Outer Music Diary

Hamza el Din - Egypt 9/16/78 sbd

This is really just a companion disc to one of the awfully bad Egypt shows. That this is much more listenable says everything and it’s also about 25-30 minutes long which is probably less time than some of the tedious jams they threw out in front of the pyramids. I’m being kind by contrast though, on it’s own it’s fairly tedious unless one is using it for a soundscape.

Steve Coleman - Resistance is Futile

Definitely one of the more enjoyable Coleman releases. It’s probably a long time before I’d be able to nail the album by a 2 minute clip though. I guess at this point I’m curious to see him stretch in his jazz idiom rather than outside of it.

Herbie Hancock & the Headhunters - Radio Bremen 11/6/74
Herbie Hancock / Mwandishi - Hamburg 10/4/71

Like many a Radio Bremen show this is extraordinary quality, very close to a perfect FM broadcast. It seems maybe a touch limp on the perfomance end and I say this after many listens to great Herbie shows, many of which will tear your head off with their intensity. The Mwandishi filler is a bit more of an afterthought, they were a pretty abstract band live and a small clip like this only shows part of the spectrum. But as with all shows at releasable levels of quality, the vibe comes through pretty well and that’s a pretty important element in my book.

Man - Bessinger Turnhalle, Darmstadt 11/22/72

Because when a show sounds this bad you really know what you’re missing. That it’s marginally a keeper, compared to a horrible 71 show I had to move immediately, has more to do with this being right in the middle of one of the band’s peak eras than being on the good side of the sound quality threshold. I only wish it sounded as good as some of the other later shows I’ve run across. When these guys were on fire it was thermonuclear.

Dan Bradshaw Leather - Distance Between Us

This was a really bizarre album and from what I understand this was a pseudonym for one of the Enid guys. I’m not a big Enid fan really, except for the early albums they strike me as very kitschy, but this related piece doesn’t really sound anything like the band except for the heavy presence of mellotron. For the most part it sounds like someone sat down at the keys and started improvising and tweaking around. I’d need another listen or two to see if it’s a direction I’ll want to continue taking, but I doubt it. I feel like I’m missing a lot of context.

Juicy Lucy s/t

Gotta love a band with such a name, when this big, bluesy almost Beefhartian vibe starting coming out of my speakers, I realize they were really onto a raw thing. It’s a rock album for the most part, not even very psychy, but it’s got some serious sack.

Diabolus s/t

Obviously locked in a room with Stand Up and Benefit, these guys weren’t really ever given the chance to emerge from the large shadow Ian Anderson casts. While they move at a more classical rock angle than blues rock, recent immersion in the aforementioned Tull albums has consistently pointed out those sections where Diabolus lifts. Had those Tull albums been less in mind I’d have probably liked it even more than the very high 9/low 10 it’s heading for.

Flux - Protoplasmic

My editor at Exposé really flipped over this album when it came out, in fact I think it might have been his best of that year. It’s the reason I think I’ve been patient with it over the years and given in a number of listens, but I’ve come to the conclusion it’s probably not for me. It’s fairly electronic, in some ways a lot like what the Mauve Sideshow might have sounded like without mellotrons and with a sequencer. Perhaps it’s just some of the chilly aesthetics that distance me, as I’d suggest that the interest in the album has a lot to do with all the unusual rhythm patterns and how voice and other layering plays off of them. Overall I think an 8 is about where I’ll sit with it.

Humus s/t

Humus have always been something of a primitive outfit at least equipment and productionwise, a lot of very tinny thin sounds that tell you you’re in home studio land. While the band made big steps for their next album, they’re still embryonic enough here that all I remember is the odd nasally envelopes on certain tones.

Venegoni e Co. - Rumore Rosso Vivo

I ceiling out with these guys at a 9 for some reason even though the Daath gap is probably a bit more accurate. I’m not really sure why, it’s possible because they seem a little overpolished in a way, a little slick. Live they’re hardly different from album with an occasional excursion meaning this is something of a redudant release, more like an interesting once over. Or twice over.

Fusioon s/t (first)

I was surprised to see I had an 8 on this, just because it’s hard to imagine that the group who put out Minorisa might have started out so poor. I did bump it up one even if I can’t imagine this somewhat primitive classical rock album might reel me in more than it has. They weren’t ever really great songwriters though, even on their best music their transitions and stacked ideas are choppy in execution and lacking a natural flow.

Grateful Dead - University of Alabama Coliseum, Tuscaloosa AL 5/17/77

The Dicks Picks series actually has two releases now covering just this little southeast swing into confederate country, so it’s really not much of a surprise that a leftover such as this might not be quite in the same league. It’s testament to what a great month this is that the poorer shows still average out to 9s and 10s. It also has a great “Looks Like Rain” that has given me an earworm (amplified by the flu as usual) all week. When they nail that chorus it’s as close to gospel as rock n roll gets.

Arrigo Barnabe - Clara Crocodilo

This album reminds me of my days of progressive rock collecting in the early 90s back when resources were slim and a lot of the ideas one had for finding new music often came from flipping through old Marquee magazines. I don’t read the language but there seems to be something of a glamour when it comes to all the exotic names. It’s as if you’re trained to look up anything with an “Il” “della” or four word band name. Arrigo Barnabe I remember seeing in one of these Marquees, although at the time I had no idea they were more or less Zappa-ish and progressive rock from the outside in. Clara almost seems operatic and formal in so many ways, so it’s not something I can imagine myself loving over time, but I do appreciate what seems to be a unique compositional complexity, the Zappa influence already assimilated and pushing in new directions.

Egberto Gismonti - Infancia

Lost to the Gismonti gestalt.

The Meters - Rejuvenation

I find it slightly amusing that after years of hunting down arcane and compositionally complex rock music that I’d eventually be gravitating to the booty groove. Meters albums and shows are just fantastic, they communicate right to the body, something perfect for an overloaded head. Perhaps live they communicate a little more to the spirit as well, with the longer jams, but there’s a lot to be said for these album versions as well, they’re concise in a very good way.

Brian Auger - Closer to It

Strangely enough this Auger, separated by a good 2000 or so miles from New Orleans, does have a few things in common with the Meters in terms of it being groove oriented. In a way it might be like the difference between a Lonnie Smith and Charles Earland album, on the latter, like here, you’re going to find it just a little more chopsy. Auger’s pretty bad ass and I generally like listening to him play even if I rarely find the music very compelling. Which ought to put this at a 9 like many of his others.

Steve Coleman - Rhythm People

I think this was one of his better jazz (and less hiphop) releases but, again, I tend to get muddy with all of these. When Coleman’s at his best for me, he’s a lot closer to the Dave Holland Quintet and I tend to feel less interrupted by his diversions.

Keef Hartley Band - The Battle of Northwest Six
Locomotive - We Are Everything You See

Numbing on remembering specifics on these first spins, except like nearly all this early British rock I’m spinning, they’re all very enjoyable. They continually remind you of the rock half of progressive rock in a era before fluff became the template.