Janis Joplin with Big Brother & The Holding Company - Down on Me / Summertime / Piece Of My Heart / Ball And Chain

Rhapsodic and cathartic, psychedelic music came roaring into existence in the mid-1960s. The style’s guitar-centric, anything-goes approach ushered in an era of extended solos, wild sound effects, ringing eardrums, and an unprecedented merging of influences – from American blues, jazz, folk, and rock to sounds culled from Africa, India, and other parts of the world. “Certainly drugs played a role – that’s way up front,” remembered Sam Andrew, co-guitarist in Big Brother and the Holding Company, one of San Francisco’s seminal psychedelic bands.*
In its earliest incarnation, Big Brother and the Holding Company performed as a four-piece, with Sam Andrew and James Gurley on electric guitars, Peter Albin on bass and acoustic guitar, and Dave Getz on drums. By 1966 this lineup had become the house band at San Francisco’s Avalon Ballroom, devoting most of its sets to long, exploratory instrumentals. During this period Andrew and Gurley immersed themselves in the recordings of John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, and Indian vina and sitar players. Gurley, often credited as the seminal psychedelic guitarist on the San Francisco scene, was especially impressed by Coltrane. “I thought if I could play a guitar like John Coltrane played the sax,” he explained, “it would really be far out. So that’s what I was trying to do. Of course, nobody understood it, especially me!”
Concert promoter Chet Helms suggested that they expand their lineup and recommended Janis Joplin, whom he’d seen singing traditional blues and folk songs in Texas coffeehouses. The 23-year-old completely transformed her style soon after joining Big Brother. “The moment Janis heard the volume increase, she had it,” Andrew remembered. “It was like she switched a channel that brought out the power. And the music was louder by a quantum leap than what went before. It made everything different. It took away all the rules. And the velocity was something too – it would just shift into overdrive.”
James Gurley shared this viewpoint: “As much as Janis made us as a band, we made her as a singer. She had to sing the way that she did in order to sing with us. We didn’t say, ‘You have to sing like this,’ but we said, ‘This is the way we’re gonna play. How are you gonna sing?’ And she went, ‘Whoa! Okay. Here’s this. [Imitates Janis] Whaaaa!’ It went on from there. She had a lot of power.”
Weeks after Janis joined, Big Brother rushed into a studio to record their eponymous debut album for the short-lived Mainstream label, to little acclaim. Soon thereafter, though, their mind-blowing performance at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival brought them worldwide attention. A Columbia Records mega-deal led to the band’s landmark Cheap Thrills album, recorded between March and May 1968. Dubbed-in audience noise gave listeners the impression that the whole album was a live recording, but only “Ball and Chain” was recorded onstage. The other six tracks were taped in studios in New York and Los Angeles. Robert Crumb, the preeminent underground comic book artist, created the hippie-influenced cover artwork.  From: https://www.foundsf.org/Big_Brother_and_the_Holding_Company:_Cheap_Thrills

Royal Blood - Out Of The Black

British rock duo Royal Blood have only been around for a short time but have already became a favourite of Arctic Monkeys drummer Matt Helders. Vocalist/bassist Mike Kerr and drummer Ben Thatcher have expanded upon their debut single Out of the Black with an EP.
The title track’s stuttering drums, grunting guitars and howling vocals are an audacious arrival onto the music scene for the duo. Kerr’s voice is a carnal, virile twist on the intense, piercing high notes of Matt Bellamy from Muse. The random, staccato beat of the drums in between choruses and verses, as well as the sped-up outro, are nicely unsettling to listeners. They show that the duo will not stick to the traditional four-to-the-floor rock song structure.
The EP then launches headfirst into second single Little Monster (which is clearly not a reference to one of Lady Gaga’s fanbase). It’s a dirty, slinky offering (‘love on my fingers, lust on my tongue…come on and get some’), anchored by economic yet full-bodied riffs. The final chorus has some marvellously murky, melodic ‘oh-oh-oh’ harmonies and ad-libs that allow the track to reach the climaxes that few bands like Queens of the Stone Age reach.
The same type of comparison can be applied to Come On Over, which is worth more than its status as the b-side of Out of the Black. An unrelenting bass groove makes this a devilish, moshpit-worthy metal headbanger. On the closing stomper Hole, Kerr’s yelps penetrate the din of smoky riffs. The lyrics about being ‘stuck in a hole’ however can apply to the song itself. Hole does not have quite as much momentum as the earlier tracks, as it fails to climb out of its own hole of darkness.  From: https://renownedforsound.com/ep-review-royal-blood-out-of-the-black/

Willow Child - Starry Road

What do we learn in the new Willow Child video? Well, first off, we see that quite literally it’s vocalist/guitarist Eva Kohl driving the band, and while one could make the argument that the totality of the German five-piece’s debut album, Paradise & Nadir — out May 11 on StoneFree Records — works much the same way, it’s not entirely that simple. Kohl is most certainly a forward presence in the band and in the mix of Paradise & Nadir, which was recorded by vintage specialist Richard Behrens (Heat, ex-Samsara Blues Experiment) and features cover art by Harley and J, but the organ work of Jonas Hartmann plays a significant role in “Starry Road” as well as other album cuts like “Eirene” and “Red Wood,” while Eva‘s brother, David Kohl drives languid bluesy grooves there and on the subsequent, progressively-minded “Mayflies,” which not only highlights Eva‘s vocals in its verses, but leaves room for the lead guitar of Flo Ryan Kiss to shine soulfully as it moves through its midpoint while bassist Javier Zulauf adds depth and tonal warmth alike to a spacious soundscape.
So while it may be Eva Kohl in the driver’s seat of that classic Chevy truck, don’t take that to mean the band has nothing else going for them. Paradise & Nadir is a quick-turnaround first album — the band’s lineup only solidified last year — but the songs feel older. Not only older-school, but to listen to the jammy break in the seven-minute “Beyond the Blue Fields,” there’s an established feeling between the players that, no matter how tight they are when they go into the recording studio, simply can’t be faked. Maybe that’s a result of the Kohls and Hartmann playing together longer, but whatever the case, Willow Child‘s dynamic isn’t just making an introduction for itself here: it’s showing that the band entered into the process of making their debut with a firm grip on who they are and what they want to accomplish as a band. Opening both sides of the eight-track offering with the longest piece — that’s “Little Owl” on side A and “Beyond the Blue Fields” on side B — they quickly mark out an expansive feel and balance that with structural traditionalism that only enhances the classic heavy rock aspects in their work.  From: https://theobelisk.net/obelisk/2018/04/16/willow-child-paradise-nadir-starry-road-premiere/

Led Zeppelin - Tangerine / That's The Way / Bron-Y-Aur Stomp / The Battle of Evermore

Robert Plant would sometimes introduce Tangerine at concerts by saying: "This song is for our families and friends and people we've been close to. It's a song of love at its most innocent stages."
Jimmy Page wrote this and first recorded it when he was with still with The Yardbirds. This was the last Zeppelin song Page wrote without any input from Robert Plant. It's also the only track on Led Zeppelin III for which Plant didn't write the lyrics.
Jimmy Page played a pedal steel guitar on this track. He told Guitar Player magazine in 1977: "On the first LP there's a pedal steel. I had never played steel before, but I just picked it up. There's a lot of things I do first time around that I haven't done before. In fact, I hadn't touched a pedal steel from the first album to the third. It's a bit of a pinch really from the things that Chuck Berry did. Nevertheless, it fits. I use pedal steel in 'Your Time Is Gonna Come.' It sounds like a slide or something. It's more out of tune on the first album because I hadn't got a kit to put it together."
This was recorded on April 4, 1968 at one of the last studio sessions for The Yardbirds, under the title "Knowing That I'm Losing You." This first version performed by The Yardbirds, featured music almost identical to "Tangerine" by Led Zeppelin, but with different lyrics (vocals by Keith Relf), and was never officially released. It was supposed to be included on the Cumular Limit compilation (which was released in 2000), together with other materials from the same sessions, but interestingly enough, Page vetoed the release of the song. Since then, the version from The Yardbirds has leaked onto the internet, and Page has been accused of ripping off a Yardbirds composition, simply changing the majority of the lyrics (probably initially written by Keith Relf) in order to avoid any problem with the other members of his previous group. This would explain his veto against the release of the original song. It is not easy to ascertain the above, as the remaining members of The Yardbirds haven't spoken about the subject so far.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/led-zeppelin/tangerine

Robert Plant wrote the words to The Battle of Evermore after reading a book on Scottish history. The lyrics are about the everlasting battle between night and day, which can also be interpreted as the battle between good and evil. 
This is the only song Zeppelin ever recorded with a guest vocalist. Robert Plant felt he needed another voice to tell the story that plays out in the song, so Sandy Denny from Fairport Convention was brought in. Her vocals represent the people as the town crier, while Plant's voice is the narrator. Fairport Convention was a British folk group Zeppelin shared a bill with in 1970.
Sandy Denny was given a symbol on the album sleeve - three pyramids - to thank her. The four members of Led Zeppelin each designed their own symbols for the album. Denny died in 1978 from a brain hemorrhage resulting from a fall down the stairs.
Jimmy Page wrote the music on a mandolin he borrowed from John Paul Jones. He explained to Guitar Player magazine in 1977: "On 'The Battle of Evermore,' a mandolin was lying around. It wasn't mine, it was Jonesey's. I just picked it up, got the chords, and it sort of started happening. I did it more or less straight off. But, you see, that's fingerpicking again, going back to the studio days and developing a certain amount of technique – at least enough to be adapted and used. My fingerpicking is a sort of cross between Pete Seeger, Earl Scruggs, and total incompetence."
Led Zeppelin rarely played this live, but when they did, John Paul Jones sang Sandy Denny's part.
Many J.R.R. Tolkien fans see the lyrics as a reference to his book Return Of The King, where the lyrics could describe the Battle of Pelennor ("The drums will shake the castle wall, The ring wraiths ride in black"). Plant is a huge Tolkien fan, and referred to his books in "Ramble On" and "Misty Mountain Hop." 
A lot of this fits the battle of the Pelennor fields: "At last the sun is shining, The clouds of blue roll by" - as Sauron's army and influence advanced the sky darkened and when he lost this battle it became light again. But a lot doesn't fit to that particular battle/book, including the part about the angels of Avalon, as Avalon was not from Tolkien's world but the legends of Merlin and King Arthur. The song is not completely about that battle but there are references to Lord Of The Rings things like Ringwraiths and most of the song can be interpreted to be about it if you choose.
Sound engineer Andy Johns said of the recording: "The band was sitting next to the chimney in Headley, drinking tea, when Jimmy grabbed a mandolin and started playing. I gave him a microphone and stuck a Gibson echo on his mandolin. Jimmy had brought this stuff before and had asked me to take a look at it. Suddenly Robert started singing and this amazing track was born from nowhere."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/led-zeppelin/the-battle-of-evermore 

10,000 Maniacs - What's The Matter Here / Don't Talk / Peace Train / City Of Angels

"There is a darker side to the band that never had been completely, thoroughly shown," Natalie Merchant explained to the Los Angeles Times back in the summer of 1989, a few months after the release of 10,000 Maniacs’ fourth studio album Blind Man’s Zoo. "It was something that had to be in a way exorcised and then we could go on to something else. On In My Tribe, there was that separation of lyrics going in one direction and the music going in another direction, one being very jovial and the other one being in some points very violent, other points very melancholy.”
Indeed, it is this paradox of the band’s buoyant melodies juxtaposed with their versatile vocalist’s incisive, often sobering words delivered in her reassuring, maternal-like tone that has always made In My Tribe such an enthralling listening experience. And it this duality that also largely explains why the album earned the Jamestown, NY ensemble of Merchant, Robert Buck (guitar), Steve Gustafson (bass guitar), Jerome Augustyniak (drums), and Dennis Drew (keyboards) the broader fanbase and critical accolades that had eluded them on their previous LPs, the self-released Secrets of the I Ching (1983) and their Elektra Records debut The Wishing Chair (1985).
After the underwhelming commercial reception but promising critical attention The Wishing Chair garnered, the Elektra brass doubled down on their investment in the band, hiring the accomplished producer Peter Asher (James Taylor, Linda Ronstadt, Bonnie Raitt) to steer the band’s songs in a more polished, radio-friendly direction. Though the group was initially apprehensive about Asher’s influence and recommendations in the studio, they ultimately acquiesced to his vision and created their breakthrough album in the form of In My Tribe.
"The album gave us a great chance to really coalesce as a band," Drew admitted to Rolling Stone in 1989. "At that point we had to save our career and make a good record. We fucking buckled up, tightened our belt and did it."
Elektra’s decision to release the band’s cover of Cat Stevens’ 1971 staple “Peace Train” as In My Tribe’s first official single suggested that while the label had high expectations for the album, they wanted to tread carefully by teasing audiences with something more established and familiar. Included on original pressings of the LP, “Peace Train” was removed from subsequent editions due to controversial remarks Stevens (by then known as Yusuf Islam) made in reference to—and as some interpreted it, in support of—the Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa calling for the murder of the celebrated author Salman Rushdie following the 1988 release of his novel The Satanic Verses, which some Muslims decried as blasphemous against Islam.
While the pleasant yet perhaps too familiar “Peace Train” failed to kickstart meaningful sales for the album, the chart success of the two singles that followed gave the record the boost it needed. Driven along by whimsical guitarwork that belies the song’s subject matter, “Like the Weather” is Merchant’s ode to seasonal affective disorder induced lethargy.
With Buck’s jangly, shoegaze-like guitar sheen, the emotionally jarring third single “What’s the Matter Here?” finds Merchant singing from the perspective of a woman observing her neighbors abusing their child and delicately outlining the warranted guilt-trip. Other standout songs abound, and collectively reinforce the human empathy and generosity of spirit that pervade the entire album. The soaring “Don’t Talk” documents a woman’s attempts to temper her alcoholic lover’s verbosity and disingenuousness when he’s under the spell of drink.  “City of Angels” laments the plight of the homeless in Los Angeles, while “Cherry Tree” examines illiteracy. The plaintive “Gun Shy” explores the dichotomy of life inside and outside of the military.
The Michael Stipe assisted “A Campfire Song” condemns greed and materialism gone awry, while “My Sister Rose” finds Merchant scrutinizing the socially-mandated tradition of marriage and the ceremonial pomp of weddings. The album concludes with “Verdi Cries,” her stripped-down, piano and strings imbued recollection of a trip enriched by her fellow hotel guest’s love of the 19th century Italian opera composer Giuseppe Verdi.  From: https://albumism.com/features/tribute-celebrating-35-years-of-10000-maniacs-in-my-tribe 

Maplewood - Indian Summer

You probably need to be a certain age to understand why any contemporary band would want to sound like Bread, the 70s soft-rock band. Bread’s founder and lead singer, the trebly-voiced David Gates, had a way of yoking bad poetry to gently hooky guitar riffs to create a sum greater than the parts. The ridiculously twisted syntax of “Baby, I’m-a want you/Baby, I’m-a need you/You’re the only one I care enough to hurt about,” paired with a lead guitar shading into a country-western mood, made for a memorable tune that rose to number three in 1971 (undoubtedly on the buying power of 10-year-old girls and their moms). When the molasses of Bread got too glutinous, there was always the palate-cleansing freshness of America, whose weird song about a nameless horse in a desert that was also an ocean (with its life underground and the perfect disguise above) made them more dangerous than David Gates. Their 1972 hit “Ventura Highway” rolled along in a sunny, feeling-no-pain way that most Bread songs didn’t, the proof being how great it felt (and still feels) to drive with that song on the radio. And when the whole cute-blond-sensitive-hippie-boy thing got old, you had the mature FM jolie laide of Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and Young). Which basically brought you back to Bread, who, because of their ubiquitousness on AM radio, were always more present in daily life. Certain moods and motifs seemed to devolve to Bread. There was something about the structural and musical underpinnings of those classic three-minute songs that even Gates’s shitty poetry couldn’t ruin. And Maplewood, a contemporary band from Brooklyn, understands this and can access it without baldly referencing or merely reproducing that influence.
Without a shred of irony—with, in fact, a sometimes embarrassing amount of sincerity—the band purveys an appealing hybrid canyon-rock/driving-with-the-radio-on sound. The layerings of vocal harmonies and strummy guitars on their self-titled debut album, just released on Tee Pee Records, recall classic acoustically driven bands like CSNY, America, and the Byrds; the romantically inclined lyrics and the sweetness with which they’re delivered put one in mind of the well-crafted, catchy hits that once spanned the Billboard Top 40: Sammy Johns’s “Chevy Van,” the Bellamy Brothers’s “Let Your Love Flow,” and Seals & Crofts’s “Summer Breeze” (with a nod to the Isley Brothers’s more sensuous, orientalized version).  There are also echoes of Elton John’s “Madman Across the Water” (the song, not the album) in the opening notes of “Sea Hero,” Elvis Costello’s “Party Girl” (from Armed Forces) in the bass line of “Little Dreamer Girl,” and even a mellow Stones moment in the burnished pedal steel of “Desert Queen.” But more than just the laundry list of influences/references, what’s really interesting is that the five musicians who make up the band come from a variety of other bands that sound nothing like this one: drummer Ira Elliot hails from the Fuzztones (later Nada Surf), guitarists Mark Rozzo and Steve Koester from Champale, Craig Schoen from Winterville, and Jude Webre from the Places. Ten-year music veterans, these guys produce a sound that is purposeful and accessible, informed and inviting.
“Although we had no preconceived ideas about how the album should sound,” says guitarist Craig Schoen, who also produced the album in his home studio, “the main idea was vocals, vocals, vocals. We have three lead singers, basically. On 85 to 90 percent of our songs, at least two of us sing all the way through. Sometimes it’s all three of us. There’s a definite vocal centerpiece to each song, but by the end it’s usually all of us.”
And the harmonies are indeed beautiful, but in a great pop song harmonies exist to serve lyrics, and here Maplewood has work to do. To put it over the top, this album needs an infusion of classic pop polyphony: words and music working together. With a few exceptions—for example, the inviting opening of “Indian Summer” (“The sand—feel the waves between your toes/Can you feel the way the old wind blows/From one to another/Care to discover/Indian summer”), perfectly matched to guitars and vocal harmonies—the lyrics tend to be background for the music, as in “Santa Fe”: “Santa Fe, Santa Fe/We lost the way/Santa Fe, hey, what should I say?/Show me the way, show me the way, show me the way.” The reason why those old 70s tunes were so memorable was that the pure sounds of the words as they fell together—the counterpoint of metered vowels and consonants—were as clever and shapely as the melodies. Those two elements working together create the seemingly effortless beauty of a great pop song. That’s something Maplewood has yet to do. But once they figure it out, look out.  From: https://brooklynrail.org/2005/01/music/maplewood-not-ashamed-to-sound-like-brea/

Möng - Dassun

The duo, formed by Lily Noroozi on vocals, accordion, and daf (Middle Eastern percussion), and Isao Bredel Samson on vocals and nyckelharpa (Swedish keyed fiddle), explores musical landscapes encompassing traditional, Western popular, medieval, Eastern, tribal, and even soul music. Möng's music is unique, captivating, dreamlike, and vibrant… While they use traditional instruments, their music is nonetheless contemporary. It opens a window to worlds where dreams and reality feed off each other, worlds in which they express themselves in "Izalien," a musical and imaginary language that reveals what words often struggle to convey… Their first album, "Finnen," has been well-received by a wide audience in numerous venues and festivals.  Translated from: https://harmonic-festival.com/project/1168/

In the vast world of experimental music, the duo Möng mixes several musical universes. Traditional, popular, medieval, and oriental, with a touch of electro, the two women blend all these musical styles and invent a new language to interpret them. On stage, Lily and Isao take the audience on a beautiful waking dream.
The girls of the duo Möng are nomads in every sense of the word. Their lifestyle is perfectly consistent with the music they perform. An electro-folk with very personal accents.
Lily and Isao sing together and play their music on traditional instruments such as the Daf (Middle Eastern percussion) or the Nyckelharpa, a Swedish bowed string instrument. For their first album "Finnen," the duo surrounded themselves with other musicians. The result evokes oriental and captivating accents and gives each instrument as much space as the voices.
Performed in Izalien, a musical and imaginary language, Möng's music is unique, dreamlike, and vibrant. "The goal of this language is to stop intellectualizing music and to speak from the heart. Each sound evokes an emotion, and everyone can interpret it according to their own feelings," explains Isao.  Translated from: https://www.franceinfo.fr/culture/musique/entrez-dans-l-039-univers-fantasmagorique-de-mong-les-musiciennes-de-la-foret_3345195.html 

Kansas - The Wall / Miracles out of Nowhere / Questions of My Childhood / Cheyenne Anthem

For a long time I considered Kansas to be more like a sidekick act in relation to those truly talented British progressive rock bands. This was probably due, in no small part, to the weak critical reception and tepid coverage that they seem to get from the mainstream rock press, many of whom dismiss them as “corporate rock” or whatever intellectually lazy label they use to dismiss certain acts. But as I listened extensively to Leftoverture while preparing for this review, I came to realize that this band may well equal some of these acts held in higher esteem. While it is i true that they draw heavily from contemporaries like Genesis, Jethro Tull, Yes, Pink Floyd, and Rush, they really have an art for mixing it up in a totally entertaining fashion. Kansas also has a knack for hitting the “sweet spot” when it comes to melody and harmony and they really make their own mark when it comes to true sonic value.
The second epiphany I had concerning the Leftoverture album was actually a question – can this be considered a religious album? There is no doubt that it is definitely philosophical, inspired and spiritual in the new-age lefty kind of way. But is it religious? If so, it may be the best type of religious album; implicit and artful with many subjects left in the form of a very good question, rather than a conclusion or directive.
Which brings us back to the critics of this album, many of which blast it for being a “concept album” without having a true concept. My statement to that is perhaps it is not a concept album at all, just a fine collection of songs with more universal themes than traditional rock and roll. These universal themes may reach beyond the typical conventions of the garden variety rock critic. Others have said the band tries to be too “arty” when they don’t have the talent to do so. To those who say this album doesn’t contain rhythm or composition, I say they simply do not like music.
The first side on the album contains a nice mix of styles, highlighted by “The Wall”. The guitar-led intro is just fantastic and nicely switches to the baroque-inspired verse with harpsichord-like keys that are later accented by strings and thumping rhythms. This song really feels influenced by a mixture of Yes and classic Genesis, but with a more terrestrial feel especially when it comes to Walsh’s lead vocals and Livgren’s poetic lyrics which pre-empted Roger Waters by about three years.
The album’s second half is where I feel the true genius lies. Although, I can’t quite articulate that genus in words (something that no doubt frustrated those harsh critics). Starting with “Opus Insert” which is an absolutely brilliant song to the ears but quite baffling (due to its title) to the mind. It may be an inside joke or puzzle left to be solved, but I’ll just stick to what I can report. It is extremely entertaining, starting with an odd, interesting organ that breaks into a heavier section, very good with thumping bass by Dave Hope. It is a “carpe diem” song with nicely strummed acoustic during the chorus followed by a majestic riff of violin/viola which morphs even further into a marching sound with drum rolls behind vibraphone and piano before returning again to odd and beautiful beginning and then synth-led ending.
Before you can catch your breath “Questions of My Childhood” kicks in with a wild and upbeat intro led by synth then organ. More philosophical themes are explored around maturing and realizing you never get all the answers. A great violin lead in the outtro by string man Robby Steinhardt sits on top of the intro synths, which nicely migrate into the background. “Cheyenne Anthem” is nearly a straight-forward folk song with a message, but it seems to have a deeper, poetic meaning as the verses go on (again, religious?)
Musically the song is once again brilliant, never getting bogged down by any predisposed “message”, with nice acoustic guitars and synth overtones and Jethro Tull-like folksy passages which lead to an upbeat section that sounds almost polka (although probably based on Native American tribal dance). This gives way to more Kansas-style riff before the big mid-section breaks back down to simple strummed acoustic guitars and haunting vocals in background.  From: https://www.classicrockreview.com/2011/12/1976-kansas-leftoverture/

Gang Gang Dance - Adult Goth

“I can hear everything, it’s everything time.” With that pronouncement, the 5th full-length from astral dilettantes and sometime Brooklyn residents Gang Gang Dance slowly lifts from the launchpad with quiet grace into the 11-minute opener “Glass Jar.” It’s all lens flares and gentle percolations of field-recorded spoken-word snippets, synthesized glissandi, tinkling chimes, and teased cymbals as the atmosphere thins from blue to bruise black. Some four minutes in, the mothership slowly rotates on its axis and the more ardent arpeggios of a navigation computer begin to flash. With a distant stellar destination in sight, the track erupts with a joyous, driving hyperjump halfway along its length and we are propelled into the brilliant all-nite-flite realm of Gang Gang Dance at their best, wrapped about with Liz Bougastos’ ethereal cooing and stabs of charmingly cheep-preset-keys’ steel drums and Fripped-out guitar. It’s the Mos Eisley Cantina house band high on 21st-century spice and a brilliant introduction to a typically gorgeous, strange album whose twists and turns nevertheless form a tightly coordinated intergalactic journey.
Gang Gang Dance have always been keen on crafting album-length voyages for their listeners, but this full-length follow-up to the scintillating Saint Dymphna has an even tighter trajectory. Saint Dymphna was a glorious Aladdin’s cave of sonic gems, revisiting woozy My Bloody Valentine atmospheres displaced to dancefloors here, there famously collaborating with grime boss Tinchy Stryder before he hit high rotation, just for instance. Eye Contact has many of these elements, but couches them more comfortably and consistently, cruising from alpha to omega with just a few diversionary pit-stops, barely stopping to play stylistic hopscotch across the Kaoss pads of their formidably cosmic imaginations.
The album is built around three interludes marked by a number of lemniscates (infinity signs to you and me) reminding us that it’s everything-time because anything goes, but only for a while. The first, “∞,” is a reprieve from the breathless opener, a faded recording of a Latin crooner cocooned by electronic susurrations. This hushed episode paves the way for “Adult Goth,” a track that, when it breaks down, is reminiscent of the labyrinth-rave, Goblinesque postures of Gatekeeper: a haunted gothic castle of pulsing dance music burnished with winding arabesques and Bougastos’ mournful, horizonward voice.  From: https://www.tinymixtapes.com/music-review/Gang-Gang-Dance-Eye-Contact 

Thin Lizzy - Live And Dangerous at the Rainbow 1978

 Thin Lizzy - Live And Dangerous at the Rainbow 1978 - Part 1

 

 

Thin Lizzy - Live And Dangerous at the Rainbow 1978 - Part 2

 

One of the '70s’ most energetic and enduring double live albums was released 35 years ago, and from the start, fans knew what they were in store for: The cover photo pulls them out of their seats, over the barricades and face to face with the leather-covered crotch of an instrument-wielding rock star.
Thin Lizzy’s celebrated ‘Live and Dangerous’ vaulted the hard-working, and even harder partying, quartet as close as they’d ever come to mainstream success in their U.K. homeland, making it to No. 2 on the chart.
But the Irish group, which was founded in Dublin back in 1969 by singer and bassist Philip Lynott, drummer Brian Downey and original guitarist Eric Bell, struggled to make themselves heard among the era’s other more popular hard-rock power trios. Their souped-up cover of the traditional Celtic folk song ‘Whiskey in the Jar’ got them noticed, but they were written off as a novelty and had to start at square one again, gradually building a loyal following with Bell’s twin-harmonizing replacements, Scott Gorham and Brian Robertson.
Even with occasional hit singles like ‘Jailbreak’ and ‘The Boys Are Back in Town,’ Thin Lizzy had trouble capturing their dynamic onstage presence in the studio. They even hired producer Tony Visconti, best known for his work with David Bowie and T.Rex, to take 1977’s ‘Bad Reputation’ to the next level. But it was the following year’s concert document, also produced by Visconti, that got them there.
Like Kiss, who faced similar difficulties until ‘Alive!’ turned their fortunes around, Thin Lizzy excelled onstage. So stellar but under-served favorites like ‘Emerald,’ ‘Suicide,’ ‘Johnny the Fox’ and ‘The Rocker’ burst out of ‘Live and Dangerous,’ drawing listeners into the band's take-no-prisoners stage show, with a friendly shove from frontman Lynott.
All in all, fans were given 17 of Thin Lizzy's best songs in what basically amounted to a greatest-hits set -- from the melancholy beauty of ‘Southbound’ and the bloodthirsty battle lust of ‘Massacre’ to the uplifting, saxophone-assisted R&B of ‘Dancing in the Moonlight’ and the heart-tearing despair of their signature ballad ‘Still in Love with You.’
Like many concert albums from the era, ‘Live and Dangerous’ received some after-the-fact overdubbing in the studio. But it doesn't take away any of the record's power.  From: https://ultimateclassicrock.com/thin-lizzy-live-and-dangerous/

 

 

 

Health - Crack Metal

Rat Wars is the fifth studio album by American noise rock band Health. The album was conceived after the band put together the second Disco4 album remotely. Vocalist and guitarist Jake Duzsik initially considered naming it Outer Dark, after the novel by Cormac McCarthy, but eventually settled on Rat Wars, the title of a track from their previous album Vol. 4: Slaves of Fear; the band compared the situation to The Doors' Waiting for the Sun.
Rat Wars includes the work of a number of guest artists, including synthwave artist Sierra, electronic producer SWARM, Willie Adler of metal band Lamb of God, and members of Youth Code and Street Sects. It was produced by Stint, though for "Children of Sorrow", band member John Famigletti intentionally used the demo mix as he felt it had "more vibe". "Future of Hell" was derived from a track by electronic artist Nexy that Famigletti heard whilst driving; he asked to work with him on the album, but was declined, leading to the track being sampled instead.
Rat Wars incorporates elements of metal, electronic and industrial genres. It continues in the direction established by Health's previous album Vol. 4: Slaves of Fear, being thematically darker and sonically harsher than the band's previous work.
Duzsik described it as more personal than Health's previous work, being thematically "much more of an ‘I’ record than a ‘we’ record” and influenced by his "disharmonious state". He called the imagery of children in the lyrics "Jungian", being influenced by his own experiences raising his son.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Wars

The Dowling Poole - Be There

Any band who can boast a CV containing stints with The Wildhearts, Honeycrack, The Cardiacs, The Ginger Wildheart Band, Jackdaw4 and The God Damn Whores must be worth sitting up and taking note of. So it proves with The Dowling Poole, a band who came together when Willie Dowling and 'Random' Jon Poole sat and made google eyes with each other during the recording of Ginger Wildheart's 555% album. The result is Bleak Strategies, an album which is a million miles from bleak, instead being one of the most uplifting Power-Pop-Rock highlights 2014 has served up. With both of the mainmen in this band (NOT a project, as we'll find out!) possessing razor sharp wit and a reputation for zaniness of the highest order, Sea of Tranquility's Steven Reid took his life in his hands as he delved deep into the Bleak Strategies of both Willie and 'Random' Jon.


As a pledger for Ginger Wildheart's '555%' album, I had the pleasure of watching your in the studio relationship grow and flourish... was it musical love at first sight?

Willie Dowling : "Not really. He was a grower shall we say. Well, that is until I saw him sit at the piano and start jamming out some fairly serious things with his head turned to the sky like he was having a nap. And then when the red button was pushed and it was his turn to record, this serious, adept competent and considerate musician with supreme powers of concentration suddenly took over the room. That's the Jon Poole I fell in love with.and it helps that he's quite amusing of course."

A: John Poole : "Although there was a distinct lack of eye-candy on offer during that session our beer goggles were very much intact which is ultimately what bought us to your attention."

However I believe that it took the pair of you a little time to pluck up the courage to ask the other to work with them. From the outside the two of you working together seems like such a wonderful fit, why the initial bashfulness?

J: "Despite our rather forward personalities we both have a mammoth-sized fear of getting changed in the changing rooms of swimming baths. Frustratingly, this spills over into our personal life and has a knock on effect on our relationships with people. Had we not touched on this subject one drunken night then I imagine none of what followed '555%' would've taken place."

W: "I think there were a lot of reasons, not least of which the situation that we were both in with our respective bands. But also because I think that it's a bit like asking a girl out for a first date. You're so terrified of rejection it takes a good deal of bravado to pop the question."

You have both had long, winding musical paths leading up to The Dowling Poole. When it came to song writing for the album did you decide to focus on one side of your musical psyche, or did you both just let fly and see what happened?

J: "I should only speak for myself here but when I heard the mischief Willie was up to I recognised a side of my own writing that I felt I couldn't offer to other people I was working with, as it may have steered other people off in a direction they may not have been comfortable with. When I first thought, or wondered about a collaboration with Willie I imagined a multicoloured, psychedelic, summery sounding collection of classic, British pop songs. The first ideas I presented to the table were along these lines. Anything that either of us comes up with gets chopped, changed and added to via the Dowling Poole machine. The great thing is that although I had recognised similarities in what we'd previously done, I feel like we've had a positive effect on each other's writing and constructing."

W: "I think Jon had a pretty good idea of what we were going to do because he kept describing it. At the time I was not long finished with Jackdaw4 so I was still meandering a little and I'd throw songs in randomly until I caught the drift of what he was writing and how it felt, and I then got a little more focussed and started to chip in along the same lines."

Was the initial writing process a collaboration or did you bring completed ideas to the studio to thrash out?

W: "Usually, one or other of us has the bulk of a song to present but it quickly gets thrown into the pool and chopped up, taken away from or added to and enhanced, which generally means that although it is recognisably the original song idea, it has been suitably dressed and styled by a process of collaboration."

I've got all the Jackdwa4 albums, the God Damn Whores releases and the 'Random' Jon Poole solo album. Impressively right across 'Bleak Strategies' it's possible to hear aspects of both of your song writing as the songs unfold. Is that a sign of just how "together" you were on this album?

J: "Yes, I think so. As I say despite being on the same page and having a number of influences in common, somewhere along the line it gets distorted and gets plopped out of The Dowling Poole machine clear as a cloudless, summer's day."

From: https://www.seaoftranquility.org/article.php?sid=2812

The Stone Poneys - Different Drum

If you’re a singer or part of a musical ensemble that doesn’t have all of the required parts in it, then you’re going to want to have the best session musicians available to you to join you on your journey. It’s quite understandable why someone like Linda Ronstadt would want to be particular about this sort of thing.
In her career as a solo artist, she was constantly reliant on the talents of those around her to provide a suitable and prominent backing to her vocals, and by the mid-1970s, she had elevated herself to star status, known around the world for hits like ‘You’re No Good’ and ‘When Will I Be Loved’.
For the most part, she was blessed with excellent players, and this became especially apparent the more notable she became for her work. Of course, it would become easier for her to court the best in the business when she herself was at the top of her game, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that those at the bottom of the ladder can’t acquire the services of those who are established performers themselves.
However, she wasn’t always firing on all cylinders, and it took a lot of hard work for her to get herself to this position in the first place, having been active in the music industry for almost a decade by the time that she was topping the charts for the first time in 1975.
Her first project, Stone Poneys, is one that she doesn’t really look back on fondly these days, due to it not having the exact creative direction she had always wished to take, and many of the comments she has made about the band’s material border on disparaging and dismissive. However, her experiences of working with one of the most illustrious groups of musicians during this period came as something of a shock to her system, and she found it impossible to work with them, as she explained during a 2013 interview with Rock Cellar.
“We used some players from the Wrecking Crew on that,” she said, referring to her band’s minor 1967 hit, ‘Different Drum’. “Don Randi was on harpsichord and Jimmy Gordon on drums. When you had expensive musicians on the clock, you didn’t keep them long. Those players in the Wrecking Crew were so good you could book half a session, and that would be enough time to get what you wanted recorded properly.” 
Despite having two prominent figures who had played on the hits of acts like The Beach Boys and The Monkees, not to mention that the recording also featured Eagles’ Bernie Leadon and was written by The Monkees’ Mike Nesmith, Ronstadt insists that they were only picked because they were the first available people.
“I didn’t know that world at all,” she continued. “I’d just come from Tucson, and I had no clue. I’d just played music with the people that I knew; I didn’t know there were other people you could hire. I was worried about it. It’s not that they weren’t good players – my God, they were vastly better players than we were, but they hadn’t evolved along our same path.”
It’s perhaps a case of her own inexperience showing, but it’s almost certainly also a valuable one to have had so early on, so she would know exactly what to do later on when she found herself surrounded by some of the biggest names in the industry and on the cusp of international success.  From: https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/band-who-ruined-linda-ronstadt-1967-breakthrough/

Uni and The Urchins - Simulator

Uni and The Urchins describe their sound as neuro-divergent pop, and while that may simply be a flippant means of eliding further characterization, it’s a fair self-assessment. Industrial, prog rock, androgynous glam and grunge all jostle for supremacy on the group’s debut album Simulator. The album was reportedly due pre-Covid, but all that time spent inside recording (and a lineup change) likely made this a stronger album than it otherwise might have been, shot through with anxiety, dread and sometimes even gleeful acceptance of our technologically dystopian future.
Made up of Jack James Busa, Charlotte Kemp Muhl and David Strange, Uni sound like they’re beaming in from another planet, where everything is darker, dirtier, slicker and weirder. Kemp Muhl is the primary songwriter, but Busa is out front as the lead vocalist on most of the tracks. He has a slinky, self-assured voice that makes itself the center of attention over the orchestral glam rock of “Subhuman Suburbia.” The chorus arrives on a wave of string synths, with Busa throwing in some “My Generation”-style stuttering: “This little black hole town/ Is b-b-bringing me down/ I guess there’s no more room/ For one more crying clown/ But there’s no way out.”
Muhl, who previously played in Ghost of a Sabre Tooth Tiger with Sean Lennon, sings lead on “Covid's Metamorphoses,” and she has a great voice, too. Her wry delivery over the grungy guitars here sounds effortlessly cool. There’s an unfortunate “Elon, can you take us to Mars” lyric that perhaps hasn’t aged well, but “Versailles, rabbi, the Fourth of July/ Tongue tied, hentai/ An eye for an iPad was the battle cry” is undeniably creative. Muhl is also the mixer/master/engineer of the album, which seems like a lot of work for someone who’s also playing bass and singing!
“Popstar Supernova” is dancey and catchy, with a drum machine beat and computer-beeping synths giving it the “lost in outer space” feel as Busa sings that he’ll be “Forever be your white trash Casanova/ Lost in outer space, makeup on my face/ I’ll never be a popstar supernova.”
Someone must have told Uni: “’Doll Parts’” but make it Nine Inch Nails.” Uni takes on the Hole song with an industrial beat and menacing synths that sound straight out of the early Reznor catalogue. Busa singing “I want to be the girl with the most cake” gives it a novel queer twist.
“Clean” and “Dorian Gray” are both standout tracks – glam rockers that give early Roxy Music a run for their money, with all the synths, grandiosity and crooning that entails. The guitars on “Simulator” are dark and grinding, almost heavy metal, over Depeche Mode-style keyboards. “If we sever our heads we could last forever, livestream in between/ Till digital death,” Busa sings, and it could be a promise or a threat, or a little of both.
Uni puts its own bizarre spin on “Amazing Grace,” turning it into a love song by changing the first line to “Amazing face, how sweet you frown” and accompanying the lyrics with industrial synths. The result is unsettling and effective, much like when Marilyn Manson covered The Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams.”
The only place the album really falters is on “Life In The Middle Class,” the tale of an unnamed suburban man who has a “picture of his second wife/ While the African wars fight, the dentist can make your teeth white/ His glasses only see the past and shadows that he did not cast.” Busa has a Bowie-esque delivery that’s impressive but dunking on generic suburban dudes is low hanging fruit. In an era of a shrinking middle class in America, the disdain seems wholly misplaced. There are worse crimes than “eating marshmallow pie with the Catcher in The Rye.”
The album ends on “In The Waiting Room,” a languid tune full of cello and chime sounds with lyrics that sound like lost verses from Beck’s “Sexx Laws”: “The dentist grins with his laughing gas/ Receptionists in Venetian masks/ Skeletons from this afternoon/ Read last year’s magazines in the waiting room.” The drums and guitar don’t kick in until the song gets two thirds of the way through, and by then you’re not sure if the gruesome waiting room Busa’s describing is supposed to be purgatory or hell.
Sometimes the lyrics here are clever and witty (“We’ll call you a prophet if you profiteer”), and sometimes they sound a little like a Stefon bit; as in, this place has everything: “Lizards in powdered wigs/ Eating Cheetos on Mars/ Spiders in garter belts.” Uni and the Urchins is a highly visual group – they made a corresponding video for every song on the album, but only check that out if you’re comfortable with body horror. Sometimes Uni seems like it’s all over the place, grabbing from genres like glam and industrial and sticking them all in a blender, but the music is always note-perfect, like it was built in a lab. It’s a little airless, but with a name like Simulator and the robot/alien themes, that was likely the vibe they were going for.  From: https://spectrumculture.com/2023/02/15/uni-and-the-urchins-simulator-review/

The Joy Formidable - The Wrong Side

A major-label deal may no longer be a prerequisite for breaking into the mainstream, but they still do come in handy if you want to stay there. When you think of the biggest rock bands of the past 20 years—Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Muse, the Black Keys—they all ascended to the top line of the festival poster, in part, due to the largesse of a deep-pocketed corporate imprint. And from day one, Welsh power trio and Atlantic Records hopefuls the Joy Formidable seemed poised to join them in the 50-point-font club, with their atomic fusion of Britpop-scaled anthemery and post-shoegaze overdrive. When firing on all cylinders, they could be the heaviest rock band that you would never think of classifying as metal, or the most pop-friendly act to drop the occasional blast beat.
So when the Joy Formidable split from Atlantic after two respectably charting albums, there was a more profound sense of unfinished business than with your typical major-to-indie reversion. Initially, the change in circumstance was noticeable only if you scoured their Spotify page for the label metadata fine print: the band’s 2016 album, Hitch, was streamlined and stage-ready almost to a fault. But where that album saw the band overcome an internal crisis—i.e., the end of singer/guitarist Ritzy Bryan and bassist’s Rhydian Dafydd romantic relationship—their fourth record was nearly aborted by an existential one.
And so, with AAARTH, the Joy Formidable have embraced independence not just as a business-survival strategy, but as a creative-liberation philosophy, too. They still sound very much like a rock band striving for the “Top of the Pops”; only now, they want to be the strangest one on there, too. The sense of playful abandon is right there in the album’s name: the Welsh term for bear (albeit with a few extra A’s for guttural emphasis), AAARTH is the sort of title that would make major-label marketing departments wince, while requiring radio announcers to activate the phlegmiest reaches of their larynx.
Ironically, now that the Joy Formidable have resettled in the Southwest U.S., they seem more eager to assert their Welshness. AAARTH opens with a rare display of their native tongue, “Y Bluen Eira,” but the language isn’t the only thing the average Anglophone listener will find inscrutable. It’s less a song than a statement of purpose—a funhouse-mirrored portal into an album that isn’t as eager to make friends as its predecessors.
AAARTH is hardly lacking in towering rock songs, but the band builds them on wobblier foundations for the sheer thrill of trying to make them topple. The staccato-riffed standout “The Wrong Side” comes on like the introductory lurch to Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” spun off into even more over-the-top anthem: What begins as an earnest, reach-across-the-aisle plea for kindness in post-Trump America gets gradually sucked into a swirl of squirrelly guitar lines and player-piano frivolity. And while “The Better Me” could be the most fetching pure pop song this band has ever produced, it too builds into a whirling dervish of booming drum breaks, short-circuiting synths, and noisy spasms that gurgle and wheeze like gastro-intestinal indigestion.
Not every song here aspires to the same degree of inspired irreverence. While the album introduces some intriguing new looks—like the Eastern-psych strut of “Cicada (Land on Your Back)”—the Joy Formidable still have a tendency to pummel their tunes into a modern-rock mush. AAARTH sags under the weight of its less melodic, more melodramatic moments, like the nu-goth pummel of “Dance of the Lotus” or the muscular but meandering grunge-funk workout “Caught on a Breeze.” They’re the sort of songs that immediately show their hand on an album that otherwise excels at slow reveals and sonic Easter eggs. AAARTH’s most arresting moment comes in the form of “All in All,” a gentle glockenspieled ballad that gradually floats skyward until it burns up and explodes into the stratosphere. Of course, by this point, such nuclear-grade eruptions are to be expected from even the Joy Formidable’s most subdued songs. But here, we at least get a clearer view of the artfully arranged debris swirling inside the tornado.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/the-joy-formidable-aaarth/

The Spencer Davis Group - Gimme Some Lovin' / Keep On Running

 The Spencer Davis Group - Gimme Some Lovin'

 

 The Spencer Davis Group - Keep On Running

 

They say the greatest songs almost write themselves. Roy Orbison claimed Oh, Pretty Woman took him half an hour. Tony Iommi came up with the riff to Paranoid while the rest of Black Sabbath were at lunch. Keith Richards supposedly dreamt (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction in a Florida hotel room. 
The Spencer Davis Group’s classic Gimme Some Lovin’, covered by everyone from The Blues Brothers to The Grateful Dead and Thunder, came together in less than an hour. 
“The classic ‘wrote it on the back of a fag packet’ story was often true,” recalls Muff Winwood, then the band’s bassist. “Sometimes there’s that little bit of magic that you can’t put your finger on, but it happens and it just works. Gimme Some Lovin’ came really fast.”  So fast, in fact, that Island Records boss Chris Blackwell was convinced the band were wasting his time. 
“We’d been rehearsing at the Marquee,” Muff laughs, “and he came down at midday but we weren’t there. We were down the road in a café in Wardour Street, and Chris found us in there. He went berserk: ‘What the fuck do you think you’re doing with your careers? You’ve got work to do and you’re lazing around here!’ So we said: ‘Just wait until we’re finished, then come back and listen to what we’ve done.’ 
“We’d done Gimme Some Lovin’ in ten minutes and couldn’t believe how good it was. So we’d packed up and gone for lunch. Of course, when Chris came back and heard it his jaw just dropped. It just sounded like an instant hit.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-story-behind-gimme-some-lovin-by-the-spencer-davis-group

Island Records impresario Chris Blackwell had brought his Jamaican Ska artist Wilfred "Jackie" Edwards over to England and introduced him to the Spencer Davis Group. Blackwell asked him if he had anything suitable for them to record. He played them a Ska record he had written, "Keep On Running," which Steve Winwood reworked to a more rock sound on the piano. Following Keith Richards' lead-in "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction," the band's bass guitarist Muff Winwood used a fuzz guitar.
Spencer Davis: "No one had seen a picture of the group in America and in 1966, the radio was split into black and white stations. 'Keep On Running' was played on black stations in the States and when they saw a picture of these four shining white boys, the record was dropped from the playlists so the momentum was lost."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/the-spencer-davis-group/keep-on-running 

 

Tori Amos - Cornflake Girl (UK Version)

Cornflake Girl is based on a book by Alice Walker called Possessing The Secret Of Joy, which details the practice of female genital mutilation in areas of Africa. In an interview with NME Classic Songs, Tori recalled discussing the issue with a friend: 
"We were talking about the fact that the women are betrayed, by a grandmother, a mother, or an older sister - that the women you trust the most are taking you into this butchery. And we had a term for those people, those girls that would turn on you, that wouldn't be there for you, that would maybe expose something you trusted them with, and really let you down - a complete wreckage. So those girls were called Cornflake Girls."
The cereal bowl is used as a metaphor for divisions among women. The "Cornflake Girls" are close-minded while the "Raisin Girls" are open to new ideas.
Before she became famous, Tori appeared in a commercial for Kellogg's "Just Right" cereal, beating out Sarah Jessica Parker, who was also unknown at the time, for the part. Tori played piano in the ad. Kellogg's also makes Corn Flakes.
Tori's record company released a series of Corn Flakes boxes with her picture on them to promote this song to record companies. They are now collector's items. 
Who's the Rabbit in the song? Tori told NME: "Rabbit is someone that I knew, a fantastic, magical creature that would live in the woods, that would work maybe six months of the year with her partner, who was Fox; they were Rabbit and Fox. They would live in the woods of Oregon - I'm talking about the great woods, not just a park - and they would live out in the wilds. So Rabbit living in the wilds with Fox, I thought that was romantic."
Two music videos were made. Andy Delaney and Monty Whitebloom, known as Big TV!, directed the UK version, which is a twisted take on the Wizard of Oz. Tori directed the US version herself, along with Nancy Bennett, which follows the singer tooling around the desert with a truckload of girls.
Tori fought hard for the whistling that comes in over her piano at the beginning of the song. Everyone else - including her then-boyfriend/producer Eric Rosse - was in favor of a mandolin line that guitarist Steve Caton came up with. "Everybody really liked that," she told The Baltimore Sun in 1994. "And even in the mix studio, I was screaming at the top of my lungs that it had to be a whistle. I want the cowboys coming over the hill. Eric was laughing his head off, and the mixer, Kevin Killen, said to me, 'This whistle is naff, Tori.' And I said, 'Well, guess what, Kevin. When you make your own song, you can put your own mandolin on it. This is a whistle. F--king put it in. Put the sample in.' So I got my whistle, and I'm happy as a clam to this day."
While most of the album was written and recorded in New Mexico, this track evolved out of a piano riff Tori came up with while living across from a reggae hangout in London. On an unseasonably warm day, she heard a faraway groove coming through her open window and started jamming to it. "Within pretty much a day's time I had a piano riff for what would become 'Cornflake Girl,'" she explained in the liner notes to her 2006 compilation, A Piano. "I was just playing along, and then, when the music stopped, I found myself still playing that riff."
But the song was far from being complete. It needed help from other musicians, and even an entirely different climate, to bring it to fruition. She recalled: "About a year later, when I took the song into the studio for recording, other musicians came on and the original bass riff started to become something else. The legendary George Porter, Jr., brought his own variation of New Orleans voodoo, having been an instrumental part of The Meters. Eric had developed a loop that he said he was inspired to create after hearing me play my original riff for hours and hours. It's an interesting progression to note that 'Cornflake Girl' was inspired by a groove-loop kind of percussive rhythm. Then I wrote the piano part, and to the piano part yet another percussive part was written. Then to that new and improved loop Paulinho Da Costa came and layered the track with even yet another syncopated, percussive part that included big sleigh bells and all kinds of things. 
So despite 'Cornflake''s initial quick and spontaneous creation, all the mini sections and compositional details took over a year to resolve. Sometimes you get a real burst of inspiration, and then all you have is a riff. You don't really have a completed thought. It took me going very far away from where it had started to really finish it. Taking it from the city of London to the desert of New Mexico so that it could find its own character."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/tori-amos/cornflake-girl

Knifeworld - Clairvoyant Fortnight

Releasing records via frontman Kavus Torabi’s own label Believers Roast since 2009 – a single, debut album Buried Alone: Tales Of Crushing Defeat and two EPs – Knifeworld were snapped up by InsideOut for last year’s Prog Award-nominated The Unravelling. Torabi now finds himself a chap very much in demand, featuring in both Guapo and Gong, and partnering best pal Steve Davies every Monday night for an Interesting Alternative radio show. With their next record looming on the horizon, this is good time to clear the decks and get the elusive, out-of-print stuff in one handsome triptych package: “The album that should have been,” Torabi says. Abandoning chronology, he’s opted to open with 2011’s Dear Pilot, the familiar keystones of Mel Woods’ soft, agile vocals, Chloe Herrington’s magisterial bassoon and sax, and Emmett Elvin’s bright key flourishes illuminating some barrelling, no-nonsense baroque agit-punk, with the XTC-psychedelic, shanty-swinging Dear Lord, No Deal bringing up the rear (admiral). Clairvoyant Fortnight’s poppy, soothsayer-sceptical vitriol skips past In A Foreign Way, another woozy, oceanic track that then retreats for debut single B-side Happy Half Life, Dear Friend. Shadowy and lulling, this is a gothic connector to The Unravelling’s unsettling score, backed up by the nervy, percussive avant-prog of multi‑part highlight The Prime Of Our Decline. But a savvy Torabi leaves the best till last as HMS Washout chucks us back out to sea again over 14 minutes of jazzy tumult and bubbling RIO exposition. Mostly we’re waving, not drowning – no life jacket required.  From: https://www.loudersound.com/reviews/knifeworld-home-of-the-newly-departed

 

Luminous Orange - Braque's Bird

Not so much a band as the musical project of Yokohama-based musician Takeuchi Rie, Luminous Orange have been through more than 30 members and support members since being formed in 1992, including Nakau Kentarou and Inazawa Ahito from indie punk band Number Girl and Ian Masters of the Pale Saints. The influence of 1980s American alternative rock bands such as Sonic Youth and the Pixies, and particularly British shoegazer bands such as My Bloody Valentine, is a constant throughout Luminous Orange's career, although early releases tended toward a more melodic, less distorted guitar sound reminiscent of Teenage Fanclub or early Primal Scream, a sound clearly evident on their first full album, 1996's Vivid Short Trip. Released in 1997, Waiting for the Summer saw Luminous Orange edging toward a more effects-based guitar sound as well as more eclectic songwriting, influenced by Tokyo's "Shibuya-kei" sound, which came to the fore more strongly in the following year's Puppy Dog Mail EP, released on Ian Masters' Friendly Science label. Issued in 1998, Sugarcoated, the group's first true shoegazer album, made its sonic intentions clear with a cover version of Ride's "Chelsea Girl," and featured a greater reliance on distortion and a more layered sound. Luminousorangesuperplastic pushed further in this direction in 1999, and after a brief flirtation with Cornelius' Trattoria label, the band produced the well-received Drop You Vivid Colours, featuring the richest, most multi-layered musical textures and melodies yet, as well as some of the most sonically abrasive sounds. In 2004 Cream Cone Records put out a heavily augmented re-release of Luminous Orange's debut under the title Vivid Short Trip (7 Stops Farther), but apart from that, the band released no new output until the 2007 mini-album Sakura Swirl on U.S. label Music Related, although ever-shifting lineups of the band continued to tour intermittently throughout this period, playing the CMJ Music Marathon in 2004 and South by Southwest in 2006 and 2007.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/luminous-orange-mn0000470488#biography 

Otis Redding - My Girl / Shake / I've Been Loving You Too Long - Live 1967

The first thing that stands out in the first segment of Otis Redding: Respect Live 1967 is Redding’s sheer size. At 6’1”, he seems to tower over Booker T & the MG’s guitarist Steve Cropper and bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn on the tiny Oslo stage. No matter that Redding and Cropper are actually the same height, Redding looks a clear half foot taller.
It may seem an odd first reaction, but it’s an indication of the amazing physicality of Redding’s performances. On record, it’s fairly apparent Redding is a muscular vocalist; if Sam Cooke’s style is defined by a sort of grace and smoothness, Redding’s feels more like that of a great force held in check, and even on ballads, Redding’s voice threatens to break loose. In performance, that restraint is thrown aside, perfect pitch sacrificed in service of an all-out frenzy.
The DVD contains footage of two shows: one from the Stax-Volt tour of Europe in the Spring of 1967 and the other from the Monterey Pop Festival that same year; both were shot by DA Pennebacker within the last year of Redding’s life. Pennebacker’s ability to get astoundingly close to his subjects without attracting their attention, evidenced in Don’t Look Back and Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, is on display here as well. The footage has an intimacy that concert films like Scorcese’s recent Shine a Light could only dream of: the viewer has the feeling not so much of being in the audience as being virtually inside the bass drum.
The Stax-Volt footage, shot in crisp black and white, is the lesser-seen of the two performances. After watching Booker T & the MG’s define cool with their performance of “Green Onions”, followed by two Sam & Dave songs that showcase the duo’s playfulness and deftness in interacting with both the band (while a perspiration-drenched Sam Moore lays down the verse for “When Something is Wrong with My Baby”, Dave Prater, with his back to the audience, is getting laughs out of Donald “Duck” Dunn) and the audience, feeding off one another, Redding’s performance of “Satisfaction” comes on like a juggernaut.
Stamping his feet like a man possessed, Redding urges the band to a breakneck speed, locked down by Al Jackson’s drumming, with the pure insistence of his voice. The follow up of “Try a Little Tenderness” begins as a sweet ballad only to speed into the same level of panic, bringing the audience surging to the stage as Redding makes his exit.
After a photo montage set to “Sittin’ On the Dock of a Bay,” we’re treated to Redding’s storied performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, just six months before his death. Again, the intimacy of the shooting is amazing: chills come as much from Redding’s performance as the condensation of his breath caught in the stage lights. The intensity of the lights gives Redding’s bright green suit a brilliant shine and the camera gives enough time to the backing band to remind the viewer that, along with Motown’s Funk Brothers and Mussel Shoals’ Swampers, Booker T & the MG’s are some of the most important players in the history of American pop music.  From: https://www.popmatters.com/69630-otis-redding-respect-live-1967-2496067813.html

The Breeders - Cannonball

Before “Cannonball,” The Breeders were known as Kim Deal’s side project, overshadowed by her first band, Pixies. However, by 1993, Pixies singer/songwriter Black Francis had broken up the band by fax, so The Breeders were no longer a side project. Deal was in San Francisco recording Last Splash when her twin sister Kelley told her the Pixies had broken up. Pixies were responsible for alt-rock’s biggest bands, and The Breeders enjoyed the commercial fruits of that labor.
Many musicians work hard to be cool, but Dayton, Ohio’s Kim Deal is carelessly cool. Her indie-aloofness inspired The Dandy Warhols to write a song about her in which singer Courtney Taylor-Taylor pleaded for a girl as “Cool as Kim Deal.” Moreover, the combination of “whatever” and meticulousness makes Last Splash imperishably special. But, on “Cannonball,” what are the Deal twins singing about?
In 1996, Deal told Phoenix New Times that Marquis de Sade inspired “Cannonball.” Said Deal, “The message of the song as a whole was making fun of Sade and his libertarian views that if he was better off than someone, then they were just fodder for him. Playthings. It was saying, ‘Come on, life’s not a contest.’”
The intro voices (“Ah-hoo-oh”) are the Deals’ nod to the Oompa Loompa song from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory. And “Cannonball” was originally called “Grunggae” because of its mixture of ’90s alt-rock and island sounds. (The “Grunggae” demo appeared on the 20th-anniversary edition of Last Splash.)
Deal opens the song, checking a distorted harmonica microphone as it squeals before the song breaks for its iconic bassline. However, the memorable bass part was the result of a mistake. A timid entrance that’s one fret off the correct note is repeated twice before the band begins and the right note is played.
Kim Gordon and Spike Jonze directed the music video for “Cannonball.” The Breeders perform the song in a garage, and the video cuts to scenes of Deal singing underwater. Throughout the video, a cannonball rolls down the streets of Los Angeles.
In 1990, Deal formed The Breeders with Tanya Donelly from Throwing Muses. Pixies had opened for Throwing Muses in the ’80s, and Deal and Donelly were hanging out in Boston while both bands were on a break.
Ivo Watts-Russell, co-founder of 4AD, signed The Breeders and released their debut Pod in 1990. (4AD was also home to Pixies and Throwing Muses).
Deal told Marc Maron the name “Breeders” came from a slur that some LGBTQ+ people used against heterosexuals. She also said the 1979 horror film The Brood inspired the name.
Producer Steve Albini recorded Pod, which also featured drummer Britt Walford (from Slint) and British musician Josephine Wiggs (from The Perfect Disaster), who plays bass on “Cannonball.” Kelley Deal joined the band on the Safari EP (1992), and Donelly eventually left the group to form Belly.
Producer Gary Smith said about the Pixies’ legacy, “I’ve heard it said about The Velvet Underground that while not a lot of people bought their albums, everyone who did started a band. I think this is largely true about the Pixies as well. Charles’ [Black Francis] secret weapon turned out to be not so secret, and, sooner or later, all sorts of bands were exploiting the same strategy of wide dynamics.”
He continued, “It became a kind of new pop formula and, within a short while, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ was charging up the charts, and even the members of Nirvana said later that it sounded for all the world like a Pixies song.”  From: https://americansongwriter.com/the-meaning-behind-cannonball-by-the-breeders-and-the-french-libertine-who-inspired-it/