Outer Music Diary

Time to catch up on some homemade CD-R’s to see if I need to upgrade to a full blown CD. The results:

Frumpy – By the Way. D: 9 I did hear this one back in the early 90s, but hell if I remember it. So this is my “debut” grade. Yee-hah! Country rock German style. Well that’s how it starts anyway. Next track is a nice poppy number with good organ grooves. Throughout some good guitar crunch, plenty of organ, extended blues numbers, etc… Some of the guitar/organ jams are sublime, which contrasts with the barnyard song structures themselves which can be a little too good time rock n roll for my tastes. And, uh-oh, there it is – the dreaded drum solo (not too long). Some lounge psych too. Damn – what a yin/yang album. Don’t think this one is worth upgrading though… High 9.

Fooz – Space is Dark… It is So Endless (includes Fooz – s/t). D: 9 (8) Sounds like a Bongnaut title to me (they must’ve rejected “One Note for Grasskind”). I had the debut by this Spanish band and settled on an 8 grade. It was like most modern stoner groups – they just didn’t do anything new or unique (Sabbath roots, Kyuss modern metal touches, Hawkwind atmospheres. YAWN). So, how does this compare? Someone’s been listening a lot to Hawkwind’s “In Search of Space” with all the acoustic guitars and swirling electronics. LOL, now I read it’s a cover of ‘Space is Deep’. I had the right band, wrong album (remember I have no documentation here). 3rd track goes for the ‘Planet Caravan’ Sabbath vibe, but it’s not near as trippy. Still quite interesting. Yet another cover of ‘Astronomy Domine’ is the 6th track here. Turns out this album’s first 6 tracks (guitars are primarily acoustic) are unique and the rest is the reissue of the first album. And the band had broken up prior to this release. Hmmm… I do like the acoustic numbers better than anything prior, without the 2 covers. And I’m glad I now have a copy of the first album, which I didn’t burn. I’ll go 9 on the new stuff and keep the 8 on the first one (it’s only been one year since last heard).

November – 2:a. D: 11 Over the last few years, I’ve acquired a fondness for the Swedish hard blues rock sound, including both the first and 3rd November albums, especially the latter. So it would seem this title would be a near cinch as one that belongs in the collection. And, like the Frumpy earlier, it’s one I heard over 15 years ago without the background or appreciation of the style. Just finished listening to it – and it’s a no brainer for the style. This will get a full review later. Truly a niche play though and not one that’s easy to recommend. Hard rock on a blues base with Swedish vocals. It’s a hard sell…

Epitaph – s/t. D: 11 While we’re at it – might as well add another early 70s hard rock album to the pile. Yet another one I gave the short shrift back in those listen-to-15-new-albums-a-day many years ago. Of course “Outside the Law” was a buck bin special when I was in college. That one did get many listens including recently, and it’s just not my thing. So how did this one age? Very well. First song was the sort of breezy rural rock that made OTL such a drag. But after that, Epitaph shows a strong progressive side, with plenty of complex structures to go with those guitar solos. And quite a bit of mellotron for a Kraut group. I’ll need to get the first 2 and do a writeup.

Lamp of the Universe – Echo in Light. D: 11 LotU is the pseudonym of Craig Williamson from New Zealand, who’s aggressive side is carried out in the stoner metal band Datura.. If I didn’t know any better, I’d swear this was a lost recording on the Swedish Xotic Mind label. Very much in the tradition of albums by The Word of Life, Adam, ST Mikael, Stefan and The Entheogens. Craig does a nice job of mixing the Eastern mystic hippy dippy with more psyched out rockers. His “dreamy” vocal style is a bit of a one trick pony. Acoustic guitar, sitar, hand percussion, old organ, wah wah, synths, flute – you can practically imagine how the album will go if you know any of the groups above. Which I happen to like, so it works out swell. I typically don’t like solo albums, as I feel the lack of synergy can turn a recording into a monolithic exercise. And some of the music just goes on forever, which is kind of the point. For the style there’s about a max of about an 11 and I think he’s achieved that. I need to pursue this and his other CDs.

Attending a show at the Masonic Center isn’t anything like attending one at Yoshi’s, the Palace of Fine Arts or numerous other easy to locate venues, the Masonic Center itself is part of the Nob Hill district of San Francisco, an area that gives one new meaning to the word vertical. We approached from the Haight/Ashbury district and thus went up and down hills like a roller coaster before realizing the parking entrance was behind the venue at the last moment.

The Masonic Center is one of those gorgeous, near-gothic, huge buildings in San Francisco and by the time the sun has set, there’s not much to see except that it goes up. One literally ascends to their seat, like a venue in the sky. We ascended to our reserved parking through a ramp in the back, only to find ourselves in the lowest of 5 parking floors underneath the venue. And above these, at least two floors before one reaches the lobby itself of the Masonic Center. It’s hard to believe you’re even in the building given the lack of decor, even the venue itself barely matches up to the grandeur of the building itself.

So up through the parking, into the lobby and up to the balcony we went, reaching the venue barely in time, although with minutes to spare thanks to a good 10 minutes of delay. This ascension seemed a good metaphor for the night, as if one was rising just to attend such a cosmic event and the balcony seats seemed to hang right over the large stage where the instruments were set up.

The program listed Alice Coltrane’s instruments as piano and harp, but fortunately what we had instead were a piano, her trademark Wurlitzer and a Korg synthesizer. No harp. When the members were called off at the beginning of the show, Alice got a nice standing ovation, it was immediately apparent that this was a great, appreciative crowd, and one that was about at capacity.

As the quartet began their first number, Alice sat at the Wurlitzer, spinning out modal phrase after another. Like on her later 70s releases like Transcendence, Alice took long meandering solos, often creating chords and patterns through her phrasing. For most of the concert, Alice and son Ravi would sit back to the let the other take the spotlight and there was a reverence and respect between the two that was touching, making me feel at times like John was on the stage with them. Alice herself had a presence like a saint, obviously happy to be there and in the moment.

While many of the early tracks, the first on Wurli, the second on piano and the third a Korg patch that sounded like a piano over string patches, sounded like they were probably from Alice’s recent album Translinear Fire, it wasn’t until the band started incorporating the John Coltrane repertoire that things moved from the wonderfully cosmic to the utterly electrifying. The initial strains of Impressions got appreciative applause from the audience, but noone had any idea what they were in for until Alice’s solo gave way to Ravi’s. Ravi literally torched the house with his tenor solo waking up Roy Haynes in the process. Both pushed each other to extreme climax after climax resulting in at least a 5 minute standing ovation which had Haynes come out, grab the mike, and say that he hadn’t had as much fun since he played with John Coltrane, Charlie Haden following up with his agreement. It was at this point I knew I needed to get tickets to see Ravi in Davis next month, he’s far too talented to be anything but a big name at this point.

While Impressions was by far the evening’s highlight, if not the year’s, the band also played one of JC’s later pieces to great effect, probably some of the night’s more avant garde moments. Ravi’s versatility was obvious here, moving into near free territory at times and Alice’s transposition of some of John’s sax lines to Wurlitzer was impressive in its effectiveness. And to cap off the entire night, the band encored with the first two movements of Love Supreme as if it was the band after Tyner and Jones had left. By this point Roy Haynes was really on fire and nearly every hit during a drum solo would garner a whoop from someone in the crowd.

And before we knew it, it was over and we were descending the balcony, the parking floors, Nob Hill and San Francisco as if we were leaving the gig in the sky. One of only three gigs played by Alice this year, and the only one on the west coast, it was something of a one of a kind event and a reminder of the spiritual heritage of the Coltrane family still making their patriarch proud all these years later.