It’s a message from an ancestor who lived a long time ago…

Some musicians are a genre unto themselves, some musicians see no boundaries, some musicians are a force for good in the world and some exemplify the word cool. Taj Mahal is all those things. He never disappoints live or recorded.

So here we have 1974 and Taj is out there covering his roots, reggae, funk, blues some proto-disco grooves (I just created that phrase right now) and folk music. Who gets to cover The Slickers Johnny Too Bad and Marley’s Slave Driver and get away with it and sing in at least three languages on one record? It’s the type of music that makes a middle aged white guy dance or at least nod his head contentedly.

It is also the coolest album cover I have seen in a long time.

And you might see what a state we’re in…

The thanksgiving feast is put away. The leftovers are in bags in the fridge and naps have been taken and games played. Everyone has either gone to bed or gone to do what they want to do now the obligation of family has subsided.

It’s at this point my mind turns to the old country and sometimes the past. I remember struggling through the latter half of the 80’s in Thatcher’s England and the early 90’s before having had enough and setting out to find some space in the colonies as my Dad puts it. I was going to reach for some quiet gentle sounds from the past, Jansch and Renbourn, Pentangle, maybe Fairport Convention or the Albion Band or Steeleye Span. The thought of protest was in my mind after watching the news though so I thought I would reach for that most polite, beautiful and scathing of political folk-rock records. Alright Jack by the Home Service.

Along with Billy Bragg, John Tams and the Home Service led the charge against Thatcher in the late 80’s. The music was beautiful, haunting and angry all at once. Bragg and his cohorts were one dimensional in comparison to the horn arrangements and scathing lyrics of the Home Service that was born out of the ashes of Ashley Hutching’s Albion Band. There is no greater protest song than Sorrow/Babylon, it’s a hymn to protest, decrying war, the rise of the corporations and the inhumanity of politicians. It is still relevant today which may be the shame, however when you realize that the section Babylon is a traditional song you understand the struggle seems to be endless.

So now we are heading further out into the Cascade foothills looking for that peace and quiet that age seems to call for, an acre of land maybe. My Dad has started to refer to this move as the old homestead.Of course at the moment that acre looks more like a scene from the Somme as we try and get ready to build.

 

 

Weather’s fine…

I pick up Todd Rundgren albums when I find them. It’s not that I am a fan. He does however fascinate me. He is at times prog master, pop singer, soul singer, electronic pioneer or that guy who gets so much music on one record you will destroy it if you play it. He seems an odd man, pretty genuine, a maverick and an iconoclast. He also is honest enough to take a gig as it will pay the bills, see his work with the New Cars or Ringo’s All Starr Band.

I’ve been listening to Rundgren in his various guises since I borrowed Hermit of Mink Hollow from the library on the basis of he played guitar on Bat out of Hell. The only song that really stayed with me was Onomatopoeia, which may be the worst song on the album, I then moved on to Initiation which I got used and was virtually unplayable because of the amount of music he crammed onto both sides but was fun enough if forgettable. I then moved onto his prog work with Utopia, I think he may be the only US musician who really got prog, of course this is based on exhaustive research that resulted in it being the only US prog I liked. He has obviously written some great songs produced some great albums and got into arguments with Andy Partridge which is way more than I have ever managed, but I find myself liking the albums while they play but I may not ever need to hear any of them again.

So the other day I found this oddity and it made me think of Bruce over at Vinyl Connection and his recent ’77 series, as well as his posts about albums released in ’67. Basically Todd did the same thing in ’76 but being a musician and not a blogger he dedicated a whole side of his album to songs he loved from 1967. He missed the decade connection by a few months but what the hell that would be too perfect. The A-side covers are Faithful, get that recreations of the originals, the B-side Todd Rundgren originals.

As with all Rundgren albums it’s a fun listen, the originals are much better than the covers, some guitar histrionics, sardonic lyrics and great production but at the end of the day I have no real connection to it other than I know it is well produced sounds great while it’s playing and will sit on the shelf until I want to hear my other White Album.

Here is the track list for those interested.

 

 

Who’s driving my car now?

I was heading for the ditch and hit a detour.

There is no musician more ornery than Neil Young. Known for his rocking excursions into extreme feedback and his gentle acoustic meanderings he is fairly predictably going to do something that will confuse, anger and energize you. The bizarre wilderness that was the Geffen years was a period of pastiches and dead ends, variously hillbilly country, big band blues and rockabilly nightmares not to mention the computer vocals of Trans.

Which brings me to one of this weeks impulse buys, A Treasure, one of the Neil Young Live Archive releases. I may have bought four or maybe five this week. The tour prior to recording Old Ways in 1984/85 took place while Young was being sued for releasing music that was not representative of himself by his record company. A Treasure is taken from this tour and it sounds like it was a whole lot of fun, especially as he was on tour with no album and no support from the label.

So what we have is a rock musician playing with some ace country session players and the rest of the band being made up of the usual suspects like Ben Keith and Spooner Oldman. What really changes the sound though is the fiddle and mandolin, what makes it different from Harvest though is Young’s attempt to sound like a country band rather than country rock but that’s a country band with Young’s psyched out feedback drenched guitar firmly seated in the middle of the mess.

This is all brought to fruition on Grey Riders the last track on the album, this is psychedelic country at it’s best, fuzz guitar feed backing solo’s mandolins and fiddles and Young howling at the moon.

Did she wake you up to tell you that it was only a change of plan…

I was planning on this massive ditch trilogy/quadrology whatever you call it post. In preparation I  thought lets listen to the reason for the ditch first.

So I sat myself down and listened to Harvest, then I listened again and remembered that fine crisp day in the late 70’s when I struggled home from Woolworths with my new recently purchased copy of Harvest. This was my go to album for years when unhappy, in love, happy drunk/stoned or just tired. I would play it when I woke up and before I went to sleep. I lived this album in all it’s schmaltzy at times over the top glory. I burned through countless copies, at one time I had it on CD, cassette and the record so I could play it on the car, wondering around and at home. It was stolen by more girlfriends than I can imagine, I must have single handedly kept Neil Young in cocaine the number of copies I bought.

Anyway today I celebrate the album that was the precursor to the ditch, the towering pinnacle of country rock or whatever it’s called the album that gave us the phrase More Barn!!!

So I am staying out of the ditch for now and listening to Harvest.

Neil has finally confirmed the more barn story;

You’re very nearly human you’re so well disguised…

There are bands that go in phases, that ebb and flow as a singular member becomes more prevalent or a relationship changes. People come and go and the sound changes or develops or stagnates.

There are band members who have been on the periphery and then are suddenly in the ascendance. Bob Calvert had always been around Hawkwind, adding lyrics, poetry and if you believe the books instability in all areas. A cross between Biggles, Lawrence of Arabia and some fictional English lord, although he was South African. Go read about him he is a fascinating/challenging man. For a brief few years at the tale end of the 70’s he was the stylistic and lyrical driving force of the band along with Dave Brock’s metronomic riffs and the electronic bubbling that went along with the Hawkwind sound.

Between Space Ritual and rejoining Hawkwind Calvert released two solo albums. Captain Lockheed and the Starfighters and Lucky Leif and the Longships. Both are patchy. The first a comedic rock opera of the US’s sale to Germany of somewhat defective military hardware. The second a tale of the viking discovery of America with the wonderful Lay of the Surfers sounding like Hawkwind covering the Beach Boys and Michael Moorcock appearing on the banjo for Moonshine in the Mountains. Both albums contain great songs and have an eclectic cast of musicians including all the usual Hawkwind and Pink Fairies alumni and Brian Eno. They do not seem fully finished though however fun they are, my preference ins Capt. Lockheed with it’s Pythonesque interludes with Vivian Stanshall and let’s face it it has Lemmy on bass.

I believe Calvert’s strength to have been the fact he was not really a musician, he was a writer. He was also bonkers and suffering from challenges that made him unpredictable and a dangerous performer. Listen to the recording of Over The Top when he wants to sing Master of the Universe and the band goads him into an improvisational piece that flowed out of his mind straight to the mic. A band and it’s lead man not necessarily in sync but definitely heading in the same direction, two forces opposing each other to create. Of course by this time Hawkwind were not Hawkwind but the Sonic Assassins and preparing for another incarnation that unfortunately only included Bob for a short time as they became the Hawklords.

So for the best part of three Hawkwind albums and the Hawklords album Bob Calvert and Dave Brock led what was left of Hawkwind on a merry trip through some of the best space rock you can find. Gone were the endless riffs and Lemmy’s pulsing bass, instead we had something coming close at times to Bowie in a punk band. In fact Bowie stole Simon House for his band from Hawkwind around this time. Preaching a dystopian vision of the world that was terrifying before dystopias became the last comfy bastion of the young adult novel. High Rise, Uncle Sam’s on Mars and Damnation Alley paint a terrifying picture of a world in disarray.

The music at this time feels a little restrained. It’s as if the excesses that the band were known for were being held at bay by the control necessary to get the ideas out. It’s not as anarchic musically, although lyrically the chaos was still there. Songs are stories not chants to anchor the music, experiments are a little more controlled and the bleeps and swooshes while still there are the background and the songs would still exist without them, they are dressing not integral to the whole unless you acknowledge those bleeps and farts along with the rhythm guitar is the Hawkwind sound.

I never saw Calvert with Hawkwind, I heard the stories from those grizzled old fans in the pub though, the Atomhenge stage design, the machine gunning of the audience the waving of scimitars and the strange uniforms for the Hawklords tour. I did however see Calvert, due to some poor decision making I do not however have any memory of the gig apart from talking to strange man smoking outside before the show started. To this day I swear it was Calvert and he whispered the secrets of the universe to me as I stepped inside. Of course the bad decisions I was making may have caused this memory, it’s fake news I tell you. I also cannot remember the secrets of the universe, although I know for a fact I knew them once and s our glorious orange leader may say they were the best secrets.