The Things You Build

The things you build as a father - trying your best - many

or most must come to an end, and today is the day for the

second and good rabbit run. The first did not keep that

killer dog out which bit and punctured her bunny’s lung

[yet there is a place that can last, where they are all

eventually buried and a sentimental rose bush planted

above].  But this better protection and home that housed

her others and last one - then ours - has taken minutes to

pull from the ivy and overgrown grass, its wood rotted

and the armadillidiums spilling out from their residence.

All but that main post concreted in to secure the gate and

provide its central support, a pillar bolstered further with

broken brick and stone, whatever I could muster to help

and hold. It was set solid, though also tested and old.

Gareth Dickson - Quite A Way Away

Not Nicked, It Just Is

Commenting on any male folk singer-songwriting guitar player today and the name of Nick Drake will be referenced: I have done so many times. Gareth Dickson’s third album Quite A Way Away is the most deserving of the tag, if that is a sensible verb to use. It is certainly the most apt referencing in how his vocal tone in particular and the pace, as well as deep suspired notes, so uncannily reflect that of Drake.

The guitar work is much more complex. Indeed, the album’s eight tracks are all experimental electro-acoustic guitar soundscapes over which the Glaswegian’s fulsome vocal seems to recite complementary wordscapes. Unless they are atmospheric instrumentals. The guitar is finger-plucked seemingly inside a reverberation chamber creating an expansive sound. Apart from opening track Adrenaline which has a slightly jarring melody and stabbing vocal, the rest of the album is gorgeously soothing. By second track Noon, the ghost of Drake’s voice will haunt with its reminder. 

John Coltrane - On West 42nd Street, [1957] - Top Fifty

Darting and Running

Yesterday I was listening to Pharoah Sanders’ John Coltrane tribute album Crescent With Love and it got me thinking about the first time I heard Coltrane. It was on an lp I got when I was about 15/16 years old, John Coltrane On West 42^nd Street, and it was well played at the time so is a little rough if put on the turntable today. I’ve never been able to find a cd copy, and in that ever turning learning curve I now know this is because it isn’t strictly speaking a John Coltrane album – it is a vinyl only collection put out under his name to cash in on his then emerging popularity.

Taken from 1957 recordings with the Wilbur Harden [fluegelhorn] quintet, including on the tracks on the album Tommy Flanagan [piano], Doug Watkins [bass] and Lois Hayes [drums], the record includes the following songs in this order: Side One - Wells Fargo, West 42^nd Street, E.F.P.H.[sic]; Side Two – Snuffy, Rhodomagnetics. I am writing this as these and other tracks [19 in all] can be found on cd on the Coltrane Mainstream 1958 Sessions where, for any nerd interest, there is an extra ‘F’ on its third track E.F.F.P.H. [compared with album liner notes, though on the album itself there are both ‘Fs’], and the Side Two tracks on the vinyl are inverted as well as becoming respectively in that inversion tracks four and nine [and you’d have to be intense to want to follow that]. 

All five tracks are quite conventional and there isn’t an outstanding melody/song, compared with, for example and unfairly, My Favorite Things. Each player gets a solo set and this too is quite formulaic. But I do recall simply loving each Coltrane solo as I still do, inevitably mixing that nostalgic sense of first discovery with the continued appreciation of today. I’m not incisive enough to really discern differences  in absolute quality of playing – though it’s hard to make a bass solo soar like Harden’s flugelhorn – but Coltrane’s tenor sax solos do always seem that little bit more adventurous than the others; more on the edge of breaking from the formula and routine. Yet that could be the wishful thinking/hearing of my original joy and the occasional nostalgic revisiting – though listening as I write to final track Snuffy, Coltrane’s solo following Hayes’ piano really does dart out of the starting gate and run much more wildly and entertainingly.

It makes my Top Fifty for all the obvious and right reasons as I hope I have outlined here. As well as my first introduction to Coltrane, it consolidated an incipient interest in jazz, and a fairly traditional form of jazz as well. Whilst I moved on to the more adventurous and avant-garde, I think I had my fix of that already from the prog rock representation of the time.

The Legendary Pink Dots - Chemical Playschool Vol. 15

Spaced Out

I’m relatively new to The Legendary Pink Dots, an Anglo-Dutch ‘band’ formed in 1980 and now essentially the work of Edward Ka-Spel, Phil Knight, Eric Drost and Raymond Steeg. Their psychedelic proclivities are embraced by this wonderful array of genres named on Wikipedia: 

Avant-garde rock

Experimental

Neo-psychedelia

Ambient

Post-punk

Industrial

Noise

Synthpop

Industrial rock

Noise rock

Their latest Chemical Playschool Vol 15 is most of these at some point in each of the five tracks lasting between three to nineteen minutes. The best over-arching genre would be Space Rock. Whilst I quite like the electronic instrumental/noise journeys, I enjoy most the broken ballads of Edward Ka-Spel where the planetary pulses, echoes, found sounds, spatial distortions and other effects work around these narrated postulations/poetics - with opener Immaculate Conception most closely sounding songlike. But that’s because I now write stone cold sober rather than stoned. Were it the later and listening as I am currently to second and longest track Sparks Fly – Museum, you’d have to send out the space rescue team to find and bring me back home. It would be a long search.

Allen Thompson Band - Salvation in the Ground

Wait For The Full Praise

The Allen Thompson Band’s album Salvation in the Ground is very good indeed: consistent melodic songwriting, accomplished players and singers, and Thompson’s tenuous tenor which isn’t immediately gripping but has an honest and emotive appeal that grows quickly in the listening experience. The 60s/70s influences are obvious though not dominating - The Band, Neil Young, The Eagles, Ronnie Lane – and Thompson’s natural felicity with tune and storytelling is what impresses most. It is americana and southern country soul. Third track Last Goodbye is a gentle southern funk; fourth Everybody Knows is a piano ballad echoing The Band, and fifth While I’m Young reminds me of Lane - perhaps it’s the accordion, and mandolin - and thus my reference to him as an influence, though lyrical references to Virginia and Tennessee root it elsewhere. It has some sweet and uplifting country harmonies. It is also a wonderful love song. It is simply straightforward and effective solid songwriting and performance. Sixth The Purple Rose and the Black Balloon invokes Credence Clearwater Revival, so the influences unravel without surprise but absolute delight. If I was told this is a long lost and unreleased album from Gram Parsons, I could just about believe it. Can’t praise better than that.

The Nice - Ars Longa Vita Brevis, 1968 - Top Fifty

Lucky Latin

This is one of the earliest albums I owned, and one of the earliest truly psychedelic ones. Released in 1968, I will have certainly had a copy in 1969 for reasons I will explain shortly.

Its psychedelia is a perfect mirror of the genre at this time: there are childlike, playful songs mixed with progressive interpretations of classical music. Indeed, that latter penchant for such acts pilfering from the classical catalogue was the catalyst for me and many others my age to take a serious interest in classical music at a time when we had little reason to do so otherwise, and I certainly had no nurturing from family for this.

A typical playful song is second track Little Arabella with its lounge-organ sound, Beatlesesque horn arrangement, and silly lyrics to a bubbly silly tune. But what wonderful fun. Even opening track Daddy, Where Did I Come From taps into a youthful sense of rebellion [though hardly revolutionary: instead, a conventional birds and bees query] but the question asked is mocked by its melodramatic tone and the naff parental response to which the asker seems to be dying in agonised rejection of that naffness. There is the requisite use of the child’s voice too; with more to come. Third track Happy Feuds is equally pop-central with Keith Emerson’s Hammond organ as the pervading hint that something musically more dynamic is about to happen. Again, childlike vocals sing the essential nonsense of the lyrics, but within that nonsense about ‘knowing themselves’, it actually hooks into the adolescent questioning of personal identity, so I think it really did appeal at the time more deeply than it can – platitude alert - listening now.

It’s fourth track Intermezzo from the Karelia Suite, from Sibelius, where the ‘seriousness’ kicks in. It is a rousing tune in its own right, but the organ with pounding drums and bass of respectively Brian Davison and Ian Hague leading into the jazz organ solo announces its prog credentials with virtuoso skill and volume. It ends too on a psychedelic noise-jam leading back to the romp of its main melody which was genuinely adventurous for its time. Emerson’s L-100 huffs and puffs and swirls are stonking.

That’s side 1 on the lp, and side 2 is the prog rock suite Ars Longa Vita Brevis which translates to ‘Art is long, life is short’, a suitably grand maxim for a band of the time and inclination, and again adolescent aspirations to being creative. Its five movements contain another requisite of the time – the drum solo – and there is also a full orchestra used for some parts. Emerson indulges himself in some piano virtuosity as well in 2^nd Movement – Realisation before returning to full orchestra and Hammond for the 3^rd Movement – Acceptance ‘Brandenburger’ where the jazzy appropriation of J S Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No 3 is brilliant, and quite beautiful. The classics made cool for this 15/16 year old at least.

The Latin maxim of the album’s title and the side 2 suite formed the basis for my English ‘O’ Level creative writing exam in 1969. I don’t now recall how I was able to use this and its named movements – Awakening, Realisation, Acceptance, Denial – but I did, relishing the conscious manipulation to sound knowledgeable and informed. I do vaguely remember really enjoying what I wrote and how I incorporated the gist of the aphorism in some youthful declaration of creative intent. Pretentious? Hell yes. And of course I did well, but as an eventual English teacher I never lost sight of the fortuity of the examination process this had presented me and thus its many flaws, though in this case I was able to make positive use of the opportunity.

So for many reasons this album is important both musically and as significant memory and deserves its place in my Top Fifty.

The People's Temple - More for the Masses

More Going Ahead Backwards

I’ve written quite a bit recently about retro-rock and great exponents like Rival Sons. Garage rock is also getting its resurgence, and yesterday’s review of Crushed Out refers to just one. Another and more garage psyche reincarnation is The People’s Temple More For The Masses. With fourteen tracks averaging between just over two to three and a bit minutes each, this fulfils one of the genre’s prerequisites. It is an album of two halves: the first more garage rock, with a Rolling Stones’ blues with harmonica lift for fourth track Texas Revisited; the second has more psyche elements, like thirteenth The River [Donovan’s Song] with its sitar and mellotron distant background sound and dreamy vocal. Second song Blinding City has a classic quick rhythm guitar riff and then Electric Prunes-like echoed effect behind a raw lead solo. Nothing new, but that’s the successful point.