Monthly Archives: December 2015

Talk about your Red Menaces. I have long believed that Jefferson Starship’s Red Octopus was the product of a fifth column of CIA agents designed to sap the intelligence of the American counterculture. Then again, I’ve never liked Grace Slick and always thought the highlight of Marty Balin’s career was getting smacked in the kisser by angry Hell’s Angels at Altamont.

But here’s the surprise. Relistening to 1975’s Red Octopus after decades, what strikes me is how listenable it is, despite all the latter-day hippie bullshit the Jefferson Starship lays on you. Their futuristic spoutings on Universal Love—they’re riding on a starship, after all—are off-putting, to say the least. But on Red Octopus they come up with a parcel of songs most of which are good enough to allow you to ignore the words, which are mostly Aquarian crapola well past its sell-by date.

The LP’s chief advantage is its fast tempos. It’s a bona fide rock album, with the exception of “Miracles,” “Tumblin’,” and the closing cut, “There Will Be Love.” Opener “Fast Buck Freddie” is a cool tune, thanks largely to the sound of Papa John Creach’s electric violin, Craig Chaquico’s guitar, and Grace Slick’s thin and icy vocals. “How long?” she asks, “Until we take it back,” and I’m assuming she means taking it back from the man, although I don’t know what “it” is. But it doesn’t matter much because the song, which moves like quicksilver, is so good.

As for “Miracles,” its opening is pure space-age hoodoo, leading to a slow and soulful number with Balin—who had just returned to the band after a 4-year hiatus—taking the lead and Irv Cox delivering on a happening saxophone solo towards the end. In its own way, “Miracles” mines the same Philly soul territory David Bowie was exploring on Young Americans, sans Bowie’s skill at writing lyrics. But what am I saying? Not even Bowie could have bequeathed us a lyric as inspirationally dumb as Balin’s, “I had a taste of the real world/When I went down on you girl.” That’s some true dunderheaded genius right there, is what it is.

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Press Play is our Monday recap of the new and FREE tracks received last week to inform the next trip to your local indie record store.

Takénobu – Curtain Call
Mairearad Green – Blessing On Tanera
Nathaniel Bellows – Oh, Now
MIRA – Ghost
Peru – I Need You
Krisp – Franz
Swaying Wires – Nowhere
Cotton Mather – The Book Of Too Late Changes
Universal Thee – Hounds
Mik Current – Lies

TVD SINGLE OF THE WEEK:
Miranda Lee Richards – 7th Ray

Husky Rescue – Far From The Storm
Epic Empire – [paʁi]
Strange & Primitive – Highwayman
P’ARIS – Focus
The Weeknd X Ember Island – Can’t Feel My Face (Steve Void Remix)
Husky – If You Want Me (ft. Kimono)
Bad Cartoons – On The Dial
Meyhem Lauren ft. Action Bronson, Roc Marciano & Big Body Bes – Bonus Round
ChumZilla – The Five Wounds ft. Wrex Mason & Tamar Green
KAYZO – Hasselhouse

I’ve never been a fan of Jeff Beck. I was indifferent to his work with the Yardbirds, and downright loathed the jazz-rock fusion he pawned off on suckers (yours truly included) in the mid-seventies. My basic feeling is this: tons of talent, too little great music. But there is an exception: 1969’s Beck-Ola, which he recorded with The Jeff Beck Group, which was essentially a supergroup consisting of Beck on guitar, Rod Stewart on vocals, Ronnie Wood on bass, Nicky Hopkins on piano and organ, and Tony Newman on drums.

Beck-Ola is a much better—despite its lack of critical plaudits—LP than the first album recorded by the group, 1968’s Truth. The difference between the two is that Beck decided he wanted to play harder rock, and Beck-Ola, with a few exceptions—for example, the lovely Nicky Hopkins instrumental “Girl From Mill Valley,” on which he shows off both his piano and organ chops—is a much tougher LP than Truth.

What I love so much about this 2-LP lineup is how much it lays down the groundwork for the Faces, which both Stewart and Wood would join after Beck, always an explosive and difficult individual, basically tested their patience too far. As for Beck, he blew it in epic proportions following the breakup of the group, declining an opportunity to join The Rolling Stones in the wake of the death of Brian Jones.

But that’s just history. What Beck-Ola happens to be, in the end run, is a seminal heavy metal album, with Beck demonstrating his chops (along with the rest of the band) on such head-banging heavy cuts as “The Hangman’s Knee” (superb guitar solo, titanic cymbal crashing, we’re talking Led Zep country here); and their hard-charging take on Elvis Presley’s “All Shook Up,” on which Stewart shines and Beck plays some really fucked-up guitar, and I’m talking fucked up in the epic sense. Beck squeezes out notes, plays wild runs, revs up his guitar like a funny car, makes funky scratching noises, and generally makes me concede that, despite my dislike for most of his oeuvre, he is a truly brilliant axe-slinger.

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Out of the UK’s punk scrap yard came Gary Numan, first as part of the ever more synth-imbued Tubeway Army and then as a solo artist for a long string of albums. His chart dominance in the waning moments of the ‘70s was fleeting but huge, and his most commercially successful run of LPs detail a pop-savvy artist of much deeper value than his hit singles; Replicas, The Pleasure Principle and an expanded Telekon see vinyl reissue in the US on December 11.

Gary Webb started out in the bands Mean Street and The Lasers; recording with neither (Mean Street waxed one song after his exit for the Live at the Vortex comp LP), after departing the latter with bassist Paul Gardiner they formed Tubeway Army with Webb’s uncle Jess Lidyard in the drum chair. Promptly signed by Beggars Banquet, with Webb on guitar they initially dished out beefy Bowie-influenced punk, the singles “That’s Too Bad” and “Bombers” later compiled with a mess of demos from the same era as The Plan.

It’s a cool acquisition for serious punk collectors, but ’78’s Tubeway Army was even better. By the point of its release Webb had adopted the name Gary Numan (he’d briefly wielded the handle Valerian) but his signature sound was still in development, the debut augmenting the punk excursions (which occasionally leaned into a hard rock/glam merger) and sci-fi themes (impacted by Phil K. Dick and William Burroughs) with interjections from a Minimoog discovered in the studio by Numan after recording began.

Tubeway Army is very good record with a few excellent spots and conversely a handful of lags; ‘79’s Replicas is more fully-formed, and while the group’s name remains on the cover it’s flanked by Numan’s on later editions; the LP is clearly his show and any doubts over such will be quickly dispelled by the icy/edgy opener “Me! I Disconnect from You.”

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