Felt s/t

A solid if not particularly stand out American blues rock release. Obviously the highlights are the longer tracks, in particular the 10 minute “The Change” that allows everyone to stretch out and show their chops. But of course, a one off like this isn’t going to transcend its influences which seem to be anything from John Mayall and Eric Clapton to The Allman Brothers Band. Everything seems recorded nicely and the Akarma reissue, even if it may be a vinyl rip is doable. But honestly there’s not a lot here that hasn’t been done elsewhere on a higher level.

Creative Construction Company – Muhal

Absolutely amazing 1970 free jazz work with people like Muhal Richard Abrams and Anthony Braxton in the group, this fits right in with the solo work of both artists, groups like Art Ensemble of Chicago or especially the more cosmic work of the Jazz Composer’s Orchestra or even some of the larger band work of Don Cherry for Blue Note. In particular I really like the violin playing of Leroy Jenkins who along with his other instrumental work really fills out the collective artist sound considerably. In fact with some of the angularity involved this could almost be a European work, some of the strings reminding me a bit of Yochk’o Seffer’s compositional work. The rise and fall of the intuitive playing is a total joy to behold and even though this is a definitive free jazz work it rarely ever descends into a mess of wailing, squonking horns, each climax built to superbly.

Gong – Gong Unconventional Gathering, Melkweg, Amsterdam 11/5/07

And despite the fact I’ve seen the Gong band four times since they started playing again in the late 90s, none of them were with the mighty Steve Hillage, so in many ways, despite the deaths of drummers Pierre Moerlen and Pip Pyle, this was THE Gong show for the history books at least since the original group. I mean no short shrift to the wonderful Steffi Sharpstrings, but to hear Hillage again playing with this band (not to mention Tim Blake) is sheer bliss. The continuity between the Hillage set and this Gong set is even acknowledged here as if the band just augmented the Steve Hillage Band and kept going, opening with the usual “You Can’t Kill Me.” It was strange though, ”A Sprinkling of Clouds” is in its proper place in the songlist (it was usually left out of every post-90s-reunion gig I attended and sometimes replaced with a modern piece that just made its absence all that much worse), so I was surprised that I don’t remember hearing it after listening to this show. Overall the set list will be pretty familiar for the Gong fan, both selection and flow, so despite the band getting some extra energy from the celebration and the unity of the event, after the fact it seems almost like another gig.

Don “Sugar Cane” Harris – Sugar Cane’s Got the Blues

Another in the recent batch of SPV-distributed new MPS reissues, this album by the Frank Zappa and Don & Dewey veteran violin master boasts yet another one of those line ups that’s impossible not to gawk at, Wolfgang Dauner, Robert Wyatt, either Volker Kriegel or Terje Rypdal on guitar, etc. The title will intimate that this is a blues album, but for sure this is definitely more of a jazz record, certainly it has a pretty down home feel at times, but musically the European aesthetic turns the four long tracks into something far less classifiable. Also, Harris is an extremely versatile player with quite a bit of edge to his style, sounding rough and ready one moment, lithe and sinuous another. I found it interesting that after I’d finished playing it that one of the songs being jammed was the Horace Silver classic “Song for my Father,” so I suppose it’s a testament to how rearranged it was that it didn’t even register. Overall, the album doesn’t have a feel that it was particularly thought out beforehand, relying mostly on the caliber of musicianship to move through the various songs. But it’s not the sort of virtuoso violin stylings that you’ll find with any number of violinists from Ponty to Urbaniak and Seifert, but something a lot more down home, with an almost Captain Beefheart-like roughness to the chemistry. Definitely one I’ll need a few more listens with to absorb properly.

Man – Live at the Padget Rooms, Penarth (expanded edition)

This is possibly my favorite Man album, not least because Man, especially around this period, were one of the world’s finest live bands, in fact their albums often don’t do them justice in terms of how utterly heavy and ferocious this band could be. Partially it’s because at this stage they didn’t have a keys player, so the sound is guitar heavy and at their most intense quite crunchy. While this new Esoteric version expands the albums to two discs, I think the total time was around 90-100 minutes in total with three long tracks per side and the second of the two discs the more substantially longer. But here you can hear the entire gig and the flow of the music from the spacier earlier pieces to the utterly monumental closing numbers, one you may remember from the original, the closer “Daughter of the Fireplace,” but pride of place goes to the gig’s penultimate “Romain” whose almost Black Sabbath like heaviness erupts into a siren towards the end. Honestly there are few live shows at this sort of caliber and after hearing the full gig I’d be hard pressed not to include this on a list of the best all time live shows. While the sound quality, from 8 track tapes, isn’t quite what you’ll get from the studio albums, maybe a tad muffly overall, the performance far outweighs those complaints. This is an absolute must, a classic performance from the greatest Welsh band who ever made music.

A. R. & Machines – Die Grune Reise – The Green Journey

This is one of those modern remasters that struck my ears as being cranked up too high and clipped, or at least it’s the first copy of Die Grune Reise that made me feel my ears were going to bleed. Which is too bad because this is a very groundbreaking album totally of its time. And while we have to give Reichel a lot of credit for his echo guitar experiements, I think the vocal work towards the end, which humorously apes the guitar sequences to great effect, might even be worth more attention. Everything about this is redolent of how free the era was, no boundaries and a totally unleashed experimentation. In fact to my ears, even though the next several Machines albums were quite fine, this is the best Reichel ever did in that mode, maybe because there’s still a bit of naivete to the work. There’s also a DVD here that I haven’t watched yet, which from the liner notes sounds like it was created for the music long after the fact, so I’m hoping maybe this version will balance the sonics better and be a little less like it’s being crammed through an era where loud productions and mastering are the standard.

Groundhogs – Live at Leeds

I’m maybe vaguely sure that the music on this early ‘hogs live release was used as bonus tracks on the other reissues, or if not the bonus tracks certainly hold quite a bit in common with the music here. If you looked at a theoretical peak I’d say this is the band just after cresting the top, still great, performing stuff like “Cherry Red,” but also getting that bit of gruffness that would take them into their second stage with records like Hogwash and the like which reminds me more of Motorhead than Colosseum. Anyway it’s still pretty high energy and impressive, although the quality is not quite up to the studio albums of the time.

Hidria Spacefolk – Live 11 A.M.

I’m not really all that sure what you can say about a band like Hidria Spacefolk who really seem to have mastered their take on the whole Hawkwind-Gong-Ozric Tentacles thing. I definitely find the title amusing as I’m sure anyone whose attended NEARfest can attest, as just about anything this powerful that early can be overwhelming. Music like this doesn’t particularly challenge me like it used to given the similarities among bands who use riff structures to jam over and spiral electronics around, but it’s also a style I’ve always really liked, so I always get the comfort food vibe. It is nice, however, and unlike some of the bands in this style (including Ozric Tentacles at times) that Hidria appear to be as competent on stage as they are in the studio and rarely was a misstep taken on this impressive show. Anyway I can imagine you’d know if you’d like this just by the style on display.

Def Leppard – On Through the Night

I think of my early AOR period as the early 80s and when it comes to Def Leppard, High n Dry was my album of the time, even if it took Pyromania to break the band. Their debut On Through the Night is entirely different from both successive records, definitely a child of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, most of which were spawned by Judas Priest influentially. They may have even had a different vocalist at this point, or at least the crooning was developed later and they certainly didn’t have the radio friendly songwriting chops that made Pyromania an album made up entirely of hits. I was pretty surprised on this listen because I don’t think I’d ever heard this album and because of that I don’t think I’ve quite absorbed it either.

Dave Liebman & Richie Beirach – Mosaic Select 12 (disc 1)

Easily the highlight disc from this Mosaic Select collection, it features the Lookout Farm live in 76 burning down the house. The collaboration of the recently ex-Miles Davis Band’s horn player with keyboardist Beirach almost perfectly mixed in American and European jazz, fusion and free work, with a definite sense of the East looming in the background in terms of the possibilities of Coltrane’s work Liebman was following up on here. This band really had some serious intuitive power making all the improvisations incredible flights between musicians really driving each other. And to hear them in 76 at what sounds like their peak in maturity is a real gift.

John Patton – Mosaic Select 6 (discs 1-2: Along Came John, The Way I Feel, Oh Baby!)

Patton’s early work expanded the trio he was often part of with Grant Green and Ben Dixon in the 60s adding one or two tenors and a trumpet player. Each album, unsurprisingly, increases in confidence moving through various sessions, the Oh Baby! work with Blue Mitchell on trumpet perhaps the cream of what’s here, but the best of the Patton-named collaborations with Green (such as in Got a Good Thing Goin’) isn’t on the Mosaic Select collaboration, perhaps showing this to be the more collector-oriented material. I thought it all to be confident work, although I’m definitely in my comfort zone when it comes to Green and Patton. I did find, however, that I didn’t pay attention so much to the third disc and will have to get back to it before comments are possible.

Allman Brothers Band – Macon City Auditorium, Macon, GA 2/11/72

It’s incredible to hear the Allman Brothers carry on after the loss of Duane Allman, leaving Dickey Betts alone in the guitar chair, something relatively rare over the long career of this group. That he carries the band throughout the entire show is testament to the band’s strength at this point in their career, playing on a great deal of energy and emotion and really just nailing every song. Of course the trademark dual guitar harmonies are missing, yet it’s as if Allman picks up the pace on the keyboards, the band’s music almost turning into the jazzrock of the times during some of the instrumental flights. It makes the whole show terribly poignant. A chapter in an incredible story, this is a band that really could never be beat down for long and sung in the face of adversity.

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss – Crossroads (CMT)

I’ve only been recently listening to Krauss and Union Station and of course much longer for Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin, but found the concept of a collaboration very intriguing, not just the rock/bluegrass fusion possibilities, but also the sex and age yin/yang between the two. It creates an absolutely amazing tension on stage that just heightens the edginess of this project, from the reconstructed Led Zeppelin and Union Station pieces to Marc Ribot’s occasional very avant jazz/blues solo. The full band works not only through the covers but a few traditionals and the occasional rockabillly sort of number. The whole thing just brims with age and experience and both Plant and Krauss come off like the veterans they are. Plant seems almost 40 years younger in many ways, clearly relishing the experience to dive well away from the rock fields he’s a bonafide master of and as he implies during the interview segments, the combination of Krauss’ almost pitch perfect voice with his own smoky blues actually works. Most startling are the Led Zep reconstructions, with Krauss taking lead on one of my favorites, When the Levee Breaks (Zep’s version a reconstruction in its own right) and the dual vocals on the very sexually charged “Black Dog,” all of which clearly delighted the crowd. You really have to give credit to everyone involved, it’s a shame so few veterans challenge themselves like this.

Kaleidoscope – Tangerine Dream
Cherry People – Cherry People

Kaleidoscope (the British one) may have detected the oncoming psychedelic era with their band name and titles, but stylistically (at least this early) they were still dominated by the pop of the mid 60s and present a series of very short and upbeat 2-3 minute pieces that are so happy you’ll either be drawing smilies for the next hour on your notebook or using the disc as the bottom of your shoe. I tend to love some of the bubblegum psych from the era, but this reminds more of bands like Gerry and the Pacemakers, Herman’s Hermits, The Dave Clark Five and the like, all of which were, at least initially, precursors to psychedelia. It’s almost the same for the Cherry People across the Atlantic, similar influences yet starting to get that bit of LA that ended up spawning the Monkees or maybe the Beach Boys. Very little of this is of initial interest, and while they don’t seem to have their faces frozen in clownlike grimaces like Kaleidoscope, the results fall in about the same category, basically two very forgettable 60s era pop groups whose songs never really caught on before the Beatles went in and changed the game. 

Edgar Broughton Band – Sing Brother Sing

And on the other other end of the 60s musical spectrum we have heavy, freakout outfit Edgar Broughton Band who can resemble anything from early Black Sabbath-like riffrock to bizarre Captain Beefheart-like bluesrock all wrapped in a certain, almost theatrical sensibility. They’re truly a creative force that had a very British festival circuit sort of feel, I can imagine them on bills with Hawkwind, Man, Arthur Brown and others, playing to hillsides of very stoned British hippies. This version of Sing Brother Sing seems packed with extra tracks and the like, so by the end of it all, one will likely to be exhausted unless you’re already familiar with the group’s music. Pretty exhilirating music by a versatile group.

Ophiucus – Ophiucus
Ophiucus – Salade Chinoise

I read a review a while back that kind of stuck with me. I think it was in one of the Clearlight Mantra reissues and was either an album review or concert review of Clearlight from a very anglophile perspective, but what it basically said was that in terms of rock music, the French were behind the eightball by the mid 70s. While I don’t agree with that by any means (the word Magma kind of obliterates the theory), it does say something interesting about French rock at its very earliest, particularly that late 60s/early 70s era when it was clear that most efforts were influenced by the British and US groups. A good example of this would be the French band Alice, a pop/rock group without a great deal of ambition (especially if you compare them to Magma or Ange of the same time period). I think you can file Ophiucus there as well.

I used to use a battered copy of the old Musea French progressive rock tome, before it was updated and released in the red cover. Groups with names like Ophiucus (a constellation whose name means serpent holder) used to fascinate me, apparently, sometimes more so than the description of the music. Because Ophiucus basically didn’t have much of an identity on either of these records and for a group with a European/mythological name, they’re strongly influenced by American music.

It’s best to talk about both albums at once, as it accentuates what’s generally genre hopping. For the most part Ophiucus stick to a pop/folk/songwriter type of style that ranges anywhere from the early Eagles to Crosby Stills and Nash without the harmonies. However bizarre divergences occur, such as the Achim Reichel-esque echo guitar instrumental on the first album. Towards the end of the second album I swear I’d walked in on a French Canned Heat cover band. The listens were so maddening in this way that I ended up playing them both a few times. And never was there any coherency among the albums, it was as if a bunch of youngsters enamored with the earthier more Americana end of pop (Grateful Dead, NRPS etc) decided to make a go of it. Both albums come off as very limp efforts and I’d say it’s mostly because they were part of the era that they were included in a progressive rock book. A couple rarities you can avoid.

Aura – s/t. 1971. Definitely one of the best horn rock albums. The movement was quite large after Chicago and BS&T became chart toppers (not to mention that Aura were from Chicago as well). However most groups tried too hard for pop stardom, and failed miserably. Or they were blues rock groups that added horns in a feeble attempt to be trendy. But Aura just kicks butt from beginning to end. They never lost focus of the horn charts and they’re constantly a feature, rather than a side show for some lame songwriting. In fact, Aura are BRASSY, more than any other album I’ve ever heard. Also some killer guitar solos ala Terry Kath to sink your teeth into. They aren’t progressive in the sense of Brainchild or McLuhan – more like BS&T if they’d amped it up a bit and not been so schmaltzy. Not sure if there’s a market for this long forgotten style, but if there is, Aura along with Gas Mask would have to be the first two to get notice for a CD reissue.

Round House – ‘Scuse Me. 1972. German group who obviously spent a lot of time with their Chicago Transit Authority album collection. And they do a pretty convincing job of their variation of the horn rock sound. Some good grooves and they veer towards the jazzy side, always a plus in this genre. Much better than the more known Brain label horn group Creative Rock.

Undertakers Circus – Ragnarok. 1973. Norwegian horn rock band that reminds me some of the more typical and mediocre US acts from the 1970 era. While the horn charts are uniformly well played, the compositions themselves maintain a blues rock standard. Probably the first Splash album from Sweden, which I spoke of recently, is the closest comparison. But it’s not even that worthwhile. There’s just not enough here to warrant seeking out. Though if you’re still curious, Pan Records of Norway has reissued it legit on CD. Undertakers Circus also has a second album from 1975, which is not on CD yet (and I haven’t heard).

Itibere Orquestra Familia – Teatro Alvaro de Carvalho Florianopolis, Brazil 5/19/04 (video)

It’s kind of funny in pairing a couple items to talk about just how often there’s an unintended similar theme between them, in this case it just happens to be about child prodigies. From what I understand Hermeto Pascoal finally retired his Grupo, leaving the individual musicians to new projects, and in bassist Itibere Zwarg’s case, it’s taking the music of Hermeto to a new band made of children. I mean it’s amazing seeing grown adults navigate some of these compositions, but seeing a group whose average age has to be in the early teens nail some of these thorny pieces is really encouraging. Pascoal wrote like a fiend, so there are definitely a few pieces here I’m totally unfamiliar with. I can only hope that so many of these players can continue the Pascoal legacy in such a manner. Now I want to check out the CD.

Derek Trucks and the Dominators – The Cavern, Atlanta 1991 (video)

There’s only one child prodigy on stage here, a very young (I believe 12 years old) Derek Trucks. Trucks is an impressive guitar player as an adult, but as a kid fronting his own band (well, sorta) Trucks has rare talent. There’s something about him, even this young, that makes the second guitarist want to step up, and like Warren Haynes on the fairly recent Beacon Theatre DVD, the other players on this set seems intent on playing as many notes as possible. Obviously this isn’t mature Trucks, he’s got all the basics of slide guitar down, but he doesn’t have that almost sublime and gentle control over his phrasing that he’d develop in the next decade. But you only tend to think of this kind of thing after watching a 12 year old tear it up. The music is mostly blues number and covers, including from the Allman Brothers he’d later join (Hendrix’s “Little Wing” as well), none of which are particularly interesting, mostly because the second guitarist/vocalist seems like he just walked in from a metal group. For me, Trucks’ laid back approach even this young is far more fulfilling than the whole “watch me shred” vibe, which seems out of place in this sort of format, on the other hand you have to give it to the band helping this young talent get well needed experience.

The Greatest Show On Earth – The Going’s Easy. 1970.
The Greatest Show On Earth – Horizons. 1970. These are the kind of albums that I *should* love, but in the end I really don’t. GSOE is at their best in horn rock mode, with some tight arrangements and tough bluesy vocals. Also notable is the extended soloing from guitar, organ and flute. But when they drift into more straight ahead rock numbers, there’s not much to get excited about. I would say GSOE are more UK blues rock than brass rock, and overall pretty average. “Horizons” is marred by a drum solo, and is thus the less preferable of the two.

Splash – Ut Pa Vischen. 1972. A typical horn rock album very much modeled after Chicago or Blood, Sweat and Tears. Except it’s sung in Swedish (which is kinda neat). Like most horn rock albums, there are some great instrumental charts offset by some lame songs. Not bad, and does sport a great cover.