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Fifty Year Friday: Genesis: From Genesis to Revelation; Colosseum: Those Who Are About to Die, Salute You

March 8, 2019

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Genesis: From Genesis to Revelation

Selling less than 700 copies, Genesis first album was recorded mostly in August 1968 and was released on March 7, 1969.  Poor sales followed, with a significant percentage of the copies hitting small town UK stores, filed incorrectly, partly due to the absence of the band’s name on the cover, in the religious music bin.  Not helping matters was the guidance from British record producer Jonathan King (once best known for his one hit, “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”, but now known more today as the discoverer of Genesis)  for the band to simplify the arrangements.  The music, though of lesser quality than later Genesis compositions, was further compromised by removal and trimming of solos, particularly Tony Bank’s keyboard solos, and by later adding orchestral accompaniment to what the band thought was the finished takes.  Yet, with all these musical compromises, the album still is worth listening to, particularly for Gabriel’s vocals, Banks keyboard work, and the generally unconventional nature of the songs, which show harmonic, melodic, and lyrical maturity and more or less make up a concept album roughly centered around the contents of Genesis and Revelations.

There are various versions of CDs that include bonus tracks and there is also the fourth CD of the 1998 Genesis: Archives set which includes demos and tracks from this time frame including “The Mystery of the Flannan Isle Lighthouse”, “Hair on the Arms and Legs,” and the “Magic of Time” with Banks providing jazz-influenced piano.  Though overshadowed by the quality of later Gabriel-era Genesis albums, “From Genesis to Revelation” is more than a historical curiosity — it is a collection of fine pop songs that are better than most of the pop music recorded in 1968 and 1969, an era providing some of the best rock music of all time.

Genesis

Additional musicians

  • Chris Stewart – drums on “Silent Sun”
  • Arthur Greenslade – strings and horn arrangement, conducting
  • Lou Warburton – strings and horn arrangement, conducting

Wikipedia track listing

 

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Colosseum: Those Who Are About to Die, Salute You

The basic idea behind blues is rather straightforward with the most common format being the twelve bar blues, consisting of four measures of the tonic chord (triad or seventh built on thirds from the first note of the scale), two measures of the sub-dominant chord (built on the fourth note of the scale), a return of the tonic chord for two measures, followed by two measures of the dominant (build on the fifth note of the scale which pulls strongly towards the return to the tonic, particularly when including the seventh note), followed by two measures of the tonic.

There are many  variations of this, and basically if one has that I chord (tonic), followed by some flavor of that IV chord (subdominant), with a return to the I chord, followed by the V (dominant), and repeating this pattern, whether in 12 bars, 16 bars or some less-common length, whether additional chords are added such as commonly adding the IV chord prior to the V resolving to the I chord, or adding passing chords or substituting related chords, then one has some version of the blues.  The idea here is that we basically have a I-IV-I-V-I progression that repeats for the duration of the song and upon which, if desired, the are multiple avenues for variation on or divergence from the primary blues pattern.

The early American Rock & Roll was primarily blues, the early British Invasion sound included many blues-based numbers, and many bands of the late 1960s, from Cream to the Yardbirds to Ten Years After to Led Zeppelin relied heavily on blues.  It’s then natural to consider blues-based rock to be more traditional rock, with the more varied chordal progressions (chord progressions that venture beyond those notes found in the I, IV and V chords)  including modal-based chord progressions commonly found in psychedelic rock and extended and altered chords commonly found in jazz to be an indication of more adventurous, exploratory, progressive rock.

And it’s natural that many musicians and bands would first start learning blues progressions and develop from there.  And so it was that many rock bands started out as blues-based bands, later developing into psychedelic bands, hard rock bands, acid or heavy metal bands, or even progressive rock bands.

But should a blues-based album sounds like progressive rock?  Or can a progressive rock band be primarily a blues band?

Such a question may be addressed in retrospect looking back at Colosseum’s first album, recorded in late 1968 and early 1968 and released in March of 1969.  At the time, the term progressive rock had yet to be applied as a label with most listeners not even dividing rock music into genres or styles.  The music of that baby boomer generation was simply the music of the times, whether it was rock, or later became to be known as folk-rock, jazz-rock, blues rock, hard rock, acid rock, or psychedelic rock.  The label of progressive rock was yet to be in play. and so what we have with this first Colosseum album, “Those Who Are About to Die, Salute You”, is simply a well-performed rock album

But what a performance.  The songs don’t stand out: all but two are blues numbers, mostly vehicles for blues and jazz-rock-like improvisation — these two exceptions being Greenslade’s “Mandarin”, ironically based on a Japanese scale and incorporating a short blues-like section before launching into an extended Tony Reeves bass solo, and Colosseum’s version of Procol Harum’s “Whiter Shade of Pale”, titled “Beware the Ides of March” which includes a foray into Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D minor” with additional improvisation.   The combination of foundational keyboard work by Dave Greenslade, high quality jazz-based sax work by Dick Heckstall-Smith and outstanding guitar from James Litherland make this a very different blues-rock album than that of contemporary rock bands and qualifies this to be classified as progressive rock — though I must admit, I am never sure what that term really means….

Colosseum

Additional personnel

Wikipedia track listing

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Category:

1969, Music, Progressive Rock, Rock

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Fifty Year Friday: Aretha Franklin, Soul ’69; Neil Young; The Beatles

January 18, 2019

arertha69

Aretha Franklin: Soul ’69

Some albums showcase great songs or excellent compositions, some great arrangements and some showcase great talent. The title is misleading, as this is more of a jazz and blues album than a soul album, and a much more appropriate title would have been “Aretha 1969.”

This excellent album, released January 17, 1969, showcases one of the great vocal instrumentalists of the last hundred years at her best.  In general, the arrangements set up Aretha Franlin to effectively display her incredible musicality.  On this album, Aretha is not song-interpreter in the manner of Billie Holiday, Mildred Bailey, Johnny Hartman, or Chet Baker, but is an expressive instrumentalist like John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, or Eric Dolphy.   For anyone wishing to explore what made Aretha so great, this is a perfect album to start with.

We also get a myriad of skilled jazz musicians backing her up.

Track listing (from Wikipedia)

Side one

 Writers(s)

1.

 “Ramblin'”
Big Maybelle

2.

 “Today I Sing the Blues“
Curtis Reginald Lewis

3.

 “River’s Invitation” Percy Mayfield

4.

 “Pitiful” Rosie Marie McCoy, Charlie Singleton

5.

 “Crazy He Calls Me“
Bob Russell, Carl Sigman

6.

 “Bring It On Home to Me“
Sam Cooke

Side two

7.

 “Tracks of My Tears“
Smokey Robinson, Pete Moore, Marv Tarplin

8.

 “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody”
Rudy Clark

9.

 “Gentle on My Mind“
John Hartford

10.

 “So Long“
Russ Morgan, Remus Harris, Irving Melsher

11.

 “I’ll Never Be Free“
Bennie Benjamin, George David Weiss

12.

 “Elusive Butterfly“
Bob Lind

Personnel 

neil-young-debut

Neil Young: Neil Young

I’m a pushover for early Neil Young, whether it’s his simple, uncomplicated songs (uncomplicated harmonically and lyrically) like “The Loner” or his repetitive, extended songs with unfathomable lyrics like “The Last Trip to Tulsa.”  Nothing here on this album to get a Pulitzer Prize for music or a Nobel Prize for poetry, but how can you not love how Neil cuts to the core of what the singer songwriter experience is all about and provides the equivalent warmth and informalness of those Saturday lunches at a friend’s house?  It’s always a pleasure to take this timeless debut album, released January 22, 1969, for a spin — a classic album which winningly captures and represents Neil Young being Neil Young.

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The Beatles: Yellow Submarine

And of course, I have to mention the Yellow Submarine “soundtrack” album, released January 13, 1969, which importantly contains one masterpiece, John Lennon’s 1968 blues-based “Hey Bulldog” with its opening, addictive riff emphasizing the melodic dissonance of the tritone and McCartney’s solid and sometimes improvisitory bass work, and one other very strong composition, George Harrison’s 1967 “Only a Northern Song.”  Also included is the 1967 early psychedelic, “It’s All Too Much.”

Category:

Album review, Blues, Fifty Year Friday, Folk Rock, jazz, Rock, Soul

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Fifty Year Friday: The Pretty Things, S.F. Sorrow; Led Zeppelin

January 11, 2019

s.f.-sorrow-front

Pretty Things: S.F. Sorrow

Recorded from November 1967 to September 1968 in Abbey Road Studios, The Pretty Thing’s S.F. Sorrow, initially largely ignored but now generally considered a classic, was released in the UK in December 1968, and then not released in the U.S. until the middle of 1969.  Panned by the Rolling Stone’s Lester Bangs as an “ultra-pretentious” concept album, the album received limited attention for years. Its poor reception and lack of sales precipitated founder and lead guitarist into leaving the band for a period of nearly a decade.

There seems to be many contributing factors to the album’s commercial failure: the lack of promotion, the late release of the album in the States (coming out after, rather than before, The Who’s superior, more opera-like concept album, Tommy), bad reviews, and the dark, despondent subject matter, allegorical and tragic, with its primary character named Sebastian Sorrow.  Also, heavily influenced by the Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers and “Fool on the Hill”,  its musical language is that of the psychedelic rock of late 1967 and 1968, now losing much of its mass popularity.  By the time of the album’s release, the major proponents, adherents, and imitators of psychedelic rock were moving on to hard rock, progressive rock, or heavy metal.  These and other reasons caused the album to be pretty much ignored until reissued by Edsel records in the late 1980s on vinyl and then on CD in the early 1990s.

I purchased a S.F. Sorrow CD around 1992 and set it aside for some time, coming back to it recently, taking the time to appreciate what it had to offer and its historical significance — not so important as an early concept album — remember Nirvana’s 1967 album as well as other concept albums, including Sgt. Peppers, Days of Future Passed, and The Who Sell Out preceding it — but as one of the last carefully-crafted psychedelic albums of the sixties — and one that looks forward towards hard rock, progressive rock, and heavy metal — three of the most prevailing, and commercially viable, offshoots of the psychedelic rock era.

The Beatles’ influence, particularly from Sgt Peppers and singles like “Fool on the Hill”, is strong — the second track borrows elements from “Norwegian Wood” through “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite”, and the third track, “I am the Walrus” and “Good Morning” — yet, this is an album that incorporates and absorbs those influences more than mimics.

More to the point, is the quality of the album which starts out strong and builds to the end without weakness or filler; even the somewhat musique-concrete “Well of Destiny” (possibly influenced by the transitional section of “Day in the Life” ) serving its purpose in the musical narrative.  The arrangements, variety, and appropriateness of instrumentation further elevates the quality of the album, and in fact are usually of greater interest than the melodic/harmonic content of the songs themselves. (Perhaps the best song on the album, is the most simply arranged one, the poignant, “Loneliest Person”)

Though this album is very much a product of  1967 and 1968 sensibilities and styles, there are passages and techniques that anticipate other works of 1969 and the early seventies.  One can hear hints at later music from the Beatles-influenced Electric Light Orchestra (especially in “Trust”) and Badfinger to Benefit-era Jethro Tull (“Private Sorrow”) to the Who’s Tommy (“The Journey” and the intro to “Old Man Going”) to Queen.  The most remarkable similarity is to the heavy metal, bass-dominated style of Black Sabbath in “Old Man Going”  which also includes a short hard-rock electric guitar.

The CD release includes some notable bonus tracks, including “Defecting Grey” , a commercially unsuccessful single from this time period.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

Side One

1. “S.F. Sorrow Is Born” Phil May, Dick Taylor, Wally Waller 3:12
2. “Bracelets of Fingers” May, Taylor, Waller 3:41
3. “She Says Good Morning” May, Taylor, Waller, Twink 3:23
4. “Private Sorrow” May, Taylor, Waller, Jon Povey 3:51
5. “Balloon Burning” May, Taylor, Waller, Povey 3:51
6. “Death” May, Taylor, Waller, Povey, Twink 3:05

Side Two

7. “Baron Saturday” May, Taylor, Waller 4:01
8. “The Journey” May, Taylor, Waller, Twink 2:46
9. “I See You” May, Taylor, Waller 3:56
10. “Well of Destiny” May, Taylor, Waller, Povey, Twink, Norman Smith 1:46
11. “Trust” May, Taylor, Waller 2:49
12. “Old Man Going” May, Taylor, Waller, Povey, Twink 3:09
13. “Loneliest Person” May, Taylor, Waller, Twink 1:29
Bonus tracks

14. “Defecting Grey” May, Taylor, Waller 4:27
15. “Mr. Evasion” May, Taylor, Waller, Twink 3:26
16. “Talkin’ About the Good Times” May, Taylor, Waller 3:41
17. “Walking Through My Dreams” May, Taylor, Waller, Povey 3:35
18. “Private Sorrow” (Single version) May, Taylor, Waller, Povey 3:50
19. “Balloon Burning” (Single version) May, Taylor, Waller, Povey 3:45
20. “Defecting Grey” (Acetate recording) May, Taylor, Waller 5:10

Personnel

The Pretty Things

  • Phil May – vocals
  • Dick Taylor – lead guitar, vocals
  • Wally Waller – bass, guitar, vocals, wind instruments, piano
  • Jon Povey – organ, sitar, Mellotron, percussion, vocals
  • Skip Alan – drums (on some tracks, quit during recording)
  • Twink – drums (on some tracks, replaced Alan), vocals

CFP National Championship - Alabama v Clemson

Led Zeppelin: Led Zeppelin

With the semantic essence of heavy metal captured in the group’s name, its hard to dispute that Led Zeppelin forged a new path down the nascent arena of hard rock and heavy metal. With a name remarkably similar to Iron Butterfly, and a similar, but more promising, blues-based musical DNA, we have the beginnings of what would soon be the quintessential hard rock group influencing predecessors like Free to countless successors like Aerosmith, Metallica, Queen, Alice Kooper, Guns N’ Roses and countless emulators that never landed a major recording contract.

From the opening guitar and drums in the opening track, “Good Times, Bad Times”, there is a focus, crispness and intensity not present in many of the blues-based rock albums immediately preceding this one.  My first experience with this album was when my next door neighbor brought it over for me to capture on my reel-to-reel tape deck for my own, limited music library.  Based on my friend’s direction, I recorded the tracks he thought worth putting on tape, securing the more accessible tracks, like”Good Times, Bad Times”,  “Babe I’m Going to Leave You” and “Communication Breakdown” but leaving out a couple I would not listen to again for decades — the last two tracks of side two.  Fortunately, since my friend had fairly good taste, we recorded all of side one, including the mysteriously dark and heavy, “Dazed and Confused”, a well-written composition, starting with, and repeating, a chromatically-descending chord sequence. Though credited to Jimmy Page on the album, the work is mostly based on a song by the same name on a 1967 album by Jake Holmes, which the Yardbirds (a group that included Jimmy Page for a while) had originally “borrowed.”  If you haven’t heard the Jake Holmes version, do yourself a favor and take the time to listen to it below.

Side Two of Led Zeppelin starts with a majestic organ solo by John Paul Jones as part of the captivating beginning of “Your Time Is Gonna  Time.” Unfortunately, the verse is much stronger than a weak, almost annoying, chorus that detracts from the rest of the work.

The next track, one which we also recorded for my repeated listening pleasure was “Black Mountain Side” based on an arrangement of the Irish folk song “Down by Blackwaterside” taught to Jimmy Page by Al Stewart.  This is followed by “Communication Breakdown”, later to become an AM radio hit.  For me, this title always brings to mind that famous phase in Cool Hand Luke — “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

The last two tracks are probably what my friend would have referred to as the band just jamming, but listening to these again, I appreciate the quality musicianship and the  overall mood.  That said, I can’t particularly bemoan not having grown up with these two tracks as part of the musical soundtrack of my high school years (1969-1973.)

Though I have mixed feelings about this album, which has many strong points, but is certainly guilty of not properly crediting others, a common enough practice in the Renaissance and Baroque days of music, but not so acceptable in the late 1960s,  I would pick this in an instant over contemporary albums by Steppenwolf and Iron Butterfly.  Do I regularly, or, on average, once-a-decade listen to this? Not really; I find the later Led Zeppelin albums more appealing — and I pretty much don’t listen to those due to all the more interesting jazz, rock and classical music that contends for my limited listening time.  However, that said, prior to posting this Fifty Year Friday entry, I did truly enjoy listening to this first “L-Zep” (modern transformation of their name) once again (and then a second time), forty-nine and a half years later after first hearing all of it, and  making a copy of it for my own use, just as Jimmy Page had made a copy of both “Dazed and Confused” and “Down by Blackwaterside” for Led Zeppelin’s own use on their very first album.

No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. “Good Times Bad Times“
2:46
2. “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You“

 

 6:42
3. “You Shook Me“
6:28
4. “Dazed and Confused“ Page, inspired by Jake Holmes[c] 6:28
 

Side two
No. Title Writer(s) Length
5. “Your Time Is Gonna Come”
  • Page
  • Jones
 4:34
6. “Black Mountain Side” (instrumental) Page 2:12
7. “Communication Breakdown“
  • Page
  • Jones
  • Bonham
 2:30
8. “I Can’t Quit You Baby“ Dixon 4:42
9. “How Many More Times“
  • Page
  • Jones
  • Bonham
 8:27

 

Led Zeppelin

Additional personnel

 

Category:

Album review, Fifty Year Friday, Rock, Uncategorized

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Fifty Year Friday: The Canterbury Scene: Soft Machine and Caravan first albums

January 4, 2019

Establishing the starting point of progressive rock is a hopeless cause since elements of progressive rock appear in bits in pieces long before a general progressive rock style.  The best one can do is try establish the earliest date of the first progressive rock group. Some might argue that such an “earliest date” is established by the formation of the Wilde Flowers, a group of jazz-leaning musicians that took a crack at British Rock and Roll in 1964 and developed a more-or-less accessible, and even partly danceable style of music that foreshadows the music of the Canterbury scene — easily enough explained by the members of the Wilde Flowers all taking prominent roles in these later groups. Though no albums were recorded, we have a set of demos that have been released on CD and are currently available on You Tube.  Keep in mind that these were demos and not particularly representative of Wilde Flower live performances, which included some jazz-based improvisation.

Though I prefer to keep my distance from the term “progressive rock” as a label for a style of music, I support a concept of progressive rock representing the pushing of boundaries of status-quo music and breaking free of the constraints of commercial expectations, particularly when commercially successful as in the case of songs like the Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.”  This means that any rock music, whether by the Beach Boys, the Beatles, Jefferson Airplane, The Doors, The Zombies or some other group from the mid or late sixties that goes past the minimal expectations of pop/rock to explore the passageways that naturally and unnaturally twist and spiral out into Robert Frost’s road not taken.  This is also why I am hesitant to consider some of the “neo-progressive” rock bands as notably progressive — such a use of the “progressive” label creates the ironic condition when applied to today’s musicians, of being indicative of a lack of progressiveness as they are trying to recreate an older style as opposed to pushing out to new territories. However, that said, quality and excellence is a more welcome and appealing feature in any music over progressiveness for the sake of sounding or being progressive. I will more readily listen to the post-romantic British symphony composers of the early twentieth century over many of their contemporary atonal composers.

The Wilde Flowers

Band members included, at various times:

softm1MI0001896961

The Soft Machine: The Soft Machine

The Soft Machine, named after the 1961 novel by William S. Burroughs (titled based on the nature of the human body) started as a quartet in 1966 that included Robert Wyatt and Kevin Ayers from the Wilde Flowers, and classically-trained keyboardist Mike Ratledge and guitarist Daevid Allen from the free-jazz group Daevid Allen Trio. Following a European tour in August 1967, Allen, an Australian, was refused re-entry into Britain due to a previous overstay on an earlier visit.  Allen returned to Paris, to later form the group Gong, leaving Soft Machine a trio. On the first Soft Machine album we also have  Brian Hopper and Hugh Hopper, prior members of The Wilde Flowers, appearing in the writing credits.

This first Soft Machine album is a mixture of psychedelic rock and jazz elements as in tracks like “Joy of a Toy”, based on “Joy to The World” and sounding more like early space rock than Christmas music. Robert Wyatt makes up for any shortcomings as a vocalist with his contributions on drums.

Interestingly, the post of this first Soft Machine album on YouTube (link) has a Dislike to Like ratio of .0257 in the same ballpark of the Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers (link) ratio of .0254 — compare that to the Beatles’ Abbey Road ratio of .15 (link) or Gentle Giant’s Free Hand of .030 (link)

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

Side one
No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. “Hope for Happiness” Kevin Ayers, Mike Ratledge, Brian Hopper 4:21
2. “Joy of a Toy“ Ayers, Ratledge 2:49
3. “Hope for Happiness (Reprise)” Ayers, Ratledge, B. Hopper 1:38
4. “Why Am I So Short?” Ratledge, Ayers, Hugh Hopper 1:39
5. “So Boot If At All” Ayers, Ratledge, Robert Wyatt 7:25
6. “A Certain Kind” H. Hopper 4:11
Side two
No. Title Writer(s) Length
7. “Save Yourself” Wyatt 2:26
8. “Priscilla” Ayers, Ratledge, Wyatt 1:03
9. “Lullabye Letter” Ayers 4:32
10. “We Did It Again” Ayers 3:46
11. “Plus Belle qu’une Poubelle” Ayers 1:03
12. “Why Are We Sleeping?” Ayers, Ratledge, Wyatt 5:30
13. “Box 25/4 Lid” Ratledge, H. Hopper 0:49

The Soft Machine

Additional personnel

caravan R-11701362-1520895436-5771.jpeg

Caravan: Caravan

Also made up of band members from The Wilde Flower (Pye Hastings, David and Richard Sinclair, and drummer Richard Coughlan), Caravan started up in 1968 and released their first album about the same time as Soft Machine’s first album.  This would be the first British group signed to Verve records, the famed American Jazz label founded in 1956 by Norman Granz that not only carried the most jazz titles in their catalog of any label, but also was home to Frank Zappa and The Velvet Underground.

Even if one is able to somehow dismiss the first first two Nice albums or the first Soft Machine album as qualifying as fitting into the progressive rock genre classification (once again, I am making a distinction between between being considered progressive rock music and being classified under the prog-rock label), it is much more difficult to dismiss this first Caravan album. It is unfortunate that the balance and mixing of this album is dodgy at best, but the music more than compensates for this otherwise serious failing.

“Place of My Own” with its alternation between the dreaminess of impressionism and the insistent forward progress of a march creates a whole organic work of four minutes that is comparable in substance to a similar length classical or jazz track. With liberal use of keyboard arpeggios and emphasis on the instrumental section over the lyrics, Caravan creates an overall mood and character to the entire work giving it is own identity as effectively as bands like Yes and Genesis would do to many of their songs on their early albums.  This is followed by the Indian-influenced instrumental, “Ride”, the effective forward-moving and sometimes beautiful “Love Song with Flute”, and the quirky, mostly psychedelic Cecil Rons. ” However, the most notable piece is the nine-minute “Where but for Caravan Would I” which is co-written by Caravan and Brian Hopper (who also co-authored some of the tracks on the first Soft Machine album.)  It is epic in nature,  starting off with a relatively simple section, repeated, that modulates to a short contrasting section that quickly returns to the original section again before breaking out into a furious instrumental section dominated by organ that again returns to the original key and the altered and more intense original theme, which is followed by a more complex rhythmical section that nicely functions as the coda to bring the work to a satisfying and complete conclusion.  This is a template for the prototypical prog-rock track, laid bare without any unnecessary frills or complications, something easily grasped and enjoyed, and available to be copied with endless variation and development.  Yes, later groups would move well beyond this, but Caravan provides the necessary starting point — and though it may not so much have influenced other groups as much as it was just an instance of the parallel development of the post-psychedelic rock groups that got their start at the end of the late sixties, it is as an impressive example of the relentless nature of this new music to carve out its own language and means of expression from the available languages and expressions readily available in the diverse music of that time.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

All tracks credited to Sinclair, Hastings, Coughlan & Sinclair except “Where but for Caravan Would I?” which is written by Sinclair, Hastings, Coughlan, Sinclair and Brian Hopper.

Side One

#

Title

Length

1.

 “Place of My Own”

4:00

2.

 “Ride”

3:41

3.

 “Policeman”

2:45

4.

 “Love Song with Flute”

4:09

5.

 “Cecil Rons”

4:05
Side Two

#

Title

Length

1.

 “Magic Man”

4:01

2.

 “Grandma’s Lawn”

3:23

3.

 “Where but for Caravan Would I?”

9:01

Caravan

  • Pye Hastings – lead vocals (side 1: 1-2, 4), co-lead vocals (side 1: 5 & side 2: 1, 3), guitars, bass guitar
  • Richard Sinclair – lead vocals (side 1: 3 & side 2: 2), co-lead vocals (side 1: 5 & side 2: 1, 3), bass guitar, guitar
  • Dave Sinclair – organ, piano
  • Richard Coughlan – drums

 

Side Note:

Interestingly, the post of this first Soft Machine album on YouTube (link) has a Dislike to Like ratio of .0257 in the same ballpark of the Beatles’ Sgt. Peppers (link) ratio of .0254 — compare that to the Beatles’ Abbey Road ratio of .15 (link) or Gentle Giant’s Free Hand of .030 (link)  

Caravan’s first album Dislike to Like Ratio on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt1inf8CRnE&list=PLALZtwXPtUFKvbI7h8Fc5CdqRYoI_qyyd) is .0028 — or 356 likes to only one Dislike — rather unheard of in youtube land.

Category:

Fifty Year Friday, Progressive Rock, Rock

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Century Sunday: 1918

December 30, 2018

New Orleans

First of all, wishing everyone a happy, productive and fulfilling 2019!

I was not around one hundred years ago, but my grandparents were.  My mother’s mom was twenty, and she sometimes referenced the terrible flu epidemic of 1918 and the lives it took.  For many, this affected them more directly than World War I.

World War I would end in November of 1918.  For many years, Armistice Day, November 11, was a notable holiday in the U.S. until sometime after World War II, when it was renamed Veteran’s Day, honoring those who served in both world wars. Now Veteran’s day is a tribute to all those that served in the U.S. armed forces, the true great heroes and protectors of our nation.

In movies, Charlie Chaplin, Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton continued to provide silent comedies.  The big silent movie hit of 1918 was Mickey, starring Norma Mabel, the famous actress, writer, director, and producer of the 1910s and 1920s.

In 1918, the gifted seventeen-year-old Louis Armstrong was playing cornet on Mississippi riverboats.  With prostitution made illegal in New Orleans in November of 1917, not to protect the women involved, but as a step to prevent VD transmission to nearby army and navy camps, Storyville, the red light and entertainment district of New Orleans, and the musicians that made a living in Storyville would take a financial hit: soon Louis’s idol, King Oliver would move to Chicago, and Louis would replace him in Kid Ory’s band.

Original Dixieland Jass Band continued to release recordings including their most famous one, “Tiger Rag.”

Pianist, and National Public Radio (NPR) host of “Piano Jazz”, Marian McPartland was born on March 1918, living until 2013. Other jazz musicians born in 1918 include trumpter Howard McGhee, pianist Charles Thompson, pianist Hank Jones, saxophonist Ike Quebec, and trumpet player, composer, arranger and band leader, Gerald Wilson.  King of the Slide Guitar, blues guitarist, composer, singer and bandleader Elmore James was also born in 1918.  Mr. James was one of the first guitarists in the 1950’s to intentionally overdrive the electric guitar’s amplification to produce distortion for musical effect.

Classical violinist, Ruggiero Ricci was born in 1918 and gave lessons to one of my good friends from college who talked about him in utmost awe and respect. Ricci gave performances as a member of the US Army in World War II and then later, in 1947, was the first violinist to record the complete twenty-four Caprices (Opus 1) by Paganini in their original form. Ricci also championed many twentieth century composer’s violin concertos including Ginastera’s.  In total, Ricci made over 500 recordings and performed over 6,000 concerts in sixty-five different countries.

Leoš Janáček composed Taras Bulba, Arnold Bax his first string quartet,  Igor Stravinsky his Histoire du Soldat. Operas first performed in 1918 include Béla Bartók’s dramatic Bluebeard’s Castle and Giacomo Puccini‘s set of three one-act operas, Il trittico.

jazz 1918.jpg

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1918, Blues, Century Sunday, Classical Music, jazz

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Seventy Year Saturday: 1948

December 29, 2018

 

1948 mar 3 deuces

Bebop continues to flourish with live concerts and recordings featuring Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk and the up and coming Miles Davis. Imagine being able to go back in time to see Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Max Roach at the Three Deuces!

Coleman Hawkins continues his legacy, releasing his classic solo saxophone single, “Picasso”, almost as an important musical statement as his more famous swing-era masterpiece. “Body and Soul.”   Are there any other swing giants that were able to  make the transition into Bebop as successfully as the Hawk?  Musically successfully that is, since unfortunately, great artists like Coleman Hawkins received very little financial reward in 1948.

Serge Prokofiev, out of favor with the Soviet cultural authorities, premieres his final opera, The Story of a Real Person on December 3, 1948 at the Kirov Theater, Leningrad (now thankfully called Saint Petersburg again).  Given an unfavorable reception from the “authorities,” further performances were forbidden to the general public until after Prokofiev’s death, The Story of a Real Person not being performed again until October 1960 at the Bolshoi Theater, Moscow.

Oliver Messiaen’s completes his Turangalîla-Symphonie, a large scale orchestra work commissioned by Serge Koussevitzky for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and later premiered in December 1949 with Leonard Bernstein conducting.

Arnold Schoenberg at the age of seventy-five composes his cantata, A Survivor from Warsaw, written in tribute to the Holocaust victims. Richard Strauss at the age of eighty-four composes his “Four Last Songs” for soprano and orchestra.

Hans Werner Henze and Witold Lutoslawski finish their first symphonies, while Walter Piston completes his third, Brian Havergal composes his seventh, and Nikolai Myaskovsky wraps up his first twenty-sixth, his Symphony on Russian Themes.

Samuel Barber composes Knoxville: Summer of 1915, John Cage his Suite for Toy Piano, Howard Hanson his Piano Concerto, Dmitri Kabalevsky his Violin Concerto, Eduard Tubin his Double Bass Concerto, and famous film composer, later to write the scores to the first two Godfather movies, Nino Rota, takes a break from movie music to compose his String Quartet.

Cole Porter’s Kiss Me, Kate Broadway production opened on December 30, 1948 at the New Century Theatre and ran for 1077 performances,

On the extreme, commercial pop-side of music, Kay Kyser with Gloria Wood on vocals score a major hit with a song embedded in my childhood memories, “The Woody Woodpecker Song.”  If only the worst pop songs of today, were this good….

 

 

 

 

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1948, Classical Music, jazz, Music, Seventy Year Saturday

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Fifty Year Friday: Chick Corea, Hugh Masekala

December 28, 2018

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Chick Corea:  Now He Sings, Now He Sobs

At age twenty-eight, Chick Corea had already made serious contributions on studio dates with Herbie Mann, Hubert Laws, Cal Tjader, Dave Pike, Donald Byrd, and Stan Getz often contributing arrangements as well as playing piano.  He had also recorded his first solo album in 1966, Tones for Joan’s Bones, with Woody Shaw on trumpet, which was released in April 1968.

Corea started playing piano at age four, developing not only impressive piano skills, but a passionate love for both classical and jazz music.  This mastery of the two genres is apparent in this album, the format of jazz trio working well in terms of emphasizing the piano part and facilitating optimal engagement between a small set of artists.

“Steps –  What Was” starts with piano solo soon joined by veteran Roy Haynes on drums and twenty-year old Czech classically-trained Miroslav Vitouš on acoustic bass.  The work brims with enthusiasm and freshness and, after a brief drum solo by Haynes and before a bass solo by Vitouš, is a wonderful piano-led passage that reveals an early version of Corea’s “Spain” theme.

“Matrix’ includes a brief statement of the theme and a wild ride of head-spinning improvisation, again including room for statements by Vitouš and Haynes.

The next two tracks take their title from the explanation of the third line of the  Kung Fú (Inmost Sincerity) hexagram   in the ancient Chinese Book of Changes, The I Ching, roughly translated as “Now he beats his drum, and now he leaves off. Now he weeps, and now he sings.”  These two works are very different with “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs”, being generally forward-looking, energetic and optimistic and “Now He Beats The Drum, Now He Stops” being more of a two-part composition, with the first section, a piano solo, full of reflection and inner-doubt, and the second section surging with revitalization and purpose.

The last track, “The Law Of Falling And Catching Up” is a free-jazz excursion with Corea directly accessing the strings of the grand piano.  Somewhat pointillistic and Webern-like, the piece is sweeping in texture and content yet, at under two and half minutes, compact and focused.

Track listing [from Wikipedia]

  1. “Steps – What Was”
  2. “Matrix”
  3. “Now He Sings, Now He Sobs”
  4. “Now He Beats The Drum, Now He Stops”
  5. “The Law Of Falling And Catching Up”

Personnel

 

Hugh Masekala: The Promise of the Future

Though sometimes Masekala’s work gets categorized as “Easy Listening”, this album contains some fine jazz and early world-fusion with Masekala providing quality trumpet with fine supporting musicians including uncredited folk-revival guitarist Bruce Langhorne.  Baby Boomers will recognize the instrumental  “Grazing in the Grass”, which went to the top of the charts, and was later revisited by The Friends of Distinction with added vocals.  Also notable is the reflective, meditative rendition of Traffic’s “No Face, No Name And No Number”, Miriam Makeba’s “Bajabule Bonke” and Masekala’s own “Almost Seedless.”

Track listing [From Wikipedia]

No. Title Writer(s) Length
1. “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough“ Nick Ashford, Valerie Simpson 2:00
2. “Madonna” Al Abreu 3:10
3. “No Face, No Name and No Number” Jim Capaldi, Steve Winwood 3:26
4. “Almost Seedless” Hugh Masekela 3:36
5. “Stop” Jerry Ragovoy, Mort Shuman 2:35
6. “Grazing in the Grass“ Harry Elston, Philemon Hou, Hugh Masekela 2:40
7. “Vuca” (Wake Up) Hugh Masekela 3:40
8. “Bajabule Bonke” (The Healing Song) Miriam Makeba 6:25
9. “There Are Seeds To Sow” (Guitar – Bruce Langhorne) Hugh Masekela 2:25

Personnel

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Album review, jazz

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