Pink Floyd-Animals

Animals

 

Roger Waters and David Gilmour composed "Animals" at a time in England when the face of rock music was drastically changing, 1977. Punk bands were forming everywhere, and they all hated Pink Floyd's brand of drawn-out, ethereal music -- stuff they felt was pompous. Thus, given the times, "Animals" turns out to be an impressively guitar-driven album, musical compositions that, despite it all, are also drawn-out and ethereal as only Pink Floyd can be. The middle of this great album courageously contains three lengthy songs, much too long- winded for radio, thus spoiling the album's commercial viability. Also, "Animals" strangely opens and closes with two short and melodically pleasing acoustic songs about love gone bad; "Pigs on the Wing," parts 1 and 2, somehow work well with the overall vibe of the album. Call it a settling of the nerves.

In many instances, "Animals" is fairly stripped-down, with Gilmour's soothing voice completely missing, and Richard Wright contributing absolutely nothing, thus nixing past creative keyboard elements. The possessive Waters writes all lyrics, and the concept of "Animals" is entirely his. In his harshest manner, Waters rips apart late-1970s society through the use of three types of animals: dogs, the materialistic and glib "yuppies" of a decade later, concerned only with wealth, good times, power and their own well-being; "Pigs" are no less flattering, high-positioned and self-righteous, they preach and dispense their high-minded, moralist views from atop the world's ranks; "Sheep" are the aimless and docile masses who get used and abused by the more powerful Dogs and Pigs in society. It's pretty acrimonious stuff, and downbeat lyrics like "all alone and dying of cancer" don't do much to lighten the mood. Weary of the corrupt and crumbling society surrounding him, Waters went on a musical rampage. Political foes, economic hardships and sleazy low-lifes all get their medicine from the non-apologetic Waters, within the confines of these thematically devised tunes.

Though he writes good, astute, observational lyrics, Waters is a bit of a "dog" himself, and he often comes across as self-imposing and self-righteous as the album moves on. Ultimately, "Animals" is great because of the actual MUSIC. Enter Gilmour, thankfully rescuing this one-man monopoly on creativity. Gilmour remains his usual melodic self, pushing forth the fairly paltry compositions with his brand of tunefulness and soaring guitars.

On "Dogs," an interesting moment occurs after Waters cheerily wails, "Have a good drown/Dragged down by the stone." The word "stone" is then repeated countless times through a haze of electronic muffling as dogs bark chillingly in the background and a synth sizzles quietly. Music like this is not heard everyday, and Pink Floyd should be commended for seriously reviving their music and changing with the times a bit back in 1977. The band's more quaint and drug-induced days of singing about lazy nature scenes or fairy-tale scenarios where one merely observes (see The Piper at the Gates of Dawn) were long over by "Animals." It became socio-political music with a harder edge, all run by Waters and Gilmour. There's a sense of purpose and direction from Waters on "Animals" that is eerily one-dimensional, but it's a prelude to an even better concept album to come. Though it's not Waters' creative apex (that would be The Wall (Deluxe Packaging Digitally Remastered), "Animals" is astoundingly excellent, profound music, and the continuation of the civil war within this band. 

George Harrison-Electronic Sound

Electronic Sound

OK, we all know what this album is, right? For the benefit of those who don't already know, this album was originally released in 1969 and was George Harrison's experiment with nothing more than a moog synthesizer. It's not what you'd call "music"...as the title suggests, it is "sound." That does not mean that it's in the same category as John Lennon's "Revolution 9" or his other experiments, however. This is 40-some minutes of sound created with a moog synthesizer--there are no vocals or voices in it whatsoever. You will also not hear any of George's guitar talent or even any actual rhythms.
This is a good album to listen to if you need some far-out background sound for whatever reason. You will not be able to memorize this like you would with regular songs, so the album sounds almost new every time you listen to it. If you like more modern industrial music, you might really enjoy this album, if not solely for its historical significance.

Listening tip: Wear headphones or have your speakers on either side of you to get that nice "surround" effect. Many of the sounds jump from side to side and it's much more exciting to listen to this way (as is pretty much anything recorded back when stereo was still a new thing).

Emerson Lake and Palmer-Triology

Triology

Trilogy finds ELP at a more harnessed, yet still experimental and progressive format, as this offering is not as harsh and abrasive sounding as Pictures at an Exhibition. It seems more clean, crisp and refined, yet still encompassing the complex and manic keyboard flourishes of Keith Emerson. It also has the more elegant Greg Lake pieces (In The Beginning), and Carl Palmer's fabulous drumming. You get quirky numbers like The Sheriff, which features a crazed, yet humorous piano solo what I would describe as "wild west ragtime" at the end. Man, Keith Emerson can play the hell out of his instrument. Hoedown, if you remember the "Beef, it's what's for dinner" commercial, then you'll know this is a unique remake of a classical piece. This one is a more rocked up version. Trilogy is one of the prog-rock epics on the disc. It almost has a latin-like feel to it in the way Greg Lake delivers his vocals against Keith's synths and the percussion used in the last few minutes. Living Sin is a great tune. My only complaint is the annoying dark-pitched vocals. Abaddon's Bolero is a synth experiment and is all instrumental clocking in at 8 minutes. And it all starts out with The Endless Enigma, a 10 minute prog fest spread across the first three tracks. This is my favorite from the disc. This truly has some creepy parts in it. Not the least of it is brought on by Keith Emerson's synths. It truly has a creepy last second synth echo that you just can't get out of your head, at least for me.

Overall, a fine offering from ELP. This was my second purchase and I look forward to owning more ELP discs, as they have become a new favorite of mine.

Great Pot Smoking CD.

Grateful Dead-Grayfolded

GrayFolded

It could be argued that the first ever plunderphonics record was the Grateful Dead's Anthem Of The Sun from 1969. In this they overlaid studio techniques involving overdubs, phasing, echo, backward tapes, pitch and speed shifting onto a complex collage of live concert performances that centered on That's It For The Other One, which was itself superimposed over a skeletal studio rhythm track. Therefore it is especially fitting that the acknowledged master of the medium, John Oswald, should devote this two-disc set to a single piece by the Grateful Dead.

Dark Star is best known in its elongated form on the album Live/Dead, the only Grateful Dead record owned by John Oswald at the start of this project (an extract of the Live/Dead version also appeared in the film Zabriskie Point). The song began life as a sub-three minute single recorded during the sessions for Anthem Of The Sun, but its suitability as a jumping-off point for extended instrumental experimentation led to it becoming an on and off stage favourite for over twenty-five years; and since the Dead (and kerzillion bootleggers) made audio documents of all their concerts, a vast archive of over 100 performances was available as source material for John Oswald's 1995 piece, Grayfolded. Forty hours' worth of these were digitally transferred to use on the project.

Using samples as short as one quarter of a second and rarely longer than 15 seconds, the resulting Grayfolded is an extraordinary technical and sonically hallucinatory time-warped achievement, reconstructed from performances of Dark Star dating between January 1968 and September 1993. Each disc comprises one complete assembled and perfectly lysergic performance that never was, the first disc being Transitive Axis and the second entitled Mirror Ashes, each with their own subtle conceptual distinctions.

Since the early seventies, in his plunderphonic pieces, John Oswald has tried to amplify the qualities that were most striking to him in the work of the artists he was plundering. In the case of the Dead, this was their extended live playing style. Consequently, by exaggerating the length of the piece Dark Star while attempting furthermore to translate the complete feel of the Grateful Dead live experience into an ambient dance outer-space type of record, he has created a virtual super-real definition of what Dark Star is.

The piece was commissioned by the Grateful Dead and when Phil Lesh commented that he would like to hear more of Oswald's landmark "folding" effects, he added to Mirror Ashes for his benefit a two second clip whereby the whole hour of Transitive Axis was heard, having been folded 16,384 times. This is just one example of the obsessively complex nature of the construction of this sublime work.

Essential to any Deadhead collection, this is a record that can both be listened to intently, enveloped by headphones, as I would ideally recommend, or ignominiously made to function ambiently, Eno-style, as background music to aid household or office chores, or in the car. It also has wonderfully expansive liner notes by Rob Bowman, and comprehensive time-maps, showing from where each sample was taken.

Syd Barrett-Opel

Opel

Fans of Syd Barrett will justly celebrate this collection of outtakes and previously unreleased recordings, culled from the last few years of Barrett's brief creative career. Known for his querly songwriting in Pink Floyd, this collection finds Barrett less self-consciously trying to wrestle a psychedelic vision, and just letting his inner world flow out. Syd's playing is often clumsy, but never insincere in these uncompromising yet good-humored numbers. The sound quality is excellent and pared-down, often merely Syd and his guitar feeling his way through the new material (though there are some fascinating experiments like the murky basses on "Swan Lee" and the vibraphone instrumental version of "Golden Hair.") It gives me chills to hear his quiet, accented voice gently intoning a series of random words on "Word Song" - some of them ("glaucous") quite nonsensical. There is a childlike purity to this work that defies proper description. For those who prefer stream of consciousness, visionary work to radio pandering, you will not want to miss this. Fans of Barrett's other solo work will enjoy the intimacy of this inclusion to the canon.

Opel is a collection of unreleased recordings from Syd Barrett, they're either demos, alternate versions or unfinished tracks. Syd was one strange dude and very unperdictable. He would wander into the studio and start playing and would quit without warning. While he was in the studio, the backing members of Soft Machine would hang around and try to play along. But Syd would change chords or notes so often that it became virtually impossible to keep up with him. A collection of Syd Barrett's material was released a few years ago and it uses tracks from all three albums, a definitive collection of music world's most eccentric individual.

Recommended for psychedelic music fans.

Grace Slick & Great Society-Collectors Edition

Collectors Edition

This is certainly more of a SanFranciso Late sixties music, that certainly sounds really cool when your in outer space.

The Great Society has acheived a near-mythic status as the proto-Jefferson Airplane in the collective memory of the San Francisco-Flowers-In-Your-Hair veterans brigade. It is hard to admit that The Great Society was "such a half-assed band," as Grace Slick described it. It's a certainty that there are scores of dusty reel-to-reels of better and more deserving unknown bands of that era hidden in broom closets throughout America.

But The Great Society had two things going for it that no other Frisco bar band of the era could match, those being a repetiore of good songs (and not just "Somebody To Love" and "White Rabbit" either), and Grace Slick. The raw musicianship of The Great Society puts you in mind of your college roommate who played Bob Dylan tunes all day on his $75 beach guitar. Like him, at least they tried really hard to sound like something. Still, they are utter tyros. Their sincerity is wonderful, and their ability to sample varied phrases from others' songs is effective, but it doesn't make them at all "innovative" or "the first psychedelic band of the era" as other reviewers would have it. If they had been they would have had their own fifteen minutes of fame and not been a mere footnote to the Airplane. Darby Slick, the band's second most talented musician/composer, vanished from the commercial music scene to reemerge years later after studying music in India. Tentative though sloppy elements of Indian ragas do pepper The Great Society's songs, predating even George Harrison's experiments with The Beatles, but they are the attempts of a dedicated amateur. In the intervening decades Darby developed his talent, and did invent "the Slick," a unique type of fretless guitar. As a matter of fact, Jerry, Darby and Grace Slick were inspired to form the band only after seeing the Jefferson Airplane perform live at the Matrix where the tapes that make up this disc were recorded. The Airplane essentially created and then discovered them. Shortly thereafter, the Airplane shanghaied Grace. Yes, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but that doesn't mean your favorite band won't steal your lead singer.

Grace both overwhelms and uplifts her woefully untalented bandmates. Her singing is like a blast of raw power that completely swamps the reedy background notes of The Great Society. Amazingly, that voice alone manages to move The Great Society from their garage to your cousin's wedding. It is also, before years of alcohol, cigarettes, drug abuse, and overuse, clear as a bell, smoother than milk, and mesmerizingly erotic. Hearing Grace on this disc left no question as to why the Airplane had to have her.

The songs themselves are certainly deserving of some serious attention, whether covers or originals, both in choice or composition. "Sally Go Round The Roses" has a disturbing and hypnotic undertone. "Father Bruce" is a topical pop-rocker celebrating the immortal Lenny. Grace's cover of "Nature Boy" shows she can easily handle a true standard even with truly substandard backing. And of course, "Somebody To Love" (written by Darby) and "White Rabbit" (written by Grace) became the best-known Summer of Love classics. "Somebody To Love" sounds less dynamic in the hands of The Great Society, but the original "White Rabbit" has a less structured, more improvisational, and trippier feel to it than the Airplane's version. However, just because they are the original versions doesn't mean that they are necessarily "better" versions; but they are different. Given what the Airplane did with them, it would be interesting to see what another band might do with the rest of The Great Society's playlist.

THE GREAT SOCIETY is a curio recording, but one that's indispensable if you want to feel the experience of the earliest days of Acid Rock; and well worth it if you want to experience Grace Slick at her purest.

Beatles Magical Mystery Tour

Magical Mystery Tour

Music CD

John Lennon thought this was the best Beatles album...what better praise could "Magical Mystery Tour" get? John liked it because it was "so wierd", and that's my main reason for liking it too. It's quirky but solid. Despite the wonderfully odd songs such as "Blue Jay Way", the lovely "Flying" and the title track, this album also features some of the Beatle's best songs. I mean, come on - "Strawberry Fields Forever", "I Am the Walrus", "Fool on the Hill", "Penny Lane" on the same album? Wierd songs, great songs, it was an extension of Sgt Pepper, but the music here is more personal, heartfelt and meaningful. This album, "Magical Mystery Tour", is often knocked by critics, mostly because its songs are gathered from many sources, (EP's, singles) and because it came from a film which was not well liked, (though I think the film was marvelous fun!) Plus, the Beatles had just released "Sgt Pepper". Nevertheless, you've got to admit, "Sgt Pepper" was kind of a tough act to top! MMT was brilliant in its own right. Extra points for the Beatle's fabulous use of the mellotron throughout this record, truly one of the most haunting & beautiful instruments. And one final bonus point for "I Am the Walrus"...the Beatle's best song ever recorded! 

Movie

The hype (most of it) that has surrounded this movie basically said: "It's a silly nonsense movie, not worth your time, etc." Well, the silliness and the nonsense are precisely the point. There is a "Zeitgeist" here from 1967 which is kinda "the hippie vs. the Straight World" or "Authority vs. Fantasy/Dreams"...or you may have your own description. If you followed the Beatles "down the rabbit hole"/as they evolved so-to-speak you'll know what I mean. For me, since I've gotten it, it is one of my most watched DVDs. For exactly the reason that it IS more a "vibe" than about anything "concrete". And yes, the sound and picture are restored beautifully...the commentary by Paul and Ringo is cool and so are the extras. And finally, not to be too philosophical about it (but I will anyway!), the modern world could use the fun fantasy and non-violent silliness that MMT provides.

Pink Floyd-Piper at the Gates of Dawn

Piper at the gates of dawn

The Pink Floyd may not have been the only (or first) British band making psychedelic pop rock at the time, but they sure made some of the best. "Astronomy Domine" is a classic opener, with strange radio chatter giving way to Syd Barrett's mysterious and evocative spacey musings sung in his gentle but haunting voice. The backdrop is dominated by Barrett's reverb-drenched guitar and Rick Wright's crazy organ sounds--two musical elements that typify the classic sound of the whole album. Barrett's songwriting really shines for its uniqueness of vision and effortless un-self-conscious whimsy on the groovy "Lucifer Sam," the hazy childhood loveletter "Matilda Mother," and the tripped-out "Flaming." The middle of the album gets really trippy, with the bizarre "Pow R. Toc H.", filled with weird vocal sound effects, Roger Waters' only track on the album ("Take Up Thy Stethescope and Walk") and "Interstellar Overdrive," one of the early band's most classic tracks. Through these songs they show a penchant for jamming centered on virtuosity, but more on a restless urge to experiment sonically and chase down some strange and stimulating sounds. Unlike the tedious jams that typify some music from this era, Pink Floyd pulls it off remarkably well (case in point, the wild ride of "Interstellar Overdrive" sandwiched between the song's surf-sounding primary riff). Barrett's fantastical whimsy returns for the album's last few tracks, especially on the Tolkein-esque "The Gnome," which jollily interrupts the droning embers of "Interstellar Overdrive," the sublime "Scarecrow," and the classic "Bike," which sees Barrett rattling off nonsensical details about his life. The album ends (much like the contemporary Sgt. Pepper) in a chaotic clamor of strange sound effects and percussive noises, marking the end of a particularly distinguished psychedelic journey. Really, what sets The Piper at the Gates of Dawn apart from some of its contemporaries is Barrett's imagination and intuitive knack for catchy lyrical and musical hooks. This is music that, despite its weirdness, sticks with you by virtue of quality writing.

Syd Barrett-Barrett

Barrett

There is no way to predict either "The Madcap Laughs" or "Barrett" based on the few things we originally heard from Syd on Pink Floyd's debut album. At once, the records are miles apart and still as close as they could ever be. Of the two solo albums, "Barrett" is perhaps more readily accessible than "The Madcap Laughs" simply because it features a more typical rock line-up and a more traditional "songs" approach. But there is nothing typical or traditional about "Barrett".

This album is eccentirc in different ways: the "oh I forgot I was playing a solo" solo in "Gigolo Aunt", the bizarre atmosphere of "Maisie", the stylistic symmetry of song pacing between side one with side two, on the album anyway. (Baby Lemonade / Gigolo Aunt. Love Song / Waving My Arms in the Air. Dominoes / I Never Lied to You. It is Obvious / Wined and Dined. Rats / Wolfpack. Maisie / Elephant.) What it took to make this album one can only imagine and it seems a great deal of credit belongs to David Gilmour for pulling, and keeping, things together. There is a pervasively sad beauty to everything. Sad not from pain, but from surrender to a nostalgia and longing. These are the emotions that provide the record with a deeper sense of organization, intentional or not.

There is also a loose and improvised feel to much of what's going on here, and yet there are many many familiar markers. The bluesy riff on "Maisie" is nothing special, but the surpressed, almost mumbled delivery of the lyrics transforms the simple music into something ethereal. And we hear the lyrics of someone, no matter how altered by drugs and shades of mental illness, who has a singular voice. It would be too much to compare Barrett to Rimbaud, but there is a parallel sense of disorientation, dislocation and perceiving the everday as suddenly strange and saturated with new and concealed meaning. The clowns of "Baby Lemonade" remind us of "Octopus" from "The Madcap Laughs" -- originally called "Clowns and Jugglers". Here reality is transformed through incongruous juxtaposition: "sad town; cold iron hands; party of clowns; rain falls in grey." For lack of a better term, these are signature lyrics and belong only to Barrett because they show an uncanny ability to turn everything inside-out: "In the evening, sun going down, when the earth streams in, in the morning."

Even with these brilliant words "Barrett " is a disarming record because as familiar as the music is, the whole is much stranger than the surface reveals. The instrumental passages are almost all very casual and offhand, and still unique -- the backwards guitar on "Dominoes" is something that would usually make me breathe the word "cliche", yet in the context of that most sad song it feels neither cliche or even derivative. At every moment, we're experiencing something very different and very unique. Taken apart and taken together "Barrett" is remarkable music, and anything but obvious.