UK-UK 1978
UK were a super group that really
weren't all that super. In fact this album is, to these
well-honed, musically elastic and other
wise epic ears, possibly the worst thing I've ever heard.
The album bothered me so much that I
used it as a frisbee and threw it into the woods (the only
other frisbee used record I ever tossed
was a Petra album, which was actually better than this piece
of rancid tripe.)
What makes this so bad? Well, first
off I appreciate the numerous and overblown talents of every
single member of this band! I love
them all, and would listen to "Feels Good to Me" by Bill
Bruford
over and over again whilst whistling
Dixie in the shower every day for the rest of my life as long
as I didn't ever have to experience a
single second of this wretched growth of a record again. In
fact when I finished listening to it, I
had to go to the doctor to get checked out to make sure the
lameness wasn't contagious.
There are some good parts of course,
but as the whole thing is so forgettable and I had to undergo
shock therapy shortly after hearing it
I can't remember what they are.
That said, this review shouldn't keep
you from buying said album, absolutely not! If you love Asia
and Bill Bruford's solo work, this is a
MUST HAVE. If however, like me, the thought of Asia makes
you want to sort of get ill, then you
should avoid this like the plague it is.
That this was the core of the last
incarnation of 70's King Crimson made me have ridiculously high
hopes for it, but what was nestled in
these grooves had no resemblance whatever to "Red" or even
for
that matter the 80's stuff. Worst
album ever, IMHO, and would rather have my lips removed with a
straight razor before I put my poor
ears through this one again.
No video, thank you, but if you want to...I guess you can go here!
No video, thank you, but if you want to...I guess you can go here!
Henry Cow-Legend 1973
And with a great reeling squonk, the
Mighty Henry Cow are born, and it seems to have been a rather
difficult birth, of course there's tons of weird facts about how it
came to be, and there are many discourses upon how difficult a band
the Mighty Henry Cow are, but to my ears the very first time I heard
the Mighty Henry Cow, they sympathized and stretched in to fit so
perfectly that the only thing I could say after the ravishing was
"Where have you been all my life?"
as I lit a Kool Mild and took a slug
from my bottle of Olde English.
It's like John Coltrane sometimes,
other times not so much (Coltrane is better than the Mighty Henry Cow
but only because he happened to be a walking god among men) mostly
because the Mighty Henry Cow ARE a rock band of some stripe, though
the stripes might be vertical or horizontal, depending if you are
knocked on the floor by their brilliant beaming ugliness.
Also there's guitars. Coltrane had no
guitar. the Mighty Henry Cow would make two really wonderful
records, then acquire Dagmar, of whom I'm not incredibly fond, and
remain not quite as good as this before disbanding. I can't give
either this or the next album Five stars because they aren't quite
five star affairs, but for what it's worth, This record kicks asps,
and rattle snakes too. Try it and you may I say listen to 'the Cow
every day.
Van Der Graaf – Quiet Zone/Pleasure
Dome 1977
I'm into lizards and I'm into snakes
and I'm into Peter Hammill probably more than I should be. But
I can't help it, see, he amazes me with
his quixotic weirdness and those wonderfully wubulous words
that sort of make me feel like a
sandwich at Karen Carpenter's bedside. I want to be eaten by this
music, see, I want to be devoured by
it, and yet it NEVER quite does more than nibble or pull off a bit of
crust.
For some reason this record really does
come close to pushing my baby carriage over the cliff,
though, and I like it...alot. It is a
"pop" affair, as far as VDG/G could be POP but that's
really
not saying much because this is as far
away from a Donna Summer/Michael Jackson duet produced by
David Foster as it is from England's
Newest Hitmakers. This is exceedingly weird music, though I
guess it's not as weird as the earlier
stuff, but what about the way "The Habits of A Broken Heart"
just sort of melts away from it's
rather catchy beginning into a...well, whatever that is? I also
love the "Sphinx" song,
sounds like Bowie meets a Narwhal in Hell, and I'm personally glad
that it
does, I needed that sound in my life
when I first heard this album, and I still do for that matter.
It isn't the most played VDG/G record
I have, but it gets rotation a few times a year (which is
about all anything gets at this point)
and I always enjoy it thoroughly, except that one part...you
know the one I mean, where that one
thing happens and other things that shouldn't happen happen too?
Oh, and also there's a violin. Really,
a violin! Makes you almost not miss the saxophone, but not
quite. Good stuff, probably not going
to make anyone's top ten albums of all time or anything (but
it really probably does make someone's
list of awesomeness) but a good, solid record from a raving
lunatic about the effects of Space.
Listen without prejudice was the name of a George Michael album.
Lou Reed/Metallica –Lulu 2011
Ahhh, Lulu. One of the main reasons I
decided to begin writing reviews again was to touch upon this
benighted object. It's an awful album, right? I mean it must be. It
sounds not much at all like Metallica, and Lou, oh dear Lou (RIP)
sounds like Eddie (the zombie mascot from Iron Maiden) making obscene
phone calls in the middle of a drunken, drug fueled night of
debauchery with the Marquis de Sade's shrink. But there's just
SOMETHING about it that I can't quite shake. There are parts that
grab me by the lovehandles and sort of throw me around and kick me in
the face, and maybe I like that a little more than some listeners,
but it doesn't sound nearly as "bad" as everyone makes it
out to be even when I'm not in the mood to be tossed around like so
much potato salad.
What's the problem here? Well, for one thing I believe this is an
album made by two incredibly well beloved musical forces who share
very few fans. I can't imagine many fans of Lou (especially those
left after his last few efforts including the bland and pointless
Hudson River album) were quite open to the chug chug thrump
"YEAAAAAWWW" of Metallica anymore than many Metallica fans
were really looking forward to the three chord progressions and Lou
gasping like Leonard Cohen's dad about how he's an abused prostitute
who loves her man.And that's what makes this record great. Out of all things I've ever heard I can't imagine anything recorded more for the fuck of it than this. I don't believe anyone involved thought it would be really well received and I don't think Lou or Metallica were looking forward to it catapulting them to an even higher level of fame and glory. I really do believe Lou wanted to make the ugliest and most disturbing thing he could with the last sparks of energy he had in 'im and I believe he pulled it off quite well. The man who irked the music press for the last forty years by releasing Metal Machine Music (genius or total tripe?) got to go off doing what he did best, which is bothering people who don't know how to take him.
Plus "Iced Honey" "Junior Dad" "Pumping Blood" and "Mistress Dread" are all pretty great songs.
THE FUTURE OF MUSIC STARTS HERE! (and i'm not really kidding about that!)
Univers Zero – Heresie 1979
To My Favorite Univers Zero Album
Dear Heresie,
I commend the high level musicianship contained within your dank and wicked grooves. I really like the way you creep me out if I doze off whilst listening to you. I also really like the sexy cover.
From,
A friend
But seriously, this is one album I love utterly. Not a bad second on it and everything about it makes me shiver. This was the first real RIO album I heard, and it made me fall in love with the whole genre even though, to me, there is nothing else in the genre I've heard (yet) as good as this.
What makes it perfect? Well, for one thing if you sorta let yourself wander around with it, there's something about being in the smoke filled Bedouin tent, ignoring the bleating animals as the music takes you out and over the sand all aglow 'neath the perilous full moonlight. There's a dancing woman with her flowing skirts hitched down beckoning you to come...INTO THE PIT OF CTHULHU WHERE YOU WILL BE EATEN BY A THOUSAND FACELESS SHARP FANGED ELDRITCH HORRORS!
But the whole thing isn't that way, of course, and you could very intelligently argue that really it does sometimes sound like cheesy 70's horror flick music, and that it has this certain quality that maybe doesn't transcend, etc...but for my money, it's actually one of the most wonderful and fleshed out albums by a very strange and wicked band that I still can't quite believe exists.
A five? Absolutely, even though I would recommend you preview it before you plop down the cash (youtube or something) because this really is a taste thing, but oh what a taste it is!
ARRRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr......(dang Eldritch Horrors!)
Black Sabbath – Born Again 1983
Born Again, for the first time!
Black Sabbath! Ian Gillian! YES! (not the band) or, is it NO!Well, I've seen many fellow reviewers pigeonhole this one, and rightly so. It is a sort of bad that very few things manage to pull off. The production is pretty anemic, the lyrics are kind of silly, the music itself is sort of underwhelming and yet I can't say that this album is actually "Bad." More like enthusiastically misguided at best, delusional at worst, and really what would rock n roll be without the occasional ugly step child to smack around? This album is made for that purpose, however accidentally.
First problem is, of course, the cover. With that image, one can not really imagine what it sounds like. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for red satanic babies with green eyes on a purple background, but really it should sound like Celtic Frost or at least Manowar with that cover, not a (pre-dates, of course) cross between Guns N Roses and Van Halen (the only valid Guns N Roses comparison would be the weird similarity between "Zero the Hero" and "Paradise City") But the overall purpose of that comparison is that this album is not really all that heavy by any standard that could be used by any band that would foolishly call themselves "Black Sabbath" and think that they could easily get away with tepid pseudo-metal/hardrock of the 80's style.
That said, if this album were an 80's Uriah Heep or Wishbone Ash album it would have been their best of the decade. It's not terrible like "Abominog" is terrible nor is it horrid like...Actually I just realized the only 80's Wishbone Ash album I got through was "Nouveau Calls" and the cover of "Born Again" actually ate my copy of it. But you get the point.
This album isn't a real Black Sabbath album (but at least it doesn't have Joe Lynn Turner on it!) and it's not at all a Deep Purple album. Sabbath and Purple together sound like a great mix on paper but the reality was, I think, that these guys were all recovering from the seventies and couldn't quite drag their carcasses through the motions required for this to be truly successful. There's a weariness, a sort of half excited half underwhelmed quality to the album that they never quite shake. The songs sound like they started off okay, but the band just decided to call it a day instead of making them really great so what you get are a bunch of songs that are *almost* really good a few that are "pretty good" and a few that just stink. The overall result is a level of mediocrity that later Sabbath albums would kill for and earlier Purple albums wouldn't tolerate.
Not terrible, but often times boring and lacking quality control. The story is that they wrote "Disturbing the Priest" because they were recording close to a church and the priest came over to ask them to turn it down, they had tea with him and agreed wholeheartedly. That is absolutely NOT metal.
Roy Harper – Folkjokeopus 1969
It's nice to see a true English giant
with a monkey on his shoulder and not on his back (the cover of this
record) and the slightly death glazed look on his face makes one
question whether or not this is going to be in any way a friendly,
welcoming, warm record to visit. Oh, boy, welcome to the wonderful
world of Roy Harper!
SUNRISE! And off we go into a weird warped worldview that's intent
on taking us all over the map of human experience (and will come
closer than anyone I can think of, eventually) until we settle into,
some forty-odd minutes later, tomorrow. In the meantime we get the
long-before-they-existed REM sounding "Sargent Sunshine"
and Roy's on a roll, and before we can even think of what this
natural force of a song could possibly be about it's over and in
comes "She's the One" which is the lynchpin of Side 1, if
you can't deal with this one you might as well get out of the water
now. The song is about a friend of Roy's who has, in Roy's opinion, a
quite lovely wife he treats with very little respect. Roy is upset by
this and spends the next near seven minutes telling us-and presumably
the subject of the song-why he feels that way. With a beautiful ear
splitting falsetto on the "Sheeeee's the OOOOONNNNEEE" part
that could make bats crash, Roy might be implying that if old boy
don't get himself straight he might just waltz right off with his
"wonderful wife." Side 1 continues with ditties "In
the Time of Water" and "The Composer of Life" both of
which are great little tracks that do little other than sound neat
and ends with the mighty "One For All."
Then we get to side 2 and things get very odd indeed. With only three songs this side contains many firsts for Roy including first song about a bulldog who bites a cop and causes its owner (Roy) to go to court for exercising some control, then IT happens. Oh yes, it does. The cute dog/cop slightly subversive but comic track is over and we are down deep in the river of Roy Harper (We are kinda there with "One For All" at the end of side 1) and as (another first Roy's first huge epic) McGoohan's Blues starts, so does it continue for nearly FOURTEEN acoustic, repetitive minutes, building somehow this incredible dramatic tension that is almost unfelt as verse after verse strolls by, each one more interesting than the one before bridged by variations on the "Oh how the Sea she roars with laughter/ and howls at the dancing wind/ to see my....(here the lyrics change making this "chorus" not quite one)" each verse slightly more sinister, slightly more deranged until finally--are you ready for this--it breaks out into some of the most beautiful Nicky Hopkins fueled piano boogie music that strangely enough sounds again like REM to me, and Roy SINGING with a hoarse voice and being all cryptic and whoa! Suddenly the blood rushes to the head, the endorphins release and life makes more sense than it ever has (or hasn't) and for a little over three minutes (maybe closer to four) one of the most beautiful "pop" (non derogatory term for catchy 60s/70s Beatle influenced type music) gushes out of the speakers and caresses the listener, lovingly, and sort of harshly at once. Chocolate and peanut butter for the ears, and then it ends...with Manana...a sort of goofy track, not unlike Self Control at the beginning of the side, genuinely dark lyrics, but sort of funny, that's a wrap. Kid giggling at the end and you are free to go.
When you really get down to the meat of Roy and his music, I do think a very large part of whether one likes him or not has to do with how comfortable or uncomfortable you are with his words. The lyrics on a Roy Harper album are always going to be somewhat "controversial" to say the least, or actually have guaranteed, in a less enlightened time, a nice Roy-b-cue. Roy offends ME sometimes and I have a shrine built to him in my bathroom. If you can "get" his ground, sort of let him just yammer on with whatever he needs to say then you will be richly rewarded...or not.
