Gott Milk?

Yes & Brahms

2008-08-13T20:28:00.004+02:00

Now I'm not a huge fan of Brahms, nor am I any longer much of a fan of Yes, but as a kid, Fragile was in heavy rotation for a couple of years. I honestly didn't care how little sense the lyrics made (other favourite bands were The Tubes and Adam and the Ants, bands not known for their lyrical depth, generally). Anyway, the coolest tracks by Yes, for me, were Excerpts from The Six Wives of Henry the Eighth (on the 4-LP monster Yessongs) and Cans and Brahms. The latter is Rick Wakeman's handy distillation of the 3rd movement of Brahms' 4th Symphony.

Brahms' 4th at that time also went into heavy rotation. And for the better part of 30 years, I've never been without a copy of it. When I moved to Europe in 2002 (with 2 suitcases, a cheap walkman and 10 tapes), I sold almost my entire CD collection, but I'd only been over a couple of months when I bought a new CD player and a couple dozen cheap classical CDs. The version linked below is a 1987 Supraphon recording of the Chech Philharmonic Orchestra under the conduction of Jiří Bĕlohlávek (George Whitehead, the Chief Conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra since July 2006).

Brahms' Glorious 4th + Cans and Brahms (rs/320 - Yes@192)

Coffee!

2008-08-07T16:25:00.002+02:00

If I can't drink my bowl of coffee three times daily, then in my torment, I will shrivel up like a piece of roast goat

So, many years back I worked at a bookstore on Haight street, the long departed Austen Books. Across the street from Austen was a lovely cafe called Cantata Coffee. Interested in the name, I asked the owner, a sweet older gentleman of some European extraction. He explained it was named for JS Bach's Coffee Cantata. He also gave me a philosophy of coffee that included something to the effect of "It should be hotter than hell and blacker than a woman's heart". Or something like that.

It was several years before I picked up a copy of said cantata, but I share it with you today. Wikipedia has a nice summary of the cantata here.

Kantaten BWV 211 u. 212 (rs/320/24 minutes)

A break from the soundtracks

2008-07-22T20:40:00.002+02:00

Happy Pi Approximation Day!

Prior to his solo career, Richard Barone fronted Hoboken, NJ new wavers The Bongos who had a minor hit with Numbers With Wings. His first solo album, a low-key live recording called Cool Blue Halo (1987) featured nice performances of the Beatles' Cry Baby Cry and Bowie's The Man Who Sold the World.

In 1990 he released Primal Dream, the second of his 4 solo albums. The third, Clouds Over Eden came out in '93 and Between Heaven and Cello (a live recording with cellist Jane Scarpantoni who appeared on CBH and PD) was released in '97.

Seems I totally missed hearing about a spate of Bongos reunion shows a couple of years ago. Reports are that were very cool. There's also much love for Bongos back catalogue reissues.

When Primal Dream was released, it went into heavy rotation on my walkman (though it did not enamour me of the Bongos, though I went back and listened to them at the time and still was not grabbed, despite their fine critical appraisal), and didn't come off for about 2 years.

I recall that Clouds Over Eden was quite beautiful, but it didn't have the punch of songs like Opposites Attracting and River to River. Barone handles slow and beautiful as well, exemplified by a sweet cover of VU's I'll Be Your Mirror.

Enjoy Primal Dream (RS/320)!

Scaramouche!

2008-07-15T10:02:00.002+02:00

Victor Young's fine score to George Sidney's 1952 film of Raphael Sabatini's 1921 novel Scaramouche.

The tale takes place during the French Revolution and the soundtrack buckles swash appropriately.

Enjoy!

Part I
Part II (rs/320)

The Constant Nymph

2008-07-08T21:08:00.003+02:00

Now, I know these soundtracks I've been posting are kind of random. That's how I got them, I listen to them for the first time in the days or week before posting the link. It was the oddness of how they were all part of the same (apparently failed, as the label no longer lists them in the catalogue) reissue series.

I'm not posting in any order either, as there's not really one to be had.

That said, this week's post is Erich (Elizabeth and Essex) Korngold's soundtrack to the 1943 CharlesBoyer vehicle The Constant Nymph.

It's a convoluted love story in which Boyer plays a poor composer the fourteen year-old daughter of whose mentor falls in love with him. The director, Edmund Goulding, later took on Maughm's The Razor's Edge (so-so, IIRC, as the movie sidesteps some of the book's trickier religious themes) and Of Human Bondage (both in 1946).

This string-heavy music is, not surprisingly, pretty melodramatic. I imagine Douglas Sirk's movies to be similarly soundtracked.

This is one that's probably more interesting if you know the movie, but the music is quite moving in its way.

This CD also includes an unused alternate take of the vocal Tomorrow.

Erich Wolfgang Korngold's The Constant Nymph (320/rs)

Alfred Newman

2008-06-30T20:21:00.003+02:00

This is a pair of short ones.

Alfred Newman's scores for All About Eve (1950, directed by Joseph Mankiewicz) and Leave Her To Heaven (1945, directed by John M. Stahl).

Alfred Newman was nominated for 45 oscars (2 more were nominated before the academy attached the composer's name to the award.)

link: http://rapidshare.com/files/126130959/ANewman-AAE-LHTH.rar

Madame Bovary

2008-06-24T20:41:00.003+02:00

As promised, here is Milos Rozsa's beautiful soundtrack to Vincent Minnelli's 1949 film of Madame Bovary.

I've been listening the past couple days and am fondest, I think, of tracks 7 and 8 Passepied and Waltz (which I think are both labeled Passepied - my apologies). Passepied is all beautiful and flowing and the Waltz, midway through, trips into a minor key catching the listener off guard.

Rozsa had previously scored (among others) Hitchcock's Spellbound (1945), and would go on to score Ivanhoe (1942, for which he earned an Oscar nomination), Ben-Hur (1959, for which he won the Oscar for Best Original Score), and the Golden Voyage of Sinbad (1974, which starred the recently departed John Philip Law as Sinbad).

Next up, I believe, will be a double-shot of All About Eve and Leave Her To Heaven, both composed by Alfred Newman.

320/94MB Rozsa-Emma.rar

Sorry for the delay

2008-06-24T09:00:00.002+02:00

I've got Miklós Rózsa's beautiful soundtrack to Vincent Minelli's 1949 Madame Bovary ready to upload as soon as I get home.

Apparently the movie is an abject victim of the Hays Code, but that didn't stop Rózsa.

More tonight.

Elizabeth & Essex

2008-06-15T12:48:00.002+02:00

I received a comment that part II of Erich Korngold's soundtrack to The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex might have had an issue.

I've re-compressed and posted this archive here.

She!

2008-06-14T21:34:00.002+02:00

She, the 1935 film of H. Rider Haggard's novel of the same name starred Helen (later Congresswoman) Gahagan and Randolph Scott.

The soundtrack by Max Steiner is beautifully melodramatic - the title track with its female voices calls to mind the early Star Trek theme music (was it season 1 that featured the vocal aaah--aaaah?). Actually, I think the folks who did Star Trek's incidental music owe a lot to Steiner, who also composed the music for King Kong (1933), Gone With the Wind (1939) and A Summer Place (1959).

She: Part I Part II

Elizabeth and Essex

2008-05-31T20:15:00.004+02:00

So I recently found a nice stack of classic movie soundtracks reissued on the Membran International label.

No, I'd not heard of it either, but the booklets for these CDs list 60 in the series. The shop where I found mine (Levny Knihy in Prague) boasted 10 of the titles which I snapped up for 19Kc ($1.20) each.

First up, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (Warner, 1939. Music by Erich Korngold).

The movie starred Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland and Vincent Price.

320 kbps Part I Part II

laugh and shout and scream and moan

2008-01-26T17:23:00.000+01:00

One of my all time very favourite LPs is Adam and the Ants' Dirk Wears White Sox. Recorded in 1979 when the Ants were the three guys who later formed Bow Wow Wow. Much artier and punkier than the next album, Kings of the Wild Frontier. As a kid, I was mad for the Ants and drooled over the $10 import copies in stores that carried such things, but never actually saved to buy a new one. No matter, I eventually found it at Rhino. Yeah, the used record store with a vanity label side project that later became just the label and a subsidiary of Warner at that. Back when I attended Emerson Junior High in West LA, Rhino was just around the corner on Westwood Blvd and I spent many free afternoons there. And yeah, one day I found it for $1.99. The cover was thrashed, but the vinyl was in good enough shape at the time. Mind you, I played it until the grooves wore thin.

The subject matter on this album ranged far wider than it did on any of Adam's subsequent albums and includes automotive issues, cleopatra's taste for fellatio, JFK, and what happens when one meets God.

And the Futurists. Now, I never actually got down and read anything much about the Futurists at the time, being pretty sure that the line "Marinetti Boccioni Carra Balla Palasecci" that opens "Animals and Men" didn't refer to actual people, but was just a mish mash of Italian syllables. Much later, I did read dribs and drabs and learned that all of the above were members of the Futurist movement which did in fact advocate the uses of noise in music. Perhaps some day very soon I will post this song, but for the moment I'll point you to Luigi Russolo's essay The Art of Noises which refers to his fellow Futurists and to Marinetti's Zang Tuum Tum, later the name of Trevor Horn's record label the first artist on which was, The Art of Noise (and later Frankie Goes to Hollywood, apropos of nothing in particular).

Animals and Men (from the Peel Sessions) (RS)

Hommage to the vultures

2007-03-30T15:17:00.000+02:00

So one of my favourite groups is the experimental/industrial crew Coil. In the years before frontman Jhonn Balance died in 2004, they'd been performing live regularly for only a couple of years, despite having formed in 1982 or so.

One song that received a variety of different treatments in the studio and live was Amethyst Deceivers.

I share with you versions from:

Live One (Barcelona 2000)
Live Two (Moscow 2001)
(Alas, I do not have Live Three, Bologna 2002.)
Live Four Vienna (2002) (Though two tracks on this album were recorded in Prague, AD is not one of them.) (Also seems to be currently out of print. Some Amazon.com seller wants USD 125. Blerq!)
Moon's Milk in Four Phases: Autumnal Equinox (According to Wikipedia, this is the same as the Moscow recording, but I don't think so.)
Selvaggina, Go Back Into The Woods (Jesi, Italy, 2004 - originally limited to 230 copies, it's made it to the web and is quite a good show.)
The Ape of Naples (2005)

The original version, from the 7" release of Autumnal Equinox is not the same as the Moon's Milk CD version. I'm sure at one time I had the compilation The Golden Hare With A Voice Of Silver, which collects that version, but not at this time. Again according to Wikipedia, this version will be on an upcoming reissue of Moon's Milk entitled Moon's Milk in Six Phases.

Download these versions here. (rs)

I highly highly highly recommend purchasing Coil material direct from the band here.

ETA - The previously linked zip had only 5 versions - this one includes the version from Ape of Naples.

New music radio

2007-03-09T08:09:00.000+01:00

Okay, if you're by your computer right now (i.e. 6-10AM Central European Time Fridays), check out my friend Craig's show Friday Ripple on Radio Wave 100.7 (or http://wave.cz).

The music is, it seems, modern indie and strange hip hop stuff - Audio Bullies, Arcade Fire, Lady Sovereign in the last 20 minutes.

Craig's always been a source of the very cool in music.

A new post from me should be in the works after I get my old computer back on the scene.

nueva psychedelica

2007-01-20T17:47:00.000+01:00

So for a few years there, I was reading Uncut, a very fine UK music magazine, whenever I could get someone to pick up a copy in England or I went over for a visit.

The main thing about Uncut, though, wasnt' the mag, but the ace compilations - David Bowie covers in one issue, songs that inspired Dylan in another.

The last few issues I picked up though simply had tracks featured in the current issue. Often quite good stuff, but not compiled with such thematic care. And often kinda dull. Well, last month's came with a doozy, Comets Ghosts and Sunburned Hands: Uncut's guide to the New Psychedelic Outlaws.

A colleague introduced me a few months back to Comets on Fire, but I didn't realise there was a whole crew of folks making stuff that sounded like early Black Sabbath, but slower, faster, and much weirder.

I'm definitely going to be delving into these folks:

1. Entrance - Grim Reaper Blues (4:32)
2. Oakley Hall - Hiway (7:15)
3. Comets On Fire - Sour Smoke (8:47)
4. Six Organs Of Admittance - The Desert Is A Circle (2:57)
5. Citay - Seasons Don't Fear The Year (6:44)
6. Black Mountain - Druganaut (3:48)
7. Howlin' Rain - The Hanging Heart (9:09)
8. P.G. Six - The Dance (6:05)
9. Ghost - Water Door Yellow Gate (5:58)
10. Dead Meadow - Indian Bones (6:41)
11. Wooden Wand - Portrait In The Clouds (3:38)
12. Sunburned Hand Of The Man - Adult Costume (6:50)
13. Jackie-O-Motherfucker - Hey Mr Sky (6:45)


ripped at 196; alas, I had to split this one. My apologies.
Part 1
Part 2

And the usual h/t to the fine folks at Totally Fuzzy.

There was no need to call one

2006-12-20T14:47:00.000+01:00

Well, Uncle Bill Burroughs doesn't just treat us with Thanksgiving wishes, but Christmas wishes as well.

I share with you "The 'Priest' They Called Him", a recording of a story from the collection Exterminator!, made in 1992 and backed up with Kurt Cobain's feedback-drenched guitar.

The tale, recorded elsewhere as 'The Junky's Christmas (notably with Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy on the album Spare-Ass Annie), tells of an addict's efforts to get a fix and how he finally gives it to one needier than himself.

Heartwarming as only Burroughs can be. And quite out of print

Download "The 'Priest' They Called Him" (rs)

A Random Swing/Jazz Selection

2006-11-18T12:53:00.000+01:00

So I was digging through a notebook of CDs I'd had in storage and cranked up some Lee Press-On and the Nails yesterday and thought, I probably have enough swing in my collection for a post here.

Well, actually I don't - some of the stuff on this little mix isn't really swing - The Three Deuces' "You've Got to See Mamma Ev'ry Night (or You Can't See Mamma at All)" (from the soundtrack to Bullets over Broadway) is more Dixieland, I think. But it's cute.

The same might be true of Louie Armstrong's "When The Saints Go Marching In" (recorded in '38 and found on the album Louie Armstrong of New Orleans) is definitely Dixie. I quite dig the intro.

Next up we have Bix Beiderbecke's "I'll Be a Friend With Pleasure". Recorded in 1930, it doesn't exactly swing, per se, but the lineup included Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Gene Krupa - folks without whom the whole Swing idea wouldn't have flown. One of Bix's last recordings before alcohol and pneumonia did him in at the age of 28.

Artie Shaw's interpretation of Gershwin's "Oh Lady Be Good" most definitely swings, noting that it's found in the film 1938 film Symphony in Swing. Shaw's orchestra was cooking in this session, I tell ya.

I've shared two tracks by the afforementioned Lee Press-On whose Nails were exponents of the 90s Swing revival. Both are from the album Jump Swing From Hell. First up is I'm Beginning to See the Light, with vocals by the sweetly voiced Lesley Presley. This crew has been on hiatus, but (according to Lee's blog), played SF's DNA lounge a couple months back. Back in the day they shook the room; glad to hear they still do.

Next up is some early Ella Fitzgerald with "The Organ-Grinder's Swing" which brings the tempo and volume down a bit. It's a bit silly and the recording (or CD transfer) is kind of muddy, but the trombone break is ace.

Les Paul and Mary Ford's "How High the Moon" has the bounce - Ford's voice is astounding - I'm pretty sure this wasn't a multi-track recording, though it might be - she sounds as if she's harmonising with herself. My copy is on an Uncut Magazine compilation called Mob Life which features tunes from the films of Martin Scorcese. This features in the movie Casino.

And another Lee Press-On - a nearly punk version of Louis Jordan's "Caldonia" - off the hook. Lee and company are far more dedicated to the swing aesthetic, however, than say Joe Jackson when he took on a couple Jordan tracks on Jumpin' Jive. But in '81, there was no revival, just Joe letting us know there was more than new wave.

Going back a bit, we next have Lionel Hampton's take on "It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)" Alas I have no info on who was in the band, the year, but it does swing. Sweetly.

And last up is Mission to Moscow from Benny Goodman's astoundingly clean Live In Moscow, recorded on a 1962 tour of the Soviet Union. So soon after the Stalin era, these shows must have been an incredible treat for his audiences.

download the whole set here: A Swinging Time.

Random Czech Goodness

2006-10-31T08:55:00.000+01:00

So, I've been bopping around the Czech countryside recently, including a road-trip to Karlovy Vary (North Bohemia) and Mikulov (South Moravia) and last weekend, my girlfriend and I visited Moravsky Krumlov and Perlstejn Castle.

Puts me in the mood to share some Czech-ish tunes with my expanding fan-base.

Warning - this is a pretty random selection, but groovy.

We've got Cechomor, formerly the CeskoMoravska Hudebni Spolecnost (Czech-Moravian Musical Society), a folk-rock act, doing "Vcelin" (The Beehive), from their album Mezi Horami (In the Mountains). 1998.

Updated to add: Cechomor perform in Atlanta tonight (Friday 3 Nov), NYC tomorrow (4 Nov) and Boston on Sunday (5 Nov). http://www.czechomorustour.com/

Then we've got Karel Gott with "Lady Carneval" from the LP of the same name. At an office Christmas party last year, a colleague who I never would have guessed could sing, tore the roof off this at Karaoke. Cheesy late 60s pop, but roof-tearable nonetheless. 1968.

Updated to add - Gott will be playing Sazka Arena in Prague on Monday 13 Nov.

And Plastic People of the Universe, famous dissident jazz-rock outfit, were joined by a chap named Paul Wilson for a nearly unlistenable album of mostly Velvet Underground covers called Trouble Everyday. From this I share "Some Kinda Love". You may not thank me for it. 1971/1977.

Fatty Lumpkin are an interesting crew. Guitarist Ladi Kolsky is Czech, the singer is British, the bassist Canadian, and the drummer from somewhere else. Mostly funky, I share with you "Black Tie and Caviar" from their 2005 release, Fatty Lumpkin.

Alas FL's website is not up and if one performs a google search on Fatty Lumpkin Prague, this blog entry is in the first page of returns.

Jan Werich (1905-1980) was an actor/singer/writer of extensive talents. His tunes primarily fall into the pop/musical theater category. This is certainly true of those on the 1997 collection, Tmavomodry Svet (Dark Blue World). I share with you "Nerymovana" (Rhymeless), recorded in 1952.

Lucien Zell is a poet from California who has lived in Prague for several years. He often performs with an interesting bellows-like instrument. I share "God Is In Orbit" from the CD included in his volume Eden's Midnight Playground. He's also a really neat guy.

And finally, Ondrej Havelka and his Melody Makers performing "Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar". These guys are an unrepentent swing crew who thoroughly have their act together. This comes from their compilation Nejlepsi Kusy z Repertoiru (The Best Pieces from Our Repertoire). If you're in Prague, their shows tomorrow and Thursday are sold out, but the 3rd December show is not.

Get it all at http://rapidshare.com/files/1390051/__CzechTunes.zip

Spitting - Part 3

2006-10-06T09:28:00.000+02:00

Sorry for the delay folks -

I was on holiday digging bits of the Czech Republic I'd not seen in over 4 years of living in this country. Karlovy Vary is beautiful - I will be going to the film festival next year, and no mistake.

Upon return, I saw a killer Nick Cave/Dirty Three show at Prague's Congress Center. Lousy late-commie architecture (It was completed around '87 and since the revolution there has been seen no reason to demolish the joint. Alas.), but the acoustics are decent and the sound mix was balanced after the first couple songs (a good thing too!).

But this isn't a Nick Cave post. Nor is it a Legendary Pink Dots post, though I am listening to Chemical Playschool Volume 3 and saw their amazing show this week at the Roxy. A week with two killer shows has not been had in Prague in quite a while. Dang. Actually it'll be 3 all told, but Suzanne Vega at Svandovo Divadlo sold out before I knew about it. Maybe the next post will be Cave/LPD/Vega, but no promises.

This is however a post featuring (finally!) I Spit On Your Gravy Part Three. An odd disc, this - it features 3 (count 'em!) Patti Smith Covers - Beki Bondage's Because the Night (technically a Springsteen track, but whatever), Penetration's Free Money, and Brix Smith's kicking version of Rock 'n' Roll Nigger (not as kicking as Manson's, but again I say, whatever).

And it goes like this:
1. Belsen - Sid Vicious (you might recognise this bloke - looks like Gary Oldman)
2. Free Money - Penetration
3. Because the Night - Beki Bondage
4. For What It's Worth - Hugh Cornwell (from The Stranglers)
5. Murder in the Subway - Attack
6. Burn in Your Own Flame - Anti-Pasti
7. Razors in the Night - Blitz
8. Sick on You - The Boys
9. 17 Years of Hell - The Partisans
10. I've Got a Gun - Channel 3
11. Rape and Pillage - Chaotic Dischord
12. Riot in the City - Riot Squad
13. Just Thirteen - Lurkers
14. Rock & Roll Nigger - Brix Smith (Ex-Fall)

Download Part 3 here
Download Part 2 here
Download Part 1 here

Thanks again, Totally Fuzzy!

Up Yer Bum!

2006-09-19T23:05:00.000+02:00

So, following on from yesterday's post, we have volume two of I Spit On Your Gravy.

DKs, Test Tube Babies, ASF, GBH, 999 and a bunch more.

Follow the links to learn more...

I Kill Children - Dead Kennedys
Get Raped - Eater
Dead and Buried - Alien Sex Fiend
Pass the Axe - G.B.H.
Boys in the Gang - 999
Stab the Judge - One Way System
Angel of Death - Screaming Dead
Up Yer Bum - Peter & the Test Tube Babies
Massacred Millions - Varukers
New Blood - Vice Squad
Locked in a Room With Betty - P.Paul Fenech
Baby's Got a Gun - The Only Ones
Psycho Woman - Kirk Brandon

Download I Spit On Your Gravy volume 2 ... whoosh! Right here. (rs)
And thanks, Totally Fuzzy, for the link!

Some more punky goodness...

2006-09-19T00:29:00.000+02:00

Sometime back I picked up an 3-CD punk set called I Spit On Your Gravy. Mighta paid $8 for the lot. MusicMatch identifies it, but the label (Dressed To Kill) seems to be history.

That said, it's got some goodies. Volume 1 contains:

1. Land of Hope and Glory - Ex-Pistols (featuring Glen Matlock among others)
2. Splitting in Two - Alternative TV
3. Woman in Disguise - Angelic Upstarts
4. Finger up Bum - Chaos UK
5. Fuck Your Nationality - Disorder
6. G.L.O.R.I.A. - Eddie & the Hot Rods
7. Born to Lose - Johnny Thunders
8. Self Destruct - U.K. Subs
9. Judy Says (Knock You in the Head) - The Vibrators
10. Fuck It Up - The Adicts (I think these guys were in Prague a week or so ago, but I'm not sure.)
11. Expensive Being Poor - T.V. Smith
12. Smash It Up - Captain Sensible
13. Goat Fuckin' Virgin Killerz from Hell - Chaotic Dischord

Follow the links to buy the goodies.
Download I Spit On Your Gravy, Volume 1 here. (rs)

And while I'm thinking on it, big love to Totally Fuzzy. Those guys rock.

sit right back

2006-09-18T07:10:00.000+02:00

So my girlfriend is quite fond of a BBC radio show called I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue which is sort of like Wait Wait Don't Tell Me crossed with What's My Line, but of course far more British. (Wait a sec. What's My Line was originally British. Strike that.) One of the tasks on ISIHAC is "One Song to the Tune of Another" in which the panelist is given the two songs and has to sing the combination on the fly. It's hilarious.

Now, I've tried to do this very thing on several occasions, but my brain really can't wrap itself around the thing. Might have to do with a lack of ear training and general musicality. However, I've loved the concept ever since hearing Little Roger and the Goosebumps' "Stairway to Gilligan's Island" back in the golden age of the Doctor Demento show.

Of course my amusement with the song didn't even extend to being able to hum it for my friends. They just had to trust that it was funny. Five or six years ago, I found a disc in the dollar bin at Amoeba Music called Laguna Tunes. No art, just a whacky collection of stuff including the afforementioned, Joan Jett and Greg Graffan's version of "Let's Do It (Let's Fall In Love)", and Bow Wow Wow's "Louis Quatorze". The buck was well spent just for the Goosebumps.

Okay, WikiPedia comes through again. "Stairway" was produced by a chap named Kenny Laguna who later formed Blackheart Records with Joan Jett. Bingo. And here we have the liner notes for the Laguna Tunes album.

Weird. Anyway. Enjoy Stairway to Gilligan's Island. (rs)

this incredible looking Swedish girl

2006-09-16T11:42:00.000+02:00

Back in the day (tm), there was a really annoying/compelling piece that MTV seemed to have in terribly heavy rotation called "AEIOU Sometimes Y" by a pair called Ebn Ozn. Some of you might recall it.

The thing about it was some of the bits got stuck in your head. I still use the line "It's a wonder we communicate at all" with disturbing regularity. (Note the lyrics link in the above paragraph indicates that the line is "It's amazing we communicate at all" - I've been screwing it up for 20+ years which is kinda sad.)

I recently managed to retrieve an 80s compilation I'd purchased several years back for several of its tracks (Bow Wow Wow's "Do Ya Wanna Hold Me" and PiL's "This Is Not A Love Song", but not for Toni Basil's "Mickey". Shudder.) and just had to share.

I'm not sure how to embed YouTube videos in this medium, but you can dig a scratchy version of that by gone relic here. That braid is something else. (Some soul has also posted the Beavis and Butthead version, but it's not so cool.)

You can have your own sample copy of "AEIOU Sometimes Y" here (RS)

Ebn Ozn at Wikipedia.
Their full album, Feeling Cavalier, will be reissued next month. Preorder from Amazon here.

Every now and then...

2006-09-13T14:18:00.000+02:00

Okay. It's no secret amongst my friends that there are some songs that just make my skin crawl. They get stuck in the head at breakfast time and don't leave until long after last call. One of these songs is Bonnie Tyler's Total Eclipse of the Heart.

So it was with no little amusement that I read this article:

Passengers complain after Tyler sings
PARIS, Sept. 3 (UPI) -- Passengers on a flight from France to Mauritius have filed suit against Air France after musician Bonnie Tyler performed a song at the request of the co-pilot.

The passengers, believed to be Belgian, complained to the airline after the Welsh singer performed part of her 1983 hit "Total Eclipse of the Heart" at the request of the co-pilot, who retired after the flight, The Mail on Sunday reported.

"I was asleep in First Class. The stewardess came and said the co-pilot was retiring. And they asked me would I sing to him. They were having a bit of a party," Tyler said.

The complaining passengers reportedly claimed they were traumatized by the experience and had feared for their safety during the celebration. The complaint eventually escalated into a legal dispute.

An Air France official said: "The claim against Air France, which it completely rejects, is that the celebrations got more and more unruly and came to a climax when Bonnie sang.
"Air France is saying that any suggestion there was anything more than a few slaps on the back for the co-pilot is nonsense, and it completely rejects the claims that the passengers were at any sort of risk."

(h/t to PCL Linkdump)

Gott wine?

2006-09-13T09:56:00.000+02:00

Popular pop star Gott faces court dispute over his wine Charlotta

Brno, Sept 12 (CTK) - Popular Czech pop star Karel Gott might face a court dispute over the wine he has named Charlotta, after his third daughter born this spring, which has been challenged by a south Moravian wine grower who patented his own wine brand´s name Charlotta long ago, the local daily Rovnost says today.

The wine of Gott, who is also quite popular in Germany and elsewhere abroad, has been sold in Gottland, a museum his fans opened in his former villa in Jevany near Prague.

The wine grower, Jiri Hort, claims that Gott wine´s brand has caused losses worth tens of thousands of crowns to him.

Representatives of the Gott museum know about the problem. "We are seeking the necessary information," the paper quotes one of them as saying.

Hort´s lawyers, however, are preparing documents for a court dispute. Hort has a great chance to win it, according to experts from the patent and brand office.

"I´d like the affair to be settled without court disputes. I don´t meddle in Gott´s singing either. I´d like him to do the same in relation to me," Hort told the paper.

Gott, 67, an admirer of women and an idol of many of them, has never got married. He has two adult daughters, each by a different girl-friend. His third daughter, Charlotte-Ella, was born to his current girl-friend Ivana Machackova, 30, on April 30.

summertime thingy...

2006-09-09T18:01:00.000+02:00

Now there's a thought for a mix - a buncha songs with summertime in the title - Gershwin's Summertime in 8 different versions (including a recent Peter Gabriel), Summertime Rolls by Jane's Addiction, Summertime Blues (in two or three varieties), Mungo Jerry's In The Summertime, Gordon Lightfoot's Summertime Dream, and a few others.

But that's not the mix you're getting today. I realised a week or so ago that I'd scrounged up five different versions of Dancing in the Streets, through no apparent effort.

First up, we get the original hit. Martha Reeves and the Vandellas. Motown. 1964. Sweet.

As the song went quickly to #4 on the British pop charts, it's not too surprising that both the Kinks and the Who laid it out. The Kinks' version appeared on their 1965 outing Kinda Kinks.

The Who performed it live in the studio for the BBC, but I'm not quite sure the year. Pretty early on, and beautifully raw. You can get it on The BBC Sessions.

Running forward about 10 years, we get a slightly discofied version by the Grateful Dead from their pretty brilliant LP Terrapin Station. They'd been performing it live for quite a while, but this album (their first for Arista) is rather slicker than their live shows of the period, and frankly, Arista wanted a hit. The producer managed to keep Donna's vocals more or less in line, and Terrapin Station has much to recommend it (though not necessarily this).

And fast forward another seven years to Live Aid. Mick Jagger in London and David Bowie in NYC (or perhaps it was the other way around) managed with some interesting technology to duet on this one. While technologically less successful than all concerned might have hoped, it was still damn cool. They released a studio version (7" and 12") shortly after accompanied by a thoroughly cheesy, slightly flirtatious video (YouTube). The short version is available on The Best of Bowie.

Download all five (rs).

Buy Kinda Kinks.
Buy The Who BBC Sessions.
Buy Martha Meeves and the Vandellas: The Ultimate Collection.
Buy Terrapin Station. This one's expanded and remastered with a live version of the track under consideration. Haven't heard this yet myself.
Buy The Best of Bowie.

Middle East mixing...

2006-08-16T22:13:00.000+02:00

Well, sort of.

I really wasn't sure I was going to make this post. I uploaded the tracks several days ago, but the combo just seems a little weird. And very politically incorrect, in combination, anyway.

I've posted these as individual tracks, instead of as a single zipped file. The links are at the beginning of each paragraph. If you prefer the old way, let me know.

That said, on to the music.

Human League - The Lebanon (extended). This originally appeared on the followup to Fascination entitled Hysteria, in 1984. As a single it was a flop, partially for its overt politics, and (superficially) for the title - in the US we don't use an article when describing that country bordering Syria and Israel. Also problematic were the guitars at the forefront replacing the bouncy synths of their earlier hits. The subject matter is a girl and boy (well, it is the Human League) caught up in Israel's 1982 invasion.

Siouxsie and the Banshees - Israel (live). Originally a single, the version here is from the 1984 live album Nocturne. Lyrically rather obscure, the title still offsets the first shared item. Recorded on the first part of the Hyaena tour, this album also features Robert Smith on guitar.

Ministry - Hizbollah. From the album The Land of Rape and Honey, Ministry's first truly industrial album (one does not discuss With Sympathy, and Twitch was still heavy on the dance and light on the machine-gun drumming). This track slowed the pace and included some interesting middle-eastern rhythms and a sampled prayer. It's quite the curiosity in the Ministry catalogue, and shows that they were capable of far greater sonic variety than they currently practice.

Muslimgauze - Shadow of the West. From the unfortunately titled album The Rape of Palestine (1988). Muslimgauze was the name used by multi-instrumentalist Bryn Jones (who died in '99 of a fungal infection). Heavily influenced by events in the Middle East, he was very provocative with his album and song titles and artwork, and very passionate in his beliefs about the injustices he saw in the Arab world. Note however that his work is almost entirely without vocals and would generally fall under the rubric of 'world music'. Jones was incredibly prolific, having released over 100 recordings at the time of his death. Since that time several dozen more have come out. My particular favorites are probably 1997's reverb-heavy Mazar-I-Sharif and 1987's Abu Nidal/Coup d'Etat.

Buy:
Human League: Original Remixes and Rarities or Hysteria
Siouxsie and the Banshees: Nocturne or Once Upon a Time - The Singles
Ministry: The Land of Rape and Honey
Muslimgauze. Most of Muslimgauze's releases were limited edition. American label Soleilmoon lists about 25 products; European label Staalplaat about 30. Amazon has several items as well, though the album from which today's selection is drawn is, it seems, out of print.

Love Planet!

2006-08-12T15:22:00.000+02:00

So last night's adventure was the Love Planet music festival here in Prague. The lineup was pretty impressive, including Art Brut, Franz Ferdinand, Ministry, and the Pet Shop Boys. (I'd previously seen all but PSB perform live.)

(Today's lineup includes Body Count, I Am X, and Hooverphonic, but I'm in a fair amount of pain from yesterday and am taking it easy.)

Art Brut's set wasn't all that different than their March gig at Abaton, but they're a lot of fun. Eddie Argos doesn't have any pretensions to icon status - they're simply out to have a very good time. And they do. I share with you a b-side called 'These Animal Menswear' from a show in Vienna earlier this year.

I was much in need of a beer and hadn't any real desire to be too close to Ministry's sonic assault. The stuff I knew sounded quite good from the Pilsner Urquell tent. I was slightly bummed not to hear them do The Light Pours Out Of Me (a cover of the classic Magazine track that appeared on 2003's Animositisomina), but NWO, Just One Fix and Psalm 69 sounded great. (Oddly enough, I know a lot of their stuff, but those three are all from their most popular album, Psalm 69.)

I share with you 'Just One Fix' from the live album Sphinctour which documents the 1996 Filth Pig tour.

Franz Ferdinand, while great on album, are a much more impressive crew live. Sometimes there are straight-up renditions of tracks and other times, songs bend off at weird angles - 'Forty Feet' and 'Darts of Pleasure' (from their 2004 eponymous debut) featured oddly extended midsections. 'Do You Wanna' (the first single from this years You Could Have It So Much Better) and 'Michael' (another from the debut) were quite reworked. We had to bail in order to catch the Pet Shop Boys set (PSB's slot was longer but overlapped half an hour with FF's), and missed This Fire, but whatever song came before it featured Eddie Argos and Mikey B (frontman and drummer respectively from Art Brut) joining FF's Paul Thompson at the drum kit just wailing. (Eddie was actually in the drum seat indicating that he might rival Paul as the best drummer in his own band.) I share their cover of Air's 'Sexy Boy' from the CDS of 'The Fallen'.

And Pet Shop Boys - we caught the second half of 'Suburbia' which sounded ace. I was less impressed with 'Minimal' and 'Shopping' as neither were musically up there with their better work. They were up with the hits though, 'Rent', 'West End Girls', 'Opportunities', 'Where the Streets Have No Name' (which sounds far less like a cover to me than it did upon release), 'Always On My Mind'. All good, all well-executed. My personal favorites of the evening were 'It's A Sin' to which Neil gave a more powerful vocal treatment than he had earlier in the show, and a piece of their new album (Fundamental) called 'The Sodom and Gomorrah Show', the album version of which I share with you. They closed (I think - Rachel was exhausted and my back was quite sore) with 'Go West' which as we retreated got quite a response.

If any of these bands come to your town, I recommend them. I was well satisfied with my evening.

Download the four tracks noted above here (RS).

Buy:
Pet Shop Boys
Franz Ferdinand
Ministry
Art Brut - Expanded version of their debut Bang Bang Rock and Roll includes the studio version of 'These Animal Menswear', a couple of live tracks and some other weirdness.

Dire, simply dire

2006-08-11T11:12:00.000+02:00

So, on this 11th anniversary of Jerry Garcia's death, I share with you Dire Wolf. I didn't actually know much Dead when I first saw them live in 1988 (August, one of 3 nights at the Berkeley Greek). My sister got us tickets from a boyfriend who managed the concession franchise for BGP.

I recall this song because I was certain the title had to be "Don't Murder Me" (as repeated in the chorus) and commented as much to my sister. A few years later I dated a deadhead who set me straight.

When Jerry died, I had this song in my head for days as I imagined his last night in a rehab clinic in Marin playing cards with a great big harbinger of death. "I sat down to my supper, was a bottle of red whiskey / I said my prayers and went to bed / that's the last they saw of me." Save for the whiskey and lack of surrounding timber of course, that's what it must have been like.

The version I share with you is from the 1981 acoustic live album, Reckoning. The original studio version is on Workingman's Dead, an album rather shot through with death imagery. Black Peter's another deathbed confessional.

Download Dire Wolf here. (RS)

Grateful Dead Store:
buy Workingman's Dead (expanded with several live tracks, including Dire Wolf)
buy Reckoning (also expanded with a second disc of all sorts of goodies - I've been out of the reissue loop, apparently)

Some Grateful Dead...

2006-08-07T07:59:00.000+02:00

This week marks the 11th anniversary of Jerry Garcia's sad death at age 53. In honour, I'll be posting a few goodies from the extensive catalogue he helped create. The first is a benefit concert for the Greenpeace & Rainforest Action Network and featured several guests. (Infor below courtesy deadbase.com) The show occurred on September 24, 1988 in NewYork, and was broadcast. (My apologies that this is not such a high quality recording, but you'll get the gist.)

Brent Mydland's work is especially tight as are his vocals on Man Smart, Woman Smarter.

Set One:
Iko Iko
Feel Like a Stranger
West L. A. Fadeaway (featuring Mick Taylor)
Little Red Rooster (featuring Mick Taylor)
Box Of Rain
Ramble On
When I Paint My Masterpiece > Don't Ease Me In

Set Two:
Chinese Bones (Robyn Hitchcock cover, Suzanne Vega on vocals)
(This has got to be one of the oddest covers the Dead ever participated in. A couple of years later, Vega contributed lovely versions of Cassidy and China Doll to the tribute album Deadicated.)
Neighborhood Girls (Suzanne Vega song, SV on vocals)
Crazy Fingers > Man Smart, Woman Smarter
Every Time You Go Away (featuring Daryl Hall and John Oates)
What's Going On > Drums > The Wheel (featuring Baba Olatunji)
Throwing Stones > Not Fade Away

Alas, too, my copy is missing the encore of Good Lovin' and Knocking on Heaven's Door.

part one | part two | part three | part four

In Vienna there's ten pretty women

2006-08-03T11:50:00.000+02:00

So I spent a weekend in Vienna last month that included visits to the Vienna Secession building and the very cool KunstHausWien.

I thought that this post would include a bunch of songs in 3/4 time, like a fine Viennese waltz (Playground Twist, Breaking the Girl, King Volcano), but decided instead on:

Leonard Cohen: "Take This Waltz". Originally on the 1988 release I'm Your Man, the live version here is from a '92 concert in Switzerland.

Ultravox: "Vienna". The title track of their 1980 LP, this version comes from the concert film Monument. Beautiful in an early 80s sorta way.

Vic Reeves: "Vienna". This version of the Ultravox track is taken from the album Ruby Trax: NME's Roaring 40, a 3-CD compilation of very odd covers that New Music Express released in '92 to celebrate its 40th anniversary. It's got some serious gems - Curve's cover of I Feel Love and Suede's Brass In Pocket come to mind. This track, however is just kinda weird.

I thought about including Billy Joel's "Vienna" from '78's The Stranger, but thought better of it.

All three of the ones I chose are zipped up here. (RS)

Buy I'm Your Man.
Buy Vienna or Monument.
Someone on eBay wants USD 150 for Ruby Trax. Otherwise, it's way outta print.

A little love

2006-07-18T06:44:00.000+02:00

So I was a little amused by the connections between these songs.

First we have Ryuichi Sakamoto's cover of the Rolling Stones' "We Love You" from 1990's sublime Beauty.

Then we have an about-face in style for a Psychedelic Furs song of the same title, from their 1980 debut The Psychedelic Furs.

And then its Adam and the Ants' "Friends" which came out in a couple different versions. This one the b-side to "Cartrouble" in (I think) '79 and is on the remastered and expanded reissue of Dirk Wears White Sox.

Beauty I've only started to get into recently. I didn't know what to make of Sakamoto's solo stuff having only really heard new wave-era YMO. A later-developed appreciation for things jazzy and weird brought me to a love for much of his solo work. Looking at the Amazon page for this album, I can guess why it didn't grab me at the time. A funk song was tacked onto the start of the album which doesn't really go with the rest of it. I recall the segue from You Do Me into Calling from Tokyo (the opener on the European, and I'm guessing Japanese, release) was jarring.

The Psychedelic Furs and Dirk Wears White Sox were formative releases for me, my vinyl quite worn out by the time of their CD issues. Well probably not that much, but I played these two albums a lot as a kid. I played Dirk (and the associated singles on the Do It label) to the point where I can't tell you if the music's any good. It had that affect on me. I'm pretty sure that Adam listing all the people he knows before singing "and if I come in tonight, can I get in free?" isn't exactly art. It's all very staccato and angular in Wire/Gang of Four-ish kind of way that got lost with Kings of the Wild Frontier in 1981. The original Dirk release had a much wider array of subject matter that we came to expect from Adam later, including "Catholic Day", about JFK's assassination, "Animals and Men" which namechecks the major players in the Italian Futurist movement, and "Cleopatra" which discusses the Egyptian queens, um, proclivities.

The Furs' debut which I picked up after hearing "Susan's Strange" on a CBS loss leader compilation (Exposed or Exposed II, I'm not sure), and was sunk. I've been listening to their later stuff (Mirror Moves, Forever Now, Talk Talk Talk) and they really never matched this one for musical force, inventiveness and art school umph. I think my favourite song at the time was Pulse for its driving beat and simplicity (I was 13; I think I have dispensation), though listening now "Sister Europe" and "Flowers" might top the list, though it's all pretty flawless.

Download all three here (rs).

Buy from Amazon:
Dirk Wears White Sox
Psychedelic Furs
Beauty

Next up, I think, will be a holiday mix related to my weekend in Vienna a couple weeks ago. If anyone has any recommendations for a surgery mix (as I recover from Hiatus Hernia Laparoscopic Nissen Fundoplication), I'll take them into account too for a near future post.

Gott some!

2006-07-13T16:35:00.000+02:00

Okay, I've been outta the loop - had meant to post these a couple weeks ago, before going on holiday and then hernia surgery (woot - successful, but will have me homebound another 10 days or so).

So. Karel Gott. Him for what I named this blog in the first place. As a totally random selection, I offer Moon River and Be Bob a Lula sung in English from his 1966 album The Golden Voice of Prague. It's really something of a misfire because his voice is splendid in languages he actually speaks. In '66 this did not include English. My guess is that with his monumental popularity across Europe at the time, a crossover album had to happen. My guess is that it wasn't a hit.

In between those two, I offer Citim and Napoj Lasky C. 10. The first, from '76 is a cover of Albert Hammond's Feelings; the second (from '74) might translate into Love Potion #10, but it is not a cover of the Clovers' hit of almost the same title. I came by these on a compilation of his 70s recordings (in a series that includes double discs covering the 60s, 80s and 90s - haven't scored the other two yet.)

Download these four tracks here.

Buy The Golden Voice of Prague from Amazon here.

Amazon doesn't list the other compilation, but if you're interested in Gott stuff, most of it is available here in Prague for cheap. Drop me a line and we'll chat.

Quality and Distinction

2006-06-27T09:59:00.000+02:00

I'm working up a new post, but wanted to direct my readers to a recent post on Ramblings Of A Music Man in which our friend Steve posts the British Electrical Foundation's fine album Music of Quality and Distinction about which I blogged here last year.

Dig it:

BEF - Music of Quality and Distinction

Gott land?

2006-06-23T12:32:00.000+02:00

I know I haven't actually share any of Karel Gott's music with y'all, here at Gott Milk?, but I must direct your attention to an article in the Prague Post:

In the land of the Czech pop god

The curtain rises on a shrine to housewife heartthrob Karel Gott

By Kristina Alda
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
June 21, 2006

Karel Gott's villa in the prestigious village of Jevany, just outside of Prague, is being transformed into a museum for busloads of fans.

Like Mattoni mineral water or Karlovy Vary wafers, the name of legendary Czech crooner Karel Gott has become one of this country's most readily recognizable brands.

Gott, who has won more awards and sold more records than any of his countrymen, is like an Engelbert Humperdinck, Tom Jones and Frank Sinatra rolled into one giant, durable, bouncy ball of pop prowess. He's been enriching — or haunting, depending on which way you look at it — the Czech pop scene for over 40 years.

Now, the 66-year-old Gott, who has a cult following in Germany, has lent his name to a museum. Gottland opens June 30 in the singer's former villa in Jevany, a summering haven for Prague's elite, just 30 kilometers (19 miles) from the capital. The museum will chronicle the balladeer's career, housing a collection that includes his original furniture, oil canvasses he's painted and a life-size wax figure of Gott, bought from Prague's wax museum for 100,000 Kč ($4,435).

Read on.

May holiday thingy

2006-06-18T20:34:00.000+02:00

Okay, last month my girlfriend and I went on holiday in the states. The deal was originally that we spent one night in Paris in order to get the first flight in the morning to San Francisco. Well, that flight was canceled, so we spent another night in Paris (after 4 hours in queue at Charles de Gaulle, perhaps the worst airport in the EU-15), this time going into town (the layover was only supposed to be 9 hours, so we supped at a hotel near the airport and slept) and seeing Notre Dame and eating really really good cheese and visiting Shakespeare and Co. Was lovely, save that we were already supposed to be in SF.

The flight we ended up with took us to SF by way of Atlanta where immigration was really much easier than one might expect. Our chap at passport control was especially amusing, asking my English girlfriend after Margaret Thatcher's health.

Finally got to SF a day and a half late. My sis picked us up and all was fine.

Spent several days with friends in SF and realised I missed them quite a lot. However, the City is very noisy and that's one of the many reasons I prefer Prague.

The next part of the holiday included a flight down to SF, a drive across the Hoover Dam, a night in Kingman, AZ (but not in Barstow or San Bernadino), a couple of nights at the Grand Canyon, and a night in Las Vegas before heading to LA to see my folks and several other friends.

And since my return, I've wanted to share a wee mix that speaks of this vacation. So the mix includes the following:

John Cale: Paris 1919, from his album of the same name.
Packabeats - Evening In Paris, from the album Joe Meek - The Pye Years (My apologies that this is in .ogg format - might one of my readers point to a converter? Couldn't find one that works.)
London Symphony Orchestra - Going to California, from the album Kashmir-Symphonic Led Zeppelin. This album was arranged by the inimitable Jaz Coleman who also happens to be a resident of Prague.
Bob Dylan & Neil Young - San Francisco Bay Blues, from a bootleg of the same name of a 1988 show.
Rolling Stones - Route 66, from the album England's Newest Hit Makers.
Tomita - Sunset, from the Grand Canyon Suite.
Bruce Springsteen - Viva Las Vegas, from an NME compilation of Elvis covers called The Last Temptation of Elvis.

Get all seven tracks in one lovely file:
http://rapidshare.de/files/23431493/WestCoastHolidayMix.rar

A piece of seedcake...

2006-06-16T15:45:00.000+02:00

To celebrate Bloomsday 102, I offer you Kate Bush's very fine song 'The Sensual World', from her 1989 release of the same name. She wanted to lift the lyric's entirely from Molly Bloom's soliloquy, but was prevented by the Joyce estate. Nonetheless, it's a lovely track that captures Molly quite nicely.

Other James Joyce related songs include 'ReJoyce' by the Jefferson Airplane, 'Golden Hair' by Syd Barrett (a musical setting of an early pome by Joyce), and (I suppose) anything by Two Gallants (who take their moniker from the Joyce short story of the same name).

Download here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/23214136/kb-tsw.zip

Click here for Kate Bush items from CD Universe.

Jump into some Joyce here.

Suppose I accidentally got my shit together...

2006-06-12T22:08:00.000+02:00

Several weeks back an old friend posted a reference in her blog about a mix tape I'd made her way back that included MC 900 ft Jesus' 'If I Only Had A Brain'. The mix had gone AWOL, but as I had a couple tracks I figured I'd make a post about him and satisfy my friend's jones.

MC 900 (ne Mark Griffin) put out three hip-hop-ish and increasingly jazzy albums in the early 90s and then returned to obscurity in Dallas, TX.

The first album, recorded with DJ Zero (ne Patrick Rollins), Hell With The Lid Off (Nettwerk), featured the single 'Truth Is Out Of Style' - I was selling records in Santa Monica at the time and remember a 12 yr old (or so) coming in for this, but it wasn't until the following year when Welcome To My Dream (also Nettwerk) came out that I got listening. (My loss, for the song is truly funny. And fun to dance to.) Far more atmospheric and of a piece, Dream featured a freaky first-person piece about arson ('The City Sleeps') and several pieces rapped from the point of view of the mildly (or more so) schizophrenic. 'Adventures in Failure' (featuring the occasional Public Enemy sample) is about a man on the run from his job, his wife, and much of his life. The line "what do you think this is, some kind of joke?/Give me ten big macs and a small diet coke" may sum up his character.

The last album Griffin released, One Step Ahead of the Spider (American Recordings) included the afforementioned 'If I Only Had A Brain' (the rather amusing vid for which was directed by Spike Jonze). Griffin also satisfied a penchant for delivering deadpan semi-poetical spoken bits featuring twisted characters. Opener 'New Moon' has a woman in love with her car ("if she got home a few minutes early on any given afternoon it gave her a thrill as if she had stolen a little something back from death") speeding to her destiny.

Years back, I had a CD single from Spider (might have been 'But If You Go') that had a non-LP track called 'Regression Session' - would love to have that track again if any of my fine readers has a copy.

The three tracks in bold are found here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/21978658/em-see-nine-oh-oh.zip

Buy from cd universe:
Hell With The Lid Off
Welcome To My Dream

One Step Ahead Of The Spider seems to be out of print, but follow that link to new/used sellers on Amazon.

2006-05-27T14:19:00.000+02:00

Thursday night's adventure was a beautiful (albeit small-scale) production of Verdi's Aida (1871) at Narodni Divadlo. (I say small-scale because I've hear tales of it being performed in huge stadiums with casts of thousands plus elephants.)

I sorta knew the story from having bought a highlights CD with synopsis a few weeks back (which I cannot find right now - blarg!). Egyptian general falls in requited love with captive Ethiopian slave (whose father unbeknownst to all is the king of Ethiopia). Pharaoh's daughter is in love with the general too, though, and causes much trouble. Not that the characters don't all have their hubrises (hubri?). Nasty love/war triangle with gorgeous music.

Because most of the opera is small scale set pieces - Radames learning of the impending war, Amneris finding out he's in love with Aida/tricking Aida into revealing her love for Radames, plotting (surrounded by chorus of ladies in waiting or the Egyptian equivalent) what to do - that sort of thing - I wondered what could possibly merit the scale described in some reports. Then we get to Radames' triumphant return from the war. Divisions of soldiers prance before pharaoh and Amneris bearing spoils of war (including tusks at one point). Well, Rachel was paying very close attention and saw the same actors three times in different costume. This is the bit where one gets elephants and casts of thousands in those large versions. I suspended my disbelief and was hansomely rewarded.

What is very apparent in the staging is that it's a Christian allegory with Amneris in the place (among other things) of Pontius Pilate. The last sequence has the true lovers dying, having been entombed alive, in the pose of a pietà. Throughout the opera, we hear/see choruses singing to various Egyptian deities, those these seem not so far from pieces that might be included in a mass (something with which Verdi was not unfamiliar).

I'm sure more and better has been written on the subject, but I was quite moved.

For your enjoyment, here's the Triumphal March. I bought the CD (Famous Opera Choruses on the London label) at a thrift store with no packaging. iTunes says it's Singverein Der Gesellschaft Der Musikfreunde performing, but I don't know the year or the cast.

http://rapidshare.de/files/21504658/SingvereinDerGesellschaftDerMusikfreunde-Aida___Triumphszene.rar (18MB, 192br)

punk reposts

2006-05-27T13:29:00.000+02:00

A request was made for a repost of volumes 1-3 of the punk box. Here are the first two:

Holidays in the sun volume 1 (disc 1)
Holidays in the sun volume 2 (disc 2)
Punk and Disorderly (disc 3).

More JB!

2006-04-22T09:31:00.000+02:00

If you enjoyed the recent post of James Brown and James Bond, I would direct you to Funky 16 Corners where Mr. Grogan has posted The JB's very funky The Grunt. Dig.

JB & JB

2006-04-21T08:22:00.000+02:00

So, We've got a mix that's 5 parts James Bond, 3 parts James Brown, and two parts good spyin' fun.
Download the goodies right here (47MB) and buy from the links...

1. Rex Garvin and the Vandellas - Sock It To 'Em JB
(The original version of this James Bond tribute can be found on this cold kicking collection: In Crowd The Ultimate Mod Collection From The Original Style Movement.)

2. Son of PM - James Bond Theme
(from the very strange Thai Beat A Go Go volume 1 - get all three and see what happens to your party.)

3. Dan the Automator/DJ Shadow - Inspector Jay from Delhi
(from Bombay the Hard Way: Guns Cars & Sitars/Soundtracks from 1970's Indian Cinema. Bombay II - Electric Vindaloo, covering the 80s, was also a winner.)

4. Desmond Dekker - 007 (Shanty Town)
Doesn't actually reference Bond himself, but still a pretty rockin' track of the old-school reggae variety.
(from the Original Soundtrack - The Harder They Come)

5. Devo - Secret Agent Man
(from Duty Now for the Future)

6. Paul McCartney - Live and Let Die (audience recording, live in
Budapest 2003)
(I'm betting there's a much better live version here: Back In The World - Live. I saw the man in Prague 2 years ago and boy howdy did he deliver.)

And here's your 3 parts Godfather of Soul:
7. James Brown and his Famous Flames - Try Me
(from the 1959 album Please Please Please)

8. Pop Will Eat Itself - Not Now James, We're Busy
(A James Brown tale about the man who "wants to get into it, do his thing". Alas, my rip of this is a little dodgy - might have been ripped from an MP3 CD - get the whole album - well worth it - This Is The Day...This Is The Hour...This Is This!)

9. Big Audio Dynamite - James Brown (remix)
(from the excellent 1989 release Megatop Phoenix)

10. The Specials - Sock It To 'Em JB
(A cover of track 1, they pump up the horns and the action. If it doesn't get your booty movin', nothing will. From More Specials)

The image up top is nicked from the very cool site 317x. Give it a look-see.

Extreme Punk and Punks Pay Tribute

2006-04-13T23:31:00.000+02:00

Yup. This is it. Discs 9 and 10 of Punk - Voice of a Generation.

I think the whole box set idea was, perhaps, starting to wear thin by the time they got to these. Note how many songs on disc 9 are paired tracks by the same band. Previously, single discs might have doubled two songs by the same band, but the other 13 or 14 songs were all by different crews.

Disc 10 is an odd concept to start with - all songs with people's names in them, but this didn't hold up so well either. Two songs each dedicated to Thatcher and Frankenstein. Hmm. Perhaps I'm being cheeky, but that might actually be 4 songs on the same subject. Add to that two songs titled "XYZ is Dead" and I'm guessing the compilers wanted to be done.

Don't get me wrong, it's still mighty fun stuff, but perhaps in smaller doses.

Follow the links in the table headings. I'm gonna leave 'em up for about a week, at which time I'll be deleting volumes 6-10. As previously noted, I've killed the links for the earlier volumes. If you missed 1-5, let me know and I'll hook you up.

Vol. 9 - Extreme Punk	Vol. 10 - Punks Pay Tribute
Chaos UK - Hate Disorder - Driller killer Disorder - Fight the right GBH - Gunning for the Pre (live) English Dogs - Forward into battle English Dogs - Incisor Special Duties - Violent society External Menace - No view External Menace -Poor excuse Riot Squad - We are the riot squad Riot Squad - there ain't no solution Court Martial - Fight for your life Chaotic Discord - Punk Agression Chaotic Discord -Destroy peace n freedom The Varukers - No masters, No slaves Blitzkrieg - The future must be ours	Notsensibles - I'm in love with Margaret Thatcher Suburban Studs - Houdini Charms The Vibrators - Frankenstein stomp The Dodgems - Lord Lucan is missing The Tights - Howard Hughes Spizz Energi - Where's Captain Kirk? Disorder - A prayer for Cliff Richard Peter and the Test Tube Babies - Elvis is dead Notsensibles - Garry Bushell's band of the week USSR - John Lennon is dead Art Attacks - Frankenstein's Heartbeat TV Smith - Gary Gilmore's Eyes The Vibrators - Jesus always lets you down Sham 69 - King Kong drinks coca cola The Varukers - Thatcher's Fortress The Gymslips - Barbara Cartland

Vol. 9 - Extreme Punk

Vol. 10 - Punks Pay Tribute

Chaos UK - Hate

Disorder - Driller killer
Disorder - Fight the right

GBH - Gunning for the Pre (live)

English Dogs - Forward into battle

English Dogs - Incisor

Special Duties - Violent society

External Menace - No view

External Menace -Poor excuse

Riot Squad - We are the riot squad

Riot Squad - there ain't no solution

Court Martial - Fight for your life

Chaotic Discord - Punk Agression

Chaotic Discord -Destroy peace n freedom

The Varukers - No masters, No slaves

Blitzkrieg - The future must be ours

Notsensibles - I'm in love with Margaret Thatcher

Suburban Studs - Houdini Charms

The Vibrators - Frankenstein stomp

The Dodgems - Lord Lucan is missing

The Tights - Howard Hughes

Spizz Energi - Where's Captain Kirk?

Disorder - A prayer for Cliff Richard

Peter and the Test Tube Babies - Elvis is dead

Notsensibles - Garry Bushell's band of the week

USSR - John Lennon is dead

Art Attacks - Frankenstein's Heartbeat

TV Smith - Gary Gilmore's Eyes

The Vibrators - Jesus always lets you down

Sham 69 - King Kong drinks coca cola

The Varukers - Thatcher's Fortress

The Gymslips - Barbara Cartland

Disabling

2006-04-10T08:24:00.000+02:00

I've decided to disable all links after a week - this is in fairness to the actual copyright holders and also much more in the spirit of music blogging. The best idea behind music blogging is to interest eachother in stuff we'd never otherwise hear.

After the Punk set, I'll not be posting full albums (unless they're entirely out of print, a la the very fine These Records are BenT.)

Discs 9 and 10 of the punk comp will go up in a day or two.

I'm contemplating a James Bond and a Jerry Garcia post after that.

Cheers,

~Bishop

Indie Chart Hits

2006-04-09T13:35:00.000+02:00

So here are volumes 7 and 8 of Punk - Voice of a Generation.

Indie Chart Hits Vol. 1	Indie Chart Hits Vol. 2
Alternative TV - Action time vision Angelic Upstarts - Woman in disguise Attak - Murder in the subway Red Alert - City invasion Blitzkrieg - Lest we forget The Blood - Megalomania Channel 3 - I've got a gun Anti-Pasti - East to the west Court Martial - Gotta get out Disorder - Complete disorder The Drones - Can't see The Ejected - Have you got 10p Emergency - Points of view The Undead - It's corruption The Varukers - Massacred millions UK Subs - Self destruct	Vice Squad - Resurrection Erazerhead - Shell Shock Blitz Warriors Anti-Pasti - Six Guns The Insane - El Salvador Mayhem - Gentle Murder Notsensibles - I thought you were dead One Way System - This is the age The Partisans - 17 years of hell Peter and the Test Tube Babies - Up yer bum Red Alert - Take no prisoners Instant Agony - No sign of life The Samples - Dead hero Spizz Energi 2 - Work The Varukers - Die for your government Sham 69 - Hersham boys (live)

Indie Chart Hits Vol. 1

Indie Chart Hits Vol. 2

Alternative TV - Action time vision
Angelic Upstarts - Woman in disguise
Attak - Murder in the subway
Red Alert - City invasion
Blitzkrieg - Lest we forget
The Blood - Megalomania
Channel 3 - I've got a gun
Anti-Pasti - East to the west
Court Martial - Gotta get out
Disorder - Complete disorder
The Drones - Can't see
The Ejected - Have you got 10p
Emergency - Points of view
The Undead - It's corruption
The Varukers - Massacred millions
UK Subs - Self destruct

Vice Squad - Resurrection
Erazerhead - Shell Shock
Blitz Warriors
Anti-Pasti - Six Guns
The Insane - El Salvador
Mayhem - Gentle Murder
Notsensibles - I thought you were dead
One Way System - This is the age
The Partisans - 17 years of hell
Peter and the Test Tube Babies - Up yer bum
Red Alert - Take no prisoners
Instant Agony - No sign of life
The Samples - Dead hero
Spizz Energi 2 - Work
The Varukers - Die for your government
Sham 69 - Hersham boys (live)

A wasted generation, oh what a crime...

2006-04-08T13:02:00.000+02:00

Punk - Voice of a Generation - Disc 6 - Punks in Protest

Again, I gotta say, if you like this stuff, follow the links and buy some. Many of these bands, 25+ years later, are still going concerns.

As a local grafitti once said, "Punk's never not dead"

Violators - Gangland
Riot Squad - Hate the law
Vice Squad - You'll never know
Red Alert - Screaming at the nation
Expelled - Government policy
Samples - Fire another round
Abrasive Wheels - Burn 'em down
Peter and the Test Tube Babies - Keep Britain untidy
Varukers - Government's to blame
Partisans - Arms race
One Way System - Give us a future
Varukers - Protest and survive
Anti-Pasti - No government
Blitz - Voice of a generation
Violators - Die with dignity
Special Duties - Police state

Download Punk - Voice of a Generation - Disc 6 - Punks in Protest

All my best things are in hock

2006-04-06T15:17:00.000+02:00

And here's disc 5. Note that much of this is bootleg quality
stuff, but damn good anyway.

If you like it, go and buy some stuff. These guys didn't fight
the punk rock wars for nothin', you know.

Punk - Voice of a Generation - Disc 5 - Punk Live Classics

Sham 69 - Angels with dirty faces
SidVicious - Search and destroy
Vibrators - Power city
Johnny Thunders - Chinese Rocks
One Way System - Give us a future
Peter and the Test Tube Babies - Run like hell
Chaos UK - Kill your baby
999 - Feelin' alright with the crew
GBH - Sick boy
Disorder - Health hazard
Angelic Upstarts - Leave me alone
Vibrators- Disco in Mosco
Maniacs- You don't break my heart
Suburban Studs - I hate school
Varukers - Soldier boy
Wasps - Can't wait 'til '78

Download it at http://rapidshare.de/files/17159429/punk_5_its_alive.rar.html

Still

2006-04-06T11:03:00.000+02:00

joy division-still - with the version of digital (track 20) from Substance, for which I apologise), but all in glorious 256.

Still part 1
Still part 2

Gotcha covered

2006-04-05T07:39:00.000+02:00

And this brings us to disc 4 of Punk - Voice of a Generation - Punk Covers. It's an interesting round up stuff. Some of it is of bootleg quality at best, some much better. Hope you enjoy. Buy goodies from the source if you like.

Anti-Pasti - I wanna be your dog (stooges)
Sid Vicious - My way (sinatra)
Vibrators - Jumpin' Jack Flash (stones)
Vice Squad - The times they are a changin' (dylan)
One Way System - Cum on feel the noize (slade)
Hollywood Brats - Then he kissed me (crystals?)
Erazerhead - Teenager in love (?)
G.B.H. - Pretty vacant (sex pistols)
Disorder - Joleen (dolly parton)
Angelic Upstarts - White riot (clash)
Eater - Jeepster (t. rex)
Vice Squad - Teenage rampage (sweet)
Suburban Studs - My generation (who)
Vibrators - Gimme some lovin' (spencer davis group)
Drones - Be my baby (ronettes)
The Wall - Day tripper (beatles)
Download it at http://rapidshare.de/files/17139983/punk_4_coverup.rar

30 years ago today, McLaren taught the band to play...

2006-04-03T22:46:00.000+02:00

I wasn't even thinking about this, but The L.S. Bumble Bee reports that the BBC reports that we've hit something like the 30th anniversary of punk rock this week.

Haven't delved too deeply, but I think this must be the 30th anniversary of the first Sex Pistols gig at the 100 Club out of which (if the movie 24 Hour Party People is to be believed) sprang the Buzzcocks (and Magazine) and Siouxsie and the Banshees and Simply Red.

So it's a good week to be posting old punk. I'll post a disc of punk covers and another of live goodies tomorrow and the next day. It's too late for me to be doing all the linky bits.

But it's coming.

Efficiency and progress ours once more

2006-04-02T13:55:00.000+02:00

A friend of mine who runs a fantastic music blog consisting of well-researched introductions to fairly obscure dance music, samples provided with links to purchase sites commented on my other blog about posting full albums.

These 128kb rips are lossy (though one could argue that this isn't much an issue with punk stuff, but...). If you hear stuff you really like, please follow the links in the track list and buy some of the goodies direct.

In searching for links, it seems that much of the music on this disc mostly reflects the Oi! school of punk, though I may be wrong.

Punk - Voice of a Generation - Disc 3 - Punk and Disorderly

Vice Squad - Last rockers (yes, their official merch is found on an eBay shop.)
One Way System - Stab the judge
Disorder - Insane youth
Peter and the Test Tube Babies - Banned from the pubs
Red Alert - In Britain
Blitz - Someone's gonna die
Dead Kennedys - Kill the poor (Check out the rest of the Alternative Tentacles site to which this link takes you - they release all sorts of neat stuff and are generous with legit MP3 downloads).
The Partisans - Police story
The Insane - Last day
Abrasive Wheels - Army song
Chaos U.K. - 4 minute warning
Outcasts - Mania
G.B.H. - City baby attacked by rats (live)
Court Martial - Gotta get out
Vibrators - Dragnet (like a few other bands on this list, these guys are still a going concern - I saw them with UK Subs in Prague a couple years ago and had a blast. They've been back twice since on the same bill.
A.T.V. - How much longer

Download link disabled. Buy generously from the artists who have been fighting the punk rock wars longer than most of us have been around.

you know the scene - very humdrum

2006-03-31T18:14:00.000+02:00

I've been remiss!

Here's Punk - Voice of a Generation disc 2. It follows up on the last one a rather predictable name. In the next week or so we'll also be hearing Punk and Disorderly, Live Classics, and two discs of Indie Chart Hits.

Tracklist in comments.

Download Punk - Voice of a Generation - Disc 2 - Holiday In The Sun vol. 2

Synthetic fibre see-thru leaves

2006-03-24T19:37:00.000+01:00

In a recent post, I shared a couple of tracks from a set I have called Punk - Voice of a Generation (though I probably called it Punk Box).

I found it at a shop in Berlin a couple of years ago for about €30 and haven't seen it since. Most of the stuff on it is licensed from Cherry Red, but the set doesn't name the label it's actually on.

There are notes written by Shane Baldwin of Vice Squad, in both English and German, but they're not much more than short paragraphs about each band.

Anyway, given that I can't seem to find it online anywhere, and can't direct you where to get it, I figured I'd share.

I'll put up one disc every few days and see what happens.

Tracklist in comments.

(link disabled)

Oscar and Nat

2006-03-19T12:42:00.000+01:00

For those who are interested in things jazz & pop (in the pre-rocknroll sense), I've posted Oscar Peterson's very fine tribute to Nat "King" Cole, With Respect to Nat. I've asked the fine folks over at Jazz Pour Tous will post this one as well.

Half trio work, half trio plus big band, this album is 35 minutes or so of pretty timeless pop. Actually, a couple tracks (Orange Colored Sky, Calypso Blues) are a little silly, but When My Sugar Walks Down the Street, Sweet Lorraine, and Unforgettable are grand songs handled with great aplomb.

Give it a listen: http://rapidshare.de/files/15870766/OP3-W_Respect2Nat.rar

We don't see eye to eye...

2006-03-17T00:07:00.000+01:00

So, about 7 years ago, driving to work one morning, I heard "Like Dylan at the Movies" by Belle and Sebastian on the radio.

I was sunk. As soon as I got to work, I looked them up and ordered the album, If You're Feeling Sinister. Every single track a gem, though I have my preferences.

Fast forward to last year. As part of a series of concerts in the UK in which artists play albums of their work from start to finish, Belle and Sebastian played IYFS, and sold it on iTunes to benefit...

As noted, the album is pretty flawless, which is probably why they chose this one over Tiger Milk or Fold Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant, but the high point might be "Me and the Major" in which the narrator tells of a disappointed friendship and old soldier strikes up with him on the tube. Alas, "he wants to talk / But there is too much history, too much biography between us."

And part of that history is that "He remembers all the punks and the hippies too / And he remembers Roxy Music in seventy-two."

To that end, I share with you:

Punks: The Buzzcocks doing "Boredom" and Johnnie Thunders' "Chinese Rocks" (from a mad 10-CD collection I found in Berlin called Punk Box - never been able to find it online, either.) (link disabled)

Hippies: The Grateful Dead doing "St. Stephen" (from Aoxomoxoa) (link disabled)

Roxy Music in '72: "If There Is Something" (from Roxy Music) (link disabled)
and of course

Belle and Sebastian's "Me and the Major" live at the Barbican, 2005: (link disabled)

Buy Buzzcocks goodies, including their new album Flat-Pack Philosophy at buzzcocks.com.

Buy Roxy Music's stunning debut at Amazon.com.

Grateful Dead goodies of all sorts can be had at dead.net.

I couldn't find a direct link, but Belle and Sebastian Live at the Barbican should be had at http://www.apple.com/itunes/.

I lit my purest candle...

2006-03-12T22:08:00.000+01:00

So I recently (Thanks Chocoreve) came across a wee stack of stuff by Tim Buckley. Perhaps known best today for having been Jeff Buckley's father, Tim recorded several albums of increasingly drug-tinged psychedelic (sort of) folk in the late 60s and early 70s. Having been clean for some time, he died of a drug overdose at the age of 28 in 1975. From what I gather his stuff had been long out of print until the early 90s. I'd been looking for his records having heard covers by This Mortal Coil on the very beautiful albums It'll End In Tears and Filigree & Shadow.

This Mortal Coil were a shifting conglomeration of acts who recorded for 4AD who recorded 3 albums between '84 and '91 (the third being Blood), under the direction of Ivo Watts-Russel (if memory serves). Ethereal and intense like all the best 4AD stuff of the time, and primarily comprised of covers. It'll End In Tears also features covers of Buckley's Song to the Siren (vocals by Cocteau Twins' Elizabeth Fraser), Big Star's Kangaroo and Holocaust and Colin Newman's Not Me (with vocals by Howard DeVoto).

Filigree was a much more ambitious outing and features covers of Buckley's I Must Have Been Blind and Morning Glory, Van Morrison's Come Here My Love, and Judy Collins' My Father (which 20 years later still gives me shivers). A chap named Dominic Appleton from a crew called Breathless covers much of the male vocal work on Filigree, including that of I Must Have Been Blind. His voice is very beautiful, but only so here. A couple of Breathless albums did not reveal the same depth of feeling.

Blood, to me, was not nearly so compelling as the other two, but featured some interesting goodies including nice interpretations of Chris Bell's I Am The Cosmos and Rain Parade's Carolyn's Song.

Download Song To The Siren from Buckley's album Starsailor and This Mortal Coil's It'll End In Tears.

Download I Must Have Been Blind from Buckley's Blue Afternoon and TMC's Filigree & Shadow.

Download Morning Glory from Buckley's Dream Letter - Live in London 1968 and TMC's Filigree & Shadow.

Note that Filigree & Shadow was released without breaks between songs. I highly recommend buying This Mortal Coil CDs from 4ad.com.

Buy Tim Buckley CDs at amazon.com.

You can't have that, but, if you're an American citizen....

2006-03-11T00:22:00.000+01:00

...you are entitled to several wonderful things.

I've not posted a whole album before, but as a friend expressed some interest in having this one, I thought I'd share with the whole class. (Actually, the file I downloaded from some other fine poster is still up.)

The Tubes, who indeed are still recording and touring 30+ years later, started as a glam rock act out of, I believe Phoenix. They made their name, and got a recording contract, after moving to San Francisco in 73 or 74.

Their first LP, produced by Al Kooper, spawned the hits White Punks on Dope and What Do You Want From Life. Later on they had hits with Prime Time and Talk To Ya Later.

During their first years the Tubes were never out of debt to their first record label, A&M, due to the high costs of their live shows. Numerous costume changes, sets, dancers, and a lot of drugs (keep in mind that the persona singing the song White Punks on Dope is named Quay Lude).

From 75 to 80, they released 5 albums on A&M: The Tubes, Young and Rich, Now, What Do You Want From Live (recorded live at the Hammersmith Odeon), and Remote Control. Between the costs of the albums and tours, and the lack of certified hits, Herb & Jerry gave them the boot, and in 81 they released The Completion Backwards Principle on Capitol. This album gave them their first real hits since the first album, Talk to Ya Later and Don't Want To Wait Anymore. At this time, A&M released T.R.A.S.H. (Tubes Rarities and Smash Hits), which pretty much does what it says on the tin. The hits include much of what is listed above, and the rarities include a cover of Love Will Keep Us Together and Drivin' All Night (recorded for a lost final album for the label).

Download T.R.A.S.H. (link disabled)

I am a 1954 Studebaker Coupe - some thoughts on King Crimson

2006-02-27T08:05:00.000+01:00

Now tons has been written and will be written about the mountain that is King Crimson. You can start at Wikipedia.

Briefly - they started in '69 or so as an offshoot or evolution of Giles Giles and Fripp. Guitarist Robert Fripp has been the only constant member from the beginning. With varying lineups, the Crims recorded seven studio albums between '69 and '74, culminating in the scarily brilliant Red. Red featured Fripp, drummer Bill Bruford and John Wetton on vocals and bass.

After the 75 tour (and live album USA), Crimson took a 6-year break, returning in 81 with Discipline. The new lineup (and frankly their best in my opinion) lasted three albums: Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair.

The new lineup, Fripp, Bruford, bassist Tony Levin (who had recently been working with Peter Gabriel) and guitarist/vocalist extraordinaire Adrian Belew. Belew's classic pop sensibilities reigned in Fripp's prog rock excesses and together they produced KC's three most accessible albums.

Note that the term accessible is used comparitively...

Much can be said for the fact that Belew and Fripp were at their creative peaks at the time. Belew was working with Laurie Anderson and Talking Heads and a few other crews. A few years ago I managed to count 20+ albums that Fripp either perfomed on or produced between 78 and 85 including two albums with Andy Summers (I Advance Masked was one), at least one solo album (Exposure), the Roches' debut, Daryl Hall's first solo album and Peter Gabriel's second (often called "Scratch").

Discipline's "Indiscipline" is taken from the video Live at Cape D'Agde, from the 1982 Beat tour. Really, I prefer to say nothing about this song and let you experience it for yourself. The more I listen to it, the more I like it.

Beat's Neal and Jack and Me (album version) is a riff on the original Beats, Neal Cassidy and Jack Kerouac from the point of view of the cars they drove across the US.

The title track of 1984's Three of a Perfect Pair is, perhaps, about infidelity. The really curious thing about this very pretty piece is that the guitar part and the vocal part are in different time signatures. Belew did this solo acoustic as one of the encores on the Power to Believe tour a couple of years ago.

Download these three tracks here (link disabled).

Buy King Crimson goodies from Discipline Global Mobile.

But dad, it's Smokey!

2006-02-25T19:55:00.000+01:00

In 1982 or so, Martin Fry and some friends, under the tutelage of producer Trevor Horn, released The Lexicon of Love, a pretty flawless piece of pop confectionary. Beitterly romantic and eminently danceable, "Poison Arrow", "Show Me", and "All of My Heart" were hard to escape. Pretty much every song on the album could have been a single.

The following year, the somewhat harder Beauty Stab failed to make much of a dent, though I felt it's first single, "That Was Then But This Is Now" was pretty mighty. After a 2-year break and some additions to the lineup, How To Be A Zillionaire shifted several thousand more units and had a couple of certified hits. It didn't however, have much to say, except maybe Shake that thang.

Every album since has been fairly generic for their style - Fry hasn't again broken out of the sly crooner mode that made his name back in '82. This isn't necessarily a bad thing. Every album has something that hits (even if they haven't hit the charts).

Up had "Where Is The Heaven", Skyscraping had "Rolling Sevens", but my very favorite song from ABC has to be Alphabet City's "When Smokey Sings". It's a pretty perfect hommage to Motown hitmaster Smokey Robinson. Your girl might leave, but opportunity will knock ('the front door might slam/but the back door it rings), because Smokey's on your stereo.

I don't know. When this song first hit the radio, I was floored. Some songs are like that.

Listen for yourself at http://rapidshare.de/files/14124195/ABC_WSS.MP3.
(link disabled)

Buy the whole line of ABC and Martin Fry goodies at the ABC Shop.

Japanese Gentleman, Testify ...

2006-02-19T22:05:00.000+01:00

Sorry - had to concentrate on the new job and a few other thingies. I'm back though.

And I'm hoping to post with some regularity now.

I've been very lucky in the last couple of weeks to find some goodies my Yellow Magic Orchestra. This was a Japanese pop band who were huge for a couple of years in the late 70s/early 80s. Frontman Ryuichi Sakamoto released several pretty wicked solo albums, mostly in the R&B realm. He also scored a couple movies.

One of the coolest YMO songs, to me was a 1980 cover of "Tighten Up", an R&B/pop hit in '66 for Archie Bell and the Drells, a Philly band transplanted to Houston. The first or second coolest thing about Tighten Up was its base line, the other cool thing about was a very gentle self-aggrandisement ("We dance just as good as we walk") which YMO take on quite ably, adding "This was a hit for Archie Bell and the Drells, but now we are number one!" The Wolfman Jack imitation (by Yukihiro Takahashi, I think) in the refrain is also quite amusing.

This version is a remix by Jeff Ayeroff and John Beverly Jones. It was available on the Techno Bible box set (as was their original version). Another version is available on X_Multiplies, but it has a really disturbing and anti-Japanese sounding introduction (from a Japanese band - really odd). A third version of the song, without the intro is also found on Techno Bible, but this box set is out of print.

Not much later than YMO, REM recorded a version in one of their slightly drunken b-side sessions (about which, see the liner notes to Dead Letter Office). Mitch Easter (producer of Murmur) ably covers organ duties. You can hear various band members chatting back and forth, but no one's actually giving a rap. As underproduced and off-the-cuff as this version is, with its woots and clapping at the end, it demonstrates how successful the song is as an instrumental.

This version is available as a bonus track on the Australian reissue of Reckoning, (and probably elsewhere) but for the life of me, I don't recall where it originally appeared. I used to know my REM backwards and forewards, but alas no longer. Someone probably put this on a mix for me in 1986 from a 3rd generation recording of outtakes. Or something.

So, three versions of Tighten Up are available for your enjoyment here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/13658990/JapaneseGentlemanStandUpPlease.rar
(link disabled)

I'm kinda tired, having been properly skiing today for only the second time in my life (and the second time in 8 days), and rather unable to do this song's history any justice. Did a couple bits on the kid slope to get my bearings again and then went up the scary lift (Skis parallel, lean forward, knees bent, don't sit down! - I think going up drag lifts might be scarier than going down on the skis) - only fell of the lift once (sitting down - oops), and only fell down skiing, 6 or 7 times. Not bad over 4 hours. Was a mighty blast and I'm looking forward to the next trip.

The happy ones are near

2005-12-16T17:05:00.000+01:00

So a couple of nights ago I watched the original film version of Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch. (This would be the one from '97 about football (soccer for you Yanks) with Ruth Gemmell and Colin Firth, that takes place in Britain, not the new Farrelly Brothers' version that takes place in the US about baseball with Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon.)

It's your basic Hornby love story about a guy who can't quite grow up, finding his way into maturity with the help of a woman who doesn't take his crap (but still shags him, to be blunt). As RomComs go, it was ace. Go rent it.

The movie swings back and forth between the protagonist Paul's childhood during which he became a rabid Arsenal fan and his adulthood in which Arsenal is still his main passion. In one particularly well-edited sequence, set to The Who's "Baba O'Riley", we see both child and adult cheering on their team while getting crunched in the stands. Real edge of the seat stuff.

While IMDB's entry for this movie lists the afforementioned verion of "Baba O'Riley", Amazon.com's track listing for the soundtrack lists a version by Tim Hardin. Couldn't find Hardin's to verify, but in the category of damn fine rock 'n' roll, The Who will do just fine. This version is the mix found on 30 Years of Maximum R&B.

Download Baba O'Riley here.

Music by The Who can be found all over the place, but a few albums are available here, at allofmp3.com.
Buy the proper version of the movie here, at amazon.com.

Make no mistake about Jungle-face Jake...

2005-12-07T22:39:00.000+01:00

With their first full-length, 1980's In The Flat Field, Bauhaus were the godfathers of goth. Actually, the road to goth started with their 1979 debut release, "Bela Lugosi's Dead"(c/w "Boys"), but they expanded the dour themes and dark isolation of that single to good effect. What many missed, though, under all the emotionalism that became the goth esthetic was their sense of humour. Coming close on the heels of the first post-punk wave, Bauhaus took as much from glam as they did from punk, though it's, so to speak, low in the mix. While not so present in their arrangements, the debt they owe glam is apparent in their choice of covers. They had a British top-10 with Bowie's "Ziggy Stardust" and also took on Brian Eno's "Third Uncle" (which opens 1982's The Sky's Gone Out. Their first glam foray was T. Rex's "Telegram Sam" on Flat Field.

Now it always sounded like Bauhaus (and especially frontman Peter Murphy) were taking themselves way too seriously, but a glance at Telegram Sam's lyrics indicates that they were well amused with themselves.

(Not much later, Bauhaus offshoot Love and Rockets would perform encores dressed as giant bees.)

Eight years before Bauhaus did its thing with it, Marc Bolan's T. Rex topped the charts with "Telegram Sam", the first single off 1972's The Slider. Now, it's probable that Bolan was never much of a lyricist, but like many of his early hits, it has a good beat you can dance to. The melody is really a rehash of '71's chart-topping Get It On, but that sparkling Tony Visconti production rescues it from being what many of his later singles were, desperate attempts to recover what he'd become famous for.

Somewhere in between The Slider and The Flat Field, Bolan lost his touch and his last singles were even less lyrically and musically inspiring. He died in a car crash in 1977. (Wikipedia shares that the driver of the car was girlfriend Gloria Jones. Jones had a hit in 1964 with the original version of "Tainted Love" made famous in 1981 by Soft Cell, and also covered by Coil.)

Click here to download both of these versions of "Telegram Sam".

Buy T Rex mp3s at allofmp3.com.

Buy Bauhaus mp3s at allofmp3.com.

Congratulations, Mr. Gott!

2005-12-01T10:45:00.000+01:00

Karel Gott Junior?

66 year old singer Karel Gott, who has 18 and 30 year old daughters will be a father again.

CTK reports:

Gott told the tabloid (Blesk) that his 29-year-old partner Ivana Macháčková is pregnant.

"Yes, we are expecting a baby. But I don't want to talk about it because I'm superstitious in this."

He said he and Ivana would like a boy to be born.

Gott has already two daughters with his previous partners, 30-year old Dominika and 18-year-old Lucie.

Gott has been topping pop music polls in the Czech Republic for several decades. He is quite popular abroad, mainly in Germany and Russia.

Gold is the sky in concentrate

2005-11-21T21:00:00.000+01:00

November 13 saw the first anniversary of the death of Jhonn Balance, who fronted Coil. Balance and Peter Christopherson started Coil in 1983 or so as an offshoot of Psychic TV, but it later became a project in its own right with an evolving cast of associated players that in the last few years included Thighpaulsaundra of Spiritualized.

Some of the music created under the Coil name has a certain pop sensibility (and I use that phrase very broadly), especially 1991's Love's Secret Domain which borrows much of its energy from acid house. On the other hand, much of the large Coil discography is subtly and not-so-subtly disturbing and mind altering instrumental music. For example, Balance and Christopherson wrote the original incidental music for Clive Barker's Hellraiser. (I can't seem to find Barker's quote about Coil - something like "theirs is the only music I've heard that makes my bowels churn.") Alas the studio felt otherwise regarding the soundtrack released in the film. Their other 'pop' albums include 1984's Scatology and 1986's Horse Rotorvator.

I first heard Coil in 1990 when a friend played their gut-wrenching version of "Tainted Love", found on Scatology. I was hooked. (The liner notes for the 1988 release of the CD reveal, 'At the time of writing this booklet...the official number of deaths attributed to AIDS in the UK is 1011.' Damn that was a long time ago.) From the first, their stance was unabashedly queer. Horse Rotorvator's "Ostia" is about the death of controversial (and gay) Italian filmmaker Pier Pasolini. This album also features a sobering cover of Leonard Cohen's "Who By Fire".

Their 80s output also included the music for a collaboration with director Derek Jarman called The Angelic Conversation. The movie, an impressionistic and homoerotic love-letter, is punctuated with several of Shakespeare's sonnets recited by Dame Judith Dench.

The 90s saw three compilations of vocal and instrumental work released under the titles Unnatural History I-III as well as remix work with Nine Inch Nails. My favorite of this work, perhaps just because of the title, is 'Fist Fuck' a remix of 'Wish' found on the Fixed EP.

In 2000, Coil started playing live for the first time since the early 80s. There were several incarnations of the show captured on the CDs Live One - Live Four. The bulk of Live Four was recorded in 2002 in Vienna, and the opening and closing tracks in Prague. I was quite lucky to see the Prague concert from which "I Am Angie Bowie (Sine Waves)", and "An Unearthly Red" were drawn. I considered myself blessed enough at the time that I got to see them perform. That I got to chat with Balance afterwards made me feel doubly so. Because their music is invested with so much energy, I'd not expected him to be so approachable. Very sweet and very troubled.

Because the range of Coil's music is so broad, three songs are unlikely to be much of an introduction. If these touch you at all, I recommend purchasing more. Rather than using peer-to-peer services or major retailers (though there would be something subversively pleasing about buying a song called "Anal Staircase" from Wal-Mart), please order whatever you can directly from Coil's site, http://thresholdhouse.greedbag.com/.

Threshold House and Brainwashed have a wealth of Coil information.

Click here to download Solar Lodge, Windowpane, and Who By Fire.

You can't shake it (or break it) with your Motown

2005-11-07T23:58:00.000+01:00

Listening to Leonard Cohen's Death of a Ladies' Man recently, I realized it was the fulcrum on which his styles are balanced. When I started writing this, it was not an album I ever listened to much because, frankly, it's a mishmash. A mishmash with merit, but difficult to play all the way through. The more I play it, and I'm up to about 20 listens in the last week or so, the more it's grown on me.

Note that it's the only (pre-Dear Heather) studio album not represented on The Essential Leonard Cohen (which Cohen himself compiled.) Leading up to it we have mostly acoustic arrangements that are increasingly complex culminating in 1974's New Skin for the Old Ceremony which is musically akin to the music Dylan was creating at the time with the Rolling Thunder review.

Three years after the Old Ceremony, Cohen stepped into the studio with Phil Spector and off the map. It's not as unlistenable as I thought a few weeks ago, but rarely do two songs back to back actually fit together.

Of the subsequent albums, 1979's Recent Songs is almost as bare as his very first album. Various Positions and I'm Your Man are noteable for having human drummers but sounding preprogrammed. (Alas the only album of his I've not heard all the way through is The Future, which I think disproves my thesis somewhat, if "Closing Time", "Democracy", and the title track are representative.) However the last two albums certainly hold up my assertion, given the stripped nature of the production and the absence of almost anyone else in the studio. Ten New Songs is in fact a collection of demos that Cohen found good enough to release. It's beautiful and I love it, don't get me wrong, but he seems to have shied from actually working with more musicians than was absolutely essential. One could argue that this retreat evolved from the mania that comes through so well on the 1977 production. (An aside: It's quite interesting that just 3 years later, Spector saw no need to fuck up the Ramones' sound on Road to Ruin - it's a clean production, and a little slower then what the band had done on its previous albums, but it's not so crazily out of line.)

While the later work has much perfection to it, I still think that experimentation in the studio, and in fact letting go at all, has been absent since Ladie's Man. I'd argue that Spector's arrangements, mangling of perfectly good lyrical and musical ideas, and insistence on the singer filling several unnatural (to Cohen) roles - folk rock singer, sinatra-style crooner, 50s heartthrob and texas swinger to name 4 - none of which are Leonard himself as displayed on every other recording, seem to have put a fear of recording into the artist, and each album he's done since feels sterile in comparison to the ones that came before. There's also the problem that about half the songs here are produced and arranged to the hilt. Strings, horns, backup singers, layered over the original recording. (Beatles fans spent 35+ years bemoaning what Spector did to Let It Be for the same reasons.) The songs that escaped unscathed from all the bricks in Spector's Wall of Sound are "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On" (my fave song on that when I first heard it, and still) and "Fingertips". The Motown stylings of "Hard-On" have less in common with either Leonard's or Spector's other recorded output and sits well next to Dylan's "Rainy Day Women" (Y'know, everybody must get stoned) and Lennon's "Give Peace a Chance", in that it feels like everybody's in the same room at the same time all in the same groove.

"Fingertips" is wonderful in a Hank ("How lonely does it get?") Williams kind of way and sounds as though it were similarly fun to record. It is also a nice example of how well Cohen's songs can work in a country arrangement, and works well coming after "Hard-On", but halts jarringly before the closing number, the understated title track. In terms of execution, and arrangement, the song "Death of a Ladies' Man" stands with Cohen's best. The combination of piano/drums/voice suits the lyrics. It just doesn't stand with the rest of the album. Other Cohen albums flow with some grace, by design I'm guessing, but also as a by-product of the harmony of the songs' arrangements.

Back to the beginning, however, the album starts with "True Love Leaves No Traces", an effort on Spector's part, it seems, to cram Cohen's square tenor into a round Tony Bennet-style croon. Doesn't work.

"Iodine" is reverb-soaked pop with jazzy horns. Like a few songs on this album, it sounds as though the back-up singers are tuned to different instruments than those used in the song. In fact, everything on the song seems to have been laid down slightly out of sync, and the listener can feel the physical space between Cohen and everything else in the song.

"Paper Thin Hotel", already the weakest song on the album lyrically, suffers from an musical emphasis on the rather clunky rhyme scheme (soul/control, face/place, heart/apart). The almost spoken-word arrangement bares an oddly strong resemblance to the title track of Dear Heather, which, I must say, is not a point in either song's favor. Also, the treacly ooooh/aaaah backing vocal is not as difficult to listen to as the backing on "Iodine", but still detracts from the song.

Now, the more I listen to "Memories", the better its arrangement sounds, though it's also the closest song on the album to the original Philles recordings on which Spector's established his Wall of Sound style in the early 60s. In this song, Spector pushed Cohen towards an early 60s Frankie Avalon-style vocal, which he pulls off with some aplomb (his limited range notwithstanding). However the repeated mock-angel chorus before the line "your naked body" is only amusing once (maybe twice if repeated at the end), not four times. It just seemed tiresome.

Finally, "I Left a Woman Waiting" feels almost like something left off a Rod McKuen album. The arrangement is sappy in a late 60s AM radio sort of way, to match sappy Southern California couplets like "Free as running water / Free as you and me". Whatever Spector was doing with the arrangement, though, is subverted by the gorgeous line "Quick as dogs and truly dead were we", which jars the listener right out of the song.

Death of a Ladies' Man was Cohen's fifth studio album in ten years of recording. His next five studio albums would take 24 years. While his poetry has become more and more incisive in these later albums, it has never been as musically exhilarating as what came before.

Click here to download "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On"

Buy Leonard Cohen MP3s over at allofmp3.com.

Music of Quality and Distinction

2005-10-25T21:27:00.000+02:00

When I was in junior high, the Human League hit the radio hard with Don't you want me, a song which really got on my nerves at the time. Despite a love for things new wave, I never really got into them beyond a couple of 45s. Not much later, a crew called Heaven 17 started getting notices in the pop press. The song that MTV gave some rotation, Penthouse and Pavement also got on my nerves, primarily for its disco beat, funky bass and soulful back-up singers. I honestly couldn't see what the fuss was about. (I wouldn't get anything about funk or disco, and how these forms informed what I did dig, for many years.)

Fast forward to college (1986 or so) - I had a friend named James whose main musical passions were for Icehouse and Alphaville and who shunned anything with a guitar. He and a serious Beatles fan named Mark lived down the hall from me at SF State. He played for me Human League's Reproduction and I fell for Empire state human. In this song, they eschewed the seriousness of songs like Don't you want me and The Lebanon (the 45 of which I quite wore out, actually) and the meaningless hooks of Fascination and Love Action. It tapped into my taste for Doctor Demento-style comic music. (As a kid I was hooked on The Tubes who satisfied that comic urge as well.)

Bring more water, bring more sand / Biggest person in the land.

The remainder of Reproduction is pretty serious stuff, but none of it as musically realized as Empire State Human. James explained that this record preceded the departure of Martyn Ware and Ian Marsh who were briefly The British Electronic Foundation, a production/writing crew. B.E.F. had several projects in the pipeline in '81 or so, one of which was Heaven 17. (Another, the collection Music of Quality and Distinction, contained Tina Turner's cover of Ball of Confusion the first step in the comeback that would produce Private Dancer three years later.)

I told James I'd heard Heaven 17 and didn't dig them much. I was soaking up a lot of music at the time, but concentrated mostly on REM, The Smiths, and Miles Davis, and only listened to James' collection of synth-pop when I was down in his room.

Sometime in the intervening years I heard their first single (We don't need this) Fascist groove thang and a track or two else, but it wasn't until about two years ago when I heard Temptation that I realized I needed to track down more of their music. And finally have. Listening to the albums Penthouse and Pavement (1981) and The Luxury Gap (1983), I realise that the song 'Penthouse and pavement' in some ways isn't really representative of what they were doing at the time. Had I heard Let's all make a bomb or We're going to leave for a very long time with their high-pitched analog synths and martial beats emitting from cheesy drum machines (no Doktor Avalanche in the BEF studios!), I would probably have dropped some change for the vinyl. (I've also put together a recent appreciation for the breadth of the Human League catalog via a greatest hits tape. For a couple of months, said cassette was about the only thing I listened to on the treadmill at the gym.)

Download Empire state human and Fascist groove thang here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/6753850/FascistState.zip

Buy Human League MP3s from allofmp3.com here.
Buy Heaven 17 MP3s from allofmp3.com here.

Welcome!

2005-10-20T21:55:00.000+02:00

Welcome back my friends to Gott Milk! I had this odd idea A year and some ago that I'd create a music blog like my friend Moe Rex did (back when it was cool and sometime before everybody started doing it), and that I'd just post Czech pop. I'd been going through a phase of buying cheap Karel Gott (the golden voice of Prague) CDs and really digging Čechomor, Plastic People of the Universe and a few other Czech acts.

So, yeah, that's where the name comes from.

The fact is, though, that Gott isn't all that interesting. In the pop realm, I'd rather listen to Frankie and Dino (and you may very well get some rat-packy goodness from me in the coming posts).

For the first post however, we're going to go back to two of my great loves: really good covers, and David Bowie.

From Mr. Bowie, we have a cover of Alabama Song. Written by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill (well, there's some question on that note), the Doors did a deuced popular version on their first album. Bowie, however, recorded his version in '79 or so, around the time of Scary Monsters. The version we have here was recorded for the BBC in 2002. Perhaps for Jonathan Ross. I'm guessing he's got Mike Garson on piano and Gail Ann Dorsey on bass/backing vocal.

From some folks you wouldn't, these days, peg as Bowie fans, we have Moonage Daydream performed by the White Stripes. It's serious bootleg quality and is purported to be a recording of their first performance, at Detroit's Gold Dollar. I suppose one could argue that Moonage Daydream is a blues of sorts, certainly not bluesy in the way of other White Stripes influences, but perhaps so in the way of other White Stripes recordings.

If that makes any sense.

Edited to modify: How embarrassing - the link to ready rock moe rex had been incorrect. It points right proper now.

The songs are zipped up right here:
http://rapidshare.de/files/6537943/AlabamaDaydream.zip.html

Buy:
White Stripes MP3s at allofmp3.com
David Bowie MP3s at allofmp3.com