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Posted: January 19 2015 at 09:45
SteveG wrote:
Psych Doom that I lifted off Toaster Mantis in the' What are you playing now thread'.
This is a 'What will you play in the future disc' for me. Sounds like it's going to be a deep meditative type of listen where you have to pay attention to every detail in the music and lyrics.
YOB are definitely something of an acquired taste, not in the least thanks to Mike Scheidt's rather idiosyncratic vocals and their music's lack of apparent hooks in most of the songs. It's all about the journey, build up and release of tension through their song structures as well as use of sound layers building up on one another. In a way they're like a psychedelic Reverend Bizarre, right down to the extremely long songs (often more than 20 minutes) that are rather complex without being flashy about it.
I'm happy to see more people catch on to YOB here, by the way. They're one of those psychedelic doom metal bands that while continuing the tradition of both genres never feel like a retread of previous bands in either, with the specific details of their modernization of the 1970s sounds being very well thought out.
Edited by Toaster Mantis - January 21 2015 at 01:25
"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Posted: January 19 2015 at 11:04
They're pretty continuously the same band, though the influences from Neurosis and music from the 1990s and onwards are more apparent on the newer records. Those immediate post-reunion albums actually seem to be regarded as something of a slump, with Clearing the Path to Ascend being the return-to-form. (as the review cliché goes)
Edited by Toaster Mantis - January 21 2015 at 01:19
"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Posted: January 20 2015 at 09:43
The Moving Sidewalks:
Tom Moore, Don Summers, Billy Gibbons and Dan Mitchell.
Moving Sidewalks: The Complete Collection. 2012 Rock Beat Records.
After the mini explosion brought on by the excellent 13th Floor Elevators reissues coupled with a new Roky Erickson solo album in 2010, ZZ Top founder and guiding light guitarist Billy Gibbons decided to remaster and re release all extent music created by his first recognized recording the outlet, The Moving Sidewalks.
Formed in Huston, Texas after the Elevators first exploded on to the Texas club scene, The Sidewalks were not the innovators that The Elevators were and initially copied The Elevators' 'wet' reverbed guitar sound along nascent Roky like screams for their first regional single 99th Floor which contained sexual innuendo as well as being a verbal shout out to The Elevators.
Billy Gibbons is the first to admit that The Sidewalks, fronted by Gibbons whose guitar skills were already fully formed,were musical chameleons and many of their 'takes' on the sixties psychedelic sound showed heavy influence from Jimi Hendrix (particularly on the song Pluto-Sept. 31st, from The Sidewalks alubum Flash, which owes it's manic beat to Hendrix's Foxy Lady. Even though Gibbons is already quite an accomplished player, he wisely avoids any sonic or stylistic copying of Hendrix sound and technique).
The Complete Moving Sidewalks contains their first and only album 1969's Flashwhich features great Sidewalk originals like the song Flashback, which is common sounding longing for a lost love song that morphs into a pseudo Eastern tinged mantra of regret replete with sitar like guitar and table sounding hand drums.
Original sounding blues and and a blue tinged ballad fill out the album before we get to the last two songs, Eclipse and Reclipse . The first shows off studio trickery lack extensive stereo panning and liberal of tape very speed in comedic Zappa like outré sound college.Iit's follow up is another sound college that's a bit more serious and leans towards much more towards the avant garde. The band were obviously listening to a lot of different music from between 1967 and 1968, as this album demonstrates.
The second disc of The Complete Moving Sidewalks contains more regional singles, B sides and alternate takes. The most impressive of these is an alternate take of a cover of The Beatles' smash hit I Want to Hold Your Hand that was recorded in a tricky time signature referred to by musicians as 'super slow motion'. This plodding piece of aural heaven includes fuzzed guitar and bass along with gigantic drum fills after Gibbons slowly but firmly states his desire to hold the hand of the apple of the eye. This one alternate take (sands the later session master's buried in echo and muddy organ) could easily be a ZZ Top staple today.
Great fun, but the important thing about this album is Gibbons' shifting takes on the quickly evolving styles of American psych rock in that it acts as a sonic road map. It charts the reverb guitar and screaming Roky-like vocals of The Elavators through to the acid rock of Jimi Hendrix, the trippy musings of Red Crayola and on up to the harder psychedelic reimaging's of pop classics that was perfected by Vanilla Fudge.
Gibbons is co producer of this 2 CD compilation and with the considerable resources necessary, he has restored and remastered these obviously crude independent studio recordings to clear excellent sound devoid of any tape noise.
Again, apart form some of the killer cuts found on this compilation, it is indeed a skeleton key to late sixties psychedelic rock.
Billy Gibbons: The sidewalks have stopped moving but Billy's still grooving.
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Posted: January 20 2015 at 14:50
Wire
Chairs Missing 1978Following their minimalistic punk debut Pink Flag, U.K band Wire returned with a more sophisticated album combining their more creative aesthetic with Eno-esque style synth layering in order to invoke a chilling isolating effect to the band's music. Often dubbed Punk Floyd by the bands detractors, the analogy was quite apropos for the music and the distance the group felt from the mainstream punk movement that they felt were only interested in tearing down the musical status quo but offering little to replace what they wanted to eradicate. Coupled with a lyrical vane similar to Syd Barrett's Floyd era days (and declared unintentional by the group as they claimed to have no previous experience listening to early Floyd or Syd solo albums), gave the group wide critical acclaim to go along with their pioneering sound.
Chairs Missing was the last album Wire recorded for EMI records as EMI questioned their commercial appeal as well as stating difficulty over how to market the group.
The band made a follow up for Warner Bros. titled 154, that suffered from a fracture in the band regarding which new musical direction to follow, if any, and the album suffered as a result. Wire broke up a short time later, but Chairs Missing remains a seminal release of psychedelic and punk rock fusion.
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Posted: January 21 2015 at 01:35
Chairs Missing is a great album. I still need to listen to their other records, apparently they go even more experimental on 154, but there are frankly many other of the artier UK punk groups from the I'm more interesting in exploring right now.
"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Posted: January 21 2015 at 10:11
^Yes, 154 is more experimental and was even better received by critics than Chairs Missing, but I, like some others, felt the album lacked more visceral songs like those that were found on Chairs Missing like Marooned, I Am The Fly, and the guitar driven epic Mercy, coupled with the album's theme on isolation and madness.
154 is still a fine album, however, and has many great merits of it's own.
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Posted: January 21 2015 at 10:57
Time to recommend Flower Travellin' Band's Satori if it hasn't already been mentioned.
The best description is psychedelic hard rock, bordering up to early heavy metal, that's rooted in traditional Japanese music instead of blues right down to a very strange guitar tone that sounds more like an extremely distorted sitar. Add to that an approach to making dark and disturbing rock music that's clearly rooted in a cultural perspective somewhat removed from Judaeo-Christian-Islamic ideas of good and evil, the resulting music being one of the most characteristically East Asian hard rock/heavy metal records I've ever heard.
Edited by Toaster Mantis - January 23 2015 at 15:27
"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Posted: January 22 2015 at 09:34
The Syn
Syndestructable 2005
The Syn were a sixties psychedelic pop band that hailed from the U.K. and featured pre Yes Chris Squire on bass and backing vocals. The group scored a psych rock hit on U.K. radio with the catchy and clever song Grounded.
Thought to remain a footnote in the history of English rock, the band had a surprising reunion in 2005 that included original lead singer Stephen Nerdelli. The result was Syndestructable, an excellent 'space rock' album that's good, bouncy and will no doubt put a smile on your face. The music is probably more in the vain of pop prog then space rock, and Mr. Squire's distinctive bass and backing vocals are prominent on the album.
Ironically, after Squire ended up in Yes, he ended up recruiting ex psych pop Tomorrow guitarist Steve Howe after the departure of Peter Banks. The rest is history as they say.
The Syn would reunite again in 2009 without Squire. Nardelli recruited former It Bites guitarist Frances Dunnery and Camel man Tom Brislin on keys for a follow up album titled Big Sky. Big Sky obviously misses the Squire factor, but it's a decent pop prog album in it's own right.
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Posted: January 23 2015 at 09:37
"Wow! What was it like to see Hendrix in person?!"
I've probably been asked this question over a thousand times as I saw the late guitarist play live at a concert hall in Philadelphia in 1968.
The best that I could answer were usually clichés like 'you had to be there' and other phrases to that extent as I was never sure what it was about that concert that seemed so magical. Sure, there were many mind altering 'enhancements' used by people at concerts of that era, but many other concerts that I attended in 1968 did not give off the same vibes (to use the parlance of the times) as the Hendrix show.
I feel a bit of panic now as I afraid my memory will cease one day and I will not be able to recall any of the details, let alone the reason why that concert was so impressive to me.
The concert stated with great expectations. Jimi Hendrix was well known by the fall of 1968, having released two outrageous studio albums and blowing away every guitar great of the day. When Hendrix finally came on stage, he noticed a girl crying in the front row and as he checked his microphone, he asked her why. The girl's response was inaudible but Hendrix replayed with "Just leave that trip outside, dig?" The young girl responded again inaudibly and Hendrix now said "All storms pass because they're not built to last. Everything is going to be groovy" before nodding to Noel Reading and Mitch Mitchel and immediately begain to play Fire.
Hendrix concerts were known for there technical sound problems and Hendrix's Strat going continually out of tune. And so it was with this one. After 5 extended songs, Hendrix lost one Marshall stack and asked the audience "Does anyone in the house have a valve tube?" While his stage techs attended to the dead amp, Hendrix was half talking, giggling and laughing so by now he seemed to be somewhat inaudible. And the audience was probably unable to receive his words after such an aural assault.
His Strat's G string constantly kept going out of tune and Hendrix would quickly correct the tuning and continue playing until his D string went out of tune and out of habit Hendrix quickly adjusted the tuning again of his G string and thereby also put that string out of tune. The result was half a bar of what sounded like two cats fighting until Hendrix quickly realized his mistake, looked over to Reading, smiled, shook his head and quickly retuned both strings before launching into the instrumental lead of Purple Haze and extended that song's solo for about 5 minutes to compensate for his mistake.
So, it was far from a perfect show, but when Hendrix encored with Hey Joe, the crowed roared and some girls even cried. But it was not something like Beatles hysteria, these young girls were deeply moved by this amazing musician that was far from political or protesting a cause. Protesting was de riguer for that period in American rock music. Still, Hendrix had a message that got through.
It was simple as it was profound. Hendrix exuded hope in an era of American history when hope no longer sprang eternal. Except for this one unique individual.
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Posted: January 23 2015 at 09:54
SteveG wrote:
^Yes, 154 is more experimental and was even better received by critics than Chairs Missing, but I, like some others, felt the album lacked more visceral songs like those that were found on Chairs Missing like Marooned, I Am The Fly, and the guitar driven epic Mercy, coupled with the album's theme on isolation and madness.
154 is still a fine album, however, and has many great merits of it's own.
It's always been a tossup for me between Chairs Missing and
154. If anything, I lean slightly towards 154 just because there are maybe 2-3 songs on Chairs that I'm not crazy about, and only 1 such song on 154.
What songs are those? I hear you ask. Well, for Chairs Missing it might be "I Feel Mysterious Today", "Being Sucked in Again" and "Used To". For 154, it's most definitely "Once is Enough" (and maybe "Single KO" too, if I'm in a bad mood).
Which are my favorites then? I'm glad you asked. On Chairs, I am head over heels in love with "Practice Makes Perfect", "French Film Blurred", "Mercy", and "Outdoor Miner". On 154, I am nuts about "The 15th", "A Mutual Friend", "Blessed State","Map Ref", "Touching Display", and "40 Versions".
Edited by HolyMoly - January 23 2015 at 09:56
My other avatar is a Porsche
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased.
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Posted: January 23 2015 at 10:01
^Good points, Steve. I'm often very influenced by an artists 'break through' work and tend to focus on their initial accomplishments and slack off on their follow ups, even if they may be of a higher caliber. A big exception for me would be Wish You Were Here by Floyd over DSOTM.
So, I would have to agree with you that 154 is the better album. But just slightly.
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Posted: January 23 2015 at 10:06
I'm still not sure, really. As I said, it's always been a tossup for me. I got them both at roughly the same time, nearly 10 years after they'd been originally released, so they both seem of a piece to me.
Edited by HolyMoly - January 23 2015 at 10:07
My other avatar is a Porsche
It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle if it is lightly greased.
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