Outer Music Diary

Umphrey’s McGee - Guiness Oyster Festival, Chicago, IL 9/6/03 (video)

Umphrey’s McGee sound an awful lot like what would happen if Echolyn became a jam band. My first exposure to the band was a different video recorded by a bumpy camera that didn’t really do a whole lot for me, but this set was entirely impressive (and much better filmed). The band seems to exist on the shoulders of their two frontmen, both excellent guitarists and decent vocalists who, probably a lot like Garcia and Weir did in their day, trade spotlights. I’m not familiar with UM’s own music, which tends to hop styles like a lot of jambands - modern/indie pop here, jazzy jam there and the obligatory reggae number - but I enjoyed just about everything, laughing with pleasant surprise when the band segues effortlessly into Zeppelin’s “Fool in the Rain,” which has to be one of the most unlikely Zeppelin cover tracks. UM’s as terribly tight as you’d imagine from a jamband sort of tour schedule and there are loads of solo guitar spots, probably the closest thing on their repertoire to the scene they’re mostly allied with. Really cool stuff and unquestionably progrock.

Bevis Frond - Rockpalast, Harmonie, Bonn, Germany 10/6/04 (video)

Bevis Frond make me feel like I should like them a lot more than I do, at least up to the point of this video, where it sort of clicked for me what it was I don’t like. As you can generally tell from any of their concerts, Nick Saloman likes to talk and I do seem to remember anti-prog screeds and such in Ptolemaic Terrascope (and a previous DVD that I watched), which wouldn’t necessarily bother me except that such statements fall flat when his own songs seem so ambition-less. I’m constantly thinking, “another song based on a clichéd 3 or 4 note riff which sounds like what Jimi Hendrix would have been like if he couldn’t write.” Even things about Frond that I remember liking, the long 10-15 minute guitar bonanzas don’t seem to light me up like they used to, but perhaps some of the polish has faded over the band’s career. I do like the fact they’re using two guitarists for this Rockpalast show and that it’s all excellent quality, but I think I can safely say these guys aren’t for me.

Tom Waits - WDR Studio L, Koln, Germany, Rockpalast 4/18/77 (video)

Waits is something of a cross between an old jazz singer and a beat or modern poet and this was sort of my first interaction with his music and my initial reaction was to find it to be in an aesthetic I wasn’t comfortable with at all. It’s definitely jazz for the most part, but the vocals are often just a torrent of words and they’re delivered in a style which you’ll know if you connect with in a very short amount of time (I’m not going to try and qualify it). I sat through the whole thing, but after a while it wasn’t really pleasurable at all and found that at this point in time, it just wasn’t going to work for me.

Grateful Dead - Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA 12/31/89 (video)

I took this set in three chunks and it’s a good thing because it’s in a pretty painful era. Listening to Brent Mydland sing “Dear Mr. Fantasy” is just not a musical highlight for me and where I’d give Waits the space of an unfamiliar aesthetic, Mydland just makes me cringe. Even in the good old days the Dead weren’t always at their most effective on New Year’s Eve, but they were well into their musical decline at this point. Songs like “Man Smart (Woman Smarter)” and “Iko Iko” make me want to claw my ears out and even 13 minutes or so, mid-suite, of a tired “Dark Star” don’t save it.

Allan Holdsworth/IOU - Frankfurt Jazz Festival 2/86 (video)

I’m not really the biggest Holdsworth fan so this video came as a big surprise to me as this was as good as set as I’ve heard from the guitarist, no matter what band he’d teamed up with. I recognize bits and pieces, a bit from a different band (UK? Bruford? been too long since I heard those) and then later, songs from his 80s albums all played with grace and outrageous musicianship from the trio. Holdsworth himself is pretty much the consummate professional and he spends his time varying his playing from the guitar to synth guitar, but never really spending too much time on the fast stuff. I was truly mesmerized by the greater part of this set, it’s always nice to get your opinion turned to the positive on something. It makes me wonder what live recordings are out there.

Devo - TV Appearances 1978-81 (videos)

Saturday Night Live and Kirshner performances, and even Merv Griffin from 1980, this is basically a bunch of different Devo videos from the peak of their popularity. The stage shows are bizarre and the fashion about what you’d expect from the era, with much of this being lip synched and not so interesting as a result (as Devo are quite interesting to watch when they aren’t lip synching). It’s cool to listen to the music though, as they tended to model their futurist pop on the backbone of synthesizers that groups like Tangerine Dream were using at the time. But after taking all the Whip Its and Coal Mines, I was ready to move onto something else.

Jazz Q Praha - Pozorovatelna (The Watchtower)

There are four very common American fusion models, first Miles Davis, second Weather Report, third Mahavishnu Orchestra and four Return to Forever. Jazz Q Praha hits the third in the list very early with the picked chord riffs, but the fire isn’t quite there to sustain it. Later in the record the band swings to the first model, hitting Miles Davis just about in his Jack Johnson prime, imitating the raunchy and slighty funky stomp, but, not quite getting it either. If anything, it proves that being familiar with the four models are likely gonna kill you on a lot of fusion, because except for rare occasions, the clone isn’t up to par on the musicianship. Dissonant picked chords like a theme from The Inner Mounting Flame are great if your musicians are going to go out there and kill it, but it’s a big let down it they don’t. Jazz Q got a lot better in their later years, this is disappointing to say the least.

Aka Moon - Southsite Anvers, Belgique 3/31/95 (video)

Aka Moon as the trio alone don’t really make me as enthusiastic as the band with additional guests. This is the trio in what seems like edited form, with a lot of fade outs on tracks, but even with this limitation I can only really absorb it in chunks and after a good 20 minutes I find myself numb to the largely non conventional melodic scales on the part of the saxophone and bassist who become a blur after a while. Of the trio shows I’ve heard or seen, this one is definitely on the better end but I find myself missing other tones and can never really imagine sitting through this again.

Outer Music will be taking this week and Christmas/New Years week off for the holidays. It will give us all some time to recharge and get some work in the queue.

Parliament Funkadelic - The Motor Booty Tour, Landover, MD 1979 (video)

A very long (at least two hours) P-Funk ensemble show from the Motor Booty Tour and to be honest this set seems quite a bit like others from the band in the late 70s, with the arrangements for various songs being geared towards a good party, which generally means for these guys that various themes can be merged together as suites without a lot of tweaking on the musical end. You’re left evaluating the show for spark and the rather muddy video quality doesn’t really help to bring it out, as so much of this is about being there. Some good solo spots abound and the usual theatrics, but I think I’d prefer an earlier show to this as this kind of had a generic feel to my eyes and ears.

Grateful Dead - Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ 4/26/77 (video)

Black and white footage of a solid gig from a great tour, featuring material from both first and second sets including the fabulous Half-Step and Eyes of the World. The video quality varies a lot, making some of the first set watching a bit distracting, but after watching the band quite a bit later, it’s a relief to see everyone with energy, playing on a rather small stage and sounding as good as they ever did.

Maher Shalal Hash Baz - Blues du Jour

Above all, Tori Kudo’s music reminds me of a strange merging of Nick Drake delicacy and whimsy with Stereolab-influenced pop. I’d never really heard of the group before, so finding out Kudo’s a Jehovah’s Witness was rather interesting, although it was impossible from a once through to detect exactly how this might influence what is something of an eclectic and occasionally “out” blend. It’s as if MSHB took the naivete of the late 60s and early 70s singer songwriter types (evidently Syd Barrett’s a big influence, although as I said the mood is more Nick Drake) and updated it for the techno/British pop generation. The results are certainly idiosyncratic, particularly when the music moves occasionally to a different genre or two with the naivete and gentle accessibility intact. Unique, although maybe not quite to my tastes.

Various Artists - Beyond the Valley of the Dolls OST
Various Artists - Birds Do It

While one of these is a soundtrack and and the other a collection of soundtrack excerpts, both albums plumb the late 60s/early 70s period of psychedelia from widely different musical perspectives. The soundtrack to the Beyond the Valley of Dolls album definitely portrays the mainstream, bubblegum end of the psychedelic spectrum and like with Hair, the classic late 60s group Strawberry Alarm Clock gets a couple tracks, although for my ears this is slightly late for the group. But in comparison to the Lynn Cary and Barbara Robison tracks, they sound quite a bit more out. If this period wasn’t so user friendly for my tastes, an album like this might be something I’d toss aside easily, but SAC broke the incense and peppermints vibe for me when I was 15 years old and even if I can recognize the cheesy and exploitive nature of the music, well at least it’s my cheese.

Birds Do It is an even more fun package featuring instrumental music from 60s and 70s German sex education movies. I recognize less names than I thought I would have, Kristian Schulze being the only one, but almost all of the music has the feel of the era, although perhaps a bit more along the soul or souljazz axis than the pop one. Every one in a few tracks actually gets the energy up and one is left wondering exactly which parts of the movies these various songs back up (short of reading the liners of course). Looking forward to getting back to this one as there’s definitely some impressive stuff her, especially for what was basically library music of a sort.

Grateful Dead - Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA 2/6/70
Grateful Dead - Broome County Arena, Binghamton, NY 11/6/77

Two very different eras of Grateful Dead music represented by these two shows, but in a way both are what I’d say are at the end of those eras, the band’s 1969 style evolving into something a lot more rootsy later in 1970, and the Godchaux version of the Dead coming down from the peak represented by the Terrapin Station tour in the first half of 1977.

Early 1970 gigs still strike me as 1969, the band’s still combining a bit of muscular energy with the psychedelic phase of the music and besides the fact that not all these shows are in expected quality, they’re very good listens. While 20m+ versions of Lovelight can test my patience, at least in this case it follows up on a rather neat Good Lovin’ suite that moves through the Other One before an almost 10 minute version of Black Peter, not a particularly common event. In fact this suite is really the gem of the whole set, as quite a bit of the show is Pigpen heavy and his songs aren’t really exceptional on this set.

My first impression of the Binghamton 1977 show was muted due to quiet mastering, but I was rather impressed with it and I’m often not for shows that come out of the late 77 tour, in comparison to the previous tour it feels like they’d lost a bit of energy. But here we open with a lengthy Half Step, an almost 9 minute of Friend of the Devil (and at this point they hadn’t slowed it down yet) and a wonderful two-suite plus second set with highlights Saint Stephen and Wharf Rat. For the next year or so the Dead’s sound would move to an almost crystalline or fragile delicacy and this is a good example of when that worked.

Carré Manchot - Mab ar Miliner
Carré Manchot - Noz!

Carré Manchot is a Breton folk group who utilize the bombarde as a main instrument, a sound I’ve never been able to truly appreciate as it sounds like a combination of oboe and kazoo (and in fact is a sort of cross between a reed instrument like an oboe and pipes). Without it, I may have enjoyed this quite a bit more than I did, although being a very straight Breton folk group (and there are really a surprising number of ensembles like this), the music may not be as much to my taste. Most of this music I explored on the tail end of discovering Malicorne and Gwendal, few folk groups of which I’ve enjoyed more.

Of the two albums here, their first and third, the latter, Noz!, is the most assured and there are some neat song structures, which I find to be the elements that create crossover interest from rock music. The music on both is spirited and I can imagine if you like folk and the bombarde doesn’t make you think of trapped geese that these could be enjoyable listens. I try to appreciate what’s being played rather than what it’s being played on, but I’ve yet to crack the bombarde. Here it’s so omnipresent I find the music hard to enjoy, while appreciating the skill of the unit nonetheless.