Back in the mid/late 80s SPIN magazine was a hip alternative to Rolling Stone for people interested in “alternative” rock music. I subscribed for a number of years and credit the publication for turning me on to a number of great artists and albums. You have to remember that this was before the days of file sharing, Pandora or Spotify. Back then you only heard about great new music via word of mouth, radio or published articles/reviews.
One album in particular that I credit SPIN for alerting me to is Psychocandy by The Jesus and Mary Chain. The group was featured in an article about Scottish bands in the April 1986 issue. You can read it starting on page 29 of the link below.
In an 1985 article in The Face, Max Bell described the JAMC sound beautifully:
“The Jesus And Mary Chain certainly make a fine racket. Guitars are pitched to distortion, feedback snarls, rhythms filter through to create a polyphonic and massive effect. Yet within this healthy maelstrom lurk conventional melody lines, whose impurities are matched by their catchiness.”
Yes indeed. I think of “Just Like Honey” as the melding of Spector’s Wall of Sound – it also utilizes Hal Blaine’s famous opening drum phrase from the Ronettes “Be My Baby” – Brian Wilson’s earliest, most innocent Beach Boys anthems, and The Velvet Underground’s distortion and feedback.
After more than 30 years, “Just Like Honey” and Psychocandy still sound sweet.
Today’s SotW is from the “Restored” dresser drawer. It is “Senses Working Overtime” by XTC from the English Settlement album. “Senses…” reached the Top 10 in the UK but only managed #38 on the Rock Album Tracks chart in the US. It was released in two formats, the 4:34 single version and the 4:53 album version. Why Virgin records thought they needed to cut out a few lines to make the song 19 seconds shorter is incomprehensible to me.
“Senses…” is an impressive composition. The musicianship is amongst the best in the vast XTC catalog. The first of three sections opens with a folky “medieval” sounding acoustic guitar playing some variation on an E flat chord. Shortly it’s joined by a cool bass line. Colin Moulding plays his fretless bass with creativity and panache. I especially dig the legato slides.
The middle section makes effective use of diminished chords and acts as the bridge to the rousing count-up chorus.
The drumming is ear catching. The fills in the choruses (after the count of “5”) insist that listeners play “air” drums along with the record.
The lyrics are cryptic. Is it a peculiar love song? Is it about an insane person? It doesn’t really matter. To me it’s a lot like The Beatles (John Lennon’s) word salad, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” The expressive lyrical imagery is way more important than the “meaning.” Thematically, the lyrics are much closer to The Beatles (George Harrison’s) “All Too Much” from the Yellow Submarine soundtrack.
Beyond the words are the way they sound. It was a creative mind game to write “1-2-3-4-5, senses working overtime.” After the count, you expect to hear 6-7 (seven) and get the word “senses” that’s a bit of a trick.
Sadly for us XTC fans, there were few opportunities to see the band live. In April 1982, just a few months after “Senses….” was released, the band played their last concert in San Diego. Andy Partridge experienced a nervous breakdown of sorts and was unable to perform in front of audiences. He retreated, Beatle like, to the studio and crafted several more outstanding albums – including Skylarking, Oranges & Lemons, and Nonsuch.
Enjoy… until next week.
BTW – Did anyone notice that everyone in the video is playing left handed — including the drummer. Still messing with our senses?
One of the dilemmas I face when I post each week is introducing my readers to songs that will appeal to the widest audience possible. But I’ve learned that when doing what I do (writing about obscurities) there will be large blocks of people that will HATE a certain percentage of my offerings. So I thank those of you that continue to read even when I suggest two or three songs in a row that you simply can’t stomach.
So be forewarned… today’s SotW will not have a broad appeal. But I know there are at least a few of you that would love to hear a good guitar wig-out. If you’re one of those people that appreciates guitarists that have huge pedal boards and use every one on it (e.g. J. Mascis), you will enjoy “Solar Marmalade” by The Bevis Frond. You know who you are!
“Solar Marmalade” is an 8 minute instrumental that starts “at 11” and never lets up. It employs fuzz, wah-wah and a whole lot more. It’s a bit psych, a tad proggy and just a little jazzy. Influences cover the spectrum from Hendrix and Black Sabbath to Punk and Grunge. The song is on the 30 cut, 1991 album, New River Head.
While you’re listening, here’s a little about the band. The Bevis Frond was the solo studio pseudonym of British guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Nick Saloman. He devised the alter ego in 1985, recording at home in the spare time he could squeeze out while raising his daughter as a stay at home dad. Once things started to take off, he formed a touring band.
If you like this “Solar Marmalade” but aren’t familiar with the band, check out their discography – it’s huge. By my count, they released 22 albums in the 18 years between 1987 and 2004 (and they’re on Spotify). The eclectic New River Head – with touch points from The Byrds to Husker Du — may be the best!
Back in the early 70s I played high school football. The tunes that were played in the locker room covered the entire spectrum of music that appealed to the diverse socio economic groups that were attracted to pay football.
Some (white guys) guys were into the Stones and Allmans. Some liked Zeppelin and Bowie. There were prog rock fans into Yes and ELP. There were singer/songwriter fans into James Taylor and CSN&Y.
Then there were the African American guys that turned us onto Al Green, the Chi-lites, the Stylistics, the O’Jays and Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly. I loved, and still love, all those groups. But one of my favorite albums that I first heard in the locker room was Wild and Peaceful by Kool & the Gang. Today’s SotW is that disc’s “Funky Stuff.”
Now if your only familiarity with Kool & the Gang is from the wedding reception standard “Celebration” (1980) you may decide to stop reading right here and check in again next week. That would be a mistake.
Wild and Peaceful is a great album that contained three bona fide classics – “Jungle Boogie” (#4), “Hollywood Swinging” (#6) and “Funky Stuff” (#29). “Jungle Boogie” was revived in 1990 when master soundtrack programmer Quentin Tarantino used it to great effect in Pulp Fiction. (It starts after the credits and plays through the car radio as John Travolta and Samuel Jackson have the famous McDonald’s/Burger King discussion.)
Beside the hits are other great songs like the spoken word “Heaven At Once” and the 10 minute funk workout title song closer.
But back to “Funky Stuff”… It is the perfect album opener. It immediately grabs you with a whistle call to attention and its blaring, James Brown inspired horn section intro and doesn’t let up when the party starts. It adds a chugging, funky bass line, R&B guitar lick and more disco era whistles.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
Today’s SotW was written by another guest contributor, Ron Marcus. Ron has guested for the SotW a couple of times before. He is an exceptional musicologist and rock historian. He’s also a (tie) dyed in the wool Dead Head, having attended almost 300 Grateful Dead concerts by 1993. Ron is also the drummer for Rockridge Station, a band based out of San Francisco’s East Bay that performs original songs and covers of Americana deep cuts.
The Beach Boys have spread their music around the world since 1961. Brian Wilson has written hundreds of songs and has been immortalized by his uncanny craft for hit songs and incredible production, especially vocal harmonies that have hummed in the heads of millions of people for generations. His story was on display in the fantastic biopic Love and Mercy and he just finished a worldwide tour honoring the 50th anniversary of Pet Sounds, his seminal album that inspired the Beatles to produce Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (considered by many the greatest recording of all time). His battles with mental illness are legendary and represent survival against many odds to come out so gracefully on the other side. Hardly Ignored or Obscured!
However, his brothers Dennis and Carl are a different story. Carl was a great surf guitarist, very underrated in his influence on other guitar players and his vocals on “Good Vibrations” and “God Only Knows” are as beautiful as any ever sung. Dennis (the Beach Boys’ drummer) is known more for being the only one in the band who was actually a surfer and car racer. He was the one that nudged Brian to write surf and car songs, which paved the road (and waves!) to their legacy. He also is known for being a drunk and druggie who was eventually fired from the band. Of course, he was also infamous for his association with Charles Manson and his family; quite a way to be remembered.
This week’s SotW is called “Love Surrounds Me” by Dennis Wilson. It is from the previously unreleased Bambu, the follow up to his seminal 1977 solo album Pacific Ocean Blue.
POB was critically praised and a seller of 200,000 albums, and it was the first solo release from any Beach Boy. Momentum high, he continued to write incredible, deep textured songs that were slated for inclusion on Bambu, recorded in 1978 and 1979.
As his personal life fell apart, he descended into such self-destructive behavior that he lost all the friends and believers who engineered and produced these songs. So the project died on the studio shelves where it stayed until 2007, 34 years after his tragic death. The engineers and producers finished the mixes and gave the world a treat releasing Pacific Ocean Blue on a 2 CD set that included outtakes and the aforementioned, unreleased Bambu.
“Love Surrounds Me” shows a sensitive side of the wild Beach Boy. He plays most of the keyboards and drums. The harmony vocals are so particular that he went to 6 different studios for final mixing! This track features future girlfriend Christine McVie, from Fleetwood Mac, as one of the singers,
This is just a taste of the depth of Dennis Wilson’s catalog. By the way, none of his songs are about surfers or cars! Just for the record, he is the uncredited writer of Joe Cocker’s 1974 hit ‘You Are So Beautiful.”
This week we have a guest contributor, Barry Stelboum. He’s had a life-long love affair with music of all kinds and did a stint as a music journalist writing for Spin and other entertainment publications. He is an accomplished photographer and aspiring filmmaker. He is currently the drummer and sometime bass player for the Brooklyn based band called The Occasionalists (with my cousin Mark V.) that specializes in live karaoke performances. When he’s not indulging in his creative outlets, he heads up the Legal Department for a big New York ad agency.
Back in the day, I’d often wander into Sounds, a now sadly departed used record store on St. Marks Place in the East Village. I used to spend hours in the store looking for obscure gems and cheap .99 cent cut-outs on which I’d take chance. One day in 1990, I saw this album featuring a cover with a beautifully eerie photo of a huge jellyfish. The record was called Submarine Bells by a band called The Chills, about whom I knew nothing. There was something about the whole package that made me think that there was going to be something interesting inside. So, I dropped my hard earned $2.99 to see if I’d be right. In short, it was love at first sound.
The album’s opening track is this week’s Song of the Week, “Heavenly Pop Hit.”
The song opens with a splashy organ riff that sounds like it was recorded in an underwater church. Within seconds, drums, guitar, bass and the indescribably unique vocals of Martin Phillips join to create an instantaneously catchy melody that immediately draws you in. You’re hooked before you even get to the impossibly catchy “Dum de dum dum, It’s a heavenly pop hit” chorus, complete with an angelic chorus of male and female voices that elevate the listener to pop music heaven. Like so many of my favorite albums, the overall sound matches the eerie album cover art (Black Sabbath’s Black Sabbath may be the most perfect example of this match), with fluid bass and guitar lines, flowing melodies, and dreamy and otherworldly vocals that somehow feel like that jellyfish floating through the sea.
While it garnered some critical praise and a bit of a minor underground/college following in the US, the album reached #1 on the New Zealand album charts and cemented The Chills status as the godfathers of the New Zealand music scene. Those initial keyboard sounds of “Heavenly Pop Hit” literally opened a whole new music scene for me and, after wearing out the grooves of Submarine Bells, led me to the discovery of countless other great NZ bands, beloved in their homeland, but unknown here, including The Clean, The Verlaines, The Bats, Tall Dwarves and others.
Valentine’s Day is just a few days from now so I thought I’d make today’s SotW appropriate for the occasion. I’m not going for some sappy love song. I’m going sensual with Afghan Whigs “66.” It is from their final album 1965 that confusingly was released in 1998.
“66” has a terrific opening line that sets the mood for the song:
You walked in
Just like smoke
The Afghan Whigs hailed from Cincinnati, OH and reached the height of their popularity during the grunge rock period of the 90s. The band was led by Greg Dulli who handled guitar and vocal duties and was also the band’s primary songwriter.
Be sure to put this one on your Valentine playlist.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
This week marks the 9th anniversary of the SotW; more than 450 posts and over 600 songs! Thank you for your continued support.
Elbow is a British group that is sometimes saddled with the description as a “modern prog” band. What does that even mean?
Yes, the band’s songs are moody and atmospheric but they don’t have many of the usual hallmarks of prog rock like uncommon time signatures and long solos. They are only prog in the same way that Radiohead, Talk Talk, or Coldplay might carry that mantle.
All that aside, Elbow is one of the best bands you probably never heard or heard of. They have been working together since 1990, but it took them a very long time to get off the ground.
In the late 90s they won a contract with Island Records and recorded an album but Island was sold to Universal and the band was dropped by the new company before the album was released.
It took until 2001 for the band to get a new contract with V2 Records and release their critically acclaimed debut Asleep in the Back. (Take that, Universal!) Band leader Guy Garvey said of the title:
“It’s a memory we all share, from when you were a kid and you were coming back from a holiday in the car with your folks. There was that moment where you heard the engine switching off and you knew you were home. That warm feeling. Your dad would scoop you up and carry you up to bed.”
That’s an apt summary of the vibe of Asleep in the Back. Take, for instance, today’s SotW, “Little Beast.”
It starts with a dreamy vamp with some Eraserhead like industrial sounding percussion. About halfway through the song gets a little lift with added instrumentation.
In an interview Garvey said “Little Beast” is about:
“… growing up in Bury, not being a fighter, and occasionally being in dangerous environments. When there’s nothing to do in a small town apart from what’s expected of you, you can get caught up in it all. My favourite lyric is “the whole town’s dripping down a hill like the spine of something dead”. There’s actually a mill town north of Bury where the street layout looks like the spine of a dinosaur coming over the hill.”
I recently discovered the self-titled album of a New York based band called The Mystery Lights. The retro psych group records for the Wick label, the rock subsidiary of soul imprint Daptone; home to Charles Bradley and the recently deceased Sharon Jones.
The description of the band on the Daptone website is enlightening:
“… the Lights’ sound has evolved into a fuzz-fueled hopped-up 21st Century take on 60s garage pebbles, and artful 70s punk, that is all their own.”
That description certainly applies to today’s SotW – “Follow Me Home.”
The band has been together since they met as teenagers in school in Salinas, California, famously the birthplace of John Steinbeck.
Back in the mid/late 80s SPIN magazine was a hip alternative to Rolling Stone for people interested in “alternative” rock music. I subscribed for a number of years and credit the publication for turning me on to a number of great artists and albums. You have to remember that this was before the days of file sharing, Pandora or Spotify. Back then you only heard about great new music via word of mouth, radio or published articles/reviews.