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Blog No. 5 George Harrison: Moog Music Pioneer?

Blog No. 6 The 13th Floor Elevators: Was such a poor sounding debut album really that influential?









                  Blog 1] How prog became a dirty word (or how punk really started) by Bullwinkle J. Moose  I was born in the early 50's and went through the standard musical baby boomer experience of the time in that the emerging rock and roll scene was scorned by my parents and welcomed by my friends and siblings. This soon turned into the infatuation with the 60's British invasion spearheaded by the Beatles and their landmark appearance on the Ed Sullivan show. This soon turned to counter culture music fandom when my brother and I witnessed a concert in 1967 in Philadelphia by a black guitar player named Jimi Hendrix. Everything went black or fluorescent colored after that. But once the haze cleared, I knew that this guitarist was amazing. One of those talents that would come around once in a lifetime. I played guitar briefly before crushing three of my left hand fingers in a dirt motorbike wipeout, so I had an idea of what he was doing even if I knew I never could play what he was playing even if I had four good hands. I briefly switched to slide playing before seeing another genius in concert who was outdoing Robert Johnson's acoustic slide work. His name was Ryland (Ry) Cooder. Cream happened. Abbey Road happened. ITCotCK happened. Woodstock happened. And then things started to change.                            

            The hippie scene was over and disco started to drift in along with the 70's.I didn't care. I still had my music. Folk rock, prog rock and hard rock. At a party in the late 70's, my friends and I were just finishing listening to the closing strains of Dave Swarbrick's coda on The Who's bombastic classic song Baba O'Reilly. At the conclusion of the song, a friend produced a new album from Eric Clapton titled Slow Hand. I had heard one weak sounding song off the album but was still hoping to hear some fireworks. Clapton had been in a slow mode for a while. I was hoping the album's title was an in joke and that he would come alive again. I listened to the album. A real snoozer. My friends all said the album was a classic. All I could say was that I thought that they were packing their bowls too tight. (to be continued)                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Well, obviously my opinion to my friends went over like a lead balloon, so my friends said to me that I was unable to appreciate the subtle genius of a refined work like Slow Hand. A statement that I felt  went over like a square wheel. Before things got too heated, my friend Roger reminded me of our mutual agreement that they, the three friends that  I referred to as the 'metal mob', Roger, Phil and Joe Maz,  and I agreeded that they would not play the new punk music (that I considered simplistic) that was exploding at the time and that I would cease from playing prog music (that they considered too complex and boring); and if they were allowed to play the exciting new punk then I would have nothing to complain about.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 My first response to this was that three chord rock songs could not compensate for the lack of passion in the former rock genres and that the lyrical contents of punk were childish at best. Well, here we go. First Roger told me that punk was a direct response to the over indulgence of prog as Johnny Rotten so famously stated by wearing a home made t-shirt condeming Pink Floyd and their pretentous music. I responed that Rotten Johnny was up against mega stars in his own country and how else could he compete against Floyd on a purely musical and intellectual level? Then things started to take a turn for the surreal. Roger, a truck driver, went on to state while on a delivery between the NJ and PA border, all he could get on the radio one night was one of two available stations playing all four sides of Yes' Songs Froms Telegraphic Oceans. His claim of FM radio play was so outrageous I didn't even bother to correct him as to the album's title. Joe Maz then chimed in that he just heard the first side of Tull's new album Songs From The Wood on the way over  in his car and was wondering when Tull was ever going to go back to making multi song albums like Aqualung. Just when it couldn't get worse, Phil complained that all prog groups were touring with full symphony orchestras and that's why concert prices for prog shows were going through the roof and one friend even questioned if Floyd even performed most of The  Wall live in concert as they were hidden by a wall. I think I kept pushing the bottom of my jaw upwards to make sure I was not standing there in shock with my mouth ajar.                          

             My only backup to counter these left field claims was that my best friend Jimmy and life long prog sharing buddy was stopping by soon and I was hoping he would help me counter these outrageous statements. But Jimmy had just gone through a seperation with his wife, got hooked up with some disco club bimbo and decided that he could dance as good as Travolta, even though he had three left feet. I just hoped he wasn't too loopy tonight. No such luck. He showed up with a new prerequisite Travolta hair cut,  polyester threads and a Patti  Labelle disc tucked under his arm. I tried to engage Jimmy in discussions  involving Floyd's Dark Side of The Moon, Yes' Close To The Edge and only ELP touring with an orchestra and losing money in the process, but all he could do was keep looking at himself in a mirror, gently touching his blond hair and ask in a made up voice that sounded like a cross between Travolta's Saturday Night Fever character and Sylvester Stalone's from Rocky: 'Whadda think huh, whadda think?' Now, I'm not really sure why punk rock started in CBGBs  in NYC in 1974-75, you  would probably need a sociologist to figure it out, but I do know why prog is considered a dirty word. For a brief time in 1977, I'm sure the entire non  prog listening world was convinced that all four sides of Yes' Songs From Telegraphic Oceans was in constant rotation on FM radio, Jethro Tull's last multi song album was Aqualung, prog groups toured with full symphony orchestras driving up ticket prices and and a blond haired Irish kid from the Bronx kept looking in the mirror and saw John Travolta's image staring back at him. That friends is the Gods honest truth, or my name isn't Bullwinkle J. Moose.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                Post  Script: Is the story true?  Well mostly. The last part of the story is a compilation for the the sake of simplicity and to hopefully give you a laugh. In 1977 I was working as a live sound engineer for a metal act and 'Roger', 'Joe Maz' and 'Phil' were three lovable if somewhat clueless band 'roadies' whose loved the music of the Stones, The Grateful Dead, Rainbow, Kiss and Sabbath and their often bizarre misguided take on prog music, no doubt added by mass cannabis consumption, never seemed to be without end and often gave me quite a laugh during our many motel stops on the road; so the last part of the story is a compilation of some of their more outrageous takes on prog. As for my friend 'Jimmy', he went on to become a somewhat wealthy Wall Street stock trader and hasn't spoken to me in years. Now you know that's true.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Blog 2] Roy Harper: Prog's buried treasure You are probably familiar with the name Roy Harper. He sung vocals on the song Have A Cigar on the 1975 Pink Floyd album Wish You Were Here album because Roger Waters couldn't do it justice. But what else do you know about him? Do you know that he created three of the best prog albums Between 1975 and 1980? The album's bear a striking similarity with Floyd's work and could almost be called Symphonic at times. Except that there is no orchestra playing or any use of keyboards. And nobody misses them. Harper started out his sixties career as one of swinging London's trendy folk singers alongside the likes of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn.  Almost as skilled as an acoustic guitar player of the afore mentioned, but Harper could something better. There was only one slight difference, he could actually sing and write his own songs. Harper was literate and eccentric, to put it mildly, and sometimes what he sang about went over most people's heads. But he had talent and he was going to stay an acoustic playing folkie for as long as it took. Until Have A Cigar was played all over the world and Harper received little credit for his contribution. It was stated on the album jacket in small writing but no one really noticed or probably cared. But Harper cared and he was determined to give up his acoustic troubadour ways and create his own prog rock album.                           

            But to stay within his folk aesthetic heavy keyboards were out of the question so Harper just figured that he would work around them. The first thing that Harper did was to hire a good studio and touring band, cut an album and hit the big time. He was under contract to Harvest records at the time and had full use of the EMI Abbey Road studios that you know who had made famous with the four Moptops crossing the street in the white zebra stripes.Harper assembled a studio band consisting of ex-Yes and King Crimson member Bill Bruford on drums, ace session guitarist Chris Spedding and uber bassist Dave Cochran. The album was not overly prog but contained some killer cuts including a demo 'run through' version of a poignant moving song called Hallucinating Light. Played and sung by Harper and his musos in one demo 'first run through' take. it was stunning and everyone knew there was no need for a proper take. Harper's slightly raspy vocals actually enhanced the song giving it a feel and vibe that a smoother take could not. They captured lightning in a bottle and why not when you consider who were the creators. Another stand out track was the five movement suite song titled The Game, again made magical by Harper's studio band that was now going by the name of Trigger. When it came time to produce an album sleeve, Harper choose Hipgnosis to create the cover with a photo of Harper walking on water. Remember that I said he was eccentric. And here's where the problems started.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        HQ: Harper's record company Harvest (EMI) handled the distribution of HQ in the UK and Europe. In America and the rest of the world, the distribution was handled by Chrysalis Records. Harvest was afraid of Chrysalis' reaction to the record cover in the  U.S. and had their own reservations about it being released in the UK and Europe. This was the seventies after all and the world was not as progressive as Harper or Hipgnosis imagined it to be. The cover was changed to a Harvest  approved design instead. The record had a single released in the UK titled When An Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease. A sentimental tale that was great for the UK but senseless anywhere else. Except for India perhaps. Who else in the world played Cricket ? And this was what Harper was up against.                           Harvest was supposed to be a record label that was geared toward the nineteen sixties counter culture that was supposed to give artists artistic license  with groups like Pink Floyd on it's label, but it was a sham. It was there to make money like any other EMI  owned company and Harper was one of it's worst treated signings. Harper, up until the last album he produced Life Mask, was a true folk singer songwriter that recorded predominately with just his lone acoustic guitar, his voice and occasional strings from arranger David Bedford. When Harper completed his 1971 four song cycle all acoustic album Stormcock, Harvest threw a fit at not being able to offer a single from the album and were especially annoyed that Harper  did not take their advice and produce a true rock album with full instrumentation. So the HQ album cover switch, the release of  When An Old Cricketer Leaves the Crease as a single with almost no promotion from Harvest and especially Chrysalis in the U.S., did Harper no favors and strained his relationship with both record companies. But worse, it kept most of the world from hearing this extraordinary album. Undaunted, Harper would try again in 1977 with an album that combined all of the words in the title into one nonsense word: Bullinamingvase. Do you recall that I said that Harper was eccentric?                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

                   Bullinamingvase: That didn't sit well with Harper was that HQ's album title was changed to An Old Cricketer Leaves The Crease in the U.S. Again, what sense did that make and Harper may have kept that in his mind. For this follow up album Harper retained ace session players Henry McCulloch on guitar, B.J. Cole on pedal steel, Steve Broughton on drums and Dave Cochran on bass again. Harper was again going to make a prog rock album but still keep it devoid of heavy keyboards, especially synths,and again used uber studio Abbey Road and it's incredible engineers to record the album. As most  of Harper's previous protest topics like the Vietnam War were long past, Harper again wrote songs about life in England and personal relationships. One song in particular featured harmony vocals by Paul and Linda McCartney and was another long almost stream of consciousness song called One Of Those Days in England. The song was long but catchy so EMI edited down the song and released it as a single which almost cracked the British top ten charts and was actually good for Harper in England. But other tracks, particularly a prog song called Cherishing the Lonesome was ignored. The song was actually two songs in one that Harper had cleverly grafted together with an acoustic into, heavy rock middle section with a killer vocal performance from Harper and an acoustic multi tuned guitar coda that freed up the need for keyboards.                         

                The song woud have been probably been a world wide hit if it was released and promoted in the U.S. and Europe but it wasn't to be. Harper named the album Bullinamingvase (Bull In A Ming Vase) to probably drive EMI crazy for their name change of HQ, but this only made the album harder to market. The album also picked up steam in England due to a throwaway track titled Watford Gap, a real truck stop in England that Harper song of it's rotten food. The truck stop complained and the song was dopped from the album by EMI, Apparently this was a more important Issue to Harvest and as usual 1977's Bullinamingvase suffered. But Harvest realised that Harper almost had a top ten hit with One If Those Days In England and wanted another album from him and quickly. And Harper tried to oblige them.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           
                The Unknown Soldier: The follow up album by Harper was to be called Commercial Breaks as a jib to himself by Harper who was up to that time about as anti-commercial as an artist could get in his attitude and material which he felt was never aimed at the masses. Most of the same studio musicians followed with the inclusion of Andy Roberts  on guitar.  Accounts differ but when the album was completed and previewed for Harvest, the Haverst brass rejected it as being of poor quality. Harper offered to redo the album but wanted additional funding from Harvest. At first this was not forthcoming and the album sat. In the mean time, Harper wrote more songs including a collaboration with David Gilmour for Gilmour's 1977 self titled solo album. The song was called Short and Sweet and was one the album's highlights. When funds were eventually available to Harper. He did  re-record seveal songs including one called The Flycatcher which originally lacked the gravitas that this grand song about a ghostly  vision on a beach of a lost love of Harpers required. Sticking to his no keyboard ethic, Harper hired David Bedford to compose an earie violin melody over the song's verses and included a double lead guitar coda by Both McCulloch and Roberts that were dissimilar and coiled around each other like two snakes entwined around a tree branch.                                      

             Harper cut his own version of Short and Sweet and also composed a duet  for Kate Bush and himself with  Gilmour guesting on guitar. The song was called You and Harper was pumped about the album which he now renamed The Unknown Soldier after another new song that Harper wrote for the album. The album cover featured, according to Harper,  a photo of real skeletal remains of  an actual soldier from a military memorial tomb in France. Real or not, it is a chilling album cover,  and of course it was changed for several European countries, again adding a sense of confusion to one of Harper's albums.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                             The album was released in 1980, three full years after Bullinamingvase and with animosity that existed between Harper and Harvest it was to be their last release together and as usual, the album received little promotion. Especially in The U.S. where the album is practically unknown and remains so to this day along with its predecessors HQ and Bullinamingvase.To be fair, the music  scene changed rapidly between 1977 and 1980 with the onslaught of punk and the reaction to it by hard rock/metal, so that's part of the reason why The Unknown Soldier remains a footnote in the history of progressive rock. However, the same can not be said of the albums HQ and Bullinamingvase which would have been successful if they were promoted properly,  and the sucess of The Unknown Soldier would have naturally followed. Certainly Harper's well known eccentric behavior and difficulty working with past producers like the  venerated American producer, living in the UK at the time, Shel Talmy (The Who,  Kinks and  The Pentangle) who once referred to Harper as 'no bed of roses'  after producing his second and third solo albums including the exasperating meandering Folkjokeopus, no doubt didn't help his cause; but Harper possessed that rare ingredient in his talent to place him on almost equal footing with other seventies prog greats, at least for a short time.                        

               Also hindering Harper's cause was his inability to initially produce a strong follow up to Bullinamingvase. Always a bit patchy and uneven, Harper's albums were never knock out classics like those produced by Yes or Pink Floyd, but they contained some exceptional songs that were every bit the equal of Roundabout or Comfortably Numb,but few people heard them.  And that's a sad fact for both Harper and fans of progressive rock.                         

 

                 Blog No.3] Gordon Haskell And King Crimson:  What was and what could have been.  To many in the Americas, Gordon Haskell was the short lived, one time bass player and lead vocalist for King Crimson. For those on the Continent, Haskell made a Lazarus like rise from the died with a jazzy novelty hit in 2001 titled How Wonderful You Are.            

             What must people don't know is what a great song writer Gordon Haskell was and still is, and why his less than friendly split with Robert Fripp after both finished recording the tension filled Lizard album, that was released in 1971, may have had a bad outcome for both in the long run.           

            Haskell had originally known Fripp from their younger League Of Gentleman band days before Haskell split off to join swinging sixties psychedelic rockers Les Fleur de Lys, with whom Haskell wrote and recorded singles released in the U.K. for Polydor Records, before he himself was picked up by CBS Columbia Records U.K. division., for whom he recorded his first solo album in 1969 titled Sail In My Boat. Filled with catchy if somewhat quirky pop rock songs, Sail In My Boat showcased Haskell's melodicism and developing wit in lyric writing. The album sported several singles that failed to chart, which was similar to the album's fate. 1969 was also  the year that king Crimson released their Progressive Rock masterpiece In The Court Of The Crimson King. Where Fripp had taken former Giles, Giles and Fripp band mate Mike Giles on an extended psychedelic trip with ITCotCK, Haskell had sailed his boat deep into MOR territory. Due to these different creative paths, the two were seen to be separated by the muses and good fortune. At least for a short time, anyway.                    

           

              Lizard: While Haskell's solo career stalled, Fripp's promising juggernaut with KC imploded after the band's U.S.tour of ITCotCK with the departure of Mike Giles and Ian McDonald to form their own group and the stated intention of Greg Lake to also leave to go on to cofound ELP. Most members are probably familar with circumstances that led to Fripp's creation of ITCotCK's follow up album In The Wake Of Posedon with, which was by all accounts, a piecemeal work with done with many different mucians, albeit some stellar ones, that helped Fripp flesh out his compositions coupled with Peter Sinfield's lyrics, at which this time Fripp was convinced Sinfield was a true visionary as well as a profound and relevant lyricist. Greg Lake agreed to return to lay down the lead vocals for the albums moving title track as well as centerpiece connecting songs Peace-A Theme. Fripp and Haskell were still friends at this juncture and Fripp asked Haskell to supply the lead to the gentle ballad-like Cadence and Cascade. Haskell's vocal stood out as it conveyed a sense of reflective sincerity after listening to the highly dramatic echo laden bombastic declarations of Lake on the album's other tracks. With the exception of Mel Collins on woodwinds and the omnipresent Sinfield, Fripp was left with no band after completing the recording of In The Wake. But no matter, he wanted to move on. Musically as well.            

          
              Along with new drummer Andy McCulloch, Haskell was asked to join the second incarnation of KC along with Mel Collins again on woodwinds, Sinfield  again as Svengali and and the incredible Keith Tippett guesting on piano for what Haskell was soon to find out was going to be something completely different. Fripp and Sinfield already had a set vision for the multiple directions of Lizard's styles and any suggestions by Haskell as to looking at any of his own material was dismissed out of hand. Contrasting the previous two albums more direct social commentary lyrics and analogies, Haskell found the lyrics to Lizard's songs vague and when  he pressed  Sinfield for meanings in order to help deliver the lyrics with understanding and conviction, Sinfield gave him none or answered him in ways that made the lyrics more obtuse. What Haskell could understand made little sense to him and resulted in his real protracted laugh in the musical break of Indoor Games where he struggles to deliver the line "hee ho". These stories of documented tensions that can be found in almost every KC biography or in the remastered Lizard album liner notes. What is not documented but is literally on the record itself is the burying of Haskell voice in the recordings by the over use of  flanging, anoyong fade ins and outs and heavy reverb. Coupled with a guest spot from the impeccable Jon Anderson, recorded clear as a bell, on the album's side two opening centerpiece Prince Rupert Awakes, no doubt did not help tensions between Fripp and Haskell.           

            Tensions between Fripp and Haskell came a head after the completion of the album during rehearsals. Haskell asked that Schizoid Man's key be slightly altered to suit he voice. Fripp declined. A final exchange of words ensued and Haskell walked out. Without doubt, Haskell was a pleasent  but limited vocalist, but it was something that Fripp felt that he could work around, the same way he would work around Boz Burrell's limited bass playing skills for the Islands album in 1971, but he was not going to change his music one iota to accomadate Haskell.           

           

               It Is And It Isn't: Haskell was able a secure an audition with Atlantic/Atco records supremo Ahmet Ertegun who was visiting his Progressive Rock charges in the U.K. in 1971 who included ELP and Yes and had his eye on Charisma recording artists Genesis. If anyone in the record industry is responsible for bringing prog rock to the masses in the nineteen seventies, it's Ertegun, if people ever recognize that fact or not. Years later, in the eighties, Ertegun had a demo of Phil Collins song in The Air Tonight spooled up on his desk. Whenever someone came in his office proclaiming the latest and greatest in pop music, Ertegun would play the demo of In The Air Tonight and tell his guests that when they came up with something as good, he would be all ears. Notoriously gifted at picking out good songs and songwriters, Ertegon recognized Haskell's Progressive rock gems and signed him up. Also recognizing that Haskell had limited vocal abilities, he set Haskell up with long time Atlantic/Atco producer Arif Mardin. A musically trained arranger that could get the most out of a limited singer, Mardin's first priority was get great backing vocalists to bolster Haskell, which included former Rascals' lead singer Eddie Brigati and his album vocal backing brother David, along with an aggressive bass player with a great set of pipes named John Wetton (who was later to join KC himself.)

             After securing the strong necessary backing vocalists needed, Mardin assembled a crack studio band that he considered his best "progressive' players aside from Wetton, which included session guitar ace Dave Spinoza, who was so responsible for giving McCartney's Ram album it's jangly rhythm work as well as ace session players Alan Barry on guitar and, an early member of Mogol Thrash, drummer Bill Atkinson who had the style of Phil Collins with the skill of a John Bonham. Alternating between quiet and load prog rock numbers, the musicians created magic on every one of the albums tracks, especially on the albums heaver numbers. Mardin's 'in you face' production placed the rhythm section out in front as the song's shock troops, with the dynamic interplay between the stinging guitars of Spinoza and Barry being the icing on the cake. (to be continued)               

            The songs were a mixture of pastoral acoustic numbers and driving guitar based prog rockers with an incredible balance of both in songs like It Was Just A Lovely Day. The album, released in 1971, was  titled It is And It Isn't and sports one ofthe worst album covers ever seen, though Haskell had no say in it's design and loathed it himself. The most striking thing about the music on the album is the command of Haskell's vocals that are only augmented in the choruses by Wetton and company, as well as the minimal use of keyboards (sparing use of electric piano and organ) that went against the grain of the times, and as a result, does not date the album. Unfortunately, the album and Haskell got caught up in an executive shake up at the time of Atantic/Atco's U.K. division and the album was released with no fanfare on either side of the Atlantic Ocean and immidiately sank like a stone.            

            

            Lizard went on to mixed popular reaction, despite it's being viewed as KC's definitive jazz/rock progressive music statement, and it's follow up album 1971's Islands faired even worse, with even the most die hard KC fans at
odds with it's intent and quality at the time of it's release. When Peter Sinfield anounced he was leaving KC after Islands and once and for all breaking his 'God as creator' view in Fripps eyes, Fripp was free to re-imagine KC in new ways and welcomed new coloberations.             

            There is probably nothing more foolish  in life than contemplating events that might have been. But I have two in Progressive Rock music. 1) What would have happened if Roger Waters didn't go off his nut and stayed with Pink Floyd and 2) What would have happened if Gordon  Haskell  had stayed with KC until after
the departure of Peter Sinfield?            

            If you don't have a copy of the album  It Is And It Isn't, I suggest you pick one up. If only just to impress your friends with your knowledge of great but little known prog gems. I've found that this is one that always surprises people the most. Other great Haskell albums outside of the prog realm include 1979's cynical rocker Serve At Room Temperature, 1992's electronic prog of Hambledon Hill and 1996's R&B tour de force Butterfly In China, 2002's smokey jazz tinged Harry's Bar and his searing 2010 retirement album titled One Fine Day, in which Haskell reflects on the world and his life in it during the last seventy years. A perfect way for a great songwriter to exit the world stage.

 

             

 

                     

               Blog No. 4] Skip Spence: The American Syd Barrett: . Alexander "Skip" Spence should have had an inkling that his rise to American rock stardom was going to end as sstrangelyas it started. A proficient guitarist, Skip was in a San Francisco music club waiting for an audition to try out as a guitar player for for one of the new Bay Area bands that were forming in mass in 1966 when he was eyed by singer Marty Balin who with together Paul Kanter, was putting together psychedelic acid rock group Jefferson Airplane. The only problem was was that Balin was looking for a drummer and Spencer, a crack guitarist and bassist never played the drums in his life. No matter, Balin liked how he looked and stood out from the other musicians at the time (no mean feat) and got Spencer a drum kit to practice on. A fair player with a percussive rythmic feel, Spencer was able to hold his own against guitar and bass greats Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassidy for JA's first album Jefferson Airplane Takes Off. Unforntunately, the Airplane was progressing quicker than Spencer could and he lost his drummers position but the JA gig opened doors for him and Spencer, reunited with his electric six, hit the ground running and co-founded another of the Bay Area's psychedelic country rock groups called Moby Grape which defferentiated itself from groups like the Airplane or the Gratetful Dead in that Moby Grape had three guitar players instead of the usual two. Spencer quickly established himself as one group's of the key songwriters and key members until a strange happening occured during the recording of the group's second album in NYC in 1968. Spence, like most of his contemporaries, was a heavy indulger in LSD, and while staying with the band in the Hotel Albert in New York City, Spence was arrested for hacking through bandmate's Jerry Millers hotel room door with a fire axe before being subdued by Police, detained at Rikers Islands before being transferred to NYC's Bellveue Metal Hospital where he was confined for six months. It was at Belleveue that Spence was ddiagnosed as having drug induced Schizophrenia. It was also at Bellveue that Spence wrote what was to be his last album.

               OAR: After his release from NY's Bellveue Mental Hospital in July of 1868, Spence asked for and was given an advance from CBS/Columbia Records in order to recored a solo album where in he would play all of the instruments himself and act as his own producer, something that was even more bbizarre then his being allowed to record a solo album after his mentally based six month incarceration. According, to Moby Grabe producer David Rubinson, Spence bought a motocycle and rode from NY to Columbia's Nashville Studios in Nashville, Tenn. A facility often refered to as the 'Abbey Road of Counry' due to it's dated but clean eefficient operation and it's technically sharp staff. Spence was booked for four days in the early weaks of December and played all instruments on the recordings including acoustic and electric guitars, Fender bass and all percussion and drums. Most of the songs were well thought out sketches with about a third of the others being a combination of improvisation and word play.
             The albums opening track (Little Hands) is folk rock paean to world peace as wished through the minds of the worlds suffering but innocent youth. It's a song of it's time that does something that the hippie/dippie mantra of that era fails to do in that it also ttranscendsit's era  and because of a lack of coying triteness, it remains timeless up to the present day.
              The Albums third song Margeret-Tiger Rug is a playful stream of consciousness two part jam featuring just Spence on bass and drums crowning about an lady ice skater with muscles in her eyes and chapped lips before morphing into a childlike chant about catching a tiger by the tail. The album then does a complete about turn around and the listener is off into the pathos of of a man exposing the pain of his shattered soul on the following song Diana.
              Next up is the album's darkest song Weighted Down, clocking in at over 6 minutes, in which a standard  loping cowboy high plains type of C&W melody is slowed down to 3/4 time with paintive acoustic strumming by Spence. His spooky baritone vocals slowly recall his release from prison and what he finds when he returns home. An unfaithful wife and his cheating best friend and his waiting down by the river to reunite with them, with a gun is his hand.
              Before the gravitas of Weighted Down can weigh down the listener, Spence takes the listener's off ride into either outer or inner space detained by the listeners state of mind wit the psychedelic freak out War In Peace with it's spacey ambiance, filtered echoey vocals, spacey electric guitar fills, phasing, panning and alien sounding effects for the times. This track is Psychedelic Rock at it's zenith and could easily fit on PF's PATGOD as would Oar's closing freakout jam Grey/Afro.
              Side two's high lights includes the Biblically referenced Books Of Moses in which Spence, in his most God like vengeful baritone, is preaching something about divine judgement while someone or ones in the back ground are hammering away with nails on blocks of wood building God knows what? A Cross? The Lost Ark? Or knowing Spence, a bird house? We never do know as thunder and rain effects take over to close his unintelligible rants.
             Books of Moses gives way to the playfully innocent celebrations of sex on Dixie Promonade which probable the closest Spense gets to Barrett's Jug Band Blues and than onto the totally farcical 'Lawernce of Euphoria' in which Spence does a no holds barred celebration of  the fun of partying  and sounds authentically'euphoric' while performing the song.
             Afro/Grey is a 8 minute long heavily psychedelic tinged R and B based bass and drums jam that is expanded upon by heavy use of echo on the bass so that notes and chords are actually echoed into the opposite speaker and Spence high treble settings and semi slap style give the instrument a hybrid percussive sound that meshed well with his drumming and gives the illusion of polyrythmic effects. All the while, Spence floated dense impenetrable ethereal vocals above the sound mix that resulted in another of the albums' stellar psychedelic standout tracks.

            Oar was released briefly in America in Febuary of 1969. Columbia Records states that approximately only 700 copies of album were ever sold (the lowest number of albums ever sold by Columbia records incidentally) and that they saw no need to persue future pressing. The common story, from former Moby Grabe producer David Rubinson who incidentally mixed the album in NYC, was that the album was underpressed by Columbia as they say no commercial valve in it.
             The more reasonable explanation was that someone at the very highest levels of Columbia Record's brass realized that they had an artist who was, for all intents and purposes, an absent land lord that was not able to tour to promote the album, had a history of erratic dangerous behavior and if the music press wanted to interview him, then they would have interview him at some kind mental facility. So Oar's production was stopped just a it was starting to be amped up. It's just a guess, but it makes the most  sense.

            Oar will never be considered a Progressive Music album, but it was a bonifide Psychedelic Rock and, a term that came into being decades later, an Acid Folk album that plays well next to early Floyd albums like Piper, Saucer Full and Barrett's solo albums and in many ways surpasses them beause it goes beyond the mere whimsical and fantasy of those albums into serious concerns like murder and heartbreak as well as all  of the other things that balance out life. All this from an unbalanced person.
            Oar went on to enjoy a hugh cult following in America in the early 70's with the hard core Barrett crowd as well as crossing over to Greatful Dead fans due to it's Country bent (or bent Country, depending how you look at it). Like many mythical albums, it doesn't live up to it's myth unless you deeply consider the state of mind of it's creator at the time of it's creation. His muse spent and his reason depleted, Spence never recorded another album in any form again and one of the cofounders of San Francisco's greatest rock bands, The Jefferson Airplane and Moby Grape, died still hospitalized  from his illness in 1999.

 

 

 

               Blog No. 5] George Harrison: Moog Music Pioneer? Move over Wendy Carlos, Ben Folkman and Morton Subotnik. I'm putting George Harrison on the list, if he wanted to be there  or not.

             If anyone is familar with Harisson's three LP solo album titled All Things Must Pass, they will know that disc number three contained recordings of music jams with George and some of his music pals.The closing song of side one  of this disc contains a forgettable jam of George with Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Klaus Voorman and Billy Preston. In a song that doesn't know if it wants to be a fast blues tune or a slow R 'n' B number, Ginger is busy and overplaying, Clapton is underplaying and Preston's electric piano sounds like it's on auto pilot . About forty seconds into this snoozer, the listener will have a WTF moment when some space rock synthesizer floats in before pulliing up the tone arm and flipping the disc.

            The first time I actually heard WTF outloud by someone as they got up to flip the record, I said "oh, that's from Harrison's synthesizer album or an out take from that recording session." Then I got a WTF look and and had to explain, lest the disc flipper think me mad.

            One of the advantages of living on and off in the U.K. in the seventies for me was exposure to Beatles items and recordings that were not even heard of, or poorly known, in the United States. For those unfamiliar, All Thing Must Pass was not Harrison's first solo album. It was not even his second. It was third. Harrison produced two solo albums while still a member of the Beatles. One was celebrated by him and the other rejected.The first and one of Harrison's personal favorites was a soundtrack to an English movie titled Wonderwall (The  move title later became the title of 90's Brit band Oasis's smash album.) that was released in 1968. While Harrison was going through the early phase of his love affair with Indian religion and music. (Recall George playing sitar on a track on the Rubber Soul album, Norwegian Wood?). The soundtrack was a mish-mash of Indian raga and contemporary music that fit the movie's theme of an uptight English gent and his relationship with very open swinging lady neighbor. Harrison loved the music as it got him close to professional Indian musicians for the first time and about half of the album was recorded in Mumbai (Bombay), India.The first World Music album soundtrack by a rock musician, predating Peter Gabriel's The Last Temptation soundtrack by twenty years.

            Harrison's album, titled Wonderwall Music, was the first album to be released on the new Apple Corps label that was set up with his band mates,The Beatles.

            Apple also set up an experimental subsidy label called Zapple. Apple with a Z out front. The second album released on the Zapple label was a solo Moog Synthesizer  experimental soundscape album by George.

            While producing his protege Jackie Lomax's first solo album, George came into contact for the first time with the Mark IIIP Moog Synthersizer and it's showman and salesmen Paul Beaver and Bernie Krause. And George bought one and had it delivered to his home in England. 

             Elctronic Sound: Harrison's first encounter with the Moog was while he was recording Jackie Lomax's solo album for Apple in California. Moog salesman and synth player Bernie Krause gave Harrison a 18 minute long demonstration of the Moog IIIP and all it's many effects. Now here's a place where this story gets a bit dodgy. krause claims in his autobiography that the "music work" produced, a futuristic soundscape that finely disects the line between music and non musical sounds such as the opening a swirl of dissonant sound that's partly jet engine like whoosh, that he never knew that this 18 minutes of music was being recorded and took legal action against Harrison as the record went into production, even though Klause was listed on the album's LP jacket and record label as "assisting George Harrison". It's strange to me that he didn't know he was being recorded along with Harrison as there is absolutely no extraneous noise on the 18 minute long recording such as studio chatter or manual patch ins of the Moogs more then 100 patch cord plugs, except for one brief "patch In" sounding noise along with the smallest snippet of voice.  (The fact that a second moog synth was overdubbed throughout the recording also raises an eyebrow for me.)   
            And this is an important giveaway as the Moog Modular Synthesizer was a truly electronic instrument like the Thereim that proceeded it, as it was not an acoustically based instrument that was amplified. One important key to the Moog's function was actual voltage control to determine it's sounds, The Moog was comprised of voltage control modules that was made up of one or more inputs thtat accepted a voltage of generally 10 volts or less. The manipulation of this voltage controlled key parameters of the modules circuits such as the  frequency of an audio oscillator, amp gain, and cut off frequency which determines pitch and timbre.
            Without getting too technical, this tangent demonstrates that early Moog synths had no pre-programmed signals and that a series of patch bay cords, like an old fashioned  telephone switchboard operator wielded with abandon, was also needed to connect the Moog's voltage generated oscillators, amplifiers, filters, envelope generators and ring modulators for every radically new sound that the Moog created. Doing this quietly and quickly during recording was a must.  The imposing machine sporting two keyboards, a ribbon contact board, and four of it's distinctive black patch bay modules was delivered to Harrison's home soon after he left from California.

                    

 

                            

 

Sadly, I don't think you want a serious answer, do you?

 

Because, unlike many of these comments, yes I can comment. There were no "wasted" moments in the 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's or 00's or 10's ... it was all a worthwhile great trip through the aethers of music, regardless of anyone liking it or hating it!