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- The Strawberry Alarm Clock "Incense And Peppermints" 1967 (USA)
Review soon. |
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- Funkadelic "Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On" 1974 (USA)
George Clinton, the founder and leader of Parliament-Funkadelic, turns 80 years old this week. More review soon. |
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- Fishbone "Fishbone" EP 1985 (USA)
In
the late 80's, Fishbone seemed poised for greatness. But then "grunge
rock" and hardcore rap took over the music scene and their sharp
combination of punk, funk, ska, soul and metal didn't fit those molds.
But then, they really didn't fit any mold in the first place which was
one of their great strengths (though also a great weakness since major
record labels are generally not good at promoting artists that can't be
easily pigeonholed). Their other great strength is impeccable
musicianship:
started by band nerds in junior high school
in the late 70's, the core members developed a remarkable chemistry
because they literally grew up playing together. (Their band name
reflects their band nerd roots: "Fish" for the Fisher brothers on bass
and drums and "bone" because their keyboardist doubles on trombone).
Only one of the seven full-length albums they released between 1986 and
2006 managed to scrape the bottom of the Top 50 on the American album charts, and they
haven't had a major label record deal for more than 20 years now, but
the group soldiers on to this day with 5 of 6 original members (and
even had a full reunion of the original lineup in late 2020). But for
all their legacy, I think their greatest moments on record can all be
found on their debut, a nearly perfect 6-song EP which is our CAOTW
this week. |
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- The Chambers Brothers "Love, Peace And Happiness" 1969 (USA)
The
Chambers Brothers were four brothers from Mississippi who wound up
starting a folk and gospel singing group in Los Angeles in the 1950's.
In 1965 they made a splash at the Newport Folk Festival at the same
time Bob Dylan was electrifying and
"inventing folk rock". Their biggest hit came a couple years later
by which time they had become more of a psychedelic soul garage band:
the original album version of "Time Has Come Today"
was a masterful 11-minute psychedelic freakout which didn't make the
charts until they chopped it down to a 4-minute single almost a year
later. They never scored another hit anywhere near that big, but
recorded plenty of great tracks in the late sixties. Their most
ambitious release is this week's classic album: a double elpee with one
live concert record and one studio record, half of which is the titular
track which takes up a whole side of the record and is their longest
epic (16 minutes of groovy psychedelic soul.) |
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- Van der Graaf Generator "The Least We Can Do Is Wave To Each Other" 1970 (UK)
Van
der Graaf Generator, a lesser-known British prog-rock band that has
existed off and on since the late sixties, was planning to do a tour in
2020 and should be hitting the road later this year. This week's CAOTW
was their first proper album, released more than 50 years ago.
Following a debut album (The Aerosol Grey Machine 1969) which was really a solo project by the group's singer/songwriter Peter Hammill,
the band's line-up solidified around Hammill, Hugh Banton (keyboards),
Guy Evans (drums), David Jaxon (horns) and Nic Potter (bass). Although
Hammill occasionally played guitar, their usual lack of that instrument
was a distinctive ingredient in their sound (like the Canterbury band Egg only with horns). After their next album,
the bassist left and then their music was arranged for the unusual
combo of just keyboards, drums, horns and voice. The group broke up in
1971 (but not really; they still played with Hammill on his solo
albums), but then regrouped in 1975 for a
few more records before falling silent through the 80's and 90's. The
classic quartet reformed again in the early 2000's, and have
sporadically continued as a trio of Hammill-Banton-Evans after Jaxon
left about a decade ago. Their most recent album came out in 2016, and
happily I wouldn't be surprised if they still have one more in them. |
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- The Beatles "Help!" 1965 (UK)
Sir
Paul McCartney turns 79 years old this week, and your humble narrator
Dave 3000 was born the day he turned 29 (do the math). Back in the
sixties, Paul was in a band that was a pretty big deal.
They recorded 12 proper albums (and a couple movie soundtracks) which are all classics for one reason or
another. In 1965, the Fab Four had already conquered Europe and America
and were touring all over the globe, attaining new heights of pop
superstardom which had barely been conceivable before they came along.
Artistically, they were pretty much done with cover songs at this point
as Lennon-McCartney were the hottest songwriters in the world, and they
were branching beyond music with the release of their second motion
picture film Help! Though their first film is the one most often mentioned by film critics, arguably Help!
was even more groundbreaking. It is a goofy, loose spoof on spy films
(James Bond was red hot at the time) with a lot of offbeat quips and
non sequitor gags that basically make it the prototype of genre-based parodies like Airplane!, The Naked Gun, etc. But even more importantly (because it was the sixties maaan), 1965 was the year Bob Dylan
introduced them to "the devil's lettuce" so a lot of The Beatles'
antics on screen, as well as the sounds they were getting in the
studio, were some of the earliest stirrings of psychedelic rock. The
album yielded a batch of ultra-classic Beatle songs, including three
international chart-topping hits: Lennon's "Help!" and "Ticket To Ride"
and McCartney's pseudo-classical ballad "Yesterday" (a precursor of progressive rock?) |
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- Poppy "POPPY.COMPUTER" 2017 (USA)
For my self indulgent birthday special, we have a second bonus CAOTW. Poppy
was the most interesting American pop music sensation of 2016-2018, and
this is my favorite of her records (so far). I think her electro-pop music is super-catchy,
her lyrics make me chuckle, and the singer's breathy-girly ASMR voice
is hard to resist. It was Poppy who sent me down the rabbit hole of
contemporary Japanese pop music (or "J-pop", which is a million times
more interesting than "K-pop" which I promise you will never hear on
Kosmik Radiation.) Basically, at this point in her career Poppy was
taking most of her musical cues from Japanese pop (in particular the
delightful Kyary Pamyu Pamyu) and adding
a dose of good ole American irony and sarcasm. Poppy may be a parody of
a pop star, but she is a genuine master of pop music as well. The "real
person" who inhabits the Poppy persona, Moriah Pereira, co-writes every
song on all her albums, so she is not the vacuous waif she pretends to
be. In more recent years, she has dyed her hair back to it's natural
dark color and added a lot of heavy metal to her sound - apparently she
always wanted to be Marilyn Manson?! (Though when she began to "go metal" I
sussed that Poppy's true inspiration might be the very popular J-pop metal band BABYMETAL.)
But if the past is any indication, she'll probably change her style and
do something new before long. I like to think someday she will do an
acoustic country music album! (She was raised in Nashville, so
I bet she would be a natural.)
While we're on the subject of J-pop, here's a couple new items of interest: First, Yasutaka Nakata's longest-running project CAPSULE released their first new song in about 6 years this week, "Disco Of Light". Secondly, as I mentioned last month Dempagumi.inc
recently had their first concert as a 10-member group after they added
5 new girls earlier this year (actually it was a 9-girl gig since Mirin Furukawa is on maternity leave). The first clip from that show has appeared online, and it's a brand new song called "1,000,000,000 Radio Wave Seat!"
(the B-side of their recent single). It continues to give me the
impression that they will be more of a Broadway-style musical theater
group during this phase of their history. I can live with that (in fact
the new songs' choreography is better than ever), but can't help
feeling that their glory days as a prog-pop big band with 6 lead
vocalists are over for good. So let's flash back with this emotional
performance of "I'm Sure, I'm Sure" (by the transitional 5-girl lineup of late 2017). |
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- Jethro Tull "Aqualung" 1971 (UK)
This week's show is a pledge drive special featuring vinyl albums of the year 1971. Aqualung
is Jethro Tull's most well-known and popular album, and it's a pretty
strange record. But then they are a pretty strange band. Originally a
"progressive British blues band" much like Savoy Brown or early
Fleetwood Mac, only just a little more eclectic: their leader
played flute, not normally a rock instrument, and there were always
touches of jazz and British folk music in their heavy blues sound.
After original guitarist Mick Abrams left in the late sixties, Jethro
Tulls' music became increasingly theatrical with high-falutin' concepts
as the blues influences waned. Aqualung
is an album with themes (mostly criticizing organized religion) thus
was often mistaken for a "concept album" about a creepy guy named
Aqualung. It wasn't that, but the misunderstanding inspired one of Tull's wackiest and
most fun albums, their 1972 follow up being a sort of joke of a concept
album consisting of one epic 40-minute song called Thick As A Brick (did they not have the zaniest titles in prog rock?) |
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- The Who "Tommy" 1969 (UK)
Peter Townshend is 76 years old today. Back in the sixties, he wrote the world's first "Rock Opera" - which was not Tommy,
it was a nine minute multi-sectioned song called "A Quick One, While
He's Away" from The Who's second album released at the end of
1966. But this week's classic album is of course Townshend's most
famous Rock Opera and a far more ambitious affair. It solidified The Who
as rock superstars at the forefront of British Classic Rock but
unfortunately, as an album, it was recorded on the cheap under intense
pressure from the record label and really did not turn out as well as
it could have. But then The Who is one of those bands where the concert performances
were the real deal and their studio recordings were often on the
disappointing side. Pete has written a few more Rock Operas since the
sixties; The Who's next studio album was originally intended to be a
rock opera called Lifehouse and the one after that Quadrophenia
is probably Pete's best effort at the long form rock concepts. Most
recently he wrote a mini-opera called "Wire & Glass" that came out
in 2006. So how great are Rock Operas? Maybe not that great, but the
idea of theatrical rock music with overarching concepts and stories was
a huge influence on seventies progressive rock from Jethro Tull to Styx.
In Japanese theatrical rock news, today Dempagumi.inc
is releasing their first single of 2021, which is also the first
release since Eitaso retired in February and they unveiled FIVE new
members to fill her spot. The new song "Dempa Princess Power! Shine On!"
is mainly a vehicle to introduce the new gals but also twists princess
metaphors through their cheery girl power vibe (turn on closed
captioning for the
English lyric translation: since Prince Charming is an illusion "our
princess alliance will build our own castle"). So far I have
mixed feelings about the new lineup: with 10 members they definitely
seem more like a Broadway dance troupe than a singing group now, which
is not out of line since choreography is such a large part of what they
do, but I
feel it could lead to a "dilution of awesomeness". Pinky is one of
their best singers, she's been with the group nearly 10 years, and she
only gets two solo lines to sing in this song (poor Rin only gets one
line!?) It will also be "interesting" to see how they reconfigure
classic songs from the six-girl systems of the past for a much larger
group -
the five new girls can't just share Eitaso's old lines, so I guess
they're
going to reassign solo parts from the veteran members? Or sometimes
the new girls will only sing on the choruses and not get solo lines?
So far they have only performed
two songs as a ten-piece (for the encore of their February
concert, and only one of those has been released online). Dempagumi's
first full concert with the new lineup happens in Tokyo
next week, so we'll find out soon enough. |
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- The Police "Synchronicity" 1983 (UK/USA)
We
return to our April theme featuring classic albums of the new wave era
which are also listener requests. Back in 1983, this was my favorite
album, and it was a lot of people's favorite that summer as this record
duked it out with Michael Jackson's legendary Thriller
for the top spot on album charts all around the world. It also turned
out to be the swansong for The Police, who were probably the most
interesting of the popular groups of the new wave era. Their dirty
little secret is the members played at being punk rockers, but their
previous bands were a legendary prog band of the 70's (Stewart Copeland
played drums for the last few albums by Curved Air), a legendary psychedelic band of the 60's (Andy Summers was the lead guitarist for the final lineup of Eric Burdon & The Animals), and a regional jazz fusion band (Sting played bass in a group called Last Exit, NOT the group of the same name with Sonny Sharrock).
So these cats could REALLY play their instruments and had a lot of
experience and diverse musical ideas to bring to the group. However,
they also didn't get along too well and the ego clashes between
Copeland (technically the founder of the group) and Sting (who wrote
all the hits) were legendary. By the time of recording Synchronicity,
the three played in separate rooms in the studio and followed a rule
that only one member at a time would be present for overdubs. Somehow,
this weird lack of communication seems to have helped the album: there
is a sparseness to the arrangements that really highlights what great
players they were, as all three contribute great parts to every track.
Also, Sting outdid himself writing the tunes for this album: "Every
Breath You Take" was a monster song that won a couple Grammys, and
"King Of Pain" and "Wrapped Around Your Finger" were also huge hits.
But most interesting of all, the heavy centerpiece of the album
"Synchronicity II" also managed to become a Top 40 hit in spite of
having obtuse lyrics and weird chord modulations - it was one of the
most unusual hits of the entire decade. And listening to this album
again all these years later, there really isn't a weak track on this
classic album. |
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- Santana "Lotus" 1974 (USA/Mexico)
Feliz
Cinco de Mayo! This week's classic album is one of the great live
albums of all time, a triple album originally released only in Japan.
Santana was one of the great San Francisco jam bands of the psychedelic
era, beginning in the Frisco ballrooms of the sixties as The Santana
Blues Band, led as always by the group's namesake, legendary guitar
hero Carlos Santana. The two things Santana added to the jam band
formula were latin grooves (of course, what they were famous for) and
also they were big proponents of the electric jazz fusion style ala Miles Davis.
The band was on fire for this particular gig, seamlessly weaving from
one theme to the next in a funky stew of high-volume improvisation. |
