Outer Music Diary

Cat Stevens - Tea for the Tillerman

I had something of a reminder to relisten to this title, a Cat Stevens album I hadn’t heard since I was probably 16, when the title track started popping up as the theme to the HBO show Extras. It could be Cat’s best album overall, “Wild World,” “Where do the Children Play?” etc. However, it’s the sort of nostalgic listen that doesn’t feel as fond as usual. Maybe it’s the ballads like “Sad Lisa” and “Hard Headed Woman,” perhaps they just didn’t fit the mood this listen. Might have given this a 10 when I was younger but it sounds more like a 9 now. Kinda makes a melancholy mood.

Nebula - Let It Burn

I found this a surprisingly decent stoner rock album, particularly when I was expecting it to be yet another croak, riff and doom fest. More like the Fu Manchu they’re related to, Nebula have a bit of a jammy feel to the music that opens things up some. But like so many of these groups, afficianados of 70s rock aren’t likely to find anything in here that wasn’t done better two or three decades before. I may need to modify my stoner rock rating scale to “Wow that was a surprise,” “Not bad” and “You’re making my boys ache.” This one falls right about in the middle.

Gong - In the 70s

This is another Voiceprint archive series that was apparently created to help Tim Blake out post-accident recently. I wish tragedy wasn’t the only thing that inspired these types of releases, because this shows that the Gong vaults are a lot more impressive than what’s available to traders, and the first chunk, from ‘73, although without the presence of Gilli, is impressive, covering most of the band’s career up to that point. The live version of “Blues for Finlay” from a year earlier is something of a revelation given that the band dropped it almost entirely from their repertoire once the Trilogy was well under way, and I don’t think I’d ever heard it live before. The other bits, rehearsals and live tracks are all very interesting, making this quite the package for fans. Which makes me wonder why it hasn’t been talked about as much, something I’d probably chalk up to the lack of Voiceprint promotion outside of the UK.

Jethro Tull - Convention Center, Anaheim, CA 6/19/71

Around this time, Tull were finally just starting to break out from the super progammatic, solo-burdened and tedious sets of recent years when starting to add the Aqualung material to their sets. So this isn’t a bad period to check out, even if there aren’t a surfeit of quality show, in fact this particular title seems to have been compiled from at least two sources. Nothing is Easy is here as well as music from what would become the band’s most popular album and even though I felt things slow down in a couple places, it was generally an enjoyable listen.

Eric Dolphy - Gaslight, New York City 10/7/62

Wish I wouldn’t have misplaced the tracklisting for this show, as it’s a rather fine document, featuring Dolphy in post Coltrane sextet mode and definitely benefitting from the experience. There’s something about jazz gigs in NYC, and this has all the energy of a great night. I feel fortunate to have it in such decent quality, making me assume this was probably a radio broadcast of some sort.

East of Eden - “Rock of the Seventies” German TV 1971 (DVD)

This was a big surprise, although without a specific date in 71, I wasn’t sure whether I’d be getting something more like Snafu or more like their s/t reboot record and the track listing cleared up its belonging to the latter period, with not a nod to the band’s past. While I find the second East of Eden enjoyable, I far prefer the first band, so this was more like watching a different band. I still find Jig-a-Jig to be something of a shtick, so by the time the band started dancing around for this one I was about done with it, so it was a good thing it’s short. The good quality definitely made it worth the watch overall.