Formed in Cincinnati before migrating westward to San Fransisco, cLOUDDEAD emerged at the turn of the century to profoundly impact the sound of experimental hip hop. Comprised of lyricists Yoni Wolf (Why?) and Doseone (Adam Drucker) and producer Odd Nosdam (David P. Madson), cLOUDDEAD debuted with a series of six 10-inch EPs that were in turn compiled to form the group’s debut album in 2001, an eponymous 3LP set that still carries an avant-garde thrust nearly a quarter century later. Superior Viaduct’s reissue is due on November 29.
Experimental (or underground) hip hop was burgeoning from the late 1990s and into the new century, with Anticon, a label formed by seven individuals including the three members of cLOUDDEAD, one part of a wave that encompassed imprints ranging from Rawkus (Company Flow, Mos Def, Talib Kweli), Definitive Jux (Aesop Rock, Cannibal Ox, Mr. Lif, RJD2), Stones Throw (JDilla, Madlib, MF Doom), and 75 Ark (Antipop Consortium, The Coup, Dan the Automator).
Anticon was formed in 1998 and gathered a deep roster that crossed over into electronica and indie rock. cLOUDDEAD is amongst the label’s most lauded projects while also being somewhat mysterious, even as all three members were active prior to the group’s formation. Wolf and Drucker met in the mid-’90s and were part of the group Apogee before forming Greenthink as a duo and releasing two albums. With the addition of Madson, they became cLOUDDEAD.
Occasionally the experimental tag has been applied to hip hop that was better assessed as just quirky or raw or perhaps just dense with ideas. But in the case of cLOUDDEAD, the descriptor of experimental really fits, and to the point where some would argue that what they were up to wasn’t hip hop at all. But of course, upon encountering new developments in the music, many have decried “that’s not hip hop” for decades.
PHOENIX, AZ | Dayglow made their Phoenix stop at the Arizona Financial Theatre on Friday night and the group brought everything they had to the desert. Dayglow the band is on Dayglow the tour in support of Dayglow the album—I’ve personally never seen such a trifecta—but the self-titled project and tour is a true testament to the genuine nature of the band.
The 23-song setlist includes three encores and a mix of the band’s entire discography. Despite the album title tour, Dayglow delivers all the fan favorites and includes a little bit of the entire five year resume. The venue hosts shows throughout the week, but Dayglow locked in a coveted Friday night slot. With the year wrapping up and tours coming to a close, fans deserve as much music as they can get before 2024 ends—and this one was a high.
The show was opened by Teenage Dads, a young crew from Australia. Arizona Financial Theatre is a big venue and it can be a difficult feat for a young band to engage a crowd, however Teenage Dads not only has the talent, but the personality to make the building theirs. The band began releasing music in 2017 and is presently making their name known in the States. They are traveling with Dayglow for the majority of the tour and seeing what our music scene has to offer. In return they offer American crowds pure entertainment and a ton of energy as a warm-up for Dayglow.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | As the Eagles’ continue their highly anticipated Sphere residency in Las Vegas, Nevada, UMe is releasing a 40th Anniversary vinyl edition of Don Henley’s triple-platinum Building The Perfect Beast album.
Building The Perfect Beast is available now as a 2-LP set for the first time, remastered from the original analog tapes and pressed on 180-gram vinyl. The album features the hit singles “The Boys of Summer,” “All She Wants to Do Is Dance,” “Sunset Grill,” and “Not Enough Love in the World.” The new 2-LP release will also feature the vinyl debut of the album’s complete track list, as “A Month Of Sundays” was only available previously on the CD, cassette, and digital versions. Order Building The Perfect BeastHERE now. A newly remastered digital version of the album is also available now for streaming and download.
In addition to featuring four hit singles, Building The Perfect Beast garnered five GRAMMY nominations and won the award for Best Rock Vocal Performance, Male for “The Boys Of Summer.” Don Henley was the biggest winner of the 1985 MTV Video Music Awards, taking home four Moonmen, including Video of the Year for “The Boys of Summer,” which was also the year’s most nominated video.
Best known as co-founder of the legendary rock band, the Eagles, as well as an influential solo artist, Don Henley has maintained an extraordinary commitment to music and various philanthropic efforts throughout his career, including a dedication to environmental issues and artists’ rights. Raised in a small East Texas town, Henley was drawn to the sounds of exotic music broadcast from distant radio stations in New Orleans, Nashville, and Ciudad Acuna, Mexico. These stations introduced him to the blues, bluegrass, gospel, jazz, and rock and roll, paving the way for his future as an artist.
Celebrating Joe Correro on his 78th birthday. —Ed.
Talk about your camouflage. On the surface Paul Revere & The Raiders were five smiling and well-groomed (at least by Fab Four mop top standards) young men tricked out in Revolutionary War garb complete with tricorn hats. They certainly didn’t look like long-haired sex fiends out to run off with your daughter to San Francisco where she’d die from an LSD overdose. They looked like The Monkees, and everybody knew The Monkees were safe as Milk Duds.
But 1967’s Greatest Hits (Expanded Edition) tells a different story. Boise, Idaho’s Paul Revere & The Raiders weren’t The Monkees. They were a garage rock band like The Seeds and The Standells, and if America’s parents had just listened to them they’d have packed their daughters off to the nearest nunnery and sent their sons off to military school the minute they found a copy of this baby in their rooms.
Most of the songs on the compilation come straight out of juvenile hall. The Rolling Stones comparisons are obvious–the Raiders follow the Stones’ career trajectory from scruffy R&B to subversive “Under My Thumb” pop, and vocalist Mark Lindsay comes off like an American Mick Jagger. But you also get The Who on “Just Like Me,” an intercontinental kissing cousin of “I Can’t Explain,” and some derivative Beach Boys on “Action.”
But what you mainly get is lip and a bad attitude. When Lindsay isn’t laying down the law with a shameless social climber (see garage rock masterpiece “I’m Not Your Stepping Stone”) he’s snarling mad ‘cuz he’s been hearing rumors his girl’s been running around and he isn’t going to put up with it (see “Steppin’ Out”). Our boy has woman problems galore, and he’ll chew your ear off talking about them if you let him.
Trumpeter-composer Richard Allen “Blue” Mitchell recorded steady as a leader and sideman from the early 1950 until his premature death from cancer in 1979. Along the way, Mitchell played rhythm and blues, funk, rock, and a whole lot of hard bop jazz, the style for which he is most renowned, if too often overlooked. His initial run of sessions as a leader were cut for the Riverside label, and one of the best is Blue’s Moods, a quartet date from 1960 featuring pianist Wynton Kelly, bassist Sam Jones, and drummer Roy Brooks. Added to the Original Jazz Classics line in 1984, it’s available now in a fresh 180 gram vinyl edition cut from the original tapes in a tip on jacket with an obi strip from Craft Recordings.
Blue Mitchell was a perennially inside guy, never dabbling in the avant-garde, even as a sideman. He debuted on record straight out of high school in 1951, playing R&B (unsurprising given his nickname) as a sideman in Paul Williams’ Hucklebuckers. Other R&B bands that benefitted from Mitchell’s contribution during these early days were those of Earl Bostic and Red Prysock. Entering the jazz field during this period, Mitchell worked first with alto saxophonist Lou Donaldson, then altoist Cannonball Adderley, who brought him into the sphere of the Riverside label, and after that, pianist Horace Silver.
But if a solidly inside player, Mitchell wasn’t a traditionalist, touring with Brit blues-rock kingpin John Mayall as documented on the 1972 live set Jazz Blues Fusion. Later in the decade, like a few of his contemporaries, Mitchell searched for commercial success by taking a trip to the Funktion Junction, his not highly regarded 1976 LP for RCA.
In terms of critical reception, Mitchell’s peak stretch began in 1958, the year he cut Portrait of Cannonball and his first LP as a leader, Big 6, and continued deep into the following decade as a productive run for Blue Note was winding down. Blue’s Moods, Mitchell’s fourth of six for Riverside, stands out in part through the lack of an additional horn in the lineup (his prior albums featured tenor sax and trombone).
VIA PRESS RELEASE | 30 years ago, Roxette released their fifth album Crash! Boom! Bang!, including a stream of hit singles like “Sleeping In My Car,” the title track, “Fireworks,” “Run To You,” and “Vulnerable.”
The album would sell more than five million copies and was followed by their second world tour, which saw them perform for over a million people, including the second performance ever by an international act in China.
We’re celebrating this classic album’s 30-year anniversary with a unique special edition: a double album in black and white vinyl with 18 tracks and an 8-page booklet, as well as an 18-track CD version that also includes a bonus CD with 23 demo recordings of songs considered for the album.
“Roxette were among the three most played artists on American radio during 1989, 1990, and 1991, and we were on top of the charts all over the world. So, it’s no wonder we felt pretty confident when it was time to record the new album,” Per Gessle says. “Having had that kind of success made us feel that we had a perfect opportunity to stretch out into new directions. To show slightly different sides of what Roxette could be. And I still think Crash! Boom! Bang is our best album.”
The 30-year anniversary versions of Crash! Boom! Bang will be released on December 6. Watch out for the fireworks.
Celebrating Graham Parker on his 74th birthday. —Ed.
Some guys just can’t catch a break. Especially if their name is Graham Parker, who released four stellar albums from 1975 to 1979 and never came close to making the big time. Just how good was he in his prime? The English rocker’s first two LPs (1975’s Howlin’ Wind and 1976’s Heat Treatment) made the top five of TheVillage Voice’s annual Pazz and Jop poll. But has your average music fan heard his music? Not so much. The guy might as well be invisible.
Parker had his own suspicions about his failure to reach the big time, and it was Mercury Records, who in his opinion did nothing to promote his music. He laid out his argument in the scathing “Mercury Poisoning” with its lines, “I got Mercury poisoning/It’s fatal and it don’t get better/I got, Mercury poisoning/The best kept secret in the west, hey the west.” It’s a great song. It never made its way on to an LP. Parker’s new label, Arista Records, planned to release it as a single in 1979, but ultimately relegated it to a B-Side. Too risky to release–Parker could turn on you next.
Parker’s voice bears a distinct resemblance to that of Elvis Costello, but he doesn’t go in for Costello’s witty wordplay. Parker’s songs address everyday concerns in everyday language that Costello’s clever songs never do. Just check out “Local Girls” (don’t bother with ‘em) and “Saturday Nite Is Dead” (“I used to know a good place to go/But now it’s nothing like it was then”).
Parker had a crack backing band in the Rumour, who would go on to release three albums in their own right. Furthermore, ace guitarist Brinsley Schwarz has gone on to record six well-received solo albums, while rhythm guitarist Martin Belmont has released a neat dozen. Keyboard player Bob Andrews, drummer Steve Goulding, and bass player Andrew Bobnar rounded out the quintet, providing more than enough coloring and backbone to fuel the hard rockers and ample subtlety to add nuances the slow ones.
It’s a pretty good rule of thumb that if a band’s first six albums bore you or annoy you by turn, and you’d sooner contract food poisoning than listen to them, you’re not going to turn on number seven and say, “Wow, these guys make a swell din!” In fact it’s a pretty good rule of thumb you’ll never turn on number seven at all. It’s called aversion therapy.
Yet such is the case with progressive rock stalwarts King Crimson and their 1974 LP Red. They’d been a thorn in my ear since their 1969 debut In the Court of the Crimson King, and I wasn’t alone—for every listener enthralled by the album (“a surreal work of force and originality” said a Rolling Stone reviewer at the time) there was another who heard it my way (Robert Christgau’s verdict: “ersatz shit.”)
My favorite take on the undeniably/unfortunately influential LP is worth quoting in full, if only because it always makes me laugh. Chuck Eddy: “A history of sixties rock: On March 6, 1959, a month and three days after The Day The Music Died, Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller gathered up four violins and a cello and the Drifters and recorded “There Goes My Baby,” which begat Phil Spector, which begat Pet Sounds, which begat Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which begat Days of Future Passed, which begat this shit, which killed everything. But so what, it was already dead.”
After In the Court of the Crimson King the band proceeded to pile pretentious album upon pretentious album until what you had was a veritable Mt. Everest of pretentious albums with pretentious titles like In the Wake of Poseidon and Lark’s Tongue in Aspic upon which (on a clear day) you could actually LOOK DOWN on Emerson, Lake & Palmer. This was not a band anyone would think capable of rocking out, despite the fact that they’d served up a killer rock track (“20th Century Schizoid Man”) way back on their 1969 debut. Which proved they could do it, but obviously found it lowering. Their ambitions lay elsewhere. That’s the problem with art rock. You can take the rock out of the art rocker, and odds are he won’t even know it’s gone.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | Fire Records announce Television Personalities’ new release Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out – Radio Sessions 1980-1993 out 17th January 2025. This new collection of music brings together classic radio sessions from the masters of DIY post-punk and indie pop. Featuring two ’80s BBC sessions that aired on John Peel and Andy Kershaw along with a super rare 1992 WMBR set, this double LP features covers of Buzzcocks, The Raincoats, and Daniel Johnston with previously unreleased songs and a bonus download WFMU session from 1993.
The Television Personalities’ splendid DIY skills and loveable ramshackle persona led them on many a subversive trip both on record and playing live. But it was the radio that first introduced them to the world in a whirlwind of repeated spins. John Peel let outsiders everywhere tune in to their altered world. And, at the height of punk they parodied the new revolution, their single “Part Time Punks” becoming a Peel staple, and the clamour to hear more eventually resulting in a session in 1980. The 45s kept on coming but it would be six years before they’d be asked back for a session, during which time that slew of fantastical songs had elevated them to cult status.
In 1986, Andy Kershaw’s Radio 1 Show summoned them up north with the band in unplanned hiatus. In Stockport, as a recently reconstituted trio, they barely had time to unpack their instruments before the tape spooled out and the session ended—the traffic was terrible. Almost inevitably, they chose songs that weren’t even released, just because they could.
Through the ’80s, Daniel Treacy had matured into a gifted storyteller turned pop culture narrator who placed the modern world in his own hazy shade of focus. His songs were loveable, immediately identifiable, and pin prick sharp; they were tidily observational, and often magically acute. This was a gifted raconteur, an inspiration and an essential alternative to the hiss and flutter of “normal” radio, a medium that by the late ’80s had just about abandoned them.
Celebrating Gary “Mani” Mounfield in advance of his 62nd birthday tomorrow. —Ed.
As a famous man (I think it was Geoffrey Chaucer) once said, time waits for no man. And in the case of Manchester’s The Stone Roses, the five long years that passed between this, their massively popular 1989 debut, and 1994’s Second Coming were fatal. Come Second Coming baggy pants and bucket hats were passe, and Britpop ruled England’s green and pleasant land.
Those five years may have been piddling compared to the 14 years that elapsed between Guns N’ Roses’ The Spaghetti Incident and Chinese Democracy, but those five years they were an eternity–during the same time span The Beatles went from Meet the Beatles to Abbey Road.
The Stone Roses’ half-decade of silence stemmed form a variety of issues, the most important of which was a protracted effort to sever ties with their record label, but it doesn’t much matter. In his poem “The Second Coming” (sound familiar?) William Butler Yeats foresaw a rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem, waiting to be born. The Stone Roses’ follow-up didn’t so much slouch towards the record stores as crawl, and by the time it arrived Engand’s notoriously fickle trend watchers had long since written them off.
None of which detracts from the fact that The Stone Roses is one killer LP. The album’s rave-friendly dance rhythms and hypnotic grooves would seem to put The Stone Roses in the same category as fellow Mancunians the Happy Mondays, but they took it the extra yard by fusing said dance rhythms with the Happy Daze psychedelic guitar sounds of the mid to late ‘60s. Like the Happy Mondays, The Stone Roses produced dance music, but they could rock the arenas as well.
Some guys just do it all. Today we speak with Andy Babiuk about the newest release from the Chesterfield Kings who have been rock and roll torch-bearers over the last forty plus years. The album is titled, We’re Still All The Same. Take that musical pathway, connect it with Little Steven—and his Wicked Cool Records label—and first you’ve got a story about a meat and potatoes rock band that continues to preach the garage rock gospel in the 21st century with the help of one of the day’s most active rock and roll champions.
Or, the conversation could shift into Andy’s exhaustively complete authorship of the incredibly successful books: Beatles Gear, Rolling Stones Gear, or The Story of Paul Bigsby. These books delve not into the minutia of famous musicians’ lives, but instead tell the tales behind the instruments that they held in their hands while making the timeless music that they made: the guitars, the amps, the effects, and the studio tools. How’d they get them, what’d they do with them, and where’d they go. All of them, fascinating reads.
There’s even another path available when speaking with Babiuk. It’s possible to simply discuss a day in his life running his own guitar shop in Rochester, NY, Andy Babiuk’s Fab Gear. It’s not just any guitar store, the shop specializes in the vintage instruments that were responsible for the sounds you hear on some of your favorite records recorded in the 20th century. They do repairs too. They worked on the 1964 Fender Stratocaster that Bob Dylan used to “go electric” at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival and change the course of music history. You know, stuff like that.
As you can see, there’s no shortage of angles I can take in this chat with Andy and, as you’ll soon hear, I did my best to get to it all, and we even went to a few unexpected places. Luckily, for us, Andy is ready to share his unique insights on his involvement in several aspects of a life spent in rock and roll: you could say he’s an open book. Perhaps the next story he writes will be about himself. There’s certainly plenty there to explore.
Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.
The Brian Jonestown Massacre are alive and well—relatively speaking. That they’re around at all may come as a surprise to anyone who’s watched the 2004 documentary Dig! It gave us a frontman, Anton Newcombe, at odds with the entire world. He brawled with his bandmates. He brawled with audiences. He brawled with record labels. He brawled with inanimate objects. And he had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol and heroin that made his long-term tenure on planet Earth questionable at best.
Which was sad. The documentary is hilarious in parts (when Newcombe wasn’t saying things like “You broke my sitar, motherfucker!” he was proving he couldn’t roller skate), but his antics distracted from the fact he’s a massively talented musician (plays like 900 instruments or some such) whose retro-futuristic songs make most every other psychedelic revivalist out there look like a piker. And while his legendary proclivity for self-sabotage when it came to scoring record deals bordered on the downright perverse, what it really underscored was Newcombe’s absolute refusal to be bought—he’d sooner go to the devil than shake hands with him.
So it’s nice to know that Newcombe (who has long called Berlin home) has a wife and kids and his own record label and a band that tours regularly and plays to large audiences. The Brian Jonestown Massacre continues to release awe-inspiring albums, and Newcombe has also released a pair of very cool collaborative albums with Canadian singer-songwriter Tess Parks and an excellent album with side project L’Épée, whose other members include French film star Emmanuelle Seigner and The Limiñanas.
And all would be rosy were it not for a (hopefully one-time) setback into bad habits during an ill-fated 2023 tour of Australia, which was a classic case of deja vu all over again. Contentious throughout, the tour ended disastrously with Newcombe verbally abusing the audience before hitting BJM member Ryan Van Kriedt in the head with his guitar, leading to an onstage rugby scrum and the cancellation of the remainder of the tour. Ominous? Yes. Pathetic? Even more so. Watching a guy in his late fifties flee an enraged Van Kriedt is wrong on many fronts. But the band has a 2025 European tour scheduled, so let’s hope Newcombe (whose own comments lead me to think he was drinking again) has cleaned up his act.
Choosing your favorite Brian Jonestown Massacre album is not easy. People who say they all sound the same are dead wrong, because over the years Newcombe has dabbled in shoegaze (e.g., 1995’s Methodrone), country and folk rock (1996’s full-length Thank God for Mental Illness, and the 1999 EP “Bringing It All Back Home–Again”) and the more experimental sounds of 2008’s My Bloody Underground and other LPs. Most psychedelic revivalists mine one vein, and pretend the music died in 1967. Newcombe is well aware of what’s happening now, and he takes it all in and incorporates it into the BJM sound.
The Brian Jonestown Massacre is best known for its drone, but drone or not there’s some mysterious something that gives all of their songs a distinctive and unifying feel. It’s there in the great jangle rockers “Going to Hell” and “Wasting Away” from 1998’s Strung Out in Heaven every bit as much as it is on the urgent and driving drone rocker “It’s About Being Free Really” from 2022’s Fire Doesn’t Grow on Trees. Newcombe does a lot of different things, but there’s never any doubt you’re hearing Newcombe.
That said, if I had to pick ONE, at gunpoint say, I would have to go with the 2000 EP “Zero: Songs from the Album Bravery, Repetition and Noise.” I know what you’re thinking: why not just go with the album? I’ll tell you: that “Zero” was originally meant as a joke, meaning you wouldn’t find any songs from the album on the EP. In the end, three made it onto the EP (along with three others), and they’re three of the LP’s best. What’s more, “Zero” doesn’t include any of the songs from Bravery, Repetition and Noise that leave me cold (most prominently “Leave Nothing for Sancho,” “If I Love You,” “Stolen”). Most importantly, the songs on “Zero” have a unified sound; Bravery, Repetition and Noise is all over the place. It’s a good album. “Zero” is a great EP.
It’s worth noting that the Brian Jonestown Massacre is a big band—six guitarists big on this one, with keyboards and a guy (the legendary Joel Gion) whose only job is to stand on stage shaking a tambourine and/or maracas, looking impossibly cool. They play on a crowded stage, which makes the frayed nerves a bit easier to understand. But it also produces a bigger, fuller sound, and on “Zero” it tells. Neither Gion or guitarist Matt Hollywood, both of whom figure large in Dig!, are credited on “Zero,” although both return periodically. Newcombe may be an asshole, but he’s also a charmer. He must be, because despite the abuse he heaps on band members they can’t seem to stay away. Or maybe they just can’t resist his talent. Or they’re victims of rock ’n’ roll Stockholm syndrome.
“Zero” features only six songs, but all six are winners, and have a unified sound, and it’s that unity of sound that makes the EP so powerful. Opener “Let Me Stand Next to Your Flower” features a big bottom, a full sound, and a very psychedelic vibe—against a lovely melody (set, oddly enough, to a kind of march). Newcombe and another vocalist (the credits are vague) sing, “You’re just like that voice in my head/You’re making me wish I was dead” before getting down to the nitty gritty: “You’re like candy to me/You’re like candy to me/You’re like candy to me/And candy’s no good.” Or sometimes, “candy’s so good.” As is true of everything Newcombe does, duality reigns. Good, bad—they’re the same thing.
“Sailor” is a cover of a song by sixties garage band Cryan’ Shames, who gave us “Sugar and Spice.” Newcombe isn’t a covers guy; offhand, the only other BMJ cover I can think of is of Charles Manson’s “Arkansas.” Here, the BMJ takes a very good original and takes it Lennon/Beatles heights, except “heights” is the wrong word—the sea this sailor is sailing is an inward one. It’s all so dreamy, the melody’s divine, and the arrangement is intricate and perfect—doubly so when you consider how many moving parts are in play. This isn’t psychedelia revisited, it’s psychedelia perfected. Newcombe isn’t a mere mimic, revisiting old ground—at his best he’s a visionary looking to the past and the future at the same time, and I’m fully prepared to say this isn’t just one of the best retro-psychedelic songs ever committed to vinyl—it’s one of the best psychedelic songs out there period. And he did it without George Martin, probably in a couple of days, possibly while on heroin. Think about that.
The slow “Open Heart Surgery” (they’re all slow) features big drums, a lot of reverb on the guitar, and a dreamy organ, and features a lyric that is all love, which is one of the peculiarities of Newcombe’s character—despite the sociopathic behavior, and the “Keep Music Evil” message he’s been pushing since forever, Newcombe frequently sings about love, love, love: he even tells the subject of the song he wrote it to make her smile. To smile! Anton Newcombe! Like John Lennon (or scarier, Charles Manson) he’s a Janus-faced dichotomy, Woodstock and Altamont all at once. He sums this up perfectly in the “long version” of “Straight Up and Down” from 1996’s Take It from the Man!, which closes with a mash-up of “Hey Jude” and “Sympathy for the Devil.” Good and evil meet in Newcombe’s world, and the results are beautiful.
But the cynical part of him—the Altamont part of him—is apparent from the next song, “Whatever Hippie Bitch.” It’s just slightly sprightlier than the other fare, and has a harder kick. That said, there is absolutely nothing in the very basic lyrics to give meaning to that putdown of a title, which seems to have been a joke that just happened to fit the aggression of the song. Tambourine and organ hold the fort until the drums come kicking in, and after that it’s mainly Newcombe’s vocals (with a constant echo from somebody else) that do the heavy lifting.
Which is an illusion, of course. There’s a whole lot going on behind the scenes, and part of Newcombe’s gift is the ability to make the complex sound simple. People are always saying, “The guy can make an album all by himself!” Big whoop. Who can’t these days? What makes Newcombe special is his ability to write a song for lots of players and make you forget they’re there. This is no suite, no big Brian Wilson production number. But take one or two of the players out of the mix, and you’d have a lesser song. He’s writing stealth psychedelic chamber music and it’s (at least in part) the cause of the onstage mayhem—if one of the many musicians isn’t playing the part Newcombe hears in his head he lets them know it, often by giving them a good kick.
“If Love Is the Drug, Then I Want to O.D.” is more than just a clever title—it features a complex lyric about waiting for a lover, and within that lyric there’s a sly take on the old “took LSD and jumped off a roof thinking she could fly” saw. It mingles love, anger and sarcasm, the last best expressed by the chorus “You’re so, high/You’re so, high/You’re so, high/Why can’t you fly?” It’s about a lover falling, presumably into drug addiction, and Newcombe turns the Velvet Underground’s “I’m Waiting for My Man” on its head—she’s the user, but he’s HE’S waiting for HER. Flute and tambourine run throughout it, along with female backing vocals and a guitar echoing with reverb, and it has a vaguely VU feel to it.
The thirteen-minute “New Kind of Sick” is psychedelic futurism at its best. Slow, spacy, synthesized, and orchestrated, it drones its way into your mind while some harmonized vocals sing about robots and madness. This is Newcombe gone contemporary art rock, but it’s still every bit as psychedelic as Syd Barrett—he’s just using a different palette of sounds. Several minutes in a minimalist drone takes over completely, and the only thing you hear is the echo of an echo of a hum. It’s Newcombe meets Eno, except Newcombe didn’t need Eno. Is it frustrating, waiting out the seemingly interminable hum? For a guy like me, yes. This guy is happy when guitar and the tambourine come back in, plaintive, followed by an even more plaintive, lovely organ. I’ve read it described as Newcombe’s magnum opus. It’s not. But it’s proof that trying to put a label on the guy is sheer foolishness.
The Brian Jonestown Massacre seem destined to be remembered for on-stage fisticuffs as much as for their mind-bending music. A pity, but like it or not, the chaos is part of their appeal. And unless you’re a mental health professional, you’re bound to see the humor in it. I guess we’re all sick, but it’s funny. It distracts from the great music, but let’s face it—Dig! is a laugh riot.
How embedded is Dig! in popular culture? On the Thanksgiving 2005 episode of Gilmore Girls, lead Rory’s band Hep Alien reenacts a fight from the film. Anton Newcombe may not have liked it, but it’s hilarious. And just to make sure people got the message, BJM tambourine player Joel Gion, whose high spirits and almost supernatural good humor in the face of chaos made him the one person in Dig! you couldn’t help but love, makes a cameo as a new addition to Hep Alien. He stands back as the members of Hep Alien go at it, blase. He’s seen it all before. He knows how the story ends. Let’s hope he’s wrong.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | GRAMMY®-winning Icelandic-Chinese artist Laufey announces the cinematic release of her debut concert film, Laufey’s A Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl. Beginning December 6, the musical adventure will be available for limited screenings in cinemas and IMAX theaters and will captivate audiences worldwide with stunning visuals and Laufey’s mesmerizing vocals as she performs alongside the legendary Los Angeles Philharmonic.
Laufey’s A Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl was filmed in Laufey’s adopted hometown of Los Angeles. Directed by Sam Wrench (Taylor Swift | The Eras Tour), Laufey takes the audience on a spell-binding sonic journey under the stars, performing alongside the legendary Los Angeles Philharmonic. Playing the iconic venue that Ella Fitzgerald and so many of Laufey’s heroes played before her, the film gives a behind-the-scenes look at the monumental show. As Variety sums up “Laufey feels like she was born to play the Hollywood Bowl.”
Laufey says, “It’s always been a dream of mine to present my music with the LA Philharmonic. To be able to bring that concert to people way beyond LA and the Hollywood Bowl is so meaningful to me, especially as I come from so many different parts of the world, which have all played a part in inspiring my work and artistic journey.”
Wrench states, “Capturing Laufey’s debut concert at the Hollywood Bowl was a dream; cinematically sublime with a scale and intimacy that is so evident in Laufey’s music. I can’t wait for everyone to experience this on the big screen.”
Celebrating James “J.Y.” Young on his 75th birthday. —Ed.
Friedrich Nietzsche once said, “Beware, for if you stare long enough into Styx’sThe Grand Illusion,The Grand Illusion will stare back into you.” Nietzsche had good reason to be fearful, for not only did Styx’s masterpiece ultimately drive him mad, it also happens to be the most addictive slice of “soft-core prog” (thank you, Philip) ever created. I myself was certain I hated it, but like Nietzsche I stared too long into it, and sure enough here I am, come not to bury The Grand Illusion but to praise it.
Chicago’s Styx came to be in 1972, but its members were playing together long before that under the name TW4. A lightweight ELP but with catchier melodies, far better guitar hooks, and fewer grandiose musical pretensions—no “symphonies” or 93-part songs ever came from these guys—Styx was gigantic from the late seventies to early eighties, scoring four consecutive multi-platinum albums, a feat never matched by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.
Styx was your younger sibling band par excellence. While older sis Suzie sneered at Styx as a moronic shlock-rock band, younger brother Randy knew for a fact Styx could kick the asses of all those high-falutin’ progressive rock outfits like Yes and Gentle Giant Suzie thought were so sophisticated with one synthesizer tied behind its back. Styx was more fun to listen to while doing bong hits, too.
Styx recorded The Grand Illusion—their seventh studio album and the one that catapulted them to superstardom—in 1977. The album’s cover was the work of legendary psychedelic poster artists Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse, while the band’s line-up at the time included Dennis DeYoung on keyboards, synthesizers, and vocals; Chuck Panozzo on bass guitar and vocals; John Panozzo on drums and vocals; Tommy Shaw on acoustic and electric guitars and vocals; and James Young on guitar, keyboards, and vocals. DeYoung handled the bulk of the songwriting duties, although Shaw and Young also contributed tunes.
VIA PRESS RELEASE | The 21st Century Schizoid Band, the long running outfit featuring both distant past and very recent members of the legendary King Crimson, returns with an extravagantly packaged, and beautifully designed 2 CD and 2 LP capturing one of their finest performances ever, recorded live in Barcelona in 2003.
With the breathtaking line-up of vocalist Jakko M. Jakszyk, saxophonist Mel Collins, multi-instrumentalist Ian McDonald, bassist Peter Giles, and drummer Ian Wallace—key Crimson members going back to the days of In the Court of the Crimson King, and forward to the band’s very last line-up, Live in Barcelona features faithful, but nevertheless wholly individual versions of a slew of Crimson classics—some oft-heard but still welcome; others (including “Formentera Lady” and “Cirkus”) rarely played and a must-hear for Crimson aficionados everywhere.
The show opens and (almost) closes, of course, with the still astonishing “21st Century Schizoid Man”—the first, a dramatic excerpt, the second a full-length exploration. Other highlights include further In The Court of the Crimson King favorites “Epitaph,” the title track, and a truly breathtaking “I Talk to the Wind,” a grinding “Ladies of the Road,” and a “Sailor’s Tale” that eclipses even Crimson’s best-known live version, from the 1972 Earthbound album. Crimson’s veteran saxophonist Mel Collins, who plays on both, doesn’t merely roll back the years; his improv denies they’ve even passed.
But 1967’s Greatest Hits (Expanded Edition) tells a different story. Boise, Idaho’s Paul Revere & The Raiders weren’t The Monkees. They were a garage rock band like The Seeds and The Standells, and if America’s parents had just listened to them they’d have packed their daughters off to the nearest nunnery and sent their sons off to military school the minute they found a copy of this baby in their rooms.
Parker had his own suspicions about his failure to reach the big time, and it was Mercury Records, who in his opinion did nothing to promote his music. He laid out his argument in the scathing “Mercury Poisoning” with its lines, “I got Mercury poisoning/It’s fatal and it don’t get better/I got, Mercury poisoning/The best kept secret in the west, hey the west.” It’s a great song. It never made its way on to an LP. Parker’s new label, Arista Records, planned to release it as a single in 1979, but ultimately relegated it to a B-Side. Too risky to release–Parker could turn on you next.
Those five years may have been piddling compared to the 14 years that elapsed between Guns N’ Roses’ The Spaghetti Incident and Chinese Democracy, but those five years they were an eternity–during the same time span The Beatles went from Meet the Beatles to Abbey Road.
Or, the conversation could shift into Andy’s exhaustively complete authorship of the incredibly successful books: Beatles Gear, Rolling Stones Gear, or The Story of Paul Bigsby. These books delve not into the minutia of famous musicians’ lives, but instead tell the tales behind the instruments that they held in their hands while making the timeless music that they made: the guitars, the amps, the effects, and the studio tools. How’d they get them, what’d they do with them, and where’d they go. All of them, fascinating reads.
Chicago’s Styx came to be in 1972, but its members were playing together long before that under the name TW4. A lightweight ELP but with catchier melodies, far better guitar hooks, and fewer grandiose musical pretensions—no “symphonies” or 93-part songs ever came from these guys—Styx was gigantic from the late seventies to early eighties, scoring four consecutive multi-platinum albums, a feat never matched by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.
