Outer Music Diary

So seldom do I find any real surprises from the 1980’s — A decade that I consider mostly a complete wasteland musically, for the most part. My familiarity with this band was pretty much restricted to a couple of early LPs (the scream & juju) and a 12″ EP (spellbound). I’m not sure what came over me in the record store this past weekend, but I’m glad it did. I walked out of Rasputin’s with a copy of Tinderbox in my bag, along with a few other things found cheap. WOW! This disc is absolutely amazing, full of interesting and unusual song ideas and cool textures. And… (unlike the rather rough vocals on those early albums) Siouxsie can really sing now. This album was from around ‘85 (don’t quote me on that) and totally blew me away. I listened to it in the car again on monday just to be sure… On the way home I stopped back by the store and grabbed a couple more S&tB albums (one studio album from before: Hyaena, and one from after: Peepshow), and ordered CDs of a few of those early ones on the web monday night. Hyaena is good, but not a total stunner like Tinderbox. I haven’t got to Peepshow yet. Maybe tomorrow. The only negative about Tinderbox is track 13, some sort of extended dance mix that has too many 80-isms like heavily gated drums and endless repetitions. Totally forgiveable, though, considering the engaging quality of the 12 tracks before it.

Santana - Winterland, San Francisco 12/31/73

I dug out this Leon Thomas-period Santana album recently, as conversations regarding this tour tend to pop up in Santana circles, mostly due to the fact that the Lotus album was a somewhat incomplete view of the tour. My pick of the litter is definitely the Fayetteville show from a bit earlier in the year as it’s an almost flawless sounding soundboard, extraordinarily warm for its source. This Winterland show isn’t quite up to that standard, but the reason I pulled this out again is because I’d heard it had poor sound and don’t remember my copy being the same. There’s nothing to dislike performancewise from this tour from the long, smokin’ jams all the way to Thomas and Santana covering Pharoah’s “The Creator has a Masterplan.”

Freddie Hubbard Quintet - Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ Spring 1970

I don’t know what it is about Freddie but he’s gotta be one of the most deadly trumpet players in any genre, as soon as he steps up for his solo I start getting goosebumps in anticipation. This is an excellent sounding two-disc show featuring Hubbard’s music prior to the CTI sound he’d soon adopt, definitive hard bop with one of the greatest chopsters in jazz at the helm. Parts of the set do seem a bit quiet at times, although it might have just been distraction. The sax playing here is pretty outstanding as well, but I’m not sure I have the info sheet to make the call.

Sympozion - Kundabuffer

A rather large new Israeli progressive rock group, Sympozion work in a rather formal, intensely composed, almost orchestral style. What’s neat about their take is how they incorporate cyclical motifs out of the book of minimalism, it’s an awful lot like what Terry Riley might have sounded like had he played and composed with early Maneige. Like Riley, Sympozion’s incoporation of these motifs adds the occasional mandala-like drone to the works, warming up what could have been a rather stodgy, quasi-classical piece of music. While the jazzer in me would have loved to see a section opened up a little more (comparable to the way Tipographica did so going from their first studio album to their first live album), for the most part this is a surprisingly warm release, especially for its occasional avant-garde aspirations. Not sure how this will fare with my ears over the long term, but it’s a promising first listen.