Outer Music Diary

Out of Focus s/t

Hadn’t heard this early German classic in a long time, but I had friends over, couldn’t think of what I wanted to hear so deferred to my company. I actually remember this record being a lot heavier than it is, but I’m probably conflating it with the band’s first album, which was indeed quite a bit heavier. Anyway, it’s great stuff with all sorts of inventive song structures and loads of solos. Saw no reason to change the 12. Seems like one has to read Audion magazine to find talk about this group, which is a shame as they were one of the best from Germany.

Pearls Before Swine - These Things Too

Somewhat idiosyncratic folk music that seems something like a precursor to Nick Drake and albums like Bryter Layter. It’s of its own paradigm and while I was intrigued on first listen, this repeat made me almost hoping for it to end. Like anything of this vein, it takes a little to get used to the vocalist and song stylings and I haven’t found much to get comfortable with. I’ll give it another play to determine whether I’m going to hang onto it or not, but it’s not likely at this point.

Led Zeppelin - III
Led Zeppelin - IV

I think I was looking forward to my revisit of Zep’s fourth album the most, it was the one that impressed me the most after my first run through of the complete studio box, probably based on the amazing “When the Levee Breaks.” It’s songs like this that cement the band’s reputation. It’s actually not all that different from the third album, both albums are widely diverse in style, from acoustic to electric, from rocker to ballad, from heavy to folky. The problem in evaluating anything like these two is songs like “Rock n Roll,” “Stairway to Heaven” and the like, if you’ve listen to classic rock radio at all, these songs have been beat into your head like advertising. I rested Stairway for a good few years, so that has some life in it, but shorties like “Black Dog” are just a little too shopworn for me to see any of these albums over an 11. I’m sure they deserve a better grade too.

Bobby Hutcherson - Components

This strikes me as a very solid date during a very good year for jazz (1965). Then again it’s a Blue Noter and Hutch is joined by Hubbard, Hancock, Carter and Spaulding, hardly a group to go wrong with. It’s a little unusual in that it has a pretty typical vibes jazz sound, mellow if gorgeous, but so much of it turns to the avant garde at times to give it an appealing complexity and sophistication. Another title that gets a little better with every replay.

Pink Floyd - The Wall, Earl’s Court 6/17/81 (1/2) (DVD)

There seems to be a major divide between the Pink Floyd of Animals and that of The Wall, it’s like a different band or the same band deciding to go cabaret on us. This is basically the whole album (there might be more on disc 2, not sure yet) with all the special effects and videos you could muster. You basically only really see Roger Waters and occasionally David Gilmour as they hash out this dreadfully audacious pityfest. I may have mentioned before, I do like Comfortably Numb and maybe one other song or two, the rest of it just makes me feel uncomfortable. And to think, some people actually like to dose to this.

Grateful Dead - Mershon Auditorium, Ohio State University, Columbus, OH 9/30/76

A friend of mine commented to me on 1976 shows saying they’re basically divided into the great and bad (the great include shows like the July 18th show at the Orpheum). I’m not totally sure I agree, but then I went and listened to this set, which was fairly weak and wondered if he may have a point. 1976 shows for me are pretty weird, there’s like a slickness they’d have to wait until 1977 to be comfortable with.

Rod Stewart - Reason to Believe - The Complete Mercury Studio Recordings (Eng) 2002 

This three disc set covers Stewart’s albums from the Rod Stewart Album to Smiler and was something of a revelation. I’d never realized how much I actually enjoyed songs like Maggie and the like, in fact the first two albums, including Gasoline Alley, are fabulous, even better than his collaborations with Jeff Beck. I started the set a few weeks ago and listened to one disc at a time. By the time I got to disc three, yes I was squirming in pain with all the string-augmented music and cheesy numbers, but my memories of the first two discs are intact. Maybe I’ll talk about the albums individually after a few more listens, I wasn’t looking at the titles enough to make the separation.