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- Buzzy Linhart "Music" 1970 (USA)
An obscure classic for sure, hipped to me by a listener request. More review soon. |
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- Grateful Dead "Blues For Allah" 1975 (USA)
Today
is Jerry Garcia's 76th birthday, so I figured it's time for another
classic album by The Dead. They were one of the great live bands of all
time, but their success at making studio albums was very hit or miss.
In particular, they rarely achieved the psychedelic majesty they were
famous when they weren't on stage. So I think their most classic albums
are their first three live albums, and their second "studio" album
which was largely edited together from concert recordings (though the
Official History of Rock says it would be their two best-selling albums
from 1970, which I have not made classic albums because Workingman's and Beauty represent the lighter side of the Dead; basically sounds like CSN).
In particular, I think their studio LPs from 1973-1980 are particularly
dull, with one interesting exception: this week's Classic Blues for Allah.
The title track is their most out-there progadelic epic (much more
interesting than the orchestrated sidelong suite about turtles on their
next studio LP), and this record also added a couple of classics to
their concert repetoire: the jazz raga "Help On The Way/Slipnot!" and
endless groover "Franklin's Tower". |
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- Enoch Light & The Light Brigade "Spaced Out" 1969 (USA)
I'm
a bit surprised this record wasn't a classic album sooner, since it is
arguably the greatest "space age bachelor pad" or "turned-on easy
listening" album of all time. Enoch Light was a primarily a producer
known for super hi-fidelity recordings (including extreme stereo
effects), and his band The Light Brigade was basically studio musicians
featuring guest appearances from other artists (usually
instrumentalists) affiliated with Enoch's Project 3 record label. On
this particular LP, the Brigade includes Dick Hyman on moog synthesizer
(I'm also surprised I haven't given him a classic album yet), The Free Design
on vocals, and Tony Motolla on guitar: in other words an all-star easy
listening orchestra! Plus in the style of the times it is kind of a
concept album: all the songs are by Burt Bacharach, The Beatles or
Johann Sebastian Bach (the 3 B's). Back in 1969, youth counterculture
types (hippies) probably thought this was the most horrible
commercialization imaginable, but today it sounds more sixties than the
sixties probably really were (if Austin Powers didn't shag to this
soundtrack in the movies, he could have).
Also on the show this week: further down the rabbit-holes of J-pop and "weird girl" pop with Scottish futurist Sophie, Wednesday Campanella (Japanese oral folklore styles mixed with rapping and house-y dance music), Haru Namuri (the J-pop anti-idol: brooding art punk with dissonant guitars), and another "wake up kawaii" session with Kyary Pamyu Pamyu (this video from 5 years ago celebrates her reaching the legal drinking age in Japan, which is 20). |
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- Rush "Caress Of Steel" 1975 (Canada)
Rush
is an iconic supergroup, very much progressive and heavy, though their
only record which might qualify as "psychedelic" is this week's classic
album. I think Rush's first two albums are pretty cool hard rock, definitely under the influence of Led Zeppelin, but then what hard rock band of the early 1970's wasn't? For their third album Caress Of Steel,
they got more ambitious, and the result nearly ended their careers as
the album sold poorly and the accompanying tour was sparsely attended.
Fortunately for them, their next LP 2112 was the hit record that established them in the pantheon of classic rock. So why didn't Caress
succeed? Listening to it 40 years later, it's pretty ridiculous and
probably sounded kinda cheesy and dated at the time: corny swords and
sorcery epics (Neil Peart's worst lyrics?) rendered by Geddy Lee's
notoriously shrieky voice, and most of the album consists of two epics
"The Fountain Of Lamneth" (20 minutes) and "The Necromancer" (12
minutes). Or as Lee explained in a a documentary of the band "we were
really high when we did that one" (huh, I always figured they were more
the sporty clean-living types). But as I have often said, goofy dated
records of the classic rock era are a big part of what the Kosmik
Radiation show is all about! Besides, this might be guitarist Alex
Lifeson's best work: he solos his butt off and often achieves Hendrixian
majesty. Following a 2015 farewell tour and 2016 documentary film, Rush
officially confirmed their retirement in early 2018, fifty years after
Lee and Lifeson started the band as teenagers.
And
now for something completely different! Lately I have become interested
in "J-pop" (Japanese pop music), or more specifically two particular
contemporary Japanese artists of note: Kyary Pamyu Pamyu
has been called "Japan's Lady Gaga", except her sense of aesthetics is
much more unified (her songs sound like her videos and costumes), her
songs are better (catchiest global pop artist since ABBA?), and she's
kind of psychedelic! KPP has articulated an interesting theory of
"traumatic cuteness" which explans her bizarre mix of fluffly pink
sweetness with disembodied organs, weapons, death, and other references
you don't expect from girly bubblegum. Then there's BABYMETAL
who are pioneering a new genre called "kawaii metal" (kawaii=cute,
which is like an ideology in Japan): three adorable teenage pop idol
girls doing choreographed headbanging in front of a real live heavy
metal band. There's also something psychedelic about their odd mix of
teeny bopper melodies, death metal, EDM, rap, and reggae(!) and they
are arguably one of the top heavy bands gloabally right now, selling
out massive stadiums in Japan and headlining festivals around the
world. Unfortuneately, it seems these two fascinating artists are more
the exception than the rule of J-pop, but they are both a lot more
interesting than the boring dreck that tops the charts in the West
these days. |
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- Bongwater "Double Bummer" 1988 (USA)
The
1980's are "officially" remembered as a conservative era of cold,
soulless corporate rock, but in fact the Reagan era in America had one
of the most vibrant musical and cultural underground scenes. Punk rock
reached its zenith, heavy metal was reborn, while rap/hiphop was
developing from a disco-spinoff into the next great form of American
popular music. In 1988, a band would only call itself "Bongwater",
referencing decades-old hippies and classic rock, if they wanted to
signal how uncool they were (which therefore makes them ironically
cool, following the punk/indie/underground inversion principle). They
do sixties covers of unlikely tunes by iconic artists like the Beatles and Monkees,
but pisstake them into oblivion - are they making fun of hippie rock or
harkening back to those halcyon days? I would say literally the former,
but spiritually the latter (hippies were the original pisstakers on
previous cultural traditions). Their approach and attitude is more
art-punk than hippie, and on the whole it makes for some decidedly
weird listening (definitely psychedelic, whatever their intention!) The
main brains of Bongwater were Ann Magnuson, an
actress/writer/performance artist type (she appeared in a few Hollywood
films around that time, including the classic Cabin Boy),
and Kramer, the record producer who goes by one name and ran the
Shimmy Disc record label. The label found its greatest success with the
more "refined" silliness of King Missile (a band featuring mostly the
same musicians), who had college rock hits with radio-friendly classics
like "Jesus Was Way Cool" and "Detachable Penis". |
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- Faust "The Faust Tapes" 1973 (Germany)
To quote the articles and press clippings on the cover of this album,
which was sold in the UK for the low-low price of just 49 pence: "The music on this album, drawn from Faust's own library of private
tapes, was recorded informally and not originally intended for release.
However, since British interest in the group has been unusually great,
it has been decided to make some of this unofficial material available
to the public in this country. These tapes have been left exactly as
they were recorded - frequently live - and no post-production work has
been imposed on them. The group wish to make it clear that this is not
to be regarded as their third album, but a bonus release - on sale at
the current price of a single - to mark their signing with Virgin
Records, for whom they will shortly be recording their next official
album. The Faust Tapes reveals Faust at their most personal and
spontaneous. It's a unique glimpse behind the scenes of a group which
European and British critics have hailed as one of the most exciting and
exploratory in the world." |
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- Miles Davis "Miles Smiles" 1967 (USA)
Miles would have been 92 years old this week (and Bob Dylan is 77!) This week's Classic Album is a high point of his acoustic jazz period, recorded a year or so before the first electric instruments
began to creep into his studio. It's also the second album featuring
the "Second Great Quintet" of his career (the first one being his group
with Coltrane in the 1950's), with the line up of Miles on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on saxes, Herbie Hancock
piano, Ron Carter bass, and teenage phenom Tony Williams on drums.
Shorter wrote most of the tunes, including the afro/blues polyrhtyhmic
waltz "Footprints" which has become a jazz standard. |
