Outer Music Diary

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss - Crossroads (CMT)

I’ve only been recently listening to Krauss and Union Station and of course much longer for Robert Plant and Led Zeppelin, but found the concept of a collaboration very intriguing, not just the rock/bluegrass fusion possibilities, but also the sex and age yin/yang between the two. It creates an absolutely amazing tension on stage that just heightens the edginess of this project, from the reconstructed Led Zeppelin and Union Station pieces to Marc Ribot’s occasional very avant jazz/blues solo. The full band works not only through the covers but a few traditionals and the occasional rockabillly sort of number. The whole thing just brims with age and experience and both Plant and Krauss come off like the veterans they are. Plant seems almost 40 years younger in many ways, clearly relishing the experience to dive well away from the rock fields he’s a bonafide master of and as he implies during the interview segments, the combination of Krauss’ almost pitch perfect voice with his own smoky blues actually works. Most startling are the Led Zep reconstructions, with Krauss taking lead on one of my favorites, When the Levee Breaks (Zep’s version a reconstruction in its own right) and the dual vocals on the very sexually charged “Black Dog,” all of which clearly delighted the crowd. You really have to give credit to everyone involved, it’s a shame so few veterans challenge themselves like this.

Santana - “Eros,” Budokan, Tokyo 7/6/73

Like the Amon Duul II - Munich 69 show I mentioned earlier, this Santana show is basically another incremental upgrade of a very poorly sourced show. It’s even more sad as I believe there’s a laser CD video of this gig that’s long out of print that implies it does exist in good quality. For the time being I have to rely on Jaycee Fairgounds and Winterland performances to document what was one of Santana’s jazziest and finest line ups, the band that did Lotus and (more loosely) Welcome. This was the Santana band following the Miles Davis band to Japan about a week or two later and similar in its genre crunching, giving singer Leon Thomas some time for solo spots (including the Creator Has a Master Plan). In fact to my ears this is Santana at a very high peak with only downhill to go on the other side. A truly cosmic, inspired vision that still seems poorly documented due to the Lotus’s somewhat skewed angle on what happened during this tour.

Trikolon - Cluster

While so many early Germans were spacing and tripping out Kosmische style or following the British diversion on blues rock and hard rock, the occasional true progressive rock unit would raise its head, this time using The Nice and ELP as a very notes-heavy classical rock sort of inspiration. This was an extremely rare album until it was reissued and to some extent it’s not a surprise at it’s likely only to appeal to genre-ists who can take what is nearly an album long, vicious keyboard assault, in fact maybe only Wallenstein’s Blitzkrieg had a similar sort of approach. It all adds up to an album that’s perhaps a bit too one dimensional and certainly on the derivative side; however, there’s a strange psychdelic tinge to the production that you don’t tend to find on classical rock albums that makes it a bit more interesting and in that way you might compare it to the later Ejwuusl Wessaqhan.

Eagles s/t

Three singles on your debut album is definitely going to catapult you to no measure of success and it did start these guys on a tangent that I found strangely timely. I forgot to check the time on the CMT Crossroads performance by Alison Krauss and Robert Plant a couple weeks ago and came in right at the end (no worry, repeat later), only to get an Eagles interview and documentary instead, kind of cool since I’ve been listening to them quite a bit lately. They’re all around 60 now and not doing anything I’d find particularly interesting (I barely recognized Joe Walsh, who used to always crack me up in interviews) but they do talk about this album and “Take It Easy” and ”Witchy Woman” for a bit, an album that would sort of set their varying formulas on the table, with each successive album improving it quite a bit. For the most part, I found most of this debut fairly average, which was a completely different experience than “One of these Nights” but you still have to concede that from a commercial perspective this was a mighty shoe put forward.

Isabel Campbell and Mark Lanegan - Ballad of the Broken Seas

This unusual collaboration seems to weave together strands of British psychedelic folk, traditional Western music and some modern production values for an occasionaly Morricone-esque, epic and mythical fabric. It’s definitely unusual for both musicians, Campbell hailing from Belle & Sebastian and Lanegan from Screaming Trees, and the result is often something like Tom Waits meets Mellow Candle or Johnny Cash doing old Pentangle numbers. It’s all delivered in a somewhat mystical, folkloric tone that also rings modern due to the percussion and the merging is somewhat reminiscent of world/ambient fusions with this sort of past/present juxtaposition. Quite nice overall.

Derek Bailey - Pieces for Guitar

These almost sparse and bizarre guitar viginettes remind me quite a bit of the old Fred Frith guitar albums. The silence here is almost as important as the notes and it’s a lot like soft chiming at times, certainly in improvised and often dissonant themes, but all of it is strangely beautiful and I was very surprised, as I’m not usually as interested in solo work, how captivating this all is. Some are likely to hear this and think it’s some rank amateur banging away on the guitar randomly because it’s so far away from normal Western scales, in fact, I get the impression so much of this is tied together by a certain intuitive sense rather than any obvious rhythms or melody lines. So obviously only one to approach if you’re interested in music well beyond boundaries.

Cardiacs - On Land and In the Sea

Well the Cardiacs sure have a lot of really incredible albums, in fact I almost wish I’d have started with the late 80s/early 90s records rather than Sing to God and Guns. For one thing, after immersing myself in the lower quality live videos, these albums sound positively radiant in their production. In a lot of ways, I wonder how these guys get away with what they do. Their music seems similar over their career, based on very strange but almost signature chord progressions, all delivered with fantastic energy and bearing the stylisms of epic prog rock and bonkers punk. From a ways off I can imagine a lot of this sounding the same at first, but it’s really amazing how fast some of these songs start to stick to the head, revealing what is not just iconoclastic but brilliant songwriting. The epic finale “The Everso Closely Guarded Line,” at just under 9 minutes, works an instrumental melody that would put some of the classic symph bands to shame. To my estimate this band is still one of the world’s most occulted treasures, with a professionalism and sense of originality that belies how obscure they still are.

Bobby Hutcherson with Harold Land - Now!
Bobby Hutcherson/Harold Land Quintet - Juan-les-Pins Festival, France 7/26/69

I sure hope the quintet didn’t have to open for or follow Miles Davis during that date, given that lost quintet’s incendiary power. And given the existence of the 1969Miles CD, it’s no surprise this Hutcherson/Lane quintet peformance would eventually show up, although it actually sounds better qualitywise. You sense the band following up on the thorny hardbop of mid 60s Blue Note Hutcherson into new paradigms of music by the time Now! showed up (it was recorded several months after the show in question) and likewise my interest wanes a little bit from all those amazing albums. Now! works with large band formats (two if you have the Blue Note RVG edition with the second line up bonus tracks) including vocals and would give Crouch and Marsalis conniption fits as in many ways it’s as much a classical or new music work as it is jazz. Maybe only Mingus was creating music like this at the time. I preferred the slightly earlier, less conceptual work a little more, but both show and album are well worth checking out for the out jazzer.

Johnny Cash - American V: A Hundred Highways

This oddly titled album appears to be Cash’s final recordings and I have to say that he probably went out on a high note with this one, remarkable even for a remarkable career. It’s definitely mature Cash with a deeper, more melancholy voice, a man at the end of a long road and the songs are almost wistful at times. I guess it can’t be considered a Cash record entirely due to some production work after this death, but it seems to successfully catch the spirit. I like Cash as it is but still found myself surprised at how much I enjoyed this later work.

Ophiucus - Ophiucus
Ophiucus - Salade Chinoise

I read a review a while back that kind of stuck with me. I think it was in one of the Clearlight Mantra reissues and was either an album review or concert review of Clearlight from a very anglophile perspective, but what it basically said was that in terms of rock music, the French were behind the eightball by the mid 70s. While I don’t agree with that by any means (the word Magma kind of obliterates the theory), it does say something interesting about French rock at its very earliest, particularly that late 60s/early 70s era when it was clear that most efforts were influenced by the British and US groups. A good example of this would be the French band Alice, a pop/rock group without a great deal of ambition (especially if you compare them to Magma or Ange of the same time period). I think you can file Ophiucus there as well.

I used to use a battered copy of the old Musea French progressive rock tome, before it was updated and released in the red cover. Groups with names like Ophiucus (a constellation whose name means serpent holder) used to fascinate me, apparently, sometimes more so than the description of the music. Because Ophiucus basically didn’t have much of an identity on either of these records and for a group with a European/mythological name, they’re strongly influenced by American music.

It’s best to talk about both albums at once, as it accentuates what’s generally genre hopping. For the most part Ophiucus stick to a pop/folk/songwriter type of style that ranges anywhere from the early Eagles to Crosby Stills and Nash without the harmonies. However bizarre divergences occur, such as the Achim Reichel-esque echo guitar instrumental on the first album. Towards the end of the second album I swear I’d walked in on a French Canned Heat cover band. The listens were so maddening in this way that I ended up playing them both a few times. And never was there any coherency among the albums, it was as if a bunch of youngsters enamored with the earthier more Americana end of pop (Grateful Dead, NRPS etc) decided to make a go of it. Both albums come off as very limp efforts and I’d say it’s mostly because they were part of the era that they were included in a progressive rock book. A couple rarities you can avoid.

Brian Lynch Quartet - Fuchsia

I put off listening to this for a while on the misguided idea that it was some sort of modern fusion album, misguided in that it’s at least not the type of modern fusion album I was expecting. This is a Canadian quartet very much along the lines of some of the mainstream Dave Douglas albums, homages to Miles Davis from the late 60s quintet through the electric era. What struck me about this set was how muscular, choppy and on fire the whole band was, with the trumpet playing way more Hubbard than Miles. I am hoping this gets even better as this was a real surprise. Drew my fast attention several times during the play.

Goro Ohmi - Fire

It’s amazing to me the assimilative quality of progressive rock and the lengths so many collectors go to drag something into the fold. Meet Goro Ohmi, Japanese musician creating album after album of kitschy and bombastic “soundtrack” music, I guess people must have thought Teru’s Symphonia and then of course not much of a stretch to Ohmi. At least a lot of the music is somewhat original its own way, in that the epic nature and bombast are unusually rendered at times (I can only think of useless words like quirky here), but the whole thing is so damn twee that my knees were starting to shake.

Richard & Linda Thompson - Shoot Out the Lights

I can’t figure out why it’s taken me so long to start checking out the music of Richard Thompson, although this early 80s, very countrified album probably shouldn’t have been a first go (to be fair I’ve probably heard a show or two). Thompson seems to be more in the tradition of singer/songwriters, like a slightly more folky or celtic Neil Young, which doesn’t help this listener at all. But anything quite this different from what I usually listen to needs more attention, especially as it may be something of a departure from the usual Thompson music.

Harlequin Mass s/t

Typical of late 70s American prog/pop, Harlequin Mass had some painfully obvious commercial moves that really drag down the album, highlighted by the atrocious lyrics to “New Song” (”Ahh’m singin’ a new song bay-beee”) . In fact that it was reissued in Italy on Mellow is not a surprise as the dreadful lyrics may have been overlooked. Musically it’s a blend somewhere between Yes and Renaissance, but while Renaissance had a sort of understated elegance to the music, Harlequin Mass are about as sublime as a kick to the head. I found myself more annoyed with this as I revisited it. I might have thought a lot differently had I not understood the lyrics as they kept throwing me out of the record with the clumsy and cliche rhymes. The positives are some nice guitar work and a few interesting arrangements, however those searching for original ideas aren’t likely to find anything close here. I knocked it down to a 5, but it had an irritating quality that might have made it worse had I needed to hear it again.

Germinale - …E Il Suo Respiro Ancora Agita le Onde…

I’m not a big Germinale fan, although this title could be the best of their releases. Stylistically they’re a rather elegant and melodically pristine symphonic rock group, which makes their Van der Graaf cover late in the album almost shocking with its intensity. Germinale have something of a gentle feel to their music, a sound almost entirely indigenous, one is occasionally reminded of Banco’s arrangements or the romanticism of Allusa Fallax or Locanda delle Fate. It’s entirely this sense of beauty and grace that is likely to split listeners, as I think a bit of bite here and there wouldn’t have hurt, like I said earlier the VDGG cover almost felt like a natural part of the Germinale album, that is if one was looking for some sort of peak. Anyway I brought this to a 9 which is a natural grade, one that might not make a later cut, but I think there’s a sort of sense of freshness here that doesn’t hurt.

Little Feat - Waiting for Columbus (deluxe ed)

In all my years I’ve probably only heard one or two Little Feat songs, which is rather inexcusable overall. This deluxe ed of their live album is often considered their classic, and it was easy to see why right off the bat, a definitive 70s rock style with touches of southern rock, country and a bit of Steely Dan too. What struck me is that there’s a lot of good songwriting here, for an album chock full of pieces I’d never heard, I was really drawn into a lot of this, in fact the last time I had a similar experience was listening to the two Big Star albums. Perhaps its something of a classic rock comfort level here, but I enjoyed the hell out of this and was kind of surprised when the final disc ended and my changer went onto the next one, something that rarely happens to me at such a length.

Be-Bop Deluxe - “Made in Heaven” disc 2 (BBC Sight & Sound, New Precision, Don Kirshners Rock Concert, Midnight Special) (DVD)

I’ve never been the biggest Be-Bop Deluxe fan, although it seems to me I had a run with Sunburst Finish at one point. This is the second of a two disc set, the first I watched a while ago, and I actually found this the better of the two despite that it captures the band’s later career (although there’s a quick flashback to the 70s at the end). For one thing, Bill Nelson is a pretty amazing lead guitarist, by the end of the disc I was wishing there were more solos, but in many ways BBD were basically a pop/rock group and most of their songs follow verse/chorus traditions pretty closely. They were quite good at what they did, even if my appreciation ceilings out in the 9ish area. Fans would probably really love what is here.

Krisiun - Live Armageddon (DVD)

This DVD presents an extremely well-recorded concert from a couple years ago, as well as some archives that present early versions of the band. The casual listener will notice little difference between any of these Krisiuns. I swear that I went from being totally blown away to starting to find it all a bit boring within about a 15 minute span. The only different emotions came during the frontman patter with gems like “Thank you veryfokkin’much” and the tendency to introduce songs with the same death metal vox (imagine “it’s great to be here” a la cookie monster). Musically, they’re a pretty talented trio, although the bassist and guitarist do a lot of riffs in unison and one does get a bit weary with the guitar player’s arpeggio sweeps. The drumming, like many DM bands, is stupendous, although the earlier clips have triggered kits a la Morbid Angel. Yeah, Krisiun are something of a one trick pony, although they really do about all they can with that trick. It clearly took some practice.

Various Artists - Night Music 10/12/89 (DVD)

I’m not sure what Night Music was, although it seems to be an American show airing on Japanese television. Whatever it was, on this night it presents a number of vastly disparate musicians playing together or apart or with the house band. Most of it was far outside of my interests, particularly the Van Dyke Parks and Maria McKee segments. However, there are a couple SRV clips where he sits in with the house band, and then a rather lovely “Thembi” with Pharoah and co. The show’s outro was “Creator Has a Master Plan,” but unsurpringsly things ended before it would have gotten interesting. I don’t think it was worth the time for “Thembi” overall.