Lisa Loeb - Snow Day / Taffy / Do You Sleep / Waiting For Wednesday

If someone brings up Lisa Loeb, you will likely bring up her 1994 smash “Stay (I Missed You).” She seemingly came out of nowhere, with no record label to her name, to have a hit song off of the Reality Bites soundtrack. Many probably don’t know that Loeb had been working tirelessly to craft her skills in the industry and shape a sound all her own. In a time period of rising female singer/songwriters like Ani Difranco and Sarah McLachlan, Lisa wanted to stand out.
“I didn’t want to be too reactive after the success of ‘Stay,’ but I also didn’t just want to be pushed into the ‘acoustic’ corner. I didn’t want to be seen as a folk artist at all. My music sounded like a band and I felt like the lead singer of my band; just like some of my favorite male music artists like David Bowie or Elvis Costello. However, during that period, if a female artist went by just her name, most people assumed you were a folk artist. That’s why I wanted to make sure my band name was included on everything and why I wanted to be seen and heard playing guitar. I realized early on that if you want people to know something about you, you have to show them.” While promoting her single “Stay,” she would join Juan Patino in the studio to record new songs along with staples from her Liz and Lisa and Purple Tape days. What came out of the process would be a joyous blend of pensive indie-rock and a sweetness that only Loeb can provide. It’s a subtle sweetness, never overpowering but welcoming. First, let’s discuss the re-recordings of older songs in Loeb’s catalog.

A fantastic evolution comes from “Snow Day.” Lisa opts for a finger-style guitar intro that completely evokes the falling of snow. The electric guitars add brightness and warmth to the song. Lisa dives into the themes of loneliness and depression on the track. She continually calls back to someone being her medicine to this solemn mood. The depths of this sadness are fully displayed in the lines, “It’s a sinking feeling/ Pulls me through the seat of chairs/ When will you come rescue me/ Find solace, and then take me there?” There is an interesting juxtaposition of the upbeat sound of the music against the soft sadness of her lines. Because of this, the song feels like a mantra to keep moving forward as some days it's just “It’s a long ride.”

“Do You Sleep?” keeps the absolutely beautiful fade in guitar loop at the song's beginning. It maintains this dream-like feeling as you open up into this indie rock-driven world. The themes of love lost continue through Loeb’s questioning of how he’s managing since she’s gone, “Do you eat sleep do you breathe me anymore?/ Do you sleep do you count sheep anymore?/ Do you sleep anymore?/ Do you take plight on my tongue like lead?/ Do you fall gracefully into bed anymore?” Lisa is at her breaking point. She’s more than ready to cut ties and end this with this closed-off man. The song ends how it opens, now fading out on the loop. It’s like waking from this dream.

One of the best indie rock tracks on the album is the complete earworm “Taffy.” The punchiest track on the album, Loeb’s electric guitar-filled ditty swells you forward as it kicks off. The title is a nod to stretching the truth like candy machines stretch out taffy. Each verse sees Lisa bumping her friend til they bruise from all the tall tales this person is apt to tell. To match the slightly light yet charged tone, Loeb treats the chorus like busting someone’s chops than chastising, “Actually, bottom line/ You tell the truth sometimes/ Sometimes you tell the truth/ Like you’re pulling taffy.” It’s one of the best upbeat tracks on the record.

The album's second, more indie rock-forward song is “Waiting for Wednesday.” The title alludes to the day she’s waiting on to see if she gets her period. She goes through all the emotions of worrying about this pregnancy scare and wondering if her boyfriend will stay or run from her. She weaves back and forth between wanting to confront him on her cowardice and being petrified about the notion of his reaction. She ends this out readying her mind to tell him, “Now I’m waiting for Wednesday/ You’re back from out of town/ The West is dry/ Your mind is clear/ And I don’t want to be here.” I find this to be a very eye-opening take on the woman’s perspective on these scenarios, something that wasn’t as openly talked about in the early 90s.

From: https://medium.com/the-riff/tails-by-lisa-loeb-album-review-d07c3318acd5

Ghosts of Jupiter - The Undertaking

Ghosts of Jupiter is a psychedelic rock band based out of the Boston area, previously known as the Nate Wilson Group. Led by former Percy Hill keyboardist Nate Wilson (currently touring with moe.), the band features a loud, riff-heavy sound inspired by classic rock groups such as Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, and Cream. GOJ also features Guitarist Adam Terrell (Assembly of Dust), bassist Tommy Lada and drummer Tom Arey (Peter Wolf / J. Geils Band).
Since forming in 2011, Ghosts of Jupiter have released 3 full-length albums and an EP, in addition to an earlier album, Unbound, which was released under Nate Wilson Group in 2008. Ghosts of Jupiter’s 2011 self-titled album featured blues-inspired, heavy guitar riffs, showcasing the bands psych-era rock sound, reminiscent of the late 60’s and 70’s. The album was followed up in 2016 with the critically acclaimed release of The Great Bright Horses.
Ghosts of Jupiter’s 3rd and latest album Keepers of the Newborn Green demonstrates a sharply honed expansion of their varied sound, running the musical gamut between pastoral acid-tinged folk, mellotron and flute-laden prog explorations. The album features ethereal vocal melodies, steeped in lyrical mysticism, combined with a menacing dose of “Saucerful of Secrets” era Pink Floyd.
The ten songs featured on Keepers of the Newborn Green were mixed and engineered by bassist Tommy Lada, utilizing the band’s mobile and home recording equipment during 2020’s pandemic. Drummer Tom Arey supplied the basic tracks at the band’s studio in Allston MA, and all other elements were compiled remotely. Guitarist Adam Terrell recorded most of his parts from his home studio in VA, while Wilson worked on vocals, keyboards, guitar and flute tracks at his home in Worcester, MA.
Thematically the album reflects some of the unavoidable political upheaval of the past few years, in particular the 2nd track “Villians” juxtaposes earthy medieval folk sounds with a critique of the toxic segmented realities created by modern media. Other songs on the album, in particular “Imperium Waves,” and “On Bending Tides,” reflect the emotionally cathartic side effects that were born of the interruptions of our daily lives caused by the events of 2020. Track 7 “Sea of Madness” examines the influence of conspiracy theories, misinformation and anti-science sentiment that has made its way to the forefront of modern culture in recent years.  From: https://adkmusicfest.com/project/ghosts-of-jupiter/

Eva Quartet - Yova

Its origins, vocal techniques and raison d’être are in Bulgaria’s villages, but the thrilling Bulgarian female vocal ensemble sound had already been through an organizing, arranging and conducting process when it became famous via the Bulgarian Radio choir, which gained the title Le Mystère Des Voix Bulgares from the releases by Swiss musician and record label owner Marcel Cellier (who, incidentally, also brought the wonderful early, pre-kitsch recordings of Romanian panpipes virtuoso George Zamfir to the wider world).
The members of Eva Quartet, formed in 1995, were all members of that choir, but they came together through their mutual involvement in the Orthodox Church, and in their quartet eschewed the traditional folk costumes for black-dressed elegance and a presentation that moved them into a more classical context, while keeping the traditional-rooted uniqueness.
Minka is their first release since 2012’s The Arch, a collaboration recorded with the late and very much lamented Hector Zazou just before his untimely death in 2008. A couple of the songs are group arrangements, and the striking up-tempo "Yova" was composed by the group’s soprano Gergana Dimitrova. The rest of the fourteen pieces are arranged by others, including four by Dimitar Hristov, current director of the National Radio Folk Orchestra, and two, of beautiful Rhodope mountains material, by kaval master Kostadin Genchev. For all the tracks they have a conductor too.
This is clever, meticulously made music, as is that of a classical vocal ensemble, but the voices yearn, surge, linger, interlock, drone and counterpoint, and on the up-tempo pieces fizz and chatter, in ways that no Western-classical ensembles, even the progressive ones, match in style or sound. They choose to use vocal sounds that are more cultivated and largely not as edgy as those of the village singers, nor of most of the legendary Mystère singers of the past (who were recruited from the villages, and brought the material with them), but they still have that extraordinary and moving Bulgarian polyphonic sound.  From: https://www.rootsworld.com/reviews/minka-21.shtml

Black Sabbath - Sabbath Bloody Sabbath / A National Acrobat / Killing Yourself to Live / Looking for Today

Arguably Black Sabbath’s greatest album cover, let alone album, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath is a tour-de-force of a record that features more intricate arrangements than previously, enlisting the services of keyboards and orchestral dynamics. The band’s fifth opus is a self-produced affair, although considering the inner friction, fatigue and illegal substances I’m wondering how it was recorded at all. Even so, this eight-track platter saw the band accepted into the mainstream with several huge concerts.
Despite its overtly occult album cover, Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, for me anyway, lacks the murky gloom of previous records; only the chugging mid-section of the title track nods to cocaine-induced doom. Mind you, the title track is one of the band’s finest ever moments; Ozzy Osbourne’s vocals this time around are more tortured scream than sorrowful moan. Also, as expected, Bill Ward, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler are on fine form despite rumours that the guys were literally drying up.
Clearly the band were keener to experiment, enlisting the talents of keyboard magician Rick Wakeman (Yes) whose tinkering added more cosmic atmospheres to proceedings. The gothic strains of ‘A National Acrobat’ are bereft of any truly occult stuffiness; instead the band seem to have adopted a fresher sound with the guitars taking on a crisper approach.
Black Sabbath truly became masters of progressive rock and flirting with all manner of ludicrous dynamics to create instrumental wonders such as ‘Fluff’ and the truly monstrous ‘Killing Yourself To Live’. The latter cemented its place in metal history as one of the greatest songs ever written; it’s more a case of doomy rock ’n’ roll rather than out-and-out coffin dragger. There’s certainly something mystical about this spooky affair as Ward’s battering ram drums contradict the lavish presentation elsewhere as Iommi’s solos spiral off into the ether.
It would be unfair to deem Black Sabbath’s fifth opus as their lightest, but the intricacies displayed suggest a band moving away from the grit and grot of Birmingham’s smog-choked backstreets. ‘Sabbra Cadabra’ showcases more of the band’s boozy, bluesy melody as the synths drive hard in the distance, while Wakeman’s lush arrangements pepper the slow-motion dirge that is ‘Who Are You?’; Sabbath opting for more mellow passages of time although the world view is still weak, bleak and weary.
‘Looking For Today’ is more sprightly, holding hands with ‘Paranoid’ as a cool piece of polished rock, but the inclusion of flute and pensive acoustics puts pay to any chart success.
The album ends with the melancholic strains of ‘Spiral Architect’, which wafts on the breeze as an acoustic flutter before taking flight as a stirring masterpiece of a tune awash with synths and less threatening guitar chug. It’s a track that sums up Sabbath circa 1973 – the band more Bleary-Eyed Sabbath rather than Black Sabbath – but it’s an album that also proves there is more to this beast than meets the eye.  From: https://www.metalforcesmagazine.com/site/album-review-black-sabbath-sabbath-bloody-sabbath/

Richard & Linda Thompson - Smiffy's Glass Eye / Georgie On A Spree / Mole In A Hole

It’s probably going too far to say that Hokey Pokey is an overlooked gem in the Richard Thompson catalog. But this, the second of six studio albums released by Richard and Linda Thompson between 1974 and 1982, generally doesn’t receive the accolades reserved for their first and last. The first, I Want to See The Bright Lights Tonight and the last, Shoot Out The Lights deservedly are considered classics. More than classics, defining moments in British popular music of the era.
Hokey Pokey, by contrast, seems like the endearing younger sibling of Bright Lights, particularly when considered on the merits of it's title song. It’s a seemingly lightweight and upbeat number built around Thompson’s memories of the Italian ice cream vendors on the streets of suburban London in the fairly grim postwar years when he was growing up. Sung by Linda with Richard on backing vocals, it is laden with double entendres, driven by Timi Donald’s drums and Pat Donaldson’s propulsive bass guitar and punctuated by Richard’s slashing, pointilist guitar work.
The album, as David Suff’s liner notes on this 2004 remastered edition say, was Richard’s attempt at making a slightly lighter statement than the so-called doom and gloom he was already becoming known for. Thus “Hokey Pokey,” the jaunty “Smiffy’s Glass Eye” and “Georgie On A Spree,” and the closing track, a cover of Mike Waterson’s folksy satire of evangelical Christianity, “Mole In A Hole.”
But the illusion of Hokey Pokey as a change in tone is revealed as just that, an illusion, upon closer examination of even these upbeat-sounding songs. “Hokey Pokey” starts with an innocent picture of kids playing in the street, but soon devolves into convicts in prison and transvestites in the alley. “Smiffy” portrays the cruelty of children to one of their own who has a disability. The female protagonist of “Georgie” is left waiting by the phone for a lover who has probably abandoned her. And the good Christian fellow in “Mole” is called home much too early by his Lord.  From: https://agreenmanreview.com/music-2/richard-linda-thompsons-hokey-pokey/

10,000 Maniacs - These Are Days / Eden / Few And Far Between

10,000 Maniacs always excelled at cerebral folk-pop arrangements, gracefully blending stringed instruments, brass and percussion with lead singer Natalie Merchant’s rich, supple voice. But it wasn’t until a decade into their career together that the band created its masterpiece. Each of the tracks on 10,000 Maniacs’s swan song, Our Time in Eden, is like a miniature parable on the state of America, past and present. The album’s opening track, “Noah’s Dove,” is told from the perspective of someone still inside the garden, looking out—perhaps enviously—at a fallen angel: “You were the chosen one, the pure eyes of Noah’s Dove/Choir boys and angels stole your lips and your halo.” The allegory continues on the richly poetic “Eden,” in which Merchant recognizes mortal imperfection (read: “original sin”) and, having presumably eaten from the Tree of Knowledge, realizes that time is slowly devouring her time in the garden.
The bibilical imagery isn’t always as overt, though. Merchant is a gifted lyricist and her greatest work can be found among Eden’s 13 tracks. She’s concerned with both the present (her Utopian ideal) and the past (her idealized memory): “These Are Days,” “Few & Far Between” and “If You Intend” all deal with seizing the moment, acknowledging and making peace with the past and making the choice to simply live, respectively, while tracks like “How You’ve Grown” and “Stockton Gala Days” nostalgically and reluctantly address the singer’s past. Merchant can conjure a place and time with ease; she seemingly picks her words carefully but they fall from her mouth as if by chance, like they suddenly came to her as she stood there in front of the microphone in the recording booth: “That summer fields grew high with foxglove stalks and ivy…Emerald green like none I have seen apart from dreams that escape me.”
One of Eden’s most striking moments is the lush “Circle,” in which Merchant twists the traditional meaning of the titular symbol, envisioning it as a womb, a maze (“A terrible spiral to be lost in”) and the face of a temptress. There are a few obligatory tales of morality, including “Tolerance,” “Candy Everybody Wants,” in which Merchant’s cynicism is juxtaposed with crisp guitars, shiny horns and bright melodies, and “I’m Not the Man,” which finds Merchant narrating as a black man falsely accused of murder and sentenced to death. Ominous bassoons give the song its foreboding sense of helplessness and despair, and Merchant aptly ends the album with the rhetorical question: “Who struck this devil’s deal?” It’s a fitting close to an album that takes its listeners on a journey from the exile of Eden to a frontier-era America (“Gold Rush Brides”) and back again, never once doubting that it is indeed possible to return to the garden.  From: https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/10000-maniacs-our-time-in-eden/

The Eyes of Mind - Dream Life / She Only Knows

Another dose of giddy psychedelic revivalism from Greg Shaw’s LA stable. Produced by Mark Wirtz (whose credits in the genre’s original era include Keith West’s Tomorrow, a legendary British psych band), the quartet takes the Edwardian flower power route path down the paisley road. Guitarist Jamie Phelan has a pleasant, fragile voice; the Eyes avoid slavish re-creation in favor of a subtler melodic evocation of the innocence and positivity of ’60s pop.  From: https://trouserpress.com/reviews/eyes-of-mind/ 

 

Black Mountain - Live Freak Valley Festival 2022

 Black Mountain - Live Freak Valley Festival 2022

 

 Black Mountain - Live Freak Valley Festival 2022 - Part 2

 

“So, how was touring with Coldplay?” That’s the answer Black Mountain’s guitarist/co-vocalist Stephen McBean gives when asked what their least favourite interview question is (future interviewers take note), although, as bandmate Jeremy Schmidt explains, it’s “far enough in the distance now that it’s not so forward in people’s minds.”
The three of us are talking a day before the Canadian prog-rock five piece’s first ever New Zealand show at the Great South Pacific Tuning Fork, sitting on an outdoors bench on a sunny Auckland afternoon. The two band members are only too happy to discuss a range of topics, from side-projects to streaming.
The band have come to New Zealand for the first time on the wings of their fourth album, IV, an ambitious offering packed with classic rock references, both sonically and in its straightforward title. When I ask whether they were wary of choosing a title with connections to what many people see as untouchable rock albums, Schmidt instead confirms their ambitions.
“That’s exactly why we chose it. It’s a lineage that we like. And it was sort of brought up as a bit of a lark, like ‘Oh, well it’s the fourth record, we should call it IV, probably not gonna have a chance to do that again’.”
As a worthy side note, “toying with all that stuff” apparently briefly involved, among other things, the working title OS4. “Yeah that was a stupid one,” laughs McBean, while Schmidt clarifies, “The variations seemed amusing to us for like, about a day or two…”
While this is Black Mountain’s first time in Aotearoa, McBean’s other outfit, Pink Mountaintops visited in 2012. They are just one of many side projects linked to one or more of the prolific band members.
“Pink Mountaintops and Black Mountain, at the beginning, were kind of essentially born out of the same band, and those first two records, some of that stuff could have been on either record, it was just kind of what we recorded,” says McBean, who devoted a lot of time to Pink Mountaintops in the six-year gap between IV and Black Mountain’s previous album, 2010’s Wilderness Heart.
In this time, keyboardist Schmidt was also working on his own solo project, Sinoia Caves, with which he debuted IV track Mothers Of The Sun. “That was like an old song that we had worked on years ago and really didn’t want so see it fall by the wayside, and I knew that just suggesting we go back and work on something old was not going to be terribly appealing to everyone, so I went and worked on it. We always liked it, the song had a great riff, but it seemed like a jam that just sort of… wore its welcome out. I did a vocoder version of it with my solo project Sinoia Caves… I knew all my bandmates would be there, so that was sort of a trick.”
“They all inform each other in different ways,” adds McBean. “You Can Dream was a Pink Mountaintops song that I was playing live, and I was kind of like, well, if there’s more keyboards in Black Mountain it would make more sense.”
In review, the band are often described as drawing heavily on classic ’70s music, but they “don’t live in a vacuum,” as Schmidt puts it. “People always say that old music was way better,” says McBean, “but it’s just ‘cause you don’t hear all the garbage. There’s definitely a certain thing that was happening then because it was the first time it was happening.
You can never return to that, unless the world explodes and we start again.”
This talk of time differences leads me to inquire about a hot topic in the music industry: How they feel about streaming. “Since forever you’re trying to get your music out there, whether people are dubbing it on cassette tapes and stuff, and it’s always been the record labels that are complaining about that killing music.” says McBean.
“It kinda sucks that now it’s… gotten to a point where it creates music as a… can of pop, or whatever. If you spend ten bucks on a record when you’re thirteen, that could be the only record you’re gonna have for that month and you’re gonna damn try your hardest to like that record ‘cause it’s yours, whereas [now] you’re like, “err, I don’t really care for the first 30 seconds, this record sounds like an ambient record,” and go seek something else.”
“Bands I think are fine, because more people come to your shows when you tour and people buy merch and stuff, but sometimes it’s a bit of a shame that, well it’s the same with film, that the people behind the scenes are getting slowly pushed out of the financial equation, whether it be the producers or the arrangers… The Beatles were obviously amazing but without George Martin it would have been a bit of a different game.”  From: https://tearaway.co.nz/interview-black-mountain-aotearoa/

 

The Amorphous Androgynous - The Witchfinder

Just why this deeply trippy album gets such a negative write-up from various progarchives contributors is something of a mystery to this writer, because this is actually rather wonderful. Released in 2005, this was the fourth album issued under the Amorphous Androgynous moniker adopted by Gary Cobain and Brian Dougans, a London-based duo perhaps better known to some as both the popular underground dance act Future Sounds Of London and the compilers of several volumes of the excellent 'A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind' series of compilation albums. Despite their background in dance music however, the twosome obviously have a deep fondness for a wide variety funk, rock, jazz and folk-based 1960's and 1970's psychedelia, and 'Alice In Ultraland' is an impressive testament to that love. Skillfuly blending dance elements, woozy beats and ambient washes with proggy instrumental flourishes and a dazzling array of psychedelic sound effects, this arguably ranks as the finest of all Amorphous Androgynous albums, though die-hard prog-rockers may wince at some of the album's more 'contemporary' elements. But it's their loss. From the opening strains of the blissful opener 'The Emptiness Of Nothing', to the cosmic grandeur of stand-out track 'All Is Harvest' and the neon-coloured keyboard washes that pulse throughout 'The World Is Full Of Plankton', this lovingly-crafted slice of neo-psychedelia rarely lets up, sweeping the listener along on a kaleidoscopic sonic journey brought to full life by the diamond-sharp production. Even the album's sleeve manages to allude to the clever crossbreeding of hazy sixties ideals and 21st century cool, with an EMI stereo label cunningly placed in the corner for true authenticity.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=22795 

Yaelokre - Harpy Hare

Harpy Hare is the first song released by Filipino-Icelandic folk music artist Keath Ósk under the name Yaelokre. It was released as a single on January 4, 2024, and later included as a track on Yaelokre's debut album, Hayfields.
Harpy Hare is a song based on a popular clapping game in Felicity that in turn is based on the fable of the Harpy, the Hare and the Hound. The game is played with three or more people and end up as a game of hide and seek.
Yaelokre has said on one of their twitter spaces that this song is about the Bellringer, but they haven't disclosed in what way yet.
Harpy Hare as described by Yaelokre: "Harpy Hare is a rendition of one of Meadowlark’s common fairy tales; “The Harpy, the Hare, and the Hound”. It has many alterations and depictions. Commonly known as a rhyme, or a children’s poem. Its a verse kids say during a game of Hopscotch. While also being one of the ‘easiest’ plays to perform. Though in spite of its prevalence, barely anyone could remember its truth and origin. It was a song the Storyteller refuses to sing once more for it was claimed, but misunderstood."  From: https://the-yaelokre.fandom.com/wiki/Harpy_Hare

R.E.M. - Shiny Happy People

"Shiny Happy People" is described as an accessible and optimistic pop song. It contains waltz-time strings, "rippling" guitars and "hippy" lyrics, and guest vocals from Kate Pierson. Pierson said she felt the song was an "homage" to her band, the B-52s. R.E.M. had already recorded the song when she arrived, and gave her no direction, telling her "do whatever you want".
R.E.M.'s lead singer, Michael Stipe, described "Shiny Happy People" as a "really fruity, kind of bubblegum song". Pierson interpreted the line "throw your love around" to mean "to share your love and grow your love with others. It's not mindless at all. It's a song about spreading love."
According to some reports, the phrase "shiny happy people" was taken from Chinese propaganda posters used after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. However, no statements from the band members have been found to support this. Pierson said the song was "supposed to be shiny and happy ... So I can't imagine that R.E.M. was thinking at the time, 'Oh, we want this song to be about Chinese government propaganda.'"
The accompanying music video for "Shiny Happy People" was directed by American film and music video director Katherine Dieckmann. She was asked by the band to direct the video, and drew some inspiration from a scene in the 1948 movie Letter From an Unknown Woman by German director Max Ophuls. In this scene, a couple goes to a carnival with a railroad car attraction. Rotating landscape backdrops roll past their "window", and eventually we learn they're propelled by an old man pedaling a stationary bicycle behind the scenes. Dieckmann wanted to re-create this situation, using a large children's painting for the moving mural. Stipe suggested her to contact a friend that was schoolteacher, having her fifth-grade class create the backdrop.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shiny_Happy_People

The Fiery Furnaces - Tropical Iceland

In a grand move to restore liner notes to their informative zenith, the inky little paper accompanying Gallowsbird's Bark offers a handful of (supposedly) autobiographical clues to The Fiery Furnaces' raucous brother/sister gambol: "Matthew encouraged Eleanor to come down in the basement to make their first Fiery Furnaces music together. Maybe he should have hit and stabbed and smashed her. But he just swore." Despite some implied tongue-in-cheekiness (and the obvious fact that relentless sibling posturing is an awfully exhausted conceit right now, even if these kids really are related), it's a surprisingly apt and insightful peep into the bright blue heart of The Fiery Furnaces' blaze: violence, dark rooms, boy/girl handholding, and big selfless compromises all vie for attention on this debut, a feisty blues-rock barn-dance with enough pings and yelps to keep everyone's little hands curled tightly into fists.
The Furnaces' electric guitar, drums, sparingly applied bass, and freewheeling piano riffs recollect everything from Muddy Waters to the Rolling Stones, and Gallowsbird's Bark plays like a big, half-drunken romp through golden-era rock 'n' roll-- airy and thrilling and shifty as hell. Lyrics mostly consist of quasi-rambling witticisms that somehow come together in the delivery; Eleanor Friedberger's brash, oddly assured warble (the evenly hollered "I pierced my ears with a three-hole punch/ I ate three dozen donuts for lunch") is lovingly reminiscent of the kinds of semi-absurdist snickers that Dylan got away with in the late 60s (check the baffling-but-somehow-not credo, "The sun isn't yellow/ It's chicken," from "Tombstone Blues"). Likewise, the duo's spare, confrontational guitar riffing is grating only insofar as it jars; blues-driven, feral, and scribbling all over the page, Bark's sixteen tracks house a mess of weird, undulating musical bits that are hugely intriguing despite not always making a whole shitload of sense.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/3271-gallowsbirds-bark/

Cult of Scarecrow - Rainbows and Unicorns

Even though Cult of Scarecrow is a relatively new band with just one EP prior to their debut proper, most of the guys behind this moniker are all veterans from the Belgian metal scene. Starting out as Dead Serious before they turned into Die Sinner Die. This was all way back in the early nineties. Fast forward to 2017 when the troupe got back together and re-baptized themselves as Cult of Scarecrow on the base of the second song they had newly written together again . A self-titled EP with four songs was the result. Now three years and a world pandemic later, they have construed their debut full length under this new banner.
Stylistically, they’re not so easy to pigeonhole. There’s a wee bit of thrash in there still from their yesteryears, but mainly this is simply nineties styled heavy metal with a lot of groove, grunge and a touch of old school doom metal. Not that any of these tales are actually really slow, it’s more the rumbling Black Sabbath-like bass that will remind you of the doom of yore. That is one of the main differences with the EP which adhered much more to doom’s typical slow-mo tempo.
This difference will in part come from the new drummer Nico Regelbrugge who likes to kick up more of a racket than his more stoner oriented predecessor. Maybe not doomy per se either, but the vocals for sure ingrain the songs with a sense of sinister brooding as their lead singer Filip De Wilde sounds like a Flemish version of Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley, which brings in this grunge aspect from way back in the nineties.  From: https://www.grimmgent.com/albumreviews/cult-of-scarecrow-tales-of-the-sacrosanct-man/

Malicorne - Une Fille Dans le Désespoir

Gabriel Yacoub and Marie Yacoub formed Malicorne on 5 September 1973 (naming it after the town of Malicorne in north-western France, famous for its porcelain and faience). For two years, Gabriel had been a member of Alan Stivell's band, playing folk-rock based on Breton music. He sang and played acoustic guitar, banjo and dulcimer with Stivell, appearing on his 1972 À l'Olympia breakthrough (live) album and his 1973 Chemins de Terre (studio) album, before leaving at the end of Summer 1973 to form his own band, intending to popularise French music the way Stivell had popularised Breton music. Since several of their albums are called simply Malicorne it had become the custom to refer to them by number, even though no number appears on the cover at all.
Released in October 1974, Malicorne 1 consisted of the four founder members, that is the Yacoubs, Hughes de Courson and Laurent Vercambre. They use a combination of electric guitar, violin, dulcimer, bouzouki and vocals. The four musicians, between them, could play twelve instruments. Their first four albums (one album released each Fall from 1974 to 1977) consisted of mostly traditional French folk songs, with, per album, one or two songs written by Gabriel Yacoub, one or two instrumentals and a few music and lyrics borrowed from some Canadian versions of the songs and instrumentals. They occasionally sang group harmonies a cappella. On Malicorne 4, they were lastingly joined by a fifth member, Olivier Zdrzalik, on bass, percussion and vocals.
L'Extraordinaire Tour de France d'Adélard Rousseau, dit Nivernais la Clef des Cœurs, Compagnon Charpentier du Devoir (1978) was very much a concept album, concerning a guild craftsman's travels around France, with an implied spiritual exploration. It is perhaps the most exciting of their albums, with some gothic and prog-rock elements in the music. Like their next album Le Bestiaire, it consists mostly of songs by Gabriel, with a few by Zdrzalik and de Courson. The range of sounds of these albums is huge. Some sections are clearly classical music, but electronic wizardry and bagpipes also appear. Their appeal goes beyond the French-speaking world, and still gives them a dedicated following. All of their albums but one (Les Cathédrales de l'industrie) are available on CD. In 1978, Malicorne released their first compilation album Quintessence spanning their first four "classic" albums and including their non-album track "Martin" (previously released only as a single in early 1975).  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malicorne_(band) 

Dillard & Clark - Lyin' Down The Middle

Dillard & Clark was a country rock collaboration between ex-Byrds member Gene Clark and bluegrass banjo player Doug Dillard. Their collaboration began in 1968, shortly after Clark departed the Byrds and Dillard left the Dillards. They were considered part of the Southern California country-rock scene in the late 1960s, along with Poco, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Linda Ronstadt, Michael Nesmith and the First National Band, Rick Nelson & The Stone Canyon Band, and the latter-day Byrds.
Their first album The Fantastic Expedition of Dillard & Clark was released in 1968 on A&M. Recording personnel included Clark (lead vocals, acoustic guitar, harmonica), Dillard (banjo, fiddle, guitar), Bernie Leadon (vocals, lead guitar, bass, banjo), David Jackson (bass), Don Beck (mandolin, resonator guitar), with guests Chris Hillman (mandolin), Byron Berline (fiddle), and Andy Belling (harpsichord). Most of the songs were written by Clark, Dillard, and Leadon. Drummer Michael Clarke assisted with a few early live performances. The album is praised by connoisseurs for its iconic quality and innovative character, at the intersection of country rock and americana. 
The duo's only other album, Through the Morning, Through the Night, was released in 1969. Donna Washburn (guitar, vocals) joined the group, and Bernie Leadon departed to co-found the Eagles (in 1971). Further band members were Berline, Jackson, and Jon Corneal (drums). Leadon, Hillman, and Sneaky Pete Kleinow (pedal steel guitar) made guest appearances. After his work with Dillard, Gene Clark resumed a solo career. Dillard kept performing as Doug Dillard & The Expedition for a short time, but soon pursued his own solo career. Byron Berline went on to form the Country Gazette with guitarist/bassist Roger Bush.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dillard_%26_Clark 

Farafi - Moussou Teke

Born on the streets of India, Farafi is a nomadic duo whose music is based on authentic vocals and percussive sound. Joy and Darlini have drawn inspiration from their travels to create an eclectic collection of sounds inspired by traditional African, Middle Eastern, Indian and Western contemporary music. Their songs vary from heartfelt to upbeat dancing styles. Farafi sing in their own language as well as several African languages, showcasing limitless ways of creating, to reach the depths of all humans. 

Darlini: We met in the state of Goa on the West coast of India, in a little town called Arambol. We first sang acapella, just the two of us. In Arambol, people meet easily and come to create spontaneously. Over time a vibrant platform of international artists joined in and brought their colors to the project. 

Joy: The friends I made in this magical place are still very close to me. In fact, many of them are featured on this album and continue to support us throughout this adventure. 

Darlini Singh Kaul and Joy Tyson were raised by musical families. Right from their childhood, they were keen on visiting unfamiliar worlds both in real life and their imagination. Darlini was born in London, with Indian-French roots. She went to a French conservatoire, later on, she studied theater and dance in the UK. Joy, whose family comes from Eastern Europe, grew up in Clearwater, Florida. When she was 17, she moved to the West Coast to raise dairy goats and study sustainable living in a community in California. 
The two women were united by their shared love for African music. From their early beginnings in Goa, they were surrounded by an enthusiastic community of musicians who explored different music traditions, such as Indian classical, Turkish and Arabic maqam. Of course, they were inspired by Western jazzcats as well. When it came to naming their band, the duo drew inspiration from the West African Bambara term ‘Farafina’, meaning the ‘land of the black skin.’ In addition to their own, wildly creative ‘farafish’ language, African vernaculars are key to Farafi’s way of singing. 

Joy: We resonate with the phonetics of Zulu, Xhosa, Swahili and Yoruba. We often translate English lyrics to multiple languages, and then look at what phrasing fits best for what we have to say. 

Darlini: When I was a kid, I felt limited by English and French. As I started to sing African songs, a language I had no intellectual reference to, it made me look at the notion of invented languages as a tool to compose purely on a phonetic aspect. This allowed me to express feelings that were beyond a language and sing straight from my heart. 

The heart of Farafi is a duo, with both women singing. Joy plays the cajon, Moroccan krakebs and frame drum, Darlini the West African ngoni, the kashaka and Indian ghungroos. They have exhilarating percussion tracks such as Ey budida and enchanting acoustic ballads like Sembere. Farafi can extend to as much as a live eight-piece band, creating songs like the female warrior chant Djanya Wofu, an unadulterated blues power.
Having traveled around the world, now that they consider Berlin their new home, they teamed up with local label Piranha Records – Kreuzberg’s outpost to send messages from the global underground. After two official bootlegs, the time was right to release their debut album. Calico Soul is the poetry of two free-spirited women, joining their voices together with a world-bound, cosmopolitan sound. Calico Soul is a timeless message of hope, togetherness and freedom. 

From: https://www.piranha.de/piranha_arts_ag/farafi 

The Black Crowes - MTV Spring Break 1993

It was the turn of the decade and the rock world needed something fresh to break through the glut of highly produced hair metal / hard rock that was flooding the airwaves. Though grunge would eventually be the force to overturn rock radio as we knew it a year later, The Black Crowes eventually became the breakout band in 1990 that started to show there was finally a fresh appetizer on the menu. This strong five-piece rock band emerged as a force with their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker — a record that embraced early era rock's soulful R&B influences while bringing back a Rolling Stones-esque swagger for a new generation.
The group started six years earlier with brothers Chris and Rich Robinson forming Mr. Crowe's Garden in 1984 while still teenagers. The group went through a series of other members in the years leading up to settling on a lineup that would eventually playing on Money Maker and the changes didn't stop after the album was recorded. Guitarist Jeff Cease played on the record, but eventually gave way to Marc Ford who would handle duties on their second record. Johnny Colt played bass on four albums, while drummer Steve Gorman was the other constant through the band's entire first era prior to their 2019 reunion.
The early years provided some challenges with a still underage Rich Robinson having to hide out in the car at times before being allowed to come into clubs to play the shows. But eventually George Drakoulias, a staffer at Rick Rubin's Def American label, caught the group playing a New York show and was so impressed that he not only helped to get them their label deal with Def American, he also stepped in to produce Shake Your Money Maker.
Splitting time between Atlanta's Soundscape Studios and three different studios in Los Angeles, the now newly renamed Black Crowes laid out their bluesy yet Southern rock inspired record throughout the course of 1989. Speaking of the name change, Chris Robinson told Q Magazine, "We were really into the Dream Syndicate, the Rain Parade, Green on Red — all those Paisley Underground bands, so we wanted a psychedelic name. When we changed, we kept the Crowes because that's what people called us anyway."
The sessions also provided some stellar assistance, with The Allman Brothers' Chuck Leavell helping out on piano and organ, noted backing singer Laura Creamer helping to accentuate some of the record's chicken skin-raising moments and a young engineer named Brendan O'Brien chipping in on "a potpourri of instruments." The Shake Your Money Maker album arrived Feb. 13, 1990, but it wasn't an instant hit. "Jealous Again" was the first song released from the record, but it didn't catch fire immediately. Though the song's muscular opening riffs and killer piano backing are fan favorites now, it was a slow build until the track eventually climbed to No. 5 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
However, people did take notice, picking out influences ranging from '70s-era Rolling Stones to making their Georgia connection to Southern Rock roots. “What Southern rock became is not what the Allmans started out to be. They were creating a new Southern sound. And what we do now is what I’d like Southern rock to become," Chris Robinson told Rolling Stone, adding, “But there is a lot of the South in us. I don’t know exactly what it is. Maybe it’s just that we’re a little closer to the ground. We have no pretensions about what we do. We’re just a little earthier. We do things a little slower, more casual.”  From: https://loudwire.com/black-crowes-shake-your-money-maker-album-anniversary/

Moby Grape - S/T - Full album

01 - Hey Grandma
02 - Mr. Blues
03 - Fall On You
04 - 8 05
05 - Come In The Morning
06 - Omaha
07 - Naked, If I Want To
08 - Someday
09 - Ain't No Use
10 - Sitting By The Window
11 - Changes
12 - Lazy Me
13 - Indifference 

Moby Grape’s career is “Murphy’s Law’ in action, so much so it transcends other archetypal stories of  fledgling rock and roll bands for whom ‘what could go wrong will go wrong.” The bungling all began even before its eponymous debut album was released fifty-five years ago when the group itself committed the cardinal sin of signing away rights to their creations (as well as their comically cryptic name). Not long after, well-laid but intrinsically unsound promotional plans of their record company gave way to even more unforeseen personal adversity, all of which was in stark contrast to the unflagging confidence the quintet radiated in the baker’s dozen versatile performances on their first album. 
It’s a mature piece of work that belies the group’s abbreviated history together: they had been formed but six months prior to entering a recording studio. The efficiency and productivity of recording Moby Grape belied everything that otherwise went awry around it: the project took just six weeks, and $11,000 to record all thirteen tracks (while another song, “Rounder” was also recorded, but without lyrics or vocals). The end result is a gem from start to finish, as ebullient as it is seamless in its composite of folk, country, blues, and rock. And the psychedelic overtones hearken to the ‘Summer of Love’ in which the album was issued, yet without dating the music at all. 
As fully in evidence on the very first cut, “Hey Grandma,” the unflagging exuberance permeating this record is comparable to that zest pervading the work of none other than the Beatles when they hit their stride on A Hard Day’s Night. Besides containing original songs from each of the five members, and in addition to inventive group harmony singing on cuts including “Fall On Me” and the various lead vocals are as distinctive in their own way as the individual styles of lead guitar work by Peter Lewis (finger-picking) and the aforementioned Miller (staccato blues). Acoustic and electric instruments mesh as completely as the counterpoint and contrast of the lead and background vocals on “805.” 
Meanwhile, Skip Spence—one-time drummer for Jefferson Airplane and collaborator in founding the band alongside manager (and future business nemesis) Matthew Katz—inspired the band early on in more ways than one: his enthusiasm was unflagging early on–most clearly in evidence during the effervescent “Omaha”–but also in the way his guitar work locked in with drummer Don Stevenson and bassist Bob Mosely. In addition to their other contributions, the natural solidity of the rhythm section also maintained the fleet thrust of the ensemble: the changes the group navigates during “Indifference,” in addition to the instrumental ride-out, hints at the collective predilection to improvise on stage (see 2010’s Moby Grape Live). 
Clearly, Moby Grape’s was a wealth of talent in which nothing of value went to waste, at least on this first LP. In the form of carefully-tailored arrangements like that of “Come In The Morning,” this band proffered tracks with as much (or more) hit potential as other releases of the time by, say, the Buckinghams or the Association. But Columbia Records’ simultaneous issue of five singles from the long-player (plus an over-the-top release party) was an effort of unprecedented hype at a time such publicity engendered skepticism in the cognoscenti, influencers of the era both the band and its label were eager to win over. 
Ameliorating the situation somewhat, at least early on, was the designation of David Robinson as their producer for the debut album–he of studio work with jazz-icon-in-the-making Herbie Hancock, the Pointer Sisters, Santana, and Taj Mahal. But a further faux pas in the form of a misconceived press party, plus the ignominy of band member’s arrests soon after the record came out only followed some outrage over famed photographer Jim Marshall’s cover photo: Stevenson was flipping the finger and not all that surreptitiously. In the end, the not inconsiderable lengths to which the prestigious record company strove to win a bidding war to sign the band were effectively squandered and the momentum behind Moby Grape the band never matched that within Moby Grape the LP.
In fact, with the possible exception of Buffalo Springfield’s own debut, few if any other contemporary albums of the time could measure up to this one in terms of the consistent quality of material and musicianship (and the latter suffers tremendously for its audio quality). It’s superior in comparison to early efforts by peers including the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane and, strictly in terms of debut albums, this self-titled record also transcends the initial release by The Doors, often lauded as the greatest of its kind during its (or any) epoch of popular music. 
The Grape’s performance at the Monterey Pop Festival might’ve turned the tide of ill fortune, but instead only continued it. The quintet’s opening of Saturday’s festivities was rescheduled by the promoters in response to the aforementioned Katz’ outlandish demands for the film footage of the performance to be included in the movie of the festival. As a result, the winning and infectious assets of the Grape’s tight set were lost to most attendees except the earliest arrivals in an assembly that would later bear witness to the legendary theatrics of the Who and Jimi Hendrix (on which Sunday the band was originally set to play). 
As detailed in various written accounts of the Moby Grape saga, but most comprehensively in Cam Cobb’s 2018 book What’s Big and Purple and Lives in the Ocean?, that egregious mistiming was a precursor of more unfortunate events as well. The record company hurried the fivesome back into the studio, again with Rubinson, but, at his request, in New York City instead of the more amenable West Coast environs that nurtured the ensemble’s congregation. Outside their collective comfort zone, Moby Grape lost its shared sense of focus both inside and outside the studio and, based on wildly divergent personal and professional circumstances,  the tightly-knit amalgam of versatile talent that gave birth to the eclectics of the first LP dissipated in the sessions for WOW/Grape Jam. (In an instance of woeful irony, the album was nominated for a Grammy in 1969 based on its surreal cover art). 
Columbia’s marketing wisdom compelled the set to be sold for just over the price of a single LP. But the damage had already been done to Moby Grape’s reputation and integrity because, when the sophomore work came out less than a year after its predecessor, memories of the early debacle(s) remained fresh. By that time, even as the initial LP had sold well for such an inaugural release, Skip Spence went his own somewhat errant way (not wholly by choice) during the course of the coming months: he was able to complete his own fairly famous solo album called Oar. Due primarily to health issues, he was then only intermittently to ever work again with the four others in the wake of the Big Apple fiasco, et. al.
The over-produced stylistic morass into which Rubinson and the musicians descended on Wow afflicted even the sole tune to recall the penetrating intimacy of the prior effort. As included in the splendid Listen My Friends anthology, the alternate take of “Bitter Wind” is Mosley’s vivid tune in its purest form, a foreshadowing of his later prolific contributions on two subsequent records, each of which is outstanding on their own terms. Variations on the themes set out on the debut recordings as a quartet resulted in the excellent Americana-styled Moby Grape ’69 and, later that very same year, Truly Fine Citizen (the latter in Nashville with Dylan’s producer of the era, Bob Johnston). 
Various management snafus continued, however, most seriously damaging of which was Katz’ assembly of a faux road entourage. The end result of such errant machinations was exactly the kind of misperceptions both the musicians and the record company had rightfully wanted to avoid but nevertheless fell prey to, despite all their (scant?) best intentions. The lack of a clear-cut and widely-appealing image was (and is) anathema to the widespread popularity this extraordinary band deserved. But in testament to the fundamental chemistry at work within Moby Grape, the various members have soldiered on in a variety of forms since (often under different names), actually reuniting its original personnel lineup for 20 Granite Creek on Reprise Records in 1971. Meantime, the band has performed live sporadically–oftentimes in later years following Spence’s passing with his son Omar– including on special occasions such as the Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Celebration in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park in September 2007.
It was later that year the group’s five original albums, appended with bonus material, were reissued by Sundazed Records, home of the aforementioned collection of concert content (issued coincidentally with the previously-reference Legacy Music compilation). But, in a continuation of ongoing legal skirmishes initiated by Katz (including the very rights to the band’s name), the first two were withdrawn from the marketplace in less than a month. Nevertheless, they are worth searching out if only because, in the case of the first, the five additional cuts illuminate the essential strengths of the original personnel: the tight muscular musicianship comes into greater focus on the instrumental of “Rounder,” while the full-throated group harmonies are even more prominent on this take of “Looper.”
Ironically, the aggregate of deterrence to a bonafide breakthrough this fivesome encountered renders all the more stellar that vintage work of more than a half-century. It’s a testament to its potency that the mythology arising around the record (and its creators) does nothing to taint, much less undermine, the incandescent power of Moby Grape.  From: https://glidemagazine.com/276607/55-years-later-revisiting-moby-grapes-commanding-self-titled-debut-album/

Xenia Rubinos - Help

Do you remember when your interest in music and recording was sparked?

I was always listening to music in my house. My dad was from Cuba. My mom is from Puerto Rico. They both liked salsa music and traditional folk music from Puerto Rico. My dad loved to dance, so any excuse that he had to dance salsa, we were dancing salsa. My dad was also a classical music fan. He wanted me to be an opera singer and a classically-trained pianist, which is what he always wanted to do. But I was really into Mariah Carey, and I wanted to be her. I was seven years old and would spend the entire day learning all the lyrics to every song. I didn't even know what she was talking about, or what most of the words meant, but I would study them. My mom got me a karaoke machine and tapes of Mariah Carey songs. I would sing to these, and then I figured out that I could tape myself. As I got a little older, around 12, I started writing my own songs on this machine. I would take two blank tapes and layer voices, my little keyboard, and beats on it. I found some of these cassettes last week. They're still somewhat playable. It's wild. I was making beats. I didn't even know what I was doing. I didn't have any formal training. Music was something for myself; my own private space.

Were you bouncing these tapes back and forth, doing sound on sound?

Yeah, that's exactly what I was doing. By the end, there was a thick layer of noise on top of everything. I had a Casio keyboard that had built-in speakers that came with some pre-programmed beats. I'd play the beats and spit on top of it. Or I'd get a pencil and play the table or the bed frame, and I'd use the karaoke mic to record it.

I'd love to hear some of that!

It's intense! There are some that are more experimental, where I'm doing what I think is jazz. There's one that's me clearly trying to figure out this pop music thing. The lyrics are, "I came down here to bust a move." It's ridiculous. It's so embarrassing.

But you were a kid! It's supposed to be ridiculous.

I was 12. We might need to issue a re-master. [laughter] Get Heba Kadry [Tape Op #139] on the case and see if she could fix it!

It sounds like your parents were supportive of your musical endeavor.

They were very supportive and patient of the space that I needed to do my thing. My dad was paying for lessons early on, because he thought that I could be a child prodigy. Then he quickly realized that I was not interested. But when it came time to figure out what I was going to do after high school, I just wanted to move to New York. I grew up in Hartford, Connecticut, and I wanted to move to New York, meet other musicians, and learn how to do music. That wasn't an option. I'm first-generation born in the United States. My father escaped communism. He was a professor in Havana and came to the U.S., worked at a 7-11, and started all over again. My mom was the first person to graduate from university in her family. For me, the "no college" thing was not an option. I was like, "Okay, music school then." My dad was saying, "You'll never be able to do anything because you're too lazy. And also, you're old." He was thinking about that young, 6-year-old violinist vibe. That wasn't me! For both of my parents, it was important to give me the opportunities that they never had. That was their dream, to create this situation that was such a luxury for me to be able to say, "I'm going to study music," or to choose what I wanted to do. My mom took the approach of, "I'm not going to force you to do something else and then have you grow up and hate me."

How was your debut, Magic Trix, conceived?

Magic Trix came out of a period of time where I was urgently trying to play my music. I had moved to New York and was coming out of this jazz/composer scene. I would write music, I would write all my parts out, and then I would get people together to play it for me. I would never, myself, play it. I graduated from college and studied jazz composition; but, despite doing that, my physical writing of parts skills was not so great. I had varying degrees of success in getting my music to sound like what I wanted it to sound like, getting a band together to play it, and being able to rehearse them the way I wanted to. It was always an uphill battle to get my music played. A lot of the rhythms I was playing were easy to me, because I felt them in my body and wrote them naturally. I didn't think it was complicated. I didn't think it was something to argue about. All of my rehearsals would devolve into, "You wrote it like this, but I think it's like that." It was a nightmare to get to the point where the music sounded like what I had envisioned, and the players were confident in playing it. It was exhausting.

Eventually you did it all yourself?

I urgently needed to play. I got a [Boss] Loop Station. It was when Tune-Yards [Tape Op #88] first came out. I thought maybe this could be a way for me to make my music without other people. I also was shy about playing instruments that were not my voice in public. I was coming out of this very jazz-centric scene, where it's like, "Do you have the chops?" I started looping and playing keyboard. That accelerated everything. Some of the songs I started developing became Magic Trix. Then some of the songs, "Los Mangopaunos" and "Ultima," I had been playing with my instrumental group – more on a composer tip – became more developed songs. All of a sudden, I had all this music. I was sharing it with Marco, who had been playing with me all these years, and he said, "You should make a record. Record this." We made [Magic Trix] in my basement studio with this great engineer, Jeremy Lucas. It was very much live playing. It was my first time ever making a record. I had no idea what I was doing. Marco and I started our own little LLC to put out the record. A year later, Ba Da Bing Records, a small independent label in Brooklyn, re-issued it.

From: https://tapeop.com/interviews/152/xenia-rubinos 

The Rolling Stones - Monkey Man

 

In the mid-1970s, I became friends with a guy on my block, Steve, who was a couple of years older than me, played guitar (he would eventually be the guitarist for very popular Fresno new wave covers band Aqua Bob), and was enough of a Rolling Stones fan that he had a poster of Mick Jagger on his bedroom wall.
It was a poster for Ampex tapes, featuring a close-up of Mick doing his thing with a giant “AMPEX” in black letters below him. Only Steve had crossed out the “M” and the “X” so that the poster just said “APE.” Which teenage Jim always found pretty hilarious. Anyways, I think of that every time I hear “Monkey Man,” a very self-conscious piece of myth-making in the vein of “Sympathy For The Devil.”
“Monkey Man” opens with an ominous Bill Wyman bass line accompanied by equally unsettling piano tinkles by Nicky Hopkins and a Jimmy Miller tambourine, all of which lead into one of Keith Richards’ greatest rhythm guitar parts, a jumping and jiving riff that always seems like it’s on the verge of leaping out of your speakers and kicking the shit out of you.

I’m a fleabit peanut monkey
All my friends are junkies
That’s not really true

And it wasn’t, yet, as Keith hadn’t yet entered into full-blown junkiedom, though he’d probably dabbled by that time. (One of the quotes that comes up in nearly every book I’ve read about the Stones is from Anita Pallenberg, who pointed out that Keith dealt with his guilt about Brian Jones’s death by becoming Brian (though obviously Keith was made of sterner stuff, in case you haven’t noticed.) In any event, Mick continues, even more delighted in himself than usual:

I’m a cold Italian pizza
I could use a lemon squeezer
Could you do?

But, I’ve been bit, and I’ve been tossed around
By every she-rat in this town
Have you, babe?

Oh look, it’s another Robert Johnson reference! I’d honestly not put together how much Johnson was on Let It Bleed, outside of the cover of “Love in Vain” — which they infamously credited to “Woody Payne” until eventually Johnson’s estate sued. It was probably recorded around the same time that Led Zeppelin recorded “The Lemon Song,” in yet another case of great minds stealing from the same source. Meanwhile after Mick expresses that he’s a monkey man and is glad that the potential lemon-squeezer is a monkey woman, he continues shit-talking.

I was bitten by a boar
I was gouged, and I was gored
But I pulled on through

Yes, I’m a sack of broken eggs
I always have an unmade bed
Don’t you?

Well, I hope we’re not too messianic
Or a trifle too satanic
We love to play the blues

That last verse is, of course, just Mick fucking with people: a wink an a nod to the devilish image they’d been cultivating and darkness they’d been flirting with for a couple of years, and is delivered with Mick’s massive tongue firmly in his cheek, and wouldn’t even come close to being the last time he’d go down this road.
That said, this is all a warm-up for the main event, an absolutely thrilling instrumental break, where Keith turns his jumping jack riff and bounces it pretty much all over the place in a battle with Charlie Watts, who answers Keith with some big slams on his floor tom before overdubbing some slide guitar, or not as the case may be. In addition, Nicky Hopkins is all over this, and even takes a long piano solo while the guitars wheeze all around him. It’s finally cut off by Mick singing “I’m a monnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn-kayyyyyyyyyyyyyy . . . man” a couple of times in the sickest possible voice, literally Steve’s poster come to life.
After that, it’s Mick just screaming that he’s a “ma-ma-ma-monkey” in a shattered falsetto as Keith continues to dance with his guitar. The whole thing is equal parts ridiculous and awesome, and “Monkey Man” is one of those Stones songs that’s honestly so over-the-top I can actually see people hating it with a vengeance, but I come back every single time to how Keith and Charlie are playing off of each other, and that’s what does it for me.

From: https://medialoper.com/certain-songs-2053-the-rolling-stones-monkey-man/