Monthly Archives: September 2015

Discussions concerning the USA’s early 1980s underground scene often dwell upon punk’s adjustment into hardcore and the new wave’s gradual transformation into college rock. However, as the clock incessantly ticks, numerous archival releases have assisted in expanding the sonic landscape of said timeframe, and a fresh addition to this shelf has just arrived from the New York City label RVNG Intl. Having already devoted a volume to the solo recordings of K. Leimer, Artificial Dance continues the enlightening overview of the composer’s productivity by focusing on his studio project Savant. It’s out now on 2LP/CD/digital.

Starting in the mid-‘70s Seattle’s Kerry Leimer began a mission of self-documentation that has been recently reevaluated as one of North America’s earliest responses to Euro-based electronic innovators Cluster and Brian Eno, especially the latter’s groundbreaking ’73 collaboration with Robert Fripp (No Pussyfooting). Holding 30 tracks (31 on the double wax), RVNG’s A Period of Review (Original Recordings: 1975-1983) nicely illuminates the breadth of Leimer’s achievements and is a superb primer into his influences.

Undisguised influences at that, for amid the riches is a brief entry named “Eno’s Aviary.” Some might find the reference a tad blatant; it rather quickly reminded this writer of “In the Wake of King Fripp,” the leadoff cut on the second album from Heldon (Heldon II “Allez-Téia”), the French prog rock unit led by guitarist Richard Pinhas.

Like Heldon, K. Leimer was part of a milieu where postures of originality were at least sporadically deemed as less crucial to success. And it was an epoch seeing a large percentage of recordings bought on intuition and high hopes; trying before buying simply wasn’t as common, and therefore a song title as homage could clue in prospective buyers and potentially lead them to the cash register.

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Press Play is our Monday recap—on Tuesday this week—of the new and FREE tracks received last week, provided here to inform your next trip to your local indie record store.

We Came As Strangers – Eyedom
Flower Fellow – The Rope That Ties Us
Eskimeaux – Two Mountains
KINSEY – Wide Awake
Amy Blaschke – Come See About Loving Me
Pelicans And Their Allies – Just Like July
Damien McFly – Losing Myself
Tuff Sunshine – Dreamin
La Sera – Running Wild
Youth Man – Pigs

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Andrew Wasylyk – Last Of The Loved

Shannon and the Clams – It’s Too Late
GUIDES – Pictures On Pictures
French Kiddiz – Stratosphere
Commandeur – Wasted
Mindex – Don’t Try to Teach Me ft. Milena Sarkisyan
Years & Years – Desire (Jerry Folk Remix)
Dirtyphonics – Since You’ve Been Gone feat. Matt Rose (Infuze Remix)
DOLPHIN TEARS – NEED Ü
Gater – Everything We Do
CloZee – Anticlimax

Sometimes, and I’m talking about times when rock just seems too tame, tepid, and predictable, you have to go where the wild things are. I’m talking about free jazz in general and the supergroup Last Exit in particular. I love them because they mixed some rock in with their skronk to produce a maniacal din that never forgot to be—in the loosest terms, that is—musical. Can you take it? That answer will depend on how open you are to songs that sound like very cool car crashes.

I probably wouldn’t like them but I was raised on the stuff. My youngest brother is the jazz equivalent of that guy who can’t find food spicy enough for his flame-jaded palate, and who eats peppers that would turn your mouth into a crematorium. And he deviously subjected me to increasingly atonal noise music, slowly ratcheting up the dissonance until Albert Ayler sounded tame and the hardest rebop sounded like Glenn Miller.

Last Exit, which included the legendary Sonny Sharrock on guitar, Bill Laswell on 6-string bass, Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums, and Peter Brötzmann on bass saxophone, formed in 1986 and dissolved in 1994, following the death of Sharrock. During that time they recorded a lot of music that was loud and confrontational, and appealed not only to jazzbos but also to more adventurous hardcore fans, to the point where they got labeled punk jazz. Critic Greg Kot wrote that they worked at a level of “volume and violence that makes most rock bands sound tame,” which is an understatement if ever I’ve heard one. Me, I like to think of them as the Butthole Surfers of Skronk.

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Inspecting chart history proves otherwise, but due to the ubiquitous nature of that one song everybody remembers, Bobby Fuller is considered by many as a One Hit Wonder. Others view him as the true-blood ‘60s extension in art as well as life of fellow Texan Buddy Holly, which overlaps with the assessment by some that Fuller was maybe the last gasp of rock ‘n’ roll innocence before the ‘60s became The Sixties. But he was also just a passionate young guy with a boatload of talent for whom music was paramount, and nothing communicates that better than a listen to The Bobby Fuller Four’s 1966 LP, I Fought the Law.

The Bobby Fuller Four’s second and best long-player opens with what is probably my pick for the band’s greatest moment and certainly one of their leader’s finest compositions. It’s not the title track, for “I Fought the Law” was penned by Sonny Curtis of The Crickets, a group most famous for their backing of Buddy Holly (Curtis joined after Holly’s plane crash demise; the original appears on 1960’s In Style with the Crickets.)

The tune is “Let Her Dance,” a delicious slice of guitar and vocal harmony driven pop-rock and easily one of ’65’s best singles. Perfectly calibrated for airplay, its 2:32 flows with expertly layered simplicity. Once established, none of the song’s elements drift far in their roles; not Fuller’s lead singing of his wounded-heart love lyrics or the gorgeous chiming and jangling of his and Jim Reese’s guitars, not the beautiful but non-grandiose backing vocals, not Randy Fuller’s bass, and definitely not DeWayne Quirico’s drumming, which with subtle alterations follows the same pattern throughout.

Individually, none of these aspects are especially noteworthy. It’s in the assemblage and the ensuing vigor of the captured performance that greatness is attained. And over the years, playing “Let Her Dance” has turned many a head that had erroneously pegged Bobby Fuller as basically a slightly displaced rockabilly guy.

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“The first records I heard growing up were vinyl. I was very young.”

“At night, my father would often light some incense, drink a few glasses of wine, and play records on the turntable. The volume was always turned way up on the large meshed speakers. It was my first introduction to Buddy Holly, Bob Dylan, The Band, The Byrds, and David Bowie among others. On heavy rotation was Neil Diamond whom I’m a fan of and an acapella band called the Persuasions. Their album we owned was called Coming at Ya, still a fantastic record to this day.

I owned a little fisher price record player and would spend hours listening to my Popeye 45s with story adventures and music. I also had a really great old children’s record called Mother Goose. I still have it but it’s all scratched up. I’d like to have it restored someday.

When I was about 14 my cousin introduced me to Led Zeppelin with a live mixed cassette tape. It was my second great musical awakening.

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It’s not exactly a secret, but the musical history of the 1960s is loaded with bands. A few got famous, some are still remembered, and many more hang in the purgatory of obscurity. From Los Angeles via Amarillo, TX, The Kitchen Cinq fell short of stardom but they definitely haven’t been forgotten; helping to insure their placement in the cultural memory is the most recent volume in Light in the Attic’s Lee Hazelwood Archive Series, When the Rainbow Disappears: An Anthology 1965-68. Collecting their LHI sessions, rare material as The Illusions and The Y’alls, and superb notes by Alec Palao, it’s out now on compact disc and double vinyl.

When the Rainbow Disappears carefully compiles the output of a worthwhile outfit, with The Kitchen Cinq’s background also shedding light on one of the decade’s more idiosyncratic pop artists in Lee Hazelwood. The set’s liners detail the Cinq’s struggles as the inaugural act on Lee Hazelwood Industries, the story providing supporting roles to vocalist Suzi Jane Hokom and fellow Amarillo scenester and future songwriter of note J.D. Souther.

Consisting of Dale Gardner on lead vocals, Mark Creamer on lead guitar, Jim Parker on rhythm guitar, Dallas Smith on bass, and Johnny Stark on drums, The Kitchen Cinq’s early Amarillo days were spent as The Illusions. Taken from two sessions, the five glimpses of these origins are amongst When the Rainbow Disappears’ best attributes.

Divided between three originals and two covers, these entries simultaneously illuminate the infancy of The Kitchen Cinq and present the fruits of a perfectly sturdy mid-‘60s rock ‘n’ roll band. More to the point, they got work; The Illusions’ ’65 date offers “Young Boy,” a solid beat-combo-styled number from Parker with harmonica and appealing tandem vocals and a surprisingly non-rote cover of “Searchin’” by The Coasters that surely went down a storm during gigs.

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I have a dream. It’s that someone will put out a LP of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here made out of sugar and heavily laced with LSD. That way you could lick it before turning it on, and hear the damn album the way it should be heard, while you’re peaking.

It would be appropriate; has any major band ever been as associated with acid as Pink Floyd? (Yeah. The Grateful Dead, dumbo.) But not even the Dead managed to put out LPs (like 1969’s Ummagumma) that I would ONLY listen to while I was on hallucinogens, because they were unlistenable to anyone on the uninitiated side of the doors of perception. That said, I’ve since put on Ummagumma and found its first side to be bearable and its second side to be complete and unadulterated bullshit (“Several Species of Small Furry Animals” or “The Grand Vizier’s Garden Party (Entertainment),” anyone?). And while my recollections are hazy, I have come to the conclusion that the guy in the dorm who owned it was so far out there he’d only play side two while tripping balls.

The Pink Floyd story is a familiar one. The band was formed in London in 1965 by Syd Barrett, Nick Mason, Roger Waters, and Richard Wright, with David Gilmour coming aboard in 1967, destined to be the substitute for Barrett, who despite the band’s success and his status as the band’s chief songwriter was coming unhinged. After numerous legendary on-stage fiascos involving increasingly odd behavior on the part of Barrett—he might stand in the hot stage lights, crushed ludes melting in his hair, looking off into the distance with his arms dangling down, declining to play his guitar for the entire set—the band more or less decided to not pick him up for a gig, and just like that he was gone, although his living specter (he showed up, bald and bloated, at the Wish You Were Here sessions, and his evident madness left several of his former band mates in tears) would haunt the band and indeed inspire some of their best work.

As time went on the band moved from challenging works such as Ummagumma towards more commercial LPs, such as 1973’s The Dark Side of the Moon, which contained none of their trademark acid jams (“long psychedelic noodling stuff,” as Gilmour dismissively described them) and made them superstars. But I’m partial to its successor, 1974’s Wish You Were Here, in part because I’ve heard “Time” and “Money” so many times I scream in agony when they come on the radio, and I don’t think I could give the landmark LP they’re on an even break.

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