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Author Topic: Sundazed: Albums from the Golden Age of Popular Music (Read 7826 times)
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Maybe I put too much faith in atmosphere
Re: Sundazed: Albums from the Golden Age of Popular Music
Looking at CB's famous list, I see The Doors' third album Waiting for the Sun is high among her "Worth Another Listen"s. I loved their debut, liked most of Strange Days but this one flummoxed me from day one. In fact it was my last Doors purchase, the way that Weasels Ripped My Flesh became my last Zappa LP.
Looking through the track listing today, there's not that much I'd write home about. The opening big hit sounds dated and a lot of the rest sounds tired, at least to these ears. Eventually I chose "Not To Touch The Earth" for its exciting build-up and its connection with their big theatre piece "Celebration of the Lizard", of which it seems to have been part. Sticking my neck out here but this may be the closest The Doors came to reproducing their live act in the studio.
Later I came to love L.A. Woman so all's well that ends well (or something).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAqx8y6mOFY
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_for_the_Sun
"Ik bun moar een eenvoudige boerenlul en doar schoam ik mien niet veur" (Normaal, 1978)
You're Grass and I'm a Power Mower: A Beach Boys Orchestration Web Series
the Carbon Freeze: Eclectic Essays & Art
Ramases' 1971 album Space Hymns gets the thumbs down from CB--except for this one track. I haven't checked out the rest of the album but "Life Child" sounds excellent to these ears. Indeed, the passage beginning at 3:40 is simply breath-taking. The band backing Ramases (real name Kimberly Barrington Frost) would go on to form 10cc. His wiki page is an enthralling if heart-breaking read. May the gods protect the eccentrics of this world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8HpI4QkaoI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramases
It was only after I'd moved to NL that I discovered there was a Dutch band called The Outsiders (I'd bought the seriously tear-jerking "Girl In Love" by the US band of that name in 1966). Their 1968 album CQ (or C.Q., take your pick) is listed among my friend's "Wasn't Impressed With"s, although she describes two tracks, "Wish You Were Here With Me Today" (linked here) and "I Love You No. 2", as good. Assuming my spies have been doing their job properly, the lineup for this album is Wally Tax (vocals), Ronnie Splinter (guitar), Frank Beek (bass guitar) and Leendert "Buzz" Busch (drums). Actually I have CQ lined up for late night/early morning listening--it gets rave reviews, not what I'd expected at all. So I'm intrigued.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-ZBFYehg4Y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsiders_(Dutch_band)
Quote from: JK on July 18, 2019, 06:47:51 AM
Actually I have CQ lined up for late night/early morning listening--it gets rave reviews, not what I'd expected at all. So I'm intrigued.
Curious album ^^, a bit on the uneven side. I most liked the one I linked (obviously), the noise-heavy "Doctor" and the driving "Happyville" (for harmonica fans only).
Now, I remember Chimera's unsettling cover being a subject of discussion across the road. I listened to this album all the way through yesterday and I'd say it's top-notch in all departments, not least in terms of sound quality. Lisa Bankoff and Francesca Garnett's two-part voicings are particularly strong.
The Youtube blurb is confusing. According to the sleeve notes, both Lisa and Francesca sing on all tracks except "Sad Song For Winter", which features just Lisa.
This is the opening track, "Come Into The Garden", followed by the goofy "Interlude #1":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4g4teAExNoM
http://time-has-told-me.blogspot.com/2006/09/chimera-uk-acid-folkbaroque.html
Some years ago I discovered this take on Richard Strauss's Also Sprach Zarathustra and posted it at a now-defunct forum. I rediscovered it last night with a lucky spell of googling and here it is again (now on two forums for safety's sake).
I remember giving the debut album by Ars Nova a brief listen in a record shop in 1968--it was on Elektra so I was immediately intrigued. I gave up after two or three tracks--it was too eclectic for my tastes in those days (and perhaps too frivolous). So I never got as far as "Zarathustra".
It seems this album and 2001: A Space Odyssey were released pretty well simultaneously so there was little question of the Kubrick film being an influence. As if to confirm this, the Ars Nova track includes a bizarre passage from Strauss's work that is nowhere to be found in Kubrick's OST, namely the twelve-tone "Of Science" fugue (here at 0:32; see the Strauss link).
This album by Ars Nova never made my friend's lists, probably because, being somewhat out on a limb, there were no YouTube comments that would have led her to it. Fifty years later, I can appreciate it more than I did then, having mellowed with age (or something). "Zarathustra" was the last track on side one of the original LP:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RzNgjWg2Zw
http://therockasteria.blogspot.com/2017/10/ars-nova-ars-nova-1968-us-magnificent.html [please read but don't click on any links on this page!]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Also_sprach_Zarathustra
Lacewing's lone 1971 album is tucked away towards the end of CB's "Wasn't Impressed With"s. She didn't single out "Paradox" as the standout track, which it most definitely is. It's understandable, as a gruelling three-year session of listening to some 300 albums would probably become more of an ordeal than a pleasure towards the end. It certainly shows stamina!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQKTs4JZsZA
http://badcatrecords.com/BadCat/LACEWING.htm
I must add that it was great fun going through these lists, standardizing the layout and checking dates and spelling. And most informative!
« Last Edit: August 05, 2020, 03:16:20 AM by JK » Logged
One of the few UK albums I bought in the 1960s was Family's Music in a Doll's House. I'd heard many of its tracks on John Peel's radio show and was astonished by the sheer variety, something that (in ny view at least) successive Family albums failed to deliver. I used to take the needle off after "Voyage" (my favourite track) but these days I can appreciate the qualities of its two (on CD three) successors. I've linked "Peace Of Mind" as well because of the subtle transition between it and "Voyage" (here at 2:20), which has largely been lost in uploads of "Voyage" alone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHFru3rfxK8
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_in_a_Doll%27s_House
Another from the "Worth Another Listen" tier is Small Faces' Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake. Back in 1968 I arrived home one day to hear this remarkable string-fuelled music issuing from the open window of my brother's room. It was the opening instrumental title track.
Hard to pick just one song, so these are the next two on the album, here in one video.
"Afterglow" shows just what an outstanding singer Steve Marriott was. Nice organ too--and manic drums. "Long Agos and Worlds Apart" features for once the dulcet tones of keyboardist Ian McLagan and a trick ending.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eM_ug_WxWG4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogdens%27_Nut_Gone_Flake
My blogger friend put me straight on something that had been bothering me for more than half a century! Side two of Love's Da Capo consists of one long improvised track (apart from Alban "Snoopy" Pfisterer's Bach harpsichord bits bookending it). After the tight arrangements on side one, I always regarded it as a let-down and a throwaway side. I think I only played it twice, the second time just to confirm my dislike of it.
If I remember correctly what my friend told me, Arthur Lee in his autobiography says something to the effect of regretting not having released a long live track from those days (maybe it was because of the quality, maybe those gigs were never recorded). So in a way, "Revelation" compensates for that omission. I've been listening to it with different ears ever since. Thank you, that person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea7_6p1aUzs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Da_Capo_(Love_album)
The final post in this topic is devoted to the opening track from the first LP by Haphash and The Coloured Coat. Featuring the Human Host and the Heavy Metal Kids was released in 1967 and I bought it soon afterwards. It was done on coloured vinyl but i can't recall if it was red like the copy being played here. "H.O.P.P. Why?" features some wonderful scrunchy bass work:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8EV8Rh3Ols
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hapshash_and_the_Coloured_Coat
Postscript: Thank you, my friend, for this opportunity to revisit the music of my youth. But now it's time to move on.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Which is why I'm rescuing this splendid topic from a life of obscurity on page two. The music it includes is far too good to let languish--and, I have a new addition to make.
Popol Vuh got a mention earlier in this thread but now it's time to back it up with some music. Their 1971 album In den Gärten Pharaos ("In the Garden of the Pharaohs") consists of just two wildly different but equally stunning tracks. If the title track is contemplative, the B-side, "Vuh", is like being hit over the head with an Alp:
In den Gärten Pharaos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Vhht487PwQ
Vuh: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MwtcoixW6A
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_den_Gärten_Pharaos
Surrealistic Pillow never made it onto my blogger friend's list, maybe because she decided it was overfamiliar (which I suppose it is). Lots to say about this one but I have work to do so I'll restrict myself to saying thank you, first of all to Mark for sending me the original US version some years back (a breath of fresh air after the UK hatchet job) and to CB for reviving my interest in it. This is for them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrealistic_Pillow
I don't believe we've had Blues Magoos' Psychedelic Lollipop yet. It's among my friend's "Worth Another Listen"s. It's one I myself bought in '66 on the strength of their hit single, "(We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet". I wasn't impressed with much of the rest at the time. I did listen again recently (i.e., ten years ago) and was pleasantly surprised! (I may be wrong but I can't recall seeing the album title on the original UK release, which means it was regarded there as self-titled. Perhaps the record company balked at the drug-related word "psychedelic".)
This is their psyched-out version of John D. Loudermilk's "Tobacco Road", best known in the version by the UK band The Nashville Teens. This is one track I did like at the time:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vaA4KnsBEo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelic_Lollipop
It was a comment on YouTube that brought me face to face with one of the many "Wasn't Impressed With"s in my blogger friend's list. Recorded in late 1967, Cauldron, the lone album by Fifty Foot Hose, sounds great to me. So good in fact that when I first heard it I played it twice in a row.
I can imagine her being put off by the persistent comparison being made everywhere between it and USA. Chalk and cheese, I'd say. USA is highly sophisticated, whereas this is lo-fi mad-professor's-laboratory stuff, where anything goes. I just love those cheapo electronics burbling to themselves throughout just about every track.
This is "If Not This Time". Thankfully, I copied and pasted the YouTube blurb reproduced below from an earlier upload--it's essential reading for those interested in this band and this album:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncf3oQJ9C5A
Picture Dr. Who jamming with a more proficient Great Society featuring an adenoidal Grace Slick on vocals, and you have at least a scant aural reference for this rare proto-synthesizer-in-an-acid-garage-band junction. It was recorded in late 1967 on Mercury's subsidiary Limelight label, so it comes to no surprise that they were unceremoniously dumped after it failed to become the label's answer to "Surrealistic Pillow." They broke up mid-1968, which quickly resigned "Cauldron" to the ever-growing scrap heap of one-off Bay Area bands signed in the wake of the 'Summer of Love' that were forgotten long before autumn's end. This is a pity, as Fifty Foot Hose's "Cauldron" is a small but terrifying monster of homegrown psychedelia. Only the unmistakably West Coast guitar jamming spree in their epic cut and paste "Fantasy" is there audio evidence as to the space (San Francisco) and time (1967) they occupied, but the uniqueness of the album is in the efforts of Corky Marcheschi and his bulky, homemade electronic instrument, a nameless behemoth consisting of audio generators plugged through echo and fuzz boxes, a huge cardboard tubes, a plastic outdoor speaker and other homemade devices. It was jerry-rigged, unglamourous...and highly effective. It's presence runs throughout the whole jazz, folk, R&B potpourri and turns it into a proto-electronic stew with practically every other track solo audio generator experimentations, some 2 minutes and some so brief they act more like codas to the song they trail. "The Things That Consern You" is an acidhead reassuring his old lady that "The things that I do now/ they don't consern you now/ I'm just trying to feed my head." But with all the beeping, flashing and f***ed up crude electronics, they seem to be not only feeding his head but also setting it alight like a flickering neon sign. A tremendous rock out and the high point of the record is "Red The Sign Post." Here lead vocalist Nancy Blossom gives it some strident Slick vocalising as husband David Blossom goes for it on customised Gretsch with fuzztone built directly into his axe. It's a blistering surge out, recalling "Bombay Calling" by It's A Beautiful Day. Not that it sounds the least bit like it, mind you. But just as "Bombay Calling" provided Deep Purple with the inspiration for "Child In Time," "Red The Sign Post" (deep breath) is the undeniable source where Ritchie Blackmore based a note for note guitar blueprint for The Purps very own "Space Truckin'." Aaarrghughhh!
The album calms down (somewhat) with the Owsley-dosed coffeehousing of Billy Holliday's "God Bless The Child." Acoustic guitar and hissing jazz hi-hat and traps are surrounded by incongruous space whooshes and bleeps in a proto-synth, fifties sci-fi movie manner. It all ends on with the hellish title track, "Cauldron" with the echoed clang of struck bells and an aggrieved woman's wailing as Nancy Blossom's chiding tones are slowed and sped up at will over a backward-masked rhythm section. The vocals get more and more filtered and unreal, at first intoning only words that start with an 's', and becoming the demented little sister of the second side of Brainticket's "Cottonwood Hill" -- another femme vox-scalded, hellbound psycho-out.
After only one album, this proto-cyber psych outfit passed as quickly as they came. Their only mention would be a name-check in Ralph J. Gleason's 1969 book, "The Jefferson Airplane And The San Francisco Sound" published over a year after their demise. But recent interest caused by both US and UK re-issues of "Cauldron" led to a reformation and a small string of gigs in San Francisco in 1997, a full thirty years on.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifty_Foot_Hose
I found this next glut of JK goodies awaiting deletion on another forum and backed them up forthwith. I'll post them individually over the next few weeks, editing them slightly to make them Smiley-friendly.
First off is the UK band Goliath, whose self-titled album was released in 1970. The interview linked below may shed some light on it.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLF-92rCh83EoF2AwuzOLr17b831xsNNSG
https://www.psychedelicbabymag.com/2014/07/goliath-interview.html
I've probably said this before but really I can't say it often enough. It's a wonderful experience being introduced to albums I missed first time round, passed over or simply forgot about. Wonderful too because tastes change and things I sneered at the time I now much prefer to albums I used to swear by. So many thanks to the OP, who was born twenty years after most of these albums were made!
An Escape from a Box (1972) by the Italian band Circus 2000 is a curious album. The almost childish lyrics and tight instrumental work shouldn't work together but they do--and wonderfully well, as evidenced by the opening track, "Hey Man". (A technicality perhaps, but the original LP cover confirms that this album features their second drummer, Franco "Dede" Lo Previte, who joined in 1972.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMmNF-hlhlE
www.italianprog.com/a_circus2000.htm
Looking through the '60s topic at my "hobby" forum, I stumbled on a number of things I'd posted at (ahem!) PSF two years ago. Some are from obscure albums and belong here and others are 45s for posting in the more general "Listening" thread.
As I said at the time, I never realized just how much psychedelic music had been recorded in the later '60s, early '70s until I joined PSF. Looking round for new additions, I stumbled across this album Paix by Catherine Ribeiro + Alpes. The instrumentation includes a cosmophone (in the picture?) and a percuphone--the mind boggles. This is the epic title track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpJl3dY8jDc
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paix
frenchculture.org/music/3227-trip-through-world-french-psychedelic-music
Next up from the archive:
I was alerted to this brilliant album in April 2018 by my erstwhile partner in crime at PSF. The name Fuzzy Duck doesn't ring a bell although I can't believe I never heard anything by them back in the day. From their one and only (eponymous) album, this is "Afternoon Out":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxX8zpNK2xI
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_Duck_(band)
After hearing a brilliant song by The Action at the Hoffman Boards, I read them up and discovered that the singer on that 45, Reg King, left soon after and in 1971 made a stunning and criminally obscure self-titled album. This is the opening track, "Must Be Something Else Around":
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIW2dJs-vgQ
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reg_King
This was first posted two years ago to the day at PSF:
Here's another from the "Keepers" list of psych-related LPs I'm gradually working my way through, leaving out things I know (or know I don't like). From 1967, these are The Freeborne [god these guys were young!] with the mesmerizing "Land Of Diana". (The poster dates from August that year when they opened for the VU at the Boston Tea Party.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BiW2MLZqtQ
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Freeborne
And here's another recommendation from the same source. The Peppermint Rainbow seem to have made little impression in the UK at the time (1969) and in fact only had one hit in the US, the gorgeous "Will You Be Staying After Sunday?" I have had little time for sunshine pop in the past but if much of it is like this, I may be converted yet. (The picture is of singer Bonnie Lamdin.)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNg7arOQoVA
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Peppermint_Rainbow
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