Lemonheads - 'It's A Shame About Ray' (Atlantic)

I alluded to in the Lick post about how I think this record holds a special place in the hearts of many people from my age and background. I base this assertion on an ongoing, continual discovery of peers who share a my unbridled love for this record. Which is understandable - it's not only the only consistent Lemonheads album, but it's absolutely the peak of Dando's songwriting power, where a perfect storm (no doubt driven somewhat by his descent into heavy drug addiction) converged and he turned out a bubblegum-punk masterpiece. But it's also a product of its time; that time for me came when I was 13 years old, and my days were spent dreaming of a greater life ahead –– one that would be entirely achieved through music. The alternative/grunge explosion happened and Ray was no doubt a part of it, even though the sounds within are just pure pop, borrowing deftly from other genres (country-rock in 'Hannah & Gabi', folk-blues on 'My Drug Buddy', and a nod to light opera with the cover of 'Frank Mills'). The marketing arm of Atlantic records was clear to position Dando as an alterna-hunk heartthrob and sure, he was fine at that. But I never cared about pin-up mags or pop stardom; to me, Ray was a roadmap to exploring my adolescence through the culture of then-underground white guitar music. The air of mystery surrounding this record evoked more questions than answers (who were these characters: Ray, Fiona, Allison, etc. –– and that mysterious car photograph on the back?) so it felt like a complete world, one that I wanted to dive into. I'd like to say that twenty-five+ years of hindsight have shown this wonder to be superficial, but I still feel something every time I spin this. Expanding my knowledge of music has only brought me around to appreciate this more; maybe he just struck lightning in a bottle here, but I think there's a sophistication to these songs, at least some of them, that can be found after they sink in a bit. It's a nostalgia trip, sure, but the way I've shared this nostalgia with peers who grew up in different places and different environments says something about the connecting power of music through subculture, something that has likely been eroded by the Spotify generation. I don't even know if I have specific memories of this record, or more general ones; of being 14, taking the bus to the University campus and walking around the buildings, sneaking into the computer labs, looking at magazines and records in the various independent shops. Looking at the fashion I aspired to ape – Doc Martens boots, carefully-curated t-shirts, the choices that declared 'indie' rather than hippie or metal or punk, while conveniently overlooking that this record was on Atlantic. Dreaming of finding love, or rather companionship, and wondering if there was someone out there like the woman on the cover, with a minimal approach towards style, a take on femininity that rejected make-up and hairspray, and an intellectual sophistication that could be conveyed through the symbols revealed - backpack, shoes, haircut. I didn't model myself after Evan Dando, not in the slightest, as I think even then I found his cute-dumb smile annoying; I loved It's a Shame About Ray despite Dando, and still do. Even back then I had the pre-'Mrs. Robinson' version of the CD, and now I have the LP which also omits that unlikely hit, and that's the only way I know this record. Was I 'starting to happen' at this time? Absolutely, and I wonder now when I stopped. 

Jefferson Airplane - 'Surrealistic Pillow' (RCA Victor)

OK, here's a bit of seemingly intentional nonconformity, but I don't think Surrealistic Pillow is all that great. Which leads to the followup question of why do I own a copy then, to which I cannot really provide an answer. This copy is beat to shit and the stereo pressing, and I love their subsequent release, but I think the record's notoriety probably stands in the way of me truly evaluating it, truly appreciating it maybe. Which is what I tried to do when it came up today, next in this project, another surprise of 'Oh do I have this still?' as happens so often here. I guess given the surreal, truly psychedelic sound of After Bathing at Baxter's I find the tepid folk-pop songs on here hard to sit through; the recording is also done in that too-echoey way that makes it sound particularly dated, the same way Moby Grape records sound to me, which is maybe just the 'psychedelic sound', at least the San Francisco variant. Speaking of Moby Grape, Skip Spence wrote 'My Best Friend', which is one of the more forgettable numbers here; it, along with 'Today' and 'How Do You Feel' steer Surrealistic Pillow far closer to sounding like a slightly amped up Mamas and Papas than the cabal of psychedelic visionaries they're supposed to be. The two towering songs here are of course 'Somebody to Love' and 'White Rabbit', and I don't know what I can really say about them that is an original take. The latter is of course a ridiculous work of music, immortalised by Hunter Thompson, and the former is, to me, merely a pretty good pop song of the era. That both of these are Grace Slick's contributions and that they have endured so much longer than anything else on Surrealistic Pillow probably indicates that having her join the band was a good idea. 'Plastic Fantastic Lover' is pretty good and 'She Has Funny Cars' is good music to play in a documentary when you're talking about the swinging sixties. Otherwise the pick of the litter for me is Jorma Kaukonen's beautiful 'Embryonic Journey', a bit of melting Vanguard/Takoma magic that works extra well before 'White Rabbit'. I know I'm being a bit hard on this because it's considered a psychedelic classic, but it hardly sounds like the Cold Sun LP. And better grooves are around the corner, for sure.

Peter Grudzien - 'The Unicorn/The Garden of Love' (Subliminal Sounds)

Peter Grudzien is an outlier among outliers; in many ways you could call this just another acid-drenched, home-recorded privately pressed psych record, albeit one deeply rooted in country/western traditions and affectations. But Grudzien's 1974 statement is one that is militantly gay, wistfully fragile, and perfectly balanced on the damaged/cohesive axis, and somehow feels completely unlike anything else in the genre. The songs on The Unicorn are almost all based around a strummed acoustic guitar and his yokel yodel, but then there's some weird fuckery throughout; 'Redemption and Prayer' is built around processed voice loops, and feels akin to something that might come out of the San Francisco Tape Music Centre a decade earlier. 'Kentucky Candy', an epic ode to his lover, has some delay-heavy, operatic background vocals that (according to the liners) were just ripped off an LP recording of Tannhäuser, and the effect is stunning. There's a plodding bass throughout most of the album (which is just enough to make it all feel off-kilter, despite Grudzien's excellent technical abilities) as well as pedal steel, banjo and some electric guitars. It feels like a vision - one that begins with the title track's mystical allusions (for the unicorn, according to Grudzien's original liner notes, is a 'frail creature that will redeem mankind', though the 2007 reissue notes state that it's about a guy whose profile looked like a unicorn) and on through the unambiguous 'White Trash Hillbilly Trick' and 'Queen of All the Blue-Eyed'. He digs in and shreds on the instrumental 'The Lost World', and the lyrical themes throughout don't avoid the big issues of religion, love, and guilt. This is a lovely reissue too; the home-recording makes everything a little bit uneven, as levels tend to jump from cut to cut, but the acoustic instruments sound warm and full, and the musique concrete parts feel appropriately spooky, with enough midrange to clearly identify them as tapes being reworked. Everything climaxes on the finalé, 'Return of the Unicorn', which moves through a variety of different recording fragments, including a lo-fi, instrumental keyboard theme which feels anthemic, and a full-band (though of course, all Grudzien) conclusion which sounds decisive, even visionary. The second album was culled from recordings ranging from the 1950s to the late 80s, and it sounds appropriately hodgepodge, but strong. There's more country stylings but even some homemade doo-wop ('The Bills', from 1957), a few versions of the title track, and some cover versions. Spotty, yes, but overall enjoyable, and it feels more like a window into the mind of a person who is just absolutely in love with sound and its potential. And he was at fucking Stonewall, according to the haunting cut of that name, from 1987, made up of nothing more than his (deeper than before) voice accompanied by bells. His chronicling of the story revises the official history and talks about clones and conspiracy theories, too! The aforementioned liner notes, written in all capital letters, are pretty difficult to read but tell Grudzien's story, and one of the things that I think makes this so strange is that Grudzien is a New York City guy through and through, despite the Nashville/Bakersfield influence on his music. Given that Merle Haggard died last weekend, it's interesting to think about the whole sense of identity in country music; Haggard played his cards when it suited him but is mostly remembered as a right-wing or even reactionary figure against the counterculture (though it's of course more complicated than that, sorta like, say, Neil Young). Grudzien seems like he's from another planet, and maybe he was -- he was a total outsider in every way, not just because of his sexuality, and you could argue that country music represented a true freedom to him, and his obscure private-press rendition of it captures a genuine essence that the commercial products only pretended at. Though I hesitate to ever call one form of art/music genuine and another not; what I mean is that Grudzien, who even after this gorgeous double-LP reissue remains super obscure, represents the untold story of 1970s counterculture. Not that The Unicorn necessarily stands alongside any traditional country or underground gay art music of the time - it's just a singular creature, and shaped a bit like a unicorn.

Gong - 'Flying Teapot: Radio Gnome Invisible Part 1' (Charly)

I'm a bad Gong fan, because I don't own anything beyond this first part of the Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy, nor could I really tell you what it's all about, even though the story is written out, by hand, in the gatefold sleeve. But who's gonna take the time to read this? Instead you can drift off on the psychedelic voyage presented by Mr. Allen and friends, and listen to his voice, focusing on the lyrics when you want to and letting the guitars, flutes and echoing resonance take you to new dimensions of sound and spirit. This is a pretty solid album though, significantly more progventurous than Camembert, though at the expensive of, well, cohesion. We have two titular tracks here, 'Radio Gnome Invisible' which opens things up as a hard introduction to the Gnomish concept; then, the 12:30 of 'Flying Teapot'. Most of side one is taken up by this second cut, which shifts from movement to movement in an epic manner yet stays nimble - it feels almost like it doesn't repeat or go back into themes, but maybe it's because I feel my brain get baked just by listening. I like the diversity here, and we have long instrumental runs that take this record just a small step closer to Genesis territory than before - this isn't totally insane NWW-list Futura-prog at all, but feels druggier because of the cultural associations around this kind of music. Maybe it's the chord changes, or the modalities, or the saxophones and guitars interacting in a certain way, but it definitely feels like prog-rock, though Daevid Allen's singing brings things back to la-la land. There are slow, spacious passages with tape loops and wind instruments making abstract soundscapes, but then also lively and exuberant rock jams. If anything, it's a treasure map being laid out that has an irrepressible personality, yet fits well within the context of early 70s prog-space rock. Hawkwind are a good comparison perhaps, but Gong is goofier and therefore they've always been more to my tastes. Side two handily shifts between sounds - 'The Pot Head Pixies' has the same hooky/manic energy as Camembert's 'Fohat Digs Holes in Space'; 'Zero The Hero and the Witch's Spell' moves between exploratory noodling over a light jazz-rock base to a thick, slow space-dirge in just a matter of minutes. 'Witch's Spell/I Am Your Pussy' ends things with Gilli Smyth intoning about modern Wiccan rituals, or something - by this point you can practically smell the smoke wafting in from .... somewhere? Gatefold cover so you can roll your joints in it, of course. I don't have parts two or three so I guess we'll never know what happens to this invisible gnome, but I guess he probably starts getting really into jazz fusion.

The Gerbils - 'The Battle of Electricity' (Orange Twin)

The Gerbils are pretty much forgotten now, but were pretty much forgotten when they were happening, too, at least outside of their Athens-based scene. They were dismissed as a Neutral Milk Hotel side project, one of the more obscure offshoots of the Elephant 6 thing, which meant they got lumped in with those bands just by their associations. And who can blame us? Scott Spillane and Jeremy Barnes are half of the Gerbils and also half of Neutral Milk hotel; the other two guys were certainly a big part of the Athens, GA pop scene around the turn of the millenium and the Gerbils managed to record two albums and a handful of 7"s before disappearing completely. And their sound is also pretty similar to their other bands, in that they are built around fuzzy guitar pop with some external instruments (horns, melodicas) as accents. This album is made up of ten songs with untitled interstitial tracks in between, some slow and dirgy and others a bit more spry. Vocalists Spillane and John D'Azzo harmonise in a very classic indie-pop singing style - not too gruff, occasionally reaching for low registers and helping to deliver the lyrics which are slightly dark and cynical ('The Air Up There' lyrically belies the jaunty shuffle of its music; 'Lucky Girl' is likewise more bitter than it's high-pitched, bright indie-pop cadence suggests). 'Snorkel', the title track, and 'Share Again' are a trilogy near the end, without these instrumental passages. The first of them is a slow song about going to the beach that keeps threatening to crash like a wave; for seemingly slight subject matter, it feels huge and monolithic. The interludes aren't filler; there's two in a row on side two, and they are lovely. They not only show some diverse musical influences with this limited palette (there's a pre-rock pop music feel at times, almost Tin Pan Alley, plus some funereal dirges and impressionistic sketches); they also serve to tie the whole thing together and make this feel like a proper band, despite drummer Barnes credited not with a kit but 'snare drum, floor tom, cymbal'. The Gerbils know when to step on their fuzz pedals and amp things up; 'Meteoroid from the Sun Strikes a Dead Weirdo' feels as punk as things ever get in this scene, and 'The White Sky' has some near blast beats behind it's shimmying keyboard licks and fast chord changes. The whole "indie pop" sound has been so maligned over the years, particularly by those who focus on the Calvin Johnson sweater-wearing cuteness that came out of the Pacific Northwest and all of the attendant developmental disorders that went with it. But I have a real soft spot for the bright lights of that movement, some of the 90s most memorable bands, who actually sound a lot more diverse and some, such as Tullycraft, even feel like spiritual descendants of punk. At its best, great indie-pop can convey a wistful sentiment such as  'Not a night goes by that I don't think of you / I watch you in my darkened room / Electricity was invented when I was left like this again' with a feeling of approachability, solidarity, and craft. The Gerbils had this in spades, and while it's hard to truly sonically separate them from that genre, they, like many of the best examples of any scene, stand apart.

Bob Dylan - 'Bringing It All Back Home' (Columbia)

I grew up with an oppositional view of music. Music was so tightly tied to the social aspects of growing up in America in the late 80s/early 90s that it meant something. What bands you liked = who you were. And by my early teenage years I was hellbent on constructing such a personal definition that was unique from the others in my adolescent sphere, yet also grounded in something. I did my research - when I decided that "punk" was the ultimate reaction to the unjust society (which, of course, I had no remote understanding of), I went to the library and properly studied it. Even then I had some respect for the history of music, but only a Gestalt history - where the central figure was Lou Reed, not Dylan. And because I was only capable of seeing culture developments in opposition to one another (rather than synergistically - didn't I learn anything from James Burke's Connections documentary series?), I ended up with a pretty screwed up view. The way I saw it, I liked Descendents and not Smashing Pumpkins like the other kids at my school; this meant that embracing Descendents automatically meant a rejection of everything Smashing Pumpkins "stood for", which by extension was the entire capitalist patriarchal society that dominated the earth. (A funny concept for a band writing songs like 'I Like Food'). So my understanding of music - and believe me, for years, there was nothing else I consumed or thought about except music - highlighted the moments and quotations which supported my already existing narrative. I think that's what everyone does anyway - we pick and choose the facts we like - but how do these existing narratives get constructed? A subject for deeper investigation, maybe when we get around to the R's and do the Stones .... Anyway, I remembered reading about Johnny Rotten making a t-shirt that says "Fuck Pink Floyd", and quotes from SST 80s guys that emphasised their isolation and commercial futility -- this was the language to me. It was us against them, and the history of rock and roll being spewed out by Rolling Stone magazine and the Greil Marcus-style critical canon was privileging the commercially successful artists, not the real innovators. Fuck Dylan, fuck the Stones, especially fuck Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac and all those dinosaurs -- the real Rock and Roll hall of fame, as I saw it in 1994, should have housed the Dictators and Fugazi, not Clapton and Foghat.

Twenty years later I'm hopefully a bit more nuanced in my view of the world and especially culture. The irony is that I came to embrace many of the so-called 'classic rock' artists who I so blatantly rejected when I was young; I got into classic rock in my late 20s, and particularly Dylan, who I spent years never completely understanding why everyone liked him so much. To me (in the 90s), Dylan was a culturally significant figure who wrote vague, bland folk-rock songs and went through a bunch of phases including a shitty Christian one, and who was worshipped by a legion of obsessive rock writers who were basically being hoodwinked. To me, in this decade, Dylan is fucking awesome, though for reasons that are often intangible. I might still mostly agree with my 90s view, if I were to remove the word 'bland' from the above sentence, but over the years, and especially as I've had my own life experiences, Dylan's power has crept up on me. I'm still picky about his output - this is actually the only Dylan LP I own, and only because i picked it up years ago for dirt cheap and I rarely listen to it -- and I favour the Basement Tapes-era stuff (particularly the 4CD bootleg), the more mystical and funky bits of Desire, and the vastly underrated New Morning album. I think if you care about rock music at all, and I sure do, then Dylan is unavoidable. I didn't try explicitly to like or dislike Dylan - it just happens. Cover versions help, such as Fairport Convention's brilliant renderings or the amazing-beyond-words cover of 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' by 13th Floor Elevators. 'Baby Blue' is here to close the LP and I realise while listening to it that it's buried in attitude, as is pretty much everything that makes early Dylan great. I don't want to pontificate on what Dylan 'means' because there's already a huge (and mostly horrible, I imagine) volume of semi-scholarly literature about that. But there's something that grew in me as I became more confident in my own life and creative choices, and that thing is frequently tickled when listening to these overplayed classics. Being an American abroad perhaps contributed to it as well - in Britain I couldn't understand how everyone was just worshipping the man, and my pleas that Neil and Roy Harper were actually better songwriters went unheard -- and eventually I guess I just wore down. Actually when I watched that film I'm Not There, I was quite taken by it - and I realised just how much I was a Bob Dylan fan. And what's also great about confidence is that I'm happy to like anything I like - just wait until we get to the J's and I can write about how brilliant 90s San Francisco pop-punk band J Church are -- without the need for oppositional, elitist demarcations.

Edmond de Deyster - 'Selectie 01' (Ultra Eczema)

Ah, how one craves the archival obscurity, and the blossoming excitement that comes with a nice reissue. Edmond de Deyster is a Flemish synth pioneer who OD'd in 1999, leaving a massive pile of unreleased analogue synthesiser recordings.  This series of LPs (of which I only have the first, sorry) comes from the stack of reel-to-reel tapes he left behind, and dates from 1975.  Selectie 01 begins with a difficult side-long piece, a pure experiment, where high and low tones fight against organisational strategies, while ultimately assembling together.  De Deyster's edge is soft, with rounded hues that emerge in and out of hazy darkness.  It's a tough way to start a record, even a record of experimental solo synth marketed at fans of such a sound.  It takes ages to coagulate (or arguably, never does).  The flipside is a bit more palatable - split into three tracks, each with distinct compositional identity.  Side two cut one is a classic slab of slowly unfolding malevolence, packed with sounds eeking out toward murky unknowns.  It works itself out slowly, and while I'm sure most of De Deyster's work is largely improvised, this feels very certain.  Compared to the side two track two's ambulance-shards, beeping throughout, side two track one is relatively placid, a tone picked up again on the album's closer.  This could all be a hoax - an attempt to build a mythic legend, when these sounds were actually made in an Antwerp basement in 2006 - but does it really matter?  Would I have been as interested?  There's a certain gesture of faith in releasing an LP of an old, dead, lost artist - particularly if one still adheres to the standard routine that an artist must perform live to "promote" the record - an impossibility in the case of a reissue.  So the label sticks it out anyway and still produces the record, even though there's less chance to recuperate the investment.  I'm not the biggest fan of solo synth experimentation, so I hereby admit that I probably wouldn't have bought this if it was, say, a Dolphins into the Future LP.  As to how it affects my enjoyment of the record, well, I'm not completely sure of that either.  One purpose of this exercise is to listen to music as music, but then I've had trouble avoiding my own extrinsic readings filtering in.  So we'll leave this here and move on...

Neil Campbell - 'These Premises Are No Longer Bugged' (Giardia/Fusetron)

One's gotta think that this must count as 'early' N. Campbell by now, with these recordings made almost 15 years ago. Though maybe 'early mid-period' is more accurate, for Vibracathedral Orchestra was just an embryonic idea then, though we hear a preview of N. Campbell's interest in layers and tonal harmonic convergence here that would later soar majestically through said Orchestra. And his post-VCO career has been noteworthy as well, but what else can you expect from such a one-man musical force? 'Change login zeds' opens up These Premises Are No Longer Bugged with a mess of dissonant tones and bowing, with far too much surface noise on my copy to hear any bits of beauty. It's midway between the A-Band clang and the ur-drone he will later purvey, but the aesthetic is clear enough. And like all of the best Leedsian ecstatic drone slices, it begins after it's already started, or at least what we hear - a tape splice is the gateway. We're spliced into the significantly darker 'Clump' which has some murmuring gongs underneath a scratchy violin interplay, a far more malevolent track than we heard before. It's long, and it doesn't so much settle down as take it's intensity to a realm that redefines normal. By the end, the moaning seaship drones and feedback feel comforting, and the anarchic top layer becomes irrelevant flostam underneath the warmth and clatter. 'Guitar trio 5/4/97' is the most aggressive barrage of guitar noise that I've ever heard from N. Campbell, though it's brief and soon followed by Side 1's sunset 'Monument Irvine'. The nutty thing about this record is the vocal-driven Phil Spector tune, 'Why Don't They Let Us Fall in Love?' at the beginning of the flipside. It's hard to tell how earnest the singing is, as there's something a tad tossed-off about the 'yeah yeah yeah yeah' , but the melody is sweet, and the atonal scratching strings work well with cheap keyboards and bells - it's a pretty piece of fractured psychedelia in Neil's hands, and definitely a hidden gem in his catalogue. The tune extends out into a long bit of minimal repetition not unlike early Richard Youngs solo pieces (Advent and especially Festival come to mind). The rest of the album is the title track. This is another searing slice of horizontal sound, brash with energy and metallic in texture. The volume is significantly louder, enough to bury the surface noise on this lousy pressing, and there's a few currents that tease my ears more than others. A sense of motion never ends, and it's again an immense maelstrom to come out of just one soul. There's overdubs galore on this album, cause this is a true solo effort, though he fakes it well, as it really feels like a group of like-minded tranceheads. I'd like to make some grand analogy about the rise of Tony Blair and New Labour, and these being the sound of changing Britain led by a star in the North. But the reality is, I hear none of that here - like most of the greatest work of these Northern no-goodniks, it's timeless and universal.

Burning Star Core/Comets on Fire (Yik Yak)

This collaboration between one of the mid-decade's underground stars and an ascendant Burning Star Core lineup of C. Spencer Yeh and Robert Beatty was clearly recorded in one long, fun session and sliced onto vinyl for the listening public to enjoy. The recording quality is a murky, overblown mess which is part of the appeal for Comets on Fire fans, though I must admit that I always prefer my Burning Star Core more Hi-fi'lutin. Side one is all crunch, driven around a raven riff that could be the Son of (Edgar Winter's) 'Frankenstein'. Some press referred to this as Hawkwind-esque, which I can see, though I must admit my knowledge of Hawkwind is surprisingly thin. But this isn't space-rock - it's very grounded, earthy, and and geological. Side two has a more chug-chug feel, revving up into the aggro-boogie that I associate with Comets on Fire, and you also get a little more breathing room for the electronics and (I guess?) violin of Burning Star Core. There also appears to be vocals in there, perhaps a taste of Yeh's predilection for odd-throat soundforms. The drums are thunderous but the midrange is so blown out that you can only really feel the kick and hear the cymbals flittering about. I'm not sure if the recording quality benefits this, because then it becomes some aesthetic statement, or if it compromises it. It runs at such an intense level that there's little dramatic impact, but it's also awesome to follow the piercing electronic tones that cut through everything and whizz and dance around like fireflies.