Thirtythree And One Third Record Reviews

Yet another vinyl records blog to saturate the internet. My own curious take on records from the 60's to the present.

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Average White Band

AWB

Average White Band

Atlantic, 1974

You Got It

Got The Love

Pick Up the Pieces

Person to Person

Work to Do

Nothing You Can Do

Just Wanna Love You Tonight

Keepin’ It to Myself

I Just Can’t Give You Up

There’s Always Someone Waiting

The Average White Band blends the blue-eyed soul of Orleans with the light r&b and funk feel of bands like Ace and the Doobie Brothers. It sounds like a whole host of early seventies bands attempting to do this same task, but the group’s second eponymous record is a cut above because of the instrumental, Pick Up the Pieces. The majority of the songs on the album don’t have the grittiness of Pick Up but the record does groove to some degree.

While the opening number You Got It is forgettable fluff, the following number, Got The Love is a clavinet-underpinned piece that features a unison refrain in sweet harmony in a technique popularized by groups like the Spinners. The band shouts down the “got the love!” refrain as if from on high to back the lead singer up, Hamish Stuart. His voice is a caricature of itself, overly growly and sensual and full of “oohs” and occasional breathiness. The drummer keeps a steady sixteenth rhythm that is the chassis for any good dance track, and keeps it churning throughout the song. The success of Got The Love sets up the third track on the record, and the record’s only strong number, Pick Up the Pieces.

The ordinary introduction as the band vamps together over a strong central organ disguises the tight, funky groove the band will split into in a moment. The instruments coalesce into punchy solid pattern, guitar, bass, tambourine and drums holding down the time while the brass bip and bop the main melodic lines. The song, because it lacks lyrics, avoids the cliches of the rest of the band’s material and doesn’t struggle to get toes tapping. Its melody is infectious, giving way to the apex of the song, the gritty repeat of “Pick up the pieces\uh huh!” as a woodblock part taps its way in. The brass then switches to a swell off beat cadence to complement a saxophone solo. The band vamps one more time and then they march off down the road toward a tight unison ending. As soon as the band finishes their mini-masterpiece, they take a well-earned rest in the form of Person to Person, a veiled rewrite of the hypnotic Woman to Woman, equipped with more capable, yet slightly goofy vocals from Stuart.

Side one’s finale is also the side’s longest track- Work to Do. It rings with a massive brass fanfare to open and drops into a steady funk groove that is very circular in nature. Alan Gorrie takes lead vocals and imitates Steve Winwood. His high, arching voice aches with passion, adding some life to the banal and pointless lyrics. Hamish Stuart helps out on the refrains, as the band once again socks it to the listener with a cascade of sound. The band ends with a funky “work\work” chirp which is entertaining.

Side two’s only noteworthy track is Nothing You Can Do, which sounds as though the band was commissioned to write a new theme for the Golden Girls TV show. It’s soft and bouncy relying on a rimshot from drummer Robbie McIntosh to keep time. The lyrics are devotional and well sung, and as whole the song sounds like the Rolling Stones weaker efforts during their glam rock phase (tracks like Time Waits For No One), which heavily emphasize falsetto vocals and swirling electric piano or clav.

Overall, the album is fairly dull, Pick Up the Pieces otherwise justifying mediocre funk and blue-eyed soul tunes. The sexiness of other big funk acts of the day is simply not present on this album. It rings a bit hollow and places more emphasis on r&b than funk.

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10,000 Steps

10000 Lepes

Omega

Qualiton, 1969

Kerosene Lamp

Girl With Pearl’s Hair

Firestorm

Bread of the Court Jester

Callous Handed Wood Cutters

Prodigal Sons

Tens of Thousands of Steps

In The 1958 Boogie Woogie Club

Legend of the Spanish Guitar

Interrupted Concert

In the Soviet bloc, attitudes towards rock and roll and its perceived Western decadence had thawed slightly by 1969. Once forbidden, rock and rollers now stepped into the spotlight, getting their records released on the state-owned labels, and spots on TV. One of the many rock bands incubated in the Soviet bloc was the monstrously popular Omega, one of Hungary’s most beloved bands who are celebrating their 50th anniversary this year of near non-stop music making. 10000 Lepes (Ten Thousand Steps) was the band’s second effort and delved into Mellotron heavy anthems in direct contrast with the more youthful, Merseybeat-esque pop of Omega, Red Star Of Hungary, their first record. The diversity is amazing, the psychedelic rock seamlessly gives way to pop, and even blues finds its way onto the record with the closing number Interrupted Concert. The album, coming in the shadow of the Prague Spring and the outpouring of the counterculture contains no overt political references, just allusions to everyday items and people.

The album starts off with an incredibly bouncy and chipper uncontroversial track, Kerosene Lamp, but it is nothing but a comedic footnote to the raw power of Girl With Pearl’s Hair. Opening softly with the downward trickle of an organ, a flowering guitar solo, it quickly blossoms into a heavy, Mellotron powered groove. The tempo is impossibly slow and majestic, the main theme ringing throughout the track. The main verses are treated with reverential respect, the heaviness of the refrain evaporates and places all weight in the soft, broken vocals of Janós Kóbor, the bushy blonde’s voice gliding around complex Hungarian words. The ending of the song, sampled in Kanye’s New Slaves, is a powerful duo of Kóbor’s screams and the rest of the band solemnly intoning “la la lalalala” in tandem with the main melodic riff. The drums are ringing and metallic, the guitars wail and scream, and the hymn from outer space takes off back into the clouds. 

The rest of side one is an interesting mix of two fairly conventional pop songs, and the unusual jam, Callous Handed Wood Cutters. It begins with the sound of lumberjacks at work, an occasional bird call splitting the sound of sawing (“hello sawing my old friend\I’ve come to talk with you again”). The band then embarks on a slow, meandering jam to fill space. The flute soloing gets annoying fast, and the track wanders aimlessly into more sound effects to close it out.

Side two’s track Tens of Thousands of Steps follows the model of Girl With Pearl’s Hair. It begins with a piano hammering out the chords over a steady one-and-a-two drumbeat, before the deep male voices once again intone a preview of the main melody. The vocal workout for Kóbor is just the same, a lot of high notes blended in with unpretentious softer lines. Each of the guitar solos is cued in by a hiccuped scream from Kóbor, who could keep company among the heavy metal crowd. 

Side two is demonstrates the band’s genre jumping, with traditional boogie woogie coming in 1958 Boogie Woogie Club, and the aforementioned blues of Interrupted Concert. It’s an impressive spread of styles, and Omega masters each of them.

After a followup, Omega abandoned their more pop feel and tried on metal for size. They have continued to have success, but nothing touches the rock found on the group’s second and third records. Overall, the band displays an intriguing mix of genres that blend together. It’s like the cover of the record. The groups faces peer out of bushes, each face distinct, but blended together into one unified.

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Orpheus

Orpheus

Orpheus

MGM, 1968

I’ve Never Seen Love Like This 

Lesley’s World

Congress Alley

Music Machine

Door Knob Song

I’ll Stay With You

Can’t Find the Time To Tell You

Never In My Life

The Dream

Don’t let the psychedelic lettering of the band’s logo fool you, Orpheus’ eponymous debut is a pop album with only the slightest hint of psychedelia, akin to some of the work from Clear Light and the Rascals. Hailing from Worcester, MA, the band was another cog in the “Bosstown Sound” wheel put together by MGM Records. Their light and fluffy tone made them perfect radio fodder, but don’t offer a comprehensive listening experience. The Orpheus sound is one part Johnny Rivers, one part Rascals, one part Association.

The opening track I’ve Never Seen Love Like This is a fine example of the sunny pop peddled by the band- strings and brass cascade over intertwining vocal parts singing banal love lyrics. The drumming is tight and the playing is adept, however, hinting that the band could have greater material than just this.

Congress Alley is a nod to the hippie hangout in Worcester. A community based around one dead-end street, Congress Alley was famous locally for its collection of countercultural figures. The song mimics the neighborhood, it’s vibrant and irregular, complete with a brass blasts and the token “groovy”, even a vibraphone introduction. It bursts with energy, really capturing the mood of the sunny day as mentioned in the song. The energy level is high enough that it remotely sounds like chase-sequence music from a third rate TV shoe. Regardless of “what you say” or the weather, things stay a gas on Congress Alley, though the fadeout after just two minutes deflates the song’s grandeur considerably. It’s a mini-pop masterpiece with multiple layers.

Music Machine, also on side one, is the most ambitious track, though the finale, The Dream, is interesting as well. The adventurous track begins with a hushed introductory passage that blossoms into a whimsical brass powered pop groove. It’s equipped with fine surrealist lyrics, and an orchestral spread that rivals a good film score. It attempts the concept seen in Mr. Tambourine Man of sleep-as-a-voyage, but doesn’t come near the eloquence and tension of Tambourine Man. 

Stylistically, side two continues in the same vein as side one, though it features the hit Can’t Find the Time To Tell You. The briefest track on the side is the jazzy waltz of Never In My Life, which pulls in sitar and flute for some excellent interplay, each instrument feeding off the other. The song spirals out of control, into mad sitar soloing, before the Indian-flavored (The) Dream takes over and ends the record on a mysterious, almost apocalyptic note. Vocalist Bruce Arnold implies the “dream” is his to suffer through alone. It’s a sobering way to end the album, and demonstrates emotional maturity and a sense of placement from the band, who is otherwise fairly basic and unsophisticated.

Orpheus is one of the shortest records in my collection (there’s not a song over 4 minutes on the entire album), and its content is fairly forgettable in the shadows of the decade. Nevertheless, despite the shortcomings of the record, they managed to take Can’t Find the Time To Tell You to the top of the charts, and also released several more records before disintegrating in 1971. Of note, Orpheus opened for Cream when both bands played my alma mater, Brandeis University.

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Twilight Asylum

Twilight Asylum

Oscar

BASF, 1976

Twilight Asylum

Kevin’s Magic Aeroplane

High On Life

Three Cheers for the Working Man

Remember the Star

In the Morning

Jeremy

Old Soldiers Never Die

Take Me Back to the Good Old Days

The glam rock of Oscar is part disco, part prog, and 100% fabulous. Very little is known about this British band, but the album is adorned with hideous little figurines characterizing each song. It is hard to take Oscar seriously when instruments like theremin and sound effects are used on the odd but enjoyable opener Twilight Asylum that lends its name to the album.

Twilight Asylum chronicles the residents of the Twilight Asylum, paying particular attention to a “Mr. Dick”, perhaps a reference to the recently impeached American President: “We love you Mr. Dick\and all your little tricks\But we think you’ve gone too far this time\ and that’s why we’re taking you to the twilight asylum”. Underpinned by a disco hi-hat pattern, the song is weirdly danceable and its vocals are remarkable compared to the mediocre talent in that department. Conga drums and a descending guitar line provide musical color. The band goes off into a Zappa-esque fanfare of cheesy brass that sounds almost synthetic. 

While the Rolling Stones put down the working people on Salt of the Earth, Oscar has a genuine salute to them (Three Cheers for the Working Man) that opens in a swirl of an acoustic guitar. The drums are tight and heavy and keep steady time as the band launches a rather conservative critique of English society. With “half the country on the dole now”, reflecting the socioeconomic situation of the UK at the time, the band champions the people making the economy flourish along with a weekly, honest working wage. Strings glide through the track, adding a flavor of baroque rock to the song, and the choruses, which ought to be stronger, but are sung in a wavering male chorus that is not particularly harmonious. Some of the lyrics ring a bit hollow and sarcastic, especially the refrain- “now he (the working man) has got it better\hope he can remember!” 

The records best track is the sobering, literally, In the Morning. It’s a lament for a man whose wife is a prostitute (it appears), punctuated by graceful strings, more tight drumming, and a catchy chorus. “In the morning\Everything has changed\We’ll be on our way” the band sings with the help of an impish sounding children’s choir. The song is all too brief, but the chorus is what uplifts the entire track.

The most disco song on the album is the pop fluff of Jeremy that casts light on a high-profile death. It takes place over a strong disco beat, and tight unified guitar lines, but it lasts, like most of the other songs on the record, for only a few minutes, not the best for dancing. Also who wants to dance to a song about a dead person?

Twilight Asylum is a quintessentially British album that is a mirror to the times. It reflects both musical styles that were popular, glam and disco, and political aspects of life, especially on tracks like Three Cheers for the Working Man and Kevin’s Magic Aeroplane.

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Ars Longa Vita Brevis

Ars Longa Vita Brevis

The Nice

CBSP, 1969

America

2nd Amendment

Daddy Where Did I Come From

Little Arabella

Happy Freuds

Intermezzo from the Karelia Suite

Son Edito El Gruva

Ars Longa Vita Brevis:

Prelude

1st Movement: Awakening

2nd Movement: Realization

3rd Movement: Acceptance

4th Movement: Denial

Coda: Extension to the Big Move

Ars Longa Vita Brevis is one half pop farce and one half classical masterpiece that echoes the ambitious work Keith Emerson would attempt with ELP. For now the Nice is content to play progressive rock games for side one, before letting a full classical suite take up side two. It’s essentially the “Keith Emerson album”, as his piano and organ work are critical to the tracks, replacing a lead guitar, and his vocals are most prevalent, except where the higher backing vocals of Lee Jackson are present.

The beginning of the album is a bang-on rendition of Leonard Bernstein’s America. Emerson’s fingers fly over organ keys as Brian Davison and Lee Jackson struggle to hold their own, though they do. It’s the dexterity of the playing that carries the song which is otherwise repetitive.

The album’s most joyous track is the jazzy Little Arabella, which further adds a comic flavor to to the record after the jokey punch of America and the jocular toot that is Daddy Where Did I Come From. Arabella is a wild child of the 60’s, unconstrained and rearing to go. Emerson’s vocals are delivered practically in your ear, making the track unsettling and a bit bizarre, but the lyrics are clever and excellent, and the omnipresent organ fleshes out the song with musical color. Drummer Brian Davison keeps locked on to the tempo with a light swing of brushes, while the bass works its way up and down the frets. A randy piano also bangs its way through the track, and there are a few humorous sounds (“smoke coming out of her head” is accompanied by a hissing). The track dissolves into a tick-tock groove while the three members of the Nice take turns saying absurd things, until the babble overpowers the instruments and the song finishes.

Happy Freuds is an excellent finger-pointing song as it rocks on a steady, bouncing beat before dissolving into cymbal rolls and organ powered experimentation. The thick accent of lead vocalist Keith Emerson dominates the song, as he does on all track but the suite on side two. 

There’s almost too much instrumental work on the record for its own good, as many of them are a bit dreary and not particularly inspired, trying as hard they can to be pretentious and failing. Instead it comes across as an awkward mix of jazz drumming and classical organ-eering. Nevertheless, the album gets points from the critics for being diverse and displaying musical skill.

Ars Longa Vita Brevis is a dense record, but it doesn’t leave much to talk about, it’s simply too good. It’s a bit dull, but technically flawless and offers an avenue into prog that doesn’t challenge the listener.

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The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees

The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees

The Monkees

Colgems, 1968

Dream World

Auntie’s Municipal Court

We Were Made for Each Other

Tapioca Tundra

Daydream Believer

Writing Wrongs

I’ll Be Back Up On My Feet

The Poster 

PO Box 9847

Magnolia Simms

Valleri

Zor and Zam

The Monkees?! What are they doing here in my collection amongst Steppenwolf, the Moody Blues, and the Jimi Hendrix Experience? For all their prefabricated corniness, 1968’s The Birds, The Bees, and the Monkees is an interesting and enjoyable album, the first Monkee record to not take the number one spot on the charts. It’s the band’s Revolver, a prelude\warmup to their Pepper, Head. While they allow others to do the songwriting, the Monkees sing refreshingly up-to-date psych pop songs with abandon. No album but the rare and filler-packed Head comes close to the balance of silliness and seriousness present in a more mature Monkees sound. The conditions surrounding the album are tragic, as at this point, with increased creative control, the Monkees had effectively ceased to work collectively. They recorded tracks in separate studios around LA with various session musicians, and slapped a “produced by the Monkees” label on the album to assuage fears of an imminent breakup. All instruments on the record except for the odd Mike Nesmith lead guitar are played by session musicians. While the musical vision of the record is impressive, it’s eroded by the fact that the Monkees composed and played on very little of their own album.

Side one is graced with the Monkees’ corniest but most lovable ballad, Daydream Believer. It opens with the gentle tinkle of a piano picking out the chords, as a squeaky, almost feminine sounding Davy Jones delivers the tender lead vocal. He tiptoes his way through the banal lyrics. The sappy strings hammer home the point that this song is light and fluffy, perfect for AM radio fodder, though its imagery is colorful.

Writing Wrongs on the other hand demonstrates Mike Nesmith’s psychedelic songwriting ability. It’s got a great groove and great drumming, and is ambitious, taking up five minutes as opposed to the scant two or three of other tracks. But the psychedelic quality doesn’t end there- Davy Jones’ song about a circus (The Poster) as described through a poster features excellent brass lines, a tasty hook, glockenspiel and strings. 

Valleri is a tricky pop song that deserves mention because of its arching harmonies and difficult flamenco-inspired guitar lines that serve as a transition. Short and high energy, it was perfect material for a single, the kind of song that drove Monkee fangirls crazy. It’s a fairly basic tune as Jones laments his inability to articulate his love for “Valleri” well.

Set against the false pop optimism of Valleri, Zor and Zam enters from another galaxy, a baby Tomorrow Never Knows shock ensues. The album’s closer is definitely the most worthwhile piece of music made for the album. In a spooky, childish voice Mickey Dolenz recounts the tale of King Zor and King Zam and the buildup to a war they plot. It’s a stirring teenybopper anti-war song- the kings had a war “and nobody came”. To the king’s collective horror they look out on an empty battlefield and realize no one has come to fight to please the “two little kings”. Complete with booming horns, and sinister tympani to close the curtains on the song and the record, the song is over before it’s begun. It’s great to hear even the cuddliest and artificial of pop acts add their voice to the chorus of anti-Viet Nam singers.

Birds, Bees, Monkees is a cut above the pop music to be had on the four previous Monkees records. It doesn’t change the music of the times, but blends in very well with it, a strong effort in a crowded market. Though the lack of authenticity makes it hard to credit the Monkees as the geniuses behind the record, their earnest delivery of the songs, and the choices to include the ones they did is noteworthy and commendable. Monkees, and its psychedelic-blooded companion Head mark the last time the Monkees would be together as a quartet until 1987’s Pool It.

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Mashmakhan

Mashmakhan

Mashmakhan

Epic, 1970

Days When We Are Free

I Know I’ve Been Wrong

As the Years Go By

Shades of Lonliness

Afraid of Losing You

Gladwin

If I Tried

Happy You Should Be

Nature’s Love Song

Letter From Zambia

Mashmakhan is to vocal arrangements what Blood, Sweat, and Tears is to brass- they’re lush, ornate, and complex. Every track melds various song snatches together into one whole being, mostly with jazz undertones. Jazz fusion and psychedelic rock are at the heart of Mashmakhan, the Canadian band’s first album. They would release one more and then call it quits after unsuccessful sales.

Most of the music on this eponymous debut is achingly beautiful and rather dense. This is particularly evident on I Know I’ve Been Wrong, which ends in a huge rave up as bass player Brian Edwards flies up his frets while Rayburn Blake, the lead singer cries out in desperation “Let’s talk it over!” The song takes off after a fairly subdued introduction and angelic vocal part. 

Days When We Are Free opens the album with a frantic groove, the drummer must be sweating keeping it up. This evaporates into a relaxed pace, where a Zappa-esque guitars solo ensues. The haunting block harmonies carry on throughout the song despite its varying parts. The general motif is that at the end of the rainbow we will be free in our mind and body, somehow. While most bands would continue on and use the song as a guitar workout, Mashmakhan ably supplies a narrative to supplement.

At the same time as they rock Mashmakhan can croon through schmaltzy pap like Happy You Should Be about a love affair turned sour. The melody is powered by gentle guitars, lush strings, and brass, and sounds as though it came straight from a Burt Bacharach record.

The album’s only weak link is the filler in the form of a “jazz” jam called Letter From Zambia. It drags on at over six minutes while featuring a vaguely racist tribal sound of rattles and flute soloing in a vain effort to give that exotic vibe it needs. There’s even a few bird calls to add to the mess at the opening of the track. It’s good music for massage therapy and little else. The song doesn’t even touch on Zambia’s political issues (the dictatorship of Hastings Banda), leaving me to believe they picked the state to simply sound exotic.

Even though Mashmakhan underperformed on the charts, it remains one of the hidden gems of 1970. It is one of my favorite albums, and deserves to be bought, despite its low points.

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Day Blindness

Day Blindness

Day Blindness

Studio, 1969

Still Life Girl

Jazz Song

Middle Class Lament

I Got No Money

House and a Dog

Live Deep

Young Girl Blues

Holy Land

Day Blindness are the Doors’ less insidious, more hard-rocking siblings. They cast off the gentle, refined creepiness and the elegant Morrison poetry of the Doors to produce a heavier sound still with emphasis on the mighty Farfisa, Wurlitzer, whatever organ. Day Blindness has an amateur sound and feel, after all their eponymous debut’s cover is drawn in marker (though cooly enough, one band member has the Beatles in the background of his photo on the rear of the cover). Nevertheless, the band forges a path through new territory, combining the riffs and grooves of the James Gang with the organ and cadence of the Doors, with a little Iron Butterfly thrown in. It’s entirely possible all these elements coming together are not coincidental, as Day Blindness were in Los Angeles around the same time the Doors and Iron Butterfly were cutting records. The band follows some of Butterfly’s style by using their songs as blues workouts, which are substantially longer than the psychedelic songs Iron Butterfly put out.

The band’s songs never allude to it, but Day Blindness’ drug use is an apparent point of pride, as the jacket advertises the record as a product “of many trips”, while mysterious potions and smoking joints dot the rear of the cover.

Unlike the Doors, who were never ones for the culture wars of the sixties (though they made the odd political statement), Day Blindness tackles the plasticity of the middle class dream with the song Middle Class Lament. Sounding a bit like the Bonzo Dog Band, another group that poked fun at British middle class morals and attitudes, the protagonist bemoans his dreary life now that he’s settled down and found a job. The band wails away inappropriately heavily behind the vocalist, most likely guitarist Gary Pihl. The organ, played by Felix Bria, the only non-vocalist in the trio (drummer Dave Mitchell sang as well), is always at the center of attention even though there are guitar solos and words to be sung.

Side two demonstrates the band’s imitations of the Doors to a T. Live Deep is the side’s opener, which swings pretty hard (the Doors’ default rhythm) and is sung with a Jim Morrison cadence- velvety, and trailing off at the end. Holy Land is a copy of The End. Built around a hypnotic bass line, it gently builds the track under the soft, smug voice of Gary Pihl. The beginning of the song is a messy jam that goes nowhere eternally, but as if out of thin air, a Latin groove drops down and Pihl begins asking questions of his “mother” and “father”. Sound like familiar motifs? This groove leads to an organ solo that could easily have been one of Ray Manzarek’s.

Day Blindness skimps on both quality and lyrics, preferring drawn out blues jams and guitar solos to actual content. But that doesn’t mean the album is bad- it just doesn’t stand out in a crowded field.

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There's No Hole In My Soul

There’s No Hole In My Soul

The Barry Goldberg Reunion

Buddah, 1968

Sitting In Circles

Hole in My Pocket

It Hurts Me Too

Fool on a Hill

Capricorn Blues

Another Day

Sugar Coated Love

Strung and Younger

I Think I’m Gonna Cry

The Answer’s In Your Head

After leaving the psychedelic blues group The Electric Flag, pianist and organist Barry Goldberg formed his own briefly lived group and continued to play the blues, albeit spicing it up with unusual psychedelic rock songs and a fabulous cover of the Beatles’ Fool on the Hill (misspelled as Fool on a Hill on the album). There’s No Hole In My Soul is the record output for the group, a dense piece of varying styles that has something for everyone. Following Goldberg from the Electric Flag to the Barry Goldberg Reunion is Harvey Mandel on guitar. The album’s cover is a hint to what’s inside: the cover is a jumbled mess of photographs of faces, blending into one another. The album’s songs are a mixed bag as well, often at odds with one another, representing a variety of styles.s

Goldberg’s instrument of choice, the organ, plays heavily on all tracks, occasionally dwarfing the overall sound, but on songs like the lead off track it remains a tasteful accompanier. Sitting In Circles is a masterful, booming number that brings multiple elements to the table. Echo graces the track, filling up the spaces where the organ, strings, guitars, and drums aren’t playing with excess sound. Goldberg moans the lyrics in a rather contemporary fashion, sort of an older John Mayer cum Leonard Cohen. The lyrics are suitably basic, placing the emphasis on the music, which is excellent and just a bit complex. 

Fool on a Hill sounds like a Velvet Underground outtake, though not a word is spoken. Two or three organs come together (Beatle pun unintended) to make a drone that is otherworldly, while drums keep time by soloing faintly in the background. On occasion the drums will serve a more central role to the song, but it’s really all about the organ and guitar duet that functions as the main melody. The song is a Blue Jay Way interpretation of a classic, fuzzy and hazy, barely holding together rhythmically and absolutely delightful. The organ captures the spiral into the clouds that Paul’s vocals carry on the original as he improvises around “round\round\round\oh oh oh”. While slight homage is paid to the original, the Barry Goldberg Reunion is not afraid to push the limit, psychedelic-izing an already trippy song. While the lyrics on other tracks deal with liberation of the mind and riding on rainbows, Fool on a Hill takes credit for being the most psychedelic song on the record. It’s followed by a goofy blues number that hammers shut side one called Capricorn Blues. It’s a bit of astrology rock\blues, as the protagonist struggles to get a date with the proper astrological sign, something Goldberg laments. 

Side two is fairly basic blues and rock, but the final track, a live number called The Answer’s In Your Head is a stirring utopian vision along the lines of We Love You. by the Rolling Stones (“lost within our minds\cos we love you!”) The mind is the best place to method the stresses of social change and of being led and being imprisoned by American corporate society. The band presents a convincing argument for the hippie school of thought, that through experimentation with drugs and less hang ups one can make a revolution, though the radical leftists of the sixties chose to carry out more concrete actions. A rousing Doctor John style piano boogie is attached at the beginning of the track, building up to the introduction of the actual song. The noise of a concert jam fades into a country and western track, Goldberg’s voice soaring over the song, backed up by what sounds like a live audience on joyous cries of “the answer’s in your head!”. The song deals with Goldberg recognizing the potential of mindfulness and liberation just around the corner, while describing the loss of his ego. It’s a joyful celebration of the counterculture, complete with whoops and handclaps, inviting the audience into the musical painting. 

The smiles this album elicits are endless, it’s impossible not to love catchy sing-alongs and full tilt boogie woogie. Sadly, though, this is the only album from the talented bunch that comprised the Barry Goldberg Reunion.

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Quebecois

Quebecois

La Révolution Françaís

Trans-Canada, 1968

Quebecois

Isabelle

L’Amour

Bingo

Shoo Doo Be Doo

Et La Terre Tournera

Pierre-Paul Ladouceur

La Famille

C-Cool

Americas

It’s 1968, and from the smog of Mexico City to the drab decay of the Soviet Bloc revolution is in the air. Guy François and his merry band, La Révolution Françaís, attempt to capture that revolutionary call on their song Quebecois, which lends its name to an album of odds and ends produced for the American market. The band had minor success in French-speaking Canada, with the hit Qubecois, but the management wanted to look outside the country for further triumph, and cobbled together an album made up of songs from the band’s first and second records. The group also re-recorded two songs in English, Et La Terre Tournera became 9 til 5 andQuebecois became the tacky Americas included on the album. Unable to attain many American market sales, the band parted ways after just two records, leaving the Americans with the unusual and catchy record Quebecois.

The opening track is a declaration of independence of sorts from the people of Quebec. 1968 brought pro-secessionism to the province, and La Révolution decided to cash in with the song Quebecois. The lyrics are fairly benign for revolutionary rhetoric: they call upon the people of Quebec, from the mayor (oddly enough) to the Expos to unite, whether red or blue, capitalist or communist, to push for leaving the nation. It’s a rambling exposition of multiple factors. It opens with a gentle, sinister guitar and drum groove, which blossoms into a beautiful string driven line, punctuated by pompous brass, and shaky harmonies. After this, the band drops into a funky groove, repeating “Quebecois!” in falsetto over a churning beat that could easily be sampled in hip hop. This section melds uncomfortably with a marching band that is brought into the song, repeating the main melody, a glockenspiel dinging out the melody loudly and annoyingly. From the cheerful cotton candy world of the marching band passage comes the main Révolution powered section for a final time, marching into the fadeout. The track Americas is identical, but changes the words into a corny tip of the cap to America, with appalling lyrics like “Argentina seems so shiny\California seems so wealthy”. Given that the whole world is revolting against American imperialism, the tribute is ill-placed and takes away the radicalism of the group, if it had any.

La Révolution Françaís also tackles a Beatles-esque number entitled Isabella, which rings with open acoustic guitars, tasteful piano soloing, and impassioned vocals from Francois, the lead vocalist for the band. There’s a mock “bagpipe” cadence at the opening and closing of the track, completely wiping out the beauty of the song in one cruel shave-and-a-haircut introduction and coda.

The other song worth mentioning is side two’s opener, Et La Terre Tournera, a rocky ballad that could use a little more punch, but with whining guitars and heavy drums, is the hardest rocking song on the record. While I can’t begin to interpret the lyrics (as, alas, I speak no French), the song’s title implies the passage of time. The song is over rapidly as well, clocking in at just over two minutes. 

The most interesting track on the album is the jazzy C-Cool, which features various band members singing, whispering, and squeaking over a supple acoustic guitar, mimicking the sort of arty folk popularized by the Beatniks. A sitar solo adds musical color to track cut down to four minutes from the original nine (it was the centerpiece to the group’s first album).

While stocked with run of the mill pop songs that are brief and memorable, Quebecois sports some decent experiments, namely the title track and C-Cool. For what it is, it’s quite excellent.

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Rolling Stones - We Love You

July 30th and 31st 1967. London, Olympic Sound Studios and Essex, County Church Hall. Director - Peter Whitehead, basing on Trials Of Oscar Wilde.

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Long Time Coming

A Long Time Coming

The Electric Flag

Columbia, 1968

Killing Floor

Groovin’ Is Easy

Over-Lovin’ You

She Should Have Just

Wine

Texas 

Sittin’ In Circles

You Don’t Realize

Another Country

Easy Rider

The minor supergroup The Electric Flag follows a tradition of new electric acid blues groups like Paul Butterfield Blues Band and the Blues Project. The Flag then fuses these elements with psychedelic soul stylings like those of Sly and the Family Stone and the Chambers Brothers to create an interesting jambalaya of sound. The album features such dynamic players as Buddy Miles and Nick Gravenites, as well as Mike Bloomfield. Richie Havens also guests on sitar.

The record fades in with a clip of Lyndon Johnson announcing that he is speaking on behalf of the dignity of mankind, which is followed by a brief laugh track and applause, a mild political statement. The band then launches is into their brass-heavy interpretation of Killing Floor, whose lines “I should have quit you” are directed squarely at the sitting President of the United States. The track whirs to a stop, as though the record itself has suddenly stopped moving, but instead the listener is treated to the best song on the album. Groovin’ Is Easy is a far better track, and uses its horn lines far more effectively, raising goosebumps. The lyrics themselves are minimal and uninteresting, but it’s the music that truly sets this song above what comes after and before it on record. Stylistically, it shifts. From the groovy, funky main riff the band seamlessly transitions into a mock bagpipe drone, followed by a tip of the cap to pompous anthems, which then plops the listener back at the beginning riff. Backing vocals chirp unusually as the lead vocalist (it doesn’t actually say who it is)ad libs his way into the fade-out. 

Also on side one sits Over-Lovin’ You, a Motown inspired track with plenty of tambourine and blaring horns. There’s also a rave-up ending to side one with Wine,which sounds old fashioned in its recording here. The band nonetheless manages to imbue the song with high energy, as though they’re competing for a slot to play the song live at Mardi Gras (the city of New Orleans being the location central to the song).

Side two opens with an impassioned blues that incorporates silly lyrics “you make me feel like a Ringling Brothers circus clown”, for example, into a very serious blues number. The song is called Texas- the location where the vocalist “just got in from”. It mopes along, trudging depressed into the future, the horns and guitar writhing in agony, with Buddy Miles or Nick Gravenites’ vocals manic and full of pain.

The album rumbles closed with the powerful experimental medley entitled Another Country, whose footnote is the subtle acoustic song snatch, Easy Rider. 

Without the dynamic horn section, and indeed the all around talent of some of the players (Buddy Miles springs to mind), A Long Time Coming would have fallen quite flat if it had to rely on lyrical content alone. Instead it’s a masterful work that stands as a monument to sixties experimentation with musical form. The album also dates itself with its wonderful, purple tinged cover. It’s got the band’s logo emblazoned in red bubbly cursive, proudly proclaiming itself a unique “American Music Band”. This floats above the head of a groovy looking gal in heavy eyeliner, presumably in the nude. Both the sound and the look of the record give it a place in time, a place it’s most certainly worthy of.

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The Legend

The Legend

The Legend

Label unknown, 1968

With A Girl Like You

The Sky That’s Blue

Zeppelin’s Good Friday

Where Oh Where Is Mother

Yesterday’s Child

Eyes of the World

I Love the Little Girls

I Know

The Kids Are Alright

Cold Wind in August

Sunny Day

You’ll Be Sorry Someday

Gigi

Baby Blue

Portrait of Youth

Enjoy Yourself

The Legend has a strange ability to sound like a different band on every track. They run the gamut on their eponymous debut from sunshine pop to psychedelic rock to garage rock to blue eyed soul. The Colorado sextet, consisting of Jack Duncan, Barry Davis, Ernie McElwaine, Gerry Jimerfield, Mike Kelly, and Randy Russ cut just one album before morphing into the more successful group Dragonfly. The Legend sounds as though the group pulled every song from their repertoire into the fold without a thought for conceptual continuity. The album, on the majority of the songs, sounds like the Who on acid working out in a garage. The cover of the album is as cheeky as the music, a little in-joke shared among the listener and the band. It depicts the band member’s faces in goofy 1960’s pastiche, a style reserved for paintings of cute things like children or animals. The eyes are painted extra-large and the cheeks and noses have a rosy pink shine to them. 

The most interesting number on the album is not the Dylan\Who covers that grace side two, but the Rascals knockoff I Know. Equipped with piercing horns, and piano, and a simple chord structure, the band swings quickly through the track. The lyrics are banal lovey dovey nonsense but its sound is unmistakably that of the Legend, and the Rascals by proxy. 

The Legend also tackles the Who’s hit The Kids Are Alright, which is as punchy as the Who’s original version. It’s metallic and noisy and shines with Jimerfield’s lead vocal, which cuts through the track like a hot knife through butter. The touch that makes it more the band’s own is the sharp organ that tastefully complements the main instrumental body.

Most of the songs written for the band (or obscure covers) are in the vein of psychedelic pop, including the groovy Zeppelin’s Good Friday and Where Oh Where Is Mother. It’s a hazy song that stomps along with the same sort of garage band sound the  Seeds made famous. A mixture of marijuana and metal. Once again able organ playing gives the song color, but it’s the heavy, effects drenched cries of “Where oh where is mother?” that sell the track. The lead guitar and organ blend together with the vocals and seamlessly swoop upward into a guitar solo after the second chorus. It’s punctuated by tight guitar and drum interplay, as they ping pong back and forth on sixteenth notes. A tasteful organ and piano passage descends downward challengingly to end the song.

The closer to the original record was yet another garage band cover of Dylan’s Baby Blue, this time complete with a “skit” ending. While it follows in the same footsteps as the Chocolate Watchband’s cover, the ending is most unusual. the track suddenly crackles through small speakers and the listener hears the sound of footsteps leaving a room. The footsteps head through a door and then they pick up a sitar and noodles into the space that was originally the last on the record, though a rerelease has brought two extra numbers to the table. I Can See For Miles was likely the inspiration behind Portrait of Youth, an organ drenched power pop piece with tympani (?) breaks and ringing cymbals. It’s one of the few tracks actually penned by the Legend. Thesong  kicks off in a wall of feedback, a feature which completes every verse, while a thumping bass drum keeps time and the drummer uses the rest of his kit in terse, sixteenth note fills.

While not the best of the psychedelic garage rock bands, the Legend and their debut and grand finale of the same name are worth seeking out in a world crowded with the Seeds, the Watchband, and their umpteen imitators. The Legend tries to be unique, and somewhat succeeds.

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Bark

Bark

Jefferson Airplane

Grunt, 1971

When the Earth Moves Again

Feel So Good

Crazy Miranda

Pretty As You Feel

Wild Turkey

Law Man

Rock and Roll Island

Third Week in the Chelsea

Never Argue With A German If You’re Tired Or European Song

Thunk

War Movie

While not the best of Jefferson Airplane’s albums, Bark is the ringing in of a new era of hard rock and excess. Why excess? Take a look at the record’s original packaging. There was an outer jacket made of brown, reinforced grocery bag paper, meant to look like an A&P grocery bag. This in turn held the record’s actual jacket, a cardboard monstrosity with a picture of a fish head with human false teeth peering out at you. Inside this jacket was the record in a brown paper sleeve, and a foldout containing lyrics to the album’s songs. Only with money and influence could Jefferson Airplane have indulged in such excess. Even though the album has political statements, the band is clearly departing their roots for commercial prospects just over the hill in Jefferson Starship. In terms of bang for buck, this album delivers, it’s just not as original or adventurous as the group’s initial releases.

The album opens with a thrilling, stirring anthem in the form of When the Earth Moves Again, complemented nicely by Papa John Creach’s fiddle fanfare, high pitched and excited. Once again the band indulges in unison, not quite harmonious vocals, triumphantly shouting the refrain “When the Earth moves again!”

Crazy Miranda is the melancholy, piano driven story of a woman who believes anything she reads, living off propaganda, even if it’s contradictory. This track could be a mild diss to radicals of the sixties, whose blind ambition for change consumed them. Just like Miranda, hippies and revolutionaries were unable to see that things weren’t changing very rapidly. There are spooky piano flourishes abounding, served well by Grace Slick’s haunting vocals.

The mellow Only Pretty As You Feel follows, deflating the energy built up by the album’s first three tracks, though the energy is recaptured with the side closing Wild Turkey instrumental jam, once again ably underscored by Papa John’s fiddle. Feel features guitar work by Santana, very subtly, however. The song is more notable for its baritone vocals, and its collective songwriting credit, which belongs to drummer Joey Covington, Michael Shrieve, Casady, Santana, and Kaukonen. The song is extremely relaxed, almost jazzy.

Grace Slick tries out her experimental side once again on side two of the album with the highly unusual Never Argue which is sung entirely in German, echoing the obsession with German Zappa had on his string of 1970’s minor hits including One Size Fits All.

Thunk follows, the middle song of a final triad of excellence. It is penned by Covington, who understands harmonies like no one else in the Airplane. The track is done entirely a capella, chronicling Covington’s apparent inability to collect himself and talk to his love interest. The love interest appears to be dissuading Covington from any further contact. Never has a song of rejection been sung so beautifully.

Finally, War Movie wraps up the record. Another fairly hollow political number, perhaps inspired by the Kent State Massacre, Movie deals with a people’s revolution, which unlike Kent State, ends successfully, with the people repulsing government troops. While it is sung with conviction, it’s hard to see Jefferson Airplane manning the machine guns. Backed initially just by acoustic guitar and powerful vocals, the song blossoms into revolutionary country rock, Papa John Creach’s fiddle swooping through the mix. It’s not a happy war song, it’s a bit grim, but its prediction of revolution in four years is premature and untrue. If we’d had the revolution men like Reagan would have never had a career.

Bark is a beginning and an ending. The new, heaviest-yet Airplane is an endangered species, limping into the air for one more album before finally being retired from service. Bark a closing of an era and an opening of a new musical direction.

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Volunteers

Volunteers

Jefferson Airplane

RCA, 1969

We Can Be Together

Good Shepherd

The Farm

Hey Frederick

Turn My Life Down

Wooden Ships

Eskimo Blue Day

A Song For All Seasons

Meadowlands

Volunteers

Jefferson Airplane doesn’t get any finer than Volunteers. It’s a mixed bag of mellow acid rock, political psychedelic rock, and experimentation in between. Its jacket mimics a newspaper, the interior depicts a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, and the record in a plain white sleeve holds some of the best, eclectic, yet grounded songs the band has yet to offer up.

The album opens with a utopian call to tear down the walls between one another, with an affectionate nod to the American anarchist group with the line “Up against the wall, motherfucker”. It also holds some of the most politically charged lyrics Jefferson Airplane penned, including the line “All your private property\is target for your enemies”. It jangles open with a riff borrowed from the album’s title track which is incidentally the grand finale. It’s a behemoth of a song that lends itself to sing-alongs, with endless rehashes of the general idea of liberation, a repetitive groove, and noisy, cymbal-filled drumming from Spencer Dryden. From the ashes where We Can Be Together burnt out comes the soft, almost biblical-sounding Good Shepherd (perhaps it’s the nod to Paul and Silas).

Gentle and pastoral, Good Shepherd doesn’t square with the rock and roll feel of the side, even though every track doesn’t particularly fit the rock mold. The Farm is a vocalization of the growing back-to-the-land movement among certain hippie circles. Disenfranchised with life in the city, hundreds of folks moved to communes and the countryside. Jefferson Airplane dips its toes in country rock to write a song summing up those feelings of lack of attachment and the desire to reconnect with nature. It’s bass heavy, but features beautiful vocal work from Slick and Balin and the Ace of Cups. Just for good measure, as the song spirals into madness, Jefferson Airplane throws in animal sound effects.

Jefferson Airplane wanted to go out with a bang it seems (temporarily, their inactivity lasts a year), and penned the fine track Volunteers. It’s preceded by an unusual instrumental distraction entitled Meadowlands. On Volunteers the beat is big and the whole band echoes, as though playing in a large, empty warehouse. With euphoric screams and cries the band pounds on a piano (played by Nicky Hopkins), torture their guitars, and in unison shout the triumphant lyrics of liberation. While not explicitly political like We Can Be Together, Volunteers can be interpreted as a call for revolutionary volunteers, as they “march to the sea”. “Pick up the cry!” Grace Slick shouts over the madness, her words nearly drowned out by the heaviness of the band’s playing. It’s an excellent track, one of the finest the band wrote, though its origins remain humble. One morning, songwriter Marty Balin was awoken by the sound of a “Volunteers of America” garbage truck rumbling by. So smitten was he with the truck he proposed the name as a title for the album, and for a song. Afraid of law suits, the Airplane dropped the “of America” and opted instead for “Volunteers”. 

Volunteers is Jefferson Airplane’s apex. There’s nowhere to go but down, which they did, yet their two remaining albums are solid, just not as politically aware and musically mixed as Volunteers.

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Crown of Creation

Crown of Creation

Jefferson Airplane

RCA, 1968

Lather

In Time

Triad

Star Track

Share a Little Joke

Chushingura

If You Feel

Crown of Creation

Ice Cream Phoenix

Greasy Heart

The House At Pooneil Corners

Crown of Creation is a solid rock album, but it could have done with more experimentation like After Bathing At Baxter’s or more rhetoric like on Volunteers. Nonetheless, the record opens up the doors of opportunity for the band, who get even heavier in their sound and their drug use as the decade comes to a close. Creation is a signpost for which direction the band is going to go. 

Creation opens with a fantastic track called Lather about the complexities of growing older, specifically, hitting 30. Grace Slick gives her most haunting performance yet as the musicians gently keep time behind her. Her voice is sickly sweet and chiding, mocking poor “Lather”- coming across like velvet through the speakers. The whole song smells of tasteful overproduction, with necessary sound effects being added to spice things up, evident in the tank’s gunfire or the click-clacking of typewriter keys that embellish the track. Based on Spencer Dryden’s turning 30, the narrative is most interesting, threatening his childish behavior with the responsibilities of adulthood. He’s no longer young, but he’s not at all any wiser for being older. The humor of the song disguises its dire message, and it ends in the gentle babble of “adult” conversation.

The footnote to side one is the video nasty synthesizer drone of Chushingura. Random clicks (that sound like scratches to the record’s surface) and drum beats ring out as guitar strings are picked and a synth (or perhaps an organ) whines dissonantly. The track has no purpose but to frighten the listener, although its inclusion is strange. Despite the darker nature of Jefferson Airplane revealed on the album, it’s inherently pleasant drug music. Chushingura is a scary foray into unexplained territory. Brief, at only 1:17, it nonetheless reinforces that this album is perhaps not the sunny psychedelic rock of previous records.

The swing of Crown of Creation is reminiscent of earlier Airplane endeavors. Based off of John Wyndham’s The Chrysalids, the song tackles the growing gap between the old and intolerant, and the revolutionary young, a theme that would crop up on 1969’s revolutionary album Volunteers. While the last lyric implies a love motif, the majority of the song is spent pointing fingers at the older generations, who “cannot tolerate our minds” and ways of being. Stability is achieved by the older people at the expense of themselves, they become “fossils”. The philosophical themes of the song are somewhat eroded by its brevity (the lyrics are three stanzas), but at closer examination it does drive its point home.

What’s most missed from the album is the material left off the record. The seven minute jam based around a blues riff that is Sydney the Space Pig, and the merry experimentation of Would You Like A Snack, penned with Frank Zappa, are conspicuous absences that emerged as bonus material on later albums. These songs could have spiced up the rather uniform sound of the tracks on Crown of Creation. Overall, Creation is overshadowed by the other herculean efforts of 1968, namely Beggar’s Banquet and The Beatles. Had the band been more ambitious, the album could have stood the test of time, but it hasn’t very well.

Of note is the material that came with the record, a portrait of a dog, “Brumus” on one side, and lyrics and credits on the other.

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After Bathing at Baxter's

After Bathing At Baxter’s

Jefferson Airplane

RCA, 1967

Streetmasse:

The Ballad of You Me and Pooneil

A Small Package of Value Will Come To You, Shortly

Young Girl Sunday Blues

The War Is Over:

Martha 

Wild Tyme (II)

Hymn To An Older Generation:

The Last Wall of the Castle

Rejoyce

How Suite It Is:

Watch Her Ride

Spare Chaynge

Schizoforest Love Suite:

Two Heads

Won’t You Try

Sunday Afternoon

After Bathing At Baxter’s is the most adventurous sibling of the Jefferson Airplane family of records. Coming after Surrealistic Pillow, it maintains some of Pillow’s influence, but while Pillow emphasizes a radio-friendly acid rock, Baxter’s is a unified piece that can’t be easily broken up. The album throws caution to the wind and experiments with song suites, sound effects, and the avant garde. Baxter’s isn’t quite as catchy or as an enjoyable as Surrealistic Pillow, but there certainly noteworthy tracks. The album is also notable in that it gives every member of the band a slot, from drummer Dryden to powerhouse Slick, whose vocals are evident right off the bat.

The record opens with a wall of feedback, like a psychedelic muezzin calling the listener to worship at the temple of the Airplane. The eerie choir of voices on The Ballad of You, Me, and Pooneil gives way to arrhythmic guitar soloing as Airplane struggles to keep it together. The song relies on typical Airplane motifs, a driving rock swing, simple chords, and surrealist lyrics. As it closes with another blast of feedback, Pooneil blends into Package, a collage of babbling that would be at home on a Zappa record, complete with screaming, manic voices, giggling, vibraphone, a frantic drum beat. The group sounds as though they are a bar band playing through the mayhem of a Saturday night’s drunken revelry. “No man is an island!\He’s a peninsula” booms out as the experiment closes, heading into the album’s strongest song, Young Girl Sunday Blues.

Blues is complimented by an added drum track to make the essentially simple song a bit heavier than normal, as once again Balin or Kantner’s lost sounding voice cuts through the noise of the track to tell us, in flowery language, of a love affair. He muses over the “young girl”, coaxing her to step inside his mind and his world to please him. Snaking guitars and a simple groove are very much embellished by the quality of the lyrics.

A modern love song entitled Martha follows on side one, which grinds to a halt like a carousel to make way for the epic Wild Tyme (II). Perhaps a nod to the changing nature of the 60’s Wild Tyme is only a prelude for the album’s most interesting number: Rejoyce- Slick’s bizarre, creepy James Joyce inspired number. There’s no set rhythm, just gentle experimentation, as Grace wanders in and out, vocally. Horns and tension fill the empty spaces, though it feels as though the band is not sure of how to accompany her on her journey through Irish literature.

Side two is dominated by a novel, though ultimately uninteresting guitar solo entitled Spare Chaynge, whose uniqueness is its best feature. The Airplane will go on to experiment with instrumentals and filler like this, but not at the length of Chaynge, which clocks in at just below 10 minutes.

Acid is in the water and grass is in the air on Baxter’s. Is it the band’s best album? No, most likely because it’s too much of a disjointed epic to be taken lightly, whereas Volunteers takes the disjointedness and breaks it back into traditional songs. That’s not to say the song suites are a bad idea, the Moody Blues use them to great effect, it’s just Jefferson Airplane can’t seem to take off under the excess weight and baggage After Bathing at Baxter’s carries.