Zumwalt Poems Online

Posts tagged ‘Fifty Year Friday’

Fifty Year Friday: September 2026

Welcome back to Fifty Year Friday! It is my great pleasure to announce that once again our first entry is by the esteemed and respected Leo The Deacon. I have added a couple of my own entries afterwards, but if you have limited time, please focus the Small Change reflections. I think it is the most brilliant Fifty Year Friday entry yet. Enjoy!


Tom Waits: Small Change

Has it been a year already? It’s getting so that tempus doesn’t just fugit, it kicks on the afterburners. You mind your own business, take each day as it comes, and the next thing you know, the Curator of this sublimely ridiculous blog is emailing you:  “Leo, you gnarly old fossil! Have you finished the Waits review?” I am tempted to respond by ripping off Waits himself—“the computer has been drinking, not me…” Still, I won’t yield to temptation—at least not that temptation—because we have reached the fifty-year anniversary of the release of Waits’ 1976 masterpiece, Small Change. (And because the Curator is very patient with his enfant terrible collaborator.)  Waits’ previous album, Nighthawks at the Diner, is my sentimental favorite, and the one that most thoroughly reveals the performative persona that Waits inhabited as a singer-songwriter in the 1970s. But with Small Change, Waits hits his artistic stride. The broad consensus of critics and Waits fans alike is that Small Change is his best album of the 1970s. I may like Nighthawks, with all its imperfections, the way one likes his girlfriend’s freckles or swoons over Eva Mendes’ “beauty spot,” but I can’t play the contrarian on this question: Small Change indeed shows off Waits’ artistry better than any other of his albums from that decade.

Unlike Nighthawks, Small Change jettisons the conceit of presenting a “live” performance, with the full  Waits shtick, in favor of a more conventional anthology of discrete songs. Moreover, on Nighthawks, even when singing about lost loves or drunken weekends,  Waits may be bittersweet, but never really tragic. Small Change is a darker set of songs. To be sure, the humor is still there, often deployed in the service of satire,  and his tendency toward the melancholic and sentimental shapes a number of pieces. But several songs—most notably the title track “Small Change,” but also “Bad Liver and a Broken Heart,” and “Tom Traubert’s Blues”—are darker than anything on his three previous records. The humor has an edge as well: more than just a laugh, it conveys some sharp observations on American commercialism, seedy burlesque joints, and alcoholism. By the mid-seventies, Waits had become a heavy drinker. In part, this was due to the lifestyle of a touring musician, and in part because, to gain inspiration, he actually would immerse himself in the demimonde of tawdry motels, sleazy strip joints, and down-and-outer lounges. Looking back at that time, the now-teetotal Waits told a biographer, “You know, I was really starting to believe that there was something amusing and wonderfully American about a drunk. I ended up telling myself to cut that shit out.”  The darker side of the shabby lush life was beginning to color his lyrics even then.

Almost all of the songs on Small Change are jazz-inflected, but there is a greater variety to the music than on Nighthawks. We might group the songs on this album into three bins:  several songs feature just Waits on piano or on piano accompanied by just one other instrument—a bass, drums, or a saxophone (“Jitterbug Boy,” “The Piano Has Been Drinking,” Bad Liver and a Broken Heart,” “Pasties and a G-String,” “Small Change,” and “I Can’t Wait to Get Off Work”). Two songs, “Step Right Up” and “The One That Got Away,” feature a full jazz quartet of piano, bass, drums, and saxophone. Waits plays the piano, but as on Nighthawks, he has gathered some solid jazz musicians to back him up: Shelley Manne on drums, Jim Hughart returns on bass, and Lew Tabackin wields the sax. In the third and final bin are the fullest arrangements, featuring both the jazz quartet and orchestral string arrangements—a device Waits had employed on some songs on his first two albums, but not on Nighthawks. Here we find “Tom Traubert’s Blues,”  “I wish I was in New Orleans,” and the nostalgic “Invitation to the Blues.” Truth be told, I am not a big fan of string arrangements with my jazz—it works best, perhaps, on torch songs sung by sultry chanteuses, but more often just sounds cloying and confectionary, like the thick icing on a sheet cake. Waits pulls it off with a voice full of asphalt and gravel, but it works best with “Invitation to the Blues,”  a noirish ballad so retro that one might call it anachronistic. In it, Waits sings about a guy “who feels just like Cagney” taking a shot at romance with a waitress who “looks like Rita Hayworth,” despite the long odds of success. Sure, the song has strings in the background but, having in my twenties dissipated countless wee morning hours in coffee shops and diners while contemplating some bored waitress who barely recognized my existence, I can’t help but like the song; I’m a sucker for doomed, maudlin romance.

The gem of the album is also the darkest, the title track “Small Change.” Here Waits is not so much singing as performing a spoken-word recitation of poetry, punctuated by Tabackin’s mournful saxophone. With some of the most lapidary lyrics on this or any other of his albums, Waits recounts the murder of a small-time crook late at night on a city street and describes the bystanders’ shared indifference to the snuffing out of a human life:  the ambulance drivers are just waiting for their shifts to end, the cops are cracking jokes, and a teenage factotum employed by one of the late-night businesses has been directed to hose the blood off the sidewalk. As various passersby filch the dead man’s ring, hat, and watch fob, hookers ply their trade, “their mouths cut just like/Razor blades, and their eyes are like stilettos.”

Worth singling out, too, is the brilliant “Step Right Up,” Waits’ playfully cynical indictment of American commercialism. The music is all jazz quartet, no strings, and Waits half speaks, half scats the rhythmic song which consists almost entirely of crass advertising phrases—particularly the kind one might see on TV, late at night, in the 1970s—one critic dubbed the song “proto-rap.” Much of it consists of banal slogans: “Act now!” “bargains galore,” “everything must go,” into which he gradually weaves ever more outlandish claims: “It gives you an erection, it wins the election.” Waits also works in a few genuine advertising tag lines from those distant times, such as Zenith’s “the quality goes in before the name goes on,” and Tegrin shampoo’s infamous sympathy for “the heartbreak of psoriasis.” The song is funny, for sure—but it also makes a pointed statement about Americans’ moth-to-the-candle attraction to shills and the prospect of accumulating ever greater quantities of “stuff.” We could have used a revival of the song during the last presidential election.

For me, however, the glory of “Step Right Up” is that it conjures up memories of one of the best concerts I ever attended. Right after the release of Small Change, Waits went on tour to promote it;  gone were Shelley Manne, Jim Hughart, and Lew Tabackin, replaced for the tour with less famous jazz sidemen, a trio Waits christened “The Nocturnal Emissions.”   No less a musical aficionado than this blog’s very Curator—in those days as bearded and hirsute as a Muppet—joined me in my puke yellow Ford Courier in December 1976 for the 90-mile drive up US 101 to see Waits open for the French jazz fusion violinist Jean-Luc Ponty at the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara. What twisted mind conjured up such a musical pairing I cannot say, but it was genius. The genteel old Arlington Theater had been constructed earlier in the century to resemble a Spanish mission, and the ceiling was painted a midnight blue with tiny points of starlight, to mimic sitting in a Spanish colonial courtyard under the stars. The Curator and I took our seats, the house lights were turned off, and in the blackness Waits and the Nocturnal Emissions took their places. Like some inebriated interpretation of the first chapter of Genesis, Waits flamboyantly ignited a match, piercing the void, lit his cigarette in a sweeping motion, and growled the opening bars of “Step Right Up.” I have been told hat Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring provoked a riot at its Paris debut, and if the Santa Barbara crowd had not been so terminally laid back, Waits’ opening for Ponty might have produced a similar outcome. As it was, Waits’ performance was met with bemusement and impatience by a mellow audience expecting the trademark electronic arpeggios of the Gallic superstar. The Curator and I—albeit fans of Ponty—were simply delighted. After the concert, we stopped at the Sambo’s coffee shop there in Santa Barbara—and in walked Ponty! But—that is a tale for another time. Let’s keep the focus on Waits.

As good as Small Change is, it represents the apogee, the limit, of Waits’ skid-row bard approach to his art. Already one senses Waits is searching for ways to expand his idiosyncratic music by including darker material, edgier satire, and so on. This would become more noticeable in his immediately subsequent albums, as he pushed the envelope but never quite escaped it, performing a duet with Bette Midler on Foreign Affairs, and singing a cover of “Somewhere,” from West Side Story on 1978’s Blue Valentine. It wouldn’t be until 1983’s Swordfish Trombones that he broke from his 1970s persona, for better or worse. In a sense, then, Waits’ achievement in Small Change carries the same bittersweet taste of so many of his songs:  it represents a peak moment of success, but like all pinnacles, it could only lead one down until a new mountain top could be attempted. Small Change was a summit that Waits would not equal again for many years.

—Leo the Deacon

Steve Hillage: L

Released in September 1976, this is a wonderful album. L is an intentional throwback to late sixties psychedelic rock. The first track is a cover of Donovan’s “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” and given the original historic status, its reasonable to push back and ask, “Is this really necessary?”, particularly on a prog rock album? Well, given the introductory use of shenai (an Indian oboe-like instrument) and Hillage’s amazing guitar work, this may not be necessary, but it is irresistible and fully sets the mood for the album. Todd Rundgren is the producer, and we hear that with the sped-up, tape-manipulated coda and the ethereal, cosmic intro to the second track, “Hurdy Gurdy Glissando,” begins as an apparently free-form improvisation, thoughtful and reflective, with no elements of self-indulgence, but transitions into an early Pink Floyd art song, followed by more instrumental work, highlighted with Roger Powell’s keyboard work. Powell was a protegee of the famous Bob Moog (creator of the Moog synthesizer, of course) as well as the keyboardist on the preceding Todd Rundgren’s Utopia albums.

The rest of the album continues with a general prog-rock-enhanced sixties psychedelia sound with vocal material simple and accessible, but much like Pink Floyd’s early work, never puerile or simplistic. The first track on the second side, “Om Nama Shivaya,” is particularly notable for its blend of Indian, Asian, and Western elements, and, as you would expect, Hillage’s guitar work. “Lunar Musick Suite” is next and is the highlight of the album: powerful, relentless, and hearkening back to both Gong and Rundgren’s Utopial work. The album is bookended with a fine rendition of George Harrison’s “It’s All Too Much.”

Hillage is one of the most underrated guitarists in rock. I snuck in somehow, moving with the flow of the crowd, to see him at a sold-out performance in London at the Marquee Club, but the bouncer figured out that I didn’t have a ticket and escorted me out. At that point, I bought a ticket from a late arrival and came back into the club, enjoying about two-thirds of the set until the same bouncer, a thick-forearmed brute who was about twice my weight, snuck up behind me and leveled both of his fists at the back of my neck, collapsing me to the floor, partially unconscious. My next stop was a nearby hospital for an X-ray, and though nothing was broken, I suspect this is the primary cause of on-and-off arthritic symptoms in my neck over the last thirty-five years. The neck hurts just typing this up. But I never regret a moment of risk or insanity that I engaged in my youth. Do I wish the music of today was equally adventurous as that of the 1970s — of course, but I accept the music of today as it is, even the tunes that cycle through the same tired I-V-vi-VI or vi-IV-I-V (or the most common three-chord modal progressions), just as I accept I am no longer as adventurous and often have a fairly predictable daily routine when not traveling. But just as new music continues to develop and move forward, so do old relics like me, one way or another.

Stevie Wonder: Songs in the Key

Steve Wonder released the two LP Songs in the Key of Life in late September of 1976, by far his best-selling, most ambitious, and most critically acclaimed album of his prolific career. Some may think it’s a bit of a stretch, but Stevie Wonder’s willingness to take unusual harmonic paths reminds me of Schubert’s innovative and independent approach.

Wonder embraces jazz influences and the associated ninths, elevenths, and the occasional thirteenth chord, but uses them in his own distinctive ways, using dominant ninth and suspended ninth chords to build the soulful warmth of tracks like “Isn’t She Lovely” and “As,” while relying on minor elevenths to anchor the more repetitive and hypnotic passages found on “Pastime Paradise” and “Ordinary Pain.” He also uses minor ninths, major ninths, and, for musical tension, thirteenth chords.

More remarkable, and the reason I associate him with Schubert, is his creative exploration of unusual chord progressions. I don’t have the musical ear, and you may not have the interest, for me to detail the exact progressions, but the combination of these explorations and the way Wonder uses ninths and elevenths creates a clearly identifiable personal sound, a sound that is fully present on this album.

Wonder is not a great lyricist, and I suspect that’s mostly because he writes the music first, sometimes starting with the melody, sometimes playing with chord progressions, but usually coming up with natural, authentic music, to which he then fits placeholder lyrics, tightening them up, or entirely replacing them for the final product. The music is the attraction here, and the lyrics sometimes add to the overall quality, and never seem to get in the way. In a sentence, the music is the overall attraction here.

Hopefully you have heard this album, maybe many times, and there is no need for me to break this down track by track. If, due to your age, or by some chance of the arc of your life, you haven’t heard this yet, please give it a spin (or a stream), even if you’re a prog-head, jazz or classical music snob like me.

Category:

Album review, Fifty Year Friday, Fifty Year Friday, Folk Rock, jazz, Jazz Rock, Music & Musings, Progressive Rock, Rock

Tagged with:

Fifty Year Friday: August 1976; Return to Forever: Romantic Warrior

It is my pleasure to announce that this month’s Fifty Year Friday is provided by guest author Leo the Deacon.

Return to Forever: Romantic Warrior


Ask the average person, a regular Joe, what the signature music of the 1970s was, and dollars to doughnuts, the answer you will get is disco. And to be sure, it was a phenomenon—the inevitable populist backlash to progressive rock, the best of which (think Gentle Giant,  King Crimson, or Emerson, Lake, & Palmer), challenged its listeners to do just that: listen.  Just listen.  But, as Pascal declared,  “All of man’s misfortune comes from one thing, which is not knowing how to sit quietly in a room.”  Too many of my generation just wanted to dance, and disco’s Dionysian impulse trumped the Apollonian appeal of prog rock.  Full transparency here:  as disco came to dominate the college social scene in the late ‘70s, I was put at a distinct disadvantage.  I like to think that I have some redeeming virtues, but physical grace would not be one of them. Diffident with the ladies,  all I had to offer was a fondness for words and a sense of humor, neither of which was easy to deploy in the thumpa-thumpa of a disco club, where one was expected to strut and flex and display his plumage like some desperate bird of paradise in the New Guinea jungle.  Yes, I’m still bitter…

Disco may have gotten all the attention, but at the risk of being accused of looking for a pony in a dung heap,  I would argue that the 1970s produced another signature sound:  the amalgam of jazz and progressive rock known as jazz fusion.  Pioneered by vibraphonist Gary Burton with his Duster album in 1967 and legitimated in 1969 by Miles Davis’ In a Silent Way, fusion grew in prominence and popularity in the 1970s as jazz musicians sought a way forward from the esoteric wilderness of avant-garde and free jazz, seeking a style that would attract an audience.  The result was a body of excellent jazz that held musical sway for a decade until a wave of talented young jazz musicians such as Wynton Marsalis and Terence Blanchard revived and modernized hard bop and post-bop jazz.  (Yes, I am aware that Marsalis also championed “neo-bop” although I am not convinced that neo-bop differs significantly from post-bop; it is as much an attitude as it is a musical genre.)

The topic today, though, is  1970s fusion and, from my eccentric point of view, three albums in particular stand out as emblematic of that time and style:  The Mahavishnu Orchestra’s Visions of the Emerald Beyond, Jean-Luc Ponty’s Aurora, and Return to Forever’s Romantic Warrior.   I can already hear the outraged cries of “What? No Weather Report? No Pat Metheny or Herbie Hancock?”  Cool down, take a deep breath. They are all worthy. I freely confess that my trinity of iconic fusion albums is subjective and idiosyncratic.   It is heavily weighted toward the context in which I encountered the music and the associations it retains in memory.   For me, the opening notes of any one of Visions of the Emerald Beyond, Aurora, or Romantic Warrior transport me to 1976. In those days, I and my roommate—we called him Wildman—would lounge around the backyard firepit immolating hot dogs while the sun set and we listened to the latest jazz cascade from the speakers propped up in the windows of my garage apartment.  We lived in the easy penury of college kids, feasting on hot dogs and box macaroni and cheese, dreaming of the days when we would have real jobs and real money—not recognizing how good we already had it.

Romantic Warrior was one of Wildman’s albums; we played it to death. Representing the full ripening of Chick Corea’s fusion project called Return to Forever, Romantic Warrior was probably the best of the three iconic albums.  It features Corea on keyboards, both electronic and acoustic; Al DiMeola, a newcomer to the band, on guitars; Stanley Clarke brandishes the various basses employed, and Lenny White commands a range of drums.  Most of the compositions, and the longest ones, are by Corea, but each of the other three band members contributes one composition apiece.  Too many cooks spoil the broth goes the old adage, but not this time:  the six discrete compositions of Romantic Warrior fit each other like the tesserae of a mosaic.  Had it been indifferently executed, Romantic Warrior could have been just an anthology of loosely similar pieces, but instead they achieve a synergy that makes it greater than the sum of its parts.

The album opens with Corea’s “Medieval Overture,” but this is no Hildegard von Bingen antiphon. Instead, it acts as a kind of framing device, establishing a mood or atmosphere for the album.  Corea’s electronic keyboards burst energetically, like the atoms popping in the core of a reactor, and are soon joined by Di Meola’s guitar,  and White’s driving drum work. The energetic opening gradually morphs into a more languid, mysterious passage—this is medieval the way Game of Thrones or Lord of the Rings is medieval, emphasizing the mystical and the fantastic, where dragons lurk in the blank spaces of maps and demons seek your soul.   Soon enough, though, Corea’s popping keyboards bring us back into the light, preparing us for the next adventure.

That adventure would be Lenny White’s funky “Sorceress,” in which DiMeola’s guitar tends to come to the forefront, frequently using Corea’s keyboards as a stable platform for guitar riffs as well as for Clarke’s insistent bass. Di Meola’s guitar keens and soars even more prominently—as one might expect—in “Majestic Dance” which is Di Meola’s contribution to this musical chanson de geste.  Those who lean more to the “rock” side of jazz-rock, will gravitate to “Majestic Dance” and “Sorceress,”  and perhaps to “The Magician” as well, Stanley Clarke’s piece in which he demonstrates what can be done with an electric bass.

The center of gravity of the album, though, is the title cut, another of Corea’s compositions and the second longest on the album.  My traditional biases are showing here, but the genius of “Romantic Warrior,” the third of six compositions on the album, is that it is acoustic, and Corea’s piano playing is turned loose.  This acoustic gem, held fast in an electronic setting, shows Corea mastering the essence of fusion without plugging into the power grid.

The album Romantic Warrior is brought to a dénouement with Corea’s “Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant (Parts I and II).”  This cut does not bring the album to a full circle musically, but it provides a climax or resolution to it.  Like the opening “Medieval Overture, ” “Duel” helps to frame the whole album and brings it to a satisfying conclusion.  Again, Corea’s keyboards stand out to me; in “Part I” of this last cut one can detect, I think, a subtle Latin flavor infused in his playing, a faint foreshadowing, perhaps, of his more explicit My Spanish Heart, which he would release under his own name in October of 1976.

In Romantic Warrior, Return to Forever reached its apogee; it is hard to point to another RTF album, good though they were, that achieves quite the same level of musical craftsmanship and creative symbiosis.  At the time, though, Wildman and I did not think in such grandiose terms.  Cash-strapped and barely fledged as we were, Romantic Warrior was a small, accessible luxury.  To us, it was simply a tasty album, perfect for kicking back while a stealthy chill permeated the dusk, and a fitting soundtrack for charring hot dogs and boasting of all the great things we would do. 

— Leo the Deacon

Category:

Fifty Year Friday, Fusion Jazz, jazz, Jazz Rock

Tagged with:

Fifty Year Friday: May 1976; Steely Dan: The Royal Scam

This is a real treat! Leo the Deacon is providing the content for this month’s Fifty Year Friday!

Steely Dan:  The Royal Scam

Is there anything more cliché than a graying, white male boomer from SoCal waxing panegyrical in a review of Steely Dan? It is so spot on, that one would expect Donald Fagan and Walter Becker—were Becker not dead and Fagan not retired to upstate New York—to turn their sardonic gaze on the phenomenon and pen some brilliantly snarky song about it. Perhaps a sort of updated version of “Show Biz Kids” from Countdown to Ecstasy,  except in this case they would be sneering at “Show Biz Geezers”  with their “Steely Dan T-Shirt.”

Guilty as charged. I have the Steely Dan T-Shirt—two, actually—but I was never especially “show biz;” just another reasonably well-off scion of the Orange County petit bourgeoisie. But, like Donald Fagan and Walter Becker—both scions of reasonably well-off families from the ‘burbs of New York City—I never felt quite in sync with the 1960s-1970s zeitgeist. The founders of Steely Dan, instead of grooving to the Summer of Love, took their inspiration from the decade before the ‘60s and the writings of the Beat generation, alienated and immersed in the seedier aspects of American life. Thus it was that when Steely Dan began working their wry, disdainful lyrics into pop/rock music in the 1970s, with each successive album incrementally more jazz-inflected and impeccably polished, I was hooked. The Royal Scam, Steely Dan’s fifth album, showcases the multiple appeals of the group, and in particular their aloof, superior, and twisted take on American society in an especially vapid decade.

Reviews at the time of Royal Scam’s release differed on the merit of the album;   all, however, agreed that The Royal Scam was Steely Dan’s darkest, most cynical album to date. And to be sure, there is more than a soupçon of cynicism to be found in such songs as “Kid Charlemagne,” the eponymous “The Royal Scam,” and the wickedly sardonic “Haitian Divorce.”   A detached cynicism, after all, was the band’s signature take on the world. But dark? Darkness perhaps is in the eye—the ear?—of the beholder. On their second album, Countdown to Ecstasy, Steely Dan included a snappy little number on nuclear apocalypse, “King of the World”—not exactly a sunny topic. Katy Lied, Steely Dan’s fourth album released a year before The Royal Scam,  featured “Everyone’s Gone to the Movies,” a lyrically creepy tale of pederasty. So, how dark, really, was Royal Scam?

Perhaps context and perspective will provide some insight. Released in May 1976, The Royal Scam hit the market in the bicentennial year of American independence—an event of no little hype then, just as the Declaration’s semiquincentennial in this, the year of our Lord two thousand twenty-six, has already given us extra jingoistic truck advertisements and patriotic-themed beer commercials set to Lynyrd Skynyrd.  Naturally in such a frothy milieu, a song like “The Royal Scam,” the album’s title cut about Puerto Rican immigrants finding in New York more poverty than success, grated against the celebratory popular mood. From the perspective of  fifty years, it sounds more like a rite of passage experienced by many immigrant groups rather than a “scam.”  But, of course, these days, when ICE is herding Latinos into concentration camps built on contaminated land—and lauded for it by pious evangelicals—hard work and poverty doesn’t seem quite so scary. Context matters.

Rolling Stone, in its 1976 review of The Royal Scam, correctly identified the album as a “transitional” one for Steely Dan and presciently predicted that Fagen & Becker’s next album “should be a pop killer.”  Since their next album was Aja, which arguably represents the apotheosis of the Steely Dan jazz-pop fusion, that reviewer pretty much nailed it. Scam does indeed push further in the direction of jazz than did its predecessors, and the participation of jazz stalwarts Larry Carlton, Victor Feldman, Bernard Purdie, and Don Grolnick on several different cuts on that album highlights the vector Steely Dan was taking. Indeed, the upbeat “The Caves of Altamira,” with its prominent horn arrangements, would not have been out of place musically on an album like Aja. So, Scam was a sort of bridge to the jazzier late Steely Dan of Aja and Gaucho. (We might add that, despite its setting in a cave, it is hard to think of “The Caves of Altamira”—about a youth encountering prehistoric cave paintings in Spain—as a “dark” song. In an interview at the turn of  the century Becker told the BBC the song was about “the loss of innocence,” but, unless he meant that in some sort of grand Rousseauean sense about noble savages becoming civilized, I suspect he was pulling the Brit’s leg.)

But back to the music itself. Although the trend toward more jazz is there, I would argue that The Royal Scam, funky though it was, represented the apogee of Steely Dan’s rock sound. It was the band’s full maturation of their take on the rock idiom that I suspect made the shift to jazzier material necessary. Some excellent guitar work is featured on the album and is dominant in most of the songs. This is perhaps Steely Dan’s most guitar-centric album, highlighted in particular by Larry Carlton’s soaring electric guitar opening of “Don’t Take Me Alive,” a song revolving around a heavily armed parricide seeking to commit suicide by cop (another example of a subject that seemed dark, even shocking in 1976, but after enormities like Columbine and Sandy Hook elicits only jaded shrugs in 2026.)  It’s a well-done piece, Carlton’s, jagged guitar oscillations mirroring the mental maelstrom of the barricaded gunman boasting “a man of my mind can do anything.”

Carlton solos again on “Everything You Did,” another song of rage on the verge of breaking the bonds of control. Famously, as the song’s cuckolded husband menacingly interrogates his unfaithful wife, Fagen chimes in with “Turn up the Eagles the neighbors are listening.”  Much is made of this line as a friendly dig at the Eagles, and no doubt it is. (The Eagles returned the favor with their reference to “steely knives” in “Hotel California.”) But I suspect the real artistic intent here was to emphasize the banality of such domestic shambles in 1970s LA. In the mid-1970s, The Eagles were ubiquitous on southern California radio; in 1976, “Take it to the Limit” hung around the Top 40 for a full quarter to become their best-selling single to that date. With their East Coast hauteur toward Hollywood, Fagen and Becker were observing “what else but The Eagles would this tawdry couple have spilling out of their speakers?”

No singles from The Royal Scam cracked the top 40 in the United States, but that hardly is the measure of a good album. And for what it is worth,  the mordant, reggae-flavored “Haitian Divorce” did get its fair share of airplay. But the essence of Steely Dan’s appeal—their ability to frame cynical, sarcastic lyrics with eminently listenable and lapidary music—is on full display in Royal Scam. The various songs’ subject matter, too, holds up well after half a century. Sure, “Kid Charlemagne” may be based on a 1960s prototype of a purveyor of hallucinogens, but, plus ça change, it wasn’t all that long ago that Breaking Bad was all the rage on TV. Is it dark? Well, hell, it’s Steely Dan—it’s going to be a least a little shady. But that’s the fun—would Space Mountain at Disneyland be as cool with the lights on? But, if you’re afraid of the dark, well, there’s always the Eagles…

                                                         —Leo the Deacon

Category:

Fifty Year Friday, Rock

Tagged with:

Fifty Year Friday: March 1976; Collin Walcott: Cloud Dance

If you are in the market for flashy, aggressive 1976 rock or fusion, then it’s best to search elsewhere. Generally, this is a relaxing, reflective, introspective album. The musicianship is stellar: Collin Walcott on sitar, John Abercrombie on guitar, Dave Holland on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums — and the music has a high level of intensity. But rather than being compelled to dance on top of the table, I think it is more likely you will find yourself listening to this cross-legged on the floor, immersed in the music as opposed to immersed by the music: one is absorbed with this music and not appropriated by it.

For the most part tracks alternate between contemplative and more extroverted. The first track, “Margueritte,” starts off softly, gathers intensity and then drifts back into a calmer, more exploratory mood, making use of repeated melodic fragments to provide continuity. This is followed by the lively, syncopated “Prancing,” which features Dave Holland, and is likely to be a favorite of listeners more comfortable with hard bop or progressive rock. Night Glider, aptly named, takes us back inward; tracks continue to alternate in this fashion until the final track, “Cloud Dance,” an energetic number that comes closer than any of the preceding tracks to approaching the current fusion aesthetics of its time, providing a strong finish to the album.

The sonic detail makes this perfect for detailed listening — instrument voices are always clear and distinct. This album nicely avoids being an “East meets West” excursion or a trendy passing nod to Indian musical tradition. It is a musical presentation with its own rules and expressive objectives — exploring new soundscapes — breathing, not rushed, with each piece providing a different refreshing and substantial experience.

Category:

Fifty Year Friday, jazz

Tagged with:

Genesis: A Trick of the Tail; Gong: Shamal; Starcastle: Starcastle; Fifty Year Friday: February 1976

Genesis: A Trick of the Tail

Released on February 13, 1976, A Trick of the Tail was the first Genesis album after Peter Gabriel’s departure. Minus their high-profile frontman, the future of the band was initially in doubt. But soon the remaining members determined to continue with their next album. The search was on for a new vocalist. Wishing to keep this under the radar, the band placed an anonymous advertisement in Melody Maker magazine looking for a “singer for a Genesis-type group.” A deluge of demo tapes followed — over 400, all of which were diligently listened to in order to create an in-person audition list of about 30 candidates.

Like almost all rock bands, Genesis did not work off of sheet music. During the final stages of auditions, it was Phil Collins’ job to work with the remaining candidates to teach them the vocal melodies that went with the written lyrics. With only a few candidates left, Mick Stickland attempted to provide the vocals for “Squonk,” but it became apparent that there was a range mismatch. The backing track had already been recorded, and the band was unable or unwilling to re-record it in a different key to accommodate Stickland’s range. Collins, having taught the song to Stickland and other applicants, reluctantly offered to take his best shot. It was then that the band realized that Collins’ version was the best of all the applicants — not only was his handling of pitch and melodic line more than adequate, his sense of rhythm, musical attack, and dramatic sensibility was notably superior to any of the external candidates. Whether he wanted it or not, the job was now his.

In terms of musical performance, arrangement, and sound engineering, this would be their best album to date. Granted, this is not at the overall musical level of their Foxtrot album, and no tracks compare to “Supper’s Ready,” “Attack of the Giant Hogweed” from Nursery Cryme, or “Firth of Fifth” from Selling England by the Pound, but this is still a must-have work of music, with an incredible variety of compositions.

Tony Banks’ contributions are particularly evident. Following Gabriel’s departure in 1975 with the future of Genesis uncertain, Tony Banks began stockpiling material for a solo album, concerned that there would be no continuation of Genesis. When Banks, Rutherford, Collins, and Hackett came to an agreement to continue as a quartet, Banks made the decision to leverage his solo material for the good of the group: the first post-Gabriel album needed to be undeniably of the highest quality to prove they could survive, so he held nothing back. “A Trick of the Tail” was actually intended for Foxtrot, and then due to its lighter quality, for his solo album. The band worked “A Trick of the Tail” into its final, infectiously swinging character, making it an effective bridge from the heavier Genesis sound of Selling England by the Pound and the more exploratory, less conventional style of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway to a more accessible, “progressive pop” style that would be the signature sound of the new Genesis for their next few releases.

But the “more accessible” label is misleading. The harmonic depth and harmonic variety of these tracks qualifies Banks for an honorary degree in composition from the most prestigious universities on the planet. And we continue to have that metrical mastery we find in “Firth of Fifth,” most remarkably applied to “Dance on a Volcano,” originally a standard 4/4 number, which was changed to the off-balance 7/8 at Banks’ suggestion, providing an incredible animation and support for Banks’ own lyrics for the song, with its message of moving forward in adversity, perhaps a metaphorical reference to the band needing to step up to the challenge of not just continuing Genesis post-Gabriel, but making it even better.

Also notable is the last track “Los Endos” which develops the thematic material from “Dance on a Volcano” and provides an effective coda to a very strong album.

Starcastle: Starcastle and Gong: Shamal

In other February 1976 albums, Starcastle released their debut album proving that American rock bands can make true progressive rock: this one is highly indebted to the Yes sound. It is interesting enough for one or two listenings, and is worth checking out even if it won’t be an album you will come back to. For those familiar with Yes, give this a listen, and let me know your thoughts in the comments. I usually don’t mention albums that I don’t believe are in the upper tier, but this is an interesting artifact from that period when progressive rock was starting its decline, but being adapted by several American bands, many of which never had more than local reach with an equally limited lifespan.

A more distinctive and interesting album from February 1976 is Gong’s Shamal. Produced by Nick Mason (yes, of Pink Floyd), Shamal is a transitional album in Gong’s discography, a bridge between the more adventurous, chaotic Daevid Allen era and the percussion-driven jazz-fusion of the Pierre Moerlen era. For those wishing for more structure than earlier Gong albums, this nicely meets that requirement. Steve Hillage is still present, but as a guest artist, and Didier Malherbe’s sax and flute contributions make this a wonderful, engaging album. Well worth checking out.

Category:

Fifty Year Friday, Music, Progressive Rock

Tagged with:

Von Bock Was A Pansy

Von Bock Was A Pansy

Those iron plates that churned the mud and gravel
Impress me not.
The rifled bore was, and is a crashing bore,
I shut my eyes to the breechblock and
Do not care for thermite.
I recoil from venturi.
I have only cutting remarks for the bayonet;
C.B.W. stinks.
Give me Gandhi & Walden, with a little pickle
On the side, and I am content.
Blood-red waiters make me yawn.

—Zumwalt
[Early 1980s?]

Category:

1980s, 1981, Contemporary Poetry, Free Verse, Modern Poetry, Poem, Poems, Poetry

Tagged with:

Imperfect Information

My apologies. I had messed up the formatting earlier. It is now corrected.

Imperfect information

Category:

Uncategorized

Tagged with:

Queen, Joni Mitchell, Keith Jarrett, Magma, Vangelis, Chris Squire & more; Fifty Year Friday: November and December 1975

Queen: Night at the Opera

Released in November of 1975, Night at the Opera starts with the excitement of an ocean voyage — we hear arpeggiated waves from the piano, whale rumblings from the bass, bird cries and seagull squawks from multitracked guitar breaking into soft strains of a tango quickly turning into heavy metal. This is Freddie Mercury the composer at the height of his craft.

After having purchased three Queen albums already, the first thing I did when I brought this album home in December of 1975 was note which tracks were attributed to Mercury — this served as indicators to what tracks would impress me the most. That turned out to be an effective predictor, but, importantly, the rest of the band’s contributions were some of their very best songs, making this album packed with classic material from start to the pinnacle of the album, the penultimate track, “Bohemian Rhapsody” — one of those rare instances in rock since the Beatles had disbanded where a truly great work of music made its way from legendary status with serious listeners, musicians, and dedicated fans to legendary status with the general public, even though, perhaps as expected, it took some time to do so.

And just as the Beatles elevated their work with multi-track musical enhancements, so too did Queen elevate Night at the Opera to a precisely rendered set of cohesive numbers that deservedly live up to the album’s title. Now, don’t get me wrong — we have an amazing musical diversity on this album — with such diversity in just Mercury’s compositions — but we add to that “I’m in Love with My Car”, “You’re My Best Friend,” the vaudevillian “Good Company” with ukulele and outstanding guitar accompaniment, and “The Prophet’s Song” with its brilliant use of deceptively simple imitative counterpoint, and it’s pretty easy to understand how Night at the Opera more than holds its own today as a timeless classic.

Keith Jarrett : The Köln Concert

One of my favorite possessions was the triple LP Keith Jarrett Solo Concerts: Bremen/Lausanne which I had purchased with Christmas money in 1973. It was just incredible to have a three LP set of piano improvisation of such high quality. Given that, I am puzzled why I never bought The Köln Concert until the complete version made its way on to CD around 1984.

Recorded live in January of 1975, The Köln Concert was released in late November of 1975, the album starts off plaintively in the style of the quiet Americana reflectiveness so well done by classical composers like Aaron Copland and Roy Harris. For the first improvisation, Jarrett leans heavily on repetitive phrases and ostinato-like patterns to continue to move the music forward, flowing as if driven by stream of consciousness, yet always compelling and logical, deftly avoiding lingering too long in any single style, texture, or mode of emotional expression as the music logically unfolds.

The second piece, broken up onto three sides of the double LP album, is dramatically different in tone and character. Like the first improvisation, it evades any simple stylistic labels sometimes flirting into rock piano improvisation. Where the first improvisation was reflective, the second is inexhaustibly joyous and intensely rhythmically as Jarrett turns the piano into a percussive engine, hammering out a powerful, trance-like groove with his left hand that is pure, ecstatic energy. This propulsive marathon of invention continues through Part IIb, before finally dissolving and making way for the famous encore, “Part IIc.” After all the complex fireworks, this final piece is a moment of breathtaking, lyrical grace — a simple, hymn-like melody that releases all the tension and remains one of the most beautiful themes Jarrett ever played.

The music makes this performance legendary, but like the most interesting legends, it has an almost mythical backstory. Jarrett had specifically requested a Bösendorfer 290 Imperial concert grand. Unfortunately, what was made available on the stage was a baby grand rehearsal piano in such bad condition that Jarrett had initially refused to play on it. The requested piano was in storage and due to horrid weather was not able to safely replace the inferior piano. So Jarrett was forced to confront the rehearsal piano, an unsuitable, tinny, and out-of-tune practice piano he tested during the afternoon of the concert and was so dissatisfied with it he almost threw the towel in performing that evening. The promoter finally convinced him that he had a responsibility to play as best as he could for a sell-out crowd and somehow do his best to deal with the inadequacies of the inferior rehearsal piano. Jarrett went forward with the performance and it was this limitation, this ‘bad instrument,’ that forced Jarrett to navigate that evening’s improvisations into new territory, compelling him to avoid the shrill upper register notes and the weak lower bass notes, replacing the harmonic function of the latter with lower middle register accompaniment patterns and repetitive ostinatos — thus creating the distinctive style that unifies the music of this remarkable performance.

Joni Mitchell: The Hissing of Summer Lawns

Released in November of 1975, The Hissing of Summer Lawns finds Joni Mitchell presiding over one of the most seamless marriages of lyrics and music of the 1970s. The poetry here is evocative and ironic, crafting memorable metaphors and unforgettable images. It’s often said that when constraints are placed on artists, they often produce their best work. For an artist who had previously written music around pre-existing lyrics to then make that shift over to the craft of fitting words into already composed music, one might expect a change in character — or at least in lyrical texture. Beginning around 1973 or 1974, Mitchell’s lyrics indeed became more fluid, impressionistic, and engaged, so that by the time of this album, she had achieved a near-perfect fusion of music and poetry, with the music among her finest creations.

And how does one classify the sound? One cannot. It draws on pop, rock, folk, and jazz, yet it belongs to none of them. The album charts its own course, allowing space for stellar contributors like Bud Shank and Joe Sample to leave their imprint without overshadowing Mitchell’s vision. The closing track, “Shadows and Light,” brings the album to a transcendent conclusion: a multi-tracked a cappella choir of Mitchell’s voice against a contrasting, processed drone from a Farfisa organ. The result is a kind of sonic cathedral, where light and sound filter through like stained glas — ever shifting, quietly monumental, and filled with a sense of cosmic design.

The entire album is a showcase of extracting equilibrium from motion. The music is built on a strong foundation yet exploratory and liberating. Here we have an artist of the highest level in full command of her gifts, unafraid to blur the lines between song and painting, intellect and intuition. The Hissing of Summer Lawns continues to be an album worth returning to: we achieve familiarity with repeated listenings but never is the magic lessened.

Chris Squire: Fish Out of Water

Another November 1975 release was Chris Squire’s highly accessible, melodic Fish Out of Water. For those like me who couldn’t get enough of the brilliance of Yes’s Fragile, this album was filled with the musical inventiveness and wonderful bass lines that dominated that Yes album. Musicians include Bill Bruford on drums and percussion, with saxophonist Mel Collins on two tracks and Patrick Moraz on bass synthesizer and organ on one track . Squire handles all the vocals, bass guitar, some acoustic twelve-string guitar and electric bass. Special compliments go Andrew Pryce Jackman who provides acoustic and electric piano keyboards and seamlessly integrated orchestration providing the album with additional depth and further contributing to its ebullient vitality. Fish Out of Water is a must-have album for all Yes fans surpassing most of their catalog released after 1975.

Crack the Sky: Crack the Sky

Crack the Sky’s debut was released in limited quantities in November 1975 by the independent label, Lifesong. Is this the biggest accomplishment by this label? Depends on your perspective — Lifesong posthumously re-released several greatest hits albums of Jim Croce material starting in 1976 as well as being responsible for “The Biggest Rock Event of the Decade” — that’s right — the rock opera Spider-Man: Rock Reflections of a Superhero — an album of such popularity that I cannot find any entry for it on Wikipedia, though in fairness, the title was released again twenty-five years later on CD and is currently available on eBay for $49.

Putting Spider-Man historical considerations aside, the Crack in the Sky album, despite its limited distribution, eventually climbed up to spot 161 on the Billboard Charts in February 1976 aided by some airplay in the Baltimore area and more importantly being identified by the Rolling Stone magazine as the debut album of 1975. 

Keyboard player and lead vocalist John Palumbo wrote all the music and lyrics showcasing an eclectic range of styles incorporating sixties pop elements and contemporary progressive rock elements. Both the music and lyrics are generally quirky, with a tongue-in-cheek, often ironic, humor deeply embedded in the lyrics and the music rich with accessible melody. There are musical moments that recall surf music, the Beatles, Procol Harum, early Genesis, and even Gentle Giant. It’s not a particularly well-produced album but it is a lot of fun, and an album that anyone who considers themselves well-versed in the history of rock music should have heard at least once.

Tangerine Dream: Ricochet

Recorded in late October and early November of 1975 in England, partly live at Fairfields Hall in Croydon and partly in the studio, Ricochet was released in December of 1975. It continues that rhythmically intense sequencer-driven signature sound from Rubycon, delivering it with sparkling clarity and focus. The music unfolds logically with a strong sense of overall meaning and purpose, effectively locking in one’s attention and never letting it go. Side One, “Ricochet, Part One” contains studio improvisations and recreations of live performances with side two, “Ricochet, Part Two” being predominantly live.

Vangelis: Heaven and Hell

Released in November of 1975, Heaven and Hell is a mixture of the cinematic, early and modern “classical” music, Greek folk and some elements of progressive rock. The album effectively combines Vangelis’s mastery of synthesizer with orchestra to create a richly themed concept album about the duality of human interaction with good and evil, the light and the darkness of existence. Side One, “Heaven and Hell, Part I”, opens furiously with synthesizer and chorus setting a strong symphonic tone and concludes with vocals by Jon Anderson of Yes segmented with a glorious orchestral and synthesizer interlude. Side Two, “Heaven and Hell, Part II” opens up, contrastingly, darkly and ominously, generally maintaining that mood with the notable interspersion of an exuberant, infectious Greek-influenced folk-dance-like section and its more reflective ending. The musical tone-painting is particularly impressive, effectively supporting side two’s darker thematic premise.

Mike Oldfield: Ommadawn

Released in November of 1975, Ommadawn is Mike Oldfield’s third major symphonic work, following the partly Exorcist-driven phenomenon of Tubular Bells and the expansive, pastoral landscapes of Hergest Ridge. Ommadawn mostly consists of one long work, the title track, divided between the two sides of the original LP with a short additional work at the end. It is this title track that is the gem and centerpiece of the album, excelling in compositional presentation and development of thematic material with the first theme deftly varied, followed by an abruptly effective intrusion of the second theme around the 4:15 mark, which is also skillfully varied. After this exposition of fundamental material, both themes are further developed and extended with a richness of instrumental variety and occasional vocals (using a cleverly altered Irish translation of some simple English words) invoking a tribal sense of community.

The second half of “Ommadawn” is more dramatic with greater musical weight and contrast, further exploring a wondrous world-fusion sound that would soon become a whole sub-genre of music. The highlights here include Paddy Moloney on the Irish equivalent of bagpipes, more properly known as Uilleann pipes, and an uplifting blend of vocals and glockenspiel followed by an Irish-like dance section that brings the work to a close.

For those looking to check this album out, avoid the original mix and go for the sonically spectacular 2010 remix which provides significant clarification and enhancement of individual instruments and provides rich, immersive stereo.

Magma: Live/Hhaï

Released in December of 1975, I bought this album in Germany in 1978, and I was not surprised in the least to find this live album of the French progressive rock group in Germany. Unlike Ange, which had a distinct French coloration to their albums, Magma had a Germanic sound and eschewed the French language to adapt a language more suitable to their music — not German, but — okay let’s break this down.

Christian Vander, son of French jazz pianist Maurice Vander, was born in Paris in 1948. Exposed to both jazz and classical music, he grew up listening to Wagner, Bach and Stravinsky and met several great jazz artists including Chet Baker, who gifted Christian Vander his first drum kit and Elvin Jones who shared his musical expertise. Vander brought all these influences as well as his intense admiration for a number of jazz giants, most particularly John Coltrane, as well as drummers like Art Blakey, Max Roach, Kenny Clarke and Tony Williams. Vander brought all such influences with him, including Coltrane’s searching musical intensity, when he founded Magma in 1969 as Magma’s leader, primary composer, drummer and an important contributing vocalist.

With the formation of Magma, Vander begin the creation of the mythology of Magma concept albums and the appropriate language — Kobaïan, the language of the fictional world of Kobaïa — a distant planet colonized by a group of humans fleeing earth’s moral and ecological collapse. The language’s main function was to provide the appropriate musical sound for Magma’s music and to represent a sacred language of renewal. Its sonic characteristics are starkly different than French, coming closer to Slavic and Germanic patterns, but intrinsically supportive of Vander’s musical ideas, which slowly coalesced into a dark, more teutonic, primitively spiritual style, with texture and timbral/orchestral characteristics eventually significantly influenced by Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana, which Vander first heard in 1972.

This 1975 Live/Hhaï album includes material as early as 1973, all of which represents the mature, dramatic Magma sound prevalent from 1973 on. The original album was a two LP set that could still fit on a standard single CD, but is currently sold as a two CD set. It is available for streaming on the usual sources for anyone wanted to sample this unique music, a music that will retain its excitement, mystery and appeal for centuries to come.

Brian Eno: Another Green World and Discreet Music; Fripp & Eno: Evening Star

In November of 1975, Brian Eno released his third solo studio album, the remarkable Another Green World which, while not as ambient as his upcoming work, is certainly an unconventional pop album full of highly accessible music surrounded with imaginatively unusual context. Eno provides a mix of catchy songs with him on vocals, some amazing guitar work from Robert Fripp, but mostly a level of exotic, quirky arrangements that elevate each and every track. Highly recommend!

In December of 1975, Eno’s fourth studio album is released, Discreet Music, and it is a boldly innovative ambient album. The first side, the title track, is a work of beauty and can be listened to directly or used as effective background music for a range of activities including writing, reading and napping off. The second side is more challenging: three “elastic” arrangements of Pachelbel’s well-known canon where the parts move at different paces — not by chance or performer’s whim but intentionally arranged to distort the relationship of the individual parts and the overall musical experience. One can still hear traces of the original canon — yet each of the three very different arrangements alters the original musical architecture with time-based abstractions that are roughly parallel to distortion concepts in cubism, futurism and surrealism and also seem related to rules-driven processes that are found in works by artists like Paul Klee, Bridget Riley, Sol LeWitt and even those famous rectangle paintings of Piet Mondrian. One also has to give credit to John Cage’s influence which opened up this whole realm of unexpected alterations whether aleatoric or rules-driven.

The most challenging of these three albums, Fripp & Eno’s Evening Star, released also in December of 1975, is another tale of two sides. The first side of four tracks, each with new standard ambient titles, is by far the most accessible and functions very effectively as truly ambient music or even meditative, reflective music, particularly the first, third tracks and fourth tracks “Wind on Water,” “Evensong,” and “Wind on Wind.”

The second side is devoted to a single piece “An Index of Metals” divided up into six tracks. I doubt there are many people that can turn it on in the background and experience a calming or relaxing effect from it. It is filled with tension and not smooth or flowing. I suspect many will just find it plain irritating if using it to relax, read, or write by as it has a somewhat intrusive and ominous character. It is more listening music and needs the attention of an active listener to properly navigate the tension, suspense, and forward progress of the music. The last of the six tracks is the most gritty of all and it ends with the tension decaying as opposed to any resolution. This sets up a nice contrast to some more relaxing ambient music, which would become more and more common and commercially viable thanks to this early work by pioneers like Eno and Fripp.



For additional posts related to Gentle Giant, please check these out:
https://zumpoems.com/2025/07/25/fifty-year-friday-july-and-august-1975/
https://zumpoems.com/2026/04/17/fifty-year-friday-april-1976/
https://zumpoems.com/2021/07/23/fifty-year-friday-july-1971/
https://zumpoems.com/2023/09/01/fifty-year-friday-september-1973/
https://zumpoems.com/2022/04/01/fifty-year-friday-april-1970-2/
https://zumpoems.com/2022/12/16/fifty-year-friday-december-1972/
https://zumpoems.com/2017/08/25/fifty-year-friday-aretha-franklin-simon-dupree-the-big-sound-and-pink-floyd/
https://zumpoems.com/2020/11/20/fifty-year-friday-november-1970/

For Must Listen To Gentle Giant and Prog Rock albums, please check out:
https://zumpoems.com/must-listen-to-music/

For additional posts that mention Gentle Giant, please check these out:
https://zumpoems.com/2017/12/30/seventy-year-saturday-1947/
https://zumpoems.com/2019/07/19/fifty-year-friday-men-on-the-moon-yes-larry-coryell/
https://zumpoems.com/2022/05/27/fifty-year-friday-may-1972/
https://zumpoems.com/2019/05/31/fifty-year-friday-power-to-the-people-the-giant-awakens-empty-sky-at-san-quentin-and-charisma/
https://zumpoems.com/2024/03/15/fifty-year-friday-march-1974/
https://zumpoems.com/2024/06/07/fifty-year-friday-june-1974/
https://zumpoems.com/2019/01/04/fifty-year-friday-the-canterbury-scene-soft-machine-and-caravan-first-albums/
https://zumpoems.com/2025/06/20/fifty-year-friday-june-1975/
https://zumpoems.com/2019/06/14/fifty-year-friday-trout-mask-replica-brave-new-world/
https://zumpoems.com/2023/08/04/fifty-year-friday-august-1973/
https://zumpoems.com/2020/02/14/fifty-year-friday-february-1970/
https://zumpoems.com/2018/08/10/fifty-year-friday-ultimate-spinach/
https://zumpoems.com/2018/06/22/fifty-year-friday-british-folk-rock/
https://zumpoems.com/2020/09/25/fifty-year-friday-september-1970/
https://zumpoems.com/2025/11/14/fifty-year-friday-november-and-december-1975/
https://zumpoems.com/2020/03/20/fifty-year-friday-march-2020/
https://zumpoems.com/2025/09/26/fifty-year-friday-september-and-october-1975/
https://zumpoems.com/2021/11/26/fifty-year-friday-november-1971/
https://zumpoems.com/2026/06/12/dexter-gordon-lullaby-for-a-monster-bouncin-with-dex-brand-x-unorthodox-behavior-fifty-year-friday-june-1976/

Category:

Ambient Music, Fifty Year Friday, Folk Rock, jazz, Jazz Rock, Music, Pop, Progressive Rock, Rock

Tagged with:

Tom Waits, Van Der Graaf Generator, Steve Hackett; Fifty Year Friday: September and October 1975

Welcome back to Fifty Year Friday! It is my great pleasure to announce that our first entry is by an esteemed and respected writer who, for reasons we won’t question, has graciously agreed to provide material for us under the nom de guerre of Leo The Deacon. If you can navigate a substantial drop in quality, a few of my own Fifty Year Friday entries follow. Enjoy!

Tom Waits: Nighthawks at the Diner

If ever there was an artist and an album deserving of the rubric sui generis, it is Tom Waits and this, his third album Nighthawks at the Diner. At a time—October 1975—when progressive rock was on the cusp of going to seed, disco was poised to go mainstream, and Wayne Shorter and Chick Corea had set aside post-bop to explore jazz-rock fusion, Waits came out with a two-disc album in which he performs mostly original songs, backed up by a quartet of first-rate Los Angeles jazz sidemen, in front of a small live audience.  As a bookish 20-year-old who never quite embraced rock music—despite the earnest and occasionally successful efforts of the curator of this blog to interest me in such groups as Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, King Crimson, and Gentle Giant—I found Waits’ wry, atmospheric, jazz-inflected compositions  a subversive challenge to the hegemony of rock and roll. Nighthawks appealed not just to the emotions, but to the head. It did not hurt that his profane, salacious, and very funny banter between songs was well calculated to engage the sensibilities of college guys whose weekends, more often than not, were spent in the company of other dateless young men.

So is Nighthawks a jazz production, or a singer/songwriter presentation? Yes. Here’s where it gets interesting, because throughout the performance Waits meanders about the intersection of several genres:  jazz, singer/songwriter compositions, spoken word, a bit of stand-up comedy. Hell, in the cut “Big Joe and Phantom 309” Waits even covers a country-music song by Red Sovine about a ghostly trucker. The entire album is a musical Venn diagram of multiple converging circles. One can’t even call it a “live” album, exactly, because it was recorded in a studio, but in front of an audience hand-picked by the producer to convey the feel of a live performance. It’s not quite authentic but it works, especially as it allows the listener to experience the entire Waits shtick: the guttural banter, the jokes, the wordplay, and the music.

The mood is set from the get-go in the opening intro, with the quartet playing a bluesy vamp featuring Jim Hughart’s walking bass and short, honking arabesques by Pete Christlieb on the sax. The sound is that of a cool, if jaded, house band at a burlesque club and Waits reinforces the conceit by welcoming the audience to the fictitious “Rafael’s Silver Cloud Lounge,” and thanking the stripper who ostensibly warmed up the audience and put a charge into Waits’  libido.  He continues with some introductory jokes about late nights and coming home after three months to find everything in his refrigerator has “turned into a science project.”  As he talks, Waits elegantly elides into the first song, “Emotional Weather Report,” which is more rhythmic spoken word recitation than it is singing. He bemoans the “tornado watches…in the western region of my mental health” and declares that “It’s cold out there—colder than the ticket-taker’s smile at the Ivar Theater on a Saturday night.” Jilted by his lover, Waits’ forecast is for more precipitation.

The rest of the album more or less follows the same pattern, with Waits sustaining a twisted down-and-out persona as he leads into another song or spoken word performance, backed by the jazzmen and revolving around themes of loneliness, lost love, late nights, and life at the margins. For my money, the best cut on the album is the third, “Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson)” in which Waits precisely captures the milieu of an all-night coffee shop. In this song, (this time he is singing rather than reciting), Waits displays his artistry in clever turns of phrase and the ability to evoke the bittersweet mood of a lonely late night out after a break-up. Atmospherics and the skilled deployment of similes and metaphors are Waits’ stock in trade and he’s at his best in “Eggs and Sausage.”

Waits is often compared to the Beat poets, but that’s not quite right. His music at this stage of his career, and particularly on this album, is reminiscent of the Beats, with its jazz and spoken word poetry, and its exploration of loneliness and alienation. But unlike the Beats, Waits isn’t concerned with philosophy or spirituality, or even drug-induced altered states of consciousness. For the most part, alcohol is Waits’ drug of choice and that and his focus on the working class and marginalized perhaps slides him closer to the Beats-adjacent Charles Bukowski. Both Bukowski and the Beats expressed profound alienation, however, with the Beats setting themselves in opposition to the 1950s military-industrial complex and Bukowski challenging the smug conventionality and moral sensibilities of bourgeois America. Waits isn’t overtly political, like the Beats could be, and he certainly doesn’t indulge in the blunt rage and belligerence of Bukowski. Rather, despite the crusty delivery, he is sentimental. In the end, Nighthawks, as well as Waits’ other music of the mid-1970s, is not concerned so much with alienation as with hard luck, loneliness, and the struggle to carve a little dignity out of an uncaring universe. On Nighthawks, the world is what it is, and Waits knows it is a mug’s game to try to change it.

Tom Waits, at any point in his long musical career, is an acquired taste. Those fans, likely younger ones who are more familiar with the growling, iconoclastic, and experimental performer Waits morphed into starting with 1983’s Swordfishtrombones, may find the younger Waits of Nighthawks in the Diner more conventional—dare we say “quaint”?—than the older artist they are familiar with.  But in 1975, Waits’ retro-beatnik hipster persona, jazzy music, and well-crafted noirish lyrics was something different from the dominant electronic-heavy compositions of rock and fusion. From the perspective of fifty years, it holds up well, although younger listeners may find themselves bemused by Waits’ frequent references on this album to LA “landmarks” that have passed into history—The Copper Penny restaurants, the seedy Ivar Theater, the  Ziedler & Ziedler clothing store on Sunset, and KABC weatherman Dr. George Fischbeck, to name a few.

If there is a flaw in Nighthawks, it is that the persona Waits adopts narrows the variety of the songs. To be sure, on a few tracks—“Warm Beer and Cold Women,” “Nobody,” and the country-ish “Putnam County”—Waits veers into his singer/songwriter roots, dials back the jazz, and sings accompanied by himself on piano. By and large, though, the album is a series of Waits’ compositions backed up by well-executed jazz incidental music. The jazz frames the mood, but the fun is in skillful lyrics, the repartee and wry observations, and the dark, at times cynical, yet not despairing atmosphere that Waits conjures up. It is an eccentric artifact of its time, but it still rewards the listener and reminds us that the 1970s weren’t all bell-bottoms, platform shoes, and leisure suits. 

—Leo the Deacon

Van Der Graaf Generator: Godbluff

Released in October 1975 in the UK, this album was only available as an import. It wasn’t until I made a trip to Europe in 1978 that I purchased it in Amsterdam and had it and several other albums shipped from a post office near the record store back to the States. That particular parcel of LPs arrived home earlier than I, and so once I was home, I put it on my beloved turntable. Wow!

As a great admirer of their previous album, Pawn Hearts, which I had bought as a cut-out in the US for less than three dollars, I had high expectations for this. Fortunately, the quality of the lyrics and music did not disappoint.

After a four-year gap between Godbluff and Pawn Hearts, Peter Hammill, Hugh Banton, Guy Evans, and David Jackson roar back more powerfully than ever with less psychedelic and excursionary elements and an apparent singular focus on drama and controlled handling of musical tension and release. Hammill displays his range of skills on vocals, superior in dramatic and expressive impact to more famous contemporary singers/songwriters like David Bowie, and even contending with the otherworldly emotional delivery of Demetrio Stratos of Area and Francesco Di Giacomo of Banco del Mutuo Soccorso. Hugh Banton and Guy Evans are in great form on keyboards and percussion; and we have David Jackson on double saxophones, à la Rahsaan Roland Kirk, creating musical textures that elevate the music experience to breathtaking intensity.

Side One opens with “The Undercover Man”, which starts softly, creating musical and dramatic suspense. Once the tension is established, it methodically builds in intensity, layer by layer, gradually crescendoing, leading to some colorful organ, sax and the further unfolding of the brilliant expression and pacing of Hammill’s staggered and passionate vocals.

“Scorched Earth”, the second of two tracks on the first side, maintains intensity, opening up quietly and building in dynamics with repetitive motives weaving through Hugh Banton’s organ part and David Jackson’s deftly engineered sax parts supported by Guy Evans’s relentlessly polyrhythmic drum work. The forward momentum cools, with an initially echoey middle section, crafted out of preceding musical material that explodes into an unpredictable flurry of syncopated melodic material and violent skirmishes of accelerating ostinatos and motivic interchanges. Two dominant mixed meters alternate. Dynamic and rhythmic shifts continue to propel the music forward to an abrupt climax ending with a brief musical exhale.

Side two opens up reflectively with “Arrow”, with a meandering and introspective introduction ferociously interrupted with Hammill’s vocals which commence to entwine and shape the course of the music leading into an instrumental of repeated sax permutations on the primitive four-note saxophone motive heard earlier but not put through a series of repeated modifications. Hammill’s vocals return with full intensity and anguish:

How long the time seems
How dark the shadow
How straight the eagle flies
How straight towards his arrow

How long the night is
Why is this passage so narrow?
How strange my body feels
Impaled upon the arrow

This is followed by more sax-dominated instrumental and intensive, unrestrained percussion eventually trailing off into a sustained whimper.

The last track, “Sleepwalker”, described by Hammill as portraying “life in death, death in life” begins boldly with a brilliant 9/8-based mixed-meter motif, syncopated and off-kilter, creating a lurching, stumbling feel, realized flawlessly by sax, organ and percussion. Once the pattern is established for the listener, it moves into an accompaniment foundation for Hammill’s vocals:

At night, this mindless army, ranks unbroken by dissent
Is moved into action and their pace does not relent
In step, with great precision, these dancers of the night
Advance against the darkness – how implacable their might!

The second section starts off as a tango with güiro, organ, clavinet and then sax on melody– but it is a 3/4 tango! It then contorts itself evolving into the opening motif for brief return of theme A, but these expectations are quickly tossed aside with an intro into a completely new section in a relentless, undeniable 4/4, the sax and rhythm hinting at a brief funky disco feel before the band shuts down that possibility completely with aggressive prog-rock percussion, sax and Hammill’s searing vocals.

A necessary aside on the artistic nature of David Jackson’s approach to the saxophone: dubbed “the Van Gogh of the saxophone” by a critic of the British New Musical Express, Jackson was described as a “renegade impressionist, dispensing distorted visions of the world outside from his private asylum window”. Following in the footsteps of jazz artists like John Coltrane, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, and Albert Ayler, Jackson focused on fully leveraging timbral and tonal qualities of his instrument to deliver a wider range of emotional experiences.

Two key elements defined his style. The first was his signature use of double horn — playing two saxophones (typically alto and tenor) simultaneously, creating dense harmonies and powerful, layered riffs. The second, and more crucial for “The Sleepwalkers,” was his pioneering use of electronics using customized pickups, octave dividers, wah-wah pedals, and powerful amplification, transforming the saxophone from a purely acoustic instrument into a versatile prog-rock sound source, capable of generating textures and timbres far beyond its natural range, allowing him to sonically manifest the fragmentation, distortion, and psychological turmoil central to VDGG’s music — and provide a fully-effective soundscape for Hammill’s autonomically engaging, intensely visceral vocal delivery.

The synthesis of those two saxophones, the bass pedals and organ work of Banton, Evans’s driving polyrhythmically-paced percussion, always at the service of the music and text propels us into the psychedelic-flavored coda which slowly evaporates into nothingness, leaving the lingering essence in the listener’s mind, eventually compelling a repeat playing of one of the finest albums

Steve Hackett: Voyage of the Acolyte

Released in October 1975, I never had enough money to buy this in my college days — such a shame, as this is a wonderful album and provides insight into how much Steve Hackett contributed compositionally to the many of the passages within Genesis’s Nursery Cryme and Supper’s Ready. Excellent, evocative and reflective music that sparkles as wondrously as ever.

Pink Floyd: Wish You Were Here

Pink Floyd released their ninth studio album in September of 1975. Fifty years later their The Dark Side of Moon boost has maintained their popularity enough so that there are multiple sets out this month celebrating the fiftieth anniversary. If you haven’t heard this album yet, you probably weren’t listening to music fifty years ago!

Can: Landed; Jethro Tull: Minstrel In the Gallery; Electric Light Orchestra: Face the Music

All released in September of 1975, all three of these albums have their strong moments and are worth checking out. Can’s Landed starts off with grungy rock badly recorded, but ends strongly with the musique concrète of “Unfinished” with much of interest in between.

Jethro Tull’s Minstrel In the Gallery is more reflective than his previous three albums and seemingly more personal. Thematically, the album lyrics cover the introspective and the cynical, with Ian Anderson’s lyrics exploring the isolation and pressures of being a public performer — Anderson being that Minstrel in the Gallery. Throughout a good deal of the album Martin Barre’s electric guitar is in the forefront and borders on a jazz-fusion ethos contrasted in other sections with delicate acoustic guitar. The album’s highlight is the musically and metrically complex, multi-part “Baker Street Muse” on side two, lasting over sixteen minutes with sharp contrasts and sharp lyrics.

ELO’s Face the Music opens up with an orchestral intro and explodes with their signature blend of strings, Jeff Lynne’s guitar, drums, and keyboards. The excellent opening instrumental, which highlights Mik Kaminski on violin, is followed by a classic-sounding ELO track, “Waterfall, reminiscent of Eldorado material. As mentioned earlier by Leo the Deacon, September 1975 ushers us into the mainstream days of disco fever and ELO made good money with an edited single version of the third track “Evil Woman.” I had stopped listening to AM radio long before 1975, but somehow I was still exposed to it enough in various public venues that I developed a rather strong aversion to its annoyingly commercially cloying sound. The remaining album has its ups and downs, and includes a number sounding much like the pre-disco Bee-Gees (“Strange Magic”) and Lynn’s excursion into country music, “Down Home Town.”

Besides these albums we have a wealth of other releases, not at the level of Godbluff by any means but much more commercially successful including albums by George Harrison, John Lennon, Elton John, Paul Simon, his former singing mate, Art Garfunkel, Rush, Herbie Mann, Linda Ronstadt, Roxy Music, Sparks, Steeleye Span, Aretha Franklin, Barbra Streisand, Frank Zappa, Hall & Oates, Crosby and Nash without Stills, and though I haven’t a clue what it sounds like, and am totally fine with that, Kiss’s Live Album, which apparently is the first album released by any American hard rock band, for if memory serves me correctly Spinal Tap had not released any live albums by that date — or to be factually correct, now that I check Wikipedia, still has not.




For additional posts related to Gentle Giant, please check these out:
https://zumpoems.com/2025/07/25/fifty-year-friday-july-and-august-1975/
https://zumpoems.com/2026/04/17/fifty-year-friday-april-1976/
https://zumpoems.com/2021/07/23/fifty-year-friday-july-1971/
https://zumpoems.com/2023/09/01/fifty-year-friday-september-1973/
https://zumpoems.com/2022/04/01/fifty-year-friday-april-1970-2/
https://zumpoems.com/2022/12/16/fifty-year-friday-december-1972/
https://zumpoems.com/2017/08/25/fifty-year-friday-aretha-franklin-simon-dupree-the-big-sound-and-pink-floyd/
https://zumpoems.com/2020/11/20/fifty-year-friday-november-1970/

For Must Listen To Gentle Giant and Prog Rock albums, please check out:
https://zumpoems.com/must-listen-to-music/

For additional posts that mention Gentle Giant, please check these out:
https://zumpoems.com/2017/12/30/seventy-year-saturday-1947/
https://zumpoems.com/2019/07/19/fifty-year-friday-men-on-the-moon-yes-larry-coryell/
https://zumpoems.com/2022/05/27/fifty-year-friday-may-1972/
https://zumpoems.com/2019/05/31/fifty-year-friday-power-to-the-people-the-giant-awakens-empty-sky-at-san-quentin-and-charisma/
https://zumpoems.com/2024/03/15/fifty-year-friday-march-1974/
https://zumpoems.com/2024/06/07/fifty-year-friday-june-1974/
https://zumpoems.com/2019/01/04/fifty-year-friday-the-canterbury-scene-soft-machine-and-caravan-first-albums/
https://zumpoems.com/2025/06/20/fifty-year-friday-june-1975/
https://zumpoems.com/2019/06/14/fifty-year-friday-trout-mask-replica-brave-new-world/
https://zumpoems.com/2023/08/04/fifty-year-friday-august-1973/
https://zumpoems.com/2020/02/14/fifty-year-friday-february-1970/
https://zumpoems.com/2018/08/10/fifty-year-friday-ultimate-spinach/
https://zumpoems.com/2018/06/22/fifty-year-friday-british-folk-rock/
https://zumpoems.com/2020/09/25/fifty-year-friday-september-1970/
https://zumpoems.com/2025/11/14/fifty-year-friday-november-and-december-1975/
https://zumpoems.com/2020/03/20/fifty-year-friday-march-2020/
https://zumpoems.com/2025/09/26/fifty-year-friday-september-and-october-1975/
https://zumpoems.com/2021/11/26/fifty-year-friday-november-1971/
https://zumpoems.com/2026/06/12/dexter-gordon-lullaby-for-a-monster-bouncin-with-dex-brand-x-unorthodox-behavior-fifty-year-friday-june-1976/

Category:

Album review, Country Rock, Fifty Year Friday, Folk Rock, Progressive Rock, Rock

Tagged with:

Fifty Year Friday: December 1974

Gryphon: Red Queen to Gryphon Three

Released in December of 1974, Gryphon’s instrumental concept album, “Red Queen to Gryphon Three” masterfully blends progressive rock, folk rock, and renaissance musical elements into diligently crafted, richly-textured, exciting and sonically colorful musical experience.

As there are not lyrics, and limited discussion by bandmembers on the intent of the album and its underlying concept, it seems that the game of chess functions as a metaphor — whether this metaphor is representative of human conflict, interaction, some life event or simply the traditional four movement classical symphony where there is an opening movement, a second movement, a more reflective movement (often the second movement but also sometimes the third movement) and a finale (the checkmate), is left for the listener to consider. What is beyond dispute is the music is the propulsive, dramatic nature of the music and the meticulous arrangements with its balanced instrumental layering.

The first track, “Opening Move” begins with a fanfare flourish, followed by a contemplative piano solo revealing the main theme, offset and contrasted by the use of a wealth of exploratory and developmental musical material. The movement gathers intensity appearing to push for a grand finish, but instead dissolves into a more thoughtful coda-like section that serves as reflective musical commentary.

The second track, “Second Spasm” is jaunty, filled with the spirit of English folk and renaissance with a sequence of interesting themes, including a second theme based on material from the first movement, a subsequent section that showcases the distinctive sounds of crumhorn and bassoon, and a march-like fourth section. The original them returns, altered instrumentation and character, developing a bit before followed by the second theme which with at full force concludes the first side of the original LP.

The third track, is the more reflective “Lament” with a contrasting, mostly upbeat section, and the return of the opening theme which ultimately smoothly transitions into an effective coda for the section.

The fourth track, “Checkmate” is an upbeat, energetic finale teaming with energy and colorful creativity. New musical material dominates, but, somehow, it all seems related to what has occurred earlier even without any discernable restatement of earlier material. The track and album conclude with a flourish similar to the material prior to the coda of the first track, which effectively wraps up a wonderful and memorably distinctive musical experience.

Category:

Fifty Year Friday, Folk Rock, Progressive Rock, Rock

Tagged with: