I was always curious about Canada. It goes back way before my several-year-period of following ice hockey and getting attached to a lot of players who by now must surely have moved on to saner, quieter lives. I got into Canadian bands with 25e Regiment (pronounced "25th Regiment) and their rare masterpiece ECOLOGY which could have led to huge success if they had followed it up. I was obsessed, completely immersed in ECOLOGY and since it still sounds amazing to me now and since it is the longest kept record in my collection well I don't think I need to groove you any further about what a groove it is. Then it was Klaatu and their brilliant music and it just took off in a big way after them.
-The Long Standing Love For Montreal And Canada-
I've been to Montreal more times than any other place in a foreign country in the world- even more times than England if I'm right. I still feel that Canadians and Canadian bands are both underrated and brilliant music and people. They get put down all the time by Americans of the over-patriotic queasily nationalistic kind who are the avid tea party fox news fools, but a lot of good Americans go up there like me and have a great time. I have been treated very respectfully up north and find it very heartwarming the reception I've gotten from the people up there. For quite some time I had best friends who are Canadians and though we are no longer in touch I think of them a lot. Montreal is amazing. You can essentially go to Europe in a car. I feel like I'm in a completely different land up there and you know what? I am.
-Dodgy Business And Narrow Minds-
Now let's get to the music which is the main thing here. If you were a Canadian band in the 60s, 70s, or 80s and you signed out of your own country not America the chances are you were digging your own commercial grave. That is why there are so many rare and obscure Canadian records that no one's ever heard of here who had hits up North and huge national success. It's almost as bad as it is for the Germans and just like German music Canadian music is a taste that I've acquired amidst much consternation from other collectors/dealers. Some people will even think this write up is nuts. Well, too bad for them.
-Copperpenny- A Classy Canadian Band-
Unlike Germany some Canadian artists and bands signed out of America and made it, but I'd argue that the best got screwed over up in Canada. Copperpenny is a perfect example of that. They actually signed the deal for their first release out of America and were buried alive here. It was probably too far out and too commercial at the same time for narrow minded American radio. Not much was done by RCA to promote ANY bands on their label so it could be blamed on them for Copperpenny's fast descent into the bargain bin in 1970 when their self titled debut was released. That was not the case in Canada. Formed in the late 60s in Kitchener Ontario (a mainly Canadian German community) and recording all the way up to the mid/late 70s they had many successes in their own country including some of the most memorable hit singles to come out in Canada. While the albums tended to get ignored the singles did brilliantly for them and this probably culminated in 1973 when they came up with one of the best soft pop tracks ever laid down in "You're Still The One-" a song right up there with "Precious And Few" by the American band Climax Featuring Sonny Geraci who attained a huge hit with their classic here.
-Their First Album Revealed-
Where things get most interesting with Copperpenny is their first album which was released in America and Canada in 1970 by dreadful RCA. RCA signed up several excellent Canadian bands including the also brilliant Cat, but just like Cat Copperpenny went nowhere here. The album sold well in Canada, in fact very well thank you. At the time of their debut the band centered around the talents of Rich Wamil (vocals lead and backup, keyboards, bass, guitar, trumpet,) Laverne McDonald (lead guitar, vocals lead and backup), Ken Hollis (lead vocals), Bert Hamer (drums, percussion, backup vocals), and Paul Reibling (bass and backup vocals). Their stunning five part harmonies and the unique combination of Hollis's soaring Vanity Fare like tenor and Rich Wamil's soulful bassy baritone are just the start. On the 9 tracks featured here 2 are dark and foreboding epics including the ultimate bad acid trip psychedelic nightmare turned psychedelic masterpiece "Stop The World' and a dreamy, creepy track about mortality/the life cycle of death and rebirth called "Castles Of Sand." The texts to their songs whether they are long tracks or short pop catchy tracks are uniformly excellent and the performances are top level professional from all 5 of Copperpenny. My copy has serous h20 damage to the record so alas I still don't have a clean one of this album, but how many records am I gonna write about right after the day I get them and first listen to them? Not a whole lot.
Something about the between-songs crackle is kind of nice if I think of it in a weird way, but thankfully the songs themselves here play great and Jack Richardson's production job is amazing. The first track on the album is the two part "I've Been Hurt Before/Ritchie's Party" and it tips you off that this is going to be a really good one to listen to. I love Ken Hollis and Rich Wamil. They sing brilliantly and especially Hollis with a voice that may melt your heart. He sings "I've Been Hurt Before" and most of the other material. Rich Wamil aptly sings "Ritchie's Party" and rocks out on it too. There are straightforward arrangements less than big baroque ones on Copperpenny's 1st and this album therefore should really appeal to British pop and American baroque pop fans.
"Stop," the second track on Side One is a reworking of one of their earliest Canadian chart smashes "Stop Wait A Minute" and one of the best songs ever written by anybody. Copperpenny had a lot of great material in them and there are no covers allowed here. If you wish Vanity Fare or White Plains wrote more challenging material and at the same time were outdoing themselves for pop brilliance this is the album to have. I love White Plains, but not all their material was as amazing as Vanity Fare who may be my favorite straightforward British pop/rock group of the same era that Copperpenny recorded in. I always wish that harmony pop bands would go just that one step further and rock out or write something really bizarre- Copperpenny do that. "Stop" is the pop/rock side of their sound and you won't find a more beautiful voice than Ken Hollis. Then they clobber you with a spine tingling track at the end of each side. This is a band who can effortlessly go from pop to progressive to heavy psychedelic rock. They can beat the living shit out of Jefferson Airplane, but I'll admit I don't think that's hard to do. I hate most American west coast big name groups and just the same way think the worst Canadians are the ones who made it really big down here. Blood Sweat And Tears I can live without thank you. However, the success of great bands like The Guess Who and The Band opened the door to bands like Copperpenny gaining a recording contract only to have their fortunes change on them in a really bad scenario of broken promises and poor promotion. Listen to songs here like "It's A Happy Day," the perfect pop soul of "Just A Sweet Little Thing," the sad yet bouncy "That Was The Game," and "It's A Rainy Day" and you like me will find that Copperpenny should have been huge in America and worldwide.
-Copperpenny Get Way Out There And Show A Progressive Side-
If you are about to start moaning about them as an out and out pop group then the two long closing tracks on each side prove you way wrong. "Castles Of Sand" is really a pretty freaky, haunting song with beautiful sad baroque vocals and dreamy uncertain mood changing music. The whole text is about how man comes from dust to return to dust to be reborn again as a baby playing with "the sands of you and I-" pretty deep stuff. "Stop The World" is the ultimate bad acid trip song- a warning and a 9 minute epic of paranoid psychedelic magic-making. Hollis can sing both the really pop stuff and the really out there stuff brilliantly and I think it's a bit of a shame that Copperpenny went out and out pop after this album. Quality pop definitely, but they just as easily could have gone progressive. "Stop The World" has made compilations and briefly had this album going crazy with collectors on the strength of the most unrepresentative track. "Stop The World" sounds like they purposefully wanted to close this album out with a huge epic attack on the ears and ill-advised drug use at the same time. The trip you're on starts ominously enough, but some of what goes on in this track reminds me of the far out German bands like Virus!!!!!! Wild!!!! Laverne McDonald plays some scathing fuzz guitar and Hollis gets really dark sounding- a pop psych Arthur Brown or Jim Morrison in tenor instead of baritone range. I've got to find a better copy of this album eventually as I love this record a lot you can tell! I'd give this a really high rating and you definitely should go after it. It will be easier to find than the other band dealt with here- Crosstown Bus.
-Crosstown Bus Are One Of The Most Overlooked Bands From Canada-
Crosstown Bus came out of Vancouver and were arch rivals in the late 60s with 49th Parallel and my good friend Doran Beattie hates them not just for that, but for how the band's leader Jeff Boyne was brought into the band post 49th Parallel Painter became Hammersmith. His stay was short before the group booted him out, but that is where I'm afraid Doran and I will have to differ. Jeff Boyne was a very talented man, but definitely the wrong guy for Hammersmith. His abilities as a songwriter, guitar player, and singer were the driving force behind Crosstown Bus and this album has always been near the top of my Canadian list with much jeering at me for it. Well too goddamned bad for you narrow minded record dealers!! I don't have a clue as to why this album is hated by a lot of people as there is nothing to hate and a lot to love.
Crosstown Bus may have been popular in Vancouver and to a certain extent Canada, but their 1971 one-off HIGH GRASS is really hard to find and especially really rare in good condition like almost all Canadian albums. For pop psych it's a monster. I love to love bands that record dealers love to hate. I don't do it as a perverse thing where it isn't based on the merits of the music and is based just on loving a band no one else seems to like- I do it because the music is of a really high quality that is overlooked in the face of vastly inferior hype jobs. Crosstown Bus came out in 1971 with an album that sounds closer to 1968 and I love the British/Canadian/late 60s amalgam of styles that is to be found on HIGH GRASS. There are two fuzz guitar blasters in the form of two covers of obscure songs "Pretty Millie" by Canadian band Houston and "Rochester River" by Rockin' Foo, an American group. Both of these songs are done much better here than the originals.
-Crosstown Bus HIGH GRASS In Full-
Crosstown Bus have a sound that is a group production not just one guy so while Jeff Boyne is the main writer and has a very special, very strong voice he isn't the entire reason why this album is so good. The band line up is Boyne (lead vocals, guitar, congas), Rob Sommerville (organ, congas, vocals), Frank Ludwig (piano, guitar, organ, vocals), Brian Anderson (bass, vocals), and Mike Killeen (drums and vocals). They didn't last very long after recording HIGH GRASS, but what an amazing album it is! I love British influenced bands and as a commonwealth country Canada could turn out some real winners who also had a very Canadian sound. That would be the case here. I love the moodiness of some songs like "Overcoats" and the title track. Then I love the bright sunlight-through-the-window vibe of other ones like "In Ten Years Time" and "Too Many Mornings." There also is in the closing track a great version of the Van Morrison classic "Caravan." I love Van Morrison's voice and I love his music even though I've heard he's a really disgusting person. I don't want to find that out. He doesn't sound disgusting to me, but a big voice like his could definitely be a big ego trip. Jeff Boyne sings in a similar range to Van Morrison and other deep voiced melodic and strong singers, but he has a quavery vibrato that is closer to the late Robin Gibb or on "Overcoats" a mellower Family's Roger Chapman. While Robin Gibb and Van Morrison had/have serious personality issues you don't get a sense that Jeff Boyne is on an ego trip. He doesn't once over sing even at his most dramatic which also brings to mind not just vocally, but musically the Swedish band Blond.
-More On Crosstown Bus And Don't Pass Up The Brilliance Of Canada-
There isn't a note I'd change here. There isn't a word or phrase or twiddle of the engineer that I would change here either and the "live" sound of five very good musicians augmented with tasteful Beatlesesque string and horn arrangements make this a top Canadian masterpiece. Every song is great. "Too Many Mornings" has a very Beatles circa 1966/1967 sound and to counteract that "Overcoats" and the title track sound very much more of a progressive dramatic kind of pop that is more like that of other UK bands. I don't know what there isn't to like here. The cover art is very psychedelic, but although this album isn't a psychedelic trip out it's got a strong late 60s vibe to it and there is nothing to complain about. I've always been able to pick up on whether a band or album is real or if they waste my time going through the motions of something they most certainly are not. This album is no fake out like The Frederic or any number of overhyped American non-psych "psych" records. Even bands as great as British North American Act were always getting blown off by a lot of American dealers, but I never came across that one which now fetches over $500! I hope that somebody can also appreciate Crosstown Bus as they come across as an honest and very talented group who focused on great songs in an era that was veering off into a lot of self-indulgence. They didn't try to keep up with the times and the quality of 1966-1968 in 1971 I find very appealing in their songs. "Pass This Way Again," and "Renie" are both songs that convey polar opposite time frames and polar opposite kinds of bands, but the album never becomes disjointed. "Pass This Way Again" is moving into the early 70s, but "Renie" is a good 1966 beat meets 1966 bubblegum pop song. "In Ten Years Time" is catchy and evocative. The whole album flows together beautifully and I really don't see what there is that some people find to adamantly hate about such a wonderful record. I guess you'll have to make up your own mind if you are lucky enough to find a copy of HIGH GRASS. I'd say give this a few spins and it should make you be the one laughing at narrow minded dealers and collectors not them laughing at the fact that you have an open mind. As for me, this may make my top 5 and I'll leave the rest up to whether it makes your top 5 or your top 10. I like to think that I know a whole lot more than most other dealers/collectors and what makes me happiest is that I know I do know a lot more than they do. Just keep an open mind and don't let other opinions influence your own. Canada is a country you shouldn't overlook. Overlook Canada and to me that's overlooking half the world. Especially for the musical part of things.
Thursday, May 9, 2013
Friday, May 3, 2013
The Best Birthday Ever, Observations On Life, Love, and Europe, And Much Praise For Warm Music From Cold Climates
Last Sunday (April 28th) I turned 37 years old and I'm looking forward to a fresh, new start to my life. It will take a lot of discipline, but I'm for the first time in a really long time confident about my future. A lot of that may stem from having the best Birthday ever of my whole life- so brilliant it was better than any Christmas I can think of too.
It was hard to get to my day of commemoration intact, but I got there. Nothing is easy in life and if it all is a big nothing for someone hard as this may be to believe I'd rather be me than someone who is bland, selfish, uninteresting, and uninterested in anything but themselves and their square ordinary life. I've had a lot of hard times and a lot of good times in my life. Looking back I tend to try to and mainly remember the happy periods and happy days, but I can remember the worst ones too. Sometimes I live in the past or just become a dreamer too much, but that is a very small facet of who I am.
When I came up with my list of records for my birthday I went really far into rare big ticket records from cold climates- Germany, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and a Canadian record was a last minute surprise when my best Quebecois friend Denis said he had it and he'd sell it to me. Denis and I have known each other forever and been friends for a really long time. I've been to all 4 locations his store has been in in Montreal and I love going to that beautiful city. The closest I've been to Northern Europe is Montreal and Scotland where the weather can be brutal. The one time I went to Montreal in October it was freezing yet still so good. What I love about Canadian and Scandinavian bands is how different they are from the rest of the music from other places. I'll freely admit I'm a bit of a paradox when it comes to American bands as I think many of the best come from southern California (mainly Los Angeles), but press me hard enough and I'll come up with a whole lot from colder places too. America is a huge country with a huge amount of music, but it was the first country to become totally polarized between great music and the worst shit ever to come out in the world. In general a lot of really rare American records aren't that rare and are not worth listening to. I will give an example of that. Morgen is not very rare as someone always has one for sale and is both horrendous and not at all psychedelic. That was New York. The Frederic is neither rare (a dealer always has it for some ludicrous price) nor is it even listenable. Instead it is as I have described it previously- a really bad lounge Frat act snot nosed supper club band from Grand Rapids Michigan. I don't know why a lot of our cold climate bands suck! There are huge exceptions of course especially as in that Ohio produced a lot of really brilliant bands and press me to say the worst American band and it's always gonna be Bloodrock and sick in the head Southern bands like them in general so it is not simple.
American music of the best kind usually is made by bands who either are heavily leaning towards Anglo/European influences or who are good at what we're really good at- pop psych. I'd probably put Brian Wilson and his brilliant music in my top 5, but even he doesn't give me the same kind of healing spirit I get from Europe. Bands like Popol Ace from Norway, Blond from Sweden, Stratovarius from Finland, and the also Finland first album masterpiece by Tasavallan Presidentti along with the best Canadian records are so warm sounding and inviting I have a huge soft spot for them and love that kind of music. Some people complain about the Germans and Scandinavians. They complain about the vocals and about the music being "oppressive," but dealers like that are shallow thinking nobodies whose opinion doesn't mean one thing to me. I will readily admit that the German psychedelic/progressive bands grew to be a favourite kind of music over a long period, but I've not looked back since I started collecting the best they have which is a lot of bands. Scandinavia I always had a soft spot for and let me not leave out Dutch bands some of whom are astonishingly good. A German band like Virus won't be for everyone, but you surely won't get an illness if you listen to their best of their two albums THOUGHTS. I don't mind dark lyrics if they are good. English was not the first language for European bands, but in the northern part of Europe most bands sang in very good English and wrote very interesting although oftentimes somewhat downtrodden texts. My two best phone friends now are German soldiers and when Denis is around we talk often sometimes. I always love going to Montreal and no trip is complete without visiting him. We've made a tradition too of going out to dinner together. Never believe what people say about Canadians- Americans really are just jealous and you won't get slammed in Quebec if your French isn't perfect. I always try to use the little that I know, but my experience has been mainly very kind people up there. I've also never met a single Scandinavian I haven't loved. I also like Russians, but they never have had a chance to make really good music because their poor country is one tragedy after another. I had a Siberian best friend a long time ago and we'd always hang out with each other and I got him huge into one of my favourite bands for almost my whole life- Europe who of course came from Sweden. The culture is rich and detailed in Europe. It is a sense of huge pride and sadness in many countries none more so than Germany. I love Europe, I love Canada, but I find that the love emotion for people overrules the hate emotion more for me as long as they are good people who try to do something worthwhile in the world.
Getting back to my birthday I did great the previous day at the one record store that is really worth my while to go to and I had the best visit there in quite some time. We drove back listening to the great Canadian band Klaatu's MAGENTALANE and Klaatu are a band that loom large in my musical history. I knew I'd be getting some great music for my birthday the next day, but just how brilliant I didn't know until that beautiful morning in a so far beautiful spring.
I got the best records ever made! I got 14 of them and only one would have a problem and 15 were mine in total if you count the one that came from France a day later- Jupiter Sunset which is a very significant record in my history. It was great to have it back and purged of the demons it had a long time ago developed a year after I owned it roughly. Most of what I got came from Northern Europe and you can't go wrong with a lot of the bands that came out of Scandinavia in the 60s and early to mid 70s. Two of the other best ones- in fact the very best ones along with the first album by Finland's Tasavallan Presidentti (President Of The Republic in English) came from Germany in Sitting Bull's TRIP AWAY and New Zealand in The Fourmyula's GREEN B. HOLIDAY. Sitting Bull is an amazing record- a mix of blazing heavy psychedelic rock and British influenced heavier edged to laid aback folkrock. There is no other album like it although the superb vocals sound like a Germanic take on some of the best British bands of the early 70s era like Asgard and Dog That Bit People or the later Idle Race. The Fourmyula's GREEN B. HOLIDAY also belongs in every collection- a pop psych masterpiece that can blow the lid off nearly every other monster album in that vein and is an equal to the best- The Koobas!
One of the most interesting things is how much great music comes from countries with really cold climates where I'd love to visit during the warmer months, but couldn't stomach during the winters. Canada provided me with some of the best records at Siren and also on my birthday proper I got a heavy Canadian album I'd been looking for for 19 years- Blind Ravage. From Montreal, Blind Ravage is pretty, well, ravaging. It's an over the top hard garage psych/hard rock album with savage vocals and brilliant guitar work. We also drove back from Siren listening to one of my oldest favorites- Beatlesesque magic workers Klaatu from Toronto. Now I can go into detail about the amazing music from Scandinavia. I feel very successful in having got some classics from there and it only proved my point that Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland have something very special in the best of the music they've produced back before heavy metal did irreparable damage to all of those countries. Having said that one of the scant few bands that could be described as "Metal" (melodic metal, though, or Symphonic Metal) that I love are Finland's long running Stratovarius.
You can't get better than them once Timo Koltipelto became their vocalist and they have not gone the way of a lot of bands and churned out a million repetitious copies of their old classics they are a band who keep going further ahead. However, for there to be Stratovarius in the 90s to now there had to be a whole lot of bands before them.
Tasavallan Presidentti were Finland's first progressive group and recorded their groundbreaking, awesome first album in 1969 long before some of the other giants like Elonkorjuu got around to it. Having mentioned Elonkorjuu (the name translates into "Harvest") they obviously played Tasavallan's first a million times. I prefer, way prefer, Tasavallan Presidentti's self titled 1969 masterpiece when Jukka Tolonen hadn't completely crossed over to jazz and jazzy progressive rock taking the band with him. Also, very importantly, on their first album and a 1971 sort of compilation release on EMI they had the services of a brilliant British vocalist and writer in Frank Robson. Robson's soulful, melodic, and powerful voice is a huge help to getting the message across. It is largely thanks to the amazing variety of material, soaring vocals, and brilliant musicianship that this album is not only Finland's early progressive peak, but a peak for the genre in the world. The music has a warm vibe, like they were sitting around the fire coming up with great music because there was no way they were going to go out in the miserable cold.
Having used the word "miserable" Scandinavian bands can make miserable great. The Norwegian progressive rockers who shared the same name as a horrible more famous German band Popol Vuh and then once signed in Germany Popol Ace never sounded like a particularly happy bunch. Famous in their homeland and forgotten everywhere else that is beyond unfortunate that is unforgivable. They couldn't get any attention outside of a small following in Europe until Genesis attempted to (get this!) snag lead vocalist Jahn Teigen to replace Peter Gabriel. Teigen had the job and refused. He said at the time that he wanted to stay in his own group because they'd be huge soon, but I think he knew that if he did take the too-good-to-be-true offer it wouldn't last long. Jahn has a super great voice- a very impressive range and the most important ingredient of them all a lot of sincerity-, but his thickly accented vocals are impossible to imagine in Genesis. Popol Vuh/Ace were a very downtrodden band. Their 1972 debut is full of depressed mellotron drenched melancholic progressive rock and a few hard rock numbers and while it doesn't capture them quite as brilliant as on their Popol Ace one proper release with Jahn STOLEN FROM TIME it is pretty damned great music. The lyrics are really sad and just seem to only look at deep issues and bad things in the world. Especially depressing is the song "All We Have Is The Past," but this achingly beautiful song captures a kind of sad progressive magic like The Moody Blues yet it has a very European sound to it. Guitarists Arne Shulze and the also keyboard playing Pete Knutsen are stellar musicians and this album also features some really cool flute passages from Pjokken Eide who wouldn't stay long. Pjokken's big Ian Anderson moment comes in the ominous, grandiose opener "Hunchback." The song concludes with a grim poem spoken by Teigen. Side Two is where the album's major musical highlight is in "For Eternity" where Love circa FOREVER CHANGES meets King Crimson and The Moody Blues, but the group would improve their sound enormously once they were down from a sextet to a five piece band.
The peak for Popol Vuh/Popol Ace would come in the form of STOLEN FROM TIME which is the definition of melodic European progressive pop/rock and features a whole album's worth of amazing songs with great variety and energy from the whole band and Jahn is sounding almost God-Like on the record. He's gotten much more sure of himself you can tell and there is more beauty and less dark claustrophobia then on their first release. The brew that was steeping on the second album QUICHE MAYA is ready to drink here. Over the course of 3 years, two albums, and a name change it came together in absolute perfection. The first track "Bury Me Dead" is not really at all about death and is instead about the hardships of a rock band trying to make it to the top with a nice amount of humor thrown in. Other highlights are "Today Another Day" and "I Can See Tears"' among a whole lot more. The closing track "Suicide" is brilliant in that it doesn't depress you when they try to get inside somebody foolish enough to give into delusional thinking and kill themselves. The group were really all set to make it, but then it wasn't going to work out for this band. When Jahn Teigen left that was pretty much the end until recently when the whole band have reformed and I wish it could be different for them a second time around. It seems horribly unfair that they never made it at the time except in Norway and to a lesser extent Germany. They can stand up to the best of all British, American, and German progressive groups and that in and of itself should make them a legendary band to more than just the few who know their great music.
I've never figured it all out. Germany, Canada, Netherlands, Scandinavian countries produce such great music with such a harsh climate at certain times of the year and in England it rains so much and is miserable so much of the time that I wonder if that has anything to do with why there is a huge amount of great music from there too. There is a big difference in the music, however. Canada has its own kind of music, its own kind of bands, its own kind of sound. The French Canadian bands tend to sound Dutch or German for some reason and the English Canadian bands can only be described as a uniquely Canadian take on whatever they do. Scandinavia is where some really amazing bands hail from and I got into a lot of them when I was much younger than now. I've never liked the winter. In fact, I hate it. That might make it even harder for you to know how much I love music that evokes the one joy of that time of year- the fireplace. Winter can be cozy. It can bring people closer together. Take my advice and hunt down some of these cold climate masterpiece records and share them with your friends- you may turn onto something really special in the process.
It was hard to get to my day of commemoration intact, but I got there. Nothing is easy in life and if it all is a big nothing for someone hard as this may be to believe I'd rather be me than someone who is bland, selfish, uninteresting, and uninterested in anything but themselves and their square ordinary life. I've had a lot of hard times and a lot of good times in my life. Looking back I tend to try to and mainly remember the happy periods and happy days, but I can remember the worst ones too. Sometimes I live in the past or just become a dreamer too much, but that is a very small facet of who I am.
When I came up with my list of records for my birthday I went really far into rare big ticket records from cold climates- Germany, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and a Canadian record was a last minute surprise when my best Quebecois friend Denis said he had it and he'd sell it to me. Denis and I have known each other forever and been friends for a really long time. I've been to all 4 locations his store has been in in Montreal and I love going to that beautiful city. The closest I've been to Northern Europe is Montreal and Scotland where the weather can be brutal. The one time I went to Montreal in October it was freezing yet still so good. What I love about Canadian and Scandinavian bands is how different they are from the rest of the music from other places. I'll freely admit I'm a bit of a paradox when it comes to American bands as I think many of the best come from southern California (mainly Los Angeles), but press me hard enough and I'll come up with a whole lot from colder places too. America is a huge country with a huge amount of music, but it was the first country to become totally polarized between great music and the worst shit ever to come out in the world. In general a lot of really rare American records aren't that rare and are not worth listening to. I will give an example of that. Morgen is not very rare as someone always has one for sale and is both horrendous and not at all psychedelic. That was New York. The Frederic is neither rare (a dealer always has it for some ludicrous price) nor is it even listenable. Instead it is as I have described it previously- a really bad lounge Frat act snot nosed supper club band from Grand Rapids Michigan. I don't know why a lot of our cold climate bands suck! There are huge exceptions of course especially as in that Ohio produced a lot of really brilliant bands and press me to say the worst American band and it's always gonna be Bloodrock and sick in the head Southern bands like them in general so it is not simple.
American music of the best kind usually is made by bands who either are heavily leaning towards Anglo/European influences or who are good at what we're really good at- pop psych. I'd probably put Brian Wilson and his brilliant music in my top 5, but even he doesn't give me the same kind of healing spirit I get from Europe. Bands like Popol Ace from Norway, Blond from Sweden, Stratovarius from Finland, and the also Finland first album masterpiece by Tasavallan Presidentti along with the best Canadian records are so warm sounding and inviting I have a huge soft spot for them and love that kind of music. Some people complain about the Germans and Scandinavians. They complain about the vocals and about the music being "oppressive," but dealers like that are shallow thinking nobodies whose opinion doesn't mean one thing to me. I will readily admit that the German psychedelic/progressive bands grew to be a favourite kind of music over a long period, but I've not looked back since I started collecting the best they have which is a lot of bands. Scandinavia I always had a soft spot for and let me not leave out Dutch bands some of whom are astonishingly good. A German band like Virus won't be for everyone, but you surely won't get an illness if you listen to their best of their two albums THOUGHTS. I don't mind dark lyrics if they are good. English was not the first language for European bands, but in the northern part of Europe most bands sang in very good English and wrote very interesting although oftentimes somewhat downtrodden texts. My two best phone friends now are German soldiers and when Denis is around we talk often sometimes. I always love going to Montreal and no trip is complete without visiting him. We've made a tradition too of going out to dinner together. Never believe what people say about Canadians- Americans really are just jealous and you won't get slammed in Quebec if your French isn't perfect. I always try to use the little that I know, but my experience has been mainly very kind people up there. I've also never met a single Scandinavian I haven't loved. I also like Russians, but they never have had a chance to make really good music because their poor country is one tragedy after another. I had a Siberian best friend a long time ago and we'd always hang out with each other and I got him huge into one of my favourite bands for almost my whole life- Europe who of course came from Sweden. The culture is rich and detailed in Europe. It is a sense of huge pride and sadness in many countries none more so than Germany. I love Europe, I love Canada, but I find that the love emotion for people overrules the hate emotion more for me as long as they are good people who try to do something worthwhile in the world.
Getting back to my birthday I did great the previous day at the one record store that is really worth my while to go to and I had the best visit there in quite some time. We drove back listening to the great Canadian band Klaatu's MAGENTALANE and Klaatu are a band that loom large in my musical history. I knew I'd be getting some great music for my birthday the next day, but just how brilliant I didn't know until that beautiful morning in a so far beautiful spring.
I got the best records ever made! I got 14 of them and only one would have a problem and 15 were mine in total if you count the one that came from France a day later- Jupiter Sunset which is a very significant record in my history. It was great to have it back and purged of the demons it had a long time ago developed a year after I owned it roughly. Most of what I got came from Northern Europe and you can't go wrong with a lot of the bands that came out of Scandinavia in the 60s and early to mid 70s. Two of the other best ones- in fact the very best ones along with the first album by Finland's Tasavallan Presidentti (President Of The Republic in English) came from Germany in Sitting Bull's TRIP AWAY and New Zealand in The Fourmyula's GREEN B. HOLIDAY. Sitting Bull is an amazing record- a mix of blazing heavy psychedelic rock and British influenced heavier edged to laid aback folkrock. There is no other album like it although the superb vocals sound like a Germanic take on some of the best British bands of the early 70s era like Asgard and Dog That Bit People or the later Idle Race. The Fourmyula's GREEN B. HOLIDAY also belongs in every collection- a pop psych masterpiece that can blow the lid off nearly every other monster album in that vein and is an equal to the best- The Koobas!
One of the most interesting things is how much great music comes from countries with really cold climates where I'd love to visit during the warmer months, but couldn't stomach during the winters. Canada provided me with some of the best records at Siren and also on my birthday proper I got a heavy Canadian album I'd been looking for for 19 years- Blind Ravage. From Montreal, Blind Ravage is pretty, well, ravaging. It's an over the top hard garage psych/hard rock album with savage vocals and brilliant guitar work. We also drove back from Siren listening to one of my oldest favorites- Beatlesesque magic workers Klaatu from Toronto. Now I can go into detail about the amazing music from Scandinavia. I feel very successful in having got some classics from there and it only proved my point that Norway, Sweden, Denmark, and Finland have something very special in the best of the music they've produced back before heavy metal did irreparable damage to all of those countries. Having said that one of the scant few bands that could be described as "Metal" (melodic metal, though, or Symphonic Metal) that I love are Finland's long running Stratovarius.
You can't get better than them once Timo Koltipelto became their vocalist and they have not gone the way of a lot of bands and churned out a million repetitious copies of their old classics they are a band who keep going further ahead. However, for there to be Stratovarius in the 90s to now there had to be a whole lot of bands before them.
Tasavallan Presidentti were Finland's first progressive group and recorded their groundbreaking, awesome first album in 1969 long before some of the other giants like Elonkorjuu got around to it. Having mentioned Elonkorjuu (the name translates into "Harvest") they obviously played Tasavallan's first a million times. I prefer, way prefer, Tasavallan Presidentti's self titled 1969 masterpiece when Jukka Tolonen hadn't completely crossed over to jazz and jazzy progressive rock taking the band with him. Also, very importantly, on their first album and a 1971 sort of compilation release on EMI they had the services of a brilliant British vocalist and writer in Frank Robson. Robson's soulful, melodic, and powerful voice is a huge help to getting the message across. It is largely thanks to the amazing variety of material, soaring vocals, and brilliant musicianship that this album is not only Finland's early progressive peak, but a peak for the genre in the world. The music has a warm vibe, like they were sitting around the fire coming up with great music because there was no way they were going to go out in the miserable cold.
Having used the word "miserable" Scandinavian bands can make miserable great. The Norwegian progressive rockers who shared the same name as a horrible more famous German band Popol Vuh and then once signed in Germany Popol Ace never sounded like a particularly happy bunch. Famous in their homeland and forgotten everywhere else that is beyond unfortunate that is unforgivable. They couldn't get any attention outside of a small following in Europe until Genesis attempted to (get this!) snag lead vocalist Jahn Teigen to replace Peter Gabriel. Teigen had the job and refused. He said at the time that he wanted to stay in his own group because they'd be huge soon, but I think he knew that if he did take the too-good-to-be-true offer it wouldn't last long. Jahn has a super great voice- a very impressive range and the most important ingredient of them all a lot of sincerity-, but his thickly accented vocals are impossible to imagine in Genesis. Popol Vuh/Ace were a very downtrodden band. Their 1972 debut is full of depressed mellotron drenched melancholic progressive rock and a few hard rock numbers and while it doesn't capture them quite as brilliant as on their Popol Ace one proper release with Jahn STOLEN FROM TIME it is pretty damned great music. The lyrics are really sad and just seem to only look at deep issues and bad things in the world. Especially depressing is the song "All We Have Is The Past," but this achingly beautiful song captures a kind of sad progressive magic like The Moody Blues yet it has a very European sound to it. Guitarists Arne Shulze and the also keyboard playing Pete Knutsen are stellar musicians and this album also features some really cool flute passages from Pjokken Eide who wouldn't stay long. Pjokken's big Ian Anderson moment comes in the ominous, grandiose opener "Hunchback." The song concludes with a grim poem spoken by Teigen. Side Two is where the album's major musical highlight is in "For Eternity" where Love circa FOREVER CHANGES meets King Crimson and The Moody Blues, but the group would improve their sound enormously once they were down from a sextet to a five piece band.
The peak for Popol Vuh/Popol Ace would come in the form of STOLEN FROM TIME which is the definition of melodic European progressive pop/rock and features a whole album's worth of amazing songs with great variety and energy from the whole band and Jahn is sounding almost God-Like on the record. He's gotten much more sure of himself you can tell and there is more beauty and less dark claustrophobia then on their first release. The brew that was steeping on the second album QUICHE MAYA is ready to drink here. Over the course of 3 years, two albums, and a name change it came together in absolute perfection. The first track "Bury Me Dead" is not really at all about death and is instead about the hardships of a rock band trying to make it to the top with a nice amount of humor thrown in. Other highlights are "Today Another Day" and "I Can See Tears"' among a whole lot more. The closing track "Suicide" is brilliant in that it doesn't depress you when they try to get inside somebody foolish enough to give into delusional thinking and kill themselves. The group were really all set to make it, but then it wasn't going to work out for this band. When Jahn Teigen left that was pretty much the end until recently when the whole band have reformed and I wish it could be different for them a second time around. It seems horribly unfair that they never made it at the time except in Norway and to a lesser extent Germany. They can stand up to the best of all British, American, and German progressive groups and that in and of itself should make them a legendary band to more than just the few who know their great music.
I've never figured it all out. Germany, Canada, Netherlands, Scandinavian countries produce such great music with such a harsh climate at certain times of the year and in England it rains so much and is miserable so much of the time that I wonder if that has anything to do with why there is a huge amount of great music from there too. There is a big difference in the music, however. Canada has its own kind of music, its own kind of bands, its own kind of sound. The French Canadian bands tend to sound Dutch or German for some reason and the English Canadian bands can only be described as a uniquely Canadian take on whatever they do. Scandinavia is where some really amazing bands hail from and I got into a lot of them when I was much younger than now. I've never liked the winter. In fact, I hate it. That might make it even harder for you to know how much I love music that evokes the one joy of that time of year- the fireplace. Winter can be cozy. It can bring people closer together. Take my advice and hunt down some of these cold climate masterpiece records and share them with your friends- you may turn onto something really special in the process.
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Henry The Fifth's View Of The Modern England- Sorrow, Hatred, And Punishment To Almost All- In Music He Finds Consolation
What is the world coming to I'd like somebody to tell me if somebody knows. The end seems in sight with the endless bombings, shootings, and violence plaguing America, but for England the end might be even closer when it comes to respectability. I used to believe that men as great as Henry The Fifth and Sigfried Sassoon still could exist and relish in the current England, but now I know better. What I am going to illustrate here will tell you all the things they never want you to know if you are English, Scottish, or any of the countries in the United Kingdom or Commonwealth. I would never move to England now. You couldn't pay me to. My dream about England was based on good times in the past there, but now I know that the country is full of hatred for foreigners and is not even a pale shadow of its former self. The recently deceased Margaret Thatcher set the country on the road to ruin and then it was decimated into a narrow minded nationalistic country where the crime rate, poverty, and pollution especially what I call "Emotional Pollution" has all but destroyed it. I have been treated with unforgivable nastiness by a lot of people in England and I know my belief in that country still able to hold within its tightly shut walls heroes and kings to be was a complete and total fabrication. In this blog music doesn't take a backseat because it is the only thing that heals poor Henry The Fifth when he comes back to see what his beloved England has turned into.
Henry wakes up one morning not long after Saint Crispian's Day and his brilliant victory at Agincourt to wonder what the future holds for England. He is proud of his country. It is a vast and great and handsome, beautiful land where the people have solid moral values. It is made out of the solid stone foundation of trust and love. He wants to know if England maintains its brilliance through the ages. He is in for a big shock. He gets up on his horse and lo and behold that horse turns into a Pegasus and a Time Machine- he flies on its courageous wings and then boards its suave comfy inside of a spaceship type of machine to go forward into the world of England today.
The first thing he does is to see what England turns into over the next several hundreds of years and already he is very disheartened, but not totally shaken of his love for his country. He goes to Victorian England and is in Soho one night when there is a loud scream and the sound of running, frantic feet. A tall blond man in a suit with a few blood stains on his tie accidentally runs into him. The two behold the differences in each other and to make up for the run in Henry and the tall blond man go for a swim in the Thames. Whilst swimming they have a conversation:
"Henry: And who art Thou? How darest Thou to run into me the sovereign King of England?
Man: I confess, sir, I am a murderer of prostitutes and my name is Jack, but not Jack Falstaff as you can see. I serve in what is called The House Of Lords and they have nicknamed me "Jack The Ripper" in the papers.
Henry: Sblood! I think you art a sick and perverted man for killing, but tell me what is this word, a prostitute?
Jack: A prostitute is a woman who sells her body for cheap sexual longings and who oftentimes carries diseases.
Henry: What!? Horrible! Ghastly! We had Harlots, but I suppose they were better than this. Still, couldn't you just try to educate these women and help them out of their wicked ways?
Jack: A valid point. I suppose I should try that, but I am a man with a mad and twisted mind to most people, a man who doesn't think enough. Still, you look like someone I've envisioned when I've read Shakespeare, but surely it cannot be so. Are you The Noble King Henry The Fifth?
Henry: That is me. Thou art correct in thine assumption. This England, this city tis big and crowded and dirty, but it looks interesting. Wouldst thou mind giving me a little tour?
Jack: Not at all, sir. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. There is a theater here called The Globe where they put on all of Shakespeare's plays. Would you like to go to it?
Henry: First pray tell me who is Shakespeare?
Jack: Hah! Only the greatest writer ever to come from our country. Don't worry sir, I do not mock you. He has preserved your Glory forever and people will talk of him, talk of you, and possibly talk of me forever. I wonder how much fouler the air and the country will be then, though. I do not like a lot of what I see around me. It does my head in. That is why I turn to these fits of violence and murders.
Henry: This Shakespeare sounds like a most great man and writer indeed. Shall we go for a little tour after we dry off?
Jack: I'll take you all over the country if you'd like. You may not like this new London much, but there are good aspects to it I suppose. Good food and drink. People are tightly bound together. Everyone bids everyone else the same token respect if they too are friendly for the most part, but I am a man of violent means of showing my distaste so they are all hunting after me. They think I am not a man, but a crazed, raving animal. Animals shouldn't be hunted down human or furry ones.
Henry: Show me around, then. It sounds like there are some things that I will like some that will horrify me."
So Henry gets a tour of London from none other than the infamous Jack The Knife. He is already shocked, but most of that is remedied when the people of London help bring him up to date as much as he can be. He gets along well with most of the people and delights in the pubs and entertainment. Jack turns out to be somebody who is so confused, so off his head that his violence can't be cured, but he at least knows that what he does shouldn't be done by anybody to anybody. Henry isn't completely disillusioned yet, but there is much that he misses from his period of England. The two of them decide to see the beginning of the 20th century before heading into the 21st and are forced to behold the First World War.
They are so shocked and horrified by what is going on that they cry, especially Henry. Jack says "Time May Heal This Tortured Land But It Won't Save The Poor Soldiers From All Nations" Henry is determined to lead a large Army to the 21st century so he takes a huge number of soldiers from England and Germany to the 21st Century that he, and it turns out, Jack The Ripper even, are so curious about. They are going to see just how far their two Englands have slid into destruction that along with the whole Army all Hell will break loose and Judgement and Damnation will be passed upon this current England.
The first thing that happens is that Jack sees London now and goes completely ballistic and stands up in Trafalgar Square and demands people to stop abusing each other and polluting the planet:
"You are a bunch of fools and swines! You call me a murderer, a madman, an insane animal, but you have no civilities towards each other nor do you have them towards anyone else in the whole world. You spit in the streets. You leave trash all over the public parks and pollute the air. You have no sense of the history of this country or what it is supposed to be and you don't care. I hate you all! You should be so ashamed of yourselves for how you live, but you don't care about anything, anyone but your own interests and your selfish, sick, twisted little world ten times worse than any murder I ever have been unfortunate enough to commit."
Henry echoes the same sentiments in a choked up speech that ends in helpless tears:
"Fools! Traitors! Philistines and Rotten Innards Of Pig's Blood! This country is full of destruction, death, murder, treachery, selfishness. I cannot believe mine eyes! What can your excuse be!? How can you call this even a world!? There is nothing but war, violence, and blind hatred. My home is now a place I can't even recognize. You don't live properly and do not wish to know how. There is only one thing in common- the wars yet these wars be the cruelest, most disgusting, and most devoid of any kind of honor that I hast ever seen. I will punish Thee Anon by setting lose upon thee plagues and all the fires of Hell! You will rot in this prison that you call with mocking tongue England! Swounds! This is not England anymore at all! I can't stand it. Dear Lord I believe I feel the tears are coming to mine eyes. The beauty and splendor of my home all but destroyed forever."
And what do the people do when Henry is there weeping? They laugh at him. A fight ensues and all Hell breaks loose. To escape from the violence the Army quiet the crowd and Henry goes to a record store not even knowing what a record is. Followed by Jack who picks up some records also wondering what they are. When they see the prices on some of them they are even more curious as to what these little square containers with striking sleeves might hold. They are shown how to play a record by the kind man who owns the store and find in record and music lovers some hope and in rock and roll, folk, progressive, British Invasion, and psychedelic music the one thing that is great about the 20th/21st Century world. Soon Henry has ransacked every store all over England and is determined to learn all he needs to know about the more modern world through music. He is curious about America too. Henry finds that not all people are bad and so does Jack. The only problem is keeping people from to them stupid questions that need not answering to them.
Bold and Honorable Henry finds out through learning how to understand the lyrics of the music that the world has disintegrated into endless wars, that people disrespect each other, but also that there still is some love. His most hated band is Iron Maiden and he has them publicly executed by his soldiers. To him they represent a perversion of the England he loved and cherished. His taste is much like mine. He loves the music of the 60s and 70s and finds it amazing. He buys an electric guitar and learns how to play it. Jack turns out to be quite a good singer and is taught how to sing rock music by none other than Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney along with Rob Halford and Arthur Brown. Halford has made him smile with "The Ripper," but he way prefers Toto and is interested in America, but after they learn of what America has turned into Henry, Jack, and their Army have some hard thinking to do. Can people be re-educated? Can the world be saved? Or are we all doomed because we've essentially just thrown all the greatness we once had out the window and are selfish, destructive, and horrifyingly poorly educated individuals? Unfortunately, after much debate, much time, and much thought Henry is determined to hardly spare anyone from his anger and the world is punished accordingly. England gets the worst of it and when the soldiers from World War 1 meet the soldiers of today they are so shocked by how bad a lot of them are that the new soldiers need to be shown that they are not worthy of fighting for England at all. The England they fight for isn't really England. After a fortnight's worth of living in the 21st century what happens to the world is that Henry finds that he alone can't save it, but can only take the lives of the people who have turned it into a tragic and destructive nightmarish devilish place of hate and destruction. Everywhere they go they try to bring peace through educating the people, but the people refuse it. Jack becomes head of The London Police! Maybe you think that's the biggest shock, but the biggest shock of them all is perhaps that Henry has become a fine musician and writes songs. His songs will be what is through top volume played all over England as it goes up in fire to be rebuilt again to a modern version of his England. Henry loves everything that he's found in the record stores, well almost everything. He hates heavy metal, but he needs some heavy music for his day of vengeance so he finds the best he can use is hard progressive, heavy folkrock based stuff, and hard psychedelic rock all of which blow him completely away and inspire his own music. You should listen to all of it. Music is salvation. Most people can have the door shut right in their face and they wouldn't have opened it for you either so don't feel too bad about not being able to do much to turn them on to a better way to live.
The best place to go for finding out in real life about how far England went down the shithole is actually an album from 1969- Bulldog Breed's MADE IN ENGLAND. The followups were two very different sides of the same hard psychedelic golden pound- T2 made somehow soothing blasting heavy power/melodic progressive rock on IT'LL ALL WORK OUT IN BOOMLAND and Asgard made the ultimate damning of what the world has become with also a one off release IN THE REALM OF ASGARD. These two have been firm favorites of mine for quite awhile now (BULLDOG BREED and ASGARD that is- I love T2, but don't have one at the moment), but there are some new brilliant albums I've been listening to. The most obscure of them is probably a richly augmented duo called Evensong whose one album on British Philips from 1973 is something of a tragic pop psych/baroque folkrock masterpiece that is as yet to be discovered by most people. And I've been digging a lot of bands from the States and from Europe. Thank Heaven for music and blame Hell for the world. The two are getting closer all the time...
I hope that my story will open up some eyes or at least make some people think. Get out in the streets and do what you did in the 60s- SPEAK UP AGAINST WAR, VIOLENCE, AND PREJUDICE! Have some consideration for other people and not just yourself. Try to make your life and your own world a good place, but don't try to turn on people who are nothing but bigoted, small-minded, and selfish fools who are making the world harder and harder for someone like me to be a part of. I have a lot of very strong negative feelings about much of what I see in England and America, but right now England is the country I am the most angry about or it could be something of a tie between the two. We certainly have a stupid view of our countries as being great when we've lost almost all the greatness we once may have had. Whether there still is time to mend and to heal we'll just have to wait and see if there is.
Henry wakes up one morning not long after Saint Crispian's Day and his brilliant victory at Agincourt to wonder what the future holds for England. He is proud of his country. It is a vast and great and handsome, beautiful land where the people have solid moral values. It is made out of the solid stone foundation of trust and love. He wants to know if England maintains its brilliance through the ages. He is in for a big shock. He gets up on his horse and lo and behold that horse turns into a Pegasus and a Time Machine- he flies on its courageous wings and then boards its suave comfy inside of a spaceship type of machine to go forward into the world of England today.
The first thing he does is to see what England turns into over the next several hundreds of years and already he is very disheartened, but not totally shaken of his love for his country. He goes to Victorian England and is in Soho one night when there is a loud scream and the sound of running, frantic feet. A tall blond man in a suit with a few blood stains on his tie accidentally runs into him. The two behold the differences in each other and to make up for the run in Henry and the tall blond man go for a swim in the Thames. Whilst swimming they have a conversation:
"Henry: And who art Thou? How darest Thou to run into me the sovereign King of England?
Man: I confess, sir, I am a murderer of prostitutes and my name is Jack, but not Jack Falstaff as you can see. I serve in what is called The House Of Lords and they have nicknamed me "Jack The Ripper" in the papers.
Henry: Sblood! I think you art a sick and perverted man for killing, but tell me what is this word, a prostitute?
Jack: A prostitute is a woman who sells her body for cheap sexual longings and who oftentimes carries diseases.
Henry: What!? Horrible! Ghastly! We had Harlots, but I suppose they were better than this. Still, couldn't you just try to educate these women and help them out of their wicked ways?
Jack: A valid point. I suppose I should try that, but I am a man with a mad and twisted mind to most people, a man who doesn't think enough. Still, you look like someone I've envisioned when I've read Shakespeare, but surely it cannot be so. Are you The Noble King Henry The Fifth?
Henry: That is me. Thou art correct in thine assumption. This England, this city tis big and crowded and dirty, but it looks interesting. Wouldst thou mind giving me a little tour?
Jack: Not at all, sir. I am very pleased to make your acquaintance. There is a theater here called The Globe where they put on all of Shakespeare's plays. Would you like to go to it?
Henry: First pray tell me who is Shakespeare?
Jack: Hah! Only the greatest writer ever to come from our country. Don't worry sir, I do not mock you. He has preserved your Glory forever and people will talk of him, talk of you, and possibly talk of me forever. I wonder how much fouler the air and the country will be then, though. I do not like a lot of what I see around me. It does my head in. That is why I turn to these fits of violence and murders.
Henry: This Shakespeare sounds like a most great man and writer indeed. Shall we go for a little tour after we dry off?
Jack: I'll take you all over the country if you'd like. You may not like this new London much, but there are good aspects to it I suppose. Good food and drink. People are tightly bound together. Everyone bids everyone else the same token respect if they too are friendly for the most part, but I am a man of violent means of showing my distaste so they are all hunting after me. They think I am not a man, but a crazed, raving animal. Animals shouldn't be hunted down human or furry ones.
Henry: Show me around, then. It sounds like there are some things that I will like some that will horrify me."
So Henry gets a tour of London from none other than the infamous Jack The Knife. He is already shocked, but most of that is remedied when the people of London help bring him up to date as much as he can be. He gets along well with most of the people and delights in the pubs and entertainment. Jack turns out to be somebody who is so confused, so off his head that his violence can't be cured, but he at least knows that what he does shouldn't be done by anybody to anybody. Henry isn't completely disillusioned yet, but there is much that he misses from his period of England. The two of them decide to see the beginning of the 20th century before heading into the 21st and are forced to behold the First World War.
They are so shocked and horrified by what is going on that they cry, especially Henry. Jack says "Time May Heal This Tortured Land But It Won't Save The Poor Soldiers From All Nations" Henry is determined to lead a large Army to the 21st century so he takes a huge number of soldiers from England and Germany to the 21st Century that he, and it turns out, Jack The Ripper even, are so curious about. They are going to see just how far their two Englands have slid into destruction that along with the whole Army all Hell will break loose and Judgement and Damnation will be passed upon this current England.
The first thing that happens is that Jack sees London now and goes completely ballistic and stands up in Trafalgar Square and demands people to stop abusing each other and polluting the planet:
"You are a bunch of fools and swines! You call me a murderer, a madman, an insane animal, but you have no civilities towards each other nor do you have them towards anyone else in the whole world. You spit in the streets. You leave trash all over the public parks and pollute the air. You have no sense of the history of this country or what it is supposed to be and you don't care. I hate you all! You should be so ashamed of yourselves for how you live, but you don't care about anything, anyone but your own interests and your selfish, sick, twisted little world ten times worse than any murder I ever have been unfortunate enough to commit."
Henry echoes the same sentiments in a choked up speech that ends in helpless tears:
"Fools! Traitors! Philistines and Rotten Innards Of Pig's Blood! This country is full of destruction, death, murder, treachery, selfishness. I cannot believe mine eyes! What can your excuse be!? How can you call this even a world!? There is nothing but war, violence, and blind hatred. My home is now a place I can't even recognize. You don't live properly and do not wish to know how. There is only one thing in common- the wars yet these wars be the cruelest, most disgusting, and most devoid of any kind of honor that I hast ever seen. I will punish Thee Anon by setting lose upon thee plagues and all the fires of Hell! You will rot in this prison that you call with mocking tongue England! Swounds! This is not England anymore at all! I can't stand it. Dear Lord I believe I feel the tears are coming to mine eyes. The beauty and splendor of my home all but destroyed forever."
And what do the people do when Henry is there weeping? They laugh at him. A fight ensues and all Hell breaks loose. To escape from the violence the Army quiet the crowd and Henry goes to a record store not even knowing what a record is. Followed by Jack who picks up some records also wondering what they are. When they see the prices on some of them they are even more curious as to what these little square containers with striking sleeves might hold. They are shown how to play a record by the kind man who owns the store and find in record and music lovers some hope and in rock and roll, folk, progressive, British Invasion, and psychedelic music the one thing that is great about the 20th/21st Century world. Soon Henry has ransacked every store all over England and is determined to learn all he needs to know about the more modern world through music. He is curious about America too. Henry finds that not all people are bad and so does Jack. The only problem is keeping people from to them stupid questions that need not answering to them.
Bold and Honorable Henry finds out through learning how to understand the lyrics of the music that the world has disintegrated into endless wars, that people disrespect each other, but also that there still is some love. His most hated band is Iron Maiden and he has them publicly executed by his soldiers. To him they represent a perversion of the England he loved and cherished. His taste is much like mine. He loves the music of the 60s and 70s and finds it amazing. He buys an electric guitar and learns how to play it. Jack turns out to be quite a good singer and is taught how to sing rock music by none other than Rod Stewart and Paul McCartney along with Rob Halford and Arthur Brown. Halford has made him smile with "The Ripper," but he way prefers Toto and is interested in America, but after they learn of what America has turned into Henry, Jack, and their Army have some hard thinking to do. Can people be re-educated? Can the world be saved? Or are we all doomed because we've essentially just thrown all the greatness we once had out the window and are selfish, destructive, and horrifyingly poorly educated individuals? Unfortunately, after much debate, much time, and much thought Henry is determined to hardly spare anyone from his anger and the world is punished accordingly. England gets the worst of it and when the soldiers from World War 1 meet the soldiers of today they are so shocked by how bad a lot of them are that the new soldiers need to be shown that they are not worthy of fighting for England at all. The England they fight for isn't really England. After a fortnight's worth of living in the 21st century what happens to the world is that Henry finds that he alone can't save it, but can only take the lives of the people who have turned it into a tragic and destructive nightmarish devilish place of hate and destruction. Everywhere they go they try to bring peace through educating the people, but the people refuse it. Jack becomes head of The London Police! Maybe you think that's the biggest shock, but the biggest shock of them all is perhaps that Henry has become a fine musician and writes songs. His songs will be what is through top volume played all over England as it goes up in fire to be rebuilt again to a modern version of his England. Henry loves everything that he's found in the record stores, well almost everything. He hates heavy metal, but he needs some heavy music for his day of vengeance so he finds the best he can use is hard progressive, heavy folkrock based stuff, and hard psychedelic rock all of which blow him completely away and inspire his own music. You should listen to all of it. Music is salvation. Most people can have the door shut right in their face and they wouldn't have opened it for you either so don't feel too bad about not being able to do much to turn them on to a better way to live.
The best place to go for finding out in real life about how far England went down the shithole is actually an album from 1969- Bulldog Breed's MADE IN ENGLAND. The followups were two very different sides of the same hard psychedelic golden pound- T2 made somehow soothing blasting heavy power/melodic progressive rock on IT'LL ALL WORK OUT IN BOOMLAND and Asgard made the ultimate damning of what the world has become with also a one off release IN THE REALM OF ASGARD. These two have been firm favorites of mine for quite awhile now (BULLDOG BREED and ASGARD that is- I love T2, but don't have one at the moment), but there are some new brilliant albums I've been listening to. The most obscure of them is probably a richly augmented duo called Evensong whose one album on British Philips from 1973 is something of a tragic pop psych/baroque folkrock masterpiece that is as yet to be discovered by most people. And I've been digging a lot of bands from the States and from Europe. Thank Heaven for music and blame Hell for the world. The two are getting closer all the time...
I hope that my story will open up some eyes or at least make some people think. Get out in the streets and do what you did in the 60s- SPEAK UP AGAINST WAR, VIOLENCE, AND PREJUDICE! Have some consideration for other people and not just yourself. Try to make your life and your own world a good place, but don't try to turn on people who are nothing but bigoted, small-minded, and selfish fools who are making the world harder and harder for someone like me to be a part of. I have a lot of very strong negative feelings about much of what I see in England and America, but right now England is the country I am the most angry about or it could be something of a tie between the two. We certainly have a stupid view of our countries as being great when we've lost almost all the greatness we once may have had. Whether there still is time to mend and to heal we'll just have to wait and see if there is.
Tuesday, April 9, 2013
WAM BAM GLAM! Waterloo (UK 1974 Great Glam/Pop/Prog/Rock) And Brighton Rock's (Canada 1988 Glam/AOR/Melodic Metal) Take A Deep Breath Underrated No Longer!
I've always had a really soft spot for glam rock/glitter rock whatever you want to call it that has included Sweet, Slade, Bowie, some T. Rex before Marc Bolan's ego eclipsed his talent and 80s bands like Skagarack and Treat (Denmark and Sweden respectively) always hit the right spot for me. Sparks are a great band who never made it huge on the same level as Sweet or Slade, but who did make quite a few really good records. Queen at one point were considered glam, but to me they were always more progressive rock. During the height of glam rock and the rediscovery of the roots of British rock in the 70s there were some terrible bands who capitalized on the glitter rock craze with snazzy clothes and horrible throwaway pop like Paper Lace and Gary Glitter that pedophile bastard, but these artists/bands will only be remembered for how horrible they were. Most of the bands active during the 1972 to 1977 period were high quality rock and later on in the heyday of big hair bands we had some with killer songs and intelligence to match of which Toronto Canada's Brighton Rock had an ace up their sleeve in TAKE A DEEP BREATH. Some bands had a glam image and fiercer music like the Danish heavy metallers Pretty Maids, but Pretty Maids had something most metal completely lacks- great lyrics.
It has always been a case of too much and too many with a lot of bands failing to get the respect they so rightfully deserve usually because of the management, their record label, bad marketing, or just bad timing. Some of these bands become highly sought after collectors items or achieve huge cult status, but way too many of them just disappear. Waterloo are such a band. Whoever was writing the script didn't like this band. They came out in one of the most strikingly Godawful covers of the glam era with the band going down the throat of a screaming transvestite on a doily with the guy still with his lipstick on in the band photo! That and the fact of the progressive rock Belgian multi thousand Euro Waterloo from 1971 did this band no favors. In truth they beat the living shit out of the Belgian band whose album is a hodgepodge of sometimes brilliant late psychedelic rock/prog rock and sometimes horrible sludgy blues rock, but the British Waterloo didn't win this battle for Britain.
Just like Bulldog Breed who went by completely unnoticed and then disappeared Waterloo are a band who exemplify the best England had to offer, but theirs is a different era and a different music. There are the blasting hard rockers on here that's true, but the songs all of which Ian Pearce wrote vary from Kinks meets Move gone heavy glam rock to laid back melodic almost McCartney numbers to a few skiffle/1960s influenced whimsical songs to the heavy progressive/psychedelic blowout "Strangers From The Sky." How a band with this much depth, power, and emotion went by with no notice is beyond me. There will always be bands that just don't get the respect they deserve at the time and Waterloo together with Circus from Cleveland Ohio are the number one bands who should have been huge nationally if not internationally, but who hit a brick wall. That brick wall is called OBSCURITY. You start in the dollar/cut out bin and then you end up pretty much with same fate among collectors although Circus and their 1973 masterpiece have gone on to be quite a collector's favorite (certainly one of mine!).
Unfortunately, Waterloo are still completely overlooked. I don't know why. The cover, ugly as it may be, catches the eye and the songs catch the ear. The influence of Ray Davis and The Kinks is obvious in a lot of tracks, but the real secret weapon is one of the two or 3 lead singers in the multitalented foursome sounds just like Dave Davies! Really. When they rock out on the second track "Ask Me" the guy is so close to Dave that he even throws in a few tasty guitar licks and heavy plowing riffs just like brilliant Dave! The first track, "Uncle Tom," sounds like "Victoria" meets an earlier British Invasion just post skiffle song with a lead vocal that is reminiscent of Ray! I never think there is anything wrong with a heavy influence of a great band so if Waterloo were obsessed with The Kinks more power to them! There aren't enough bands that sound like them. In 1974 the best band in the world (The Kinks) were having a bit of a lapse and Ray Davis was writing less inspired material than usual, but all that would change with SCHOOLBOYS IN DISGRACE which may have been 1974 I'm not sure. They really wouldn't hit their stride again until 1977 and SLEEPWALKER where Ray and Dave got back to their brilliant rollicking melodic rock which means that there was a gap and Waterloo filled it quite nicely thank you.
"Joe Barrow" is a very silly lyric, but it is a fun good song that again is reminiscent of the mid to late 60s period of The Kinks- Great British pop/rock with nice use of acoustic and electric guitars and offbeat carefree vocals. "Winter Rose" sounds like McCartney if he'd rocked it up a bit more post BAND ON THE RUN and is one of the album's major highlights, but with "Ask Me" the jaw dropper on Side One is the over 8 minute last track on the side "Strangers From The Sky." This song is heavy progressive power rock with psychedelic overtones and screaming bombastic vocals about how aliens created the world! The female vocal bits are really spooky and there's a long percussion blow out in the middle before the song explodes again into the screaming Dave Davies gone mad vocals and the frenzied riffing. A really brilliant track this should be put on a compilation of best concept songs of the 70s.
Side Two sticks to the straight melodic rock of much of Side One, but it gets even better in the writing department with amazing melodies and great vocals especially on the first two tracks. "Come And Have A Good Time" could be a lower pitched Pilot and "In The Heat Of The Afternoon" reminds me of The Move and maybe even more The Idle Race. The Kinks influence is still abundant too and maybe Waterloo missed out because their music was so classy that it was unfashionable- more late 60s/early 70s than mid 70s. 1974 was the year when the early 70s were ending and the best part of the mid 70s was beginning. Many throwback records appeared and another masterpiece still overlooked is Ex Tomorrow front man Keith West's brilliant German only release WHEREVER MY LOVE GOES- an album that appeared in 1974 and was recorded a full two years previously in 1972. Like Waterloo that album is hopelessly rare and obscure when it should have been a hit. Without support from your home base it gets really hard to break through.
Waterloo rock out again on Side Two with "I've Been Thinking" and the Dave Davies gone funky hard rocker "Wandering" with its killer screaming vocals that again sound just like Dave! I love Ray Davis and I love Dave Davies- a band who try to sound like them is only gonna get one rating from me- TOPS! There's a mellow track on Side Two in "Sunny Old Days" which again recalls ARTHUR era Kinks and both bands shared the same arranger- Lew Warburton. I wonder if something was going on that we'll not know about. One thing is for sure, funny silly lovely-to-imagine out and out pop closing track "People Of The World" aside this album rocks out like The Kinks do at their best and like them is a melodic masterpiece. Ray AND Dave would be proud of them. I bet Ray would give this a thumb's up too and he certainly was in a bit of a rough period at the time, but he'd pull out of it as said with SLEEPWALKER- an album that like most Kinks records is amazing.
Brighton Rock are a whole completely different thing. A different glam era and a different glam sound. They look like a perfect pin up group gone dark rather like if you crossed Shy with Def Leppard and that is a bit of their sound. TAKE A DEEP BREATH from 1988 may have saved my life had I heard it then when I was a beaten down and destroyed 12 year old wreck in a horrible school system and at the lowest ebb of my whole childhood, but now the album serves its purpose to comfort me and gives me fantasies of revenge. A year previous Brighton Rock debuted with the inconsistent YOUNG WILD AND FREE which does have its great moments, but not like this. TAKE A DEEP BREATH is hard rock/AOR/melodic glam metal genius and one of the deepest hardest hitting records ever made for its emotional content. Sometimes lead vocalist Gerald McGhee sounds joyful and like he's having a great time such as on the ebullient first track "Can't Stop The Earth From Shaking," but they follow that up with one of the most tortured and emotionally riveting songs ever recorded "Outlaw." "Outlaw" is about Jack The Ripper, a favourite subject of McGhee first dealt with on the first album's "Jack Is Back," but this song is something totally different. It has a really dark keyboard sound and dramatic soaring wailing vocals that sound like a plea or some kind of cry for help from a tormented soul. Gerald hits notes that are practically and at least for me impossible in the chorus of the beautiful song "One More Try" which must be the best power ballad ever written- even better than Shy's equally momentous "When The Love Is Over." "Hangin' High 'N Dry" is a moment of melodic glam AOR/hard rock keyboard heaven between the two stunning tracks "Outlaw" and "One More Try" with all of the songs on Side One alone making it seem impossible that the usual Canadian content problem wrecked everything for Brighton Rock.
Unfortunately, the impossible proved possible. Whilst earning huge acclaim in their homeland and going gold the rest of the hard rock world turned their fickle noses up at Brighton Rock. That is really unforgivable. They were labelled as a second division band when they were better than ANY AND ALL METAL BANDS FROM ANYWHERE ELSE AT THE TIME! Iron Maiden were making stale garbage as usual and Brighton Rock were making real music. This was not going to go down well in the metal world and Brighton Rock give the ultimate middle finger to anybody who doesn't believe in them with Side One's awesome closing track "Unleash The Rage." This song rocks harder than anything Iron Maiden ever did with their plodding fascist nonsense and takes to the sky. McGhee wasn't the only trick up Brighton Rock's sleeve. They had an excellent co writer and inventive guitarist in Greg Fraser and a brilliant keyboard player in Johnny Rogers. They also had a really good rhythm section, but it seems like TAKE A DEEP BREATH was a one off. It's an album that speaks volumes and therefore doesn't need anything else from this band. I don't know their third album LOVE MACHINE at all well, but YOUNG WILD AND FREE isn't quite as good. There are some great songs like "We Came To Rock" and "Can't Wait For The Night," but also some laughable ones like "Sudden Change Of Heart." That said, Brighton Rock should be given a lot of credit for just how much talent they had. Coming out of Canada they had a Canadian sound up there with bands like Haywire and Haywire were another band who just didn't get anywhere outside of Canada. Brighton Rock and Haywire suffered the same fate as Birmingham's Shy and Sweden's Treat- glam bands of the lowest level made it a lot bigger than the best ones. I would prefer to think of glam as something musical rather than all image-oriented, but for a lot of bands that made it they were almost as insufferable musically as bad grease metal as I call it with just the love lyrics not hate lyrics the only thing to put them a bit higher.
Side Two of TAKE A DEEP BREATH is as strong as Side One is. Every track from "Power Overload" to "Ride The Rainbow" which is an amazing song to the too-good-to-be-true-but-it-is closing track "Rebels With A Cause" should have been number 1, but the album and the band soon after went into the budget section and still can be found there today if you are lucky enough to find it. That is the biggest similarity with Waterloo. Neither of these is gonna cost you a huge amount, but prepare yourself to have to order these online as you won't find them in a record store nowadays unless you are very lucky. A different glam for a different era. A different hard rock for a different era. One thing is exactly equal, though, this is quality music that deserves to be given just as Brighton Rock say at least "One More Try." Waterloo and Brighton Rock should be given a try by you and they should be rediscovered from the "Underrated-In-The-Extreme" place they still reside in today. Give them a try and give them your support. They should have it.
It has always been a case of too much and too many with a lot of bands failing to get the respect they so rightfully deserve usually because of the management, their record label, bad marketing, or just bad timing. Some of these bands become highly sought after collectors items or achieve huge cult status, but way too many of them just disappear. Waterloo are such a band. Whoever was writing the script didn't like this band. They came out in one of the most strikingly Godawful covers of the glam era with the band going down the throat of a screaming transvestite on a doily with the guy still with his lipstick on in the band photo! That and the fact of the progressive rock Belgian multi thousand Euro Waterloo from 1971 did this band no favors. In truth they beat the living shit out of the Belgian band whose album is a hodgepodge of sometimes brilliant late psychedelic rock/prog rock and sometimes horrible sludgy blues rock, but the British Waterloo didn't win this battle for Britain.
Just like Bulldog Breed who went by completely unnoticed and then disappeared Waterloo are a band who exemplify the best England had to offer, but theirs is a different era and a different music. There are the blasting hard rockers on here that's true, but the songs all of which Ian Pearce wrote vary from Kinks meets Move gone heavy glam rock to laid back melodic almost McCartney numbers to a few skiffle/1960s influenced whimsical songs to the heavy progressive/psychedelic blowout "Strangers From The Sky." How a band with this much depth, power, and emotion went by with no notice is beyond me. There will always be bands that just don't get the respect they deserve at the time and Waterloo together with Circus from Cleveland Ohio are the number one bands who should have been huge nationally if not internationally, but who hit a brick wall. That brick wall is called OBSCURITY. You start in the dollar/cut out bin and then you end up pretty much with same fate among collectors although Circus and their 1973 masterpiece have gone on to be quite a collector's favorite (certainly one of mine!).
Unfortunately, Waterloo are still completely overlooked. I don't know why. The cover, ugly as it may be, catches the eye and the songs catch the ear. The influence of Ray Davis and The Kinks is obvious in a lot of tracks, but the real secret weapon is one of the two or 3 lead singers in the multitalented foursome sounds just like Dave Davies! Really. When they rock out on the second track "Ask Me" the guy is so close to Dave that he even throws in a few tasty guitar licks and heavy plowing riffs just like brilliant Dave! The first track, "Uncle Tom," sounds like "Victoria" meets an earlier British Invasion just post skiffle song with a lead vocal that is reminiscent of Ray! I never think there is anything wrong with a heavy influence of a great band so if Waterloo were obsessed with The Kinks more power to them! There aren't enough bands that sound like them. In 1974 the best band in the world (The Kinks) were having a bit of a lapse and Ray Davis was writing less inspired material than usual, but all that would change with SCHOOLBOYS IN DISGRACE which may have been 1974 I'm not sure. They really wouldn't hit their stride again until 1977 and SLEEPWALKER where Ray and Dave got back to their brilliant rollicking melodic rock which means that there was a gap and Waterloo filled it quite nicely thank you.
"Joe Barrow" is a very silly lyric, but it is a fun good song that again is reminiscent of the mid to late 60s period of The Kinks- Great British pop/rock with nice use of acoustic and electric guitars and offbeat carefree vocals. "Winter Rose" sounds like McCartney if he'd rocked it up a bit more post BAND ON THE RUN and is one of the album's major highlights, but with "Ask Me" the jaw dropper on Side One is the over 8 minute last track on the side "Strangers From The Sky." This song is heavy progressive power rock with psychedelic overtones and screaming bombastic vocals about how aliens created the world! The female vocal bits are really spooky and there's a long percussion blow out in the middle before the song explodes again into the screaming Dave Davies gone mad vocals and the frenzied riffing. A really brilliant track this should be put on a compilation of best concept songs of the 70s.
Side Two sticks to the straight melodic rock of much of Side One, but it gets even better in the writing department with amazing melodies and great vocals especially on the first two tracks. "Come And Have A Good Time" could be a lower pitched Pilot and "In The Heat Of The Afternoon" reminds me of The Move and maybe even more The Idle Race. The Kinks influence is still abundant too and maybe Waterloo missed out because their music was so classy that it was unfashionable- more late 60s/early 70s than mid 70s. 1974 was the year when the early 70s were ending and the best part of the mid 70s was beginning. Many throwback records appeared and another masterpiece still overlooked is Ex Tomorrow front man Keith West's brilliant German only release WHEREVER MY LOVE GOES- an album that appeared in 1974 and was recorded a full two years previously in 1972. Like Waterloo that album is hopelessly rare and obscure when it should have been a hit. Without support from your home base it gets really hard to break through.
Waterloo rock out again on Side Two with "I've Been Thinking" and the Dave Davies gone funky hard rocker "Wandering" with its killer screaming vocals that again sound just like Dave! I love Ray Davis and I love Dave Davies- a band who try to sound like them is only gonna get one rating from me- TOPS! There's a mellow track on Side Two in "Sunny Old Days" which again recalls ARTHUR era Kinks and both bands shared the same arranger- Lew Warburton. I wonder if something was going on that we'll not know about. One thing is for sure, funny silly lovely-to-imagine out and out pop closing track "People Of The World" aside this album rocks out like The Kinks do at their best and like them is a melodic masterpiece. Ray AND Dave would be proud of them. I bet Ray would give this a thumb's up too and he certainly was in a bit of a rough period at the time, but he'd pull out of it as said with SLEEPWALKER- an album that like most Kinks records is amazing.
Brighton Rock are a whole completely different thing. A different glam era and a different glam sound. They look like a perfect pin up group gone dark rather like if you crossed Shy with Def Leppard and that is a bit of their sound. TAKE A DEEP BREATH from 1988 may have saved my life had I heard it then when I was a beaten down and destroyed 12 year old wreck in a horrible school system and at the lowest ebb of my whole childhood, but now the album serves its purpose to comfort me and gives me fantasies of revenge. A year previous Brighton Rock debuted with the inconsistent YOUNG WILD AND FREE which does have its great moments, but not like this. TAKE A DEEP BREATH is hard rock/AOR/melodic glam metal genius and one of the deepest hardest hitting records ever made for its emotional content. Sometimes lead vocalist Gerald McGhee sounds joyful and like he's having a great time such as on the ebullient first track "Can't Stop The Earth From Shaking," but they follow that up with one of the most tortured and emotionally riveting songs ever recorded "Outlaw." "Outlaw" is about Jack The Ripper, a favourite subject of McGhee first dealt with on the first album's "Jack Is Back," but this song is something totally different. It has a really dark keyboard sound and dramatic soaring wailing vocals that sound like a plea or some kind of cry for help from a tormented soul. Gerald hits notes that are practically and at least for me impossible in the chorus of the beautiful song "One More Try" which must be the best power ballad ever written- even better than Shy's equally momentous "When The Love Is Over." "Hangin' High 'N Dry" is a moment of melodic glam AOR/hard rock keyboard heaven between the two stunning tracks "Outlaw" and "One More Try" with all of the songs on Side One alone making it seem impossible that the usual Canadian content problem wrecked everything for Brighton Rock.
Unfortunately, the impossible proved possible. Whilst earning huge acclaim in their homeland and going gold the rest of the hard rock world turned their fickle noses up at Brighton Rock. That is really unforgivable. They were labelled as a second division band when they were better than ANY AND ALL METAL BANDS FROM ANYWHERE ELSE AT THE TIME! Iron Maiden were making stale garbage as usual and Brighton Rock were making real music. This was not going to go down well in the metal world and Brighton Rock give the ultimate middle finger to anybody who doesn't believe in them with Side One's awesome closing track "Unleash The Rage." This song rocks harder than anything Iron Maiden ever did with their plodding fascist nonsense and takes to the sky. McGhee wasn't the only trick up Brighton Rock's sleeve. They had an excellent co writer and inventive guitarist in Greg Fraser and a brilliant keyboard player in Johnny Rogers. They also had a really good rhythm section, but it seems like TAKE A DEEP BREATH was a one off. It's an album that speaks volumes and therefore doesn't need anything else from this band. I don't know their third album LOVE MACHINE at all well, but YOUNG WILD AND FREE isn't quite as good. There are some great songs like "We Came To Rock" and "Can't Wait For The Night," but also some laughable ones like "Sudden Change Of Heart." That said, Brighton Rock should be given a lot of credit for just how much talent they had. Coming out of Canada they had a Canadian sound up there with bands like Haywire and Haywire were another band who just didn't get anywhere outside of Canada. Brighton Rock and Haywire suffered the same fate as Birmingham's Shy and Sweden's Treat- glam bands of the lowest level made it a lot bigger than the best ones. I would prefer to think of glam as something musical rather than all image-oriented, but for a lot of bands that made it they were almost as insufferable musically as bad grease metal as I call it with just the love lyrics not hate lyrics the only thing to put them a bit higher.
Side Two of TAKE A DEEP BREATH is as strong as Side One is. Every track from "Power Overload" to "Ride The Rainbow" which is an amazing song to the too-good-to-be-true-but-it-is closing track "Rebels With A Cause" should have been number 1, but the album and the band soon after went into the budget section and still can be found there today if you are lucky enough to find it. That is the biggest similarity with Waterloo. Neither of these is gonna cost you a huge amount, but prepare yourself to have to order these online as you won't find them in a record store nowadays unless you are very lucky. A different glam for a different era. A different hard rock for a different era. One thing is exactly equal, though, this is quality music that deserves to be given just as Brighton Rock say at least "One More Try." Waterloo and Brighton Rock should be given a try by you and they should be rediscovered from the "Underrated-In-The-Extreme" place they still reside in today. Give them a try and give them your support. They should have it.
Tuesday, April 2, 2013
Deep Feeling And The Guillotine Record- A Crazy, Amazing, And Tragic History + The Decline And Fall Of England
I finally had the courage to buy a copy of Deep Feeling's "GUILLOTINE" record after having it been my most despised and feared album in the universe and it was a strange experience to be completely knocked out by it again like I was in the very beginning and to know that this time it really does stay up there with the best of British progressive rock of the classic era.
My history with Deep Feeling is unlike that of any other record or band in my collection especially in that sighting it on the wall of a record store called Venus now long since out of business in NYC in December of 1992 I didn't know what the fuck it was or that it would mean anything to me later on in life. I looked at it from the bins thinking it would have a high price tag on the wall. Paul Major used to sell their album for cheap in his lists, well really cheap at $35 compared to the $250 + asking price now! I first heard Deep Feeling as a trashed Australian non-gatefold copy and I was amazed by how dark the music was to match the cover. Anyone hearing this album for the first time would be in for a bit of a shock unless they knew from the cover depicting a tiny illustration of a head pushed through a guillotine and on the UK issue the inner gatefold is all to the right side an abstract illustration of the band members' heads in a pool of blood. This is disturbed symphonic prog, but in the end I've come to look at it as more disturbed than disturbing. Something this good and this high quality is actually quite a good educational instrument as well as a great passionate melodic solidly played and sung album.
Unfortunately and tragically, I wished all the worst on poor Deep Feeling when I was a maniac off my medications 4 years ago and found out recently my friend and co-writer/co-founder Dave Green succumbed to cancer and died after suffering for the last over 10 years of his life with chronic illnesses. Mr. Green told me all about how he was heavily into meth during the writing of the album and how that influenced the dark vibe of the record. There never will be a reunion of East Anglia's Deep Feeling as of the original 5 only vocalist John Swail (AKA Guy Darrell as his pseudonym) and keyboardist/vocalist Derek Elson are still alive. Guitarist/vocalist Martin Jenner, Green (Bass/flute/vocals), and drummer/vocalist Graham Jarvis are all dead. It's really sad and really a shame. A lot of musicians who are famous have died in the past decade and a half and we never hear about the lesser famous ones like Deep Feeling. They must have been getting on, but that doesn't remedy or make any of the loss easier to live with. I wish they were still with us, but have to accept the fact that they are not.
I'd rather not dwell on the negative here, though. Deep Feeling are too good for that even with a very negative take to their lyrics which actually are very intelligent and informative. They formed back in the late 60s out of several bands and were initially known as The Guy Darrell Syndicate. Guy Darrell (John Swail) had been a solo artist. Martin Jenner and Dave Green went way back in various bands and Derek Elson and Graham Jarvis completed the group. One of the most remarkable things about Deep Feeling is unlike a lot of other bands who only made one or two records they had a lot of very pop singles including a sizable hit with a cover of "Do You Love Me." They'd set out as a pop group produced by the genius pop production team of Roger Easterby and Des Champ. Easterby and Champ would produce their album where the band decided on a drastic change to capitalize on the overwhelming power of underground bands in the UK such as Yes, Genesis, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple. There aren't too many similarities with the sludgy Sabbath, but Genesis and Yes are clearly a huge influence and Sabbath would have gawked at such morbid lyrical fare as "Welcome For A Soldier" and "Guillotine." It's an album like this that makes bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple sound ordinary, commonplace, and unimpressive. I really hate heavy metal and whilst I can appreciate Black Sabbath (only with Ozzy, though) I find their music cold and without enough variation.
Later on Judas Priest would take the basic sound of Sabbath and make it into something operatic and oftentimes screechy in the vocal department, but all of that is avoided by Deep Feeling. Swail/Darrell can get dramatic, but prefers a soft and mystical sounding delivery to his vocals which is a really good way to get the message across. The first thing you'll probably notice about Deep Feeling are their tremendous 5 part vocal harmonies on the deadly "Welcome For A Soldier"which begins the album in style. A violent, ambitious, dreamlike, strange, and tragic song of the Vietnam war and the horrors of warfare in general there is the underlying current of the fact that the song's narrator gets killed because he shoots up heroin before a battle and goes on a delusional trip. This dark and powerful song is a mini movie of The Beach Boys on a bad trip crossed with Genesis and Uriah Heep, but Swail's gentle voice and the soaring harmonies are trademark Deep Feeling. The production job is very good with a lot of clarity and you can hear the sharp changes of mood, atmosphere, and dynamics in a shocking way. There essentially are 4 main parts to "Welcome For A Soldier" in the opening and closing wordless swirling harmonies, the laid back beautiful verse at the beginning which when repeated after a creepy choral section (meant to be the trip) towards the end concludes with a spine chilling scream, the two 5 part harmony melodic choruses, and also some amazing musical interplay between guitar and organ. Martin Jenner could probably be compared to Robin Trower, Jeff Beck, and Ritchie Blackmore and that is pretty good company to be in with!
Deep Feeling are heavy and heavier than many bands lyrically, but not a far stretch from some of Peter Gabriel's paranoid ramblings in early Genesis. Genesis with the virtuosity of Yes are a starting point, but you keep getting reminders that Deep Feeling are a harmony pop group gone progressive. The attention to melodic detail is second to almost none and if you love British progressive rock look no further for quality. There are a lot of things that impress me here. "Old People's Home" is something I could go on about in a metaphorical way with the way it's the passing of a generation to another younger generation. A stark contrast to "Welcome For A Soldier" the only instrument is an acoustic guitar with the harmonies and Swail/Darrell doing all the rest. The bass, drums, and keyboards don't make one entrance. At the time of the song's writing in 1971 "Youth Power" was all the rage and you'd get a thumbs down for any sympathy with the polar opposite old generation. Deep Feeling take a different, sympathetic spin on that and there is one of the best lines on the album in the second verse:
"One long last look at the room they had known for so long/Wallpaper faded from days of an era now gone"
That era had gone, but in a tragic way when I listen to the music I love I know that the era in which it was created has been replaced by an era of apathy, selfishness, violence, hatred, and complete and total unawareness of what matters in life. The first two tracks are very downcast lyrically, but the next track is 10 minutes of "Classical Gas" in a stunning instrumental showcase worthy of King Crimson if they didn't go into 10 minutes of noodling on their experimental tracks. Crank the volume, relax, this one is a nice change with brilliant acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, bass, and drums and thankfully not a drum solo. Jarvis could be compared to Bill Bruford and Mike Giles throughout- he was that good! "Classical Gas" goes into a hard rock section with some heavy riffing and the whole of Side One is like some kind of musical movie where it is evocative and poignant. You think it can't get any better, but then you get to Side Two!
Side Two is where Deep Feeling really take off with 3 strong and emotive vocal numbers including the first track on the side the title track "Guillotine." Already an interest in darker, somber, and more serious lyrical themes has been shown, but "Guillotine" is very different. The story is a failed escape from The French Revolution which was the bloodiest and most pointless of all revolutions and it's a bit weird to hear a British band from the country that hates the French basing a whole song around Paris and The French Revolution! Unlike the freakishness of "Welcome For A Soldier" "Guillotine" is another mini movie with a different way of presenting its concept. Swail/Darrell's mellow vocal at the beginning is brilliant against the Gothic organ heavy backdrop and you can hear Spring, Procol Harum, and Fantasy all of the classics of prog rock yet with that infectious pop foundation beneath it all. Jenner's solo after the first chorus battles it out with the organ before he goes crazy and turns his guitar into a million permutations of apocalyptic destructiveness making Robert Fripp sound like nothing! When Swail/Darrell comes back in finally he sings harder than before with a brief powerful vocal before the repeat of the chorus and the ending of the longest vocal track on the album.
"Country Heir" is a beautiful song and a vibrant contrast to the darkness and menacing disturbed prog of what came previous to it. The softly strummed acoustic guitars, swirling pedal steel, and lazy melodic sweetly sung vocal harmonies create the perfect atmosphere of a beautiful day- very Hollies meets Heron and I got a mint original of the first Heron in the big bunch that also included Deep Feeling and that is a monster of the melodic pop/folk psych/progressive genre. Deep Feeling tried really hard to put together an album that you'd keep coming back to and "Country Heir" continues the top level lyric and songwriting in a mellower, happier style than the other original vocal tracks, but with the same determination to prove that the hit had led to the band deciding to go more into very progressive experimentation. They couldn't have been more successful in their attempt to show that they could play prog rock with the best of them. "Lucille" the Little Richard rock and roll standard closes the album with howling vocals, crushing guitars and organ, thick heavy bass, and mind bashing drums in a heavy metal assault that makes Sabbath look tame! Crazy as this will sound to some of you I've really grown out of all heavy metal with a scant few exceptions when you get to the later stuff. It all had been done better before the 80s era and I prefer melodic rock bands like Grand Prix, Lionheart, well you can see that I'm no "Aluminum Foil Head" which is how I refer to metalheads. If you played Deep Feeling for a hard core metal freak their squeamish side would come out! Deep Feeling, having said that, have a wider appeal than many with great songs and fantastic vocals that are very much a change from the overblown pomposity of many better known progressive rock collector's items. Find this album and give it a chance. Don't let the freaky lyrics put you off. I did for a long time and that was one of my biggest errors I ever made. Deep Feeling is a classic.
Each generation that comes has the chance to take the best of the previous one, learn from the worst, and build on that, but a disturbing change has occurred. As I look at the world it is crumbling to dust, the same mistakes are being made, and there is a lot of dying off of very important things in life. We have forgotten or forsaken love. We have become so self-absorbed that we don't do anything but moan about our problems and our own greatness, and England is a hard hit nation. America and England got dragged into two pointless wars by politicians and nationalistic bullshit, but the protest movement that existed and gave birth to songs like "Welcome For A Soldier" seems nonexistent. Also, the tearing down of the good things while we make glaring errors and champion foolishness is really getting to me. England needs help. America desperately needs help. So you ask yourself "What Can I Give?" It better be a whole lot. The wars and environmental destruction, overpopulation are decimating the world. You'd better get out there and do something about it if you can. I would do anything I could to make the world more what it was before my birth. I've always been like that. Trapped in the wrong place at a very awkward time for me. I've never been able to fully understand the world around me. Deep Feeling seem to have had the same vibe of alienation and so has the master Ray Davis. Maybe being out of style is a good thing. Something is glaringly obvious- there is a whole lot to think about and a whole lot that needs to be rectified.
My history with Deep Feeling is unlike that of any other record or band in my collection especially in that sighting it on the wall of a record store called Venus now long since out of business in NYC in December of 1992 I didn't know what the fuck it was or that it would mean anything to me later on in life. I looked at it from the bins thinking it would have a high price tag on the wall. Paul Major used to sell their album for cheap in his lists, well really cheap at $35 compared to the $250 + asking price now! I first heard Deep Feeling as a trashed Australian non-gatefold copy and I was amazed by how dark the music was to match the cover. Anyone hearing this album for the first time would be in for a bit of a shock unless they knew from the cover depicting a tiny illustration of a head pushed through a guillotine and on the UK issue the inner gatefold is all to the right side an abstract illustration of the band members' heads in a pool of blood. This is disturbed symphonic prog, but in the end I've come to look at it as more disturbed than disturbing. Something this good and this high quality is actually quite a good educational instrument as well as a great passionate melodic solidly played and sung album.
Unfortunately and tragically, I wished all the worst on poor Deep Feeling when I was a maniac off my medications 4 years ago and found out recently my friend and co-writer/co-founder Dave Green succumbed to cancer and died after suffering for the last over 10 years of his life with chronic illnesses. Mr. Green told me all about how he was heavily into meth during the writing of the album and how that influenced the dark vibe of the record. There never will be a reunion of East Anglia's Deep Feeling as of the original 5 only vocalist John Swail (AKA Guy Darrell as his pseudonym) and keyboardist/vocalist Derek Elson are still alive. Guitarist/vocalist Martin Jenner, Green (Bass/flute/vocals), and drummer/vocalist Graham Jarvis are all dead. It's really sad and really a shame. A lot of musicians who are famous have died in the past decade and a half and we never hear about the lesser famous ones like Deep Feeling. They must have been getting on, but that doesn't remedy or make any of the loss easier to live with. I wish they were still with us, but have to accept the fact that they are not.
I'd rather not dwell on the negative here, though. Deep Feeling are too good for that even with a very negative take to their lyrics which actually are very intelligent and informative. They formed back in the late 60s out of several bands and were initially known as The Guy Darrell Syndicate. Guy Darrell (John Swail) had been a solo artist. Martin Jenner and Dave Green went way back in various bands and Derek Elson and Graham Jarvis completed the group. One of the most remarkable things about Deep Feeling is unlike a lot of other bands who only made one or two records they had a lot of very pop singles including a sizable hit with a cover of "Do You Love Me." They'd set out as a pop group produced by the genius pop production team of Roger Easterby and Des Champ. Easterby and Champ would produce their album where the band decided on a drastic change to capitalize on the overwhelming power of underground bands in the UK such as Yes, Genesis, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple. There aren't too many similarities with the sludgy Sabbath, but Genesis and Yes are clearly a huge influence and Sabbath would have gawked at such morbid lyrical fare as "Welcome For A Soldier" and "Guillotine." It's an album like this that makes bands like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple sound ordinary, commonplace, and unimpressive. I really hate heavy metal and whilst I can appreciate Black Sabbath (only with Ozzy, though) I find their music cold and without enough variation.
Later on Judas Priest would take the basic sound of Sabbath and make it into something operatic and oftentimes screechy in the vocal department, but all of that is avoided by Deep Feeling. Swail/Darrell can get dramatic, but prefers a soft and mystical sounding delivery to his vocals which is a really good way to get the message across. The first thing you'll probably notice about Deep Feeling are their tremendous 5 part vocal harmonies on the deadly "Welcome For A Soldier"which begins the album in style. A violent, ambitious, dreamlike, strange, and tragic song of the Vietnam war and the horrors of warfare in general there is the underlying current of the fact that the song's narrator gets killed because he shoots up heroin before a battle and goes on a delusional trip. This dark and powerful song is a mini movie of The Beach Boys on a bad trip crossed with Genesis and Uriah Heep, but Swail's gentle voice and the soaring harmonies are trademark Deep Feeling. The production job is very good with a lot of clarity and you can hear the sharp changes of mood, atmosphere, and dynamics in a shocking way. There essentially are 4 main parts to "Welcome For A Soldier" in the opening and closing wordless swirling harmonies, the laid back beautiful verse at the beginning which when repeated after a creepy choral section (meant to be the trip) towards the end concludes with a spine chilling scream, the two 5 part harmony melodic choruses, and also some amazing musical interplay between guitar and organ. Martin Jenner could probably be compared to Robin Trower, Jeff Beck, and Ritchie Blackmore and that is pretty good company to be in with!
Deep Feeling are heavy and heavier than many bands lyrically, but not a far stretch from some of Peter Gabriel's paranoid ramblings in early Genesis. Genesis with the virtuosity of Yes are a starting point, but you keep getting reminders that Deep Feeling are a harmony pop group gone progressive. The attention to melodic detail is second to almost none and if you love British progressive rock look no further for quality. There are a lot of things that impress me here. "Old People's Home" is something I could go on about in a metaphorical way with the way it's the passing of a generation to another younger generation. A stark contrast to "Welcome For A Soldier" the only instrument is an acoustic guitar with the harmonies and Swail/Darrell doing all the rest. The bass, drums, and keyboards don't make one entrance. At the time of the song's writing in 1971 "Youth Power" was all the rage and you'd get a thumbs down for any sympathy with the polar opposite old generation. Deep Feeling take a different, sympathetic spin on that and there is one of the best lines on the album in the second verse:
"One long last look at the room they had known for so long/Wallpaper faded from days of an era now gone"
That era had gone, but in a tragic way when I listen to the music I love I know that the era in which it was created has been replaced by an era of apathy, selfishness, violence, hatred, and complete and total unawareness of what matters in life. The first two tracks are very downcast lyrically, but the next track is 10 minutes of "Classical Gas" in a stunning instrumental showcase worthy of King Crimson if they didn't go into 10 minutes of noodling on their experimental tracks. Crank the volume, relax, this one is a nice change with brilliant acoustic and electric guitars, keyboards, bass, and drums and thankfully not a drum solo. Jarvis could be compared to Bill Bruford and Mike Giles throughout- he was that good! "Classical Gas" goes into a hard rock section with some heavy riffing and the whole of Side One is like some kind of musical movie where it is evocative and poignant. You think it can't get any better, but then you get to Side Two!
Side Two is where Deep Feeling really take off with 3 strong and emotive vocal numbers including the first track on the side the title track "Guillotine." Already an interest in darker, somber, and more serious lyrical themes has been shown, but "Guillotine" is very different. The story is a failed escape from The French Revolution which was the bloodiest and most pointless of all revolutions and it's a bit weird to hear a British band from the country that hates the French basing a whole song around Paris and The French Revolution! Unlike the freakishness of "Welcome For A Soldier" "Guillotine" is another mini movie with a different way of presenting its concept. Swail/Darrell's mellow vocal at the beginning is brilliant against the Gothic organ heavy backdrop and you can hear Spring, Procol Harum, and Fantasy all of the classics of prog rock yet with that infectious pop foundation beneath it all. Jenner's solo after the first chorus battles it out with the organ before he goes crazy and turns his guitar into a million permutations of apocalyptic destructiveness making Robert Fripp sound like nothing! When Swail/Darrell comes back in finally he sings harder than before with a brief powerful vocal before the repeat of the chorus and the ending of the longest vocal track on the album.
"Country Heir" is a beautiful song and a vibrant contrast to the darkness and menacing disturbed prog of what came previous to it. The softly strummed acoustic guitars, swirling pedal steel, and lazy melodic sweetly sung vocal harmonies create the perfect atmosphere of a beautiful day- very Hollies meets Heron and I got a mint original of the first Heron in the big bunch that also included Deep Feeling and that is a monster of the melodic pop/folk psych/progressive genre. Deep Feeling tried really hard to put together an album that you'd keep coming back to and "Country Heir" continues the top level lyric and songwriting in a mellower, happier style than the other original vocal tracks, but with the same determination to prove that the hit had led to the band deciding to go more into very progressive experimentation. They couldn't have been more successful in their attempt to show that they could play prog rock with the best of them. "Lucille" the Little Richard rock and roll standard closes the album with howling vocals, crushing guitars and organ, thick heavy bass, and mind bashing drums in a heavy metal assault that makes Sabbath look tame! Crazy as this will sound to some of you I've really grown out of all heavy metal with a scant few exceptions when you get to the later stuff. It all had been done better before the 80s era and I prefer melodic rock bands like Grand Prix, Lionheart, well you can see that I'm no "Aluminum Foil Head" which is how I refer to metalheads. If you played Deep Feeling for a hard core metal freak their squeamish side would come out! Deep Feeling, having said that, have a wider appeal than many with great songs and fantastic vocals that are very much a change from the overblown pomposity of many better known progressive rock collector's items. Find this album and give it a chance. Don't let the freaky lyrics put you off. I did for a long time and that was one of my biggest errors I ever made. Deep Feeling is a classic.
Each generation that comes has the chance to take the best of the previous one, learn from the worst, and build on that, but a disturbing change has occurred. As I look at the world it is crumbling to dust, the same mistakes are being made, and there is a lot of dying off of very important things in life. We have forgotten or forsaken love. We have become so self-absorbed that we don't do anything but moan about our problems and our own greatness, and England is a hard hit nation. America and England got dragged into two pointless wars by politicians and nationalistic bullshit, but the protest movement that existed and gave birth to songs like "Welcome For A Soldier" seems nonexistent. Also, the tearing down of the good things while we make glaring errors and champion foolishness is really getting to me. England needs help. America desperately needs help. So you ask yourself "What Can I Give?" It better be a whole lot. The wars and environmental destruction, overpopulation are decimating the world. You'd better get out there and do something about it if you can. I would do anything I could to make the world more what it was before my birth. I've always been like that. Trapped in the wrong place at a very awkward time for me. I've never been able to fully understand the world around me. Deep Feeling seem to have had the same vibe of alienation and so has the master Ray Davis. Maybe being out of style is a good thing. Something is glaringly obvious- there is a whole lot to think about and a whole lot that needs to be rectified.
Wednesday, March 13, 2013
RENIA'S FIRST OFFENDERS AND MAGIC LANTERNS' SHAME SHAME BRITISH MELODIC WITH VOCAL BRILIANCE
Nothing to trash or slander this time just pure complete brilliant great music. Back in the 1960s and 1970s there were some of the best bands and worst bands and together with solo artists the voice was often a reason for why they were brilliant or why they were dreadful. It probably isn't a surprise that some of the most commercial bands had the best singers whilst some of the most "progressive" or the wrong kind of "psychedelic" had the worst. It would be hard for Grace Slick to hold her own against someone like Linda Rondstadt and The Stone Poneys were always miles better than The Jefferson Airplane. The same goes even more for male vocalists. The psychedelic boom in England differed from that in America in that the whole bedrock foundation upon which British Rock was built was completely unlike the American psychedelic rock of the same era. Most British bands began as beat groups or began as pop groups. Most American bands began as garage rock or folkies who went electric when Dylan did- a big difference. A lot of American psych is great and a lot of it is grating. Many of my favorites don't get rated too highly because they took more of a pop/rock approach to psychedelic rock and were more influenced by bands/artists/sounds from "across the pond." That isn't to say that there aren't great bands that sound "American," but the wrong kind of American is pretty hard to listen to. Macho and you say you're a "hippy?" No way. Most British and European bands both successful and unsuccessful in the 1960s through the 70s didn't have an ulterior motive. The music and fun was the reason for making it not to make a quick bundle of cash off of a "product."
You have to understand that a commercial British band like Magic Lanterns really came from a soul/beat background and that they were making music that may have sold at the time better than a lot of other artists did, but that it has stood up better when you hear it now. I'd go straight for SHAME SHAME and pick this album up if I were you. I own the American version of it and since the title track was a huge hit in the States it may only have been released with this track listing in the States. Magic Lanterns DID NOT contain THE Ozzy Osbourne and it's sad that the main selling point dealers use isn't the music contained herein but that a guy looks like Ozzy, but isn't Ozzy. For one thing Ozzy didn't play bass and for another his real full name is John Osbourne with a "U" not Mike "Oz" Osborne with the "U" taken out. More interesting than any of the lying "Ozzy's first band" claptrap is that of the two lead vocalists in the band Jimmy Bilsbury would just a year later go to Germany and form Megaton! So if you're looking for an explanation for that great little album's hooks and killer vocals it was Bilsbury doing Paul Rodgers and Robert Plant!
Jimmy Bilsbury cowrote all tracks on Megaton, but Magic Lanterns didn't write their own material. That doesn't detract. In fact there isn't anything that detracts. The music has a bit more of an edge to it than other great British pop, but also there are some soul influences particularly in Bilsbury's classy vocals. Of the two singers Bilsbury sings the grittier stuff and I think it's "Bev" Beveridge who has a smooth very English voice that reminds me of Mick Richardson in Forever Amber. Perhaps Forever Amber sans psych adequately describes songs like "Impressions Of Linda" and "Brunette Lady," but I would say there are some psych undertones to the tracks on the album and I'd also have to note that of the 12 selections I wouldn't change a note or line in all 12 of them. This is solid great stuff. Yeah "Pussy Willow Dragon" may be a twee track, but I'll take it any day over the garbage that some other bands went for when they were trying to be clever.
The beat boom had its survivors who barely survived like The Koobas who were already throwing the towel in when they made their record and it had bands like Vanity Fare and Magic Lanterns who were determined to make it no matter what they had to do. In both cases had they been writing their own material it would have lasted for one or at most two albums of solid melodic hard rock, but the outside material meant they made great pop/rock that was far from AM radio cannon fodder. There's no Jimmy Webb or Association covers on SHAME SHAME just strong quality real music with catchy melodies and fantastic arrangements. "Impressions Of Linda" is one of the most perfect songs I've ever heard and is a great way to start the album. The harmonies are amazing and the lead voice is very sympathetic, crystal clear, and devoid of pretensions. "Shame Shame" follows and why the song has been forgotten by radio since shortly after it was a huge hit completely eludes me. There are two versions of "Shame Shame" and Magic Lanterns' hit version way beats out the previous flop by Thee Prophets. There's some songs on the SHAME SHAME album that try for clever vocal themes and one of the standouts is the closing track on Side One "Give Me Love." This track tries to not just say love and sex are the answer to everything, but that from the dawn of history on through Napoleon it has been the reason for existence. The whole second verse about Napoleon and Josephine is priceless. Napoleon is smiling down on you Magic Lanterns! It says that Napoleon won every battle he won because Josephine seduced him before every one of them! "Never Gonna Trust My Heart Again" is the 3rd track on Side One and would have made a great follow up single to "Shame Shame" with some very appealing vocals from Bilsbury and horns used tastefully, even bordering on somewhat experimental. Magic Lanterns only had one hit in America and unfortunately in England they also never rose above a cult following. Most bands would have given up, but they stayed together for a long time and made several elusive records that I've never even seen in England. They came from Lancashire and that puts the whole Ozzy thing firmly in the ground as Ozzy/Sabbath were all Brummies (that means from Birmingham).
My favorite tracks on the album? "Impressions Of Linda" definitely great pop psych that should have been on a Rubble compilation is one. "Shame Shame goes without saying. There also is "Out In The Cold Again" on Side Two which leaves me breathless thanks to the sharp guitar chords and Jimmy Bilsbury's amazing soulful voice. A Really great pop/rock track with muscle. I used to hate the closing track "When The Music Stops" and condemn it as "overblown," but now I see that the art song attempt has its merits and really is a good song with a lot of serious ambition to it. You may hear from a lot of dealers that this record is common, but it actually despite the huge promotion put into it at the time and huge pressing is surprisingly hard to locate. You should scour every record store for it or search for it online and find it for cheap.
Your $25 on this is gonna buy you much better music than $5,000 on Apple's An Apple A Day which just doesn't work. Just like the much more progressive and psychedelic FOR FOX SAKE by The Fox SHAME SHAME isn't given a fair chance or a fair rating simply because there are American copies around sometimes. Apple I have never seen. I would love to hold it in my hands, but the truth must be faced: Apple had a few wonderous tracks like "Buffalo Billycan" and "The Other Side" with a whole lot of boring filler material thrown in. Had Apple been a band with a more substantial track listing they may have gone further and the rarity is partly because Apple were just another band who didn't take off. I've always wondered about just how small the pressings were in countries like England, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, The Netherlands if the label wasn't behind the band. A safe guess would be brutally small.
Here then is an exception as it came out in America and not just that it had a big hit to make them press a whole bunch. This won't be in a "prove it exists" file for long if you look hard enough. The slight psychedelic edge and vibe of Swinging London makes this album a real winner and one of the best pop albums ever made. Even "Pussy Willow Dragon" is good with its way sub Move pop psych and the soul oriented stuff like "Sarah Wear A Smile"and "Missing Out On You" is great.
Renia never had a hit. Blame that on a melodic rock/progressive blues rock band on a folk label (Transatlantic). Comprised of brothers Peter (keyboards/vocals) and Malcolm (Bass/vocals) Sutherland, John Robinson (guitars/vocals), Kenny Stewart (lead vocals), and Dave Matthew (drums) they lasted long enough to make FIRST OFFENDERS which could be the best melodic progressive rock album ever recorded by a British band. The great hooks and melodies are abundant in every song. The commercial vibe and Free like bluesy rock influences sound great when paired with the brilliant songwriting and great vocals and there is a happy, friendly atmosphere to the whole record. I've written a few raves on this album before, but here I'll go into detail.
The liner notes on the back are from the heart and not just a gimmick to sell the record. In fact, Renia's FIRST OFFENDERS is one of the rarest and most poorly promoted British records especially of the early 70s. The songwriting is up there with the best and I actually prefer this album to Dog That Bit People. My major complaint about Dog That Bit People I have said is that it simply tries too hard to cover too much ground and please everybody. This album has more of a really melodic progressive hard rock direction to it from start to finish.
Renia stick to a solid program of Free influenced melodic hard rock and soaring melodic progressive pop/rock on FIRST OFFENDERS and they remind me a bit of Fable or England if they went commercial and there is nothing wrong with commercial when the songs are this impressive. "You'd Best Believe It" is about everything going wrong for a guy, but in a humorous kind of a way and you can just lay back and have fun listening to it. Renia make you want to crank the speakers up and dance. They have an infectious quality and will pick you up when you feel really down. I'd say play this and Mike + The Mechanics and you can't go wrong. There aren't any Genesis influences, but in the same way that Mike Rutherford was trying to get away from the shlock of later Genesis Renia are trying hard to play progressive rock devoid of pomposity. That may sound hard to do, but this is Shape Of The Rain and Fable styled progressive rock not Beggar's Opera or Curved Air crap. There is a big difference.
Nowhere near as heavy in fact not heavy at all when compared to Leaf Hound Renia are almost a pop Leaf Hound or Leaf Hound if they'd lasted long enough to mellow and mature. That group weren't given even half a chance. Decca fucked my good friend Pete French and Leaf Hound over and destroyed their career, but Pete French rebounded. Unfortunately, when lead vocalist Kenny Stewart rebounded in Dirty Tricks after Renia he developed a bad habit of screaming his head off in blatantly poor Robert Plant imitations in the Led Zeppelin wannabes Dirty Tricks who after a good start became just another bad broken down loud blues band.
The blues influences in Renia are subtle, but Free often come to mind for Kenny' s awesome singing and the catchy earthiness of the songs on FIRST OFFENDERS. The best tracks are hard to choose, but a lot like "Friend Out On The Road," "Shelter," "Cowboy's Dream," and "Slow Down" beat the living shit out of most of what was popular on the radio at the time. To Hell with The Doobie Brothers and Lynard Skynard this is real music. Yeah, I'll readily admit I prefer European and British bands to successful American music in the 70s, but there is a good reason for that. Most of the best American bands of the 70s commercial or uncommercial failed to make it because of poor promotion and record label skullduggery, but there are exceptions.
I always break into a smile hearing Daryl Hall And John Oates because their music is so tasty. Both of them would love Renia. Soul influences can hurt if the guy is trying to be James Brown, but if he's trying to be Steve Winwood or Motown it can be brilliant. Winwood has a perfect voice, but even he would go in a bad direction later on when he resurrected himself as out and out pop around 1987. "While You See A Chance" and the album it came off of ARC OF A DIVER are undoubtedly his best after the best of Traffic. Traffic, Free, a little Deep Purple without obnoxious Ian Gillan, earlier Spencer Davis Group Steve Winwood, it's all here and it's really brilliantly done. I like Free, but I don't own any of their records. I tend to think that Free always sounded like a band who may have been better if their sloppiness had translated into excitement more often.
John Robinson in Renia is a pretty slovenly guitar player, but he sounds miles better than Paul Kossoff did. There also is a bit of Spooky Tooth and Uriah Heep in the driving organ and piano, but not with the heavy metal bombast of those two bands. What Free, Uriah Heep, Spooky Tooth, and Traffic have in common with Renia is the high energy and a great heart with a lot of soul put into the music. Every track is amazing on here and some of the harder rocking ones like "Breakneck" and "Drive Me Wild" are tuneful hard rock at an absolute best. "Mighty Queen" closes the album on a splendid note with awesome vocals and an amazing melodic sense. There is no doubt about it- Renia are the best kept secret of 70s British melodic rock.
You have to understand that a commercial British band like Magic Lanterns really came from a soul/beat background and that they were making music that may have sold at the time better than a lot of other artists did, but that it has stood up better when you hear it now. I'd go straight for SHAME SHAME and pick this album up if I were you. I own the American version of it and since the title track was a huge hit in the States it may only have been released with this track listing in the States. Magic Lanterns DID NOT contain THE Ozzy Osbourne and it's sad that the main selling point dealers use isn't the music contained herein but that a guy looks like Ozzy, but isn't Ozzy. For one thing Ozzy didn't play bass and for another his real full name is John Osbourne with a "U" not Mike "Oz" Osborne with the "U" taken out. More interesting than any of the lying "Ozzy's first band" claptrap is that of the two lead vocalists in the band Jimmy Bilsbury would just a year later go to Germany and form Megaton! So if you're looking for an explanation for that great little album's hooks and killer vocals it was Bilsbury doing Paul Rodgers and Robert Plant!
Jimmy Bilsbury cowrote all tracks on Megaton, but Magic Lanterns didn't write their own material. That doesn't detract. In fact there isn't anything that detracts. The music has a bit more of an edge to it than other great British pop, but also there are some soul influences particularly in Bilsbury's classy vocals. Of the two singers Bilsbury sings the grittier stuff and I think it's "Bev" Beveridge who has a smooth very English voice that reminds me of Mick Richardson in Forever Amber. Perhaps Forever Amber sans psych adequately describes songs like "Impressions Of Linda" and "Brunette Lady," but I would say there are some psych undertones to the tracks on the album and I'd also have to note that of the 12 selections I wouldn't change a note or line in all 12 of them. This is solid great stuff. Yeah "Pussy Willow Dragon" may be a twee track, but I'll take it any day over the garbage that some other bands went for when they were trying to be clever.
The beat boom had its survivors who barely survived like The Koobas who were already throwing the towel in when they made their record and it had bands like Vanity Fare and Magic Lanterns who were determined to make it no matter what they had to do. In both cases had they been writing their own material it would have lasted for one or at most two albums of solid melodic hard rock, but the outside material meant they made great pop/rock that was far from AM radio cannon fodder. There's no Jimmy Webb or Association covers on SHAME SHAME just strong quality real music with catchy melodies and fantastic arrangements. "Impressions Of Linda" is one of the most perfect songs I've ever heard and is a great way to start the album. The harmonies are amazing and the lead voice is very sympathetic, crystal clear, and devoid of pretensions. "Shame Shame" follows and why the song has been forgotten by radio since shortly after it was a huge hit completely eludes me. There are two versions of "Shame Shame" and Magic Lanterns' hit version way beats out the previous flop by Thee Prophets. There's some songs on the SHAME SHAME album that try for clever vocal themes and one of the standouts is the closing track on Side One "Give Me Love." This track tries to not just say love and sex are the answer to everything, but that from the dawn of history on through Napoleon it has been the reason for existence. The whole second verse about Napoleon and Josephine is priceless. Napoleon is smiling down on you Magic Lanterns! It says that Napoleon won every battle he won because Josephine seduced him before every one of them! "Never Gonna Trust My Heart Again" is the 3rd track on Side One and would have made a great follow up single to "Shame Shame" with some very appealing vocals from Bilsbury and horns used tastefully, even bordering on somewhat experimental. Magic Lanterns only had one hit in America and unfortunately in England they also never rose above a cult following. Most bands would have given up, but they stayed together for a long time and made several elusive records that I've never even seen in England. They came from Lancashire and that puts the whole Ozzy thing firmly in the ground as Ozzy/Sabbath were all Brummies (that means from Birmingham).
My favorite tracks on the album? "Impressions Of Linda" definitely great pop psych that should have been on a Rubble compilation is one. "Shame Shame goes without saying. There also is "Out In The Cold Again" on Side Two which leaves me breathless thanks to the sharp guitar chords and Jimmy Bilsbury's amazing soulful voice. A Really great pop/rock track with muscle. I used to hate the closing track "When The Music Stops" and condemn it as "overblown," but now I see that the art song attempt has its merits and really is a good song with a lot of serious ambition to it. You may hear from a lot of dealers that this record is common, but it actually despite the huge promotion put into it at the time and huge pressing is surprisingly hard to locate. You should scour every record store for it or search for it online and find it for cheap.
Your $25 on this is gonna buy you much better music than $5,000 on Apple's An Apple A Day which just doesn't work. Just like the much more progressive and psychedelic FOR FOX SAKE by The Fox SHAME SHAME isn't given a fair chance or a fair rating simply because there are American copies around sometimes. Apple I have never seen. I would love to hold it in my hands, but the truth must be faced: Apple had a few wonderous tracks like "Buffalo Billycan" and "The Other Side" with a whole lot of boring filler material thrown in. Had Apple been a band with a more substantial track listing they may have gone further and the rarity is partly because Apple were just another band who didn't take off. I've always wondered about just how small the pressings were in countries like England, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, The Netherlands if the label wasn't behind the band. A safe guess would be brutally small.
Here then is an exception as it came out in America and not just that it had a big hit to make them press a whole bunch. This won't be in a "prove it exists" file for long if you look hard enough. The slight psychedelic edge and vibe of Swinging London makes this album a real winner and one of the best pop albums ever made. Even "Pussy Willow Dragon" is good with its way sub Move pop psych and the soul oriented stuff like "Sarah Wear A Smile"and "Missing Out On You" is great.
Renia never had a hit. Blame that on a melodic rock/progressive blues rock band on a folk label (Transatlantic). Comprised of brothers Peter (keyboards/vocals) and Malcolm (Bass/vocals) Sutherland, John Robinson (guitars/vocals), Kenny Stewart (lead vocals), and Dave Matthew (drums) they lasted long enough to make FIRST OFFENDERS which could be the best melodic progressive rock album ever recorded by a British band. The great hooks and melodies are abundant in every song. The commercial vibe and Free like bluesy rock influences sound great when paired with the brilliant songwriting and great vocals and there is a happy, friendly atmosphere to the whole record. I've written a few raves on this album before, but here I'll go into detail.
The liner notes on the back are from the heart and not just a gimmick to sell the record. In fact, Renia's FIRST OFFENDERS is one of the rarest and most poorly promoted British records especially of the early 70s. The songwriting is up there with the best and I actually prefer this album to Dog That Bit People. My major complaint about Dog That Bit People I have said is that it simply tries too hard to cover too much ground and please everybody. This album has more of a really melodic progressive hard rock direction to it from start to finish.
Renia stick to a solid program of Free influenced melodic hard rock and soaring melodic progressive pop/rock on FIRST OFFENDERS and they remind me a bit of Fable or England if they went commercial and there is nothing wrong with commercial when the songs are this impressive. "You'd Best Believe It" is about everything going wrong for a guy, but in a humorous kind of a way and you can just lay back and have fun listening to it. Renia make you want to crank the speakers up and dance. They have an infectious quality and will pick you up when you feel really down. I'd say play this and Mike + The Mechanics and you can't go wrong. There aren't any Genesis influences, but in the same way that Mike Rutherford was trying to get away from the shlock of later Genesis Renia are trying hard to play progressive rock devoid of pomposity. That may sound hard to do, but this is Shape Of The Rain and Fable styled progressive rock not Beggar's Opera or Curved Air crap. There is a big difference.
Nowhere near as heavy in fact not heavy at all when compared to Leaf Hound Renia are almost a pop Leaf Hound or Leaf Hound if they'd lasted long enough to mellow and mature. That group weren't given even half a chance. Decca fucked my good friend Pete French and Leaf Hound over and destroyed their career, but Pete French rebounded. Unfortunately, when lead vocalist Kenny Stewart rebounded in Dirty Tricks after Renia he developed a bad habit of screaming his head off in blatantly poor Robert Plant imitations in the Led Zeppelin wannabes Dirty Tricks who after a good start became just another bad broken down loud blues band.
The blues influences in Renia are subtle, but Free often come to mind for Kenny' s awesome singing and the catchy earthiness of the songs on FIRST OFFENDERS. The best tracks are hard to choose, but a lot like "Friend Out On The Road," "Shelter," "Cowboy's Dream," and "Slow Down" beat the living shit out of most of what was popular on the radio at the time. To Hell with The Doobie Brothers and Lynard Skynard this is real music. Yeah, I'll readily admit I prefer European and British bands to successful American music in the 70s, but there is a good reason for that. Most of the best American bands of the 70s commercial or uncommercial failed to make it because of poor promotion and record label skullduggery, but there are exceptions.
I always break into a smile hearing Daryl Hall And John Oates because their music is so tasty. Both of them would love Renia. Soul influences can hurt if the guy is trying to be James Brown, but if he's trying to be Steve Winwood or Motown it can be brilliant. Winwood has a perfect voice, but even he would go in a bad direction later on when he resurrected himself as out and out pop around 1987. "While You See A Chance" and the album it came off of ARC OF A DIVER are undoubtedly his best after the best of Traffic. Traffic, Free, a little Deep Purple without obnoxious Ian Gillan, earlier Spencer Davis Group Steve Winwood, it's all here and it's really brilliantly done. I like Free, but I don't own any of their records. I tend to think that Free always sounded like a band who may have been better if their sloppiness had translated into excitement more often.
John Robinson in Renia is a pretty slovenly guitar player, but he sounds miles better than Paul Kossoff did. There also is a bit of Spooky Tooth and Uriah Heep in the driving organ and piano, but not with the heavy metal bombast of those two bands. What Free, Uriah Heep, Spooky Tooth, and Traffic have in common with Renia is the high energy and a great heart with a lot of soul put into the music. Every track is amazing on here and some of the harder rocking ones like "Breakneck" and "Drive Me Wild" are tuneful hard rock at an absolute best. "Mighty Queen" closes the album on a splendid note with awesome vocals and an amazing melodic sense. There is no doubt about it- Renia are the best kept secret of 70s British melodic rock.
Sunday, March 10, 2013
ENGLAND'S GARDEN SHED THE BEST MORGAN'S NOVA SOLIS THE WORST- HOW MY WHOLE MUSICAL VISION CHANGED IN 13 YEARS
It's amazing what a period of time, if long enough, can do to a person's taste and even do to their whole lifestyle. Back in 1998 I was harping away about losing my copy of the travesty called NOVA SOLIS by Morgan you are about to hear me trash and then two years later after getting it the previous year it was my favourite prog album and I found England's GARDEN SHED to be horrific. There couldn't a wronger opinion or a worse take on what progressive rock is all about. I spent years trashing England even after I disowned Morgan to a certain extent. I also spent years just collecting records in the right way and not going crazy with them and falling into a trap that leads to depression and illness. Maybe my love of England and determination to go back to a collector and not an addict is a sign that I WILL come around. I certainly hope so.
-Morgan's NOVA SOLIS The Worst Insult To Progressive Music There Is And Will Be-
Prog Rock as it is called is probably the most double-edged music form in all genres of rock and whilst I can say that "Heavy Metal" is mostly by definition bullshit Prog Rock is mostly brilliant, but that said it can be just as bad. That's where Morgan come in. Formed by ex members of The Love Affair Morgan Fisher (keyboards) and Maurice "Mo" Bacon (Drums) they soon found themselves a group and recorded this stale as a loaf of bread left on a street corner for 2 years album in Italy although the band were English. Their overbearing brand of prog rock not surprisingly has some things in common with the worst of Italian prog, but I don't think even that was this bad. Since the Italians love noodling more than anything else it probably isn't surprising that Morgan had a lot of encouragement there. Their line up unfortunately and disturbingly contained the once brilliant Tim Staffell on vocals who had been Freddy Mercury's precursor in Smile- the band that became Queen once Mercury came in. That this is the same Tim Staffell who was so good in Smile and sounded great with Brian May's guitar was one of the biggest shocks when I heard this album again.
I can't believe I ever saw anything in one note of NOVA SOLIS as there isn't one second here that isn't cluttered up with nauseating drooling synthesizers, strained pompous vocals, and humorlessness turning this album into something I can't even listen to. Morgan Fisher is the most tasteless boy-with-a-toy-synthesizer keyboard player I've heard, is totally unmusical, and his tendency towards inconsequential little noises and sounding like he is masturbating with his synthesizer puts even other bad keyboard players who fell victim to the worst indulgences of a synthesizer to shame. The fact is that rarely is a synthesizer tastefully used, but rarely is it on this level of tasteless. There is no guitar in Morgan except the occasional acoustic being strummed by Staffell so Fisher gets to dominate all of the 4 tracks mercilessly and the whole album is based around him not surprisingly. Also, Morgan are a band with a NO SENSE OF HUMOR RULE. All the lyrics to the 3 tracks on Side One and sidelong epic disaster title track on Side Two are the wrong kind of over serious. Sometimes German bands or Dutch bands or even other British bands are dark and disturbed, but this album sounds gratuitously so in a Holier than Thou Heavier than Thou way. I've heard bad lyrics that make me laugh hysterically, but Staffell's pompous jottings made me instantly hate NOVA SOLIS even more hearing it again with a feeling of pain deep within my soul. I put this album straight in a big pile, but not as big as it was in the past, to go to the one person I deal and I can't imagine what his reaction is gonna be to NOVA SOLIS if he plays it except that I seriously doubt it will differ from mine.
So with all I've said against Morgan did they have anything going for them at all? Is there one little ray of hope here that suggests the word "music?" No. From the pretentious opening track "Samarkhand The Golden" there are even overt traces of a middle finger to the progressive audience and not just the genre itself. This is so offensively bad both musically, vocally, and lyrically that how I ever thought it was good is something I'll never be able to fathom. You can skip over this album and never hear it and be a much happier person. I wouldn't recommend this to even the most die hard progressive freaks who specialize in boring Canterbury prog bands like Egg or their next venture National Health. Egg may have been bad, but they were a lot better than this! While I'm at it let me tell you about Morgan Fisher again. While Egg were organ oriented there is no classic Hammond B3 on NOVA SOLIS and if you, like me, think Morgan Fisher did irreparable damage to Mott The Hoople when he came in (except for when they became Mott with a new singer and the guitar really took over again) just imagine the worst aspects of their later work with no guitar at all. Egg possessed a truly gifted keyboard player in Dave Stewart and their problem was a lack of good songwriting. If you want tastefully done all keyboard progressive rock Morgan is going to make you long for a guitar to come in with screaming feedback and high velocity soloing before you even get through the first track. Avoid this album at all costs and put it right down there with Warm Dust and Deep Feeling (the 1971 album/group) as the worst ever. I've yet to hear something as dire as this except for those two within the progressive genre and I'd put the easy listening cocktail jazz of Samurai on Greenwich above Morgan. At least Samurai is pleasant and has a sense of fun. Unpleasant and humorless Morgan is not what progressive rock should sound like. Tim Staffell seems so obsessed with death and destruction that it seems like he is being sadistic towards you and just trying to bring you down. He definitely doesn't sing like he did in Smile instead opting for a histrionic approach more reminiscent of Martin Griffiths in Beggar's Opera. Musically speaking, Morgan make me long for Emerson Lake And Palmer as there was a true virtuoso in Keith Emerson even though he often went over the top. There are no similarities to ELP as Morgan is fully synthesizer driven and seems to be attempting some kind of bombastic electronic music that makes Kraftwerk sound brilliant to me who doesn't like their music much. Avoid this album at all costs. It certainly isn't worth spending as much time looking for it as I once did and you might if someone pointed you in the wrong direction to pick this one up.
-A Band Called England Make The Best Ever 3 years Too Late, But Still Great-
Now this is an album that I trashed for years and found "terrifying" that must be an album I missed the point of and underrated more than any other album in the history of my listening to music. England are another 4 piece band, but that's where any similarity with Morgan abruptly ends. Guitarist/vocalist Franc Holland, bassist/vocalist Martin Henderson, keyboard player/vocalist Robert Webb, and drummer/vocalist Jode Leigh comprised England and they were a band of high spirited, intelligent, and thoughtful musicians who could write out of this world material and add to that the fact that all 4 of them can sing lead!!!! England would have made a big splash in 1973 or 1974 which is when this album sounds like it was recorded, but not only was 1977 too late for recording such a symphonic and grandiose progressive pop masterpiece it was the year that punk destroyed music. In 1977 a lot of bands were about to go out the window for a period of tastelessness and gimmicks that Ray Davies summed up perfectly in his parodies of punk. He even wrote a song called "Prince Of The Punks" to show his disdain and Ray Davies and The Kinks were on Arista at the same time as England which is a funny little coincidence. Arista didn't really ever buy into punk. In fact, when the label launched a mega successful act several years down the road it would be Air Supply! So it may not be a surprise that Arista gave England complete artistic freedom on their one album GARDEN SHED and no band could have done more with that freedom.
England are very much a pop group at heart with a knack for filling heavy progressive/symphonic rock compositions up with great melodies, soaring vocals, and really daring imaginative structures. Their album is disciplined in all the right ways and never sounds stiff or mechanical. Their songs are prone to sudden changes in mood, melody, and atmosphere which together with their amazing musicianship bring to mind the three number one prog rock bands: Yes, Genesis, and Camel. If you love those bands you can't go wrong with England although the one thing that may put you off are the strong pop leanings which for me are a big plus. Jode Leigh plays drums and percussion with a devilish fury at times and at other times with the dexterity of Mike Giles and Phil Collins. Robert Webb's clever and majestic keyboards bring to mind a fun loving Tony Banks and Rick Wakeman at his best in Yes. Bass player Martin Henderson is melodically creative and plays with a driving forcefulness like Michael Rutherford and Chris Squire. Guitarist Franc Holland is just as important to England's music as the keyboards and bass playing with a keen sense of melody and power throughout. Add to that the excellent and devoid-of-pretension vocals and this is progressive rock heaven!
At times I'm reminded of earlier bands in the outdoorsy/pastoral progressive vein when the lovely melodies are flowing, but when England get heavy they get heavy. I was probably put off by some really dark lyrics to songs like "Midnight Madness" and the over 16 minute long take on The Picture Of Dorian Grey "Poisoned Youth," but England were never a band who suffered from a lack of humor and "dour" is a word that does not apply here. England are only sad in that their England that they named themselves after has turned into something of the distant past. The whole look, sound, and smell of this record is the great wonderful England that is dying off fast. The soldiers are sick of fighting in pointless wars. The country is divided and losing all sense of what it is all about. The crime rate is horrible. People are beginning to develop bad greedy behaviors like the worst of America. Can England be resurrected? Can the true real England come back? I'd say that if the people start trying harder they can bring England back to its former glories, but the music and literature for now along with the aesthetics are keeping it alive and don't fear for one second that we're gonna lose that.
England the band have a sense of fun that helps out immensely and they also are one of the most ambitious bands ever to play progressive rock. Take for instance the two longest tracks the amazing "Three Piece Suite" and the ominous yet also very melodic "Poisoned Youth." Both these tracks could easily pass for epic suites with their unique and clever songs-within-songs structures. There are about 6 songs in both of these tracks and the instrumental passages are full of melody and devoid of self indulgences. The vocals are great throughout with an emphasis on perfect melodic phrasing and complex harmonies. How could I not have loved such a wonderful album!? There are no weak links on this record and "Midnight Madness" would have Genesis smiling despite a darker lyric than nearly anything they were doing post Gabriel. The Genesis comparison is more in the keyboards and strong melodic sense. The band that influenced England more than any other band I can think of is Yes. Some would argue with me about Yes, but as I see it they are together with Camel and Genesis the Gods Of Progressive Rock. If you come close matching the magic they had at their best you must be doing something right. England have the harmonies, melodies, and essence of Yes and I'll fight that they aren't a "cloning" kind of a band like a lot of people say they are. The obscure band Kestrel also come to mind in a big way as does Aussie band Headband. Both these bands also had the same kind of melodic magic that England have and its really sad that so many great bands with so much potential go by unnoticed. Give England a chance. They'll open your mind and they'll blow it to rebuild it again and make you appreciate the magical splendor of what England the band and England the country are all about.
-Morgan's NOVA SOLIS The Worst Insult To Progressive Music There Is And Will Be-
Prog Rock as it is called is probably the most double-edged music form in all genres of rock and whilst I can say that "Heavy Metal" is mostly by definition bullshit Prog Rock is mostly brilliant, but that said it can be just as bad. That's where Morgan come in. Formed by ex members of The Love Affair Morgan Fisher (keyboards) and Maurice "Mo" Bacon (Drums) they soon found themselves a group and recorded this stale as a loaf of bread left on a street corner for 2 years album in Italy although the band were English. Their overbearing brand of prog rock not surprisingly has some things in common with the worst of Italian prog, but I don't think even that was this bad. Since the Italians love noodling more than anything else it probably isn't surprising that Morgan had a lot of encouragement there. Their line up unfortunately and disturbingly contained the once brilliant Tim Staffell on vocals who had been Freddy Mercury's precursor in Smile- the band that became Queen once Mercury came in. That this is the same Tim Staffell who was so good in Smile and sounded great with Brian May's guitar was one of the biggest shocks when I heard this album again.
I can't believe I ever saw anything in one note of NOVA SOLIS as there isn't one second here that isn't cluttered up with nauseating drooling synthesizers, strained pompous vocals, and humorlessness turning this album into something I can't even listen to. Morgan Fisher is the most tasteless boy-with-a-toy-synthesizer keyboard player I've heard, is totally unmusical, and his tendency towards inconsequential little noises and sounding like he is masturbating with his synthesizer puts even other bad keyboard players who fell victim to the worst indulgences of a synthesizer to shame. The fact is that rarely is a synthesizer tastefully used, but rarely is it on this level of tasteless. There is no guitar in Morgan except the occasional acoustic being strummed by Staffell so Fisher gets to dominate all of the 4 tracks mercilessly and the whole album is based around him not surprisingly. Also, Morgan are a band with a NO SENSE OF HUMOR RULE. All the lyrics to the 3 tracks on Side One and sidelong epic disaster title track on Side Two are the wrong kind of over serious. Sometimes German bands or Dutch bands or even other British bands are dark and disturbed, but this album sounds gratuitously so in a Holier than Thou Heavier than Thou way. I've heard bad lyrics that make me laugh hysterically, but Staffell's pompous jottings made me instantly hate NOVA SOLIS even more hearing it again with a feeling of pain deep within my soul. I put this album straight in a big pile, but not as big as it was in the past, to go to the one person I deal and I can't imagine what his reaction is gonna be to NOVA SOLIS if he plays it except that I seriously doubt it will differ from mine.
So with all I've said against Morgan did they have anything going for them at all? Is there one little ray of hope here that suggests the word "music?" No. From the pretentious opening track "Samarkhand The Golden" there are even overt traces of a middle finger to the progressive audience and not just the genre itself. This is so offensively bad both musically, vocally, and lyrically that how I ever thought it was good is something I'll never be able to fathom. You can skip over this album and never hear it and be a much happier person. I wouldn't recommend this to even the most die hard progressive freaks who specialize in boring Canterbury prog bands like Egg or their next venture National Health. Egg may have been bad, but they were a lot better than this! While I'm at it let me tell you about Morgan Fisher again. While Egg were organ oriented there is no classic Hammond B3 on NOVA SOLIS and if you, like me, think Morgan Fisher did irreparable damage to Mott The Hoople when he came in (except for when they became Mott with a new singer and the guitar really took over again) just imagine the worst aspects of their later work with no guitar at all. Egg possessed a truly gifted keyboard player in Dave Stewart and their problem was a lack of good songwriting. If you want tastefully done all keyboard progressive rock Morgan is going to make you long for a guitar to come in with screaming feedback and high velocity soloing before you even get through the first track. Avoid this album at all costs and put it right down there with Warm Dust and Deep Feeling (the 1971 album/group) as the worst ever. I've yet to hear something as dire as this except for those two within the progressive genre and I'd put the easy listening cocktail jazz of Samurai on Greenwich above Morgan. At least Samurai is pleasant and has a sense of fun. Unpleasant and humorless Morgan is not what progressive rock should sound like. Tim Staffell seems so obsessed with death and destruction that it seems like he is being sadistic towards you and just trying to bring you down. He definitely doesn't sing like he did in Smile instead opting for a histrionic approach more reminiscent of Martin Griffiths in Beggar's Opera. Musically speaking, Morgan make me long for Emerson Lake And Palmer as there was a true virtuoso in Keith Emerson even though he often went over the top. There are no similarities to ELP as Morgan is fully synthesizer driven and seems to be attempting some kind of bombastic electronic music that makes Kraftwerk sound brilliant to me who doesn't like their music much. Avoid this album at all costs. It certainly isn't worth spending as much time looking for it as I once did and you might if someone pointed you in the wrong direction to pick this one up.
-A Band Called England Make The Best Ever 3 years Too Late, But Still Great-
Now this is an album that I trashed for years and found "terrifying" that must be an album I missed the point of and underrated more than any other album in the history of my listening to music. England are another 4 piece band, but that's where any similarity with Morgan abruptly ends. Guitarist/vocalist Franc Holland, bassist/vocalist Martin Henderson, keyboard player/vocalist Robert Webb, and drummer/vocalist Jode Leigh comprised England and they were a band of high spirited, intelligent, and thoughtful musicians who could write out of this world material and add to that the fact that all 4 of them can sing lead!!!! England would have made a big splash in 1973 or 1974 which is when this album sounds like it was recorded, but not only was 1977 too late for recording such a symphonic and grandiose progressive pop masterpiece it was the year that punk destroyed music. In 1977 a lot of bands were about to go out the window for a period of tastelessness and gimmicks that Ray Davies summed up perfectly in his parodies of punk. He even wrote a song called "Prince Of The Punks" to show his disdain and Ray Davies and The Kinks were on Arista at the same time as England which is a funny little coincidence. Arista didn't really ever buy into punk. In fact, when the label launched a mega successful act several years down the road it would be Air Supply! So it may not be a surprise that Arista gave England complete artistic freedom on their one album GARDEN SHED and no band could have done more with that freedom.
England are very much a pop group at heart with a knack for filling heavy progressive/symphonic rock compositions up with great melodies, soaring vocals, and really daring imaginative structures. Their album is disciplined in all the right ways and never sounds stiff or mechanical. Their songs are prone to sudden changes in mood, melody, and atmosphere which together with their amazing musicianship bring to mind the three number one prog rock bands: Yes, Genesis, and Camel. If you love those bands you can't go wrong with England although the one thing that may put you off are the strong pop leanings which for me are a big plus. Jode Leigh plays drums and percussion with a devilish fury at times and at other times with the dexterity of Mike Giles and Phil Collins. Robert Webb's clever and majestic keyboards bring to mind a fun loving Tony Banks and Rick Wakeman at his best in Yes. Bass player Martin Henderson is melodically creative and plays with a driving forcefulness like Michael Rutherford and Chris Squire. Guitarist Franc Holland is just as important to England's music as the keyboards and bass playing with a keen sense of melody and power throughout. Add to that the excellent and devoid-of-pretension vocals and this is progressive rock heaven!
At times I'm reminded of earlier bands in the outdoorsy/pastoral progressive vein when the lovely melodies are flowing, but when England get heavy they get heavy. I was probably put off by some really dark lyrics to songs like "Midnight Madness" and the over 16 minute long take on The Picture Of Dorian Grey "Poisoned Youth," but England were never a band who suffered from a lack of humor and "dour" is a word that does not apply here. England are only sad in that their England that they named themselves after has turned into something of the distant past. The whole look, sound, and smell of this record is the great wonderful England that is dying off fast. The soldiers are sick of fighting in pointless wars. The country is divided and losing all sense of what it is all about. The crime rate is horrible. People are beginning to develop bad greedy behaviors like the worst of America. Can England be resurrected? Can the true real England come back? I'd say that if the people start trying harder they can bring England back to its former glories, but the music and literature for now along with the aesthetics are keeping it alive and don't fear for one second that we're gonna lose that.
England the band have a sense of fun that helps out immensely and they also are one of the most ambitious bands ever to play progressive rock. Take for instance the two longest tracks the amazing "Three Piece Suite" and the ominous yet also very melodic "Poisoned Youth." Both these tracks could easily pass for epic suites with their unique and clever songs-within-songs structures. There are about 6 songs in both of these tracks and the instrumental passages are full of melody and devoid of self indulgences. The vocals are great throughout with an emphasis on perfect melodic phrasing and complex harmonies. How could I not have loved such a wonderful album!? There are no weak links on this record and "Midnight Madness" would have Genesis smiling despite a darker lyric than nearly anything they were doing post Gabriel. The Genesis comparison is more in the keyboards and strong melodic sense. The band that influenced England more than any other band I can think of is Yes. Some would argue with me about Yes, but as I see it they are together with Camel and Genesis the Gods Of Progressive Rock. If you come close matching the magic they had at their best you must be doing something right. England have the harmonies, melodies, and essence of Yes and I'll fight that they aren't a "cloning" kind of a band like a lot of people say they are. The obscure band Kestrel also come to mind in a big way as does Aussie band Headband. Both these bands also had the same kind of melodic magic that England have and its really sad that so many great bands with so much potential go by unnoticed. Give England a chance. They'll open your mind and they'll blow it to rebuild it again and make you appreciate the magical splendor of what England the band and England the country are all about.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)