Outer Music Diary

Grateful Dead - Dicks Picks 28 (Pershing Memorial Auditorium, Lincoln, NE 2/26/73 + Salt Palace, Salt Lake City, UT 2/28/73)

This is a 4 CD, 2 show compilation that I last played probably a year or two ago after purchase. Due to the vagaries of my organization, they and quite a few other DPs have not gotten a lot of playtime, so I’m addressing that. One thing I really like about 73 shows, and this demonstrates that aspect nicely, is that it’s the Dead at their most jazz and fusion-informed. The flavor of electric Miles and Coltrane is all over the band as they kind of twist and turn and react and implode and scatter and regroup during the jam segments. I always get an impression after about 20 minutes or so of this that the band has really retracted into the Greater Mind. Anyway, I don’t think I could break it down anymore than that without a track by track, this is a DP that is practically marathon-length.

Borknagar - Epic

Oh man, I liked the last one. Even at the time I got this impression that it was something of a fluke which was impressed upon me as soon as I started checking out Vintersorg solo albums and realizing that this was a band that writes by riffs and recycles a lot of ideas. In fact, this album is a lot like a repeat of the last one, except that the keys player’s Anglagard influences are even more obvious, on occasion subconsciously nicking patterns and riffs. The whole thing is dreadfully bombastic and earnest, it always reminds me of the use of fans for hair in music videos. Anyway lightning is unlikely to strike here twice.

Led Zeppelin - Montreaux Casino 3/7/70

Zep at Montreux. Makes me wonder where the video is. Unsurprisingly it sounds great and still feels like 69 a little.

Amon Duul - Collapsing - Singvogel Ruckwarts & Co.

Ever have and album that is so far down your priority list that it takes you maybe 15 years to actually hear it? This is one and I can see why I waited. I could go find a local drum circle if I wanted to hear this kind of thing.

Aborted - Goremageddon - The Saw & the Carnage Done

It’s hard to not address the lyrical content of this album, but I think I’m gonna skip that on this go around and stick to the music, after all it’s not like you can make any sense of them. Musically this is what I’m calling the Florida death metal + Iron Maiden guitar solos combo, similar to those bands in the past like In Flames who wanted melodies AND growls. I suspect they’re not far off from Vital Remains either based on the description. I don’t mind the combo at all, although the guitar solos don’t have that warp and wend vibe the more dissonantly leaning groups tend to have (like Immolation, Suffocation, Morbid Angel etc).

AC/DC - High Voltage

Great album really, one of the Bon highlights, American version or otherwise. It’s really unnecessary to waste words on these guys, they’ve got at least a half dozen albums that are classics in the bonehead hard rock genre.

Art Blakey & the Jazzmessengers - Buhaina’s Delight

You always know what you’re getting with a Blakey album as long as you can get an idea of the line up and know it’s not one of his “drum” albums. Just about every one I’ve heard, 50s, 60s and even 80s is in the classic hard bop style, with a lot of uptempo pieces that keep the spirits up. So I highly doubt this will see anything other than a 10.

Womega - A Quick Step

Another inattentive day, some unsatisfying workday listens. It’s particularly hard to describe a piece like the Womega, an early rock group starting in Brit and American hard rock territory and turning it European with a twist of Zappa. These sorts of groups really had the ethic, remaking the musical world in their own image. The main problem I have is there’s a few considerable songwriting chops on this and I’ve yet to really absorb that aspect.

Hurdy Gurdy s/t

A good, fairly straight, early rock release from Denmark I believe. There’s really nothing here that hasn’t been done a lot better in a million places but it’s still a good listen, a 9 if I’m being honest and a 10 if I’m thinking that I really like the style on that day.

Plebb - Yet It Isn’t It

I’m not sure what the story is behind this rarity except that it’s pretty typical of the sorts of progrock obscurities whose reputations inflate with their rarity. So many of these bands sound like a group of 18 years olds getting together and trying to imitate their heros (Yes comes to mind here although they are not a soundalike nor have a surrogate Jon Anderson), without having substantially absorbed why they went the way they did. Lots of sloppy moments and untrained track switches make for a lack of cohesion.

Stone the Crows s/t

I’ve gotten the impression somehow that this was the band Trower’s vocalist on Bridge of Sighs hailed from. If it is, he does share time with what could be the splitting image of Janis Joplin. It’s some pretty loud and entertaining bluesy rock and I believe had quite a bit of gritty organ. Certainly at least a tenner.

Garden Wall - Forget the Colours

Forget the genre too. Garden Wall may have a name in the Genesis lineage, might have a vocalist with a Peter Hamill fetish, but this is a metal album through and through, in fact with the loud, gravelly voice it’s even close to death metal at times (maybe in the same way Sleepytime Gorilla Museum get wrongly classified), although from a compositional standpoint this is some jagged-weird writing. With that said I’m surprised the avant-metal crowd hasn’t absorbed this band into their canon as they remind me quite a bit of some The End stable bands, mixed in with a little tech metal.

Haikara - Tukhamaa

No matter how you look at it, this band barely resembles in any way the Haikara of the 70s. Instead we’re left with an album more reminiscent of the neighboring Scandivian countries with a touch of goth and folk. Think White Willow, soundalikes and offshoots. Am fairly bored with it overall.

Horde Catalytique pour la Fin - Gestation Sonore
Red Noise - Sarcelles-Locheres

It’s hard to think of a couple pieces of music I’ve had more trouble absorbing of late, I just played them both over and over. Both are very experimental early French albums that tend to polarize their audience. I can’t help but think of Limbus 3 in context with the first group, maybe even Confluence in their more avant moments. It’s improvisational music away from the jazz aesthetic and very noisy and sparse. However where Limbus 3 has an almost unitarian drone that keeps me involved, I tend to lose the thread with HCplF. Red Noise seems a little closer to cut and paste stuff, or at least Faust-like in their netcasting, but none of the ideas impressed and compelled like those on the early Faust albums. I couldn’t get either album above an 8 and have decided I don’t need em.

Man - Musiktheater Rex, Lorsch 3/4/99

A modern Man gig pinned to the end of a 72 show, this sounded quite a bit better but certainly was well below par for its year, being an audience recording (or at least I think so). I get a little annoyed with the keyboard tone mock ups (or possibly just anticipated doing so), but overall it’s a pretty strong gig.

Robert Rich - Somnium

I generally make one Outer Music post per day of listening, in fact on the old yahoogroups site, I posted them by dates before James came up with a good idea for titles here. In this post I’m making an exception and covering two days as my music listening nearly ground to a halt with the need for some silence. Somnium covers about a day and a half out of those two days, it’s 7 something hour soundtrack revolving around the clock with its slow drones. Like all good ambient music it has a medicinal effect, as it takes you out of active listening into inactive listening mode, a far more subconscious experience.

Grateful Dead - Golden Hall - San Diego Community Concourse, San Diego, CA 1/7/78

Not a great gig really, although after looking at the set list I’m wondering if I wrote down the gig wrong as this definitely has a pretty lame set list. Unmemorable. Give me 24 minutes of Playin’ any day, but I start to nod off when it’s Dancin’ in the Street.

Cream - Live Cream Vol. 2

Definitely the lesser of the two volumes, this still has a lot of incendiary firepower but also moments where they’re walking in place. I think I’m an 11 which is just about right to imply the peaks.

Wigwam - Fairyport

A revisit listen to yet another mini-LP (I’ve got a good friend who really digs these) without really any impression in terms of sound quality (and my Fairyport CD is the old version), this is a fine album. I really love the songwriting presence brought to the table, they’re really unlike anyone else, particularly if Being is brought to the table. This is a little less original and at times very jammy, but it could still very well be their best.

Santana - The Birth of Santana: The Complete Early Years

The next week of posts show me listening to a lot less music for reasons probably best expressed in my prattle blog which is linked on the right. Even in listening to what little I did, I’ve had a very tough time hearing anything, which means many of these were repeated several times until impressions sank in.

Anyway, I want to go back to the early 90s. At the time I read in Audion magazine that there were 2 or 3 British released CDs of early Santana material. The label may have been Thunderbolt, but for the most part I’ve lost the specifics. All I know is at the time, I was underwhelmed by what I heard and being a poor college student, they went out on a sales list.

Then, about 5-10 years later Sony released an early gig by the band at the Fillmore that also underwhelmed me. I began to get the impression that pre-first album Santana (and for context, I don’t think I have many early Santana albums rated less than a 12) was pretty boring. Much of this is because drummer Michael Shrieve was something of a late arrival, part of it was that the chops were those of teenagers. Anyway, as far as I can tell this Purple Pyramid 3 CD release doesn’t really overlap with my memory. It’s two discs of San Mateo sessions from 69 and a Fillmore Live gig from 68. The first two discs are late enough where things aren’t quite as lackadaisical as they were at first and I was surprised to find a jam or two with some energy. So it turns out that there’s some relevant pre-first album material after all!

AC/DC - Bonfire (disc 1 - Live from the Atlantic Studios)

Bon Scott AC/DC has control of me. I often find mindless buttrock like this to be perfect for inattentive musical moods and this one did indeed hit the spot.

Grateful Dead - Paramount Theatre, Portland, OR 10/2/77

I always get the impression that the Dead get just a little more comfortable in Oregon. A look at the set list at gdlists.com shows a band who was stretching it out even in the first set. I can’t think of too many gigs where only 3 songs clock under 5 minutes. Anyway this is part of a second listen to a group of shows from this period and I think this might be the strongest of them. It’s got that kind of mystical spacy vibe their gigs get when the jam sessions get really long.

Led Zeppelin - Dallas Motor Speedway 8/31/69

I believe this gig is one of the Texas International Pop Festival shows. I’ve played Santana and Chicago gigs from this festival and the common denominator seems to be great sound quality and short sets. You get the distinct impression Zep got through on this gig. One does wonder given the proximity why Zep didn’t get a Woodstock slot.

Group 87 s/t

This is one of those albums with a reputation that I just can’t align to, it’s one of the tackiest, sentimental rather than emotional, 80s brassy prog rock/fusion things I’ve ever heard. This is a revisit and if anything my opinion is lower than it used to be. I know this is somebody’s definition of “good” but I’m not at that sort of guru-level. I think I gave it a 5, I’m not often that offended by music.

G. E. Stinson Group - The Same Without You

One of dozens of modern left coast jazz records that seems to have started or evolved with the Cryptogramophone label (I forget what label the Stinson Group is on, I think it was Nine Winds or someone similar.) Anyway Stinson is not the Shadowfax guy anymore, not by a long shot, and this is edgy, pyrotechnic avant jazz in that “avant jazz sure sounds a lot like rock these days” sort of way. I had company over and it caught the ears several times with its moves. Looks like a really good piece.

Noetra - Definitivement Bleues

This is one I did remember listening to fairly attentively but my impressions are a little mixed, I think this was chamber-like and slightly Canterbury influenced in some ways. Very much the sort of French/Belgian aesthetic you see in some of the less difficult bands, this has a pretty gentle and accessible sense of melody.

Ibis - Sun Supreme

Listen to the newest mini-LP version of this and it’s definitely louder and less hissy. You get the pretty distinct impression that’s about all that was played with though. I did, finally decide to demote this to a 12 for the reason that the whole “It was the liiiihiiiight    diiviiiiiiheeeen” bit is really starting to strike me as cheesy (or maybe cheesier than usual). I’ve mostly given it the benefit of the doubt because of the milieu, but I’ve turned a little.

Quicksand - Home is Where I Belong
Dear Mr. Time - Grandfather

Work is picking up a lot lately so I’m still well over a week behind in catching up which is really affecting my recollection for a series of early 70s British albums, of which these two are the latest. The only thing I can remember, in relation to Dear Mr. Time is that Czar song “Tread Softly On My Dreams” (which incidentally is a W. B. Yeats inspired lyric and probably why I remember it). Quicksand were more of the heavier vibe.

Grateful Dead - Baltimore Civic Center, Baltimore MD 5/26/77

I think this is the “Looks like Rain” version that has been the soundtrack to my head of late (well, that and the Beatles “She Said” from Revolver), although in narrowing it down I realize I’m replaying the last minute or two, rather than the first section of the song that I don’t care so much for. In a way this moment when done perfectly resonates for me in an entirely cosmic manner. It apparently wasn’t just Robert Hunter who could be sublime. Overall a solid show occasionally verging on spectacular.

The Allman Brothers Band - Live at the Fillmore East (Deluxe Edition)

This Deluxe ed is something of a redo of The Fillmore Concerts, although fortunately the original mixing has been restored. So this was basically a revisit of sorts, just to move it from one shelf to the overall filing system. The amazing thing about this album is that even someone who knows it inside and outside like myself can still occasionally be surprised at how intense the performances are. 1000s of naturally worn out LPs don’t lie.

Procol Harum - London 2003

I guess my evaluation of this show (one I don’t know any more info about than what’s in the title) was probably colored a bit by having it follow one of the great live albums. Such a performance really inspires me to rant on the whole fossil digging phenomenon so prevalent in progressive rock these days. There is no song or peformance here that hasn’t been livelier or more kinetic in the past, and when you’re dealing with a band’s historical repertoire, you’re bound to catch some of the horrible material, and there are at least 3 tracks here that are so bad it’s painful. These reunion bands (with an exception or two like Colosseum) are pale shadows of what they pay tribute to and I’m well past caring about the majority of them. I can get my PH fix from albums like Shine on Brightly.

Led Zeppelin - Newport Jazz Festival 7/6/69

I’m kind of chronologically going through my Zep stack and I’m getting to the point where sound quality is solidly into the B area, which is good because all the Yardbirds crossover gigs and early Zep shows are horribly muddy. It’s important because documents like this are the only way to hear early live Zep unadulterated and quite frankly they didn’t really have anything to be embarassed about this early. A powerful and maybe somewhat sloppy live unit starting to gain momentum.

Iron Butterfly - In-a-Gadda-da-Vida

This isn’t really a good album overall, but there are parts of the side-long suite that are amazingly strong, certain aesthetics that were pretty influential in music, like the long middle instrumental section, the calculated drum solo, a hint of progressive rock in the long suite format and the development and expansion of the song’s main riff. These aspects are all interesting, particularly in light of the later Captain Beyond, but man these guys sure have some of the most dated stinkers of all time to patchy this up.

Forever More - Yours
Forever More - Words on Black Plastic

I think this might be the band with the Man connection in Deke’s books, or at least the thought overlaid the listen enough to provoke some similarities. I found this to be really great early 70s rock, a little jammy and a little proggy at times, especially as it gets later. Like many of these Brit items I’m well worth looking to get to know them.

Cream - Live Volume 1

I always thought this should be better than I thought, so it wasn’t until I really got a good listen this time that it knocked my head off my shoulders like most high-performance live Cream did. They truly were one of the best live bands in the world, especially when giving a 13 to a live comp that mostly comes from after the peak. These guys need to lay off boring us with their reunion peformances and get the Detroit 67 gig out pronto.

Robin Trower - Bridge of Sighs

An album where my memory of it and my listening to it often interact sideways. I always feel like I like this better than I do and I think it was such a thought that made me bring it down to a 9 at one point. I’ve brought it back up to the 10 with this listen, but the objective side of me still keeps saying it’s not enough. And then the live material at the end of the remaster kind of impresses the point a little more.

Osanna - L’Uomo
Osanna - Milano Calibro 9
Earth & Fire - Song of the Marching Children

All revisits to potential sonic upgrades. I moved L’Uomo up to an 11 on the basis of its stronger work, I think the best songs on it are probably as good as anything they ever did. One of these is performed lip synch on Italian TV and it’s that performance and vibe that kinda lit another fire under this for me. No change on the other two titles, both which I’ve revisited a lot, particularly when we were a yahoogroup.

David Bowie - Diamond Dogs

With a few exceptions, it was almost classic rock day today at chez michel. I’m starting to get the Bowie thing a little more, partially thanks to this one. Hopefully a breakthrough is occuring.