October 30, 2016 - Metallica - Blackened (1988)

The opening track from Metallica's ...And Justice For All album, Blackened deals with the subject of global environmental destruction.

The opening 0:37 is a slow fade in of layered guitars. Then the drums kick in and a guitar riff ups the tempo, the drums joining in at 0:47.  It all merges onto the chugging metal highway at 1:14. The cruise control is turned on and away we go. James Hetfield unleashes his angry man rhymes at 1:22:

Blackened is the end winter it will send
Death of Mother Earth never a rebirth

At 1:44 there is a downshift into Fire to begin whipping dance of the dead. Lars Ulrich does some double bass drum kicks. It all sounds like some kind of violent flaming tornado, burning everything in its path. After another pass around verse and chorus, at 2:35 we chug into a new section filled with passing road signs that warn us the death of life is ahead:

Opposition Contradiction Violation Mutilation Cancellation....no rest stops for the next zillion miles.

Really intense stuff: See our Mother put to death, see our Mother die. At 4:07 we cruise ahead through a desolate valley of demons who bombard us with fireballs and curses. This is what we get for not taking care of the planet. At 4:32, Kirk Hammett unleashes a raging solo that leads us further into the wasteland. At 5:02, Kirk turns on the turbo boosters and we race past the demons at breakneck speed. We can barely control the vehicle as we come out of the valley at 5:34. The rhythm is all discombobulated and we bounce all over the place. We get back on track at 5:51 and Hetfield looks through the rearview mirror:

Millions of our years in minutes disappears. What a ride. Many listeners complain about the sound of the album, the clicky drums, the way the bass is buried in the mix, but the level of musicianship, sophistication and complexity makes it hard to be too critical. It's a great album.


 

October 29, 2016 - Ash Ra Tempel - Light: Look at Your Sun (1972)

Today's selection is called Light: Look at Your Sun. It is from Schwingungen (Vibrations), the second album by German legends Ash Ra Tempel.

It starts off all quietly slow and bluesy, mournful like a funeral bell tolling, and I am reminded of the very beginning of Sir Elton's Funeral for a Friend. Then at 0:33 we hear the faintest of voices, like a kid hiding underneath the covers, afraid of something in the closet. The covers pull away at 0:42:

when I get up I look out of my window and see the blue sky and I know: He is my own

The lyrics are recited in a kind of shaking trance. The vocalist, the mysterious John L, sounds overloaded and afraid, along the lines of Mole and Rat in the presence of Pan in the Piper at the Gates of Dawn chapter of Wind in the Willows. The Sun! This dude is trippin. 

Light percussion comes in around 1:25. The drums pick up when we head into the second verse at 1:46:

In the morning, when I get up I stand in your garden you can see me you can hear me and I say: We are all one We are all one

When dude gets to and I say, get ready, because when it finally all makes sense to him it's like the ape realizing a weapon in the 2001 Dawn of Man sequence. He works himself into a frenzy and shouts out We are all one at 3:17, resulting in a furiously distorted guitar volcano of epic proportions from Manuel Göttsching.

Look at Your Sun and feel it all around you, ahhhh... OK...ow! my eyeballs! I was wrong, mama, that's not where the fun is!

October 28, 2016 - Al Stewart - Year of the Cat (1976)

Elegantly produced by Alan Parsons, Al Stewart's Year of the Cat is a classic of smooth 70s light rock. It's like going to bed on a warm summer night as a breeze blows lightly through the curtains. Like snuggling on a soft giant papasan chair in 1976 and having this on eight-track. Like buttah. No rough spots whatsoever; even the heavier guitar solo is balanced by strings to maintain the equilibrium. 

If it were some sappy 70s love song I wouldn't like it. It's romantic, yes, but also esoteric and cool, like a Bogart movie. A tourist arrives in a town and meets a mysterious woman. He spends the night with her and in the morning realizes that he has been left behind by his tour group so he is stuck there. No big deal to him, he's carefree and open. Any way the wind blows....

It has some of my favorite lyrics of any song, especially:

She comes out of the sun in a silk dress running
Like a watercolor in the rain

Gives me goosebumps sometimes when I hear that.

Also, you go strolling through the crowd like Peter Lorre contemplating a crime. I had no idea who Peter Lorre was for a long time, but I knew his voice from cartoons. Eventually I saw him in Casablanca. He was also incredible in M.

She comes in incense and patchouli. Nowadays, whenever I hear the word patchouli I imagine John Cusack telling Tim Robbins to get his 'patchouli stink outta my store' in High Fidelity. Great film for music geeks.

The middle instrumental passage is great as well. It flows...strings at 3:10 into light electric guitar at 3:24 into heavier electric guitar at 3:54 into Phil Kenzie's superb saxophone at 4:14...then into the final verse.

FYI: the cat is the fourth animal symbol in the 12-year cycle of the Vietnamese zodiac, replacing the rabbit in the Chinese zodiac. So, if you were born in 1963, 1975, 1987, or 1999, you might be a cat. Can you say 'meow'?

October 27, 2016 - Led Zeppelin - Ten Years Gone (1975)

Has an intro ever sounded so autumnally heavy as the opening 0:30 on Ten Years Gone? It has that 'getting darker earlier' feel to it - leaves blanket the ground, the sunlight slants create strange hues, and there's a chill in the air.

Robert Plant tells of a woman he was in love with ten years ago (so 1965-ish?), a few years before Led Zeppelin formed. She gave him an ultimatum: her or the music. Jimmy Page patched the musical ideas together. The song goes through a number of variations. After the first 0:30, a second part comes in with a descending chord sequence, like A-G-D-Dm. The intro sequence then comes back in at 1:01 and Robert waxes nostalgic starting at 1:16:

Then as it was, then again it will be
And though the course may change sometimes
Rivers always reach the sea

John Bonham thunders in at 1:34...building on to the repeated second part of the intro, and we continue along into the next verse.

At 2:30 we head into the middle section. Jimmy's guitar rises up out of the mist and it's like the sun has come out and everything sparkles and shines. Robert gains strength from this and expresses his bitter feelings of regret:

Did you ever really need somebody
And really need 'em bad 

At 3:47 Jimmy leads us across a field and we head back in among the trees at 4:10. Now, though, the sun filters down through the branches and Robert remarks that even though much time has passed

We are eagles of one nest
The nest is in our soul

There will always be a special bond that they shared. At 5:03, Robert turns reflective again; the face of his lost love still appears in his dreams. He cries out at the end that the memories are still there. He still cherishes them, holdin' on, ten years gone. The music surrounds and comforts him like protective spirits.

October 26, 2016 - Smashing Pumpkins - Rhinoceros (1991)

                                      

I remember reading this New Faces article about the Smashing Pumpkins in Rolling Stone. I went out and bought their debut album Gish at...dang, I can't remember the name of the store! I can picture windowless double doors leading outside, kind of a bluish carpet, not super bright lighting. Probably in the northern suburbs of Chicago. I bought Metallica's Black Album at the same time and one other that I've forgotten.

Rhinoceros is on the blog mainly because of the instrumental section between 3:34 and 4:25. The explosion of Jimmy Chamberlin's drums and the wild guitar pyrotechnics. It blew me away when I first heard it. It blew away Dave O when he first heard it. The rest of the song is good, the repeated outro riff is very Beatlesesque. I must admit there are times when Billy Corgan's languid bedroom stoner vocals make me want to punch something. His early look reminds me of Naboo from the Mighty Boosh. Hey Billy, I'm just joshin yuh, Gish is still one of my favorite albums from the 90s. It has tons of crazy guitar solos and amazing drums. Sorry I pretty much lost interest after Siamese Dream.

P.S. - Please don't smash anyone's Halloween pumpkins.

October 25, 2016 - James Brown - Give It Up or Turnit a Loose (1970)

Give It Up or Turnit a Loose is a classic funky groove from the hardest working man in show business, James Brown, and the original J.B.'s, featuring Bootsy Collins on bass and his brother Catfish Collins on guitar. It appears on the Sex Machine album as the third part of Side 2's Medley.

It sounds live, but it was recorded in the studio with applause overdubbed onto it. Just let it wash over you, feel the groove, tap your toes, clap your hands. Jump around, it's great exercise music. Work up a sweat. The lyrics are a combination of grunts, shrieks, screams. "baby"s and other exclamations. 5:12 - "Clyde" (James telling drummer Clyde Stubblefield to get back on the groove train).

October 24, 2016 - Musi-O-Tunya - Tsegulani (1975)

Zambia had been a British colony until 1964, so the cultural influences were still very much European throughout the 60s and into the 70s. Young Zambian musicians were influenced by the British Invasion, Stax, Motown, James Brown, and Jimi Hendrix. Gradually, as independence progressed, Zambian and other African folk influences crept into the music.


Tsegulani appears on the Dark Sunrise compilation of songs by Rikki Ililonga and Musi-O-Tunya, the rock group he founded in the early 70s. 

The song begins with a flourish of African drums. Then a low bass line followed quickly by simple rhythm guitar. Then horns, with western drums. Ndara Mbao is the lead vocalist and bassist. Listen to the rhythm guitar, it occasionally produces these cool little riffs in between the chords, like around 1:41. The lead guitarist on Tsegulani is Paul Ngozi. I love his solo. It starts after the second verse and chorus, at 2:33. It is a gritty messy pile of fuzzed out wah pedal mud. The drums and bass keep dancing around it, giving it some room. Things get back to normal around 4:30. Time for another run through of verse and chorus and a final blast from the guitar.

October 23, 2016 - Oasis - Columbia (1994)

1994 was a significant year for me. My best friend moved to Los Angeles, another friend was in Seattle or maybe Rochester, I can't remember. I spent the first few months drifting around chilly northern Illinois, working some lame temp jobs while living off the goodness of my dear parents, who I don't think knew how lost I felt although they might have privately worried about it. I don't know, they were pretty busy themselves and I wasn't saying much. And I wasn't helping them much.


Eventually April rolled around. Kurt Cobain died. He was the same age as me. I house sat for a friend's parents for five days or so. They lived in a quiet wooded area. I spent the evenings hanging out in their jacuzzi, getting stoned and reading books, including Charles Perry's The Haight-Ashbury: A History. I was working an awful temp job that week answering phones at an insurance agency. I remember this guy calling up while one of the owners was in a meeting and yelling at me to 'just get him, Okay!?!' F that crap. Why would anyone want to sell insurance?

By the end of April I had made up my mind to leave. I threw my stuff in the car and drove out west to Portland, Oregon. I got a job working at a Borders Books and Music downtown. It was a pretty fun job. I was there when the Britpop thing started happening; we played the first album from Oasis all the time. I loved it, and I loved reading about this band, lead by brothers vocalist Liam and guitarist Noel Gallagher. The Gallaghers always seemed to be arguing and fighting with each other. They did a tour of the US and played the Satyricon in Portland in September. A guy I worked with played in a band called the Lincoln Brigade and they opened for Oasis. After his set he came out and told me all about the quantity of beer Oasis were drinking and how they were building things with all the cans. They played an extremely loud show and I could tell Liam was really wasted. Afterwards, I saw him puking next to their tour bus outside the venue.

They also played my favorite song of theirs, Columbia. It starts off with 30 seconds of guitar noise, then gets into this groove that last the whole song. It has some great hooks, layers of guitars, and some fun singalong lines like I can't tell you the way I feel because the way I feel is oh so new to me. I particularly like Noel's guitar, the ringing note bend at 3:08, the riff at 3:26, and the louder one that begins at 4:04. Take that, Blur! and Cast, Supergrass, Suede, James, Pulp, Menswear, and all the other countless one word britpop groups!

October 22, 2016 - Sugar - Judas Cradle (1993)

A co-worker had the EP Beaster by Sugar, and I remember being knocked out by Judas Cradle when he played it for me one day in the summer of 1993.

Bob Mould howls behind a massive wall of guitars. The coolest part is from 1:13-1:36, when these giant guitar chords dive bomb the speakers.

You would not want to fall up on the Judas Cradle. It's a horrible torture device supposedly used by the Spanish Inquisition that splits you down the middle. Only nine more days til Halloween!

October 21, 2016 - Yes - Everydays (1970)

Wow, I have to talk about the video first. I never knew it existed! It's Yes in Bruges, Belgium! Jon Anderson, wearing a groovy shirt, takes a leisurely boat ride on a beautiful canal. During the second verse he's walking among tall trees in some sort of quasi-academic setting. At 2:25 we get heads popping up from behind trees...the playful side of Yes! At 2:35 we get a quick glimpse of a nun. Soon she is chasing them on cobblestone streets, down stairs and around corners. She's saying No! to Yes!: 'We do not want your rock n roll British progressive music near the church! You had better run!' Wow, it looks like Yes are short of breath, they really need to stop smoking. In the end, they give up and the nun takes the whole band on a canal trip...to jail! Dire non a Oui!

Everydays was written by Stephen Stills (appearing on the Buffalo Springfield Again album), and Yes covered it on their second album, Time and a Word. It will always remind me of laying on the floor in an upstairs room at the Garcia's house. My high school friends Alex and Eugene Garcia had access to their older brother's record collection, and he had lots of prog rock. I can recall listening to Time and a Word while studying the covers of albums like King Crimson's Lizard and Uriah Heep's The Magician's Birthday.  

Yes's version is heavily orchestrated, featuring arrangements by Tony Cox, conducting musicians from the Royal College of Music. I remember being stunned by the thick strings at 0:06-0:08 when I first heard them. The first two minutes are slow and leisurely. At 2:00, the strings become spooky and meandering. At 2:13, Bill Bruford sets up an intense pace on the high hat, and at 2:25 (the heads around trees part), we are shaken by a loud unison of instruments. Things build up and are released at 2:56 into a swirl of guitar, bass and organ. Although guitarist Steve Howe is in the video, Peter Banks is the guitarist on the song. He plays a fantastic solo, even inserting a line from Ode to Joy at 4:15.

Stick around for Chris Squire's mighty bass flourish at the very end. So cool.