Facebook friend Darren Viola posted some Christgau clips of 1977 live show previews of the B-52s and Fleshtones shows at Max’s, which are fun, but down in the comments was a link to this tune from 1980.
I didn’t know this one, which is great fun.
Listening to the whole album. Good!
I loved ELP’s version of Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition.
I loved Yes. I liked the Moody Blues. Fucking King Crimson.
Kelefah Sanneh wrote about prog rock in the New Yorker earlier this year. You can read his excellent piece here.
I loved much of this music. Virtuosity was important, but so was a big bottom. In my memory this was music that pounded was aggressive, like rock, but also exulted in notes and playing, and felt really good.
Sanneh gets that, which is why I’m here.
One thing I remember was that Scott Muni, the program director of WNEW as well as DJ, would often put on a whole side of Yes or the Moody Blues in order to take meetings while DJing. That usually worked, though WE knew.
There are lots of good suggestions about what you should listen to in Sanneh’s story, so go and listen to them. I’ve had three conversations in recent weeks about the Mahavishnu Orchestra. As Sanneh says, not prog, but passing.
And more than anything, you should listen to Bitches Brew.
Walter Becker, co-founder, guitar, bass player, and songwriter for Steely Dan has passed away from and undisclosed illness.
I pretty much dismissed the band following the release of their first single, Reelin’ in the Years, thinking it was a solid enough pop tune, but not thinking that much of the band, kind of the same as I liked Radiohead’s Creep when it was released never thinking what an incredible and rich catalog of tunes the band would produce.
In fact the analogy works for me since I bought both bands’ first albums, Can’t Buy a Thrill (Steely Dan) and Pablo Honey (Radiohead) liking the works in general, but never really suspecting how sophisticated the development of the band’s respective music would become.
But, starting with Countdown to Ecstasy, Pretzel Logic, Katy Lied, and then The Royal Scam, the Dan produced four albums that are as good, interesting, musically listenable and challenging as anything any performer could make
In fact, I think when I noted bands with three brilliant consecutive albums, Tom rightfully put Steely Dan’s–named for a chromed dildo in William Burrough’s Naked Lunch–list from above starting and stopping wherever you want, even adding Can’t Buy a Thrill on the front and Aja the back end.
I have to admit that with the band’s final big commercial success with Aja I became disinterested, slightly because it felt like I had been there before with the band, and partly because I was seriously into Punk and British Power Pop by then.
And, I had no interest in the band reforming and was no more interested in seeing their reunion than I would have been The Doobie Brothers or The Moody Blues.
Still, the band killed it for ten years with fantastic melodies and obscure interesting lyrics and a cluster of albums I still love.
Later Walter. Thanks for an incredible body of work and hours of pleasure. Here is a fave of mine.
Okay, hijabs elevate the novelty, but these clips don’t rely on novelty alone. That these young women are putting themselves at risk from all sides makes this music seem all the more potent. But I like it as music. Excellent.
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
A few weeks ago I picked up a vinyl copy of an album called Hard Work (1976), by John Handy. The saxophonist had an early career in the 50s and 60s working with some serious jazz heavyweights such as Charles Mingus.
He took a hiatus from performance to become an academic – teaching music at several prestigious San Francisco area schools such as Stanford, UC – Berkeley, SFSU and the SF Conservatory of Music.
Hard Work was only Handy’s second album since the late 60s. By this time he was incorporating more R&B into his work, perhaps due to exposure from his young students. This isn’t pure jazz, it’s a 70’s jazz/funk hybrid that is similar to the work of contemporaries like the Crusaders or Weather Report.
The dorian mode title track is today’s SotW.
As soon as I heard this dance floor groover I knew it had to secure a spot as a SotW. What better time than Labor Day weekend?
Enjoy… until next week.
I’ve had a week with the new Queens of the Stone Age album Villians and it is truly a monster. It is the best album of 2017. There’s hardly a reason for anyone to release anything else. It should win every award.
Dense, lush, intense. Lots of melodies and harmonies and multi-layered interplay between guitars and bass and vocals and keys and synths (not a bad thing). Soaring and singing, melodic dissonance.
All the songs are good. Most are great. Most are long. This is an album to be taken seriously, to be consumed in its entirety. Over and over again.
Gene presented The Pillows a few weeks ago and asked, “if not this band, then who?” I will say, for me, it’s the Queens. They are leaps and bounds ahead of any other new music being made today. They would stand their ground in any era. Josh Homme is a musical genius.
This is my favorite song, for now at least. It’s a good sample of what makes the Queens so special, although most other songs on the album aren’t far behind. Pay particular attention to when the main riff sneaks back in (via synth), after the stoopid punk rock part kicks in.
Thank goodness there’s something that rises above the cesspool that is today’s music.
This excellent clip gets Ray Davies at his most nostalgic and his most forward looking. Maybe not a great song, but it holds parts of great songs and the germs of psychology that matters. In other words, rock.
Another cover, a song I wanted to do for decades. I was in a short-lived band called the Femme Fatales in 1981-82, with three girl singers fronting a hard pop/punk band. We played one gig, at CB’s, right after Christmas. I had a cassette off the board that was a remarkable document. The band was nails – me on guitar, Johnny Er on bass, the great Nicky D’Amico on drums and Andy Towns on keyboard and writing the songs. The girls sounded great at practice but on stage they couldn’t hear themselves and were awful. I had no idea. It was always really hard to hear the vocals on that stage, even close to the monitors which I was not. All I knew at first was that the band was nails and that the audience reaction was tepid. About three songs in I figured it out. We were just too loud, which was always the problem with girl singers in rocknroll bands: unless they screamed they couldn’t be heard above the volume. That was then, now it’s a piece of cake with technology. But the band broke up in acrimony right then, too bad because we had another gig a week later at the Left Bank in Mt. Vernon. Which we played with me and Andy singing. I had a tape of that too which is long gone, and I was eager to keep going as we were. but Johnny Er was brought really down cuz he had high hopes for the original lineup, and because he wanted to play guitar.
Anyway, I was trying to talk the Femme Fatales into doing this tune, which I always thought was just begging to be punked up. And finally I got my chance. It was recorded a couple of weeks ago but I accidentally posted the rough mix instead of the final mix. So here it is done as well as I can do it. Lead vocals Cecilia Webber, backups by Claire Webber and Nikki Bechtold, drums by the great Bill Stevenson, bass by Chris Beeble who also twirled the dials, guitars by me. Needless to say, turn it up.
https://girlsnextdoor.bandcamp.com/
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
In Mojo #282, writer Michael Simmons opens an article about Delaney & Bonnie with this anecdote:
It’s a steamy August night in New York City, 1970, and Herbie Mann is in his pad when he hears equally hot music blasting from nearby Central Park. The veteran jazz flautist, bandleader and sessionman for Sarah Vaughn, Count Basie and Chet Baker, is bewitched. A female voice – as sultry as the weather – oozes carnality, while a guitarist bends blue notes like an electrified Robert Johnson. Behind them, a fiery band blends southern R&B and rock’n’roll.
Mann grabs his axe, heads for the park and, squeezing his way on-stage, joins the dozen-strong cast of crack instrumentalists. Hey! – says the look on their delighted faces – it’s Herbie Mann! The female voice, Mann discovers, belongs to blond bombshell Bonnie Bramlett; on the other vocal mike is her handsome, bearded husband Delaney, dispensing cues with the neck of his guitar. The collective crew are Delaney & Bonnie & Friends, the Friends tonight including transcendent slide guitarist Duane Allman – whose own Allman Brothers Band is just taking off – plus King Curtis – hands down the greatest soul saxophonist of all time.
This story led me to recall that Mann recruited Allman to play guitar on the sessions for his breakthrough album Push Push in 1971. I wonder if the Central Park concert is where they first met and decided to work together.
Today’s SotW is the title track “Push Push,“ the album cut that leaves the most room for some tasty Allman guitar work.
But Allman wasn’t the only stellar musician to play on these dates. Mann’s backers also included Chuck Rainey (bass), Bernard Purdie (drums) and Ralph McDonald – all who later would play on sessions for Steely Dan. And let’s not fail to mention Donald “Duck” Dunn (bass) and Al Jackson Jr. (drums), both from the famous Stax studio house band.
Unfortunately, any article about Push Push has to make mention that is has one of the worst album covers of all time. Here’s one article that makes that case:
Bad Album Covers Exposed! The Music Behind the Worst Vinyl Art Of All Time
Enjoy… until next week.
While looking at more of Sister Rosetta, I stumbled onto this little documentary which is wicked good.
Thought her guitar might be a Guild also, but one of the Dixie Hummingbirds said her axe was all metal so I thought it might be a Wandre a la Buddy Miller, but who knows? There are some other vids of her playing what looks like a 335 E but not totally sure.
This is really good, though. It is also the first of I believe four 15 minute clips, so if you like this, there is more on YouTube….
