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Friday, March 6, 2015

Roger Waters- Music from the body

Music From the body
Not for the faint-hearted listener, this 1970 soundtrack album to a medical documentary entitled "The Body" was created by avant-garde composer Ron Geesin & Pink Floyd bassist/singer/composer Roger Waters (Geesin & Waters would work together again on Pink Floyd's "Atom Heart Mother," but "Music From The Body" was their first joint project). The album is pretty wild stuff to say the least, with lots of experimental sounds, instrumentation, vocals and effects. The wonderfully goofy opening cut, "Our Song," with it's rhythmic sound collage of clapping, belching, farting and baby noises (accompanied by ragtime piano, no less!), pretty much prepares you for what will follow. But in between Geesin's far-out pieces (other highlights include the vocal experiments of "More Than Seven Dwarfs...", the spooky "Body Transport," and the fun "Mrs. Throat Goes Walking"), Roger Waters drops in to play some very nice, simple acoustic numbers, like "Sea Shell And Stone," "Chain Of Life," and "Breathe" (a very different song from the "Breathe" that appeared later on Floyd's classic "Dark Side Of The Moon," although it shares the same opening lyric: "Breathe in the air"). Finally, the rest of Pink Floyd themselves---David Gilmour, Nick Mason and Richard Wright---join Waters at the album's end for the uplifting finale, "Give Birth To A Smile." "Music From The Body" is definitely not an album to play at a party, but if you're a diehard fan of early Pink Floyd, then I think you'll enjoy this weird, wonderful record from Ron Geesin & Roger Waters.

Frank Zappa -We are only in it for the money

We are only in it for the money
We're Only In It For The Money arose in the wake of the hippie era in 1968. Frank Zappa must have not liked hippies because he's makes fun of them throughout this album. He also takes a stab at riots involving hippies and politics.

This album is great. It's pretty obvious that The Beatles used this as a basis for their Abbey Road album, showing how inspirational it was at the time. When I purchased the Record in the 70s, it had a different cover though. It was yellow and had all the band members on it and the CD cover was the gatefold. This confused me a lot. It was probably a manufacturing error. This album outdated now but it's a classic in the Mothers catalogue.

I'd encourage Mothers fans to get this CD and listen to it a few times to really understand how great it is.

Its sounds trippy with headphones on.