Free Creek [1969]

Super Suited

This is a 1969 album – released in 1973 – that lives up to its billing as a ‘super-session’ production. Full information can be found in interesting detail here, but the quintet of session leads are Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Keith Emerson, Harvey Mandel and Linda Ronstadt, with an additional cast-list including Joe Farrell, Mitch Mitchell, Elliot Randall, Moogy Klingman, Todd Rundgren, Dr John, Delaney Bramlett, and on opening track Cissy Strut – with guitar solos from Beck and Rundgren – some sheep noises, real or otherwise. That opener, second track Freedom Jazz Dance and third Sympathy For The Devil are funky jazz instrumentals, with fourth Mother Nature’s Son a rather slight orchestral pop piece: Keith Emerson in pretty rather than progressive mood. First vocal and rock track is fifth Road Song. Two further instrumentals are covers of, respectively, Lay Lady Lay and Hey Jude – again in the poprock vein – and the first wonderful Ronstadt led number is eighth He Darked the Sun. Harvey Mandel leads a cool blues instrumental Earl’s Shuffle, with one Clapton session producing another blues Getting Back To Molly, Earle Doude on gritty vocal. This isn’t a knock-your-socks-off collection, but it is tailored class from top to toe.

Merry Christmas

Gove at the Grotto

What do you want for Christmas, Minister?

I want to be liked, please, Santa.

Who doesn’t like you, Minister?

Quite a few people, I guess, but by-and-large it’s teachers.

Why aren’t you liked by teachers, Minister?

I don’t know Santa. I give them a curriculum just like the one I loved at my independent school that helped to make me who I am today and which I want to share with all our students to make them better human beings, so I don’t know why teachers dislike me - do you Santa?

What, like you? Not really....

.....No, I don’t mean that Santa, I mean do you know why teachers don’t like me?

Yes, Minister, it’s because you’re a knob.

A knob? What does that mean Santa?

It’s the sort of word teachers can use without fear of litigation to describe an errant child in the classroom, Minister: a colloquialism in many respects to characterise a miscreant or a dullard or a prat, but it’s more humorously pc, for example, than those last two words.

That doesn’t seem fair or accurate Santa.

I couldn’t agree more, Minister. I’d go for something epistemologically apt for you like imbecillus.

Ah, I understand now – the meaning of knob that is – but it seems jolly unkind to call me that, Santa.

Well, Michael – you don’t mind me calling you Michael do you Minister, that title being a misnomer for a knob – but I have overheard, in my travels and visiting teachers’ homes on Christmas Eve nights when the last person they should be thinking of is you, shouts of ‘Gove is a fuckwit’ and ‘Gove is an asswipe’, so perhaps you should consider yourself lucky if we actually stick with knob.

Well, when you put it like that Santa. I suppose it is an important semantic nuance.

I don’t think there is a linguistic gradation for being a twat.

Pardon Santa?

Nothing, Michael. Could you please piss off now as I have loads of other needy customers to see?

So you don’t think I’m going to be liked by teachers this year Santa?

Not a flying pigs-in-blankets chance. I deal in people’s dreams, Michael; I don’t perform miracles. You’ll need to speak with a different cultural construct for that.

Steamhammer - MKII

Take A Steamhammer Antithetical Ride

This is the classy 1969 second album from British blues and jazz rock band Steamhammer. It doesn’t quite get into my Top 50 [it’s a category still here on the blog if unfinished and neglected of late] because it isn’t an album I grew up with, but the standout song Passing Through is, appearing as it did on the CBS Fill Your Head With Rock sampler which, as I’ve written elsewhere, was one of my earliest albums.

There are great sax solos and support throughout, provided by Steve Joliffe, and these are often accompanied by the silky guitar work of Martin Pugh who also solos sweetly. It is a tight band which was famous and popular for its live act, and Keiran White has a distinctive soothing vocal that I always enjoy, again because of my fondness for Passing Through. Joliffe displays his jazz expertise on the softly chugging blues of Contemporary Chick Con Song, and White croons along whilst Pugh provides an effective but far from virtuoso guitar, and this is actually very much the band’s strength: its collective excellence.

There are the ‘formulaic’ tracks like fifth Turn Around which again [in the context of previously writing about generic seventies music] employs a harpsichord, and this is accompanied by Joliffe’s flute and very pretty vocal harmonising. Things heat up once more after this with sixth 6/8 For Amiran where there is a jazz flute riff and then White playing some bluesy harmonica and Pugh again soloing neatly rather than ripping it up. Seventh is the superb Passing Through which begins with a persistent drumroll rhythm and is distinguished throughout by White’s vocal which I can’t fully explain but know is most effective because of its tone. There is a beautiful electric guitar solo underpinned by an accompanying acoustic rhythm and another electronic effect, perhaps on an overdubbed guitar, and it is just simply a glorious rolling peaceful rock blues.

The album ends on a 16 minute blues rock jam Fran and Dee Take a Ride that probably gets as near to their live act as it can. This too is informed by the band’s signature restraint, certainly on record, where nothing gets let loose, and for Steamhammer that's the band’s hypnotic quality as the music ebbs and flows with consummate control.

Sweathog [1971]

So So

Another S, seventies band, suggestive cover, southern rock: sadly, rather insipidly so.

Star Spangled Banger [1973]

Well Rounded Formula

These singular album releases reflect both the fragility of the musical time and perhaps the fortuity of being recognised, promoted and - through public and/or label support - given time to develop and mature and create a fan base, or not. Or they were simply dreadful.

This 1973 album is a mixture of all of these, though the collapse of the Melbourne based recording company in the year of its release probably accounts for the bulk of its fate. In most other respects, this album presents the formulae of its time precisely: opening track Fear of the Night is by far its strongest, a psychedelic semi-gem released as a single, with an opening airplane stereophonically flying across the speakers before gliding into a rocky enough number with just enough fuzz [in fact quite a cool solo] to be good enough. After this it ticks the boxes: 2^nd Question of the Country has a Chapmanesque warbled vocal, and lyrics people and love, love; 3^rd Run is organ-ground garage; 4^th Fancy Underpants is as daft as it sounds, but not as satirically clever as a Bonzo Dog, and has some manic laughter; 5^th Suite 3 is pretty folk and like so many pieces of the time is a ‘suite’ or an ‘opus’ or a ‘prelude’ and so on; 6^th Protester Man begins with some studio chatter because that’s real and cool, and it does concern itself with freedom of speech and a saxophone solo; 7^th Sailing has jazz piano; 8^th Country Son has more studio chat to start and a country/folk tinge with references to children happy/dogs barking/greener hillsides/bluer skies; 9^th Pull Together begins by stealing from The Beatles, and if this all sounds negative it isn’t meant to be because it is well produced and effective enough in its understandably generic embrace, and thus the album ends on 14^th Star Spangled Banger [with an additional 15^th ‘unreleased’ version] that returns to a bit of fuzz, right-on lyrics peace my brother/goodwill to man/love thy neighbour/make love while you can and a psyche-pop tune [with more Beatles’ theft] that reminds us precisely of the bright formula and its breezy time.

Speed, Glue & Shinki [1971]

Another S From The Seventies

You can see I’m trawling through the S bands.....

Ostensibly a Japanese band, the three original members represent a mix of nationalities [though this self-titled offering was released after the group disbanded in 1971 and is largely the work/compilation of drummer and singer Joey Smith from recordings for their first album Eve, plus other musicians, again from research here] and  play a music rooted firmly in the garage/heavy rock with some prog area. It’s a double album, and the first is largely the garage rock, third track Bad Woman a simple pounding riff with a Johnny Winter vocal growl, and the next two, Red Doll and Flat Fret Swing, are similarly headbang riffs with wafts of fuzz and pounding bass. The next album is a little more experimental, apart from second track Search for Love which is again all garagerock pound. Third Chuppy is an oddly named harpsichord interlude, fourth Wanna Take You Home is a wonderful move to psychedelia with its spoken-word vocal over more grinding bass and drums and a guitar solo weaved throughout, fifth a Sun, b Planets, c Life is 13 minutes of sound distortion, and sixth Song for an Angel continues that distortion but as a more melodic moog riff overlaid with a synth instrumental.

Sleepy John [1970]

Animal Noises

Another one-off but surviving through contemporary releases that fuel the insatiable appetite for more and more touchstones to this era where many of us wish we could return and perhaps even record our own as well as live the overall dream again [apparently the band’s 1970 recording sessions did not get released as an lp until 1999]. This is a heavy blues rock album, driven by the Hammond organ of David Lee. The band is remembered as a brilliant live act and supported other bands like Moby Grape and The Mothers of Invention. Opener River has the organ drive of Deep Purple, and second Nothing has strong vocal, this linked to the rock guitar solo with an emerging psychedelic sound. Fourth Searching for the World employs more vocal harmony and at times sounds like Jefferson Airplane, and fifth Trying to Fly is a jazzy instrumental, this, like Someones Band just reviewed, hitting the rock requisite buttons of the time, but doing so with heart and some skill. Seventh You Say provides another one of the odd rock album expectations of the time: the ‘comic’ number, often with a Country lilt [or a jug band leaning], and here including various pig, cow, chicken and horse noises. I don’t think you can blame the drugs.

Someones Band [1970]

Requisite Rock

Formed as a band via responses to an ad in the Melody Make, and this sole eponymous album recorded in one night [a distinctive category of transient and existential bands of the time, it would seem], it is a blues rock solid with fine playing sustained across all 11 tracks. There are the vaguest of echoes of Skin Alley in the first two and other tracks, but you could probably cite any such rock bands of the time in hearing influence/similarities. Third Blues for Brother ‘E’ has echoes of Fleetwood Mac. Fourth I Wanna Go Where I Belong is one of the stronger psyche blues songs, and perhaps Canned Heat is in there somewhere; there is a requisite jazz tinge to seventh Give It To You; ninth A Story is quite a pretty ballad with the other requisite Country tinge, mainly in the vocal harmonies, and the further requisite drum/percussion solo gets a workout in tenth Manhunt. It seems churlish to state there are no outstanding tracks, but this is very much the norm of albums like this from the 70s, and it is the sum of its steady parts that endear and endure.

Southern Energy Ensemble

Funky '76

Sole offering from the band in 1976, this is their eponymous funked-up, soulful and jazzy set of seven tracks. First Open Up Your Mind reflects the optimistic sentiment of the day to live in harmony, and its jazzy piano and sweet soul vocals set an upbeat tone that leads to superb saxophone and trumpet solos that tear it up to some genuine mind expansion. The rest is reflected in the titles F-U-N-K-Y Til The Day I Die and See Funk, tracks two and four: if you want to party get up and move! Another one of those unknown gems from this ripe musical time.

Sigmund Snopek III - Virginia Woolf

Found Music

This post cuts across my comments on Fifty Foot Hose and then Secret Oyster, firstly by demonstrating the trajectory of that experimentation I mention with FFH in 1967, Virginia Woolf coming out in 1972, and secondly because I have just rediscovered this in my addictive compilation searchings but also in the way its genuinely adventurous mix of classical, jazz and the operatic act as a precursor for what progressive music would explore and become at its very best, rather than its otherwise bloated pretentiousness.

Although attributed solely to Sigmund Snopek III, this is actually performed with his band The Bloomsbury People, and this much I know by researching here which is better at explaining in more detail. The album has a mix of short and long tracks, opener Prelude a 58 second orchestral tease, second El Ciudad 8 minutes of electronics, marching drum, further swirling noise and dramatic and then staccato vocal, and third Orange / Blue is 13 minutes of rather sweet baroque pop, fuzzed guitar, atmospheric harpsichord and background swirling strings, pounded piano, chant, bells, more harpsichord, more tingling bells and some squealing saxophone. The title track is similar in its mix but with more obvious jazz insertions too.  It is a psychedelic sound overall because of its eclecticism and experimentation, though not a heavy psyche. There are two additional tracks on the cd version, and the first of these Livecave Book Two is 17 minutes of the most glorious spoken-word, choric, operatic and again electronic experimentation you’ll ever hear. Weird but wonderful.