Outer Music Diary

Dionysos – Le Grand Jeu. 1971.
Dionysos – Le Prince Croule. 1972. Along with Franck Dervieux, Dionysos’ first two albums have to be considered Quebec’s most pioneering progressive rock works. They mixed psych, electric blues rock and long track progressive compositions to create some wholly original music. In some cases they seem like a French Uriah Heep, but considerably more experimental. They were one of the first pop groups to sing in French. Their 3rd album, a self-titled release from 1976, is more straight ahead blues rock - and has been reissued on CD. One would suspect that ProgQuebec will eventually do both of these fine albums.

Charlee – s/t. 1972. It’s been often said that Frank Marino copied Jimi Hendrix heavily at the dawn of his career. More than likely, though, he was more influenced by fellow Montreal resident Walter Rossi and his band Charlee. Listen to the first 3 Mahogany Rush albums and compare to Charlee, which was recorded only a year earlier. Many parallels can be found. Frank eventually forged his own style and became one of the all-time great hard rock guitarists. No telling what Rossi could’ve achieved had he not chosen a career as a session musician. This is a good album, that’s unfortunately been booted a couple of times.

Handgjort – s/t. 1970. One of the original albums on the Silence label, Handgjort play an almost all instrumental acoustic Eastern world music, similar to the Third Ear Band or Aktuala. More underground and primitive though, reminding me of Furekaaben. Years later, Embryo would produce a more professional variation of this sound on “Reise” (the non rock pieces that is).

Flaviola e o Bando do Sol – s/t. 1976. Flaviola is a Recife based group that came from the same batch of freaks who created the Lula Cortes and Ze Remalho masterpiece. Though Flaviola is all acoustic, they have many of the same psychotic tendencies of “Paebiru” paradoxically combined with a hippy-dippy, Woodsy-the-Owl, sitting around the campfire style of feel-good folk ala Agincourt maybe. Fun.

A Paradise is Born – s/t. 1978. German folky with dual male/female vocals, that sounds more English in execution (and language of course). Parallels to Carol Of Harvest can be found, but without the progressive elements. Some nice electric leads. File next to Stone Angel.