‘Tis the season to peruse a bevy of numbered rundowns as websites undergo deserved holiday breaks. As it was with previous TVD Best of lists, the releases below aren’t an all-encompassing pronouncement from an overstuffed armchair on high; instead they are merely a hierarchy of loosely paired favorites assembled and presented with cheer as the calendar swiftly runs out of days.
10. Men & Volts, Honeymoon Luggage | Of all the inexplicably unsung bands, Boston’s Men & Volts are amongst the hardest to figure out, at least until one really sits and absorbs what they were up to. Formed in 1979 and often likened to Little Feat, the group was clearly too much of a straight rock extension to connect with the punk-era hoards as their initial devotion to playing the music of Captain Beefheart underscores a left-of-center sensibility that no doubt scuttled them away from the shelves of more straight-laced roots-rock heads.
Also bringing NRBQ to mind, fans of that unit (and yes Lowell George and Don Van Vliet) looking for fresh kicks are in for a treat. Honeymoon Luggage consists of a remastering of Men & Volts’ ’84 LP Tramps in Bloom, the unreleased Boomtown alb and two more platters of previously unheard studio tunes; across eight sides the non-retread atmosphere is thick and the highlights are many.
9. Close Lobsters, Firestation Towers 1986-1989 | Cherry Red’s expanded C86 set was one of the highlights of 2014. Fire Records intensified the indie pop microscope this year with a harnessing of this presently existing Scottish outfit’s Foxheads Stalk This Land and Headache Rhetoric LPs and the singles collection Forever Until Victory!
Some of the Lobsters’ cohorts frankly lost the thread as they searched for or attempted to maintain fleeting success, but that’s not the case here, Firestation Towers maintaining the focus on chiming guitars, non-hackneyed melodicism, and energetic delivery and lacking any sense of anticlimax. Sure, the early singles might jangle forth with a little extra urgency, but that’s far from an uncommon occurrence.
8. Mikael Tariverdiev, Film Music | The soundtrack section of the record shop is often a highly specialized zone, but Earth Recordings’ 3LP survey of Mikael Tariverdiev’s film-compositional output is a consistently engaging eye-opener; largely a new name to Western ears, Film Music reinforces the abundance of quality material that’s out there awaiting reissue.
Contextual information is of course necessary, and Earth provides it though a variety of voices concisely bringing Tariverdiev’s life and art into focus. While friendly with the avant-garde, the composer was more smitten with jazz; fans of Michel Legrand (for just one example) shouldn’t hesitate to inspect. After time spent, Film Music’s most impressive trait is its retention of quality over many years.
7. Trevor Jackson Presents: Science Fiction Dancehall Classics | In the grand musical scheme of things, hybridization is essential; this 3LP/ 2CD of tracks spotlighting the career of Adrian Sherwood finds the producer drawing upon post-punk, Jamaican dub, Industrial, and early hip-hop while making an indelible mark on the sonic architecture of the ‘80s and beyond.
As selected by DJ, musician, and visual artist Trevor Jackson, this tour of Sherwood’s breakthroughs largely pertains to his On-U Sound label universe (the ‘80s electro of Atmosfear is a notable exception) and includes plenty of lesser known entries amongst the familiar names. The cumulative effect is sporadically disruptive (e.g. Mark Stewart + the Maffia) but more often awesome in its cohesive intensity. Sherwood at the Controls Volume 1: 1979 – 1984 reasserted the producer’s stature; Science Fiction Dancehall Classics solidifies it with panache.
6. Half Japanese, Vol. 2 1987-1989 | Fire’s been busy with Half Japanese’s corpus across 2015; Vol. 2 reissues three albums originally on the Fifty Skidillion Watts label, and taken together they document the significant reduction of David Fair’s input, leaving brother Jad as the leader of a full-fledged though consistently evolving and quite distinctive band.
Rather amazingly, these adjustments did nothing to lessen the worthiness of this still active juggernaut; Charmed Life is right up there with the finest LPs of its decade, The Band That Would Be King isn’t far behind and Music to Strip By, while the least of the three is still loaded with fine moments. These are the records that delivered Half Jap from the fringes and into the midst of a thriving ‘80s underground. They still sound fantastic.
5. The Go-Betweens, G Stands for Go-Betweens: Volume 1, 1978-1984 | Domino’s loving attention to one of Australia’s finest bands sets the bar high in both packaging and attentive assemblage; few will attempt to surpass it. This is ultimately for the good as not many will have the scratch (or the shelf space) to procure collections this extensive and meticulous on a regular basis.
G Stands for Go-Betweens is perhaps not the place for the Forster/McLennan newbie to begin, gathering LPs of their first three albums and a comp of the first five singles with four CDs rounding up demos, stray tracks, b-sides, and live stuff plus a 112-page book. But for converts this exhaustive inaugural volume is a massively scaled but thoroughly appropriate plunge into the developmental period of a wonderfully smart pop-rock combo. Its second edition is down to the final copies so don’t dally.
4. Pere Ubu, Elitism for the People 1975-1978 | This is the explosive early work of a hugely influential and unwaveringly ambitious entity, one still extant today as led by sole constant member David Thomas. The sum of their oeuvre details one of the truly brilliant acts in rock music’s annals; these four albums constitute the first chapter.
Actually four chapters; The Hearpen Singles is Ubu embodying punk as they transcend its confines, Manhattan is the avant-garage in dialogue with an audience at Max’s Kansas City, The Modern Dance is post punk before it had a name, and Dub Housing is a study in refinement with no loss in creative verve. Altogether Elitism for the People is a stunning and rare achievement.
3. The Velvet Underground, The Complete Matrix Tapes and Loaded: Re-Loaded 45th Anniversary Edition | Once upon a time The Velvet Underground were beset by profound neglect, or at least that’s the popular narrative; for a group that supposedly hardly anybody gave a shit about there’s an uncommon amount of live documentation, and the 4CD The Complete Matrix Tapes is the latest welcome arrival. Wielding flare-ups of excellence as it substantially deepens the beautiful aura of 1969: The Velvet Underground Live with Lou Reed, this is the sound of a band working it out in the club on the way to their last hurrah.
That final blast of the spectacular is Loaded; this latest Velvets birthday installment nicely broadens the landscape of their most straight-ahead studio disc. It’s also arguably their most influential LP, with much of their tenure as a legit cult act deriving from its merger of no-nonsense rock riffing, Tin Pan Alley-descended songwriting, and proto-glam moves. Really, any creeping fatigue over the VU reissue apparatus is easily eradicated by pondering just how influential they’ve been; for evidence, simply ogle the list above.
2. Ork Records: New York, New York and Legends of Old-Time Music: Fifty Years of County Records | Or ruminate on this entry, for without the Velvets it’s clear that Ork Records, a label began by Terry Ork and guided into temporary sustainability by Charles Ball, would never have been. Numero Group drops Ork’s entire run onto 4LPs or 2CDs, opening with Television’s majestic debut “Little Johnny Jewel” and offering Richard Hell, Alex Chilton, dB’s, Lester Bangs, Cheetah Chrome, and more. The aborted Feelies 45 is an utter gem, “Fa Cé La” seeming birthed from VU’s “I Heard Her Call My Name.”
Unlike Numero’s completist endeavor, Legends of Old-Time Music’s four CDs are only a small sampling from the discography of County Records, a label started in 1963 by Dave Freeman. Dedicated to the rural traditions of the USA’s Mid-Atlantic region with an emphasis on fiddle and banjo, the total is an exceptional investigation into County’s half century of invaluable preservation featuring major names like Tommy Jarrell, Wade Ward, and Fred Cockerham alongside fascinating individualists such as Matokie Slaughter, Clyde Davenport, and Virgil Anderson. It’s a treasure chest of old-time science.
1. Root Hog or Die: 100 Years 100 Songs—An Alan Lomax Centennial Tribute and Cecil Taylor The Complete Cecil Taylor in Berlin ‘88 | Root Hog or Die is due out through Mississippi Records on January 15 2016. This may seem a cheat but it’s really just a stretch as the 6LP set limited to 1,000 copies appears to have been initially slated for release on December 18 of this year. And since Alan Lomax’s centenary began last January 15, it feels appropriate to include this collection of 100 songs on this list.
Commencing with Lomax’s cowpoke rendition of “I’m a Rambler, I’m a Gambler,” Root Hog or Die documents the indefatigable folklorist’s travels from Harlem, NY to the hills of Kentucky and all over the US South. There were also trips to the Bahamas and Grenada, Morocco, Spain, Italy, Transylvania, and every country in the UK, and these songs become more than just a tribute to Lomax, transforming into a celebration of diversity that’s an antidote for the ill wind of intolerance currently blowing in our midst.
Whether is Jelly Roll Morton, Big Bill Broonzy, Shirley Collins, Bob Dylan, Clark Kessinger, Bessie Jones, Skip James, or the numerous lesser known and occasionally unidentified singers and players caught by Lomax’s various machines, Root Hog or Die is a sometimes startling but always inviting tour of humanity’s propensity to create and share art in service of a better world. It contrasts extremely well with Destination: Out’s digital only reissue of Cecil Taylor’s month long residency in West Berlin, an immersive document that’s 11CD incarnation on FMP (Free Music Production) is long out of print.
This version ups the count to 13 albums, opening with “Legba Crossing,” a 48 minute track initially available on the first 200 copies of the FMP box and closing with a performance in East Berlin from the same period. In between is a lifetime’s worth of listening, presenting jazz at its most abstract and most disciplined, the outpouring simultaneously demanding and generous in solo, duo, trio, ensemble, and orchestral configurations and featuring a long list of improvisational heavyweights.
So gripping the lack of a physical release is, if not irrelevant, reduced to a mere quibble, The Complete Cecil Taylor in Berlin ’88 is an inexhaustible document.
