A massive amount of superb reissues hit the stores this year, and we’ve only ten spots to rank them in. So please allow us to cheat and pair them up thematically.
Here are our picks for the best of 2013, aka the year Superior Viaduct blasted it out of the archival music ballpark.
10. Public Enemy, 25th Anniversary Vinyl Collection and Slick Rick, The Great Adventures of Slick Rick
Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back arrived in March of 1988 and Slick Rick’s debut appeared the following November, just two LPs from a year jammed up jelly tight with top-notch rap releases. But for a long time thereafter it seemed like PE’s second album was the harbinger of hip-hop to come while The Great Adventures stood as one of the last great expressions of the old-school, partially because the ‘90s were loaded with multi-member crews and, the obviously Rick-influenced Snoop Dog aside, not so full of rappers going it alone.
But flash forward to right now and the scenario tilts to just the opposite extreme, and furthermore Rick’s first and best record is one of the few ‘80s rap disc’s that non-hip-hop diehards manage to recall with any level of affection. The PE box set is plainly a heavyweight document that’s brimming with the squad’s still potent sonic mayhem and unbridled syllabic onslaught, but this standalone item from the British native with an eye patch assists in revealing rap’s diversity circa ’88 and easily transcends the level of period-piece.
Yes, some of the sentiments expressed on The Great Adventures are thorny and even downright unfortunate, but compared to much of what was to come the disc is frankly PG-rated (well, other than the bizarre and rather disturbing “Indian Girl.”) For progressiveness and wildly broken ground the 25th Anniversary Collection wins hands down, with the first three LPs included being no-brainer entries on any greatest hip-hop albums list. But The Great Adventures of Slick Rick would make that cut as well. And nobody enunciates their lines quite like Ricky Walters.
9. The Gories, The Shaw Tapes: Live in Detroit 5/27/88 and Ego Summit, The Room Isn’t Big Enough
In a sentence, here’s two major blasts from the late 20th century Midwest. While The Gories’ Third Man LP was captured nearly a decade before The Room Isn’t Big Enough, Ego Summit are the elders in this pairing, a team-up of Columbus, OH underground legends who came together out of friendship and recorded one LP in a barn as a casual subterranean supergroup that of course nobody except the fans of their previous bands gave a hoot about.
Ego Summit included Mike Rep (who as part of Mike Rep and the Quotas dates back to ’75, and is the group’s senior member), Ron House (of the very cool ‘80s band Great Plains and the even better ‘90s act Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments), Jim Shepard (head honcho of Vertical Slit, V-3 and solo endeavors), Don Howland (most notable as a part of the twisted hillbilly crew the Gibson Bros.), and Tommy Jay (leader of the True Believers and frequent associate of Rep.)
The Room Isn’t Big Enough is an outstanding document of casually harnessed outsider invention, threading avant-garage, left-field pop, downer punk, and natural lo-fi (or better expressed, home recording) tendencies into a fine weave where all the personalities shine through like miniature New England firehouses.
The contents of The Gories slab are well-explained by its title, and it delivers a full helping of their stripped to the bone bluesy garage punk at an embryonic juncture. Few who heard them back then would’ve likely thought The Gories would be so influential today, but they are and that’s dandy. The Shaw Tapes: Live in Detroit 5/27/88 is dandy, too.
8. Heldon, Interface and Glaxo Babies, Nine Months to the Disco
Glaxo Babies are one of the many UK post-punk bands who for decades seemed to have slipped through history’s cracks. You’d read something about them but never be able to turn up the recorded evidence to support why they were spoken of so highly. Happily, Superior Viaduct has reissued their first two albums, both originally released in 1980 on the Heartbeat label, and while each is mighty swank, of the two I dig the second Nine Months to the Disco the best.
The record is as dark and art-drenched as any of the more celebrated post-punk cornerstones from the period, though it relies on abstraction even more than many of their peers. It integrates saxophone skronk, bursts of aggressive rhythm, passages reminiscent of sound collage, No Wave-esque moments and even an art-funk closing track into a very intriguing whole.
Earlier this year Superior Viaduct also rereleased Interface, the sixth LP from French guitarist Richard Pinhas’ excellent heavy prog outfit Heldon, and while it might seem like an odd record to pair with Glaxo Babies, hearing them together reveals some affinities. While Heldon was far more intricate and cohesive as a unit, Pinhas’ group shares the forward-thinking intensity that thrust them and Glaxo Babies into the margins of the marketplace as the ‘70s wound down.
Forget the supposed incompatibility of punk and prog; if you were really pushing the boundaries in ’75-’80, you got shuttled off to a corner.
7. Tuxedomoon, Scream with a View and Chrome, Half Machine from the Sun
When you’re shuttled off to a corner, the three main options are to quit, change or simply persevere. When choosing the last option, it helps to have a strong hometown scene, and in the late ‘70s San Francisco had one of the best in the US. Alongside punk, edgy art music flourished in the city, and the camps often blended mainly because the lines had yet to be so rigidly drawn.
So it was with Tuxedomoon and Chrome. Of the two, the outfit of the late Damon Edge and Helios Creed continues to be more closely associated with punk, though folks holding strict formal parameters for the genre continue to be at a loss when confronted with the expansiveness of their work. Half Machine from the Sun collects a double album’s worth of demos from their best period and through the stewardship of Creed ends up sounding as vital and progressive as they did when I first heard them in the dawn of the ‘90s.
These days, few would likely classify Tuxedomoon as a punk band. Instead, they’d probably lump them in with the arty motions of their fellow San Franciscans The Residents, in part due to similar aesthetics but also because they eventually got signed to the Eyeball crew’s Ralph label. But in a social context, punks Tuxedomoon very much were, and their early EPs display this quite well.
Superior Viaduct has reissued both ‘78’s No Tears and ‘79’s Scream with a View, and the latter, recorded in The Residents private studio and including the excellent “(Special Treatment for the) Family Man,” a song concerning the killing of San Fran mayor George Moscone and supervisor Harvey Milk by notorious law-enforcement asshole Dan White, is my pick of the two. It finds them straddling the wide open early punk playground and their eventual Ralphian home with true intellectual vigor. If you dig early Ultravox and haven’t heard these EPs, there’s a hole in your life that needs filled rather quickly.
6. Philip Cohran and the Artistic Heritage Ensemble, On the Beach and Hannibal Marvin Peterson, The Tribe
For any fan of jazz’s ‘60s-‘70s progressions, there is a considerable number of LPs that are must-acquisitions. The problem is that most of these documents aren’t getting reissued with the frequency of the stuff comprising the ‘50s post-bop scene. Due to extreme rarity, investing in originals is a pricy business, and many folks have no recourse but to rely on the formats of compact disc and digital for nourishment.
In a nice turn of events, two very nice reissues of some very scarce jazz from this era have hit the racks. The Philip Cohran already seems hard to find, so interested parties shouldn’t delay in looking, especially since this edition features the LP’s tracks in unedited form. Both On the Beach and The Tribe share traits with the avant jazz of the period, but the pair are more noted for their easy flow and overall accessibility.
On the Beach leader Cohran was an alumnus of Sun Ra, but the record lacks the wildness that often streamed from the work of the man from Saturn. The disc’s contributors do include future Miles guitarist Pete Cosey and members of Earth, Wind & Fire’s horn section, so that might give the uninitiated an idea of what’s in store. It also has Cohran’s frankiphone (an amplified thumb piano) and lots of femme vocals, so June Tyson fans take note.
The Tribe, which comes courtesy of one of jazz’s sadly under-recorded trumpeters, also offers female singing, and the album’s best described as being part of the spiritual jazz genre. Folks that dig the output of the Strata East label have likely already copped a copy of this, a reissue of an insanely expensive (in the $2,000 range) slab recorded for John Hammond’s World of Jazz label (reportedly, only a few test pressings made it out), and while I tend to gravitate more toward the full-blown Fire Music of this era, after a night of BYG/Actuel & ESP mania The Tribe is a spectacular mellow-down record.
5. Neo-Boys, Sooner or Later and Girl Trouble, Hit It or Quit It!
If you’re thinking that feminist punk from the Pacific Northwest started with Bikini Kill, think again. And if you thinking the late-‘80s NW scene was all about longhaired dudes dressed like professional tree-choppers holding severe fixations over the contents of their beat-up Sabbath and Aerosmith LPs, then think a third time. With K Records’ reissues of the work of the Neo-Boys and Girl Trouble, historical clarity in 2013 has gotten a little less hazy.
Hit It or Quit It!, initially released by Sub Pop in’88, was along with psych-era Screaming Trees, the tape-collage work of Pell Mell member Steve Fisk and the post-Beat outsider spoken word of Steven Jesse Bernstein, one of the real diversifiers in what eventually came to be known as Grunge. Sadly, their punkish garage style, which was a legit and raucous update of the original Pac-NW tumult brought by such acts as The Wailers, Paul Revere & the Raiders and The Sonics, got lost in the hubbub. It’s great to have it back in the forefront of the consciousness.
And it’s even more so with Neo-Boys, a group that for years was easiest to access through their inclusion on the smoking Portland punk compilation 10/29/79. Hearing the mass of tracks sequenced on K’s terrific 2LP is simply a revelation, with the group’s artful (though not arty) melodic delivery making plain that, in relation to the original impulse, the emergence of righteous American gal-punk was, if not instantaneous, than really close to it.
Three cheers for Calvin Johnson for being such a diligent historian.
4. Scott Walker, Scott: The Collection 1967-1970 and Brigitte Fontaine, Comme À la Radio
Like the delta-blues, hot jazz or old time string/jug bands, the albums included in the Walker collection are the result of such a unique set of cultural circumstances that the style is now basically lost to the ages. It can be reproduced a la repertory bands, but the verve of spontaneity that makes Walker’s early LPs such an intriguing blend of the classic and modern can’t be replicated.
The Scott Walker of today is much different than the artist who produced the work found in the above collection. The severity of his stylistic changes have marked him as one of the more enigmatic figures on the contemporary scene, but I find it interesting that Brigitte Fontaine, a performer who initially inhabited a roughly comparable stylistic zone, undertook a similar progression a few decades earlier while Walker was still navigating the role of a pop star.
Comme À la Radio, her outstanding ‘69 LP made with Areski Belkacem and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, came out the same year as Scott 3, but it found Fontaine moving far beyond the advanced yé-yé stylings of her fine debut Brigitte Fontaine Est…Folle (it and Comme À la Radio have both been reissued by Superior Viaduct) and moving into the realms of the avant garde.
From chic environs, both Walker and Fontaine landed solidly in the cult zone. She just made the trip much quicker and with far less fanfare attached.
3. Live At Caffe Lena: Music from America’s Legendary Coffeehouse, 1967-2013 and I Heard the Angels Singing: Electrifying Black Gospel from the Nashboro Label, 1951-1983
While neither of these sets is available on vinyl, both are such a mess of delights that in this instance I’m not complaining. And it’s not like Tompkins Square hasn’t offered plenty of their titles via LP throughout their wildly impressive existence. What’s presented in these two boxes is so valuable that I’ll take it any way I can get it.
The music on Caffe Lena is in part the story of a regional phenomenon, detailing the live music presented in the Saratoga Springs, NY coffeehouse of Lena Spencer, but it’s also the tale of the US’s once thriving folk movement. While the music chronicled on the set unwinds into the present, it’s impossible for me to hear it and not feel a sense of loss, mainly because its first two discs are so illuminating of a distant milieu and features so many irreplaceable performers.
I do receive a twinge of a similar feeling from I Heard the Angels Singing. But in the case of this four-disc wonder the loss is also combined with a sense of uplift, for it spotlights a variety of complimentary achievements and one huge success story (Nashboro’s) as part of a genre that has only fairly recently been uncovered by music fans of younger generations as the locale of great artistic worth.
So many unearthed musical treasures come attached with the thwarted expectations of their makers, but the individuals found here accomplished, if not exactly what they hoped to do, then something close to it. That it’s being collected in such a loving manner for the delectation of music fans worldwide is just fantastic.
2. Phill Niblock, Nothin to Look At Just a Record and I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America 1950-1990
This pairing is partially about similarities in approach. But the Niblock is also a reissue of a disc I’ve long loved while I Am the Center has forced me into a reevaluation of a style that I’ve disdained since before I could legally drive. I first read about Niblock as part of Alan Licht’s Minimal Top 10, where it placed at #5, one higher than Henry Flynt’s You Are My Everlovin’ and just below Steve Reich’s Four Organs.
And when I finally got to hear it, since originals on the India Navigation label weren’t plentiful in my neck of the woods, I was blown away. The Superior Viaduct reissue marks the first ever vinyl repressing of the 80-year-old Niblock’s debut LP, and for anyone with an interest in minimalism (or trombones, even), Nothin to Look At is a total must.
And speaking of my geographical circumstances, an intense interest in New Age music was held by the proprietors of my local record shop as I grew up (and out.) This was, as they say, not cool. I’d mosey in to pick up a Big Black record and consistently find myself enveloped by the tones of Andreas Vollenweider and Kitaro. In a nutshell, it was late-teenage Brussels sprouts.
But Light in the Attic’s I Am the Center is very useful, in part because I’m a sucker for historically based comps, but also because the private press aspect in the scenario charms me in no little measure. And ya’ know, the music it presents is also quite an unexpected treat. Don’t know if I’m going to give Andreas or Kitaro a fresh inspection, but I dig I Am the Center quite a bit. And I’ve always liked Brussels sprouts.
1. John Coltrane, The Complete Sun Ship Session and Charles Gayle William Parker Rashied Ali, Touchin’ on Trane
John Coltrane continues to be amongst the most influential of all the great jazz saxophonists. Some imitate him, scores integrate elements of his playing into their own voice, and others bend over backwards to avoid being considered a stylistic disciple, but anybody who blows an improvisational reed in a contemporary context has dealt with Trane in some manner.
And many have recorded tribute albums, but the greatest to ever hit my lobes is Touchin’ on Trane. Charles Gayle came to prominence in the late-‘80s, blowing so hard and free that his releases could clear rooms in minutes flat. But on this disc, originally issued by the German FMP label in 1991, he’s more restrained, possibly because he’s creating in salute to an artist who, even at his most extreme, never lost grip of the humanness in his work.
Bassist Parker and Coltrane-vet Ali are the perfect co-creators (not for a millisecond is the pair accompanists) on this brilliant journey, but what ultimately makes it so amazing is the absorption of Coltrane’s influence with no traces of blatant copying left to linger. And 22 years later Touchin’ on Trane still sounds fresh.
That goes double for The Complete Sun Ship Session. Loaded with alternate takes and false starts, it’s in no way an item for a casual fan, but the whole enchilada approach does much to enlighten the ears of his intense devotees to the creation of one of the final recordings by the Classic Quartet (that’s Coltrane, Tyner, Garrison, and Jones.) And the music hasn’t aged a day. The CD version of this beauty was issued by Verve, but Mosaic has stepped back up to the vinyl plate to offer it as a 3LP 180gm set, and it’s a grand gesture that celebrates the working methods of one of the 20th century’s truly singular artists.
There have been many tributes, but there’s yet to be a replacement for John Coltrane, either in quality of expression or quantity of achievement, and The Complete Sun Ship Session makes it pretty clear there never will be.
