Los Jaivas - Obras de Violeta Parra
Chileans Los Jaivas have to be one of the longest running, ambitious rock groups on the planet, one of the few who never really succumbed to trends and phases along their career. In fact this double album from 1984 is probably as ambitious and unique as any of their albums, 15 years or more since their debut. The Jaivas motif tends to be a combination of indigenous and traditional ideas with rock and classical music and it gives their sound a very unique cast, one that’s likely to be exotic for the Northern ear. This album appears to be music created around the lyrics of Violeta Parra, although from a non-Spanish speaking perspective its not likely to make much difference from their other work. Musically it doesn’t work for me as well as many of their other titles as this is a rather ornate and classical influenced work with lots of various movements that start and stop quite frequently. Many if not most of these sequences are beautiful and brilliantly arranged, but the opening and closure of some of them, without a great deal of internal development, are suite-like, giving the album a feel of longer pieces, rather than the shorter songs they are. This is likely to appeal more to the symphonic prog fan with a love for various time changes and such, but I find little of it particularly memorable and feel I’d have to put in a great deal of time to make it so. But I’ll always admire them for a strict artistic focus, one that turns up a gem like Cancion del Sur every so often.
Happy the Man - State University of New York 3/4/77
I have a tough time remembering Happy the Man tracks, particularly after they took a long piece called Death’s Crown and reduced it to smaller segments, some of which are among my favorites. In fact this show, or at least the tape, I suspect part of this is missing, opens with one of these moments, including one of my favorite mini-moog solos of all time. Obviously this is dominated by first album and earlier material, including the banal “Leave That Kitten Alone Armone,” which is maybe a hair before what I’d consider their peak period. But HTM were definitely one of the great live bands and elevated all their material outside the studio, which makes their shows terribly collectible to my ears.