Wyatters delights (what are you listening to?)

[marmiteboy]

A mixed bag lately:

Dennis Wilson - Pacific Ocean Blue
Beware Of Safety - It Is Curtains
Erroll Garner - Concert By The Sea
The Gutter Twins - Saturnalia
My Bloody Valentine - Glider EP
Skoud - Lost Systems EP
Tom Lehrer - An Evening Wasted With...
Tubby Hayes - Mexican Green

[Max_Gate]

Wayne Shorter: 'The Classic Blue Note Recordings' (2CD, 2002) - He moves body soulfully and soul bodily, the one becomes the other. In the words of the late Chris Whitley, "It's alchemical."

[zeebras]

 henry cow - leg end
henry cow - unrest
 in eager anticipation of the upcoming henry cow box set, i've been listening to all things cow and frithian, in particular the above mentioned titles. i love all the henry cow records, but these two have always been big favorites. hearing them again has been a real joy.

adrian belew - side one
adrian belew - side two
 in the early eighties, i was a huge belew fan, but got tired of him after "young lions" and the last    Â    incarnation of king crimson. i guess i've re-discovered him again thanks to a recent spin of "young lions"
and picking up "inner revolutions" recently at our local used cd emporium. he really does do great beatlesque pop. these two, however, are more experimental, and are a great listen.

joni mitchell - for the roses
 in my opinion, joni reached a peak with this record, giving her jazz leanings free reign. beautiful tunes, arrangements and instrumentations. intelligent, heartfelt music.

[Max_Gate]

I've never liked Joni Mitchell's lauded 'Blue', preferring the expansive personalism of 'For the Roses'. The lyrics recall, for me, the experience of reading 'The Pillow Book of Sei Shonagon'. Here qualities are listed, become the subject of gossip, are modified by the retelling. Why 'retelling'? I hear the album as an undeclared sequence rather than a collection of discrete (indiscreet) tracks. Like Zeebras, I believe it's her most enduring work.

[Max_Gate]

David Bowie: 1. Outside (1995) - How undervalued this album is! With the lighter 'Heathen', it represents a Bowie who can synthesize earlier selves without sounding like a ventriloquist, the husk of youthful hubris. It has the darkness of 'The Man Who Sold the World', the melodic hooks of 'Low', and a more realized narrative than 'Diamond Dogs'. Like most keepers, it underwhelms on first hearing then accelerates into the memory until you (want to) hear little else for hour upon hour.

[Max_Gate]

'Beck's Bolero' by Jeff Beck - or Jimmy Page, depending on which axeman you believe. The line-up makes Blind Faith look visionless: Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page on guitars, John Paul Jones on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano, and Keith Moon on drums.

Wikipedia describes it like this: 'The song is roughly divided into three parts. The first part being two lead guitars playing separate melodies over a bolero rhythm; the first a rock lead in a moderately overdriven tone; the other playing a slide piece in a clean slinky tone resembling a steel guitar. A simultaneous drum break and vocal scream is heard at halfway (courtesy of Moon, who knocked over his recording mic in the process, resulting in his crash cymbal being heard over the other percussion for the rest of the piece), after which the band begins playing a powerful blues-rock section. The first fuzzbox-distorted lead guitar eventually emerges from the sonic sludge along with the bolero rhythm, this time being played with percussive flourishes. The song is then brought to a very abrupt end as the band simply stops playing.'

So why does it live inside me? I bought the original 45 from a school fair and then wore it out. The urgency of adolescence is captured, as is the sexual dance that ultimately makes the lover (biologically) redundant. Ravel is the most visual of orchestral composers and that quality is a constant here. I write 'constant' but the piece really tracks time passing, the shortness of breath we eventually feel.

[theallgolden]

it seems that my last post has been lost as the forum was down for two days. it were my charles mingus days and i wrote about the pleasure to listen to 'haitian fight song'.  for sure that is not the only one of charles mingus which gives me delight. but that's not what i want to talk about.

a highlight of the year is  'leucocyte' of the esbjörn svennson trio.  it is a maelstrom , a sound orgy, played like in trance and every single note has its right and drags you under.  is it jazz or is it rock or something else? don't know and it didn't matter and that is the best argument. it is just fascinating music.
and it is so sad that esbjörn svennson died this year after diving at the age of  44. what could have come after that album? nobody knows , now this is his/their legacy. a great legacy.

all the best, merry christmas and a good 2009,

the all golden  

[Max_Gate]

Like the All Golden, I've been thrilled by EST's 'Leucocyte'. Their previous releases were patchy to these ears - so much so that I was suspicious of my delight, wondering if the band leader's premature death had made me unduly sympathetic. Months on I can confirm that this is not the case: 'Leucocyte' is a depth-charge that continues to shake me.

[theallgolden]

....and what i wasn't able to express in english did max in his posting. i tried to comparise 'leucocyte' with previous works and  started writing about a richard clayderman relation, but that is to harsh and not correct - and my english is still to poor. so i didn't wrote it. btw: the problem to write in english is one reason why i didn't post for a long time - it is just to exhausting.

[zeebras]

i've been thinking a lot lately about friends and family members who've left us, and, as a result, have been listening to some things that have a heavy nostalgia factor, including:
the bears - self titled first album
adrian belew and pals doing their beatles-pop-rock thing. catchy tunes, lively playing, great songs. i taped this for my friend lynn many years ago, and she just loved it. lynn was responsible for hooking me up with my wife, and passed away way too soon. every time i play this, i always think of her, with love and gratitude.
blood, sweat and tears - child is father to the man
this record has it all - jazz, rock, blues, soul, r & b and psychedelia. al kooper's finest hour. i vividly remember the night my brother bought this, and what was happening at that time in my life - wishing i was wearing just about anything else than what my parents had bought for me, wishing my hair was longer than it was, wondering how i could make an impression on the cute girl that sat next to me in math class. listening to this made me forget, for a while, all that nonsense.
mothers of invention - king kong, from uncle meat
i think my father had a hard time understanding just what the f uck my brother and i were listening to half the time. i remember him once telling my brother to "turn that caterwauling off" one evening while this was playing. as a parent myself, i have a greater understanding of the befuddlement my father must have experienced raising three kids. king kong has been a favorite of mine from the first time i heard it, not because it drove my dad nuts, but because it's a great piece of music.
freddie hubbard - red clay, straight life
john martyn - grace and danger, solid air
john and beverly martyn - stormbringer, road to ruin
david "fathead" newman - fire-live at the village vanguard
some cd's by recently departed musicians whose work i've loved for a long time.
and the henry cow box set arrived last week. i've been plowing through this, and loving every second of it. incredible music, from complex written pieces, to jaw dropping improvisations that are by turns knotty, pastoral, psychedelic, to art songs, rock songs and even a phil ochs song. robert wyatt makes a few appearances. if you're a henry cow fan, this is absolutely essential.
so, here's a tip of the hat to your loved ones and mine, those departed and those still with us. and please forgive the somewhat maudlin nature of this post.

[Max_Gate]

Regular readers here will know that I dislike most pop-rock. Honourable exceptions are Jefferson Airplane, The Fall, and Morphine. Latterly they've been joined by Supergrass, although I've been struggling with the recent release 'Diamond Hoo Ha'. Its textures are harsh; there's less English charm a la Kinks, Small Faces, The Jam.

Today I've made another attempt to penetrate the glam-rock veneer. Perhaps this is Bolan on steroids? Whatever, songs are starting to appeal. Here's one that summons up the memory of Friday nights circling Cathedral Square in search of girls...

Ever wondered how we all get through
Maybe someone's watching over you
All the shit that we face everyday
It somehow works itself out anyway

In the back of a stolen car
Doing 80 with the headlights off
It's when I needed you

Ever wondered how we all get through
Maybe someone's watching over you
When the ground is falling fast beneath
You somehow find yourself back on your feet

In the middle of a shady bar
Broken bottles flying through the air
It's when I needed you

[Max_Gate]

An ECM original pressing from 1979, 'Old Friends, New Friends' finds guitarist/pianist Ralph Towner in the best company he ever kept: Kenny Wheeler (trumpet/flugelhorn), David Darling (cello), Eddie Gomez (bass), and Michael Di Psaqua (drums). Thirty years has left the record worn but the performances have not aged.

[theallgolden]

listened with much delight to three mccoy tyner gems: sahara, atlantis and enlightenment.
magic music. mccoy tyner's piano playing and his improvisations are marvellous, his compositions are strong  and he transports so much of that coltrane spirit.  and he still rules. his latest work 'guitars' feature some great guitarists (bill frisell, derek trucks, marc ribot, john scofield and bela fleck) performing with mccoy tyner (each three songs). as bonus a dvd is included. to watch these folks performing the songs is great.

btw: max mentioned the jefferson airplane. it is strange. i have many ''favourite'' groups and a lot are from that era, but jefferson airplane are the ones i always forgot to mention. I have no explantion why, but to be true they are kind of  ''secret'' favourites to me.    

[Max_Gate]

btw: max mentioned the jefferson airplane. it is strange. i have many ''favourite'' groups and a lot are from that era, but jefferson airplane are the ones i always forgot to mention. I have no explantion why, but to be true they are kind of  ''secret'' favourites to me.    

My two favourite rock albums are 'Surrealistic Pillow' and 'Crown of Creation'. Both capture what William Hazlitt called 'the spirit of the age' and, as with the best of any and every generation, transcend it - whereas the intermediate 'After Bathing at Baxters' is stuck in the sludge of its genesis: drugs, free love that (of course) costs, and flights of fancy that crash in flames.

[Max_Gate]

For an upbeat Sunday morning, try Baby Woodrose from Denmark. They sound like a mid sixties American garage band. I guess they're the equivalent of replica furniture, perfectly executed but utterly (and proudly) unoriginal: "Nobody's gonna spoil my fun..."