Outer Music Diary

The Plastic Cloud s/t

Following the Reign Ghost, here’s another Canadian psych record strongly influenced by both American and English fields. In fact you could almost split the record in half, call the first side the American side, and the second the English. I prefer the former mostly because I’m more reminded of era than influence, lots of “Age of Aquarius” harmonies, fuzz guitars and wonderfully dated melodies. Side B owes more than a fair share of influence to the Beatles, especially the Lennon-esque vocals which are fairly uncanny at times. No, the Plastic Cloud won’t win a lot of awards for originality, but they do have the vibe down very nicely, in fact if side B was more like A I could have seen this at an 11 barely, but the bubblegum ‘n acid vibe doesn’t seem to make it through all the way. Shame.

Grant Green - The Complete Quartets With Sonny Clark
Grant Green - Grantstand
Grant Green - Ain’t It Funky Now! (The Original Jam Master, Vol. 1)
Grant Green - For the Funk of It (The Original Jam Master, Vol. 2)

I listen to way more Grant than I’ve been letting on in these here pages (although readers with us from the yahoo groups list will likely be familiar with this), so it’s time for a bit of an update. I’m finally filing the Quartets with Sonny Clark album away, and have put all three albums (Gooden’s Corner, Oleo, Nigeria) at 10s, which is usually my bare minimum for Grant sides. It’s unsurprising that in listening to the two CD set that I find myself resonating the most with the Coltrane-inspired version of My Favorite Things towards the end of the set, it’s quite nicely done. For the most part these albums strike me as a little more mannered for Grant, a little closer to the rise and fall of a typical hard bop album of the era. Grandstand, more of an organ jazz date than hard bop, catches fire a little more quickly and lets the blaze gather some momentum. The joy of Grant Green’s music, for me, often seems to be how he’ll approach any given song with his guitar, if he’ll gently coax a full, round warm tone in a bluesy manner or if he’ll patter his fingers at a quicker rate, or, and there’s few players this good at it, how he’ll rhythmically approach one note or phrase. Grantstand, in many ways, could be his most diverse in terms of a collection of various approaches.

You’ll get more of this latter approach during the soul jazz years. I’ve only bought the first two of three comps mentioned here (the third, Mellow Madness, didn’t leap out at me). I’m not much of a compilation buyer, but given the somewhat unevenness of these years, these make perfect mixes, featuring some of the best jamming available on albums like Live, Live at the Lighthouse, Green is Beautiful etc. There’s something awfully infectious about this stuff, it speaks directly to the booty, bypassing brain and heart. And it has to given that so much of this stuff is vamping on a chord or single phrase. What players like this can do with so little is truly astonishing.

The Residents - Meet the Residents

The Residents are a great example of a musical outfit to which you adjust to, in my case in fits and starts, slowly and distrustfully. On the surface there’s an almost cartoon like goofiness to their approach, one that perhaps drowns out their clever and unique deconstruction of American music. It’s not that they just take lots of songs and phrases of which most people are quite familiar with (albeit, today, through car commercials and jingles) and manipulate them, it’s as if they introduce these melodies and lyrics to situations previously alien to them, by timbral manipulation, sound effects, musical juxtaposition etc. The very way these tunes are removed from their origins and placed into the Residents’ personal universe is enough to reflect on just how manipulative some of these elements are. My musically appreciative side doesn’t exactly jump for joy over this, but my subversive, paradigm hopping side is damn impressed. Here’s to further breaking down the walls…

Thirsty Moon – s/t. 1972. 13+14. For me, quite possibly the reissue of the year (along with their second “You’ll Never Come Back”). Long Hair surprised everyone with these reissues I think – complete with unique liner notes from the band and a reviewer, bonus tracks (in this case a 5:42 minute number that’s highly relevant to the release) and a high quality production. They also plan on releasing a live concert from 1975, which could be enlightening (there’s no recorded material from that period). I’ve had this for many years on LP, and never tire of it. Thirsty Moon play a favored style of Krautrock for me – jazzy, improvised, heavy, intense, creative. They sound like no one group, but elements of similar German groups like Brainstorm, Kollektiv, Embryo, Emergency, Xhol Caravan and Missing Link are apparent. Six piece band with added percussion, two keyboardists (one dedicated to electric piano) and a reeds player. The band gels on a number of fronts, especially in energy and passion – something that is rarely captured in a bottle like this. Conny Plank’s engineering is all over this too (phasing, panning, gadgetry galore). And 21.5 minute ‘Yellow Sunshine’ is a classic for the ages – like Missus Beastly playing in the production of the Cosmic Jokers series of albums. Yes, this is in the Top 75 albums of all time for me. Maybe even Top 50. That’s a 14.

Warpig – s/t. 1970. D: 11. Well, forget the name. This isn’t a Black Sabbath clone, though they do have a couple of similarities. One is that they actually use riffs similar to how Sabbath did (not as heavy, but the style is there). And that they shared some of the same blues and rock influences as the Sabs. But Warpig is more in line with the typical UK “heavy progressive” movement. Warpig quite simply should’ve been on Vertigo (as were Sabbath), and most would know what to expect. Somewhere between May Blitz, early Nektar, Odin, Clear Blue Sky and Atomic Rooster one will find the sound of Warpig. Keyboards are a big element of their sound (harpsichord, Clavinet, piano, organ). With long tracks named ‘Advance in A Minor’, ‘The Moth’ and ‘U.X.I.B.’, I think it’s pretty clear this isn’t just a typical booze, dope, broads and rock and roll kind of album. There’s also ‘Tough Nuts’, ‘Melody With Balls’ and ‘Rock Star’, so it’s not totally pretentious artsy fartsy. What impresses me most is the time and place. This just wasn’t the kind of progressive rock done in Canada in 1970. A nice surprise this was and nice to see Relapse tackle this for a reissue.

Los Jaivas – El Volantin. 1971. D: 10. I have been wanting to hear the first Los Jaivas since an article appeared about it in Eurock around 1987. So I broke down and forked over a good sum of money for the Shadoks LP reissue (figuring it had a cool cover anyway). I can now see why Pinochet’s dictatorship was scared of this album (and group). This is a long way from the measured progressive rock of  “Alturas de Machu Picchu” that would arrive a decade later. “El Volantin” is what I would call freak rock, maybe along the lines of Denmark’s Furekaaben commune or even the political wing of Amon Duul. Most of the material is tribal drumming with wild vocals chanted or screamed on top, not very well recorded either. There’s some indigenous acoustic guitar strumming and pan flute so you don’t forget this is indeed a band of the Andes. The last track is really something – with wild fuzz guitar and frantic vocals. The whole thing is a mess… had it come out today I wouldn’t be impressed at all (fake counterculture doesn’t work for me). But for the time and place, this just reeks of the real underground – you can feel it. A cool cultural artifact and glad I picked this one up.