Conway Twitty - I See The Want To In Your Eyes (1974) HQ

Can't Explain Either

Can't Explain - music, film and book blog

There's a 'fellow' site I occasionally follow and it is referenced in 'My Blog List'. It's name Can't Explain is patently ironic because the author JPK's writing is always honest and eloquent and engaging. I focus on the music and we share many likes, having a common affinity for so many songs which must obviously be a reflection of mutual opinion but also our age and the experience of the music with which we grew up and which also made deep, lasting impressions during that process.

I am always amazed though never surprised at the music mentioned that I do not share a liking for or which I simply do not know. I can't explain the brilliant paradox of that reality but it is just opinion after all and it increases my respect for the contrary nature and expression of divergent opinion when I know there is so much common ground and, as I've already stated, its articulation is so genuine and clear.

I said 'fellow' site and highlighted the word because I do not want to assume an equivalence. JPK has certainly been writing much longer and there is an impressive depth of knowledge. I left a few comments and had interesting replies but I don't want to become a blog stalker either [!] thus I'm writing these comments here at the moment.

JPK has produced a top 100 musical list that is fascinating and anyone reading this should check it out. I have commented on entries on Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower', Music Machine's 'Talk Talk', and a brief ref to The Electric Prunes' 'I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night'. In various ways JPK rates these and so do I. And so do millions.

The song I am commenting on here rather than there [can you imagine me writing this much on JPK's site in a comment box?!] is America's 'Horse With No Name'. JPK's observations are both incisive and amusing. All I will add is that this is for me an unquestionable favourite and I have no reservations about my adoration for the song and the band in general. The 'West Coast' songwriting and harmonies may have their precursors and influences but America in my estimation sits on a par with any of these. Their first album release here in England - where the band lived and wrote at the time - didn't actually have the 'HWNN' track on it. This was a successful radio single and the album was sold on the back of that. Other brilliant tracks are 'Riverside', 'Sandman' and 'Three Roses' which has a superb acoustic guitar strum that I think became a distinctive feature of their playing.

Like JPK, this objective musical appreciation is built on the foundation of a wholly subjective infatuation too [and maybe JPK doesn't go quite that far!]. 'HWNN' has romantic connotations for me - first love no less - but the whole album replays the joy and pain of growing up at that time: where I lived, my friends, my discoveries, my failures and my victories. And it's when that one line - which might be as prosaic as 'there were plants and birds and rocks and things' - creates a palpable timeshift to actually being right back there: wow, what a song and glorious transportation.

John Coltrane - Blue Train

Missed train

Having recently acquired and just finished listening I don't know how I missed out on this excellent album, not that I am a huge collector. I do believe the first jazz album I bought was John Coltrane's 'On West 42nd Street', recorded in 1957, the year Coltrane apparently beat his heroin addiction, and I have other Impulse vinyls of collected works. My favourite track has always been 'My Favorite Things' and if anyone has followed my writing so far - which at the very least is clarifying for me my listening proclivities - I will love it because of its beautiful ['pretty'] Roger/Hammerstein melodic line and then the Coltrane signature development and improvisation around this.

I was led to the saxophone and its jazz home and its genius player through rock music: it was Van Der Graaf Generator and Colosseum and Manfred Mann Chapter III and all that jazz-rock and much more that prompted me as a teenager to discover jazz and in particular Coltrane.

This album was also recorded in 1957 so there is a lovely symmetry in my recent 'discovery'. The only comments I want to make are on its clarity of playing and the joyous tone. It was researching a little more when I found out about the beating of his addiction and how this led to the 'joy' of performing and recording at that time. It's just someone else's view, but I would appear to have heard a truth in that.

Jack Williams Kerrville 06

Jack Williams - The High Road Home

Journeyman

What a find.

Had never heard of Jack Williams until this album released in September 2010. Going on the cover alone you'd think it's some naff musical observations on pastoral themes, but it is nothing so simple. There is, however, a wonderful simplicity in the excellence of the songwriting and the guitar playing. The album contains new and older, reworked songs, but each and every one is a success: the storytelling, the singing, and the folk to gospel traditions underpinning the whole.

The video clip above is a fine sampler. Note the close-up of Jack's worn guitar symbolising a true journeyman. I trust it works: when I watched, the buffer-death of a daytime view meant I couldn't see it all the way through [I will try later off-peak]. In his preamble he certainly comes across as a thoroughly decent guy. And this is a thoroughly decent album.

The Ides of March - Vehicle

Marking music

I am currently marking English exam papers and as I do I will occasionally be listening to music which for me focuses rather than detracts, but more often I will listen when taking a break or deciding to write on this blog instead.

The marking principle is to always reward what the candidates do rather than penalise for what is missing: a humane and positive ethos. A key principle is 'best fit' so when skills and understanding are achieved across a range of grade bands the final mark considers all and awards in a band that best reflects the whole achievement. Sensible too.

Being, one hopes, in the marking grove, I thought I'd apply this principle to music and having mentioned the singer Larry Millas from The Ides of March in an earlier post about English jazz-rock groups I decided to grade their album 'Vehicle'. A group of this historical stature will naturally be within the Higher tier so I'll be looking at a grade range of D to A*.

It's a mixed album, patchy in fact. There is a decent cover of 'Wooden Ships' but the strength of the song itself carries the track perhaps more than the delivery, but this is followed by a strong number 'Bald Medusa' that most resembles a Blood Sweat & Tears track with which much on this album will inevitably and in a complimentary way be compared. These two would respectively reflect B- and B+ qualities [notional grades to be precise in reference] so a straight B at this stage seems a fair early impression.

However, there are two limp and embarrassing ballads on the album - 'One Woman Man' and 'Lead Me Home Gently' - and these fall well below this tier's tolerance. Whilst the ethos of the marking scheme rightly prevents me from pulling the interim grade down because of this [as it has achieved its notional B], it does nothing to enhance and is still an instinctive dampener even for this resolute applicator of the marking rules.

Two other tracks will establish the final grade. The first, 'Symphony for Eleanor (Eleanor Rigby)', is an excellent Beatles cover and marries rock voice and jazz instrumentation perfectly. It also appeals to me as I like good covers [rather than suffering the immediate distrust of purists] though in applying objective criteria I cannot allow personal preference to influence marking judgement. But it has an impact - let's be fundamentally honest - like neat handwriting, coherence of organisation and overall expression, and a varied and sophisticated vocabulary.

The second track is the clincher. It is, in fact, the first on the album and thus makes a crucial and critical opening premise. It is also the band's most famous, anthologised track and title of the album. 'Vehicle' is the quintessential track for this jazz-rock genre with its powerful vocal, punchy instrumentation, overall consummate playing, and the following opening lyrics:

Hey, well I'm the friendly stranger
In the black sedan
Oh won't you hop inside my car?
I got pictures, got candy, I am a lovable man
I'd like to take you to the nearest star
I'm your vehicle baby
I'll take you anywhere you wanna go
I'm your vehicle woman
By now I'm sure you know
That I love ya (love you)
Need ya (need you)
I want to, got to have you child
Great God in heaven, you know I love you

Cheesy but Far Out. Complete if sleazy appreciation of metaphor. A*. Non-negotiable.

This, of course, with 'best fit' takes the notional B and factors in the A* [at the top and in reality beyond the ceiling of that band] and thus arrives at an overall A. Let's be honest, we often buy and listen to albums on the basis of a single track. If anyone wanted to give this an overall higher grade on that basis, I wouldn't be arguing all that much.

Photo poser

What do these three albums have in common?

Nothing, to anyone else.

For me, they recall my incipient album buying days and the naive antagonism generated. As I've stated elsewhere, Hendrix's 'Are You Experienced' was the first album I purchased having up to that point only bought singles. Some time after the Hendrix, I got the 'Four Tops Greatest Hits' and 'This Is Soul ' albums having loved this music when growing up to love music.

Then it happened.

Deciding that I was only into 'underground' music I got rid of my 'mainstream' soul. Can't remember how I got rid of them, but I did. These and perhaps others - certainly a Wilson Pickett where I recall he is on the cover wearing a pink suit.

It has taken me nearly 40 years to replace these vinyl albums with the two in the picture next to the framed [there's still a hierarchy...] Hendrix. As well as growing up to love music I did eventually just grow up.

One day I'll find the Wilson Pickett [which is 'The Exciting Wilson Pickett' - thanks internet].

If - If [1970]

Only If

In following these routes and prompts and aural desires I did say I would visit and write about If as the English counterpart to the Chicago and Blood Sweat & Tears jazz-influenced rock of the late 60s/early 70s.

The riveted motif of the cover is a securing to the wall of If's important presence as well as future covers featuring their moniker's lexical simplicity. I pulled my vinyl copy only to be annoyed at just how worn and faded the silver cover had become though this reflects positively on its initial playing days which were often and very loud.

The jazz on this album is, however, more than an 'influence' - it is the heart. J.W. Hodkinson's vocals have that gruff fullness of the greats in this genre [David Clayton-Thomas; Chris Farlowe; Larry Millas] and the rock sensibilities are carried by this, but the sax-driven arrangements and solos of both Dick Morrisey and Dave Quincy remind the listener of the jazzier roots.

The opener 'I'm Reaching Out On All Sides' begins with solo guitar leading into the song's simple descending melodic line that is picked up by a beautiful tenor and alto combination. This is repeated after a longish but subdued guitar solo, cascading down with accompanying vocal. And that's the problem with written description - trying to represent the song in narrative. But the idea is to encourage anyone listening to this to have a listen to that. The opening track is followed by an instrumental with Andersonesque flute solo, and the album's credentials are established and sustained. I like the penultimate track 'Dockland' which sounds the most like a Chicago number, and the album finishes strongly with 'The Promised Land', again driven by a powerful vocal, Terry Smith's wow-wow guitar, that rhythmic saxophone core and John Mealing's resonating organ.

Ron Sexsmith - Long Player Late Bloomer

Fully blossomed

The 'late bloomer' of the title is surely self-deprecation because Ron Sexsmith has sustained singer-songwriter excellence since the first main label release of his eponymous album in 1995. It was an instant success with singer-songwriter luminaries like Elvis Costello and myself [I know there should have been a comma after 'Costello'....] and I was lucky enough to see him in Manchester soon after its release. The songs on that album can compete with any of his s/s peers as well as those who laid the foundations for this genre. It is simply one of the great albums.

His latest has more overall range and variation without the stand-out tracks of the first, but being able to replicate the stunning songwriting of that first would be as achievable as walking down a street unnoticed wearing the jacket he does on the album's cover.

Two tracks to highlight on this latest are 'Every Time I Follow' and 'Nowadays', both representing his distinctive writing and singing, the later reflecting positively the sound of the early work I have so clearly put on a pedestal. This is an album to grow with more listening and unlike so many even good ones released on a regular basis this is one to which I will definitely return again and again.

Gong - Expresso II

Another tangent

In the self-fulfilling journey this blog is I am enjoying the travels that take me along linking routes and in and out of the shadows of my own walking where I can then cast new ones for exploration.

From vocal exponents to Sonja Kristina to Curved Air to Darryl Way, by way of explanation, and I arrived at Gong's 'Expresso II' with its percussive jazz-fusion that's superbly done - but tonight nestled neatly into a background ambiance - until the tracks 'Sleepy' and 'Boring' [comically ironic] because DW plays violin on both and that's when the album stepped out of its shade for this listener although that is precisely what I was listening for.

Allan Holdsworth plays some wild guitar on the 'Sleepy' track which is first soothed by Way's classical strains and then merged with a similar wailing.

The Coral - Butterfly House

35th

Today is my 35th wedding anniversary, with the theme of coral, and so she has given me this album as a gift with its clear influences from Simon & Garfunkel, The Association, and The Byrds so the music too signals this amazing span of years and all the memories of that time.

Sonja Kristina - Cri De Coeur

Curved vocal

I've got myself trapped in this vocal focus, not that I'm desperate to escape, especially if it allows me a quick opportunity to write about Sonja Kristina and in doing so present her iconic 'feathers' photo.

Stunning singer with the great Curved Air, Sonja has over the years performed solo and recorded occasionally along this and more experimental lines. I got an amazon download of this album last night on the back of some idle research into Curved Air who I will want to write about at a latter stage. I was lucky enough to see them at a 'reformed' gig in South Devon at the Malborough Village Hall in 2008 where Sonia proved she retains one of the most distinctive female rock vocals of all time.

This album sparked my current interest because it too has a clutch of standards, for example 'Every Time We Say Goodbye' and 'Cry Me a River', and suffice to say she makes them her own and her own will always be good enough for me. Being absolutely honest, 'good enough' sums it up and I look forward to exploring more recent recordings, but the other honesty will be acknowledging how it is her Curved Air days that will always leave the most astonishing aural stamp on my reverential memory.

Terry Callier - What Color Is Love?

Vocal color

I've been listening to and writing about vocalists over the last few days so I've been continuing this Sunday to dip in and out of what I have or can get a listen to in this vocal bag of goodies. However, I made the mistake of grabbing for Rod Stewart's latest - which I will need to qualify once I have explained the hurt to my aural hand. This unlucky dip was into his new greatest hits classic American songbook album - just released, apparently, in time for Valentine's Day. It's a dreadful album and I think there are five eight-years-in-the-making from which this the best of has culled its collection so the chaff must be appalling. My qualification is, not surprisingly, I regard Rod Stewart as one of the great vocalists. I clearly refer to his earliest R&B days, time with Jeff Beck, with the Faces, and much of his solo career. I even liked much of his 'Soulbook' collection. Just listen to live recordings and 'The Rod Stewart Sessions 1971-1998'. He's brilliant. But don't listen to this Valentine vomitorium.

What's Terry Callier got to do with this? What color are his vocals? The answer to the first question is I simply wanted something to listen to that reminded me of a distinctive vocal and his was to hand. It's a laid-back and sweetly smooth representation of its time. Not a silly songbook standard in sight. The answer to the second question must be blue because that's all she can see even looking the other way.

East of Eden - Mercator Projected

Bass lines in stereo

I did go back to this album having listened to 'Snafu'. The one track I want to mention isn't the 'Wowie Zowie....' selected 'Communion' but rather 'Centaur Woman' which starts as a simple rock-blues with naive harmonica and then turns respectably jazzy with a classic and perfectly played 'walking' bass line. What happens next was, as I listened then, such a nostalgic and pleasant surprise. The bass playing is transported into one of those late 60s/early 70s virtuoso solos you rarely get today - like drum solos that would last for twenty minutes or more giving you time to headbang into a drugless transcendence - and a bass solo augmented with the studio-inspired addition of celebration stereo: you know what I mean, the bass line oscillating between and across the speakers in a frantic channel-switching reverie. Oh those early and glorious days of simple audio experimentation.....

Crispy Duk - ...A Late Night on Princess Street

Crispy morning

Got my 'Crispy Duk' cd this morning - ordered on the back of Paul Benley's vocals referenced below - and it's another great jazz album with those vocals ably supported by Jeremy Sassoon on Roland keyboard and Dave Walsh on drums.

And it's a crisp, clean and clear recording - apparently done live over two afternoon sessions and that simplicity underpins and highlights the excellence of the musicianship.

There are the standards again, like 'Summertime' [which one site I visit details 309 versions] and it's a sparkling cover, but the band and Bentley also tackle 'What's Going On', 'People Get Ready', 'Spinning Wheel' and 'Ain't No Sunshine' which, with such memorable originals, is a brave challenge that manages to stamp its own fresh seal. It's honest music/performance relying on collective talents without trying to be flash [though on 'Spinning Wheel' there's a flirtation with distortion that appeals to this ol' hippie and they probably just get away with the joke!].

These guys play their superb music in the lucky North West of England but if they ever get this far South to Pastoralworld I'm definitely going to have a great Late Night on Retirement Street.

East of Eden - Snafu

Automotive awe

There's a linguistic limit to variations on titles for 'listening to music in the car': I've already used car, vehicular and now automotive so I'm up against the door now; there's transportation and the notion of being transported psychologically by awe, but I've just opened and shut that door in one semantic move.

I played East of Eden's 'Snafu' today and this is a better example of 'jazz rock' than Chicago or Blood Sweat & Tears referenced in the previous post. Not sure that it matters, but East of Eden, like Soft Machine, played more wholly instrumental jazz with solos and it certainly isn't the orchestrated jazz of C or BS&T. That's all.

'Snafu' is a great album. It's another one I pulled off the shelf quickly having not listened for quite a while but knowing it would trigger memories. Then I realised a slight error: my introduction to East of Eden wasn't this album, but their first 'Mercator Projected' and the track 'Communion' which was on the Decca sampler 'Wowie Zowie The World of Progressive Music' again referenced much earlier in this blog.

It's another avenue. I thought after the Chicago post I might take an aural stroll along to If - an English and positive example of that genre, whatever it is to be called - but now East of Eden might lead me to Soft Machine. We'll see. I really should saunter over to 'Mercato Projected'.

Chicago Transit Authority - Same

Chicago's authority

Now listening to a great FM recording of a great Chicago live gig from 1977 in Uniondale, New York. And there are obviously performances from their first brilliant album: 'Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?'; 'Beginnings'; 'Questions 67 and 68', and their funky version of Winwood's pounding 'I'm A Man'.

Chicago vs Blood Sweat & Tears. There's no contest: they're both brilliant and spawned a generation of jazz rock, some that palled by comparison, and much that added positively to the genre.

Forget the later more commercial Chicago - which isn't all bad; in fact not bad at all. But the early albums, double discs, merged rock and jazz-band orchestration superbly, and these guys could play. There was also a political edge to the first album that, coupled with the mad psychedelia of 'Free Form Guitar', made an impression on an impressionable teenage aural sponge, so this album will always retain its significance - but it does so musically without any question.

OK, as I was writing that last line, 'If You Leave Me Now' has just started and this detracts from those heady early days of rock and revolution, but rich tapestry and other eclectic sensibilities try to accommodate.....

Paul Bentley - Come Sunday

Standards

Having written about Kurt Elling and spent some time revisiting his jazz vocals I also returned to another jazz vocalist who I've listened to frequently - surprising [not because of quality] but because of the range of music I have and the fact I wouldn't normally place 'traditional' jazz vocal at the top of my listening list. But it clearly is.

Paul's from Liverpool and I first heard of him when seeing his performance at one of the superb free lunchtime concerts run by the Manchester Jazz Festival in St Anne's Square. This was in the summer of 2006. He's a big guy with big vocals and it was simply an excellent set. The kind of lively and genuine and infectious love-of-the-music set that makes an immediate impact.

I bought his solo album 'Come Sunday' and it has an unplugged presentation that centres Benley's vocals where they'd naturally push to in a crowd - and that crowd being silenced just to authenticate the metaphor. With piano by Les Chisnell and the occasional clarinet of Iain Dixon, standards like 'Let's Fall in Love', 'My Foolish Heart' and 'The Shadow of Your Smile' allow Bentley's crisp vocals to complement the classic songwriting. There's a sweet version of James Taylor's 'You Can Close Your Eyes' and I'd like to hear more of Bentley covering a wider range [having this standards collection under his belt].

I have for the past 3/4 years searched for further recordings, for example an expected big band album, but with no luck. Looking today, his personal website seems to have disappeared. From other site information he appears to gig regularly in the Merseyside and Manchester areas - weddings and corporate entertainment; club sessions - but not the recording production I had hoped for. I did today discover and send for the jazz band Crispy Duc cd on which he takes lead vocal. I also discovered Paul has played or still plays with The Paul Bentley Five and The Paul Bentley Swing Band. But not much more in terms of information. Perhaps this is the reality of the jobbing artist whose talent could in my estimation stand comfortably with someone like Elling but life and listening have their labyrinthine routes.

Kurt Elling - Flirting With Twilight

Orange blossom

I like those aural surprises, musically speaking. It's brilliant when you 'discover' an artist/band/song by chance when listening to the radio or however it hits you. I've picked up on a variety of classical pieces by having Classic FM on in the background. A while back when listening to Jazz FM Kurt Elling's 'Orange Blossom in Summertime' stopped me in my hearing tracks. Having missed who was singing I sought out the playlist and was introduced to Elling for the first time and I ordered his cd 'Flirting With Twilight' - and subsequently all of his other recordings - just for this track. Couldn't wait. Wasn't disappointed. Always delighted.

I'm no expert on jazz vocal or jazz more widely but know what I like. Elling's known for his 'scat-singing' and 'vocalese' and I like this when I hear it but I think he is just more conventionally a superb singer. He has a full range and at the top, which is high, it is beautiful, but lower down it isn't - by that I mean there is a roughness and at times even a raw sound that is authentic, though I'm not wholly sure what I mean by that! It's not 'pretty' or smooth, though it can be the latter when required. That's the oher range.

The song 'Orange Blossom in Summertime' is an amalgam of the original 'Orange Blossom' by Curtis Lundy with lyrics added by Elling. On the original, Lundy plays bass and Bobby Watson is on sax on their album 'Beatitudes', and the beautiful melodic line is picked up and made even more wonderful in Elling's version and delivery.

Black Eyed Peas - Behind the Front

Black Eyed Superbowl

Just heard that Black Eyed Peas will be providing the half-time musical entertainment at this year's NFL Superbowl [when I will be supporting the Green Bay Packers against the Pittsburg Steelers, though as I like both teams I can live with either win; whatever, it will be a night of bourbon and 5-meat pizza, so what's to lose?].

I guess both Black Eyed Peas and the NFL Superbowl are ripe for critical observation: those who think the pop sensibilities of BEP have usurped their rap roots, and those who don't rate American football as a sport. I can live with the former thinking as I don't care enough to care, but the latter is simply stupid.

Watching the divisional play-offs on Sky, the announcement of this musical interlude triggered memories of seeing Black Eyed Peas supporting Macy Gray probably in 2000 somewhere on the south coast in a place beginning with P. I couldn't find an exact reference on the net. BEP were new to me and most others there I suspect but it was cool to see 'real' rap/hip hop for someone who clearly hadn't up to that point. I bought their cd and enjoyed it then but listening today it didn't have the same effect - my middle-aged, middle-class, white-guy flirting with rap/hip hop having waned [but why not listen, by the way: I can listen to and enjoy punk, but I wasn't; the same with other genres that I don't want to explore here having made the point I trust; and I should perhaps at some point in this blog write about my favourite hip hop album, Mos Def's 'Black on Both Sides'].

Back to BEP - not sure about their current 'The Beginning'. I've read caustic and satirical reviews that rightly pick up on it's ring-tone tunes and sampling saturation. Just listening to tracks now from the album it's easy to be entertained but I'm not convinced there's longevity beyond that incipient and compulsive move to the beats and cuckoo catch of the clever melodies [which are not originals].

In a Superbowl that has for the last decade at least become a national celebration of patriotic fervour as much as football - if not more I'm sure for many - I wonder if BEP will get away with performing 'Play It Loud' with its opening lyrics

I pledge my allegiance,
To rhythm and sound.
Music is my medicine,
Let the rhythm pound

because this would be contrary to the Tea Party mentality of much of the entertainment and sentiment and focus [just wait for that immaculately-timed jet fly-by at the precise point the last warbling notes of the National Anthem are sung]. Those lyrics, by the way, strike me as a perfectly sound manifesto for living, as I trust this blog attests to, readership or no!