from the LP Bongo Fury, Discreet Records, 1975
Lost in the maelstrom of grading that becomes every teacher’s world for the last couple weeks at the end of each semester, I somehow managed to miss the unfortunate news that Captain Beefheart had died last Friday, after a hard-fought battle with MS. Given that tomorrow would have been Zappa’s 70th birthday, I figured this song was an appropriate selection (Zappa’s mind-melting solo here is one of his best ever, and that’s Beefheart’s inimitable voice singing backup vocals at the end, “girl, you thought he was a man, but he was a muffin…”), taped live on the tour where their relationship, both personal & professional, basically fell apart; fortunately, the two men buried the hatchet previous to Zappa’s passing away. Plenty is being/will be written about the legacy of an artist as eccentric and anarchic as Beefheart was, so I will leave all the mushy eulogies about everything the world of modern music & art has inherited from him to the experts---suffice to say, the dude was far out man, and so was Zappa. Rest in peace fellas!
from the LP Light Of Worlds, De-Lite Records, 1974
It’s snowing outside, so this seemed like an appropriate diversion. This spacey instrumental jam has been sampled by a grip of hip-hoppers over the years (most markedly as the base loop for Will Smith’s “Summertime”), but it can easily stand on its own feet as a breezy reflection of the summer just passed, all the good times and fun in the sun, already looking forward to next year’s adventures & detours. Although they were previously a bare-bones, gritty hard funk crew, Kool & the Gang seemed to mellow increasingly with each passing year into the ‘70s, finding more success (but perhaps losing cred) as they softened their sound. So, all you analogue synthesizer sluts out there, you’d better put on a second pair of drawers because founding member Khalis Bayyan is gonna make you wet right here, just know that.
from the LP Remedy, XL Recordings, 1999
How can this track not have been laced in Chi-town??!? To be perfectly honest, the same could be said for the majority of singles & EPs the boys in Basement Jaxx dropped in the mid ‘90s leading up to this, their debut long-player; being from London, their ability to work within the Chicago phatty-boom template was uncanny (too bad all their recent stuff has been shite). The only thing I can come up with is that DJ Sneak, who was spinning at their club nights in the UK as early as ’94, must have smoked them down with so much weed that his sets somehow infused into their DNA through the cannabinoid receptor system, thus leaving them helplessly beholden to that Windy City tracky-jack groove. Not a satisfactory answer for the elevated levels of dankness found within this song, I know, but it’s the best I got; many blissed out memories of this number though, sweltering parties packed with soggy ravers rolling face on double-stacked Mitsubishis…good times.
from the LP The Strange Idols Pattern & Other Short Stories, Cherry Red Records, 1984
Last night was Larry King’s final evening on CNN, and even though I rarely made it through the whole hour of his interview show, he was obviously liked by some people in high places (see: former and current heads of state, movie stars, TV stars, musicians, etc…), so much so that it got me to thinking--- what does that say about our culture exactly? Or, increasingly, the whole damn world for that matter, given that the most surreal and head-spinning moment of Larry’s big send-off came not on the final broadcast, but last week when Vladimir Putin professed his love of the King; frankly, that whole exchange was so bizarre, I was speechless…a rare thing (wink). Not to dumb it down or anything, but my clearest memory of Larry King was his coverage of the O.J. Simpson car chase: my friend and I were baked out of our gourds on schwag and found the whole thing beguiling & impossible to turn off…so what does that say about me…? I suppose we all like sticking our noses where they don’t belong from time to time, but Larry King got to enjoy doing it for a living, for over 2 decades. So cheers to him, and cheers to living in a voyeuristic world.
from the LP Visage, Polydor Records, 1980
If you study the etiologies of various musical subcultures over the last 50 years or so, you find that many genres initially found their footing within the confines of a single club (sometimes merely a club night), insular underground scenes developing the fulcrum of a full-fledged trend, often without realizing the extent of the exposure which was to come. The short-lived New Romantic movement of the early ‘80s, essentially a fashion-obsessed tributary of the New Wave, is a textbook example of this phenomenon, and the club promoters responsible for creating all that fuss (Steve Strange & Rusty Egan) just happened to also be (good at hiring…) musicians, calling themselves Visage---a name well chosen, given the scene’s propensity for androgyny, excessive use of makeup, and foppish period clothing (see: fancy tranny pirates). This song, Visage’s biggest and most enduring hit, is suitably over-the-top with that lone oscillating monosynth and high-drama lyrics, particularly the nonchalant delivery of some French spoken word. It was all a bit cheeky, and any unabashed celebration of the ersatz in music is usually doomed to a brief shelf-life, but having spawned such polarizing and famous figures as Boy George & Duran Duran, the impact was both real and wide-reaching. Go figure.
from the LP In Search of the Lost Chord, Deram Records, 1968
No matter how impractical such a scenario would likely be, it’s easy to get tempted by the earnest idealism found within the concept of a psychedelic utopia, at least partially because some of the motivating factors which played into that equilibrium (i.e. war, poverty, and perhaps most notably, a disillusionment with the traditional rules & regulations) remain potent forces in many people’s lives today. The Moody Blues, having become rather notorious drug-takers by this stage in their career (love the acidy, proto-Alex Grey cover art), present a song here from the point of view of an older individual who, perhaps having turned on, realizes that he’s wasted his whole life, “…I worked like a slave for years, sweat so hard just to end my fears, not to end my life a poor man, but by now, I know, I should have run…”; thus, he admonishes some unseen young person to “…take this place, on this trip…ride, take a free ride…have my seat, it's for free…let’s find another place that’s free…” I doubt sitting around taking psychedelics all the time would be the solution to the world’s issues, but maybe we do need something radical, like having all the globe’s leaders eat mushrooms together, to begin the conversation…can you even imagine that?!!
from the 12” single, Greensleeves Records, 1978
Jeez, is it obvious enough that I don’t have to be teaching for a few weeks (re: sudden onslaught of posting drug-related tracks)?! It’s true, my marijuana consumption increases once the responsibility of standing in front of a classroom every morning wanes, and the ass-groove on our couch downstairs gets a little deeper. This heady anthem begins like many other weed-themed reggae cuts of that time, with the protagonist being chased down by the cops for his love of the sweet leaf, but once you arrive at the chorus things take a turn for the trippy, “…meanwhile I’m smoking my ganja, then I use, LSD…”; it’s no surprise, then, that the band responsible for this song, Capital Letters, hailed not from Jamaica, but instead Wolverhampton, in England. Even being one of John Peel’s most beloved British reggae acts wasn’t enough to garner them with wide-reaching popularity, and they only released a couple of albums before disappearing from sight; however, word is they have recently reformed and are planning to tour (knock on wood).
from the LP The Pink Mountaintops, Jagjaguwar Records, 2004
Stephen McBean’s other band, Black Mountain, have never delivered for me on the promise that such a monolithic name carries with it (too much focus on a musical image, in my humble opinion), so when I was told by a friend about this album of his other stuff under the moniker of Pink Mountaintops, I was somewhat skeptical. Happily, it was surprisingly good, and where his other project comes off somewhat contrived, these songs really evolve organically. This particular song hits the nail on the head for me: lightly tribal percussion, cyclical bassline, gentle guitar, and mysterious lyrics (“…I fuck fire, and I, I fuck rain; if I had my chance, I’d get down again…but the A-bombs are comin’, oh oh, the A-bombs are comin’…”), coming together to create its own little drugged-out scene, sounding as if the Brian Jonestown Massacre went krautrock, or if Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” & Janes’ “Slow Divers” had a baby. Dig it.
from the LP Juicy Fruit, Epic Records, 1983
When Dâm Funk recently stated in an interview that he felt Mtume’s Juicy Fruit was one of the most prolific and important albums of the last thirty years, he wasn’t kidding; granted, this style of sophisticated boogie is exactly the type of sound Funk aspires to in his own career, so I won’t go as far as him in describing the overall significance of this album, but Mtume most definitely brings the funk for us here. Coming off like some robot who composed an ode to the fluidity with which humans can move their bodies, this whole LP is unadulterated proof that being slick & being loose are, indeed, not mutually exclusive, and this vocoder-heavy track flawlessly lays out that dialectic for us; the blazing, Hazel-ian electric guitar solo at the very end (care of Ed ‘Tree’ Moore) comes out of nowhere and kicks my ass every time.
from the LP Vento Sul, Odeon Fonográfica, 1972
The cover art for this utterly captivating & enigmatic album is a good indication of what lies between the grooves: a swell of warm hazy vibrations from outer (inner?) space that slowly floods into the listener’s mind like a pool of cannabis-infused caramel, coating your brain with luscious layers of sunny melodies and sleepy beats; this particular track espouses the end of autumn like no other, that lightly strummed acoustic guitar shuffling through the piles of dead leaves as the patient rhythm section ambles along through the calm skies, wary of the storm ahead, heeding the wintry warning call of that creeping electric guitar. Marcos Valle is one of the most celebrated Brazilian musicians from the ‘60s & ‘70s, a perpetual hippie who found inspiration within a plethora of music scenes from outside his homeland, dipping his cup into some psychedelic prog-rock Kool-Aid on this stellar LP (backed by his fellow countrymen, O Terço). Smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em…
from the LP Come Get It!, Motown Records, 1978
“…I’m in love with Mary Jane, she’s my main thing; she makes me feel alright, she makes my heart sing…” Can I get an “amen” for the high?!! I sometimes wonder how different things might look around us if it was 80% of the population smoking grass instead of drinking alcohol---I’m no fool, I know better than to presume that the restorative properties in cannabis alone would be enough to loosen up folks’ minds in the radical ways needed to transform macro-cultural structures like stratification and interpersonal violence (there are plenty of racist, sexist, homophobic idiots that smoke weed), but I still think that a society of tokers might ameliorate certain aspects of their surroundings & rituals, and there’s anecdotal evidence to suggest that there’d be a whole lot more creativity and innovation going on. Been switch-hitting with some Blue Dream and some Headband this morning, roughly my favorite strains of late, and I gotta tell ya: my heart is singing people!
from the LP Bust Me Out, Mercury Records, 1984
Perhaps more than any other genre of music, hip-hop has always been saturated with “beef”, whether good old fashioned battling on the mic or the wanton trend of homicidal violence (and everything in between); at any rate, fights just seem part & parcel to the music business in general I suppose. A common scenario, particularly if and/or when older tracks enjoy a renewed popularity due to retro trends, is having people who feel that they never received their credit due, often correlating to a beef over someone else getting more props than they supposedly deserve. Grandmaster Flash is, undeniably, one of the most influential DJs of all time, but the songs for which he is best remembered (“The Message” & “White Lines”) were actually written, performed & produced by Duke Bootee and Melle Mel alone, no Flash or the other members from the Furious Five around; this fact has led many to determine that Mel & the Duke both deserve a lot more recognition than they’ve gotten---Duke in particular. His lone solo LP backs up that assertion, a buffet of electro beats & laser-synths that still sound fresh as hell to this day, and check out the phatty ghetto-blaster pictured on the cover…wish I still had mine!
from the LP Killing Joke, Editions EG Records, 1980
“…the clock keeps on ticking, he doesn't know why, he's just cattle for slaughter…” It’s finals week around campus, and by the looks on some kid’s faces you’d think it was the end of the bloody world: sunken shell-shocked eyes, slouched shoulders, heads shaking in disgust, furrowed brows & pouting lips as far as the eye can see (as a child, when I’d stick my bottom lip out in protest, my mom used to warn me, “…you better suck that lip in or a seagull is gonna come along and shit on it…”). I’m not the kind of teacher who pulls any punches on exams---fucking hated professors that tried hard to trip you up by asking misleading or trick questions! This elegy was the opening track on one of alternative rock’s most consistently namedropped albums, the self-titled debut LP from British crew Killing Joke, a crunch-n-munching dirge that presents itself like Motörhead meets Gary Numan’s darker stuff in a bottle full of Tuinals. That said, this is hardly impenetrable, and many of the tracks on this top quality album are so catchy you’ll find yourself humming their melodies long after the record stops spinning.
from the CD Disaro, Disaro Records, 2010
Distance often impacts the vibrations of music, regardless of if one is speaking about a dissociated emotional ambiance or the literal void between sound waves and your ears, fashioning an emotional response in humans that people typically either take a lot of pleasure in or dislike intensely; I’ll bet you can guess what camp I fall into. A running theme in many “witch house” tracks is a severe sense of detachment, found in both the minimalist beats and, if included, the blasé vocals; to my surprise (a hipster I am not), a chunk of this scene comes from right here in the Denver area, including the band for which the genre gets its name, Modern Witch. This track is the easy highlight for me on their somewhat uneven debut album: pummeling beats, stabby synths, evil effects-laden keys, and the singing, which shows up just enough to hit the correct notes, and not an iota more. Everything about this song resonates for me, perhaps most of all their decision to skew the equalizers in such a way as to give the impression of being recorded in a tunnel, propelling us alongside their dark, neon-lit nightmare party.
from the LP Crosby, Still & Nash, Atlantic Records, 1969
“…there's just one thing I got to know, can you tell me, please, who won…?” American children aged 10 and below have lived their entire lives with our nation at war; if you consider that we typically don’t become conscious of much outside our own lives until we are five or six years old, it’s essentially an entire generation of kids that have known only war---albeit, a rather detached vision of war, but war none the less. It doesn’t take a social scientist to know that that’s going to have some impact on their socialization, but speculating what that fallout will look like is anyone’s guess; you can bet that David Crosby, Stephen Stills & Graham Nash would prefer them to be a bit more disgusted by the ever-growing military industrial complex (both federal & private) in front of them. This anti-war tale, fittingly written on Crosby’s boat in conjunction with the Jefferson Airplane’s Paul Kantner (safe to assume they were all exceedingly baked), takes a different approach from many of its leftist musical peers of that time, tackling the idea of thermonuclear fallout rather than merely the Vietnam mess that was then at hand, “…wooden ships on the water, very free and easy; easy, you know, the way it's supposed to be; silver people on the shoreline, let us be, talkin’ ‘bout very free and easy...horror grips us as we watch you die, all we can do is echo your anguished cries, stare as all human feelings die, we are leaving---you don't need us…” This album remains rock solid from front to back, a relic of its time but, sadly, still relevant to unlearned lessons.
from the LP Gangster Love, Gold Plate Records, 1976
X-mas shopping is almost always a major pain in the ass. No matter how you cut it, the whole process is labor-intensive and generally annoying once the actual purchasing commences, mainly due to the ruthless nature of our fellow holiday shopping peers (not to mention, the understandably blasé demeanor of service staff who have been saturated & inundated by trashy people screaming at them about deals they supposedly saw in coupons that they, magically, now don’t have…ugh, get the fucking net). Pompous assholes from the higher SES bracket always get a bit crazier this time of year too, determined to find items that are so expensive as to eliminate the possibility of common folk flossing the same steez. With that in mind, I think the woman on this LP cover would be the ideal individual to have with you on any seasonal shopping adventure, perhaps on the Michigan Avenue of this song’s name (one of the higher-end destinations found within the Windy City), because she’s not the kind of woman to tolerate any sass---better believe this bitch will rob you. Porn-ish stringed licks & fatty brass tricks make this instrumental number a real barn burner, particularly toward the end, around 3 minutes in: get, get down.
from the LP You’d Prefer An Astronaut, 12 Inch Records, 1995
Sticking with an Illinois theme, Hum are surely among the mightier unsung heroes to have never emerged from the underground, short a brief (and mostly forgotten) brush with fame via their lead single from this LP, “Stars”. One might think that having the almighty oracle of all things indie & Midwest, Stevel Albini, producing your demo would ensure eternal success, but you’d be wrong, and the story of Hum reads similar to countless other crews that also fell prey to lady luck’s emotionless divining. Where their Chi-area peers the Smashing Pumpkins always leaned more towards a Led Zeppelin frame of mind, Hum reached more for the stars, marrying Hawkwind’s brutal drugy riffage to Pink Floyd’s expansive dream, concocting a noise that sounds both sprawling & torpid at the same time, and employing cryptic lyrics which tease the brain, “…sleep comes to everyone while we wait for the Sunday afternoons… that's why the suicide machine is built for two, a simple sick device devised to overload on love, to bring us colored dreams and soundtracked waves of fun…and to the left where up is down, now stands a zebra made of shapes of me, and silver and the sun; so bring no guilt with you up above the flat-line, let's just hit the sky, exploding into one…and so I give myself away, to everybody everyday; and so I give myself to you, and you need it more than I do…” Psychedelic haze from the nation’s midsection: get high, raise volume, and exist…
from the LP Born Again, Cotillion Records, 1971
Even though many of us associate the advent of talk-boxes with Peter Frampton’s use of one on his inconceivably famous …Comes Alive set, their invention actually came several decades earlier, and they’d been used extensively across several genres of music before he made the things de rigueur; in fact, as this funky track skillfully demonstrates for us, Frampton wasn’t even the first to use a talk box in tandem with a wah-wah pedal. This slick-ass number from Young-Holt Unlimited deftly showcases both of the gadgets’ abilities and their appeal, adding a layer of jelly-kneed sleaze to the proceedings which couldn’t be generated by anything else, not even if they’d added dirty lyrics in their place. These cats were primarily an instrumental crew, something which certainly limited their appeal to wider audiences, but the confidant interplay makes up for any loss of storyline, in my opinion anyways.
from the EP Overload, Network Records, 1990
Although often times overshadowed by its more well-known siblings (the 303 & the 808), Roland’s TR-909 was the drum machine most techno and house producers in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s ended up using to lay their beats, usually after having reached the limitations found on the other previously mentioned machines; frankly, the 909 is just easier to work with and has everything you need in one contraption. Midlands-based duo Altern-8 (Mark Archer & Chris Peat) probably know every last in & out of this particular device, all the fun patches and every last pattern, having employed one to craft many of the UK’s biggest rave anthems in the early days; these dudes used to show up at parties dressed in full-on, EPA style hazmat suits, including masks over their faces---which makes an old raver wonder, were they the first to start rocking those masks (pre-Vicks) which became ubiquitous at raves worldwide in the years following…? This track, and a grip of their initial wax, walks a fine line between techno & house: a bit too bouncy to be techno proper, but dark enough to sit pensively in the middle.
from the LP Bongo Fury, Discreet Records, 1975
