Category: Uncategorized

Frost* – Back With A Bang

On By Dr NickIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Jem Godfrey has just dropped a couple of Frost* bombshells on his blog.

First, they’ve just finished working with Magenta’s Rob Reed at Rockfield Studios in Wales on a DVD. The disc features five Frost* songs taken from Milliontown and Experiments In Mass Appeal plus a new song, Heartstrings. Proceeds will be used to fund production of the new album.

Actually, that should be albumS, plural. Jem’s second bombshell is that the band’s new work will be released as two albums, six months apart – the first later this year, the second by Spring of 2014. Apparently, “it’s too big a story to be told over a single hour”!

The core line-up for both albums will be Jem, John Mitchell, Craig Blundell and Nathan King. Various guest appearances are planned, including one from Dream Theater’s Jordan Rudess.

Back at the Crossroads: The Holland Brothers’ Dueling Devils

On By chuckhicksIn Uncategorized6 Comments

One of the highest compliments paid to Chapel Hill NC’s Jennyanykind came from an anonymous reviewer of their album, Mythic (1995),dueling devils

Imagine Syd Barrett composing Astronomy Domine in the mid 90s and you’ll get an idea of what this album sounds like. For that reason, it’s an unusual record, since while most rock bands of the last few years have gone for a pumped up version of that grunge folk popularized by folks like Mark Lanegan, Thin White Rope, and the Meat Puppets, Jennanykind have honed in on the stylistic nuances of bands like Barrett’s Floyd and post-Nico Velvet Underground. A subtle difference, to be sure, but one worth exploring and, done successfully as it is here, one that shows it’s possible to look back for your influences and progress musically. Great stuff.

Jennyanykind were led by twin brothers Mark and Michael Holland. In the early 2000’s they disbanded the group and began exploring their individual interests in roots music, with Mark working in the blues idiom while Michael veered in a bluegrass/ragtime direction. Dueling Devils brings the brothers back together, albeit on opposite sides of an imaginary vinyl recording, each with five tracks of three minutes accentuating their oblique approaches to lo-fi music.

Now, why in the devil would a fan of progressive music spend time with what seems to be its antithesis? I would suggest we reconsider what is called “roots” music on its own terms and within its cultural context. For that, we need to a take a trip to the Crossroads.

On the night of July 4, 2005, I found myself on a spur-of-the-moment trip from Tupelo, MS to Clarksdale, in the company of Jeff Spencer, himself an accomplished guitarist. The ride included a two-hour conversation about music, about Eric Clapton and fellow-Mississippian and King’s X guitarist Ty Tabor, among others. We left the “hilly country” at 7:00 pm and crossed the Tallahatchie at 8:00 (both referenced in Charley Patton’s blues masterpiece, “High Water Everywhere”) and sailed into the ironing-board flat Delta with distant shacks and brewing storm clouds on the horizon. By 9:00 we reached the Crossroads of legend, the intersection of highways 49 and 61 in Clarksdale. I jumped out of the car just long enough to have my picture made, but once back inside we discovered mosquitoes swarming by the dashboard light. We found ourselves swatting our way out of Clarksdale.

I asked how far it was to the Dockery Plantation, where Patton and, later, a young Robert Johnson had once entertained. “That’s Ruleville,” said Jeff. “I can take you if you want to go.”

Ruleville was another 45 minutes or so out of the way, and in the pitch blackness of a rural Mississippi night there would have been nothing to see. But what I had seen was enough to establish in my mind the environment into which the bluesmen of old had emerged. To a desolate and desperate place of gang labor and shared misery these men stood out as perverse and irresistible individuals, as showmen and shamans. To a culture that moved to the rhythms of call and response, the bluesmen broke all the rules and concocted a style of performance that, to borrow a phrase from folklorist Cece Conway, was “inimitable and unapproachable.” The blues — with variations of ragtime, jazz, and gospel mixed into the musical mojo bag — was designed to never be fully replicated. This was the work of possessed individuals, griots, spell-binding artists, intent on evoking frenzy and amazement. Two generations before Hendrix, Patton was playing his elaborate syncopation behind his head. It was not popular music, strictly speaking.

To illustrate, I’ve recently been listening to “This Is a Low” from Blur’s Parklife album. It is a cultural gem, composed around a nautical map on a handkerchief and the British Shipping Forecasts. It expresses an English band’s homesickness on the road. And it is pop music to the core, with a big, stirring chorus meant to be accompanied by tens of thousands of Brits in Hyde Park, arms raised. It’s the stuff of football supporters’ cheers.

But with the blues we honestly don’t know what the actual roots sounded like. We just make out enough of Patton, or the Bentonian craftsman Skip James, through a blizzard of crackles and pops on the best digital transfers. What we should hear in those sides are works of extraordinary eclecticism. We should hear the hedges being pushed over. We should approach them the way the original listeners found them.

To revisit these idioms, as the Holland Brothers invite us to do, is to return to the beginning of a music that packed a universe of originality into sides limited by three minutes of wax space. Every slide, every pull-off, every microtonal inflection is a dare. “See if you can do this.”

Mark Holland’s songs clearly emulate Patton. Recorded in stereo, he double tracks his voice (e.g. “My Baby Say She Coming”) to get the same disquieting effect of Patton’s original recordings (did Patton have a ghost voice? were his recordings haunted by demons?). He captures the energy of the Dockery frolics of old on “Coldwater Blues,” a rounder that takes him from one end of the South to the other. “Bic Lighter” works from a minor key to tell a story of dependence, where even “light” serves the cause of darkness.

Mark’s strength, both here and with Jennyanykind, is to capture an atmosphere where the veil between the natural and supernatural is rent. Malevolent forces are at hand, but his protagonists persevere and come to a new level of understanding, often at the expense of conventional wisdom (a good example is “Clear Tone Blues” from 2003). The griot was a storehouse of tradition, but his songs often mocked the culture around him.

Michael Holland’s sides pose a different challenge, recorded as they were live, in mono. This heightens the importance of his finger-picking and phrasing (as well as harmonica and kazoo) to emulate the parts of a larger band.  The playful “Dry Bones” draws from biblical characters (Enoch, Paul, Moses, the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel’s prophecy) to show the griot’s awareness of the “light come down.”   He then moves right into Charlie Poole’s rag arrangement of “Leavin’ Home,” a classic American murder ballad.

But his re-do of his own “Peas and Collards” (from an earlier album of the same title) is a swift-moving blues highlight.  It’s about the Southern tradition of eating black-eyed peas and collard greens on New Year’s Day for health and wealth, made ironic by the fact that the South, for most of its history, has lagged behind most of the U.S. in both categories (the original version runs through a bitter litany of corporate interests whom “money loves”: Chase Manhattan, Exxon, the WTO, etc., but not momma or the song’s protagonist).

Whereas Mark’s sides are dark, straight-up blues, Michael’s are lighter; but both elements were found in Patton and other genre-benders from nearly a century ago.

A young Syd Barrett spent time listening to a couple of Carolina bluesmen named Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.  An aspiring, avant garde artist of today  would do well to spend some time recovering some of the essentials with the Holland Brothers.

A Progressive Rock Lexicon (or: How to Talk to a Prog Rocker)

On By Erik HeterIn Uncategorized6 Comments

In any field of endeavor, there is a certain language used.  One working in the legal field speaks of briefs, appeals, affidavits, and so on.  A football coach may speak of blocking schemes, blitzes, and pass routes.  And one who flies airplanes may speak of instrument flight rules, crosswind landings, air speed, and fuel mixture.

 

Alas, those that make and listen to music have their own language.  Of course, those of us involved with progressive rock, as listeners, musicians, producers, etc., usually look at the world a little bit differently.  As such, an alternate language has developed.

 

Thinking about this, I have come up with a list of a few terms to aid conversation between prog rockers, as well as to help those who would like to speak to us on our terms.  Of course, this list is by no means considered to be complete.  Fellow Progarchists and readers of this site, in the interest of smooth communications, you are not only welcome, but are encouraged to suggest additions.  So, without further adieu, and with tongue firmly planted in cheek, I present to you a brief glossary of progressive rock terms. 

 

Short song – a song under 10:00 minutes in length.

 

Unusual time signature – 4/4

 

Normal Time Signature – 7/4, 5/8, 7/8, etc.

 

Brick – a unit of measurement for determining thickness.

 

String Section – a group of musicians in an orchestra whose function it is to emulate a Mellotron.

 

Dancing – ??????

 

Pretentious (1) – a word used to describe the critics who accuse prog rockers of being pretentious.

 

Pretentious (2) – the lyrics from this guy:

 

 

Excess – ??????

 

Air Guitar – what rock fans play.

 

Air Keyboards – what progressive rock fans play.

 

Air Bass – Well, a lot of us play this too, especially those of us that are into Geddy Lee and Chris Squire.

 

Bass Guitar – a stringed instrument typically used in the melodic discourse of a progressive rock composition.  Occasionally used as part of the rhythm section.

 

Robert Moog – the greatest electrical engineer of all time.

 

Aaron Copland – a guy who used to write music for Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

 

Alberto Ginastera – See Copland, Aaron.

 

Female Prog Rocker – a woman that participates in progressive rock, either through listening or performing.  Most frequently found in Continental Europe, the U.K. and Scandinavian countries.  A North American variant of the species exists but is extremely rare.  Another related variant of the species is the prog rock spouse, defined as a wife dragged into the prog rock scene by an overzealous prog-rock loving husband. 

 

Consuming alcoholic beverages – rearranging your liver to the solid mental grace.

 

Seed drill – a tool for precisely positioning seeds in the soil, refined by a man who was preemptively named after the band Jethro Tull.

 

Composing – the art of multiple musicians in a band sitting around arguing for hours, sometimes very intensely, over whether the next bar is to be in F or F#.

 

Corporate Attorney – see video:

 

 

(it is rumored that they also did some prog rock in the 70’s)

 

Sending Art Downstream

On By Craig BreadenIn Uncategorized3 Comments

Sending Art Downstream

I’m sharing a link here to a wonderful Pitchfork essay by Galaxie 500′s (and Damon and Naomi’s) Damon Krukowski, on streaming and the economics of sonic art.  One high point: Damon’s observation that Galaxie 500’s first record was first released only as an LP, and his next will mostly likely be released only as an LP, because streaming music services like Pandora and Spotify have made the idea of selling one’s art for a profit obsolete.  For all the bands we love on Progarchy, my guess is they face the same economic hurdles, something David Longdon of Big Big Train shared with me at any rate: they make no money, it’s a labor of love they’re lucky they’re not losing their shirts on.  On a somewhat unrelated note, I love the convenience of digital, streamed music, but I also am skeptical of it satisfying the same benefits many of us (I think) got from the LP.  Rewarded patience, a linear experience as imagined by the artist, the tactile and visual experience of the sleeve…. If streamed music also means a watering down of the artist’s reward, my skepticism grows.

Craig Breaden, January 5, 2013

Truth Button by KingBathmat

On By iangreatorexIn 2013, Uncategorized5 Comments

Truth Button

Sometimes a band comes along that defies categorisation. KBm are such an animal. From the first listen the album aroused my curiosity and I strived in vain to ‘place’ it in my comfortable world of musical genres. That I failed to do so after repeated attempts is a testament to the diversity within Truth Button. As a result it’s taken me a long time to write this review (I’ve thought of little else for the last week!)

KBm are the brainchild of John Bassett, based in the UK. Truth Button is the band’s sixth album since 2003. I will be honest enough to say I had never heard of KBm before, so this was my first experience of their quite unique sound.

Truth Button has a loose concept and in the band’s words:

“…deals with an underlying theme of technophobia and social disconnection due to the ever-growing trivial use of modern technology”.

The frequent pressing of computer buttons has led to the creation of an illusory world but through the ‘Truth Button’ we can, if we wish, attempt to connect with the real world.

This theme is clearly referred to in some of the song titles and accompanying lyrics.

The mix of musical styles is eclectic and melded into an original sound. There’s a bit of Queen here and maybe Black Sabbath there and smatterings of indie and alternative rock (Queens of the Stone Age). At times the lead and bass guitar riffs are very grungy (Tool/Nirvana).  And they throw in a bit of Radiohead and Muse. The vocals however are generally light and punctuated with some nice harmonies.

Continue reading “Truth Button by KingBathmat” →

Does Fun Belong in Music? Frank Zappa – Finer Moments

On By Pete BlumIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

zappa-finer-momentsFiner Moments is a new release from the seemingly bottomless vaults of Frank Zappa’s music.  It’s been very interesting watching some of the early response to this release, as available detailed information regarding the recordings included on this 2-CD compilation has been sparse.  The hard-core fans are adulatory, of course, but I’ve also seen those predictable lukewarm comments to the effect that this is a release that is “only for the most serious fan.”  Translation:  “I think this is crap, but hey, I understand that if you’re a serious fan of X, then you will even want X’s crap.”

If you see responses like that, do not be fooled!  They come from folks who may appreciate some of Zappa’s work, but who do not really have the patience to plumb the sort of aggressively transgressive creativity that Zappa represented.  The recordings on Finer Moments, mostly (but not all) recorded live, are from the years of the original Mothers of Invention, between 1967 and 1972.  As with most of the best of Zappa’s output, they dance deftly along a fine line between composed and improvised.  They display very effectively, to my ear, the way in which Zappa flourished as a composer (which was primarily the way he understood himself) and as a serious artist (with a sense of humor rivaling that of Erik Satie) within the (in those days) strange and evolving framework of the popular “rock band.”

Indeed, though there are no “funny songs” (read: off-color and/or politically incorrect ditties) here, my most profound impression on listening is that this music is “in your face” in simultaneously wholly serious and wholly fun ways.  Listeners who love Frank’s orchestral and chamber works, and his work with synclavier, will be best prepared for what stirs in these early recordings.  There is an ethos of music-making here which insists upon the compatibility of an aesthetic gravity with a philosophical levity.  The enthusiastic involvement of the early members of the Mothers ensures that what Zappa called “the eyebrows” (what he noted was missing when he used the synclavier rather than live musicians) is amply manifested.

I’ve seen Zappa categorized as “Avant-Prog,” and whoever might want to argue in favor of that classification will find plenty of support on Finer Moments.  But I’m inclined to say that what it shares with all of the best so-called “prog” is its humor-laced and fun-filled but rigorous refusal of categorization.  Even if you don’t consider yourself a Zappa fan — perhaps especially if you don’t — give this a listen and see what you think.

 

Not Yet Knowing The Words (Part Two)

On By Pete BlumIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Songs have lyrics.  Unless they don’t.  And music doesn’t have to have lyrics.  Unless it does.

tool_lateralusWhat I’m thinking about again today is words (words, between the lines of age, as Neil Young sang).  “Beyond words” or “I can’t put it into words” are ways of calling attention to the wordiness of words, to the way in which words only word (sure, let’s verbify it too) when they waft and waver, when they have a warp and woof with those tiny spaces where something can dwell that’s not words but more like fervent wishes.  Tool’s Lateralus had words that arrested me on first exposure.  My rights were read to me by the first three songs I heard from that album (“The Grudge,” “The Patient,” and “Schism”), first passing by me like strangers that ignored me (and I them) but then they frisked me, cuffed me, and shoved me into the back of a completely unexpected and soundless squad car.  Wondering about the words, I went to the web.  There they were, all wordy and flat and what the hell is this anyway and it’s not like it strikes you as poetry when you read it there,  so there must have been some mistake.  But back to the music and there were the words again, but in the music Maynard made love to them.  Keenan keened them, you might say, and they writhed with a painpleasure that no “PARENTAL ADVISORY” sticker would ever cover.  It was the singer and the song locked in a tense embrace that made the meaning manifest.

All of this is about that clearing that I mentioned before, and it’s really about Spock’s Beard that I was talking before, and not about Tool at all.  It’s about the way in which the meaning that I want remains aloof, remains Other.  It’s about the way in which Nick D’Virgilio’s voice does the same sort of work with words that I encountered a while back in Maynard James Keenan.  A work with words in which the words are emphatically not tools.  They’re not simply “used” or “employed” in order to bring forth something else.  That’s the way we tend to think of words when we’re doing our everyday-saying, when we’re not singing but talking (hear Adrian Belew now?  It’s oooooooooonly TALK!), as if talking were something infinitely distant from singing.  (It’s really not, but we need the supposed contrast as a provisional intuition pump.)

SpocksBeardFeelEuphoria (1)

I’m listening today to Feel Euphoria, and the comparison to my first encounter with Tool (not tools) is like an insistent throbbing.  Throbbing, pulsing, thumping.  The drumming!  Of course!  The drumming and the singing are on especially intimate terms here.  That was going on in Tool in amazing ways, but here it’s amazing while also being much more subtle, a sumptuous sort of subtle.  And I would say even more tensely intimate, in a wondrous, meaning-making sense.  The artfully restrained but deeply athletic sonic synthesis of Alan’s Guitars, Dave’s bass and Ryo’s keys are a luxurious garden through which Nick’s percussion and vocalization can dance together, hand in hand.

And TENSIONS.  Such richly meaningful tensions arise here:  “Onomatopoeia” is blissful tension, because what “sounds alike” never truly sounds alike.  “The Bottom Line” is tension because the singer who looks for it is himself found by it.  “East of Eden, West of Memphis” is a glorious geographical tension.  And then there’s that guy named Sid.  Of course he’s an enigmatic tension (if I insert a Y and allude to Syd, can you Barrett?).  Nick sings in the first person, but at least part of the tension here is with that “first” designation.  It’s him, or it’s someone else I know or remember, or perhaps it’s even me, myself (an I).  Or it’s all of us.  Or maybe not any one of us in particular.  And the closing call to “Carry On”:

When your whole world comes apart
There’s a place for you to start

This was my place to start with Spock’s Beard, my place to go back and pick up on the words that, in my prior post, I did not yet know.  Today Tool provided a tool, but only a tool.  It was really about SB.  And another tension, too:  It was really about how we might listen to any words when they are words to a song.  But that’s not to say that such listening will always be rewarded, which is why it was really about SB, and (not to elevate unduly, but) about NdV.

So, those of you who’ve known all along:  Does this all sound right?  Or does it sound just wrong enough to make a tension that might be right?  Does it help to talk of the tension that emerges when one sings rather than talking?

Kevin McCormick’s Squall (1999)

On By bradbirzerIn Uncategorized3 Comments

kcmccKevin McCormick, Squall (1999).  To my mind, this is some of the best rock music ever written—but tempered with very serious classical sensibilities and lacking the over-the-top bombast present in even some the best of 1970s progressive rock.

If one had to label his music, it would most likely be a post-prog, post-rock, or, simply put post-Talk Talk.  In the current realm of music, one might think of a mixture of Matt Stevens, Gazpacho, and Nosound.

McCormick incorporates his profound poetry as lyrics.  Each word—and the way Kevin sings it—seems utterly filled with grace and conviction.  This is part two of a rock/post-rock trilogy (he’s currently working on number three).  And, it’s hard to listen to Squall without listening to its equally fine predecessor, With the Coming of Evening (1993).  Kevin really has it all: a great voice, the ability to write poetry as lyrics, and the training of a classical guitarist.

Before I write any more, let me admit my bias.  Kevin is one of my closest friends, and he has been since we first met in the fall of 1986 as freshman at the University of Notre Dame.  We still talk and correspond frequently.  Kevin is the godfather of my oldest son, and I of his second daughter.

We bonded immediately on matters of music back in 1986.

Kevin and his two brothers had a well-known Texas band in the mid 1980s, and Kevin formed the finest band at Notre Dame, St. Paul and the Martyrs, during our years there.  Toward the end of our senior year, St. Paul and the Martyrs opened for the-then unknown progressive jam band, Phish.

During our years in college, Kevin and I traveled throughout the U.S. and England together (making sure to visit Trident studios as well as EMI (hoping to catch a glimpse of Mark Hollis) while journeying through the mother land of prog and New Wave), co-produced a “Dark Side of the Moon” charity show, complete with an angsty-movie backing a full performance of the album by the Marytrs, talked music and lyrics until late into the nights, and even co-hosted a prog rock radio show on Friday nights.

Not surprisingly, one of my greatest memories of Kevin in college was listening to the entirety of Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden in 1988.  We remained completely silent for a very long time after its completion, stunned by the immensity of its beauty.

Kevin is extremely talented in a number of ways.  Not only is he the father of our beautiful daughters, but he has won national poetry as well as classical guitar composition awards.  In addition to the two post-prog albums (With the Coming of Evening and Squall) already mentioned, Kevin has also released several albums of solo classical guitar as well as an album of Americana, all recorded on an 1840s Martin.

His music has been praised publicly by many (see, for example, his entry at Allmusic) and privately by such luminaries as Phill Brown and Greg Spawton.

As of this afternoon, Kevin has finished mixing a Christmas CD, recorded with his oldest daughter on vocals, to be released next Christmas season.  And, as mentioned above, he is currently working on the completion of his post-rock trilogy.

Here’s Kevin’s music at CD Baby:  http://www.cdbaby.com/Artist/KevinMcCormick

Here’s Kevin’s official site: http://www.kevin-mccormick.com/KM/index.html

I know we at Progarchy have offered lots and lots of suggestions for worthwhile purchases over the last three months.  But, as we begin this near year, I can state unequivocally that it’s worth supporting Kevin, especially as he prepares to record his new post-prog album.  I’ve only heard bits and pieces, but Kevin is a man of absolute integrity.  He is, like so many of us who either play prog or simply listen to prog, a perfectionist.  He also possesses one of the finest senses of beauty I’ve ever encountered in another.  So, while 2013 will probably NOT be the year of Kevin McCormick in the prog world, 2014 almost certainly will be.

Certainly, Kevin’s album should be one of the most anticipated releases of the next two years.  It’s worth beginning to anticipate today, January 1, 2013.

 

***

 

Some video links:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umMMJ4B-D6k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kewac1nhue8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fqsAcTs8KN0

But Is It Good? The Dreaded Year’s End List

On By Craig BreadenIn Uncategorized7 Comments

Years ago, I had something of an obsession with the movie Jimi Hendrix, which was made shortly after his death, and which along with Bob Dylan’s Don’t Look Back got heavy rotation in the VCR (I had ‘em back to back on a fuzzed out VHS cassette).  Once, after watching it and glowing about it and Hendrix to my girlfriend at the time, she asked me, with a sly smile, “But was he good?”

It was a bizarre and funny question, a great question.  Because of course my first reaction, most people’s first reaction, to that question regarding Hendrix, would be, “Of course he was !#$*&^!! good!  You can’t get more good.  None.  None more good.”

But, she was testing me in a good way.  What she was asking, really, was did all that talent create something worthwhile? Shouldn’t received wisdom about art be less immutable than it often is? And suggesting, too, that even established (and dead) rock gods need new evaluation, continued consideration. This is why I think year’s best lists are something of a conceit and are really part of the pop world.  In reflecting on my favorite records of the year, I realize: there are no “new” artists in my brief list; only two of the albums were released this year; and, one of the albums is actually over 30 years old.  But ah well, nobody ever accused me of being at the cutting edge of pop.  I’m always just catching up.  These are the records that were new to me in 2012, would be of some relevance to the prog listener, and which answered in the affirmative the question, “But is it good?”

GaborSzaboIn Stockholm by Gabor Szabo (1978) – A jazz guitar master whose work with Chico Hamilton in the early 1960s landed him a solo career on the venerable Impulse! label, Szabo was at once an emblem of swingin’ 60s lounge pop and serious jazz improviser.  His Eastern European gypsy roots are all over his records, which typically capture Szabo working out a handful of originals against a backdrop of covers (these can veer towards the cheesy, but his cover of Donovan’s “Three Kingfishers” is stunning, and his interpretation of Sonny and Cher’s “Bang Bang” (with vocal!) absolutely without peer.  His 60s work is topped by “Gypsy Queen,” which a lot of us already know as the tail end/outro of Santana’s cover of “Black Magic Woman.”  Carlos loved his Gabor.  But instrumental jazz pop had a short shelf life, and the 70s saw the hits wane.  Szabo went back to Europe to record, and the album In Stockholm compiles two sessions, one recorded in 1972 and one in 1978, with Janne Schaffer (best known as Abba’s guitarist!) joining Szabo on guitar.  This is pure jam music, with rock and jazz getting equal voicings.  Bass and drums create droning, searching backgrounds on extended versions of Szabo classics like “Mizrab” and “24 Carat.”  The only distraction on the set is a nod to Szabo’s lounge-pop leanings, with the overripe chestnut “People” probably getting the best treatment it’s ever gotten but, come on, it’s “People who need people” and I personally don’t need it.  The rest of the double album more than makes up for this pale first track though.  This is first-rate stuff — really mindblowing.

BenAllisonThink Free by Ben Allison (2009) – I love Ben Allison’s work.  He’s one of the few modern jazz composers I keep up with, and his records always have something to say.  Think Free is kind of an amalgam of older and new compositions, with “Green Al” and “Peace Pipe” getting fresh makeovers with the addition of guitar by Steve Cardenas, who’s been working with Allison the last few years.  This is melody-driven jazz that never strays into smooth territory; if anything, it verges on rock (although not as much Allison’s wonderful Cowboy Justice from 2006).  The recording is organic, earthy, with Jenny Scheinman’s violin contributing an almost rustic feel to some of the tracks.  I caught up with Think Free late and since then Allison’s released Action Refraction as well, which is also great, but the nice thing about Think Free is that I think it stands as a great introduction to his work in general.

LOVE FC LThe Forever Changes Concert by Arthur Lee & Love (2003) – I may be preaching to the choir, I know, but if there is one rock album from the psychedelic era that has stood the test of time it is Love’s Forever Changes (1967).  A sonically bright, lyrically dark masterpiece, Forever Changes combined rock with smooth jazz, Spanish classical music, and garage punk, forging what is in my opinion the first American progressive rock record.  Arthur Lee, the cracked master behind Love, refused to tour outside of California, and never capitalized on the potential of Forever Changes or its two predecessors (both wonderful in their own way, and classics as well).  Jack Holzman, head of Elektra Records, has called Lee one of the few musical geniuses he ever met and signed (these are big, big words), but Arthur Lee could never translate that genius into success.  Drug problems, jail time, on-again off-again performances through the 70s, 80s, and 90s did nothing to help his legacy.  Then came word that he was gigging regularly with Baby Lemonade, a West Coast psych revival band who took their name from a song by another 60s casualty, Syd Barrett.  And in 2003, this band, with Lee fronting, performed the entirety of Forever Changes in London, a performance not only beautifully executed but also wonderfully recorded.  In fine vocal shape, Lee delivers on the promise of what Forever Changes could have been for him had he pursued it with such ferocity 35 years earlier.  That he got this down before he died is a gift to us all.  I’m embarrassed to say that although I’ve long been a fan of Forever Changes (easily in my top 5 of all time), I hadn’t heard this concert until this year.  So do yourself a favor….

CelebrationDayCelebration Day by Led Zeppelin (2012) – Like the Forever Changes Concert, Celebration Day captures Led Zeppelin performing one show, the Ahmet Ertegun tribute in 2007.  Of course, this Zep isn’t the Zep of yore, as John Bonham’s son Jason is behind the drums, but Jason Bonham has long been the replacement of choice for his legendary father.  The wonderful thing about live Led Zeppelin is that they are like they are on their records but more so.  Make sense? Jimmy Page and Robert Plant always tend, intentionally, towards the unpredictable, even messy — and make no mistake, this is an Art — and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.  It works here.  Celebration Day finds Plant, Page, and John Paul Jones in fine trim.  Robert Plant, working the lower register, has really never sounded better, and Page is, well, Page.  He is a master of infusing the big hard rock riff with soul, wit, and the hammer of the gods.  John Paul Jones, an absolute anchor, is in a way the real puppet master of this band.  He and Bonham tie down the dirigible that is Page/Plant.  This was one show, one take, with songs that speak to fans who wore out the deep cuts:  “In My Time of Dying” (really??? Yippee!!), “Nobody’s Fault But Mine,” “For Your Life”….  Although the band has been well-documented now regarding its live performances during its heyday, this is the best live Zeppelin I’ve heard.

david_sylvian_robert_fripp_damage_reissueDamage by David Sylivian & Robert Fripp (2002) – A fellow Progarchist turned me onto this record and I was immediately blown away.  Somewhat familiar with Sylvian’s work, and holding Fripp in high esteem for his adventurousness, my first reaction to hearing song’s like “God’s Monkey” and “Brightness Falls” was an affirmation that artists like Fripp and Sylvian do better working in pairs than strictly solo.  This live set, recorded during their 1993 tour, draws songs primarily from an LP they made together, The First Day.  Fripps poetics on guitar and “Frippertronics” are matched by Sylvian’s words and voice, and backed by Trey Gunn on stick (a sort of bass with a cazillion strings), drummer Pat Mastelatto, and guitarist Michael Brook, there is a confidence in delivery that comes from two artists well into the second, third, fourth phases of their careers.  The sound is hard, funky, emotive, the sound of Fripp and Sylvian unmistakable.  The set misses “Jean the Birdman,” which they did perform on the tour but is not included here.  Otherwise this is a gem, and I’m probably going to spend 2013 tracking down more on Sylvian.

StormCorrosionStorm Corrosion by Storm Corrosion (2012) – I reviewed Storm Corrosion on Progarchy this fall so won’t go into it in great detail, but I find it a marvelous collaboration.  Like Fripp and Sylvian, Mikael Akerfeldt and Steven Wilson seem to do better working in collaboration rather than as heading groups or as strictly solo.  Perhaps it’s the balance.  In any case, this is a rich and wonderful album I look forward to getting even more out of in the next year.

ReturningJesusReturning Jesus by No-Man (2001) – In preparing for my Storm Corrosion review, I came across No-Man, which I had never heard before.  A collaboration of Steven Wilson (instruments) and Tim Bowness (vocal), No-Man has made a lot more records than I’m comfortable thinking about because I’ve had my head in the sand this entire time.  On the other hand, there appears to be much to discover.  Returning Jesus is a great starting point.  This is slow, crooning stuff, and is much more in the vein of David Sylvian/Bryan Ferry British vocal music.  Wilson is restrained, and there is service to the song lyric here that isn’t present in all his music.  Romantic, rainy-day music, this could also be comfortable next to Johnny Hartman’s early 60s recordings.  Really, really prime.

Wild riverWild River by David Longdon (2004) – I reviewed David Longdon’s Wild River on Progarchy and really would like to give it another thumbs up.  Wonderful acoustic instrumentation and production accompany David’s supple vocal, on a recording that goes fairly effortlessly from British soul ala Seal to more rustic excursions reminiscent of Ronnie Lane.  I’ll be listening to this record a lot in 2013.

That about wraps it up.  I could say that in 2013 I’ll make more of an effort to listen to new releases, but that would be a cheap promise I wouldn’t have much interest in keeping.  I’d much rather pick and choose records I haven’t heard yet, and listen because they’re good.

Happy new year!

Craig Breaden, December 29, 2013

Congratulations, Progarchist Julie!

On By bradbirzerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Our own progarchist, Julie Robison Baldwin, is now a married human!  Congrats, Julie.

 

progarchist julie wedding