Outer Music Diary

Cool Feet - Burning Desire (1976 Luxembourg). This is one of the most expensive of the many underground albums out there. Regularly fetching 4 figures, it’s not too hard to understand why Cool Feet has such a reputation. Blindfolded, you could swear you were listening to some newly unearthed private hard rock album from the US midwest, say Toledo, situated perfectly on the road from Ohio to Michigan. It has that small dive bar vibe, as patroned by Local Number union members. A 4 piece, with dual guitars and a gruff vocalist, Cool Feet pretty much delivers kickass hard rock from start to finish. There are a couple of stinkers to endure, as they gave at least a little lip service to their commercial aspirations. Though for me the big surprise was the early Scorpions influence, primarily from “Fly to the Rainbow” through the “Virgin Killer” albums. Truth be told, there aren’t that many continental European bands that play this style of hard rock (Belgium’s Kleptomania and Vacation also came to mind), and certainly less that remind me of primo era Scorps (though without the Uli Roth psychedelic influence unfortunately). Word down at the soup kitchen says that the album was apparently slated for a CD release on Garden of Delights and LP reissue on Amber Soundroom, but one of the members put the kabash on it. There’s a built-in audience for this album, and you know who you are.

Grim Reaper - We Were All Fools (1979 Germany). Brutkasten is sort of Germany’s DIY label, similar to France’s FLVM, England’s multitude of 99 only releases, and America’s 1970s tax dodge loophole labels (Guiness, Dellwood). There was no consistency to what was on Brutkasten, and one can find anything from acid folk rock (Carol of Harvest), Genesis inspired symphonic (Sirius), basement hard rock (Black Spirit, P205) and onto German pop and schlager music. Grim Reaper fits the mold perfectly. The music is sort of an American inspired hard rock, but with some old sounding organs recalling other German bands like Air or Erlkoenig. The production is pure amateur basement. Not a whole lot to latch onto here, except there are some nice melodic guitar leads that seem to imply that Grim Reaper did at least possess some talent, if not a lot of imagination. There’s some nice Moog work here and there as well.

Vacation - Resurrection of (1971 Belgium). Standard issue guitar fronted blues rock in the Cream / Blue Cheer tradition, all very typical of the day. Sound is quite raw, supposedly a live recording, though I suspect the crowd noise was added later (I’m a bit suspicious of the delirious crowd, as if Vacation were The Beatles or somethin’…). Guitarist is a cut above the rest. Opening track is a fast paced instrumental, and not in step with the rest of the album. Overall, I’m reminded of another Belgian group called Kleptomania. Fans of American garage music may take a shine to this, like Saint Anthony’s Fyre for example. Other guideposts include France’s Amphyrite and Quebec’s Ellison.

Spacious Mind - Live Volume One:  Do Your Thing But Don’t Touch Ours

One positive for the improvisationally minded space-rock/psych group is after a decade in the business, you’re going to likely have a good stock of live recordings and it shouldn’t be too difficult to start releasing some of the gems. Here the Spacious Mind have done that for their own audience in limited quantities, and it’s certainly a worthy first entry, marking this a series worth keeping an eye on. There aren’t any major secrets here, this is a genre that got started with Pink Floyd in the late 60s and while the technology has changed, the focus on mantric and psychedelic jams hasn’t. However, now that this band has been around for a while, I’m starting to see that divergence from the center that you’d hope for. The band does it by fragmenting parts of their sound and really concentrating on excellent textures, rather than concentrating on power or histrionics. It’s a similar path to the one Escapade took except Spacious Mind still seem a bit old school and analog.

Spirit - Spirit of ‘76

I’m like nearly everyone else in finding the first four Spirit albums the central part of the band’s canon, but even with the personnel changes, it didn’t make the band something not to watch for the remainder of the 70s as this double album so perfectly demonstrates. Or should I say bands? Randy California left Spirit in the early 70s and went on to record Kapt Kopter, which could be considered something of a template for the Spirit he picked up with to record this album, drummer Ed Cassidy partnering with him for a new version. Like Kapt Kopter, this album has a lot of reconstructed covers and while they don’t go to Residents-like lengths to make them different, there’s no question this is California and Co. even through “The Times They Are A-Changing,” “Like A Rolling Stone,” the Stones’ “Happy,” “Hey Joe” and more. The band’s original music, written by the partners, fits in perfectly, and it turns out to be something of a post-Beatles art/pop thing, like California’s solo work, all of it echoing the original music on albums like Sardonicus. It’s definitely a surreal, psychedelic, yet very American work that still deserves attention almost as much as the original music.

Keep - Live

Keep’s a hard jazz rock band to get a consonant view on, given their two studio albums and this live release as they seem to change style from one to the other, and I suppose that could be due to personnel changes invisible to me. I’ve always really liked the second album, because it works nicely as an analog to the Kenso albums, however, this Live album is more what you’d think of as standard fusion, more in the virtuoso realms of Tribal Tech and like. So while I didn’t warm to it right away, over time I’ve found it to improve distinctively from the others to make it my second favorite work of theirs. In getting used to the music, I still detect a little of the more progrock vibe from the second in the compositions even if it is subsumed to the new style a bit.

Thinking Plague - Upon Both of Your Houses

This CD was recorded at the only NEARFest I attended before travel mishaps, monetary influences and progscene politics made me lose my enthusiasm for trekking cross country for events of this sort. And it was the second time I’d seen the band after Progday less than a year before this and maybe because it was the first time I’d seen them that I preferred the Progday gig over this one. Thinking Plague, as is well known, clear proghouses of most of the fans I have little in common with much to the amusement of the remaining fans who find this band to be one of the best and most on-the-box progressive rock groups of the modern crop. Their Art Bears and other avant-rock inspired sounds both challenge and impress and I find them one of the closest to my heart from this area of music in that they have the same penchant as This Heat for creating excellent atmospheres and drones with their style, while still being forward thinking and compositionally complex as well. In retrospect this disc shows that the concert was probably even better than my experience of it, possibly due to post-show treatment sound upgrades (and lack of hangover), even if seeing Kerman’s barbie doll act adds immeasurably to the experience.

Lamp of the Universe - Echo in Light

New Zealanders Lamp of the Universe still seem to be effortless putting out far out and krautrock inspired psychedelic albums with all the attendant sitars and exotica, and it’s a shame we can’t augment their reputation by zipping them back to 1973 and signing them up on the Kosmische label. In an era where rather common if energetic space rock seems to be the overt face of psychedelia, it’s acts like Lamp, Titan and others that really get my blood moving, reminding one that there’s still a lot of territory to be mined here. Certainly there’s a shtickyness to it that will remind one of flower power and pictures of beatnicks with sitars on nice Persian rugs, but it’s a shtick I happen to be rather enamored with, that sort of naivete and ambition that makes guys without any training pick up instruments with a skill level rather less than Ravi Shankar’s and still make me feel I’ve been transported to another world.

Mu - End of an Era (aka The Last Album)

I missed this album upon its original Reckless release when that label was one of the few companies putting out a number of unusual releases alongside their slew of Bevis Frond albums, stuff like the second Crazy World of Arthur Band album, Rustic Hinge and this strange singer/songwriter outfit led by Merrell Fankhauser and joined by Beefheart guitarist Jeff Cotton. The music is definitely song oriented and unlike the other two examples, closer to some of Frond’s music. It’s a bit early for me to compare the songwriting between the two, but the music Mu recorded (and didn’t release until the late 80s) has some unusual quirks and tangents to it that made it quite an interesting listen. Overall, though, it wouldn’t be easy to say more about this without further absorption.

This is a mini admin note to announce that through the summer months (June through August) we’re going to go “off season.” After discussing with Tom and after doing this a couple years, we’ve found that occasionally we have to recharge the inspiration and feel that a few months off not only helps to get the inspiration back but also to start stockpiling articles to plan forward. However, it’s quite possible during these months that we’ll do what we call reruns, which means that we will likely be posting our old entries from the old yahoogroup that haven’t been posted here before. Although we’re not likely to do this every day, hopefully it will help bridge the gap. So we hope to finish May strong and then have our summer vacation.

Marillion - The Fish Years 1983-86 (various videos)

After the break I’ve left the text file with the contents of this unofficial collection of Marillianea, which covers the early years of a band that even if I wouldn’t consider myself much of a fan now, I once was, and they were definitely very influential to my musical path in the late 80s. And so for some reason I’m continually interested in checking out items I never got to see in the pre-internet age, as at the time I only saw things like this in books.

Part of this I already know, the 3/12/84 gig following up Fugazi that shows up everywhere. Of the Fish albums, Fugazi is probably the one I find the most tedious, even though despite it’s antagonistic, spiky and depressing vision might make it the most original of the bunch, in at least that the band’s obvious Peter Hammill/VDGG roots come out here along with the Genesis. And there really are a lot of clips covering this period here, which meant I had to sit with Assassing as an ear worm for about a week after (this, however, doesn’t offset the Marillion earworm record, which I’d give to a month-long invasion of Heart of Lothian). Also prevalent is a lot of early Jesters Tear work, as well as the rather awful and rare traditional rendering of “Margaret.”

The most hilarious part of the whole collection is spying a Genesis record in Fish’s collection, particularly when I remember them downplaying this influence in interviews. He knows, you know…

Solaris - Rio Art Rock Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brasil 9/12/96 (video) 

If I had one concert in my life that I may have regretted walking out early on, it would be seeing Solaris at Progfest in 1995 (or thereabouts). At the time the group of people I was with all unanimously were turned off by the bludgeoning loud sound and reliance on 80s technology and tones, and even though I really do like their Martian Chronicles album, I agreed at the time. So in many ways, checking out this video was like seeing what I missed. And my conclusion after watching it, at a great surprise to me, was that I didn’t really miss out on much. Quite frankly I was surprised at how many mistakes this band made (particularly the flautist who may have been having a rough night) and how repetitive and predictable the song structures are. Opinions of their other albums have made me return to Martian Chronicles only for my positive opinion to be confirmed, so I’m somewhat baffled at my lack of empathy with just about everything else the band has done. My guess is this Brasilian concert might have been a worse night than the show in LA, but at least I’m not regretting my decision to leave now.

Read the rest of this entry »

Grateful Dead - Family Dog at the Great Highway, San Francisco 9/6/69
Grateful Dead - Dane County Coliseum, Madison, WA 10/25/73
Grateful Dead - Live at the Cow Palace, New Year’s Eve 1976 (+ bonus disc)
Grateful Dead - Hartford Civic Center, Hartford, CT 5/28/77

This Dead roundup starts with a short 45 minute-ish show from the days where they played the Family Dog pretty frequently, many of the gigs which kind of strike me as average, including this one. There’s a nice “Doing That Rag” and a rather long and rare ”He Was a Friend of Mine” that more or less make up the set’s highlights, the rest is rather average (although they didn’t do “Big Boy Pete” all that much either).

The Dane County later 1973 show popped up in my pile and it at least approximately gets me ready for the big Winterland 73 box that ended up being almost my sole music purchase for the month of April. To say the least, I can’t wait, as this period is one of the best in the Dead’s long, rambling history. While this 10/25/73 gig may not be quite up to the standards of the Dicks Picks already released from this tour (particulary #14, one of the series best), average for the Dead around this time was still a very good thing. Highlights include a brilliant “Here Comes Sunshine” and naturally the “Dark Star” with “Mind Left Body Jam” that may have been the central reason why this was the most “out” period for the group.

Got another listen in to the Rhino NYE 1976 disc. While I still think this is one of the better NYE shows by the band, most of which I consider kind of weak and tepid, and it includes a very solid “Playin’,” my opinion on this might have dropped a hair after this listen. The rest of the first set isn’t really all that notable and even the long jam suite and the Help>Slipknot duo are a bit on the average side. The bonus disc on this one, is actually quite a bit more interesting in spots. In particular the “Crazy Fingers” from 6/9/76 with its delicate and beautifully intricate dual guitar work makes you wonder why they rarely returned to it and you also get another very solid Playin’ sandwich (from 9/24/76) that makes me very happy, as usual, that I preorder items like this from dead.net.

And finally my first listen to a show from another of my favorite periods of the Dead, the early 77 tour following up Terrapin Station. While this isn’t the very best gig of the month, it’s definitely solid and holds up well on its own. The gigantic “Sugaree” in the first set is certainly a plus as it really feels like the band lets loose earlier than usual and the long suite that meanders from “Estimated Prophet” into “Playin’ in the Band” and then three other songs before reprising Playin’ are particularly epic for this period, where the shows are often just a little shorter than they were before their mid-70s retirement.

Virgin’s Dream - Sophisty (1980 Germany). A couple of years ago, I received a package from Rolf Trenkler, former leader of Virgin’s Dream. It contained a CD compiled from unreleased demos called “The X-Tapes” and dated primarily from 1972 (and I reviewed it for Gnosis). But there was no mention of this “Sophisty” album (maybe because he wasn’t on it)! In fact, I see no similar members between the 2 albums. A similar thing happened with the band Moira, and yet there was a tie-in, just not on album. So this certainly could be the same band. The Krautrock Musikzirkus website lists them together, as a band from Essen. But the history provided is strictly from “The X-Tapes” era. In any case, I never knew of its existence until a good friend recently provided me with a CDR burn. Virgin’s Dream, on “Sophisty” at least, are very much a product of the late 70s and early 80s German fusion scene. Perhaps a bit more tropical, and funky, than most. Comparisons to Michael Borner’s Sun or some of Syncrises’ work wouldn’t be out of line. As usual, the guitar work is exemplary, a trademark of the time and place. No CD exists.

Key - s/t (1977 Germany). Key are yet another fusion band from Germany from the late 1970s scene. Though I’d say Key definitely are on the jazz side of the equation. Featuring long sections for trumpet and sax solos, not to mention the piano and standup bass providing the backdrop and atmosphere. A pleasant enough album, though I find it hard to believe this would motivate too many potential buyers in the CD reissue market, and indeed it remains unissued. Drummer Kurt Bilker went on to play the kit on Katamaran’s “Footprints”.

Deja Vu - Cosmic Zack (1977 Germany). I recently revisited this album for the first time in 7 years. My last listen prompted me to write the following review for Gnosis, and my viewpoint hasn’t changed one bit. “A very obscure release from Germany circa 1977. Typical of many private releases from late 70’s Deutschland, Deja Vu attempt the Novalis style of progressive rock. The primary instrument is electric guitar and is accompanied by electric piano, sax, flute, bass and drums. There are also vocals with a traditional heavy Teutonic accent (some in English, some in German). I often wonder why these bands bothered with the vocals as it only detracts from the compositions. Fortunately, side two eschews the vocals for a more energetic instrumental approach. Musically, the band plays a safe, straightforward and somewhat jazzy (especially side 2) progressive music with some well done guitar/sax work amongst the otherwise mediocre compositions. File along with Credemus, Poseidon, Eden and a host of other well-meaning, but ultimately lacking, German bands from the late 70’s/early 80’s.” Still hasn’t been reissued on CD.

Pascal Languirand - Minos (1978 Canada).
Pascal Languirand - De Harmonia Universalia (1980 Canada).
Pascal Languirand - Vivre Ici Maintenant (1981 Canada). Pascal Languirand is sort of the Richard Pinhas of Quebec. A one man show of dark electronics (primarily Moog) and searing electric guitar. He’s a bit more cosmic than Heldon, which calls to mind Klaus Schulze. And he often uses wordless voice that reminds me of Franco Falsini. On “Minos” there’s also a trippy folk number with French vocals that I find highly appealing in this setting. “De Harmonia Universalia” is quite similar, a bit less foreboding and more cosmic than its predecessor, with no dropoff in overall quality. The trio is completed by “Vivre Ici Maintenant”, and again, perhaps surprisingly, there is no noticeable downshift in the quality. Here, Languirand takes us a bit further East while adding some acoustic percussive elements. Album could be presumed an anachronism considering the late date. There is a compilation disc that features some of the music above, but would be nice to see the albums come out on CD in full.

Champignons - Premiere Capsule (1972 Canada). Starts off in a trite go-go 1960s way, with an energetic keyboard driven instrumental number. This is followed by a very slow, depressing and excruciatingly boring 7 minute blues song with French vocals. From track three on Side 1 to the conclusion of the record, it’s all aces. The music becomes primarily instrumental while taking on a darker stance. The guitar has that ominous fuzz tone, and there’s an underlying jazzy structure lead by the fine flute and sax work. For these excellent tracks I’m reminded of the Eden Rose / Sandrose family out of France, and the relative progression from one to the other. If Champignons were lead by a female vocalist, that would solidify the Sandrose comparison. Never been reissued legit on CD.