'Brien.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/beausoleil-mn0000161612#biography

Betty Davis - They Say I'm Different

 #Betty Davis #funk #R&B #soul #funk rock #singer-songwriter #1970s

There is one testimonial about Betty Davis that is universal: She was an artist ahead of her time. From her brief moment in the limelight to her decades of living as a recluse until her death in 2022, Betty Davis was a beautiful enigma. A drop-dead gorgeous model (and one of the first Black models to be featured in Glamour and Seventeen), Betty ran in crowds with Jimi Hendrix and was briefly married to Miles Davis (not to mention she played a large part in his stylistic radicalization). Her demure demeanor in life starkly contrasted with her onstage persona which oozed raw feminist liberation, a truly original punk-funk provocateur in her silver go-go boots and signature afro. One can hardly imagine the genre-busting, culture-crossing, musical magic of Janelle Monáe, OutKast, Prince, Erykah Badu, Rick James, The Roots, or Madonna without the influence of R&B pioneer Betty Davis. Rappers from Ice Cube to Talib Kweli to Ludacris have rhymed over her intensely strong but sensual music. Yet somehow, Ms. Davis’s unique story, still widely unknown, is unlike any other in popular music.
Betty wrote the song “Uptown” for the Chambers Brothers before marrying Miles Davis in the late 60s, influencing him with psychedelic rock and introducing him to Jimi Hendrix — personally inspiring the classic album Bitches Brew. But her songwriting ability was way ahead of its time, as well. Betty not only wrote every song she ever recorded and produced every album after her first but also penned the tunes that got The Commodores signed to Motown. The Detroit label soon came calling, pitching a Motown songwriting deal which Betty turned down. Motown wanted to own everything, but that didn't fly with Betty and her DIY ethos. Marc Bolan of T. Rex urged the creative dynamo to start writing for herself. She would eventually say no to Eric Clapton as her album producer, seeing him as too banal.
In 1973, Davis would finally kick off her cosmic career with an amazingly progressive hard funk, sweet soul, self-titled debut. Betty Davis showcased her fiercely unique talent with such gems as “If I’m In Luck I Might Get Picked Up” and “Game Is My Middle Name.” The album was recorded with Sly & The Family Stone’s rhythm section, sharply produced by Sly Stone drummer Greg Errico, and featured backing vocals from Sylvester and The Pointer Sisters. Her 1974 sophomore album They Say I’m Different features a worthy-of-framing futuristic cover challenging David Bowie’s science fiction funk with real rocking soul-fire, kicked off with the savagely sexual “Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him”. Her follow-up is full of classic cuts like “Don’t Call Her No Tramp” and the hilarious, hard, deep funk of “He Was A Big Freak.” Betty Davis was riding high in the 70s. A new record label, a series of high-profile relationships, and intensely sexualized live performances made her a rising star. It seemed like everything was aligned to take the music world by storm. So Betty and band got back into the studio where she would act as writer, producer, and performer, creating her definitive release–Nasty Gal. Her entire catalog has now been lovingly remastered from the original tapes by Light in the Attic to sound as ferocious and revolutionary as they did when they first sprung on an unsuspecting world in the early 70s.  From: https://lightintheattic.net/collections/betty-davis

Spooky Tooth - Musikladen 1973

 Part 1

Part 2

#Spooky Tooth #Gary Wright #Mike Harrison #Mick Jones #hard rock #blues rock #psychedelic rock #progressive rock #classic rock #British R&B #1960s #1970s #live music video

Spooky Tooth were an incredibly proficient gaggle of musicians whose individual talents were often greater than the sum of the band — when they were good, they were brilliant, but when they were okay, well they were just okay. The original line-up included two powerful keyboard-playing lead singers Gary Wright and Mike Harrison, a brilliant guitarist in Luther Grosvenor (who became equally famous as Ariel Bender with Mott the Hoople), bassist Greg Ridley (who was a founding member of Humble Pie with The Small Faces’ Steve Marriott) and drummer Mike Kellie (a future member of The Only Ones). Later, the line-up included Mick Jones who (of course) went onto world domination with Foreigner — yeah, I know, but somebody had to do it. 
Originally tinged with psychedelia and early prog rock, Spooky Tooth’s musical focus was shaped by the songwriting talent of Gary Wright over the first two albums — It’s All About (1968) and Spooky Two (1969). But this nascent potential was literally destroyed by the strange collaboration with electronic wizard Pierre Henry for their third album Ceremony (1969), which Wright claims ended the band’s career: “Then we did a project that wasn’t our album. It was with this French electronic music composer named Pierre Henry. We just told the label, “You know this is his album, not our album. We’ll play on it just like musicians.” And then when the album was finished, they said, ‘Oh no no — it’s great. We’re gonna release this as your next album.’ We said, ‘You can’t do that. It doesn’t have anything to do with the direction of Spooky Two and it will ruin our career.’ And that’s exactly what happened.” Devastated, Wright temporarily quit, and Spooky Tooth’s next album The Last Puff (1970) - billed as Spooky Tooth featuring Mike Harrison - was a rather mixed bag of covers, though it did contain the greatest ever Beatles cover “I Am The Walrus.” 
Then Grosvenor and Kellie quit, Jones joined and Wright returned to the fold penning nearly all of the songs for their bizarrely titled fifth album You Broke My Heart So…I Busted Your Jaw (1973).  Next came Witness, which was Harrison’s last album with the band, before the arrival of the more poppy The Mirror (1974), which was generally well received.  The band split — Jones went onto greater success, while Wright released his million-selling solo album Dream Weaver. Spooky Tooth deserve attention not just because of the quality of their disparate players, but also because of the quality of their early and late music — which can partly be seen in these “lost broadcasts” where Spooky Tooth perform “The Weight” on Beat Club in 1968, followed by “Old As I Was Born,” two versions of “Cotton Growing Man,” “Waiting For The Wind” and two versions of “Moriah” for Musikladen in 1973.  From: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/spooky_tooth_the_lost_broadcasts

Twin Temple - Sex Magick

 

#Twin Temple #garage rock #occult rock #rock & roll #satanic doo-wop #retro-1960s #indie rock #music video

"It's safe to say we've turned even further away from the light, and our souls are as damned as ever." Twin Temple vocalist Alexandra James is explaining her and husband/guitarist Zachary James' steadfast devotion to the devil. Given the hatred the self-proclaimed Satanic doo-wop duo has experienced at the hands of a hard-line Christian community since forming the band in 2016, can you blame them? When detractors first targeted Twin Temple a few years ago, zealots started sending stacks of Bibles to their Los Angeles doorstep — perhaps as a warning, or maybe in the misguided hope of "rescuing" the James' souls from eternal hellfire. Less obtusely, Alexandra explains that death threats routinely started coming their way through email and over social media; she adds that online extremists discussed mobilizing at their concerts, armed. This is all to say that rock & roll is still a dangerous game, at least when you're Twin Temple. "Since we started, we've received a lot of relentless moralizing, attempts to save our souls, religious fervor and backlash — even people questioning our sincerity, as far as if we're really who we say we are [as Satanists]," Alexandra explains of the extreme reactions their music has provoked. "As a kid, growing up seeing my heroes really challenge the status quo, I always thought, That's so cool, these pioneers of rock & roll are laying their lives down on the line for this. When we experienced it, it definitely gave me a whole new perspective."
What's sure is early Twin Temple songs like "Lucifer, My Love" and "I Know How to Hex You" — between their lush, orchestral pop presentations and devilish wordplay — have struck a chord across musical and ideological spectrums, for better or for worse. While clearly playing well for folks that vibe with early '60s R&B and the golden age of rock & roll, Twin Temple's love for the dark arts has also made converts out of heavy-metal fanatics — as well as earned them endorsements from famous appreciators of the occult, including Glenn Danzig and Ghost. On the other side of things, haters are literally looking to hurt the band over their beliefs. While some would shrink in the face of such violent, virulent adversity, Christian condemnation has only strengthened Twin Temple's resolve. "We just wanted to make the most brutally blasphemous record that we could," Alexandra says in relation to the group's scintillating, and obviously sacrilegious, sophomore full-length, God Is Dead. "We definitely wanted to up the blasphemy, and give some of the best black-metal records a run for the money, in terms of the themes."
True to their word, God Is Dead doubles down on Twin Temple's established anti-Christian aesthetic. Its album cover finds the couple locking eyes like lovers do — blood dripping out their mouths — as they hover over a burning church. Above some of the sweetest throwback soul sounds imaginable, Alexandra sings of torching scripture ("Burn Your Bible"), going down on demons ("Let's Have a Satanic Orgy") and just generally being "the baddest witch on the block" ("Spellbreaker"); while God Is Dead's title track is likely the most joyous ode to deicide you'll hear this year. That's the thing with Twin Temple: They're fun as hell. Despite the hate they've faced, they're still reveling in their love of Lucifer, and each other. Alexandra notes the band wanted God Is Dead to take a stronger romantic tack than 2019's Twin Temple (Bring You Their Signature Sound… Satanic Doo-Wop). That's clearly the case with "Two Sinners," a cursed bop about happily heading straight to hell with your betrothed. "Doesn't everyone want someone who makes them more depraved than they were before," Alexandra poses, rhetorically. "I think it's really romantic to break holy laws with someone, or to be nailed to a single cross. Like, I want to be buried in the same grave as Zach. So, I was just writing a love song about that." Both Zachary and Alexandra spent time in the California punk scene before linking up, but they're scant on the details of how they met — at least the 21st century incarnations of themselves. Whether playing up the camp or protecting themselves post-doxxing, they do suggest an introduction was made several past lives ago, all the way back in 1666. As if part of a finely honed vaudeville routine, Alexandra starts up that she was "burned on the cross" next to Zachary. "I was a witchfinder, actually," the guitarist clarifies, as Alexandra shoots back: "I thought you were the woman being burned next to me!"
This kind of gallows humor goes a long way to understanding Twin Temple. Sonically, their sound reveals a great reverence for the trailblazers of pop and rock & roll, Alexandra's brimstone-smoky vibrato reverberating against a Wall of Sound-style aesthetic. The band's lively, blood-spilling, ritual dagger-wielding stage show harkens back to the days of Fifties shock-rock pioneer Screamin' Jay Hawkins. Naturally, it's made them thick as thieves with the horns-raising metal community — leading to tours with Ghost, Danzig and others. It's all part of the same rock & roll continuum, Zachary argues, with Twin Temple perhaps acting as a bridge between the subversive-ness of Little Richard and extreme-metal vanguards like recent tourmates Behemoth — whose vocalist, Adam Nergal Darski, is also no stranger to offending the church. "We didn't make our music for anyone other than ourselves, from day one, and we continue to do that," Zachary says. "It just happens that, philosophically, the blasphemy resonates with a lot of metal fans. And obviously the visuals resonate because we're all lovers of horror." The culture jam continues with God Is Dead, a release that includes the Latin-grooved "Let's Have a Satanic Orgy," a song the band had also recorded in Spanish as "Tengamos la Orgía Satánica." Both versions report on a sex party taking place at the Witches' Sabbath, full-moon revelers grinding it out near a "magick circle." Rhythmically, it's a standout number in the Twin Temple catalog; playfully, it caps with a chant of "666," rather than a traditional "cha cha cha." God Is Dead's tour cycle will find the James' debuting new stage attire inspired by the song: baby pink finery embroidered with carnal scenes of demons and succubi getting it on.
Like the single, Alexandra says the stage wear was inspired by "some of the better orgies we've been to in recent memory" — while also paying homage to country great Hank Williams' ornate nudie suits, and the pastel color palette of Hollywood starlet Jayne Mansfield's Pink Palace mansion. But before all that, Twin Temple tell Revolver they have to take care of some business back at home. While wrapping up the call, Alexandra reports that the rest of their afternoon will include blood sacrifices and an exorcising session. "There's a grave I meant to tell you about that looks real ripe for digging," she says to Zachary. Without missing a beat, her partner in holy crime deadpans of the day's proposed desecration, "Just the usual."  From: https://www.revolvermag.com/music/twin-temple-satanic-doo-wop-duo-face-bible-bashers-most-blasphemous-album-yet

Gentle Giant - On Reflection

 

#Gentle Giant #progressive rock #British prog #eclectic prog #classic prog #hard rock #experimental rock #jazz rock #neoclassical #medieval #1970s #animated music video

Free Hand was Gentle Giant's seventh studio album and first for new label Chrysalis Records. It was also their highest charting album in the States. It’s a strange prospect to promote an album 46 years after it was recorded. “I don’t think any of us were thinking back then that any of this would happen now with us in our 70s… it is a bit odd, really,” says Gentle Giant’s Kerry Minnear (keyboards, mallet percussion, vocals and a multitude of other instruments) in his soft, Dorset burr. Derek Shulman (lead vocals, main lyricist, woodwind) adds: “Honestly, I’m enjoying talking about it, because when the band finished… it could have been grief, but I just didn’t want to go back and revisit [Gentle Giant]. But now it’s a pleasure. There was no expectation that this was going to be preserved.” “That’s very true,” says Minnear. “I think the multitracks only survived because Gary [Green – guitar and vocals] stepped in and then dumped them on me when he moved to the USA. They’d been up in my loft for years, until interest started to bubble and they’ve served us really well.”
In many ways, the creation of Free Hand in the spring of ’75 was an artistic venting at the relief the band felt having finally escaped from a troubled professional relationship with the WWA record label and from equally disheartening management obligations. They were primed and ready.  “We were at a pretty good high, we’d established the band and were doing comparatively good business in Europe and North America. I think we were quite mature as a band and recording Free Hand proved a happy experience,” says Derek. Ray Shulman (bass, strings, vocals) expands, “As bands develop they tend to splinter and move apart, and I think that it was the last album we made where all of us were together in Derek and my home town of Portsmouth to write and rehearse.” “And we weren’t in London,” Derek emphasises, “we were in Portsmouth of all places, so that was us cocooned on the south coast! And Gary and poor Kerry were sequestered to leave their own homes and join us.” “That’s alright,” says Minnear with a laugh, “I got a wife out of it!”
Reportedly, the whole writing and recording process for Free Hand took about seven weeks – “I don’t think we ever spent longer than four weeks doing the actual recording,” recalls Ray. “In fact, [1973 album] In A Glass House took about 12 days from start to finish,” adds Derek, “We worked our fingers to the bone to get what we wanted when we recorded. We didn’t like to drag things out and jam all day – that would have been a terrific waste of time.” Ray agrees, “We were very structured in what we did.” The focus was very much on Ray and Kerry to deliver the music. “Although Kerry and I had collaborated on earlier albums, by the time we recorded Free Hand we were working on our songs independently initially. I’d go to Kerry with my backing tracks for help with top lines and to Derek for the lyrics. Kerry was a bit more self-contained, he’d get a little bit further on before looking at lyrics with Derek. I used to start the Revox and just play. Then, listening back, if phrases caught my ear, I’d develop them,” explains Ray. Derek elucidates his role: “Lyrically, it was partly abstract, but as the album title suggests, it was about getting out of the record deals and ugly contractual obligations and I think we felt free and at ease. Free Hand was much more personal than our previous album, The Power And The Glory, which was a statement on world affairs and how power corrupts, and the whole Nixon/Watergate thing. Free Hand looked at things that were personal to the band and what was going on immediately around us.”
As far as musical influences are concerned, the group were rarely tuned in to the sounds of their fellow proggers. “We never really listened to any of our contemporaries, not that I recall. For me it would be more like James Brown or things like that!” says Ray. “I listened to Charlie Parker. We listened to a lot of modern jazz, the American band Spirit, and Frank Zappa – Zappa was an influence, I have to say. Hot Rats was one of my favourite albums of that time,” Derek recalls. “We had such eclectic tastes and weren’t really interested in other bands labelled the same as us, although not for any particular reason,” says Ray. “Ray was classically trained on the violin, but we were both in pop bands in the late 60s,” says Derek. “R&B and soul were major factors in our upbringing and we loved that music, and Kerry was classically trained and considered Tchaikovsky a sort of mentor. Whatever was good we liked – ABBA or whatever – I don’t think we shut anything out.” “Those diverse backgrounds were also part of our secret,” reflects Ray, “Gary would play these kind of progressive, jazzy lines with a blues inflection, which made it quite unique, and the combination of all of us perhaps shouldn’t have worked but did.”
Displaying maybe some of Gentle Giant’s trademark precision and attention to detail, Ray Shulman isn’t about to give their 1975 album a completely uncritical ear. “Funnily enough, on Free Hand, some of it sounds a bit under-rehearsed to me. The next album, Interview, is a lot tighter playing wise. There are some loose bits on Free Hand, which kind of annoy me…” He won’t be drawn however on exactly what he might want to change. “All of it!” he exclaims initially, much to his compatriots’ amusement. “No, there are just some bits I hear now and go, ‘Hmm.’ It’s a great album, it’s just parts we could have done differently… and if I’d realised I would have commented at the time, but we didn’t have the time!” Minnear also recalls a missed opportunity, “One of my laments is the fact that the track Free Hand had a different ending live that Ray wrote – it was a much better ending than what I wrote on the album. Live Free Hand came over as a much more killer track when it went into this sort of interesting French waltz.” Derek, however, is unperturbed about any perceived weaknesses: “I’d rather do an Édith Piaf: ‘I regret nothing’ –  it was what it was,” he affirms. He is clear about something he particularly likes, though: “I think the beginning of Just The Same, with the finger snaps and the counterpoint piano and other instrumentation, that’s really clever. It’s pretty hard to hear where the downbeat is. Having dealt with many other bands [Shulman has worked in various record label executive roles over the last 30 years or so], there aren’t many who’d have started a song like that.”
Conversation moves over to Steven Wilson’s role in remixing and preparing the Dolby Atmos and 5.1 surround sound versions. It’s been a positive working relationship since 2014’s re-release of The Power And The Glory, as Ray explains: “He originally contacted me through my involvement with DVD and Blu-ray authoring, and asked if we still had the original tapes for In A Glass House, because that was the one he could really see sounding better. Unfortunately, I had to tell him that they had gone forever. On some albums, like with some of the Octopus mixes, he said that he really couldn’t make them sound much better than the master we had, because he’s enough of a fan and technocrat that he knows what’s achievable. He’s a fan and wanted to remix stuff and we were like, ‘Well, yeah, okay.’ We had talked about getting some 5.1 mixes previously but Kerry and I felt that we didn’t have the experience or equipment, so he came along at absolutely the right time. I think we’re probably among the least fussy of the artists he’s worked with. Other projects give him explicit notes after every mix and he’s on to version five or more before they master. What he brings to it and what his ears suggest really works and we’re always really chuffed by what he does. He lightens everything up and there’s more space around everything – I don’t know if that’s a technical feature or whether it’s just his ears… I think probably it’s just his ears. I don’t think we’re ever done more than two revisions, have we, Kerry?” “No, it’s just been one or two places where it would be nice to hear some specific things,” agrees Minnear, “but usually what he brings out is very sensitive to what we were doing. You just have to mention something and he’s quick to see what you mean and he gets it.” Ray chips in. “Yeah, tiny bits really, nothing major.” “He’s really nice to work with as well,” offers Minnear. For Gentle Giant and Wilson fans alike, Derek has some additional breaking news and a heartfelt plea. “Ray has been working with Steven on two other albums, which will be released in the next few months: The Missing Piece and Interview. Hopefully, people will like the Free Hand remix enough to generate further interest. I really wish we could get hold of In A Glass House because it was a milestone for the band – I would love Steven to work on that, it’s a really interesting album. No one seems to know where the multitracks went. Could Prog put out an APB for it, because we would really love to find it? The best thing we could ever do would be to remix it and make it sound like it should have sounded, because it was done under such bizarre circumstances that it really deserves it.” “Possibly check in a skip outside WWA’s offices in Mayfair first!” quips Ray. Alongside the Atmos and 5.1 versions there’s also a Blu-ray included with Free Hand with specially created visuals accompanying each track created by Derek’s son, Noah.
Derek shares some final thoughts; “Everyone’s done their best possible work on this and it shows. Our music has really stood up and more and more young musicians and fans have caught on to what we were doing 40-45 years ago. We’re not Led Zeppelin, we’re not Pink Floyd – for that to have happened is very heartening. To know that what we did has some legacy to it. What we did was authentic, we weren’t following anyone, and the fact that the audience has become much, much larger is the most bizarre thing – kids are listening to it and trying to play it – something for all of us to be proud of.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/on-reflection-gentle-giant-and-the-making-of-free-hand