Dukes of Stratosphear - 'Psonic Psunspot' (Virgin)

You who know me will know that I love me a silent 'P' so Psonic Psunspot wins on the title front for sure. This is the full-length by this moonlighting XTC psychedelic tribute band and it continues the pastiche of late 60's pop beauty with the same slightly silly lean. Compared to the EP, PP is a bit less buried in its own conceit. When Partridge, Moulding et al go more straight, such as the practically XTC-like 'Have You Seen Jackie?', there's some songs that stand up remarkably well outside of the context of this lark. Which is to explain why I own zero records by XTC (actually that's not true, but zero that I have listened to since the 90s) and both the LP and EP releases by the Dukes. I even used to have the 'You're a Good Man Albert Brown' 12", a bit of unnecessary collector completism. Said tune is a pounding, piano ballad recalling Ray Davies circa Something Else, but almost regal in it's brassy, British class-eye.  'Shiny Cage' actually reminds me more of the Olivia Tremor Control, so the Dukes were clearly looking ahead about a decade and predicting how others would look back to a few decades previous. It's almost as confusing as 'Primer', except the songwriting is so lucid; the organ breakdowns, big ringing major 7ths, and sharp guitar solos are a Terrascopian elixir that tastes shockingly sweet. Other tracks are more devout in their pillaging - closing cut 'Pale and Precious' is the best Beach Boys tribute since His Name is Alive's 'Universal Frequencies' (and you know there's been craploads). I'm definitely sad they didn't leave us more though probably I should be more fair to late XTC. And it's on crazy coloured vinyl to match the album artwork.

Dukes of Stratosphear - '25 O'Clock' (Virgin)

What do we say about the Dukes of Stratosphear? Sure, it's a joke - this was released on April Fools Day 1985 and is so over-the-top in its Nuggets-style psych imagery that feels somewhere in-between parody and pastiche. My issue is that I actually like the Dukes of Stratospear far better than XTC, so the joke has backfired. Or not, cause maybe it wasn't really a joke. 25 O'Clock does its best to not be serious, but it's such a perfect mishmash of the Electric Prunes, Chocolate Watchband, 'Paint It Black' and all these other legendary antecedents that its impossible to not enjoy it. The production mostly apes it's influences too though there are studio tricks (most notably in 'Bike Ride To the Moon') that reveal it's provenance. But that's okay, because everyone was in on the joke - this is all wink,wink, nod, nod. This makes me question my appreciation for this though - about the ingenuity of the music - but then 'I Had Too Much To Dream Last Night' isn't necessarily a deep, moving introspective song either. 

Miles Davis - 'Sketches of Spain' (Columbia)

I've had this record for years but I never, ever listen to it. When I'm in the mood I pull out the other Miles Davis record I have, but today it's "hitting the spot".  You would think these Iberian-inspired melodies would conjure sun-parched images of Mediterranean cliffs and luscious scenery, but I'm staring out the window of a cold, grey day in Northern Europe and finding it equally beautiful as I stare at bare trees, pointing into a featureless wash of sky.  Davis's trumpet is of course the featured instrument, though he wrote none of the compositions.  It's mixed high over the session orchestra, and has a nice warm rolling momentum over the string washes.  The majority of the first side is a long piece by Joaquín Rodrigo, and it's Anadlusian grandeur is emphasised by the dramatic swells.  There's nothing jazz here until the second track, 'Will o' the Wisp', which has a swing to it.  Throughout Sketches of Spain, there's this little hand percussion that cuts through the whole mix - like an egg shaker or something.  It really grounds what could become an otherwise overblown sense of grandeur, and I award Gil Evans for his compositional taste.  Sketches of Spain is a certainly as far away from the exploratory, risk-taking Miles Davis as possible, but it's a textbook example of how trumpet can be a lead instrument.  That it was released in the late 1940's, just after the Spanish Civil War, makes me wonder about context and what sorts of statements Evans and Davis were trying to make.  We can turn to Charlie Haden and Carla Bley's Liberation Music Orchestra for a more overt form of that, but I want to believe this is more than postcard musical tourism.

Band - 'Music From Big Pink' (Capitol)

So, the canon rears its head. It took me awhile to really get into the Band, cause I always found them "too earthy" back in those dark years where I was more interested in listening to, I dunno, Harriet the Spy -- instead of Big Pink, a record acclaimed by just about everyone in history as being an all-time classic. Of course that's not reason enough to worship it; there's nothing more annoying than the blind recitation of critic pablum and when I finally did start to dig the Band it was through a genuine 'sinking in' of their work into my brainblood. I wonder how much Greil Marcus has to do with all of this, though. I mean, he wrote Invisible Republic and ever since the mythology has been in place. You know, Dylan and the Band, holed up in upstate New York and redefining American music, etc. etc. Except weren't the Band actually Canadian? I could wikipedia that to be sure, but I guess it doesn't matter since Neil is a 'nuck too and he gets a free pass for writing some of the most 'American' music ever ('Out on the Weekend', 'Thrasher', anyone?). To be honest it was almost exactly one year ago that I started to really click with Basement Tapes, meaning the officially released double LP first and not the "real" or "genuine" basement tapes. And hey, raise a glass to the bootleggers cause they deserve to use those titles -- the officially-released Basement Tapes are kind of a fucking joke since the Band went back and faked a bunch of it to raise their stature in history. Of course I think Dylan was probably fine with that, smirking at the muddy mess, figuring if you're gonna release the damn things finally (cause it was about 9 years later, right?) you might as well be half-assed about it. So yeah, about a year ago I was driving around in a car for a few weeks and I only had a few CDs, two of which were Basement Tapes (which will be henceforth referred to without a preceding article to distinguish from the bootlegs). And goddamit, I finally fell in love with it, maybe cause I was visiting the US at the time or maybe because my time had finally come. And I've subsequently checked Invisible Republic out of the library and pushed my way through the whole turgid thing and started digging through the actual basement tapes through many online bootlegs (the best of which I've found is the 4CD set A Tree with Roots), and fuck me, maybe I'm starting to believe it a bit. Which means that Music from Big Pink, which I've always liked more than the self-titled one, has started to really grow on me. I think the earliest Band is my favorite since a few Basement Tapes songs that didn't make it to Big Pink are some of the best ones: 'Bessie Smith', 'Katie's Been Gone'. But I think this is a deservedly great album and I will have to cast my lot with this version of 'Tears of Rage' - even though Dylan wrote the fucking thing, Manuel squeezes every bit of life out of those weird, cryptic lyrics and by the end I actually feel physically drained by it. It's hard to hear all the ghosts of old weird America to the level that the Marcus book would make you expect (and 'The Weight' feels just like classic rock radio/beer commercial music to me) but there's definitely cracks in the woodwork. These young Hawks were definitely going for something and you can hear a lot of pain inside 'Caledonia Mission' ;; 'Long Black Veil' sure doesn't hurt either. But maybe we should blame this album for inventing roots rock and thus the Black Crowes, the H.O.R.D.E. festival, Blues Traveler, etc.? My jury's still out on which version of 'This Wheel's on Fire' is my favorite; ditto for 'I Shall Be Released'. I guess three Dylan compositions was about par for this time (Unhalfbricking?) but these guys get more claim to it since they obviously had the close relationship with him that everyone else dreamt of. My copy of this is beat to shit, with scratches and surface noise galore, and I think that's the only way I want to hear it. I spun a CD reissue that tacked on a 'Katie's Been Gone' demo but it was just too clean for me. Do you think the basement was clean?