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...janis and her band are late going on tonight and the MC has to abate the crowd with some explaination about having had their gear stolen earlier in the day and a new bunch of equipment had to be found and that is why the show is late starting...anyone totally believing this must have the gear with them because a load of hippies stealing equipment lock stock and barrel is somewhat hard to swallow, their general ineptitude makes for the deal to go wrong before it's started...more likely janis was too strung out to get with the time to get on stage and get some rocking going...when they do get on stage they get down with some funk soul rock screech and janis gives off some down home urban shouting and the audience settle in for a late evening with the 'wicked woman', the rock goddess who will set them free from the constraints of a straight jacket society...unfortunately for janis she could not set herself free from society or the life that was mapped out for her by unscrupulous bread heads at the record company or management (the wonderfully exploitative al grossman) so she sank into the booze and smack which bought on entirely new problems so the vicious circle of society / alcohol / heroin kept on turning, least till early october 1970 when some kind of sweet relief was offered and taken...the gig represented by an audience recording on this early boot is from august 12 and was to be her last public engagement and she's kind of getting really wired, giving off some extreme vibrations like she's reaching for something / someone unobtainable yet she continually strives but never comes to the end of the quest...the set list is familiar and the raps between songs have all been heard before, interestingly the audience seem not to get any prurient enjoyment from the joplin expose raps so that must be down to the 'sophisticated boston' hick town mentality more than anything else closer to home...the band are getting some of janis frenetic energy which they translate into some heavy soul blasting, letting rip trying to carry janis further, to the place she so wants to be, to the now unachievable nirvana...
...RAPIDSHARE WITH THEIR NEW POLICY OF DELETEING LINKS THAT HAVE NOT BEEN ACCESSED WITHIN 60 DAYS MEANS THERE IS GOING TO BE DEAD LINKS ON THESE TWO SITES (http://modadelic.blogspot.com/ http://spaced3saviour.blogspot.com/ ) ...ANYONE WISHING TO AVAIL THEMSELVES OF SOME GOODIES WILL BE ADVISED TO SIFT THROUGH THE ARCHIVES FOR ANY AND ALL MISSED WAX...THANKING ALL AND EVERYONE IN ADVANCE...
...these cats were always a little bit too real to be front runners in the san francisco ballroom scene, a scene that seemed to demand long acid fused choogle with brain melting guitar to drip the lysergic drop into the mindsoup...the grape like to pack some soul into the rock'n'roll attack, the garage RnB and working class country twang also infused themselves into the fabric they wove, a fabric of busy patterns with three guitars threading their way around the tunes and the fact they all liked to vocalise gave way to some fine non chorale bleating, all having their say and sometimes with some good natured ferocity making the tunes explode with an abundance of generosity...this compilation grabs ahold of some demos, audition tapes, alternate takes and a smidgen of live recordings all from the fabulous grape years of 67/8, not one bummer on the entire disk, almost certainly due to the focused outlook they had for their music (if only they had been focused when it came to dealing with squares, their manager a complete crook and the record company publicity department boned headed enough to release their first LP as singles as well as the usual twelve inch 33RPM, a scheme that is common place today, but in the flower power haze it smacked of life sucking capitalism, a major stumbling block that would plague the band forever and a day), at least they were focused for a while, the second album 'wow' took focused to a whole new level, a level they would never reach again what with sound poems and screeching rocking blare all colliding with orchestration and horn arrangements that sound like 'the electric flag' on overdrive and adventurous without vanity, they strove to meld popular musics into a new whole, a 'cosmic american music' all given a dose of FAB4 lysergic varnish via the byrds (a heavier byrds it must be said)...this is a most welcome addition to the moby cannon and a reminder of times when musics organically spread and mutated, not endlessly sampled into 'new' patterns with dizzying regularity...a somewhat ridiculous front cover aside, a cover that makes them look anonymous, it's more appropriate for pink floyd or some lazy 'prog rock' ensemble, aside from that major foray into stupidity this can't be faulted, grape with great sound, wonderful wine will ensue for imbibing with optimistic regularity...
...a double disk of live gubbins from the mighty grape years '66/'69 with most concentrating on '67/'68 so it's a goodly snoot-full of HEP moby with varying sound quality but cool enough to get real cozy with when the mood takes...what we do notice is their jams were not of a total lysergic nature, they had a jazz infusion that pulled them away from intrinsically heavy jammers like QMS/dead and more into a night club feel, a psychedelic night club but with a more liberal attitude to life and art, not hierachy driven like the early frisco scene, once they realised they had a scene it was the beginning of the end, (that must have been about the time the good acid ran out, replaced by government sponsored 'drug'), down the slippery slope to consumer-ville, and a return to 'values' more deviously authoritarian than those from which most hippies fled back in the suburban 'mom&pop/school salute/cop days'...at times they come on like a semi lysergic 'butterfield blues band', surely testament enough to the greatness of the vine from whence cometh the grape, a lighter touch than the 'bbb' but arriving via the grape fascination with alchemy, the desire to meld the varying strains of american musics into a new though by its very nature always revolving and evolving, sound...especiallydigable on a few different levels is tracks 4/5 on disk two, the title track in two parts, a suite of avant-squealing-punked-out-acid-hard-rock in 1966 at the avalon ballroom, a total floatation in the mind soup, and that's a fact that won't be denied any way it's looked at...other times in the '69 contribution the country rocking is becoming evident, not an amalgamation of rock and country now, but a genre and sound on its own though they could still blast away in the R&B/soul rocking vein when they got amped up physically/mentally and volume-wise for some greasy garage beer stained funkiness...the disk ends somewhat mysteriously with the single from early tributary of the grape, 'peter and the wolves', a nice R&B groove but out of place here, but having said that, overall this is most assuredly a hot rocking groove and another welcome addition for the mystic citizen of GRAPEville...
...well, this is a goodly approximation of the experience groove emanating from 1972...late power trio madness, absolutely right on, nice and tasty, no head will think about copyism because its too obvious to worry about... nice guitaring racket all over and a nice soulful last track winding up a cool well recorded waxing...originally released in two mixes, one supposedly in the soul idiom the other in the more hopefull territory of the rock groove, muddleheaded thinking maybe but a precursor of what would become second nature by the nineties when remixing to catch the right pockets and empty out some cash became the norm for all record companies, big and small... ...good stuff, well worth digging in and experiencing...
...released towards the end of '69 as the long strange decade collapsed through sheer weight of the madness that had been leaking hither and thither, this wax sees arthurly looking back slightly while the main sight is on the coming years...a more hard rocking approach pervades as a new band is working its way into a cohesive unit, with some light touches to vary the mood...it caused a lot of cats to give up with digging this combo as it was seen as selling out but the only reality of the situation was just love/arthur changing with the times, afterall what was the last biscuit called...also with this new group of cats gathered, arthur thought it might actually be time to venture forth from the city of angels and take the sound outernational, this disk was the passport arthur needed to travel on, to go to europe to receive his just deserts...the last 3 tracks are early versions laid down in summer '68...a tip top slice from a great artist...
...the way to approach this wax and indeed foursail is to divorce earlier arthur disks from them completely, they cannot be allowed to cloud any judgement otherwise proper appraisal is tempered somewhat by times and circumstances that no longer existed in 1970, such had the times moved, way different ideas and social disciplines had come into play, both in the recording studio and on the streets...arthurly being no stranger to styles and experimentation went full on with this double wax and threw a whole slew of grooves into the pot and cooked and simmered until a funky banquet was fit for consumption...hard rock/country rock/goodtime hokey were only the tip of the rainbowed iceberg...jimi style acidrock blast/CSN harmonies vie for attention with social commentary lyrics that now are not so hazed up in poetics, the meaning' is clear for all who listen and think their own thoughts...cats with aversion to late '60s drum solos may wish for stimulants during track 8 which lasts for over 5 years but to keep things in order and the universal yinyang flowing in peaceful serenity track 10 comes on with fx-pedal-string-bending-monster-fuzz-out...some folky sounds like '64/5 dylan crop up at the end which is kind of strange given this late date(maybe easy rider influence creeping in) and theres some nice cali-sunshine pop (track13) happening (dino desi &billy?) but ends in free hippy invocations as if the drugs had just kicked in... to be fair to arthurs art and continuity some vibes/rhythm/lyric patterns from forever changes do crop up but theres a looseness that wasn't present on that LP...this is so much better than the self appointed rock critics on rolling stone/fusion would have the college student/hippy beleive, they had it down as arthur had to prove himself all over again, much more than lesser talents would have to...over in euroland the new love were received as some kind of west coast conquering acid heads who virtually could do no wrong, but theres always been a refuge for free thinking artisans on that part of the globe where amerikkkanism was slowly losing power and influence...this remaster sounds real good and shows the combo off to good effect...
...early 70s and this version of love are still doing time at blue thumb recs. and this wax was slightly treading water in the fact thats its a kind of short on the running time(30mins) and some live tracks mix in plus theres some funky speedfreak edits in a couple of places...the most famous thing about false start is the fact jimi was in the studio and knocked off a couple of licks for fun but the whole LP is a way cool groove, its more groove based than normal '70s hard rock which after the acid jamming gimmicks had worn off a lot of combos got into a thuddy/sluggish kind of rock which just went nowhere, it was lost before it started, and of course it became popular with the great unwashed for most of that decade...theres some great hope from arthur on this wax with it all ending 'riding that vibration', right-on realistic lyrics like a more out there curtis mayfield...unfortunately this would be the start of the end of a realistic future for arthur as the music business and society conspired to keep him from speaking the truth to the wage slaves who keep the machine ever grinding on...
...now this is nice late night album if there ever was one, bluesy acoustic strum and warble from arthur and some hard rocking acid ballads with full love coming on a treat at the midnight hour, the witching hour has always been a time when arthurs groove seems right, even that old warhorse 'forever changes' always hung nice and loose when heard in the small hours...these tracks supposedly were recorded during a short tenure at columbia records and that episode was certainly kept from love maniacs, who knew arthur and co. were working at the home of bob zimmerman and ray conniff for a few months?, not too many is a safe wager (columbia obviously got cold feet when arthur most likely had to tell them what time it was when they undoubtedly tried to cross him on some part of the deal, arthur not being a cat that had much time for squares trying to mess with him)...anyone hip to arthur around the turn of the seventies will know what to expect, the hard/mellow vibe he was laying down, hitting the funk button whilst giving out with some screeching acid rock blare, then turning around with some folky rock strum and socio-political wordage (scaring the straights was easy for arthur back in the day, and later unfortunately too easy) all rolling along at a steady pace kept in check with some potent marijuana strain...the tracks laid down by this love show that any long playing record album would certainly be up to the standards of the last elektra/blue thumb disks (coolest of wax) and that would have been a good thing indeed as arthur was surely onto a nice 'original' post hendrix hard acid sound that would have been more than welcome during the mid seventies when rock in general was undergoing a bad case of the blahs!...the acoustic numbers show arthur could more than still hold his own in the lyrics department, outstriping pretty much everyone when he put his mind to writing properly and this is one reason he didn't get approached by asylum records as he would have rode jackson brown and tom waits out of town from the get go...for a basically no more than exploitation we have some really decent sounding material and it would be extra groovy if some of the boots from that period could be cleaned up a notch or two (gethsemane sessions would be a good place to start) so we could have some good rocking tonight...
...politically charged right on funked out horn rock was the order of the day from these super-bad brothers on their one and only platter released in '72 on the small but incredible 'today' label out from NYC...cool guitar and organ swells move in and around these heavy tales of modern urban life that proved too much for the intended audience and they had to call it a day under this name...this is a disk that shouts out the righteous anger from the inner cities, the cities left to rot in decay while the citizens rot with despair and skag in a media blitzed ghetto of unwelcoming projects and condemned cold water tenements, with propaganda flowing in from the idiot box whole sole purpose is to encourage shopping for obselence and useless medicine...anger from the vietnam vet who came 'back to the world' to find the war still waging, only now it was in the streets of his 'home' town, a war waged by an unseen force controlling the very fabric of seventies society, a drugged landscape of life sapping 'downer' pharmacuticles, drugs best described by bill burroughs as 'FOR SQUARES', a condemnation from on high with no course for disagreement...a disk for cats out of hock and on the block, for hustlers who know the deal and for dreamers of a better today, a disk for all right thinking cats and all who need to learn how to get from under uncles sams mind lockdown and THINK ABOUT IT, a disk to set oneself free and hit a groove from the corridors of the ever lasting hope...
...with this LP lou entered the rarefied air of the early seventies bootleg frenzy where everyone who was anyone in the rock'n'roll game had a bootleg disk on the market, the underground head shop could supply the waxiness of illicit temptation or they didn't stay in the retail business too long, a mark of a head shops standing in the community to some degree once rested on whether it could get the latest bootleg sensation for the heads that needed them...lou was hot between 72/4 with his glitter and drugs flamboyancy, this was the period when he not only sung velvet tunes like heroin/waiting for the man/sister ray, he actually became a velvet underground song, parading his carefree gutter poet persona for all who cared to indulge in lou watching and summer 74 was when lou hit the HEAVY WEIRDNESS button for the last time, all the craziness that lou had observed and to some degree taken part in for the last decade came flooding out in an unstoppable torrent of bad tempered indifference to his audience and to himself, he seems to be waiting for the whole shenanigans to be over, the 'pop star' idea that lou had at the turn of the decade with him coming to london and being treated with a certain envious respect by musos and junkie wasters alike, then getting in the hit parade with something akin to cinema verity novelty crooning it all looked promising for the future, but the drugs and loitering fun around the globe took their toll as lou's patience with reporters shrunk to an unreasonably small quota thereby negating any true popstar standing with the main audience for pop-record-hit parade fodder, young teenage girls, if the chix aint digging it then its over for popism dreams...sometimes this anti audience stance and bad attitude can produce interesting excursions into the dark basements of LOUVILLE, where the creeps and ghouls populate the inner mind and the results are interesting moments leading to that heavy monster drone 'metal machine music', moments where lou just stretches out songs to a coma inducing agony and then sometimes he delivers a totally right on record/show in now classic early seventies drugged/whiskey swilling rock'n'roll (with reggae beat to show lou was still HEP when the day demanded such practice)...with this wax we see lou in australia, sydney on the 24th august 1974 getting to grips with a fine fine ripsnort of rocking swill, all starting with a moody funk riff (bowie style) with 'waiting...', taking the song back uptown one more time, the whole band are energetically laid back in a nice stoned friendly mood with lou feeling his way with a 'cool' rendition, basically being himself when not on an outrageous pharmaceutical binge, here he's taking the bus uptown, not a cab or train...funky head nodding rock next with 'sally...' going one more time for some good time street level poet pop rocking with super vamping keyboard action...third tune gives us a look at how 'vicious' lou is feeling, and he's cutting a fine rendition of rocking aptitude with again the band supporting and helping in a very empathic way, the stance is perfect for lous mindset this evening...'lady day' starts in heavy fashion with the metaphorical screws being tightened, lou is getting a resigned moody vibe going with semi trance invocations and some super nice acid rock string bending happening at the end...side two kicks off with a very interesting space-rock (with synth noodling) outing on 'heroin', a true 70's masterpiece of stoned basement prog rock marathon indulgence, just right for the bonghit rush (or skag, no intolerance of drugs must ever be permitted in the combined mind bohemia of NOWSville)...'...wildside' starts with a mutant bossa nova groove, only it's accompanied by the audience clapping in some really retarded manner, completely out of time with everyone and everything, then lou gets command of the tune and candy and holly live once more in amphetamine glory...'white light...' has really got to be heard by all velvet enthusiasts as so for cats in general, a mind-blast of blitzed chemical splat riding the rails to hell, a cranium cutting rush of 'switchblade intensity', white light, white heat and white powder take full control for this 'jet-packed to the max' heavy metal screech...a great record of a great gig, lou was teetering on the brink of artistic madness while thrusting out some tried and tested street corner rock'n'roll for all to enjoy...
...the future started in april '66 when the wigsta himself, old warhola took this acetate down to columbia records so they could hear what was needed in the rock'n'roll game, something new and exciting...the mixes are different and some are different takes from the album that did find its way out 9 months later...the columbia suits politely declined knowing they had the ray conniff orchestra to see them through any lean times that might crop up... ...audiophiles and noiseaphobes might need a stiff hit to see them through the hailstorm that accompanies this historical document...
...real nice euroboot containing the symphony of sound jam lasting 20 minutes and the 2 falling spikes tracks which is some chat with john cale and some marvellous velvet trance recorded at different times in late six oh years...symphony was recorded early 1966 and in amongst the proto sisteray riffing and overloaded feedback squealing is a bit of beefheart plastic factory riff, and also they had a good grip on the sound of psychedelic ballroom jamming when this whole idea was in its infancy (more evidence they were ahead of the game by melding NYC avant-droning to embryonic freak style new rock)...the fallin spikes tracks is a great way to get hep to the world the combo existed in with the tranny/superstars cutting in occasionally screaching about womens lib and other proto age of aquarius concerns (dig pope ondines four second soundbite)...all-in-all a nice head style exploito disk that allows cats into the insular rough and ready layabout artist world of mid/downtown manhattan when all things were possible and improbable...cat's who dig the echoed chaos scope and scrape of velvets-life and not so much the ballads and scary softness will get a real buzz off this and thats where its at clyde...
...from the getgo the screach of feedback on the 'melody laughter' track that kicks off this wonderous boot all velvetheads and layabouts of a hep and curious nature will know that they're in for a galaxy bending mindmelt of a trip...lasting for over halfhour this builds up to some sort of epic proportions that not too many ever reach with the insistant thud from moe and some lobe pounding squeal from john and lou plus sterling giving the occasional flurry of notes when the mood takes ahold...this is avant/freejazz blatter as interpreted by and for the NOW rock generation though no-one really knew for sure at the time...nico chips in here and there with some cooled out chantuese and towards the end lou gives out with some chant style wordage...that's the first track and then they go into a 'greatest hits/first LP as will be' routine(femme/venus/death song/parties) that all add to the swirl of noise that the roobs in columbus must have wondered what this big city popmusic was turning into...this ain't the sort of racket that sits too well in booney type places and in '66 this is a blowing apart the known world (car culture/drive-ins/petty vandalism) when it comes to having entertainment...the second disk continues the journey into the black hole of tomorrow where the unknown manifests destiny in the unseen art of chaos rock'n'roll...another halfhour jam crops up further in and again the velvet haze envelopes the listener...'60s heads will dig the murky tape hiss that lets the beatnik know this is a peek through the muddy window to see the future leaking through walls of innocent perception...definitely one of the places the mythical sixties started for cats stranded in the entrenched '50s land of cold war patriotism and wasteful unthinking/unblinking consumerism and general subservience to 'authority'...
...noise terrorism and gentle ballads is a most apt way of describing this singular combo...so far ahead of the pack when they were around, they didn't know they might have any competition from others and as it went, they didn't...no one sounded like this in the pop/rock spectrum in 1966...guitar screach, feedback, viola scraping, bass thumping, relentless drum and the occasional icy chanteuse moves from nico balancing out lou's sneer...fire up the amp and this mono platter really does fill the room out with the hep racket, better than the stereo version as it comes straight out and wham, bam and it still sounds like its recorded tomorrow...often imitated but never bettered and this late in the game never will be...
...recorded by some hep thinking cat on 03/15/69 at the boston tea party in front of lous amp and as a result all the squeal and scrunch is upfront giving slightly the illusion they're playing instro versions with the vocals so far down...a very nice amount of choogle and pounding the whole way through and all layabouts should dig the way heroin slips into sister ray for over halfhour ending the set...dig the keyboard/guitar mangle at about two thirds through, real boss sounding...tape hiss and bad editing lets the velvet head into the murky world of illicit listening...last three tracks on disc two come from the same venue(tracks2&4 12/12/68, track3 07/11/69) and give up some more velvetness which is as necessary and usefull as a cleandout and fresh bong on long afternoons of cerebral hooligan indulgence...
...very nice box set of live velvetness recorded november/december '69 in san francisco at the avalon ballroom/matrix (plus a goodly workout on 'sister ray' from st.louis ) by robert quine, himself later to be a voidoid for richard hell, on his newly aquired portable tape machine...its the usual meandering choogle of low slung back alley damage the velvets were putting down at the end their tenure in the rock business, lou is polite and friendly with the frisco floweroids, telling them what the songs are about and such like, giving out with the NYC amphetamine sleaze (disk 2 has a near 40 minute jam on sister ray) and wasted decadence of edie sedgewick...listening to late era velvets gives an air of motionless spirituality, outside time with all constaints and period shackles removed leaving an eternal oneness with NOW, the on going feeling thats it's happening for the first time even though physically they were winding down from high intensity avant jamming from earlier times...the sound quality is on the scuzzy side which as long time velvet heads know, that's really the only way to dig them, they are hidden behind the gauze that society puts up to keep the truth from being known, the velvets all powerful presence seeps through the muffle barrier imposed by technology to expose the reality of urban living...
...june 26th 1970 and the velevts are fading away with the euro/avant wing of cale and nico long gone, moe getting ready for a baby, it's just lou and sterling and as any true velvet-head knows it takes the original 5 to really getting the whole shebang firing on all cylinders...lou's poetic look at 'real' street life, sterlings guitar, cales drone sensibilities, moes otherworldly trance thud and nico wandering around being some enigmatic ice creature staring into the void...replacing the irreplaceable with replacements doug and billy yule, through no fault of theirs, it's just the way they groove, turn the underground into a rock band and as lou's not terribly interested in group situations anymore doesn't bother to ignite and burn like before...these rehearsals taking place on this disk were again taped by bridget polk, a long time admirer and cohort with a penchant for getting the scene down on tape much like andy did in the beginning...not surprisingly the sound quality is poor though listenable (all velvet heads know the deal), in a documentary sense, this is not an immediately easy experience, although once through the initial hearing it gets less of a chore to pierce the murk and grab an hour of late velvets getting a jam or two in, getting ready to play NYC, a place they never fit into as in reality the city was and is a conservative hick town, not open to self examination, definitely not open to the velvets form of theraputic drug rock, where time is suspended through the tribal dance within and without...we get to hear bits and pieces of conversation and bridget seems to move the recorder a couple of times as the sound improves with it getting slightly clearer...important in velvet timeline as this is a okay 'fly on th'wall' listen to the combo as they wind slowly down to become a forgotten force only to re-emerge in the punk years as the original saviours of rock'n'roll who amalgamated the amphetamine glam rush of elvis with avant theatrics of old europe to challenge the NOW generation who were grooving to ersatz psych and lounge rock...
...just about the time dandelion records bit the dust through not making the necessary scratch the original version of this wax was put out to an obviously disinterested public who could care less that heavy blues slammers stackwaddy were nestling alongside whimsy like clifford.t.ward, or that madman kevin coyne was hanging with his combo siren making a healthy and invigorating noise...the fact that singular songstress bridget st.john was grooving on the same label as theatrical hippys principle edwards didn't make a jot of difference to the great unwashed...hard proggers tractor and folkies mike hart and beau were of no interest either...sax blower lol coxhill and strummers medicine head were just two others that the record purchaser of the day ignored to the point of oblivion...for cats that do care there's 17 wonderful tracks all ready to give pleasure to the enlightened...
...this wax must be considered as some kind of cultural barometre of the changing times in albion land, roundabout '71, as the BBC decided it was time to capitalize on their saturday/sunday afternoon/early evening underground deejay as there must be some loot to be accessed in getting cozy with arty cellar dwellers and john was the cat to supply the means to this end...the artists getting the exposure were underground enough in the sense they didn't get in the POP chart but they came from the more cerebral end of the underground, there ain't no freak scene maniacs like the deviants/Laughin Sams Dice/sam gopal, no-sir-ee here's bridget st.john (dandelion recording artiste of this parish)/art(old) school beatnik ron geesin/plus underground rock from the provinces, kind of like the real people on holyground (a once collectible label), that sort of 'lefty avant for the people' sound, sweet marriage and welfare state, both with different exciting noise to offer the discerning listener which is well dig-worthy...bridget does her wonderful upfront folk groove stuff and ron weighs in with the usual poetic electric doodles that hit the spot...overall a top (gear) sound with introduction from john that's been treated by the radiophonic workshop just to keep it all on the 'clever trevor' grammar school vibe...any cats with even a passing interest in the underground will wanna flip to this...
...a wonderfully lovely presentation of the singles once released on the dandelion records label back when the world was young, from the delicately smokey bridget st.john to the scuzz attack that called itself stackwaddy, from lol coxhills ponderance of sax excursions to the string and rhyme forays of beau and all dalliances between are set out in this three disk round up of outright goodness...a refined urban country blues skiffle comes from the chaps called medicine head rests peacefully with all out choogle splat courtesy of tractor, both fine ticklings of the inner ear for when times call for such efforts...original rocker gene vincent found himself with a new lease on life when dandelion brought him on board for some reworkings of his hits and here he give out with some be bop alula, plus others for the hippy generation to enjoy...kevin coyne/siren, principal edwards, clague, clifford t. ward, mike hart, supersister and the way we live all offer some tunes to brighten the day and even outright novelties from the likes of bill oddie, yamasukis and will dandy don't totally let the grooviness drop by too much, everyone is smiling as the vibes perculate with agreeable niceitude...all in all a beautiful package to accompany sunny afternoons dreaming dreams of long ago, visions of the eternal river bank, ambling lazily along twisted country lanes and post war urban decay all lie within disguised as hit parade contenders...
...and then came mott the hoople, in amongst all the newly emerging prog outfit back in 1969 mott came to claim the rocking times with this outing of of swinging jams...kicking up a storm with covers of sonny bono/sir doug/(early) kinks on the first side gave a solid thumbs up in agreement to cats who'd been digging the rock groove for awhile, these mott layabouts let it be known to all and sundry they had some kind of handle on what made for a good late night rocking session (hoople noise is most definitely late night, that can't be desputed, chemically assisted late night loafing most probably)...infusing dylan style vocal slur and glimmer twin swagger added to the deal these cats were putting down, going for some kind of transatlantic cross cultural blowout (not necessarily desirous most times but in a way it sort of works, a cat can dig what they had in mind, the yanquee continent was further away, both in mileage and culture, from post swinging london back in 1969)...there's a bit of crazy horse funk attack somewhere buried in the mix along with the whiskey, beer and hash plus a desire to splat the listener full on with all instruments bobbing in and out shouting to be heard...some johnny-come-lates tend to diss this first effort as not up to the mark, boring and derivative are the cries heard most often but that's what happens when a different generation start mouthing about times they weren't part of and don't understand how things fit together...this is a truely rocking testament to late 1960's slip and sleaze...
...so we come to the second go round for the hoopling cats and this time they get elbow deep in the ballad bowl with copius whiskey shots poured over them...the couple of crowd pleasing rockers they do dish out are par for the course during the mott tenure at island recs. with all cylinders pumping out the purest of mott grooves...with this wax being top heavy in the slow and funky department this has got to be a prime candidate for late night listening with the outside world safely kept at a measured distance, no squares disturbing the vibes, the room must become a shrine to the eternal being of hoopleness, and with all the keyboard work here, both piano and organ, this is sanctified hoopling that only the righteous disciples can be allowed to dig...this will cleanse the soul with its spirit of 100% mott...
...motts forth LP for island and what would prove to be their last for the label as the sales obviously did not go down too well with the company bean counters...kicking off in fine style with some patented hoople chaos, part zimmerman amphetamine drive and part stonsian swagger, it goes down mighty fine...followed on by a mid-tempo ballad type groove with all the cats getting the vibe and playing as a whole unit...track 3 sees their interest in west coast psych rising once more with a cool cover of the youngbloods 'darkness darkness' which shows they really had a handle on yankee left coast acid vibes, even going back to when they were the 'shakedown sound' they could get to grips with californian acid pop/rock and not come off weak and befuddled like so many anglo combos who thought the future was in copying west coast rock...there's next a long mott ballad (the journey) that takes a couple plays, or possibly more to work its magic but soon it devolves from being 10 minutes to being timeless...back to rowdy motting with 'sweet angeline' where they work up a sweat and get some whiskey swagger going...mariachi trumpets come in on the next tune (second love) which is kind of funny for a london based outfit but they did dig 'sir doug' so maybe some tex-mex ain't so far from wardour street after all...back to outright stones style pounding with track 7, copying the jagger swagger where they show they have more than an inkling how the glimmer twin aesthetic works, how to run the cheyne walk voodoo down and run it down good, also some whoisms mix in giving this a nice 'london satin loon pant' groove...all recorded live in the studio with guy stevens waving guns around in a last ditch attempt to get the mott wagon firing on all cylinders as he knew fully well it could give the right incentive for the hooplers to 'kick it' one more time (phil spector /lee perry have also tried this trick when their charges need some geeing up)...the last track has some john lennon/macca white album mess about going on which brings the whole thing to a conclusion, kind of starting where they began a few years previously...
...what a mighty mighty fine trawl through all things hooply and the years of motting plus over on disk 3 there's some groovy bits and bobs from various 1960s combos that acted as precursor to the story (doc thomas/shakedown sound/buddies) coming in at just under 4 hours and none of it wasted...disk one is the island years with plenty of unreleased versions to give a fuller understanding of the group, how their rough and tumble sound came into being, what made them stand out from the crowd (the best place to see them was at small clubs away from the bright lights of the big city where they could blast away with their lurching rip roaring sound)...disk two is the hit single years where they learned how to control the rough edges and channel the noise into something the general citizens could dig, be it glam thud and thump or anthems for the crash street kidds...this of course is where they lost a lot of the original fans who didn't dig 'their group' becoming 'pop stars', much preferring the shambolic hoople to the newly clean and concise mott...as mentioned the third coaster is a trip to the pre-beginnings plus the hit years with bowie voicing 'dudes', stan tippins vocalising and some demos for various soon to be well known tunes (dig the shakedown sound groove the 'WCPAE' 'transparent day', sign of what could have been if ian hadn't got himself invited to put some sleazy rock in the stew)...add in some live stuff' and this all works out as a great sampling of mottness, so all hooplers and layabouts are advised to tip and tipple some medication for the trip as anything can and most certainly will happen over the next few hours...
...formed sometime in early 1967 andromeda are a real good example of the changing face of underground sound in the transisional years '67/'70 when psych whimsy replaced the freakbeat, heavy blues replaced psych and mixed itself in with some jazz ideas to begat the misunderstood genre prog-rock (when a cat gets down to it prog was ruined by yes and other college boy fantasies that spoke of elves and fairies in a definitely non psych manner), after prog which hung around forever it was all heads to their own discretion, punkhippy/hippypunk being the best route out from under the burden that was the seventies...getting back to the wax in question, andromedas LP was released in '69 with a nice street level power trio blast of heavy blues progging with some '67 style vocal arragements giving it a more rounded sound, bringing in the past to soften the present and make way for the future, a nomadic eye on the older times whilst heading for an uncertain tomorrow...there's a couple of semi-lengthy suites giving off the classical ideas that early prog latched onto, the popular sounding light classics that actually hark back to the beginning of the 20th century with pastorial meets metropolitan vibes, the urban scene gently eats the countryside as modern industry marches ever onward, filled early prog with an embroidery that was too fine to last, it had to be replaced by bombast on a purely hellish ELP stance (nothing intrinsically wrong with ELP bombast when restricted to the first 4 albums but then it got too stupid for its own good)...the light classic approach is the way these cats envisioned it, being able to pump up the sound with modern ampage took the light out of the classic anyway so the real way to dig prog is most assuredly with bands such as this (unless its jazz prog then another starting point must be found with jools/brian auger type R&B proggy jazzbo)...the whole vibe is one of forward motion, but a motion that is countenanced by caution, probaby caution in the fact that uncharted territory is being explored by new recruits, cadets on the maiden voyage to the next plateau where the watchword is change, further intermingling of ideas that will eventually get too complicated to stand up and prog will lumber under its own unnecessary weight, but now with andromeda we see prog with everything to live for, everything to aspire to without any pretense, without commercial leanings...cats who dig the elias hulk / czar style heavy blues splat might wish to more than dig this, it's the sophisticated elder cousin (sophisticated being in relative useage only), the cousin with examination papers marked with a pass (only just, but a graduation all the same), a mild complication of ideas all brought into line by the molding of psych learning on a substantial blues footing, a grounding from which to fly, a nest that can supply sustenance and energy for the long trip to unknown days...andromeda are most likely better than the LP shows due to studio conditions, conditions that flumox many cool combos to the point of freezeing up, but the evidence on display can only give testimony to some new creativity, a new spark from the old rock'n'roll fire, ashes refurbished with the strike of one last match, the match that relights embers of lost chords...
...this somewhat heavy handed hard rock prog disk gets off to a pretty dreary start and makes a cat want to move on quicky but the second track looks up a bit and then they find their footing...keyboard and guitar fronted copy of 'procol harum' with some looking back in the vocal dept. to the psych days...a good example of a combo not really knowing what the new prog sounds of the 70's should be and not enough talent to write a tune and stretch it out...the sort of group that would be second/third on the bill at small provincial gigs, the kind of' band that plys their wares while the audience does its own thing, like getting a drink, skinning up and generally ignoring the stage...in the pantheon of hard rocking prog they amount to really no more than 'also rans' but not very far...having said that it does not stop an original wax copy going for more bread than it should but one cats steak is another cats granola, in this case heavy is as heavy does, you either dig it or you dont...
...from the tail end of the six ohs comes this really top doomy sounding keyboard heavy, proggy hard rock with nice slices of guitar riffing and solos weaving around to make this a total treat...very much a drag that this was the only offering before it was splitsville and all concerned onto lesser, but more lucrative business...
...the wordy poetry gives this disk an othertime feel, a folky feel from an absinthe soaked, opium smoking, crushed velvet wearing wigged poet, one nestled way up on high in a lofty dusty garrett surrounded by quill pens and stacks of parchment ready to catch and keep the wordage...all this mixed with a decadent cabaret vibe that only invited guest are allowed to experience...it seems to exist only for the initiated, cats who have heard the call to dig a higher vibe...
...janis and her band are late going on tonight and the MC has to abate the crowd with some explaination about having had their gear stolen earlier in the day and a new bunch of equipment had to be found and that is why the show is late starting...anyone totally believing this must have the gear with them because a load of hippies stealing equipment lock stock and barrel is somewhat hard to swallow, their general ineptitude makes for the deal to go wrong before it's started...more likely janis was too strung out to get with the time to get on stage and get some rocking going...when they do get on stage they get down with some funk soul rock screech and janis gives off some down home urban shouting and the audience settle in for a late evening with the 'wicked woman', the rock goddess who will set them free from the constraints of a straight jacket society...unfortunately for janis she could not set herself free from society or the life that was mapped out for her by unscrupulous bread heads at the record company or management (the wonderfully exploitative al grossman) so she sank into the booze and smack which bought on entirely new problems so the vicious circle of society / alcohol / heroin kept on turning, least till early october 1970 when some kind of sweet relief was offered and taken...the gig represented by an audience recording on this early boot is from august 12 and was to be her last public engagement and she's kind of getting really wired, giving off some extreme vibrations like she's reaching for something / someone unobtainable yet she continually strives but never comes to the end of the quest...the set list is familiar and the raps between songs have all been heard before, interestingly the audience seem not to get any prurient enjoyment from the joplin expose raps so that must be down to the 'sophisticated boston' hick town mentality more than anything else closer to home...the band are getting some of janis frenetic energy which they translate into some heavy soul blasting, letting rip trying to carry janis further, to the place she so wants to be, to the now unachievable nirvana...
