#0106: I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You - Aretha Franklin

I was a little bit nervous about this.  She's one of those artists I feel I *should* respect, if you'll excuse the pun.   It would be a blatant deception to say I love soul music or that I listen to it even semi regularly.  That said, whenever I watch the Blues Brothers or The Commitments I get the urge to go out and try to join a band like that.  It's inspiring music.  Be they pumping, ballsy protest songs like the opening track on here (Respect) or the wailing despair of the title track at position 3, there is something raw and tangible to connect with.

Aretha's voice was of course unlike any woman before her.  That's not to say that other women did not possess gravel, heart, power or range but the proportions afforded by her larynx and diaphragm were unique and a shock to the world.  

Even though Respect is the only punchy number we get for a while, the next 7 tracks still have momentum because of her delivery.  

Of course, a certain amount of credit has to go to the song writers and arrangers who between them have conjured these harmonic pathways for her to skip down, stamp on, slide along and fly over with the agility of any acrobat (or flea). 

It is nevertheless refreshing when the roadhouse rhythm finally picks us up out of the dust of the dirge, however briefly.  Only 3 tracks remaining now and yet another swaying 6 in Do Right Woman Do Right Man places this album, in spite of the exemplary vocal track firmly in the date-night background music category.  It's kinda like what I said about the Wee Small Hours from Frank Sinatra way back in the beginning: each song stands up very well on its own but if they're too similar then your brain just switches off.

Oh ok, Save Me has the same uppish rhythm as Gloria (and I really should get a vocabulary together for these different feels) but by this point I'm sort of ready to move on.  And sure enough her cover of the Sam Cooke classic is a slow motion, lugubrious indulgence, which if it was rounding off a rollercoaster of a show would kick my ass all over town but I'm done.  

3 stars.

Oh, and she's not dead, apparently.  But she thanxxx you for your concern.  

#0105: Axis: Bold As Love - The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Apparently this is a contractual obligation album.  The last such album I listened to began with a song called "Sit On My Face".  This one begins with a bizarre news magazine program recording.  It's either a spoof or audio of a real program; I have no idea which but I think Jimi's voice can be heard towards the end as they're being sped up and made to sound like they're aliens or being possessed or some shit.  It's bonkers and quite fun and then there's about a minute of fucking about with stereo panning, distortion and feedback that's like having a pin cushion turned inside out and shoved up yer jacksie.  Not a great start but Hendrix has some credit to play with.

When the real first track starts it's not what you might've expected in 67 having tasted the Experience's debut.  Up From The Skies is a tasty little strut that could easily have supported a jazz solo and it's got groovy sewn into the sauce.  Not knowing what to expect now, the brief silence between this and Spanish Castle Magic is fraught with anticipation.

It comes crashing in with a sound our contemporary ears would most readily associate with Crosstown Traffic and as it swings between the lyrics spun over heavy punctuation and the cymbal washed driver groove, you're carried along on the wave of decadent denouement as his solo slices thru the smokey air and fills your mind with what-the-fuck-just-happened.

There it is: a development of his multi-string hammer-on technique rippling over the fretboard backwards (to some of us) as the guitarists in the room sotto voce "motherfucker" in unison.  The infectious chorus fills your veins and demands disappointment as the track starts to fade.  And that's how it's done.  Wait Until Tomorrow is immediately one of my favourite Hendrix tracks I've never heard.   

Ain't No Telling ain't showing no signs of letting up.  Son. Of. A. Bitch.  This is *awesome*.  All one minute and 48 seconds of it.

Ooh, it's that Sting song.

My friend Robbie was a Hendrix nut and he would play Little Wing on an acoustic guitar to the delight of many.  Crafty old bastard wouldn't do it on demand tho so whenever the mood took him and he decided to play it, everybody would pay attention. 

Hendrix seems to have picked all the best hippy words in his abstraction of the muse's imagination, form or presence; whichever he is describing.  Butterflies and zebras and moonbeams swirl like consciousness deliquesced to mercury in water, the phasing of the vocal effect adding to the ethereal mood until reality takes a big wet bite out of your ass when his solo comes in, effortlessly smashing and redefining your reverie.

I used to think If 6 Was 9 was a bit rude but actually, it's sort of a social liberation song isn't it?  It presents the idea of defying or breaking convention across the board, not just in the rat race, the white collar world referred to in the middle section but the hippies too, as he points out that he's fine even if they wanna cut off all their hair.

Just for the record, I'm fine with that too.  I just think there'd be a *lot* more bald people if they did.  Hippies basically pulled off the best combover in the history of hair.

It's not one of my favourite tracks but it does have a certain potency that draws me in regardless.

You Got Me Floatin' now recaptures the surging energy of Wait Until Tomorrow just in case we were flagging and then it's time for one of those songs I'd've thought would be a pointless answer but would probably score 1 or 2 and fuck up your jackpot.  Castles Made Of Sand wouldn't be among the first 10 songs I'd list by Jimi Hendrix and I'm kinda bummed about that. 

It's a track I think if you were covering it you'd be tempted to play slower than this recording, not just cuz I get the impression it's fucking difficult to play but cuz you'd want to pore over those licks and really sit back on the rhythm.  You'd lose that tightness when you get to the last line of the verses tho and that's where I think the genius of this song lies: in the pace.  I don't know whether all the pieces would fit together as well outside a short radius of this tempo.

But I digress.  Next up, Noel Redding on bass takes the vocal for She's So Fine.  Not a great deal of guitar present in this and that possibly illustrates a dependency between Hendrix's vocals and guitar playing.  Of course, it could just be that Redding wanted his song to remain his song, unfettered by the overpowering personality of the Hendrix axe.  And it's a good song.  The most distinctive thing about it is the drums so not really a launch pad for Noel Redding as a singer songwriter I wouldn't say but it's not so out of place that you'd think it was filler. 

One Rainy Wish is a slow waltz that's a setup for a surging, anthemic chorus that allows for some phantom time changes over the actual time change to 4/4 that make the transition back to 3 look a lot more ingenious than it is.

I really like that track but I'm starting to tire a bit and I'm hoping for something different.  As if by magic Little Miss Lover to satisfy my request with a bass hook that can only be the harbinger of Zeppelin.  Gets a bit chaotic toward the end but then fades soon after and it's another well timed retirement for a solid idea.

Rounding off the second outing for this legendary trio, then is what's as close to the title track as we're gonna see.  Bold As Love sees many of the themes and techniques from other tracks revisited but not quoted.  It's very much its own song but having noticed these similarities and that it's the finale piece, I can't help but see the parallel between this, with its repeating pattern so rich with the feel of a curtain call and many theatre shows whose closing number often involves a medley of reprised themes.

All in all, the bat rang out like the report of a .22 and the ball almost became birdstrike.  It seems I'm a much bigger fan of Jimi Hendrix than I thought.  5 stars.

#0104: White Light, White Heat - The Velvet Underground

The last album I reviewed by this lot featured a German chanteuse called Nico and it was, as I recall, abysmal.

The title track opens up and it's got a tune, it's got energy.  It's the sort of punky dirt I was expecting from VU and it doesn't bang on for too long so we're okay for now.

Who's doing the voiceover on track 2?  Is this Howard Marks?  It's some Welsh bloke reading a story over a trashy rockish groove with some noisy incidental guitar.  It's weird and has character and I know this is the sort of thing I should hate but this - and it's not cuz he's Welsh - I like.  The narration has a peculiar appeal.  It's eight minutes of the same chords but I'm listening to the story.  Ladies and gentlemen I may have discovered audio books!

Okay, I've had to look it up cuz he's singing now on Lady Godiva's Operation.  This is so wonderfully odd!  Maybe I'm just delighted that *anything* is happening after the last album but even tho John Cale's voice isn't what I'd call strong, it is as least in tune.

Lou Reed gets on the mic now and there are definite production issues with this.  His trademark vocal qualities are not fully formed as I recognise them and this is quite an awkward two and a half minutes.

I know this album is much lauded by punk and alt fans alike and I can certainly see it's ground breaking but I Heard Her Call My Name is spirit breaking for the first minute or two until it opens up into more of the chorus and we have some harmonies that soften the extremely harsh guitar noise.  Christ, is he doing that on purpose?

I should have counted myself lucky.  I now realise there's one track left and it's seventeen and a half minutes long.  It's called Sister Ray and I have a feeling I'll be crying out for Desolation Row by the end of it.  Here goes.

It's noisy and messy and trashy and all the things I detest but for a couple of minutes it's bearable cuz it's got character.  There's this keyboard sound that comes in and makes some good melodic contributions but then becomes more and more chaotic as the song continues and the words get more disjointed and tuneless and then everybody just loses their shit.

The drummer is keeping the beat going but Christ alone knows what he's playing in support of.  What is he holding together?  Maybe it's his sanity he's hanging onto while these spannered wreckheads run around the china shop with baseball bats.  It's fucking aural carnage.

Just under 10 minutes have passed when hurricane Junky starts to calm.  The drums are still going tho and there's a repeated vocal about "sucking on my ding dong" and the keyboard is making this noise like a horse snoring with a harmonica in its gob.

What in the misanthropic, genocidal fuck is the engineer thinking during this abortion performed by a blind piranha with a pencil?  Did the record company listen to this before releasing it?  15 and a half minutes gone and the keyboard player appears to be simulating the arrival of riot police in force.  Is he trying to scare them into stopping, perhaps?  The lyrics are claiming "he couldn't hit it sideways".  If he's talking about a sense of key it's the most astute observation he's made to date.

It's stopped.  I am sat in the silence, letting my ears ring.  Oh blessed moment of tranquillity.  I'll listen to The Gift again at some point but the rest of it can fuck off on the fastest mode of transport available.

1 star.

#0103: Call of the Valley - Hariprasad Chaurasia, Brij Bhushan Kabra, Shivkumar Sharma

I had best choose my words very carefully.  There is an army of people on the lookout for reasons to be offended on other people's behalf and they are dangerous.  People are listening to these idiots.  We live in a world where a handful of isms and phobias are policing us to the point where nobody is responsible for their own feelings any more and everyone is being encouraged to become outraged if they are subject of the slightest mockery.

8 tracks.  None under 6 minutes.  The first is entitled Ahir Bhairav/Nat Bhairav and is 12:31.  It reminds me of the opening of Shine On You Crazy Diamond.  A low drone fades in, a plucked instrument plays an atmospheric lead continued by what would be a bass flute in a western orchestra.  Both sounds are pleasant to the ear but as the main rhythm is established the interchanging of the instruments becomes erratic and a second guitar-like instrument in a higher register takes over. 

You could sit in an alternative healing centre with incense burning having a massage or meditating to this but the volume would have to be quite low for it not to literally harsh your mellow.  After a few minutes, the flute-analogue goes up an octave and it too cuts into the foreground with pervasive shrillness uncharacteristic of the peaceful air I imagine is intended.  At 8 minutes we get some of the bongo/conga type drums of the region entering but they do little to help coalesce the other sounds into anything with direction and it's difficult for me to imagine this was composed.

The piece finally fades out having not moved from the first chord the entire time.

Ragoo Pilo now begins in the same key with the same instruments and the same scale.  It's got the same rubato introduction but without the drone this time.  Now it's the high and low "guitars" exchanging phrases making much use of fast repeated notes like you hear with mandolins a lot.  Blimey, this is hard work.  I can't think of anything to say other than describe the noises and wince at the flute widdliing around.  Bongos are back.  This reminds me of a jam we had years ago where somebody had a poppy plant growing in their front garden which they'd harvested and made tea for us.

I remember sitting there with my foot on the sustain pedal just letting A minor ring out while everybody, completely bonced on what was basically morphine did pretty much the same as the people on this recording - to wit, meandering aimlessly around the same modal scale without ever establishing a melody.

I'm on morphine right now - I have a prescription for it.  I'm suffering with my back at the moment but even with the buzzy calm that accompanies the pain relief, there is little improvement in my perception of this music.

I don't see the point in pushing myself to find different ways of describing the same noise and I don't think it's fair to make you read them even if I could.  Bhoop is the second shortest track at 6:15 and it's more of the same.  Why did they even bother having track divisions?

There is obviously skill involved in this but I can only see the technical value, the physical achievement of playing the instrument.  I am unable to recognise any musicianship here.  I am just so culturally removed from this that it should surely be a moot point that I don't get on with it.

Much as it would be fun to really rip into this and much as I recognise my restraint as a form of positive discrimination, I can't bring myself to do it.  It's awful to me and that's all I have to say about it.  1 star.

#0102: Don't Come Home A-drinkin' (With Lovin' On Your Mind) - Loretta Lynn

I'm guessing this will be a country album.  Country albums have not fared well with my ears.  And that's all the prologue I'm prepared to give.

The opening guitar line is great, I have to say.  It's all that country 6th twangy bollocks but it's well executed.  But then we're into the pedestrian moaning.  The title track's perspective is of a woman who wishes her man would just stay out all night and get a hooker rather come home stinking and try to woo her with his petrol breath.  Maybe there is a hidden domestic abuse theme here.  Who knows what women were unable to sing about in those days that had to be encoded in what we now know is a common vehicle for marital rape and other abuse.

These songs are a mix of 2 basic types alternating without deviation across the entire track list.  The steady 4 boom-chuck-b-boom-chuck, the gummy blues - and by that I mean blues has teeth and these are just andante waltzes with that insipid lap steel sound. 

Her voice carries the songs well and as far as vocal quality goes, I prefer her to the likes of Dolly Parton and Tammy Wynette who just sound like whiny white trash.  But competent singing doesn't stop this feeling like listening to your granny's tales of how she used to go out dancing without being able to balance your boredom with the knowledge that you will one day want to remember how she spoke about her youth, how her face would glow with the memories and how its pallor in her last days broke your heart to see the life force dissipating.  But because you listened to her stories, you could feel sadness without guilt for having wasted your time together.

But Loretta Lynn is not my granny.  She's just some fucking boring country singer.  And her album is total shit.  One star for her voice.

#0101: I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night - The Electric Prunes

Have you ever sat on a washing machine in its spin cycle when you're constipated?  That's the image conjured by the band name.  The album title suggests that a clever play on drink/dream is enough to make a winning trippy title.  I predict the contents of a loosened bowel at 1800rpm.

Ready?

The title track opens the album and it's a snare on the down beat driver with the guitars all put thru a tremolo turned up to 11.  To my obvious surprise it's got a decent melody and tho the B section is trying a bit too hard to be unpredictable, it's a decent opening number.

Bangles, however relies on the same beat and the same effects and in spite of the melody and chords finding their own identity, the overall feel is too close to the first track.  The change has a different time signature and the progressions are interesting so it's a bit of a disappointing track ordering fail, really.

The next track, Onie, is a slow, major-seventh-littered piece; soft and gentle and how it avoids the cloying tack of muzak is an achievement in itself.  Nice change of pace in spite of yet again drowning the whole thing in that tremolo effect.

Are You Loving Me More finally releases us from the tremolo and gives us a decent 60s rock number with rotor organs and moves on to another upbeat tune in Train For Tomorrow.  I'll say this for the songs, they're odd progressions making use of quite peculiar intervals and my inner ear is finding it a challenge to nail them down.  Makes for interesting listening and his soft, breathy vocal is very pleasant.

This fifth track gives way to a jazz waltz solo section where the guitar isn't exactly Kenny Burrell and perhaps a bit too ambitious for the tone set but it's keeping my attention even if the general feel is that the guitarist may be playing beyond their skill level in trying to extemporise the entire solo instead of preparing something they could've played more confidently.

Sold To The Highest Bidder has a mandolin-driven Mexicana polka feel and is quite painful.  It feels like it's supposed to be a parody or a send up of the style.  "Going going gone" pronounced with max melodrama is pretty funny but that mandolin (if that's what it is) is giving me a real arse ache.

Next up is a messy 12 bar with way too much reverb called Get Me To The World On Time.  Nevertheless it bobs along quite inoffensively until the side tom makes an entrance and the rhythm switches to a Fade Away analogue that puts everybody of a certain age in mind of the Scotch 3M VHS advert from the 80s where a stop-motion skeleton Rex Harrisons his way thru

"I'm gonna tell you how it's going to be 
With Scotch's lifetime guarantee
Tape what you want both night and day
Then rerecord not fade away,
rerecord not fade away."

Resurrecting the Heart and Soul rhythm A Quarter To Nine is a cheekily pleasant jazz stroller that could've stood to be a bit longer rather than giving us The King Is In His Counting House, a working example of a weaponised harpsichord taking the main accompaniment for what isn't so much chamber music as chamber pot music.

My missus agrees.  Or least I think she does based on her having just walked past and remarked "what the fuck is this shit?"

Try Me On For Size is a nice little upbeat number incorporating a glockenspiel to good effect without lampooning themselves and then we've got a proper oompah-honky-tonk-pub-piano finale in The Toonerville Trolley.  The rhyming options are pretty slim pickings but the lyricist has spared no expense in shoehorning every single one of them into these words. 

So where does that leave us?  Rather than the total shit show I expected, they've actually managed to achieve a precarious equipoise between groovy tunes and unequivocal cock.  3 stars.

#0100: Are You Experienced? - Jimi Hendrix

I'm in a bit of a cleft stick with this.  I know a lot of the songs but I've never heard this album in its entirety in order.  So some songs I'll be reviewing as old friends and others in the cold light of whatever mood I'm in today.

I didn't get into Jimi Hendrix until my 20s and even now I don't listen to it that often.  I don't remember hearing it earlier and dismissing it either.  I do remember hearing the Star Spangled Banner from Woodstock and seeing footage of him setting light to his guitar and disapproving.  That would've been around the time of Live Aid.  Maybe that's why I always sidestepped giving it a listen.

Then in 1987 I bought Sting's album Nothing Like The Sun.  On this album was a beautiful song with a guitar solo from guest legend, Eric Clapton.  It was called Little Wing and confirmed for me my opinion of Sting as a songwriting genius.

I am shaking my head in despair at the unabashed cockwombling of my younger self.

Are You Experienced begins with Purple Haze*.  I've always had mixed feelings about Purple Haze. The intro is so discordant but the notes are revealed to be the extremes of a big chord arpeggiated by his opening phrases.  One sure thing is that once the groove kicks in, I'm just in it.  I'm committed.  I couldn't turn the song off if my life depended on it.  Even at the end of the second verse, where the band loses time so badly I'm struggling to understand why they didn't do another take, my body is unconsciously urging forward on the chair, willing them to find it again instead of reaching for the skip button.

The song continues with what is quite a messy break really, but the guitar solo is undeniably sweet and rejoins the intro seamlessly.

So mixed feelings, yes, but it's mostly love if for nothing else than the smile that spreads across my face when I think of rock and roll's most famous mondegreen and of course, The Cure's cataclysmic tribute version.

Manic Depression

The first version of this I heard was by Seal on an outtakes/rarities compilation of some kind.  Seal's voice is absolutely incredible.  I don't think anybody would dispute that.  What I hadn't noticed was how his phrasing seems influenced by Jimi Hendrix at times.  Hendrix's voice is unusual.  I wouldn't say he was a "singer" as such but yet his vocals are so easy to listen to.  He swings from tune to speech, from metered to arrhythmic but never seems to blur the line between the two.  I've never had a sharp intake of breath because a note was flat.

The deep, grinding tone he gets from the guitar swaying and driving thru the riffs on this song is mesmeric.  The stops Mitch Mitchell fills with such delicate fury make this compelling listening.   And across it all, Hendrix taking apart the complexities of depression, anxiety and mania long before the psychiatric profession had even considered the term bipolar.

Hey Joe

I already have shivers up and down my spine as this tale told in conversations reveals its tragic, horrifying narrative of a possessive man who upon discovering his partner's infidelity, murders her and flees the country.  Dunno if there's anyone who thinks this song glorifies domestic abuse but to me it's fairly clear Joe is the dick of the story.

Mind you, this is the first time I've really given a moral fuck about the lyrics.  I've always just accepted the song for what it is - a slowly building crescendo of tension towards the final outpouring of all that pent up hurt that somehow represents every character in the story.   The split scale anthem that enters perfectly expressing the end of one tale and the continuation of the cycle.

Love Or Confusion

This is one I hadn't heard before.  It's got that trademark Hendrix format where the groove goes round to the change and climaxes on a stop where there's a hook and the whole thing either repeats or goes into the change.  The hook is great and makes use of a compressed distortion (I think?) we haven't heard so far.  That groove is the same as Purple Haze but it's built on a different progression from the preceding tracks so it all stays fresh.  It's a perfectly functioning album track and I can see this becoming as beloved as the others with familarity.

May This Be Love

On to the pace change then and another song new to me.  Hendrix taking a couple of well-pitched risks here.  He attempts double tracking the vocal in places, which works well and hasn't fallen foul of the problem where what was hoped would make the sound bigger ends up sounding like 3 children all trying to sing louder than the others. 

He has also branched with the complexity of the progression and melody on this and the drums are taking a break from their frenetic funk to provide a sort of Caribbean feel?  It's a gentle song but still has that edge.

I Don't Live Today

Lyrically this appears to be an argument between depression and mania.  I don't want to live today but it's a shame to waste my time.  Ego presumably can think of something to do with that time that the depressed id can't see from behind the black dog.  It does pretty well and has a very punchy chorus but the latter minute and a half is a steadily increasing cacophony of velocity overload that begins to fade out and back in again while Jimi can be heard saying unintelligible stuff in the dips.  It's not pleasant but it doesn't go on for too long I guess and has some illustrative value.

The Wind Cries Mary

I think this is the first song where I've heard his trademark 2-string hammer-on technique.  This is a song with a similar groove to Little Wing (anachronistically speaking) but the verses are so short you never really get lost in it.  At the end of each verse the climbing resolution recurs and there's a slowing, free time feel that puts you in a state of suspended animation until it all kicks in again.  No fucking idea what the words are about, mind, but they're nice.

Fire

Once upon a time in New York City, I was walking thru the Union Square subway station heading uptown to a gig.  I saw three guys to my left just finishing setting up guitars and a small kit.  I wasn't gonna stop until I heard the drummer start playing this fucking sick syncopated beat at what felt like a thousand beats per minute.  It literally stopped me in my tracks.  I turn just in time to hear the guitars come in with this minimalist stopping riff; only a handful of notes and then left the bar open for the drums again.  So spacious.  So infectious.  I was captivated.

The guy starts singing some words I can't make out across the cheering crowd that had gathered and then there's a stop and they burst into this open, much more fluid version of the progression while he's singing what sounds like "let me stand next to your fire" over and over.

In a couple of minutes they were done and I had to force myself out of the reverie they'd created and run for my train, cursing the fact that there were too many people and not enough time to fight my way thru them to put some money in their hat.

I told the story when I got to the gig and the first guy I told instantly said, "Jimi Hendrix.  Yeah it's fuckin' awesome, man." 

A few years later, back in the UK, I arranged songs for the band I was in and sometimes formed unlikely medleys.  We were working on Live And Let Die when I realised that the flute hook was the same progression as Fire so I transposed them making it possible to branch from one to the other.  The drummer hated it but I had a lot of fun until his patience finally came to an end and we had to drop it from the set.

My favourite bit was the line before the chorus of Fire.  I would do it in different voices.  Most notably.

Michael Caine: "Let me.  Stand next to.  Your fire."
Jimmy "not yet utterly disgraced so still a fun impression to do for all the family" Savile:"(Tarzan cry) Dear Jim, please could you fix it for ME, to stand to next TO your FIRE"
Yoda: "Mmmm.  Next to your fire, let me stand."

So, yeah.  Awkward turtle.

Third Stone From The Sun

 Jazz influence front and centre for this instrumental piece that is the longest track on the album by...well, it's twice as long as the next longest.  There are some words being spoken in there somewhere but I can't make them out.  I think it was a mistake to use the same bass line as Fire for this track.  It has a more Hendrixy sounding section which is basically a slower version of Fire.  When it returns to the jazzy bit, there's a lot of weird noises and arrthymic drumming leaving Noel Redding holding the tempo baby on the bass.  You get a good couple of minutes of that shite before the main theme returns briefly before collapsing once more into absolute gash.

I fail to see the artistic merit in this.  If so many great recordings were made during this period then why the fuck wouldn't they put some of the others on here instead of this obvious and insulting filler?

Foxy Lady

Is it really Foxey Lady?  That would be pronounced "Folksy lady" wouldn't it?

"Ooooh, you know you're a little brownie baker,
mmm folksy
and you know you're a little crochet maker,
folksy lady,
I wanna take you home
to meet my mum,
I'm sure she'll want the pattern
for that cardigan"

Yeah, I'm going with "foxy".

I know the song.  I love the song.  It was a long long time before I figured out that guitar lick on the turnaround isn't actually wildly out of time, tho.  He's just *really* fucking with the tension points.  Cunt.

Are You Experienced?

The sounds of the guitar on this really remind me of the outro on Queen's I'm In Love With My Car.  Wouldn't mind betting Dr May robbed that tinny effect straight off this.  Although this sounds great for about a minute and a half, you've then got some experimentation with backwards tape loops and guitar solos which I'm tempted to play forwards to see if it's any better.  The song then resumes and I like the tune and some of the words are coming thru as I'm writing this.  I guess if he's talking about acid then it has to be a little weird but it's quite noisy and my trippy head likes its music a bit more peaceful.  Camel's The Snow Goose is what you want when you're tripping.

Having said that, me and a couple of mates sat and listened to a Hendrix compilation on repeat for about 5 hours on acid one night.  One wasn't actually tripping but he was pretty stoned, idolised Jimi Hendrix, was our friend and was quite happy to stare at the lava lamp with us while taking occasional hits on a bottle of amyl nitrite we had in our possession for some unknown reason.

Fuck.  I'd forgotten how cunted we used to get.  Good times.

Stone Free

Seal again in my memory.  He has recorded at least 3 Hendrix songs that I know of.  This is such a welcome break at this point as it seems like a lifetime ago I was telling you about Fire.  Too much weird in the interim and I for one definitely needed to hear more of that urgent pace and rebellious ire.  Both are delivered with impudent aplomb on this old favourite.

51st Anniversary

And the beat goes on.  The pace is continued with this never-before-heard track that seems to further promote the idea of being single.  The progression is one of my favourites - try it yourself if you play.  It's ii I V (or Em D A in the key of D).

What's interesting about this one is it breaks from the hook and pause format to give the bass focus for the hook and leave the dangling note in favour of dropping onto a repeated bass note that holds the next section together.

Highway Chile

First time I've heard him play a roadhouse blues.  It's worth the wait.  The sounds he's got on this guitar I have heard other guitarists trying to emulate but nothing come close to how this screams without ever hurting your ears.  I can hear how The Sweet were probably influenced by this track in particular.  Honestly, I'm starting to feel like Hendrix is to guitarists what the Beatles are to songwriters.

Can You See Me

Another new one and this one in the driving zone too.   If so many of them are similar, why am I not frustrated by that?  I think it's the articulation and grouping in the hooks, in the incidental work during the verses.  It's important to not let a song stand entirely on its vocal, I believe.  And it's not like I'm sitting here listening for what I perceive to be mistakes.  If I start getting bored or irritated, that's a reaction and I have to figure out what's causing it, not the other way around. 

Remember

Opening with a blaze of his signature licks, Remember snaps into it a strutfest of a groove with an underpinning riff supporting this wistful appeal to rejuice an old squeeze.  A solo links to the next verse that's just dripping with sweet notes that make you do your jazz face.  It's over way too soon but it's a classy example of leaving them wanting more.

Red House

And finally, a traditional 12 bar swing blues whose beauty is in the execution of this well-trodden form.  The precision and definition of his guitar playing effortlessly punctuating the lyrics, the throwaway comments as he climbs thru repeating, accelerating licks that are so easy to suck at.  It's a masterclass and a perfect end to what must be one of the biggest game changers in rock and roll history.

5 stars.  Like you needed confirmation.

-----------------------------------------

* On the CD and Spotify.  It is noted that Foxy Lady opened the original UK release but I'm breaking my rule of only listening to the tracks originally released on this occasion so that I don't miss the opportunity to write something about the other tracks included since, like The Wind Cries Mary and Stone Free.

#0099: I'm A Lonely Fugitive - Merle Haggard

There isn't a lot written about this album in the actual 1001 book and that was penned by somebody who's supposed to like this shit.  What fucking chance have I got?

This guy apparently was cashing in on Johnny Cash (shit - too late) becoming successful after going to prison.  Johnny Cash's songs had flavour.  I started this 33 minute album about 20 minutes ago and now, 40 years later I can tell you they do have flavour.  They have the *same* flavour. 

Okie from Muskogee boasts of not smoking marijuana or doing acid.  You've got brain damage cuz your daddy couldn't keep his dick out of your sister and you're preaching to me about psychedelics?  Fuck you, douchebag.  Play me another redneck polka.

Next track.  Oh I say, it's a redneck polka.  It's like I'm fucking psychic or something.

News just in.  In track 9 he claims to have always known he would lose you.  There's a few toothless hookers on the Ozark shore trying to figure out which of them he means but we know he's talking about his audience. 

There really isn't any point in my analysing the music for you or writing any kind of critique about the songs.  They are literally all the same shitty, primitive country* music. 

Zero stars.

* It's acoustic guitar, occasional very simple drums. Chords are mostly I and IV, you get a ii V I sometimes and if you're very well behaved he'll break out chord vi but I think it hurts his brain too much to contemplate the major 3rd on chord iii and give us even a little respite.   

#0098: Sunshine Superman - Donovan

So many tracks I actually know but never knew their titles or who recorded them and this is no exception.  The title track is that legendary chromatic hook that somehow never gets old as the mostly acoustic arrangement bobs and dips thru its 3 minutes of overture pop.

I say overture cuz track 2 is a bold change of pace, immediately plunging us in at the deep end with a 7 minute, slow rhapsodic song called Legend of a Girl Child Linda.  It is centred on a baritone melody supported by a simple acoustic guitar and orchestral interweaving themes from strings, flutes and oboes.  I suppose it remains to be seen whether this was the best positioning for this song.  It's a proper ballad, as in it's verse after verse of what I gather is some kind of soft tragedy.  I'm not saying it isn't good or that I might not eventually like it but it's no Stairway.  Now there's a 7+ minute song that just hits you and stay hit.

Three Kingfishers then is the song that will do most to determine the character and tone of this album and hopefully give me some idea of where it's g-oh fuck.  Here come the sitars.  It's the most authentic sounding sitar I've heard on a hippy album to date but it's still sitar music.  Directionless, meandering nonsense and the music is pretty aimless too.  Thankfully there's only 3 minutes of it.

Well, I say 3 minutes.  I'll have to add the running time of track 4 onto that as well cuz even though it's more melodic than the previous song, it's still got a really nasty twanging noise phasing into the pain zone every third beat of the bar.  Unfuckingbearable.  40 seconds to go mostly taken up by someone practising scales on the sitar.  We practice scales so we can play tunes.  Just sayin'.  Rehearse on your own dime, motherfucker.

Bert's Blues releases us from the cinnamon scented grip of its hideous forerunners but it's a fucking mess.  After the first couple of rounds it drops into a sort of harpsichord tone poem.  The cellos interweaving are doing well to sound out of place (i.e. good) against this.  What a waste. 

I think I've heard somebody else's version of Season Of The Witch.  It sounds familiar.  This isn't too bad.  It's more akin to the opening track but it's a two chord groove and while the chorus and verse are distinct arrangements, Donovan can sing and the melodies do differ, it's still....fucking dull.  This kinda reminds me of my problem with The Doors.

The Trip starts promisingly.  Nothing too aggressive in this.  It's a nice little walking blues (I think - blues aficionados may well be able to correct me on that) with a not too ambitious vocal and this is what you want from your music.  They're supposed to make it sound easy.

That last track restored some of my faith in this but when you see the next track is called "Guinevere", I tend to clench up if it's not the David Crosby masterwork.  Yes, earnest anorak, that other song has an extra "n" in it.  Well spotted, now fuck off. :0)  This Guinevere is a predictably courtly, lamentably pedestrian and forgettably historian ballad about days of yawn, sorry yore.

The Fat Angel.  I was desperate for this to be funny.  It's a funny title.  More sitars.  Instead of paying attention I did some editing on the last paragraph. Perhaps you noticed.  No?  Thanks.

The last track is called Celeste.  It's a slow number with a smidgen of sitar.  Not wholly offensive but nowhere near good enough to help this awkward lump of congealed soup get beyond two stars. 

#0097: Something Else By The Kinks - The Kinks

It is the unremarkable nature of each mundane complaint combined with their pinpoint specificity that makes these lyrics stand out.  That is, if you can hear them.  On David Watts, even amid the driving, punky beat foreshadowing Stiff Little Fingers by over a decade, I am frustrated by the vocal mix.  But it's the 60s.  Neither the sky nor the legendary "this guy" has been kissed yet so let's cut the engineer a break in this prelude to the mondegreen fields of modern lyrics.

It becomes increasingly hard to do that as each succeeding track leaves the vocal too far back in the mix and particularly on No Return there's a buzzing up front that's certainly unpleasant in the cans.  Early speakers would have been more forgiving as indeed would a basic, contemporary phone.

Through classics like Death Of A Clown, Two Sisters and Harry Rag we are taken along these short-cuts thru the gardens of Ray's mind.  It's like reading a collection of short stories.  None of the songs is much over 3 minutes and each has its own distinct tune, its own distinct story to tell with the minimum of fuss, the minimum of words.

Tin Soldier Man is a bouncy little number I'd like to hear a treatment of in a 60s set.  For all I know it's a classic people would expect to hear but it feels to me like it might be a surprise for any fans of either the Kinks or the late 60s.

Situation Vacant would stand up anywhere today.  It's got a steady, urgent groove halfway between that kooky twist and primitive headbanging.  Cracking song with a beautiful drum solo featuring on the playout.

This leads into Love Me Till The Sun Shines, which carries on the now heavier thread leading us forward thru this collection.  It's like the album started with a strong core wire that has varied in resistance as we've gone along and with the charge varying with the mood but always there, assuring us of the song's stability, affirming trust.  By the time these last two tracks come along, the core has widened to carry the load of this much gutsier material that captures and trips you out.

All that work appears to have been in preparation for the first real gamble on the album in Lazy Old Sun, which is plenty psychedelic with the suggestion of sitars, it could easily have been written by George Harrison but I don't know if I'd've like it as much.  Much as I like George, his trippy stuff always left me cold - and was too long, which is a mistake this album never makes.

Before we know we're into the light and airy Afternoon Tea with its clean lines, spacious harmonies and a solid tune sitting atop a framework so you can get grounded again.  That's good album-sense to me.  

Where experimentation occurs it is confined to specific areas, rather than being an anarchic disregard of form.  Funny Face plays with time and texture.  It has challenges but its personality coupled with its great sense of balance and enough being enough keep it interesting.   Similarly, End Of The Season toys with the chromatic properties of minor relationships producing a sort of Thames estuary film noir.  Why do I imagine a very young Bowie doing great justice to this track?

It's all rather refreshing, a dazzling whistle-stop tour that is now revealed to have had a glorious destination in mind.  Blasting through the quirky silence by the previous track, the opening of Waterloo Sunset surprises, delights and sends a wash of shivers down my spine as my mouth begins searching for the words to this very familiar tune I had no idea was on this.

Production issues notwithstanding this album is outstanding and it would be a gross injustice to give it any fewer than 5 stars.  

#0096: Surrealist Pillow - Jefferson Airplane

It has been a while.  Thank you for your patience.  I wrote a draft of my review for this album almost two years ago now so I'm taking another spin of this in an effort to let my thoughts coalesce across the divide.

The first thing that hits me about the opening track is it's got one of those deceptive rhythms where the drums and guitar seem to be in opposition.  One of them is playing against the beat and until the vocal and/or bass enters it's anybody's guess as to where the 1 is.

Sometimes that's a really cool effect.  Other times it's just annoying.  I'm slightly annoyed to be honest, which is itself annoying cuz She Has Funny Cars has got what I would call a psychedelic folk feel that does draw you in without trying to be too weird.  There are lots of vocal overlays, none of which quite manage to stay at the front for long enough to form a narrative but what this does promise is that repeated listening will yield more detail.  It's certainly bouncy enough and the guitar work is tasty and controlled.  Nice little false ending as well.

Somebody To Love is a famous song - I couldn't tell you where I know it from, probably a soundtrack.  The female vocal is rich and intense but not forced, the guitar work is again deft and interesting and whole thing is carried off in under 3 minutes so no complaints.

Taking it down a notch or two to a soft hippy sunshine song, My Best Friend hangs on to the turn while they layer the harmonies and some might say that's laying it on a bit thick but it gives way to a slightly funky play-out that then returns to the full upper body swaying coach trip song.  Back and forth the two grooves hand back control making this not the dull with saccharin excursion it threatened.

And cue the moody ballad.  Today is your basic atmospheric piece, flooded with reverb with the male vocal sitting in the almost Jon Anderson high tenor range.  It drifts past with increasing gravitas in the form of timpani and extra harmony but drifting is the operative word and if that's its intent, job done.    

Coming Back To Me is a picky one for you fledgling axe minstrels.  With a low flute line, giving it an ethereal edge, the vocals describe a dreamlike state in which lost love is seen to return.  As whiny pleading for another shag goes it's as artful as that sort of desperate clinging gets.  Sardonic dismissal aside it's quite beautiful.

It took a wile to get back to the stomping up beat stuff.  Maybe that's just their style; to be more of a folky ambient bunch.  Time will tell but the basic riff in Three Fifths Of A Mile In 10 Seconds is rescued from ennui by the now characteristic harmonies and some interesting chord changes in the turnaround.

The guitarist isn't blowing anybody's mind but he's tuneful at least and doesn't labour the point.  What's wrong with it?   Well, the titles are really interesting but I can't catch enough of the vocal to tell if that's just a gimmick.   3 5ths of a mile is prolly the distance to the shops when I was a kid.  That was 10 mins walk uphill so to do it in seconds, this song is ether about sex or drugs.   Yeah, you don't really need a weird title to get that across.

D.C.B.A.25 - This is more towards the flowers in your hair mood tho and so is the next one - How Do You Feel.  So we have a consensus now at least on what this album is really saying.  Jefferson Airplane are a folk crossover band and their strengths are formidable.

Now, I don't care if you hate the TV show, Friends.  You don't care that I hate some of your favourite stuff so let's just make our peace with that.  The next track I recognised instantly but it took a minute for me to place it as the music used during the end credits of the very last episode of Friends.  I have seen it a number of times and I do not mind admitting that I cry every single time.  I don't think it's just that the show is ending.  I think the choice of music is a significant contributor.  It's called Embryonic Journey and it's just fantastic.  It's an instrumental, solo acoustic guitar piece and it has the feel of something plucked from thin air, expressing the moment with exquisite accuracy. 

It's somewhat reminiscent of Bron Yr Aur from Led Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti some years later so that should probably be vice versa.  Maybe there's an influence there.  

We're drawing towards the close of the original track listing and White Rabbit begins as the wild card in the deck.  It's a tango / flamenco thing that breaks into a rockier adaptation for its ciimax.  Obvious references to Alice aside it's not unbearable and then we have the finale.

Plastic Fantastic.  Buggeration.  Why does everyone have to allude to Dylan?   Lots of greater musicians than I really rate him so I don't think they really mean to draw attention to his many weaknesses when they cover his stuff or, as in this case, when they write a song in his style.  This is a great song, tho.  The right length and no bullshit.  See Bob?  No you don't see, do you?  Your view is obscured by your massive, pulsating prostate.  

Plenty of variety in this and mostly not shit so I'm giving it an optimistic 4 stars[1]

[1] I've gone back and forth on whether to keep the rating secret until the end as I have here but I find it useful when searching thru previous posts to use the rating as a search term.  The compromise I've settled on is to leave it a week or two until enough people have had a chance to read each one before I include my rating in the title.  So.  That's a thing you know, now.