|
- Funkadelic "Cosmic Slop" 1973 (USA)
This
week is another high concept pledge drive show. What is the concept?
That is correct! Our Classic Album is a great one from Funkadelic's classic Eddie Hazel period that I'm
surprised hasn't been inducted already. Highlights include the original version of the title track
(one of their most popular concert staples for over 40 years now), the
shoulda-been-a-hit weirdo funk of "You Can't Miss WHAT You Can't
Measure", and hardcore political blues metal of "March To The Witches
Castle" (Black Sabbath as soul music?) |
|
- Highway Robbery "For Love Or Money" 1972 (USA)
This
week is a high concept pledge drive show, so the Classic Album is
simply the coolest obscure record on the show this week which has not
already been a Classic Album. Highway Robbery was a heavy Deetroit rock
trio of the seventies that only recorded one album. Most of the album is classy hard rock, sort of an American Led Zeppelin
only the guy who looks like Robert Plant is their singing
drummer! In fact the shrieky lead singer/drummer seems to be a
mark of quality one-off early 70's hard rock: see also Sir Lord Baltimore and White Witch. |
|
- Can "Soon Over Babaluma" 1974 (Germany)
We
lost two great bassists of the seventies this month: we celebrated
Walter Becker (Steely Dan)
last week, so this week it is Holger Czukay
time. Holger was the bassist, oldest member, edit-meister and leader of
"The Can", Germnay's greatest jam band and one of the leading lights of
"krautrock." Sadly, Holger is now jamming with drummer Jaki and
guitarist Michael auf Himmel, with Irmin Schmidt being the last original member of the group still alive (not including their "foreign" vocalists, Ameren Malcolm Mooney and Japanese Damo Suzuki,
both of whom are also still alive). This week's classic album is a
pivotal release for two reasons: it was their last album where they
recorded themselves live onto a two-track recorder (as they had done
since their first album), and also the first album as an all-German
quartet without a foreign lead singer (Irmin and Michael took over
vocal duties, but still mostly sing auf Englisch). |
|
- Steely Dan "Aja" 1977 (USA)
Even
casual fans of classic rock probably know that the band Steely Dan
basically consisted of two mysterious gnomes named Walter Becker and
Donal Fagen, who holed up in a studio in the 1970's to record some of
the most immaculate music of the 20th century. Becker passed away this
week, meaning that the nine studio albums they recorded (seven from the
1970's and two from the 2000's) are thus a closed book and there shall
be no more (though Fagen has announced he will continue to lead "the
Steely Dan Band" which remains a popular touring attraction, and he has
also released a steady stream of his own solo albums too). The magic of
the Dan was the bittersweet combination of gorgeous,
sumptuously-arranged music that stradled the lines between rock, jazz
and "R&B" and the darkest, most cynical, misanthropic lyrics ever
laid down by a Top 40 hit making machine. According to band lore, it
was primarily Fagen who provided the former (sweet riffs) and Becker
who brought the latter (acid-tongued spite). Becker's life story was
apparently full of woes (dead parents, lost decades of drug abuse)
which his dark wit turned into anthems of hipster alienation. The most
commercially successful Steely LP is the 1977 mega-platinum Aja,
which includes three of their hits (slinky groover "Peg" about a sleazy
photographer flattering a vapid starlet, the epic "Deacon Blues" which
is the sad hipster anthem to end all sad hipster anthems, and "Josie"
which is relatively meaningless but has a funky groove). But truly, all
seven of their first run of albums are timeless classics that will
probably still be popular a hundred years from now - as long as there
are alienated hipsters and lovers of sweet jazzrock riffs. |
|
- Nina Hagen Band "Nina Hagen Band" 1978 (Germany)
A
child prodigy opera singer from communist East Germany winds up leading
the proggiest punk band of all time. Her favorite song topics are
heroin (she's against it), Hinduism (for it), and UFOs. The
self-proclaimed "Mother of Punk" emigrated to West Germany through a loophole in the mid-seventies and was immediately signed to
a record contract (she had lready been a TV actress and singer in the
East). The label sent her to London to get acquainted with the latest
Western youth culture and styles just as The Sex Pistols
and punk rock exploded. Her outrageous hairstyles, makeup and costumes
have always been iconic: her spiky shag hairdo on the debut album would
prove to be her most conservative look (at least until she
started dressing like a nun in the mid-eighties! Or when she was
performing in drag as a man!) Musically, the band formed in her name
seems to have been a bunch of prog rockers pressed into new wave
service (much as groups like The Police had their roots in Eric Burdon's psychedelic Animals and Curved Air). The unusually high level of virtuosity makes Nina Hagen Band sound a bit like Frank Zappa
or The Tubes, whom I think of as "New Wave Zappa" though they debuted
well before punk and new wave in 1975 (this album even includes a Tubes
cover with new German lyrics). NHB only lasted two albums before Nina
launched her solo career, while the rest of the band become the obscure
new wave band Spliff (I just bought one of their records!) But
ultimately, the magic of Nina is her incredible voice, and the
incredibly strange things she does with it - check out this music video from the 1980's where she plays all the parts. They sure don't make them like that anymore, and hardly did in the first place! |
|
- Uriah Heep "The Magician's Birthday" 1972 (UK)
It's
Hippie Xmas again in Madison! So this week we play only the most
dumpster-worthy cheep old records. This week's classic album is a solid
heavy rock release by one of the big names of the early 70's, and
nobody should pay more than a dollar or two to get a decent copy of
this album. Though not as plentiful as old Moody Blues and Emerson Lake & Palmer records in the bargain bins of used record shops, Uriah Heep is pretty close.
This is a mark of an artist that was once immensely popular, but which
the sands of time have rendered uncool over the years. Exactly the type
of crusty oldies we like on the Kosmik Radiation show! Uriah Heep was
basically the missing link between Deep Purple (heavy metal featuring an electric organist dueling a guitar god) and Queen (operatic vocals and campy theatricality), but also one of the many bands that lost the heavy rock competition to the mightier Black Sabbath and commercial kings of hard rock Led Zeppelin. Personally, I like their classic run of 1971-1972 LPs quite a bit (they did four albums in those two years!), of which Magician's Birthday
was perhaps the best. The titular track is a hard
rock/prog/camp masterpiece (yes, they do sing a few choruses of"Happy
Birthday" to the Dear Magician in his Impenetrable Fortress Of Love). Aside from a couple dull keyboard ballads, the
rest of the album is also solid hard rock. |
|
- Jerry Garcia "Garcia" 1972 (USA)
This
August 1st is Jerry Garcia's 75th birthday! It is a well-known Deadhead
trope that the Grateful Dead was always better on the concert stage
than in a recording studio, and that is generally true. In fact, I
think three of the top five "Grateful Dead studio albums" are the three
solo LP's released in 1972. Mickey's album
has already been a CAOTW and may be the group's most ambitious
recording, though it also features many other bay area acid rock stars
(the usual suspects from Jefferson Airplane and Santana). Bobby's solo album Ace
is basically a Dead studio album, featuring the entire group except for
Mickey (working on his own record, see above) even including
soon-to-join new member Donna Jean Godchaux; it introduces a number of
staples of the Dead's concert repetoire ("Playing In The Band",
"Black-Throated Wind", "Greatest Story Ever Told", "Cassidy", "One More
Saturday Night" - pretty much the entire album). The third solo album
was of course Garcia, Jerry's
debut and his most important solo recording. His LP features a few
genuinely trippy moments like "Spidergawd" and "Eep Hour" (as far-out
as any Dead studio tracks ever got), and more classic songs that would
become part of the Dead concert repetoire, most notably "Bird Song",
"Deal", "The Wheel" and "Sugaree". |
|
- Goose Creek Symphony "est. 1970" 1970 (USA)
Are
they the most country "psychedelic band" of all time, or the most
psychedelic "country band" of all time? Goose Creek Symphony play
extremely downhome backporch pickin' and grinnin' old-timey country
style music, but then they periodically launch into heavy Cream-style
jams, and freely incorporate studio trickery and backwards tracks to
make their records even groovier. The LP est. 1970,
as in the band was "established" that year, was the group's debut
and the blueprint for their classic run of albums. The main
songwriter and foundational member of the group is one Charles
Gearheart, who still leads a version of the band today! I am pretty
sure GCS is the longest-running "jam band" in America, having outlasted
the Grateful Dead by nearly 20 years (and counting). |
