Belly - Silverfish

Belly’s King was recorded by engineer/producer Glyn Johns at Compass Point studios in Nassau. Johns had worked on Let it Be, Let it Bleed, Stage Fright, Who’s Next and Led Zeppelin (just to take the five biggest titles from his discography). Working with a guy like that was an extremely unusual move for an alternative rock band in 1995, when every record label just wanted Andy Wallace or, if he wasn’t available, one of those Lord Alge brothers with that new-fangled drum sound of theirs. Johns was as old school as it got, and his work on King made it stand out a mile. Johns encouraged the band to record the album live: two guitars, bass and drums, all together, all bleeding into each other. Even the vocals. “Any band that can play a gig can play live in a studio,” he’s said. “There was no backup plan.”
This was not standard industry practice in 1995, and in 2016 is practically unheard of. When you record this way, every microphone contains ambient sound as well as the direct sound of whatever instrument the microphone is primarily picking up. Bass goes into the guitar mics. Drums go into the bass amp mic. Everything goes into everything else. Fine, if the band can play well. But because nothing can be edited independent of any other sound source, it’s a method of recording that forces you either to not make mistakes, or to make them and live with them.
King is full of mistakes. It’s a document of a band, and a band that were, for all their many virtues, not Steely Dan. Donelly’s voice cracks. Chris Gorman’s drums threaten to fall apart on Seal My Fate and Silverfish. Gail Greenwood hardly gets on a one in 45 minutes. Real-time fader and pan-pot moves are plainly audible. It sounds great. I wouldn’t want to hear it mixed any other way.
This sound is perfect for the set of songs Donelly had written (largely in collaboration with Tom Gorman). Less surreal and sinister than the songs on Star, King tracks like Judas My Heart and The Bees still demonstrate that quality of prime-era Donelly: a gorgeous, indelible melody coupled with a lyric that seeks to hide its vulnerability behind images and symbols, the urge to be plainspoken and honest fighting with the urge to protect oneself.
At this point, the record’s slower, more interior-looking songs – The Bees, Seal My Fate and Silverfish – are my favourites, but if sparkly, guitar-heavy pop is more your thing, King has plenty of that, too. Red, Super-Connected and Now They’ll Sleep are all neglected White Album-ish classics, and the title track is a grindy, initially unpromising grower that halfway through suddenly becomes something else entirely.
Star is the record that Belly will be remembered for, and it’s obvious why. Its best songs are extremely portable. Taken out of their context and played on the radio or placed on a iTunes playlist, Gepetto and Feed the Tree sound just wonderful. Star has some great second-tier material, too. Dusted. Slow Dog. Sad Dress. White Belly. I love them all. But King? King is timeless. King is its own thing.  From: https://songsfromsodeep.wordpress.com/2016/03/01/king-by-belly/

Planxty - Johnny Cope

Most of us probably first heard the epic six-part Johnny Cope as it opened Planxty’s third album, “Cold Blow and a Rainy Night”, but Johnny’s journey starts much earlier than that. The tune is strongly associated with Irish traditional music, but actually began life in Scotland. The song sung by Planxty originated with Adam Skivring, who wrote it in 1745 to lampoon Sir John Cope, commander-in-chief of the English forces in Scotland at the Battle of Prestonpans at the start of the 1745 Jacobite uprising, where he was very decisively defeated by Bonnie Prince Charlie. If the lyrics are any judge, he was more than a bit of a coward about the whole thing, although the court martial did find otherwise. There are opinions that the melody was derived from an even earlier tune, rather than composed by Skivring. However, for the sake of containing the article, let us put this as the starting point of Johnny Cope’s march from Scotland.
The trail of Johnny Cope’s passage can be traced to page 19 of the second volume of James Aird’s 1792 collection of Scotch, English, Irish, and Foreign Airs, where a four-part version is found that bears quite a strong resemblance to the current favourite setting. Aird published his collections in Glasgow, and prominence was given to Scottish melodies, and in addition the title refers to an event of significance to the Scottish, so the tune surely started life in Scotland. The question then becomes, how did this Scottish melody become so paradigmatically Irish?
The tune shows up in one of the early Irish bagpipe music collections, O’Farrell’s Pocket Companion for the Irish or Union Pipes (“Being a Grand Selection of Favorite Tunes both Scotch and Irish etc”), in Vol 3, page 51, published between 1804 and 1810, where it is almost identical to the setting in Aird’s, and this may be the first instance of the tune found in a primarily Irish context. However, there was a lot of “borrowing” (nowadays we would likely call it plagiarism) and O’Farrell did label this one as “Scotch”, so it’s unlikely that it was thought of as Irish, yet. The melody appears again in Scotland, this time in the Edinburgh Repository of Music, vol 2 p. 30, published around 1818. This is once again a four-part setting, however there are significant differences, and especially the fourth part in this version has changed significantly.
Another setting of the tune is found in Howe’s The Musician’s Companion part 2, p. 49, published in Boston in 1843. This one is a bit of an oddity, and features a whopping eight parts. It’s worth noting this version because it shows that the tune had spread to America. Also curious is the note that it is “A favorite English Air.” Back in Scotland we find the Ross’s Collection of Pipe Music, where a martial version of the melody is presented in five parts, published around 1869. In the 1880s, James Kerr published twelve volumes of music, four of them called Merry Melodies, which include jigs, reels, and other lively tunes. Volume 3 contains a two-part version of Johnny Cope.
We’ll now check back in with Irish music collections, and start with largest collector of Irish music, the Chief himself, Captain Francis O’Neill, collector of music, and Superintendent of the Chicago Police. In O’Neill’s Music of Ireland (published 1903) we find tucked away in the Marches and Miscellaneous section, a curious two-part tune called Johnny Cope. In his Irish Music (published 1915 and arranged with piano harmonies), we find a reprint of a version published in a mysterious collection called The Repository of Scots & Irish Airs, with a note from O’Neill regarding the Irishness of the tune: “A footnote in Wood’s Songs of Scotland states that this old air originally consisted of one strain. The chorus or burden of a silly song, adapted to it was the first strain repeated an octave higher. The simple air although claimed as Scotch is in the Irish style and known all over Ireland. The above setting without the harmonization was copied from, ‘The Repository of Scots and Irish Airs’ – printed in 1799.” This setting is listed as being in March time.  From: https://rushymountain.com/2017/10/06/johnny-cope/

Carole King - Really Rosie - Side 1

1 Really Rosie
2 One Was Johnny
3 Alligators All Around
4 Pierre
5 Screaming and Yelling
6 The Ballad of Chicken Soup
7 Chicken Soup with Rice

Really Rosie is a musical with a book and lyrics by Maurice Sendak and music by Carole King. The musical is based on Sendak's books Chicken Soup with Rice, Pierre, One was Johnny, Alligators All Around (which comprise 1962's The Nutshell Library), and The Sign on Rosie's Door (1960). Sendak based the story on a demonstrative little girl who used to sing and dance on the stoop of her building, whom he observed while he was a little boy growing up in Brooklyn. The show follows a typical summer day in the life of the Nutshell Kids, a group of several neighborhood friends, including Pierre, Alligator, Johnny, and Chicken Soup from the Nutshell Library books, and Rosie and Kathy from The Sign on Rosie's Door. Rosie, the self-proclaimed sassiest kid on her block of Brooklyn's Avenue P, entertains everyone by directing and starring in a movie based on the exciting, dramatic, funny (and slightly exaggerated) story of her life.
A half-hour animated television special aired on CBS TV on February 19, 1975. It was directed by Maurice Sendak, animated by Ronald Fritz and Dan Hunn of D&R Productions Inc., with Carole King voicing the title character. King was ultimately selected as the voice of Rosie when casting directors had difficulty selecting a child actor whose voice could complement the pre-recorded songs. An album of the songs by King and lyrics by Sendak is available on Ode Records. In the animated special, only the first seven songs and Really Rosie (Reprise) were showcased.
Sendak expanded the piece for London and Washington, DC stage productions in 1978, and an off-Broadway production, directed and choreographed by Patricia Birch with designs by Sendak, which opened on October 14, 1980, at the Westside Theatre, where it ran for 274 performances. During its off-Broadway run, the lead role of Rosie was first played by a then-12-year-old Tisha Campbell-Martin. Midway through the run, Tisha left the cast and was replaced by cast member and "Rosie" understudy Angela Coin, age 10. Angela also sang the role of "Rosie" on the cast recording.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Really_Rosie 

Chicago - Ballet for a Girl in Buchannon

The first question to understanding the rock suite Ballet For A Girl In Buchannon is defining “suite.” A textbook definition is a good place to start. A suite is defined as a composition “made up of a number of movements, each like a dance and all the same key or related keys.” Suites originated in France in prototypical form and reached their apex in Germany during the Baroque era of the 17th century. The tempos of the movements quickened and slowed to give the dancers variety. Jimmy’s main inspiration from the Baroque era was Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos. In the liner notes to Claude Bolling’s “Suite for Flute and Jazz Piano” (a very sweet album), Bobby Finn wrote about the “great fluctuation of mood within the movements” and the “constant dialogue between the jazz and classical elements which seem to fight, to interrupt, to stimulate, to mimic, and even to embrace each other.” It is easy to also think of Ballet with this description. Jimmy’s own invention and synthesis could be recognizable across the centuries if Bach could attend a Chicago concert or listen to Chicago II.  
Each movement in a suite is enhanced by the contrasting movements around it, the beauty and grace of Colour My World are made more wonderful by the intricacy and complexity of West Virginia Fantasies. Each of the movements has its own feel and identity, the whole bigger than the sum of its parts because of the contrasts and relationships. In Baroque style, movements may have changes between complementary keys. In this rock suite, key changes are handled in more than one way. Sometimes they are modulations using pivot chords (a chord that is found in both keys) or the key changes using measures with no chords as transitions. Time signature changes abound as well, a characteristic feature of many Chicago tunes. This constant dynamism of key, tempo, time signature, and texture, provides an energy that keeps ears perked and blood racing, something that everyone can feel whether or not one has any background in music theory. In essence, Jimmy makes his challenging composition accessible to a very wide audience without compromising what is complex and technical.
In Make Me Smile alone, we hear three different keys. The introduction is in the key of Ab, modulating to C minor after the chord of Absus4 acts as a pivot chord. The key shifts again to E minor in the B section. Terry’s guitar solo in this section kicks off with a fiery 16th note riff that is something that jazz fans might recognize as originating as a classic horn riff, similar to Lee Morgan’s trumpet solo in Moanin’ by the Jazz Messengers. The key changes again for the last four measures, back to Eb to segue into So Much To Say, So Much To Give. In this transition between the first two movements, the woodwinds and brass give the mood a rather forlorn quality. This second movement of the suite features Robert Lamm’s only lead vocal in the suite, his excellent performance perfectly capturing the impassioned plea of the lyrics. Throughout Ballet, the vocals and instruments express a full range of human emotion through music, perfectly symbolic considering the theme and subject of the suite.
The next two movements, Anxiety’s Moment and West Virginia Fantasies together form a mid section of the suite. The communion between Lee Loughnane’s trumpet and Walter Parazaider’s flute in West Virginia Fantasies holds a uniqueness not just in Chicago’s repertoire but in rock and roll overall. Their perfect execution exposes their formal training at DePaul University and with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Lee trained on trumpet with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago and Walter was a clarinet protege of the CSO’s clarinetist Jerome Stowell. (I do wonder if Lee learned his valve vibrato on his own or from one of his professors!) When Walter comes in on flute, he’s playing in harmony with Lee; then their parts diverge into counterpoint, two independent melodic lines. This approach is echoed by Terry Kath’s guitar and Robert’s organ in the next section of the movement. Writing for a band such as Chicago, a veritable rock orchestra, surely must have opened up the possibilities of what the writers, particularly Jimmy and Robert, could put on paper. Not only did a composition this technical have to be executed in the studio but on stage as well, and Ballet is no mere jam session.  
The transition to Colour My World is a dramatic one. The tempo is taken down, the time signature shifts to a triplet feel in 12/8, and the change from brass and woodwinds to a simple acoustic piano provides for a beautiful shock. Again, Jimmy’s training and instincts as a writer inform the modulation to the key of F with C7 as the pivot chord between the last measures of West Virginia Fantasies to the opening arpeggio of Fmaj7. The arpeggios flow over unexpected changes inside and outside the key. Jimmy further proves his gift for melody with his direction of the flute solo, quite different from Walter’s own sometimes avant-garde style even though it is one of his most famous solos. Still, Walter brings his own warm, breathy tone and expressiveness directly from the soul. As a whole, Colour My World, often unfairly characterized as maudlin, is sophisticated pop perfection.
The suite finishes with the grand finale of To Be Free and Now More Than Ever, featuring the highly rhythmic strumming that is quintessentially Terry Kath, the horns blowing full bore, showing just how wedded Jimmy’s horn arrangements are to the essential melodies and identities of the tunes. Now More Than Ever reprises Make Me Smile, acting as a bookend and building to a jubilant conclusion. For the final measures, Jimmy’s trombone appropriately takes the fore in a proudly accented solo, a grand finale of his epic composition.  From: https://hornbandreviews.wordpress.com/2016/11/14/jimmy-pankows-opus-ballet-for-a-girl-in-buchannon-by-stephanie-carta/

Animated Music Videos - Ape School - Wail to God / Chelou - Halfway to Nowhere / Cuushe - Airy Me / Mumiy Troll - Moshka / Tenacious D - Classico / The Bobby Lees - Be My Enemy / Trash Talk - The Great Escape

 Ape School - Wail to God

 

 Chelou - Halfway to Nowhere

 

 Cuushe - Airy Me

 

 Mumiy Troll - Moshka

 

 

Tenacious D - Classico

 The Bobby Lees - Be My Enemy

 

 Trash Talk - The Great Escape

 

Ape School is the moniker of Michael Johnson, a multi-instrumentalist studio wiz based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, who was previously a member of the indie rock bands Holopaw and Lilys. He made his debut as Ape School in 2009 in association with Ninja Tune.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/ape-school-mn0001061374#biography

The “Halfway to Nowhere” video was made with illustrator Polly Nor, whose work explores female sexuality, insecurities, past pains, and future desires with a frankness and dark sense of humour that’s rarely seen in the media. Guts, hair, dirty rooms, devils and sensory greenery are recurring images in her work, and her video for Chelou (created with animator Andy Baker) includes them all. “The story follows a woman trapped in a grotesque and devilish manifestation of her subconscious,” says Nor. “Lost in this strange place, she’s led to confront her demons and make peace with herself.”  From: https://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/33775/1/chelou-halfway-to-nowhere-polly-nor-video

Mayuko Hitotsuyanagi, better known by her stage name Cuushe, is a Japanese singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and record producer from Kyoto. She is based in Tokyo. She is one half of the duo Neon Cloud along with Geskia. In a 2012 interview with Dazed, Cuushe cited "musician friends, movies, and sadness" as her top 3 musical inspirations. Colin Joyce of Pitchfork wrote, "The wispy-voiced Tokyo songwriter is nominally a dream-pop act, indulgent in the stirring static and hushed whispers that have become requisite for the genre."  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuushe

Taking their name from a character in the famous children's books of Tovi Jansson, Mumiy Troll have become one of Russia's most popular and critically acclaimed contemporary pop/rock acts of the '90s and 2000s. Centered around the offbeat romantic lyrics and intelligent, charismatic presence of songwriter and frontman Ilya Lagutenko, the band has developed separately from the rest of the Russian music scene, opting to work with foreign producers and recording the majority of it’s work in England. Although experimenting with different musical genres over the years, Mumiy Troll have developed an idiosyncratic sound placed halfway between traditional Russian rock and Brit-pop.  From:  https://www.allmusic.com/artist/mumiy-troll-mn0000984476#biography

Tenacious D is an American comedy rock duo formed in Los Angeles in 1994 by the actors Jack Black and Kyle Gass. Their music showcases Black's theatrical vocal delivery and Gass' acoustic guitar playing. Critics have described their fusion of vulgar absurdist comedy with rock music as "mock rock". Their songs discuss the duo's purported musical and sexual prowess, their friendship and cannabis usage, in a style critics have compared with the storyteller-style lyrics of rock opera. Prior to the release of the 2001 debut album Tenacious D, the duo had a three-episode TV series released on HBO between 1997 and 2000. The series came about after they met David Cross on the LA music scene and Black featured in episodes of Mr. Show with Bob and David. The band befriended the musician Dave Grohl, which began a relationship between Grohl's band the Foo Fighters and Tenacious D. Towards the end of the 1990s, the duo supported large rock acts such as Weezer, Pearl Jam, Tool, and Beck.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tenacious_D

The Bobby Lees are an American rock music group founded in 2018 in Woodstock, New York. The band comprises vocalist and guitarist Sam Quartin, bassist Kendall Wind, drummer Macky Bowman, and guitarist Nick Casa. The band's name originates from a hallucination experienced by Sam Quartin, in which she believed she saw a ghost named Bobby Lee. The song Bobby Lee, from their debut album, was written based on this experience.  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bobby_Lees

Trash Talk got their start playing DIY venues in Northern California more than a decade ago. They've since gone on to play their hardcore punk in front of crowds at music festivals like Coachella and Camp Flog Gnaw. The music they play is fast. It's loud. Very aggressive. Think along the lines of Black Flag or Suicidal Tendencies with a bit of thrash metal thrown in.  From: https://www.npr.org/2020/07/09/889433987/hardcore-punk-band-trash-talk

 

 Ape School

 

Chelou

Cuushe

Mumiy Troll

Tenacious D

The Bobby Lees

 

 

Trash Talk

The Hu featuring Lzzy Hale - Song of Women

Mongolian rock sensation The Hu has released "Song Of Women", featuring a guest appearance by Lzzy Hale of Halestorm. The track will appear on the deluxe edition of The Hu’s critically acclaimed album "The Gereg". This version includes three of The Hu tracks re-made with special featured artists. "Yuve Yuve Yu", featuring Danny Case of From Ashes To New, was the band's first-ever radio single. The band's current single "Wolf Totem", features Jacoby Shaddix of Papa Roach. The third track exclusive to the deluxe edition is "Song Of Women". There will also be three acoustic tracks on the new release. Lzzy appears in the video for "Song Of Women", which was filmed prior to the coronavirus quarantine. "I'm so thankful to The Hu for welcoming me, my words and my melody into this song," says Hale. "I can count on less than one hand the number of times where a project has changed the course of my spirit and renewed my faith in humanity. This was one of those projects. I'm still levitating." May is a month filled with events honoring women — Mother's Day on May 10 and Women's Health Week from May 12 through May 18, so the band felt it important to release the song in May. The Hu stands for the Mongolian root word for human being, inspiring the band's original style of music that it calls "Hunnu Rock." The group pulls inspiration from the Hunnu, an ancient Mongolian empire better known as The Huns in western culture. Their music is deeply embedded with their ancient culture, even integrating old Mongolian war cries and poetry into their lyrics. The group was founded in 2016 in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia by their producer Dashka, along with band members Gala, Jaya, Temka and Enkush. Together they create rock music with traditional Mongolian instrumentation such as the morin khuur (horsehead fiddle), tovshuur (Mongolian guitar), tumur khuur (jaw harp), guttural throat singing built around the pillars of heavy rock: distorted guitars, bombastic drums, and aggressive rhythms. All four members have earned Bachelor's or higher degrees in classical music and have gained several years of touring experience throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim.  From: https://ultimatemetal.com/threads/mongolian-band-the-hu-releases-song-of-women-featuring-halestorms-lzzy-hale.1659738/

Uriah Heep - The Wizard

When Uriah Help returned to the US for the second time, in January 1972, they were booked to open for Deep Purple, their noisy neighbours from Hanwell Community Centre. Their gregarious guitarist, meanwhile, was taking advantage of his group’s burgeoning reputation by thumbing through local phone directories and placing calls to random young ladies, inviting them along to gigs and parties.
“You’d tell the bird you were in Uriah Heep, and next minute the hotel was full of women,” Mick Box recalled cheerfully. But such a lifestyle wasn’t for everyone. On January 31, upon completing the final date of the Deep Purple tour, bassist Mark Clarke quit the band, having joined only four months previously.
“Mark jumped ship because he couldn’t deal with the stresses of the touring we were doing, which were excessive, I have to say,” Box says. “It was a mad, mad, mad time for us all. Mark felt that he just could not keep up with it, that he was going to have a full-on nervous breakdown if he stuck around any longer.”
Although Clarke’s time in the band was short, the ex-Colosseum bassist did make one lasting and significant contribution to Uriah Heep, writing a striking, harmonised middle eight for a new Ken Hensley composition titled The Wizard, based on a fantastical recurring dream he’d had every night for a week.
“I remember Ken playing The Wizard on an acoustic guitar in the back of our van,” says Box. “It was the first time I’d heard anyone play guitar with a drop-D tuning. He couldn’t find a middle eight, so Mark Clarke wrote that, and the whole song sounded so good to everyone. I think we all knew it was something special."
Gerry Bron, too, heard potential in Hensley’s whimsical power ballad. Ahead of their second visit to the US, Heep were rushed into Lansdowne Studios in Holland Park, where they tracked the song (and single B-side Why) in a matter of hours. Before the session ended, The Wizard’s semiacoustic intro was beefed up with the addition of an unusual instrument – the studio kettle.
“We were making a cup of tea, and had the studio door open, and as we were listening back to the intro of the song we heard the whistle, and thought: ‘Hang on!” Mick Box recalls. “We went into the kitchen, recorded the kettle whistle two or three times and got it re-tuned to a high C. That’s the note you hear at the beginning of the song.”
While Bronze Records readied The Wizard for an international release, Heep bedded in Mark Clarke’s replacement Gary Thain with a five-night stand at the Whiskey A Go Go club in Los Angeles in February ’72. New Zealander Thain had come from the Keef Hartley Band, and clicked instantly with Heep’s other new addition, drummer Lee Kerslake, who had joined just three months previously. The pair’s obvious chemistry, and superior musical ability, immediately elevated the whole band to a new level.
“Now we finally had a real steam engine of a rhythm section,” Box says, admiringly. “Having those two powerhouses behind us provided a wonderful foundation for the band. Lee was a fantastic drummer, and Gary would come up with these great bass lines that never got in the way of the melody of the song but always seemed to enhance it. It was an incredible knack. It was a real pleasure to work with the pair of them. Everything just clicked into place.”  From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/whacked-out-occultists-scary-seances-and-the-saga-of-uriah-heeps-demons-and-wizards