D-Sides, Orphans, and Oddities
Episodes
Thursday Dec 02, 2021
Thursday Dec 02, 2021
Bruford - Age Of Information (1980) I guess, if I'm going to call the Bowie band of 1975-1980 the best band of the decade, this group would come close to that. With the inimitable style of Jeff Berlin on bass and the wonderful Bill Bruford on drums, this album might have been the closest Prog came to the elusive jazz/pop hybrid bred into the bone for so many of the Prog hopefuls of the era.
Jan Hammer Group - Don't You Know (1977)
Can - I Want More (1976) Can was a sometimes impenetrable German Prog outfit. Their music in the early part of the decade wasn't something I could say I liked, even though I tried like heck. This was a single, which kinda makes sense. All Prog was catching a terminal disease at this juncture, but no one knew it.
Renaissance - Flight (1983) I messed this song up on my show, but this is not a bad record. Renaissance had some great moments in the '70s, and if you are interested, go find Scheherazade and Other Stories from 1975. Like Close to The Edge, it only has three songs, but I think that record is their apex by a mile, and I like the other albums. This was from their last "Golden Era", Time-Line album, although it had been a while since they could get a record company to pony up the do-re-mi for an orchestra.
Discogs: Renaissance was originally formed in London, UK, in 1969 by ex-Yardbirds vocalist Keith Relf and drummer Jim McCarty who wanted to explore a new sound blending elements of rock, folk, and classical music. Relf assumed the role of guitarist, and they were joined by bassist Louis Cennamo, keyboardist John Hawken, and vocalist Jane Relf. This lineup recorded the first self-titled album and most of the second album, Illusion (1971). A rapid series of personnel changes followed. Guitarist and composer Michael Dunford first appeared on Illusion. Before his departure from the band Hawken recruited new vocalist Annie Haslam. By 1972, when the Renaissance recorded their third album, Prologue, none of the original members remained though McCarty still wrote music for the band.By 1973 the lineup had stabilized with Haslam, Dunford, keyboardist John Tout, bassist and vocalist Jon Camp, and drummer Terry Sullivan. This lineup produced a string of relatively successful albums over the remainder of the decade. They had one Top 10 single in the U.K., "Northern Lights", from the album A Song For All Seasons (1978).By 1980 Sullivan and Tout departed leaving Haslam, Dunford, and Camp as the stable core of the group with various other musicians coming and going through the early and mid-1980s. The group released two albums, Camera Camera (1981) and Time-Line (1983) which were not well received by either fans or critics. Renaissance went into the studio to record a further album but found themselves without a label willing to release it. Material for this album as well as discarded tracks from the sessions for the previous three releases finally saw the light of day as Songs From Renaissance Days in 1997. [Ed: Which I gobbled up the day it came out, as there was no other domestic CD of this group available at the time.]
Yes - The Revealing Science of God (1973) There are moments in this song that, to me, are just amazing, transcendent, and still cause chills maybe 40 years after the first time I heard them ("Getting over overhanging trees...") like almost all of Yes' epic side-long monsters. There's a reason Prog fans like me are filled with sadness that the people who made this magic for us cannot seem to just stop recreating or trying to recreate these moments with an ever-shifting group of lesser talents. The Beatles did it right. They just stopped, resisted the potentially lucrative urge to make themselves stand there again, together, and recreate sounds from which they had long ago moved past. I like this. There's a real fire that people might have forgotten these very young men possessed.
King Crimson - Thela Hun Jinjeet (1981) So this might be #3. Tony Levin played on some later Yes albums, as well as Peter Gabriel (he plays the Chapman Stick, a strapped upright instrument with both tenor and bass strings). He also played with Paul Simon and hundreds of others. Robert Fripp played with David Bowie on his Berlin Trilogy, and Bill Bruford was amazing in Yes, his own band, Bruford, and...Genesis during a tour! Bowie and...Adrian Belew!! Who is here after stints with Talking Heads, Zappa, Tom Tom Club....it goes on and on, but I really like anything Bill Bruford played on.
Bruford - Gothic 17 (1980) I've played stuff from Bruford's first record with Annette Peacock. This is in that funky, other-worldly combination of jazz and pop. I love Jeff Berlin's voice. I wish they had dome more records together. Go find "Joe Frazier" off this album. Whoo boy.
Gentle Giant - Interview (1976)
Genesis - One For The Vine (1977) Genesis at their peak. It's hard to believe it now, but this was composed solely by Tony Banks. The scope and drama, pathos, and virtuosity amaze me especially when one considers that he (and they) never created anything this beautiful again. Who was the best keyboard player in Prog? I think about it and Kerry Minnear comes to mind, as he really was the creative force in Gentle Giant. But neither he, Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, or any of the others, as good as they were, authored something as wonderful as this.
Rush - Jacob's Ladder (1980) I don't care what you say. This album is peak Rush. After years of album/tour/album/tour, "The Spirit of Radio" captured their amazing musicianship, their cool humor, and the fact that you could be groovy in 7/8. I think of this record as the end of the beginning, but not in a good way. I played this in a band once. We were terrible. I had a tiny Casio keyboard (it was all we could afford) and I couldn't play the last bit on bass with anything resembling speed. Our drummer was great.
Discogs: Rush's seventh studio album.The cover depicted the famous incorrect headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" on a newspaper in the bottom left corner.However, the Chicago Tribune (the paper that originally published the error) pressured the band to remove the headline. Some versions appear altered with either "Dewei Defeats Truman" or a blanked section.The billboards in the distance (mid-right) originally read "Coca-Cola." However, the cola company objected to the use of their logo and the cover was changed to display the band members names in a similar typestyle to the original logo.Trivia: The woman on the cover of this album is model Paula Turnbull. Contrary to rumor, the guy waving in the background on the cover is not one of the members of Rush, it's actually Hugh Syme, the art director of the album.
UK - In The Dead of Night/By The Light Of Day/Presto Vivace and Reprise (1978) One of the first Prog supergroups, members of other big groups smooshed together. In this case, John Wetton of King Crimson, Roxy Music, Uriah Heep, Mogul Thrash, etc., Bill Bruford, the amazing Allan Holdsworth (Soft Machine, Gong) , and Eddie Jobson (Zappa, etc.) make a great album. Then Bill leaves, and Terry Bozzio (Zappa) records another record and a live album, and then...Asia.
Joe Simon - Before The Night Is Over (1977)
I don't consider The Moody Blues or Pink Floyd prog.
Thursday May 20, 2021
Caravan, Family, and...Sri Darwin Gross?
Thursday May 20, 2021
Thursday May 20, 2021
King Crimson - Cadence And Cascade (1970) There are versions with Greg Lake and Gordon Haskell singing lead floating around. Now the rarely heard version with Boz Burrell, who I think was being groomed as a kind of heartthrob in mid-60s England but ended up learning bass from Bob Fripp of King Crimson. Then he joined Bad Company and didn't sing a note. KC must have really believed in this song. Their second album was a virtual carbon copy of their first.
Don Potter - Unchain My Heart (1978)
Caravan - The Love in Your Eye (Live) (1974) A more energetic Moody Blues, a far better band than Barclay James Harvest, Caravan never reached any sort of appreciable sales, but they were pretty interesting. Using a full orchestra in the studio and live before even Renaissance, listening to them reminded me of that same old pop vs. prog de-evolution that so many prog bands ended up suffering.
Elizabeth C. Farrell for New York State Assembly (1968) Anti-hippie political campaign flexi-disc. Elizabeth C. (Betty) Farrell was a New York State Assembly candidate for the 138th district in 1968.
Embryo - Wajang Woman (1976)
Family - In My Own Time (1971)
Family - The Weavers Answer (1970)
Sri Darwin Gross - With Eckankar(1972) Religion ruins everything. It's a constant scam with willing, gullible fools who keep pumping money and mindpower into what they hope is salvation of a permanent kind. But it's all a big grift. All of it.
And so it was with a fellow named Paul Twitchell, who started a loony off-shoot of Scientology called Eckankar. This was around 1964. When he died in 1971, his wife chose Darwin Gross as his successor. And this album was released. It's pretty high-quality backing for such a mediocre singer. Judge for yourself!
Family - Burlesque (1972) The bass player is our own prog god John Wetton! This was what he was doing between Mogul Thrash and King Crimson. I wonder if HE sang "Cadence and Cascade" at one time. This is a combination of boogie and prog if there ever was one. Wetton's playing style is instantly recognizable.
Frank Pellico - Shaft (1976) Pellico played the stadium organs for both the Chicago Cubs (Wrigley) and the Blackhawks (United Center).
Funny Bone – Ride On Bones (1977) I love this record. Calvin Arnold recorded singles until the '80s. Worked with Fats Domino in 1970. I owe Fats a show.
Chatham - Hump Up (197?)
Johnny Watson - Unchain My Heart (1967) Before recording his own hits in the '70s and doing stuff with early acolyte Frank Zappa, he was sort of like James Brown on this release, an instrumental album without the "Guitar" part in his name.
Lennie Macdonald - Sad City Woman (1975) Featuring Mike Giles on drums. You know. MICHAEL Giles, the first drummer for....King Crimson. The violin solo features Wilf Gibson, who played with Electric Light Orchestra on their first two albums. Wilf played on LOTS of stuff in the decade. Including CARAVAN, and, most notably, on Kiki Dee's most popular album, I've Got The Music In Me. That was released on Elton John's label.
The singer sounds just like Gerry Rafferty. Or vice-versa.
De Maskers - Unchain My Heart (1967) I should have played this, their 1965 collaboration with what must have been an increasingly desperate Chubby Checker. Next time. I just love this cover. De Maskers (The Masks) was a Dutch pop group. The mask gimmick lasted a year, maybe?
Streetwalkers - Me and Me Horse and Me Rum (1976) From Discogs: In 1974 Roger Chapman and Charlie Whitney formed a band with a fluid line up including Family and King Crimson members. They released an album "Chapman Whitney Streetwalkers" the same year. In 1975 guitarist and vocalist Bobby Tench from The Jeff Beck Group. They released three studio albums as Streetwalkers, before disbanding in 1977.
Also on this record: Wilf Gibson.
Boz - Isn't That So (1966)
Neoton Familia - California Dreamin' (1978) Hungarian disco for you.
NGC-4594 - Skipping Through the Night (1968) The name refers to the designation for the Sombrero Galaxy in the New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars or NGC. I hate The Doors and their influence on bands that tried the same thing they were trying to do.
Painted Faces - Lost You In My Mind (1967)
Chapman-Whitney - Parisienne High Heels (1974) Another collaboration featuring John Wetton and Michael Giles who played in different iterations of King Crimson. Great song. Roger Chapman's voice is a little offputting at first, but these songs are uniformly interesting.
Roger Chapman and The Shortlist - Prisoner (1981) More good stuff despite the cheesy '80s synth, and more John Wetton on bass.
Sakura (櫻花) - Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (1971)
Shankar Ganesh - Coca Cola (198?) From the liner notes of the compilation: "Play That Beat Mr. Raja" is the very first compilation dedicated to Tamil recordings in the West. It explores the wild shores of these late 80's Kollywood music productions. With an avalanche of cinematic strings, analog synths, mind-blowing vocal punchlines, and drumkit earthquakes mixed with folkloric percussive elements, it reveals the audacity of composers such as Ilayaraja, Shankar Ganesh, or Hamsalekha.Covering an impressive range of styles, it features Kamal Hassan's vocoded rap "Vikram Vikram", Shankar Ganesh's disco stomper "Coca Cola", and the irresistible Bontempi instrumental "Love Theme", among many other hits. Straddling boundaries between traditional southern Indian identity and digested western influences, these selected oddities remain a lesson of creativity and freedom in the world of soundtracks, with their stunning incorporation of the most typical of 80s tools in a classical context, and constant love for daring structures and demented arrangements.
Sri Darwin Gross - At The Grassroots (1972)
You are Soul, an eternal, creative being. Unlimited. Divine.
Does something inside you long to know life’s purpose? To make sense of the world around you?
Eckankar is an active, individual, creative spiritual practice. A companion and road map for your journey home—to the heights of Self-Discovery and God-Discovery, and beyond.
Come along and discover the most secret part of yourself.
The key to spiritual freedom lies within you.
Shigeko Toya - Unchain My Heart (1973)
Mell Martin - Space Oddity (1980)
Sri Darwin Gross - It Just Is! (1972)
Wednesday Jun 17, 2020
My Tribute to the great Gary Storm.
Wednesday Jun 17, 2020
Wednesday Jun 17, 2020
Gary Storm was a DJ in Buffalo New York during our formative years. He was (and is) a constant source of great music that eschewed the "Classic Rock" format that Buffalo radio seems to be stuck in to this day. His show was and is "Oil of Dog".
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Kim Fowley - I Hate You (1973)
King Crimson - Larks Tongues in Aspic (Part 1) (1972)
King Crimson - Cat Food (Live) (1973)
King Crimson - The Talking Drum (1972)
King Crimson - Larks Tongues in Aspic (Part 2) (1972)
King Crimson - Starless (1974)
King Crimson - Fallen Angel (1974)
Boz - I Shall Be Released (1968) A little trivia for you and your'n: Boz Burrell was the first person to RELEASE "I Shall Be Released", a month ahead of The Band's version.
Flaming Youth - Changes (1969)
Hans Christian Anderson (Jon Anderson) - Never My Love (1968)
Mogul Thrash - Sleeping in the Kitchen (1970)
Bodast - Nether Street (1969?)
The group recorded an album for Tetragrammaton Records in 1968. The label had success in the United States with Deep Purple, but went out of business just before the scheduled release date for the Bodast album.
A portion of a song from the Bodast album titled "Nether Street" was renamed "Würm" and was re-used as part of the song "Starship Trooper" from The Yes Album in 1971.
Steve Howe - Look Over Your Shoulder (1979)
Bruford - Back To The Beginning (1978)
Annette Peacock - The Succubus (1979)
Annette Peacock - I’m The One (1970)