Shimamoto Archive

<body topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 marginheight=0 marginwidth=0> <table cellpadding=0 cellspacing=0 border=0><tr> <td valign="top" colspan=2 height=110 BGCOLOR="#000000" TEXT="#F7F7FF" bgproperties="fixed" background="04900840dvldtc.gif"> <div> <FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFFFFF" FACE="Times New Roman" ><B>The First Church of Holy Rock and Roll</B></FONT><FONT SIZE="5" COLOR="#FFFFCC" FACE="Times New Roman" ><B> </B></FONT><B>    |     </B><A HREF="index.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The First Church of Holy Rock and Roll"><U><B>home</B></U></A></div> <div> <A HREF="id28.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Commandments"><U>The Commandments</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id21.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="The Sermon"><U>The Sermon</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id19.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="New Reviews"><U>New Reviews</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id44.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Short Takes"><U>Short Takes</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id20.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Blasts from the Past"><U>Blasts from the Past</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id41.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Interviews"><U>Interviews</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id55.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Books That Rock!"><U>Books That Rock!</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id47.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Movies That Rock!"><U>Movies That Rock!</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id49.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="On the Front Line: Shimamoto Reports"><U>On the Front Line: Shimamoto Reports</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id53.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Dimitri Monroe: Letters from a BurntOut "><U>Dimitri Monroe: Letters from a Burnt-Out Recluse</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id59.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Josh Slates on Cinema"><U>Josh Slates on Cinema</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id56.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Cravens RockORama"><U>Cravens' Rock-O-Rama</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id40.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="Holy Mix Tape"><U>Holy Mix Tape</U></A>   |   <A HREF="id62.htm" TARGET="_top" TITLE="KCOUs Shake Em On Down! 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For one thing, they were ADULTS. Lou Reed was 25 when they formed in 1965, having gone from completing his literary education as Delmore Schwartz' acolyte at Rochester University (where he played in a fratboy rock band with fellow Long Islander Sterling Morrison) to writing pulp - stupid dance and car songs - as a hack songwriter for Pickwick Records in New York. John Cale came from a similarly academic background, having left Wales for this country to pursue a career as a composer of classical music, pissing off Aaron Copeland with the "destructiveness" of his music (it seems Mr. "Appalachian Spring" objected to his smashing pianos and suchlike; the old joke about "I've suffered for my art and now it's your turn" seeming to suggest itself) and leaving the halls of academe to perform with LaMonte Young's Theater of Experimental Music AKA the Dream Syndicate (no relation to the Velvets-and-Neil Young-inspired eighties guitar band), whose members would do stuff like playing a single note for up to half an hour (ahh, the art and science of monotony!). In due course, Reed and Cale found each other when the former recruited the latter to join a band called the Primitives which he was forming to promote a "dance" record called "The Ostrich," which featured a gtr with all six strings tuned to one note - shades of Young's Dream Syndicate! </div> <bR> <div> They took their name from a dirty paperback, added the painter Angus Maclise on drums, and by all accounts, made great atonal welters of noise, which were duly heard by Andy Warhol, who added ice-princess Nico as "chanteuse" and installed them in his multi-media revue, "The</div> <div> Exploding Plastic Inevitable" (the East Coast amphetamine equivalent of the acid-drenched</div> <div> "happenings" that were emanating from San Francisco). By this time, Maclise had quit and been replaced by Maureen Tucker, the primal thumping kid sister of one of Reed and Morrison's Rochester fratboy buddies. Their debut album, the aforementioned "Velvet Underground and Nico," was nominally produced by Warhol and released on Verve (primarily known as a jazz label before signing the Velvets, Mothers of Invention, Blues Project, and Tim Hardin) with a peelable Warhol banana on the cover. Incredibly, it remains one of the most influential records of its day, much more than the psychedelic hippie candyfloss that garnered most of the media attention at the time - a gritty urban artifact that juxtaposes beauty and ugliness more starkly than anyone had every dared previously. Beguiling, tuneful songs like "Sunday Morning," "Femme Fatale," and "I'll Be Your Mirror" (not to mention the droning, hypnotic "All Tomorrow's Parties"), mostly sung by Nico, bumped up against the likes of the S&M epic "Venus In Furs" (featuring Reed's vocalismo at its most leering and Cale's sawing viola, sounding in retrospect like nothing so much as the music from the scene in "Conan the Barbarian" where James Earl Jones morphs into a snake and AHH-nold knocks over the stewpot full of skulls) or the extreme amphetamine Dylanisms and cacophony of "Black Angel's Death Song" and "European Son." Recorded in L.A. while the venue where the Velvets were supposed to be gigging was closed, the album captures Reed's vocalizing near its peak, which is kind of mortifying when you think of it. Unlike contemporaries Jeff Beck or Hendrix, who used guitar feedback to create melody, Reed and Morrison employed it in the</div> <div> manner of Pete Townshend, to add to the feeling of things coming apart. The album contained two certifiable Reed classics, "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "Heroin," which showed just how much Art you could make with a I-IV chord change and lyrics about dope. </div> <bR> <div> As 1967 gave way to 1968, the Velvets tired with being dismissed as Warhol's creations and</div> <div> summarily put the wheels under him (inspiring him to call Reed "a rat"), then set out to produce</div> <div> expressions even more extreme. I will admit to having taken longer to get next to their "White</div> <div> Light/White Heat" album than any of the others, possibly because it was responsible (when I was first discovering the Velvets ca. '72) for one of my worst-ever acid experiences, in my parents' house, when I decided I'd try and be cool to impress my then-best friend (creep) by taking off the collected works of the Doors (his habitual tripping music) and putting on the Velvets. It was "The Gift" that set me off - the sound of Cale's flat Welsh baritone intoning a Reed story about a young man named Waldo Jeffers, his obsession with a girlfriend away at college, and what transpires when he decides to mail himself to her, the Velvets grinding and scraping away in the background all the while at an instrumental they apparently called "Booker T." "Lady Godiva's Operation" had the same air of menace. I felt chills and saw skulls on the stairs in my mother's house before I ended the hallucination by removing the record from my father's turntable and smashing it to bits, then went upstairs to mellow out to the sounds of Captain Beyond or something like that from the radio.</div> <bR> <div> If "White Light/White Heat" isn't the most abrasive-sounding record of all time, it's certainly</div> <div> one of 'em. (And of course, uh, I like it real much now.) Cale's industrial-strength bass notes</div> <div> at the end of the title track are the first indication that something really new is up here.</div> <div> Produced by Tom Wilson, who by '68 had done important work with Dylan, the Mothers of Invention, the Animals, the Blues Project, and, uh, Simon and Garfunkel, among others, the album was recorded at pain-threshold volume, which the recording technology of the time unfortunately wasn't quite up to capturing, but the result is the most saturated guitar sounds anyone had ever heard up till that time - what was only hinted at in Reed's guitar blast on "I'm Waiting for the Man." (Cale was actually able to replicate the effect from the earlier song with even greater force when he produced the first Stooges album.) </div> <bR> <div> The album's centerpiece is "Sister Ray," seventeen minutes of three-chord speedfreak cacophony, the garage punk ethos of the Seeds or the Shadows of Knight taken to a heretofore unimaginable extreme. (Uh, roots of Nine Inch Nails, anyone? Just subtract the blues - and the Velvets allegedly used to fine anybody who played a blues lick, a la James Brown, but you couldn't train the syntax of the flatted third, fifth, and seventh out of anybody who cut their musical teeth listening to Jimmy Reed and Chuck Berry.) Lou's guitar solo on "I Heard Her Call My Name" is legendary - the sound every beginning guitarist would make, if he had the balls, not to mention the fuzztone and the Vox Super Beatle. Folks remain divided regarding Lou's playing: was he (as Tony Glover wrote in Rolling Stone a coupla years later) "the most advanced lead guitarist in America" or a terrible tyro whose greatness resided in his sheer unmitigated front? I kinda lean toward the latter, myself - this guy made the early Ron Asheton sound like Segovia, but then again, Ron probably woulda never dared do his singular Thang if Uncle Lou hadn't been there first, so I guess we should all be grateful that he was.</div> <bR> <div> Further alterations followed - in late '68, John Cale was given his walking papers and replaced</div> <div> on bass and organ by an angelic-voiced kid named Doug Yule, who'd opened for the Velvets in a band called the Glass Menagerie at the Boston Tea Party, their new home-away-from-home and a joint run by the manager who replaced Warhol, one Steve Sesnick. Lou figured he'd be able to use Doug to spell him on lead vocals when his voice started to strain, and almost immediately started praising the new guy's playing and musical ideas to the skies - a mistake which would have some severe negative consequences later. </div> <bR> <div> I don't know about you, but when it comes to the Velvets' third album, I don't believe any of</div> <div> those stories about "we lost our fuzzboxes on the way to the airport." Rather, I see "The Velvet</div> <div> Underground" as a deliberate move on Lou's part to consolidate his leadership of the band, and to move them in a new direction...toward more of the kind of tuneful songwriting that made up a third of the debut album. As a result, you get to hear some of Lou's loveliest songcraft yet - "Candy Says," "Some Kinda Love," "Pale Blue Eyes" - along with some atypically optimistic ("Beginning to See the Light") and even redemptive ("Jesus") sentiments. While there's nothing here even remotely as jarring sonically as "White Light/White Heat," there's still a flirtation with experimentalismo ("The Murder Mystery"), as well as one of the Velvets' best jam songs ever, the classic "What Goes On." While kind of a subdued listen, it's also the sexiest VU album by far. And it closes with Mo Tucker's charmingly tuneless vocal on "Afterhours."</div> <bR> <div> (After that, the Velvets cut material for what woulda been a fourth album, had they not bolted</div> <div> from Verve in response to the company's not doing shit to sell their records. Some of the songs</div> <div> later turned up on the "VU" and "Another View" collections in the eighties and sounded, uh, a</div> <div> lot like the third album.)</div> <bR> <div> The Velvets spent 1969 touring from coast to coast, playing big and small rooms from New England to Texas to California - everywhere, in fact, but in New York - developing into a pretty formidable stage unit. The "1969 Live" collection, released in '74, comes from this period, recorded at two small venues, the End of Cole Avenue in Dallas and the Matrix in San Francisco. Audience-recorded though the tapes might be, the sound is full, with lots of presence and all the instruments clearly audible. The performances are kinda subdued, as befits the small rooms where they were playing, but the power of the band still comes through as they show just how much groove you can build with two chugging, chattering rhythm guitars (and no lead) - dig "What Goes On" in particular. The material includes some tantalizing early glimpses of toons that would later surface on "Loaded" as well as songs from all three then-released albums and a few that were never recorded in the studio. Lou's in fine voice and sounds downright personable as he talks to the audience. The CD release of "1969 Live" curiously breaks the double LP into two (separate) single CDs, attempting to compensate with the inclusion of a coupla bonus tracks. I've probably listened to this (particularly volume 1 of the CD version) more than any other Velvets album over the years; the Quine tapes will shed more light on this period and so are welcome.</div> <bR> <div> The terminal phase of the Velvets was pretty interesting. By the summer of '70, Sterling</div> <div> Morrison had returned to school to get his Masters, the band played a residency at Max's Kansas City (first New York gigs in three years!) and was recording "Loaded" with Adrian Barber behind the controls (whose place in the pantheon of rock'n'roll is assured on the basis of his involvement in this and the MC5's "High Time," even if the sound on both records can most charitably be characterized as "cloudy"). One of my favorite parts of the Victor Bockris/ Gerald Malanga Velvets bio "Uptight" is Sterl's account of spending his days reading "Vanity Fair" and playing basketball before riding his bike down to Max's to play with the Velvets, then eating a cheeseburger and drinking an ale before returning home. A man who knew how to enjoy life, no doubt. The cassette-recorded live souvenir which Atlantic released in the wake of the band's demise (the first official bootleg? Maybe.) shows that they were playing well, but "Loaded" stands, for me, as one of the all-time great albums, so much so that I bought the Rhino "Fully Loaded Edition" a coupla years ago only reluctantly (actually, when I found it used at CD Warehouse, heh heh); I didn't want anyone tampering with the original's perfection. (I'd learned my lesson with the remastered/bonus track-laden version of "The Who Sell Out"; sometimes, more is less.)</div> <bR> <div> Lou, so the story goes, told the Atlantic folks when they signed the band that he'd give them an</div> <div> album "loaded with hits," and he did, although not in the conventional (chart) sense (cover</div> <div> versions by Mitch Ryder, Rachel Sweet, and, uh, the Cowboy Junkies aside). "Sweet Jane" and "Rock and Roll" were the obvious killers, followed by "New Age." Personally, I've always found the second side (with the exception of "Lonesome Cowboy Bill") flawless - "Head Held High" and "Train Round the Bend" remain the hardest Lou's ever rocked (with Long Island garage band drums provided by Doug Yule's kid brother Billy, filling in for the pregnant Mo), while "I Found a Reason" is lovely (even with the corny spoken part in the middle)  and "Oh Sweet Nuthin" appropriately elegiac (wish I could remember the name of the band that covered it on a soundtrack a coupla years back).</div> <bR> <div> What was obvious from the liner notes was the power play that was going on - Doug Yule listed FIRST in the credits playing every instrument under the sun, Lou credited only with rhythm guitar and vocals, songwriting credits split four ways (Lou later sued and won them back). At the end of the Max's residency, Lou quit to go back to his parents' house on Long Island, Doug attempted to keep the band going with, uh, Willy Alexander ("Squeeze": shame, shame!), "Loaded" was released to well-deserved critical plaudits and massive consumer indifference, and the Velvets shuffled off into the mists of legend. Who woulda guessed back then that 30 years down the road, they'd be one of the most influential bands of all time (along with, uh, Black Sabbath and the Ramones)???</div> <bR> <div> I'm 44 years old now. The music I love the most (that I've been writing about the past coupla</div> <div> years) is mostly around 30 years old. When I was first discovering this music, I never would</div> <div> have expected to still be listening to it half a lifetime later. I don't feel compelled to try and keep up with what's new and cool anymore (OLD PERSON BEHAVIOR), although I have lots of</div> <div> generous friends who keep me in the loop with lots of newer stuff, some that I even like. Still,</div> <div> I've never found any other musical thrill that matches the one I still get listening to the good</div> <div> old stuff like the Velvets, the Stooges, Beefheart. Later this month, when "The Quine Tapes" is</div> <div> released, I'll have more. Lucky me!</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="26a79360.gif" border=0 width="121" height="310" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <I>In a Silent Way </I>Reconsidered</div> <div>  <A NAME="silent"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <div>      Surfing Half.com the other day, I saw a notice that Columbia Legacy will be favoring us, the end of October, with Miles Davis' "Complete In a Silent Way Sessions." Just what I need...another expensive box set I can't afford but donwanna live without (the other one o' the moment: Polygram's triple-disc Velvet Underground "Quine Tapes" from '69 - thanks for the tip, Rev! - the release of which has been rumored since I interviewed Mo Tucker and the guy who bootlegged the Dallas End of Cole show back in, uh, was it '98, for an article that was never published). Johnny Bargas told me a coupla yrs ago that Columbia was gonna release said box, but then they dumped the "Complete Bitches Brew Sessions" on us instead, which was an easy pass for me, lacking as that particular opus does the qualities of restraint and lyricism that make "In a Silent Way" one of my all-time faves - just a notch, in fact, behind the Stooges' "Funhouse."</div> <bR> <div>      Miles was one multifaceted mo-fo, and everyone with ears has their own favorite period. For me, "Kind of Blue" and Cannonball Adderley's "Something Else" notwithstanding, it'd prolly have to be the classic sixties quintet that featured Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams. This was the unit that took improvisational chops to rival the fifties</div> <div> Coltrane/Garland/Chambers/Jones unit and upped the ante with world-beating compositional skills. Miles seemingly recognized this, too, when he cut "Nefertiti," instructing his charges (who were justifiably renowned for taking his classic repertoire and deconstructing it at whirlwind speed in live performance - see the live-at-the-Plugged-Nickel set for a taste) NOT to solo for a whole tune. This had far-reaching implications; just dig the fact that the bands Hancock and</div> <div> Shorter led post-flying Miles' coop (the Mwandishi sextet, Headhunters, and Weather Report) were primarily COMPOSITIONAL showcases (and had lotsa jazzcrits bemoaning Shorter's failure to realize his early hype and become THE NEXT COLTRANE). The exception was the ever-irrepressable Tony Williams, as close to a force of nature as any drummer who ever lived, who went on to blaze new trails into the realm of jazz-rockdom with John McLaughlin in Lifetime (again, Miles seemingly recognized this and gave Tony full rein on "Nefertiti"'s successor, "Filles de Kilimanjaro").</div> <bR> <div>      Indeed, anyone who picks up "In a Silent Way" expecting a precursor of the EXCITING FUSION JAZZ that its all-star lineup might indicate (besides Hancock, Shorter, Carter, Williams, and McLaughlin, you get Chick Corea, Dave Holland, and Shorter's future Weather Report-mate Josef Zawinul, fresh from writing "Mercy Mercy Mercy" for Cannonball Adderley) is bound to be disappointed, 'cos this is one jazz rec where CHOPS definitely take a backseat to CONCEPT...why, Tony's heard on cymbals exclusively until the last coupla minutes of "It's About That Time!" The problem with Great Musos is they tend to wanna let people how well they can play, which oftentimes is irrelevant to making Great Music. Miles, of course, understood this from jump street -  told Coltrane Himself to try taking the saxophone out of his mouth when he complained about not being able to solo shorter than 40 minutes in a 45-minute set - and the result is a truly transcendent set of music.</div> <bR> <div>      The album consists of what are basically two long pieces, which range from mysterioso</div> <div> ("Shh/Peaceful") to lyrical ("In a Silent Way") and funky ("It's About That Time"). In terms of</div> <div> a sustained mood, it can't be beat (which is why, early in my marriage, I used to think of this</div> <div> alb as "Miles Davis Presents Music for Fucking;" who needs JOHNNY MATHIS, anyway?). When I went to Korea in '82, one of the cassettes I took with me had this album on one side and Trane's "A Love Supreme" on the other; the perfect antidote to spiritual desperation.</div> <bR> <div>      The only aspect of the box that makes me a little wary is the knowledge that Miles and producer Teo Macero pieced together "In a Silent Way" (and most of the recorded output that followed it) in much the same way a rock record's assembled: roll tape and then cut-and-paste together the best bits. What's seductive at 38 minutes in length COULD prove to be boring when extended to 240. I'm not too worried about it, though (of course, I'm one of the sick, twisted individuals who bought the Stooges' Rhino "Funhouse" box so I could revel in thirty different versions of "TV Eye"); as the guy I worked for in the record store back in high school usedta say, "It's impossible to O.D. on goodness."</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B><IMG SRC="22eaaaa0.jpg" border=0 width="170" height="170" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div>  <A NAME="guy"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <div> <B>BUDDY GUY: "SWEET TEA" AND ANATOMY OF A GUITAR HERO</B></div> <bR> <div>      As archaic as the idea of the Guitar Hero might seem in this day and age, I gotta admit that I still have one, and it's Buddy Guy. </div> <div>      I was reminded of this last night in the Borders where I used to moonlight when a friend of mine who still works there played me Buddy's new "Sweet Tea" (Jive). An incredibly radical departure from his slick, rocked-up nineties work for Silvertone, "Sweet Tea" was recorded at the studio of the same name in Oxford, Mississippi, where much of the Fat Possum Records catalog was recorded. Indeed, with the exception of Lowell Fulson's "Tramp," the entire album consists of covers of songs by Fat Possum artists. Incredibly raw and spacey, it's an unprecedented move for a blues artist of Buddy's stature - rather than aiming for the rock mainstream and enlisting battalions of guest artists (duet with Matchbox 20, anyone?), regardless of their compatibility with the featured artist's particular Thang, Buddy (or whoever's idea this was) has pointed his sights directly at the ditch, or more specifically, the punk-blues audience that's embraced R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, T-Model Ford, and the rest of the Fat Possum stable, not to mention like-minded folks from the other side of the fence like the White Stripes, the Soledad Brothers, and the Immortal Lee County Killers. Buddy Guy, the Neil Young of blues? Stranger things have happened.</div> <div>      While I can't begrudge Buddy his latter-day success, I can't really get behind most of his recent work, either (absolute nadir: the live album on which Buddy's backed by, uh, G.E. Smith and the Saturday Night Live Band)...there's too much there that denies his essential strengths, starting with the fat, distorted tone he's lately adopted as a sop to the Stevie Ray crowd. Right about now, I guess I need to say that I think Stevie Vaughan was a wonderful guitar player, with an encyclopedic knowledge of blues licks and styles. It's just that I don't feel that it's necessary to use all that artillery every time out the gate.What you DON'T play, as Miles Davis reminds us, is as important as what you DO - sometimes more. It's no accident that a lot of the young blues players who've followed in Stevie's wake are ex-metal fans, shredheads who've just discovered a different set of scales. Feh.</div> <div>      For me, the real Buddy Guy sound is the one he used on his classic Chess and Vanguard sides (for from the sixties (for the former, see "Buddy's Blues" from the Chess Records 50th Anniversary series on MCA; for the latter, try "A Man and the Blues," which bears the great "One Room Country Shack" as well as "Mary Had a Little Lamb," later covered by SRV), or on Junior Wells' groundbreaking "Hoodoo Man Blues" on Delmark - the spare, thin sound of a Fender Stratocaster run straight through a Fender amp, the absolute antithesis of the oversaturated Les Paul/Marshall sound that Eric Clapton introduced on John Mayall's "Bluesbreakers" album (ironically HIS finest moment, guitar-wise). Buddy varies his tone settings, employing a throatyneck pickup sound on "Pretty Baby" (later covered, minus the SWING, by the five live Yardbirds), on which Buddy lays the groundwork for Clapton's earthshaking "I Ain't Got You" solo, and "Stone Crazy" (wherein Buddy prefigures the nasal tone Peter Green, the greatest of the Brit bluesmen, would wrest from his Les Paul in his classic Mayall/early Fleetwood Mac period), utilizing crystalline "in-between-pickup" sounds elsewhere. (Of course, Buddy claims that Leonard Chess never let him turn up as loud in the studio as he wanted to, but I'll let his masterwork on those Chess sides speak for itself.)</div> <div>      Like all the best blues guitarists, the most important part of Buddy's sound is the one he gets with his HANDS, not his pickups or amp. (To hear it in its purest form, check out Muddy Waters' "Folk Singer" album from '63, wherein Muddy, Willie Dixon, and Buddy play acoustic instruments in a quiet, late-night tour de force.) His phrasing, alternately laconic and staccato, mirrors the rhythms of human speech in the same way that his early model Eddie "Guitar Slim" Jones' did. There's a palpable nervous energy in his best solos which Jeff Beck effectively mimicked in "Blues Deluxe" on "Truth," a song which also owes a lot lyrically to several of Buddy's Chess sides. Quick flurries of notes, octaves, double- and triple-stops are just a few of the techniques Buddy uses to great effect. The Buddy strain shows up in Hendrix' work, too, in places as disparate as the studio jams on "Electric Ladyland" or the version of "Bleeding Heart" from the Royal Albert Hall, 1969. Buddy's note choices are similarly idiosyncratic - no straight-up-and-down player, this one.</div> <div>      At this point I'd like to dispute the claim Mike Bloomfield once made in the pages of "Guitar Player" that Albert King was the only sixties blues guitarist making "contemporary" sounding records. Not to disparage the Memphis groove that producer Steve Cropper brought to Albert's historic Atlantic and Stax sides, but much the same kind of thing was happening on a lot of Buddy's late-sixties output. The hip horns and Hammond organ on "My Time After a While," "Keep It To Myself," "Got To Use Your Head," "She Suits Me To a Tee," and "When My Left Eye Jumps" give those sides a taut, tough, urban sound that's still happening today. </div> <div>      Oh, yeah, and last but certainly not least, Buddy's a powerful, emotive singer, too - as all the great blues guitarists are. </div> <div>      Buddy comes through Fort Worth about once a year, playing at Caravan of Dreams, the city's best venue - a 500-seater with IMMACULATE sound. Last time, it was sixty bucks a head. As loathe as I am to part with money for ANY reason, next time Buddy makes it through, I may have to force myself to throw it down and see the show. I have a feeling it'll be worth it.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>READIN' BETWEEN THE LINES - Asteroid B612 (Full Toss)</B></div> <div>  <A NAME="asteroid"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <div>          In case you haven't noticed, Great Rock Albums have kinda gone outta fashion. The best you can hope for, ops normal, is a nice bracing explosion of noise like Thee Michelle Gun Elephant's "Gear Blues" to shake up yr synapses, or either of the Bellrays' platters, which presented a bunch of great parts in search of a synergy...I gave 'em the I-94 Bar's highest rating, Five Rolling Rocks, more on the basis of what they PROMISED than what they actually DELIVERED.</div> <div>      How strange, then, that so many Great Albums have arrived from Australian bands over the past few months...I'm thinking of Spencer P. Jones' "The Last Gasp," the Celibate Rifles' "A Mid-Stream of Consciousness," and now Asteroid B612's "Readin' Between the Lines." These are records of surprising DEPTH as well as POWER, and they serve as convincing reminders that "subtlety" and "rock'n'roll" are NOT mutually exclusive.</div> <div>      This is particularly surprising in the case of the Asteroids, whom a lotta people in the know will tell you were THE GREATEST AUSTRALIAN ROCK'N'ROLL BAND OF THE NINETIES...quite an accolade, considering that bands of the caliber of the Rifles, Brother Brick, and ex-Radio Birdman frontman Rob Younger's New Christs have been active throughout the decade. The fire and fury from the dual/dueling guitars of John Spittles and Stewart "Leadfinger" Cunningham was matched by the intensity of Grant "Bullet" McIver, a singer of such ball-tearing intensity that (legend has it) he once screamed so hard onstage (the better to be heard over the wall of guitar blast) that he actually ruptured himself. Leadfinger left the band acrimoniously during a tour of the United States in 1996, leaving founder Spittles to handle all the guitar and songwriting duties, while back in Oz, Bullet was replaced behind the mic by John's brother Graham, a vocalist of wider expressive range. Behind the brothers, Scott Nash (bass) and Ben Fox (drums) continue to stoke the fire in the Asteroid engine room, a fine example of the kinda downright SWINGING riddim sections you only find in Oz. Trust me, these guys tear it up real good.</div> <div>      Back in '98, while back in the States studying tattooing with Philly legend "The Cosmic Commander of Wrestling," John Spittles cut a CD-EP, "Twice As Good As You," on Philadelphia's Kadillac label under the moniker Johnny Casino's Easy Action. It's a monstrous slab of totally over-the-top, guitar-driven rock, heavy on the covers (Flamin' Groovies, Ray Charles [!], Stooges), and probably the Asteroid leader's toughest appearance on disc. Until now. (Word is that there's enough material in the can from that visit for a second Easy Action album, and more recently the band has been performing and recording with ex-Charlatans/ Loose Gravel/Flamin' Groovies legend Mike Wilhelm, so the Easy Action book is hardly closed.)</div> <div>      But I digress. On to "Reading Between the Lines"...'cos the real facts is in the tracks.</div> <div>      The opening "On Your Way Down" is an Allen Toussaint cover performed in an arrangement swiped from Louis Tillett, the prodigiously talented king of pensive Aussie depresso-rock. The operative term here is "slow burn;" not since the New Christs' 1988 magnum opus "Distemper" has rock crackled with such menace, and like that watershed album, "Reading Between the Lines" is filled with intensely personal songs about a failed relationship. The band segues straight into "Am I the Problem," a Spittles original (as are the remainder of the toons here) with a riff that evokes the Stooges, but in a more precisely harnessed and controlled way than Asteroid's previous forays into this territory. </div> <div>      Originally released in 1997, the single "September Crush" is the kind of storming</div> <div> Berry-via-Stones rocker that Asteroid seems to favor more than other Oz bands. "Get the Picture" isn't the Pretty Things song of the same name, but IS a garage pounder in a similar vein, featuring guitar assistance from producer and Celibate Rifles mainstay Kent Steedman. "Still Waiting" is a stunning surprise, a slow, dare I say gentle number, like something off the third Velvet Underground album (right down to the Doug Yule-like organ washes). Speaking of the Velvets, "The Song Didn't Get the Girl" utilizes the "Sweet Jane" riff more effectively than it's been since, oh, I dunno, say "Be My Lover" on Alice Cooper's "Killer" (and that's a L-O-N-G time). The guitar damage on "Let It Slide" has to be heard to be believed and could have gone on a lot longer, but this is an album of SONGS, not JAMS, so the guitar fanatics will have to dig it for what it is. The rest of the album is equally cosmic, but I'm gonna let you find out for yourself. My personal pick to click is the tunefully rockin' "I Just Don't Know 'Bout Girls" (a sentiment with which all the fellas can certainly empathize), but honestly, they're all sensational. </div> <div>      Short version: BUY THIS RECORD. (And keep an eye peeled for the upcoming full length by ex-Hoodoo Guru Brad Shepherd's Monarchs, which folks in the know say will make it FOUR great albums outta Oz in the last year.) If you absolutely can't wait for the American release on Real O Mind in August, you can cop "Reading Between the Lines" now from Head Miles Records in Sydney (www.headmiles.com.au). They have several Asteroid titles available, as well as the Easy Action release. (Oh, and by the way, the five Mike Wilhelm/Easy Action tracks will be out soon as "5 Aces" on Kadillac.)</div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="28daaaa0.jpg" border=0 width="170" height="170" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>WEASELS RIPPED MY FLESH</B></div> <div>  <A NAME="zappa"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>Frank Zappa: genius or asshole? YOU decide!!!</B></div> <bR> <div> When it comes to rock'n'roll peepuls, more cerebral is NEVER better. (If you don't believe me, just ask Robert Fripp.) At least, that's how the conventional wisdom would have it. That said, conventional wisdom can be as full of shit as any other kind, so let's examine this further.</div> <div> (Wasn't it Thomas Wolfe who said "The unexamined life is not worth living?" Or was it some Greek guy?) </div> <bR> <div> Francis Vincent Zappa, who left the planet December 4, 1993, aged 52, after a battle with</div> <div> prostate cancer, was in all things His Own Guy. His great innovation (or sin, depending on your</div> <div> point of view) was to introduce elements of modern classical music and jazz into the rock'n'roll</div> <div> stew, along with social commentary, satire, and a singularly idiosyncratic world view. He just</div> <div> happened to genuinely dig Edgard Varese and Igor Stravinsky as well as the Penguins, Johnny</div> <div> "Guitar Watson and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, and he wanted to hear them all in the same space. In the eyes of Lester Bangs, he was an avant-garde wannabe, unlike his high school chum and sometime collaborator Captain Beefheart, who Lester averred was The Real Thing...but then again, Lester always WAS a purist. A schooled musician (he even used SCORES, for chrissakes!), FZ was probably the only person from WITHIN the rock'n'roll community (Richard Goldstein doesn't count) to throw the bullshit flag on the Summer of Love WHILE IT WAS GOING ON. He had a fleeting moment of commercial success mid-seventies with the albums "Overnite Sensation" and "Apostrophe," then by the end of the decade, his albums started to descend into puerile self-indulgence. That said, his finest hour might have been his testimony before the Senate in 1985 in opposition to the censorship of recorded music. He kept touring with progressively more accomplished rock bands until 1988, when the frustrations of dealing with first drug-addled, later egotistical and careerist musos finally wore him down. He was similarly disenchanted with the classical music world's pettiness, politics, and greed after several collaborations with orchestras. At the end of the eighties, he withdrew to his basement studio to compose on the Synclavier, a new piece of hardware that gave him access to the tonal palette of an orchestra without the inconvenience of having to deal with musicians. His very last works (the orchestral "The Yellow Shark" and the double-disc Synclavier creation "Civilization Phaze III") had an unexpected spiritual completeness, depth and poignancy. He remains a genre unto himself.</div> <bR> <div> I first encountered Frank Zappa in the pages of Life magazine, in their 1968 issue which dealt</div> <div> with "the new rock" (which they defined as a buncha San Francisco hippie bands along with the Who, Jimi Hendrix, and Zappa's Mothers of Invention), for which he wrote a history/ appreciation of rock which ran under the title "The Oracle Has It All Psyched Out." "What a fuckin' ugly band," my 11-year-old self thought. These Mothers were a far cry from the groovy Beatles, not to mention, uh, the 1910 Fruitgum Company or the Ohio Express that I was then digging. A year or so later, I actually got to hear some of their music, on a compilation album from the MGM "Golden Archives Series" (the Velvet Underground volume of which Ellen Willis immortalized in her contribution to Greil Marcus' "Stranded" anthology). My then-best friend (creep) and I quickly memorized scads of their lyrics, which we found hilarious, not understanding the deep socio-political subtexts of songs like "Call Any Vegetable," "Flower Punk," and "Concentration Moon." We WERE 12-year-old boys, after all. (We were also deep into the Firesign Theater - anybody remember THEM?)</div> <bR> <div> Later, while nominally attending the State University of New York at Albany, I'd get an</div> <div> extensive education in the Zappa oeuvre from both the listener and player perspectives, courtesy of an acid-eating Canadian Zappaphile and an alcoholic bassplayer/track star from Long Island. (Both of them remain friends to this day.) While at Albany (where "Overnite Sensation" was all the rage, along with Herbie Hancock's "Chameleon," the Average White Band's "Pick Up the Pieces," and, uh, Billy Joel's "Piano Man,"HAHAHAHAHAHA HAHAHA!), I saw Frank performing live with Beefheart on the "Bongo Fury" tour. After I dropped out, I'd become a regular attendee at his New York City Halloween extravaganzas, first at the Academy of Music at 3rd Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan, then further uptown at the Felt Forum of Madison Square Garden. (Besides Jeff Beck, FZ was the only guitarist who literally made the hair on my neck stand up, at least until I saw Derek Trucks with the Allman Brothers a coupla yrs back.) My enthusiasm for Frank only cooled around '77 when, having witnessed the Beefheart band perform two awesome and almost completely different shows within a coupla days of each other at My Father's Place in the village of Old Roslyn on Long Island (I still remember the joke about "What do Jimmy Carter and the Long Island Railroad have in common?" "They both pull out of Roslyn [Rosalyn] at 7 AM.") and</div> <div> the Bottom Line in Lower Manhattan, I drove all the way up to Hartford, Connecticut (pedal to the metal all the way) only to witness FZ's band perform a show almost identical to the one I'd witnessed at the Felt Forum days before. Adding insult to injury, security confiscated my fifth of vodka from the girl's purse where it was hidden, forcing me to endure the experience sober, so I was pleased to hear that the roof of the civic center fell in during an ice storm a few</div> <div> months later.</div> <bR> <div> Zappa's first series of albums ("Freak Out!," "Absolutely Free," "We're Only In It for the</div> <div> Money") haven't aged very well. The playing seems stiff and clunky; Ray Collins' vocals are</div> <div> smarmy, while Zappa's are nasally annoying (his voice dropped a full octave after he was</div> <div> attacked and knocked into the orchestra pit at London's Royal Albert Hall by a mentally</div> <div> disturbed fan in '71); and the social commentary seems dated (although the first album's</div> <div> "Trouble Coming Every Day" from '65 seemed very current at the time of the L.A. riots in '91).</div> <div> "We're Only In It for the Money," with its "Sgt. Pepper" piss-take cover, seems as antique as</div> <div> the psychedelia it was meant to parody - it's no longer front-page news the "Flower Power</div> <div> sucks." The records that really stand up for me are the ones that were released as the Mothers</div> <div> of Invention were disintegrating, '68-'70: "Uncle Meat," "Burnt Weenie Sandwich," "Hot Rats,"</div> <div> "Weasels Ripped My Flesh." (Add "Lumpy Gravy," a combination of orchestral performances with musique concrete and spoken weirdness from '67 and subtract "Cruising with Ruben and the Jets," Zappa's '68 homage to the fifties doo-wop music he grew up with.) These records are mainly focused on instrumental music and were assembled from various live and studio performances in the same way that later compilations like '97's great "The Lost Episodes" and the multi-volume "You Can't Do That Onstage Anymore" series would be.</div> <bR> <div> Of these four, the conventional-wisdom "best" is "Hot Rats." Lester Bangs dug it. So did the</div> <div> collective rockcrits of Britain (who didn't know what to think of the rest of FZ's oeuvre, even</div> <div> as they embraced Beefheart). As Ben Watson pointed out in his "Frank Zappa: The Negative</div> <div> Dialectics of Poodle Play" (FZ has inspired more wack scholarship than any rock artist this side of Dylan, and Watson's Marxist analysis of Frank's life and work is as arcane as any Greil</div> <div> Marcus tome, but still contains some interesting insights and is worth picking up if you can</div> <div> find it in remainderama, as is FZ's own ghostwritten autobiography, "The Real Frank Zappa</div> <div> Book"), "Hot Rats" was essentially a duet album with Ian Underwood, the classically trained</div> <div> pianist and alto saxophonist who insinuated himself into the Mothers after seeing them perform</div> <div> during their legendary residency at the Garrick Theater on New York's Lower East Side, 1967. The album juxtaposes some scintillating (and cryptically titled) jazz-inflected pieces ("Peaches En Regalia," "Little Umbrellas," "It Must Be A Camel") with some fairly conventional rock jamming (the Beefheart-sung "Willie the Pimp;" "Son of Mister Green Genes," "The Gumbo Variations"). The CD version reveals loads of sonic detail that was missing from the original LP, while restoring some material Zappa originally excised from Ian Underwood's sax solo on "Gumbo Variations," revealing how little he had to say on the instrument (as rock saxophonists go, I'd rather hear Steve Mackay). Pity, that; the transition between Underwood's ride and Sugarcane Harris' violin solo was one of the high points of the vinyl version. (Sugarcane, formerly Don of Don and Dewey, was one of Zappa's R&B idols whom he rescued from jail for the "Hot Rats" sessions. His creaking, sawing, jazz-inflected blues violin was also an important component of "The Little House I Used to Live In" on "Burnt Weenie Sandwich" and the cover of Little Richard's "Directly from My Heart to You" on "Weasels." Also, if you ever get a chance, hear the ca. '70 Epic album by Pure Food and Drug Act, a band that featured Sugarcane side-by-side with shit-hot blues guitarist Harvey Mandel of Charlie Musselwhite/Canned Heat/John Mayall fame.)</div> <bR> <div> My pick for the best of the four (and maybe even FZ's best ever) is "Weasels," which is also the first "real" Zappa album I ever owned. What seemed jarring and "weird" when I was 14 now seems like heartbeat, and I realize now that while Creem magazine might have given me a push, this record is really what prepared me to hear Coltrane's "Ascension," Ornette, Stravinsky, and lots more. It's a CONCISE summation of all the things Frank did well (in the same way that "Uncle Meat" and "You Can't Do That Onstage Anymore" are SPRAWLING summations - the former even more so in its CD incarnation, which adds an additional disc of pointless dialogue from the unreleased film of the same name to its original double-LP length).</div> <bR> <div> Side one of the LP starts out with "Didja Get Any Onya?," a blast of "Ascension"-like free jazz</div> <div> which breaks down into some vocal nonsense (including a Nazi impersonation) by future Little</div> <div> Feat frontguy Lowell George, giving way to Stravinsky-esque instrumental interludes that sound like phantom memories or echoes of dreams (including a bit that later resurfaced as part of "The Blimp" on Captain Beefheart's magnum opus, "Trout Mask Replica"). The CD version extends the last section a bit, to good effect (although it again ruins the transition between the</div> <div> classicisms and Sugarcane's violin on "Directly from My Heart to You"). "Prelude to the</div> <div> Afternoon of a Sexually Aroused Gas Mask" (with a title that alludes to Debussy) juxtaposes</div> <div> Ornettitude with bassist Roy Estrada's "crying Mexican Pope" routine, later documented on</div> <div> celluloid in the "Baby Snakes" film, and roadie/saxophonist Motorhead Sherwood's snorks. Much of the music on this album which sounds like randomness or chaos is in fact the work of a well-rehearsed band, cued by the leader's hand signals. A control freak Frank might have been, but a control freak who appreciated spontaneity and the unique personalities ("auras") of his musos, and had a sensahumour to boot. "Toads of the Short Forest" starts out with one of Zappa's most beguiling melodies, then shifts to a section where various bandmembers play different time signatures while a saxophonist "blows his nose." Then Frank takes out the papers and the trash with "Get a Little," a snippet of live recorded gtr damage (he was just finding his feet as a soloist as the Mothers were coming apart; for the full magnificence, hear the double-disc, solos-only "Guitar).</div> <bR> <div> Side two gets down to business with "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue," one of FZ's finest-ever compositions and an homage to the innovative multi-reedman (who combined a mastery of bebop with an "out" avant-garde sensibility and played at different times with Mingus, Ornette, and Trane)'s "Out to Lunch" album. One of Zappa's most astute hiring decisions toward the end of the Mothers' trajectory was to augment "Indian of the group" Jimmy Carl Black's effective but R&B-rudimentary drums with those of Arthur Dyer Tripp, III, an erstwhile symphony percussionist who could handle vibraphone and marimbas as well as traps and who features heavily on "The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue" (and would later serve time in Captain Beefheart's band, as would Estrada, Black, and "Freak Out!" rhythm guitarist Elliot Ingber at different times and under different noms de disques). "Dwarf Nebula Processional March and Dwarf Nebula" starts out with a theme which was actually used in a television commercial (for Firestone Tires, if my shakey memory serves), giving way to more of the musique concrete (French for jarring tape-loop jive) that FZ started to employ heavily with "We're Only In It for the Money." The accessible bits come next: the relatively straight-ahead (except for the instrumental break in the middle) rock of "My Guitar Wants to Kill Your Mama;" "Oh No," a key theme from "Lumpy Gravy" with jaded anti-Flower Power lyrics sung by Ray Collins; and the two-chord jam "The Orange County Lumber Truck." The latter two were revived by the shit-hot early seventies band that cut "Roxy and Elsewhere" (my personal choice for FZ's best after "Weasels"), on which they appeared as "Son of Orange County."</div> <bR> <div> The title track of "Weasels" consists of two minutes of excruciating feedback noise - worse even than the Stooges' "L.A. Blues" from "Funhouse." Over the years, I've trained myself to leap out of my chair and lift the tone arm (or hit the STOP button) before I have to endure it (in the same way as I used to fall out of bed and crawl across the floor to turn off the radio anytime I heard the deejay announcing Bloodrock's "D.O.A." while I was bedridden with a respiratory ailment during the winter of '70). Proof positive (as if anymore were needed) that nothing is perfect...but FZ's "Weasels" comes about as close as we have the right to ask of any rekkid. Dig it.</div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="1c72cce0.jpg" border=0 width="300" height="462" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>Shaping Beauty from Shards of White Noise:</B></div> <div> <B>The late great Sonny Sharrock</B></div> <div> <B>(photo by Domicil Dortmund)</B></div> <div>  <A NAME="sharrock_1"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>SONNY SHARROCK: ASK THE AGES</B></div> <bR> <div>  I got back from SXSW this year (pure bliss, in spite of having my car towed away -- got to see Ron Asheton playing Stooges songs with Mike Watt and J. Mascis, not once but twice) and had my annual fight with my girlfriend, only this time it was worse, much worse...breaking-up worse. Three weeks of soul-wrenching grief, after which we were both exhausted and quit fighting...for awhile. Then I went to see Watt and Mascis again in Dallas last weekend, got home to find five messages from her on my machine, stupidly called her at 3 AM but when I sensed the fight starting, I hung up and disconnected the phone. She called me up the other night and chewed me out for "not putting enough effort into the relationship," and after we talked tonight, it's looking pretty terminal. Plus any day now my oldest daughter will give birth to her daughter...my first grandchild. But enough about me.</div> <bR> <div>  Since SXSW, I've found that I donwanna listen to any more music that doesn't hit me as hard as "Funhouse" did the first time I heard it. (You'll never recreate that first fuck, but you'll never stop trying.) I'm tired of hearing bands that have one dynamic level, and nothing to say.Besides being a soulful, humble, and grateful cat, Mike Watt's also a pretty astute observer (read in tour diaries on www.hootpage.com to get a taste). As he told Kung Fu Nation (kungfunation.com), "Punk rock is an old art form. We've got to keep changing it or we'll become just another army." He and Mascis are that rare thing..."punk rock" guys that "can really play," proving once and for all that punk aesthetics and expression through craft are not mutually exclusive. It's like the International Society for *Good Music sez in their manifesto...if you say "punk" when you mean doing things your own way, from the heart, then Beethoven was "punk" - he made his Romantic music for himself, not for God like the Dead White Male composers that came before him. It's the spirit of the law that counts here, not the letter.</div> <bR> <div>  So for the last month I haven't wanted to write about anything, and I'll only listen to certain records, ones that meet that criterion in my estimation. Lately, that'd be Mascis' new "More Light," Watt's "Ball-hog or Tugboat?" (an eclectic stew which features a scorching take of Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain" by Watt, Mascis, and Bernie Worrell), the Rhino Handmade Stooges "Funhouse" box (excessive, sure, but I'm an obsessive - I WANNA hear 30 takes of "I'm Loose"), the Bomp Iggy & the Stooges "Year of the Iguana" comp (the final solution to the plethora of late-period quasi-official Stooges releases out there; if it included "Sick of You," it'd be perfect)...and Sonny Sharrock's "Ask the Ages."</div> <bR> <div>  Released on producer Bill Laswell's Axiom label in 1991, "Ask the Ages" is an all-time top 10 rec for this writer. Put it right up there with "Funhouse," "Trout Mask Replica," "Live at Leeds," "Truth," "Astral Weeks," "A Love Supreme," "What's Going On." Sure, it's a wired, electric freeblow jazz extravaganza, but it also inhabits the same spiritual space as "Astral Weeks," Van Morrison's swirling mystical-incantation-with-acoustic-jazz-backing. When I was playing in bands and things were really clicking, anytime I played a guitar solo, no matter where I was, outdoors or under bright lights, I'd feel like I was in a small, dimly lit space, not claustrophobic, but safe and warm. It's hard to explain, but this album feels like that to me. It's heart-healing music.</div> <bR> <div>  Before his passing, too early (aged 53) in 1994, Sonny Sharrock made quite a name for himself as the first guitarist to assimilate the influence of the school of free players who followed in the wake of John Coltrane's masterwork. After spending the years from 1959 to 1964 (in a series of albums starting with "Giant Steps" and ending with "A Love Supreme" and "Crescent") building on the modal style of playing Miles Davis introduced on "Kind of Blue" (the epochal date that introduced a style of playing based on scales, not the chord changes to pop songs like "I Got Rhythm" which jazz cats up through Charlie Parker and his disciples used as the springboard for their explorations), Coltrane started investigating the expressive possibilities of "free" playing, introducing elements of atonality and the kind of honks and screams that he'd forced from his horn early in his career as an R&B player, but eschewed like other increasingly artistic-minded jazz cats in the fifties. Featuring his regular quartet augmented by a half-dozen young firebrands like Pharaoh Sanders and Archie Shepp, Coltrane's 1965 album "Ascension" is one of the most intense listening experiences available anywhere, while its successor, 1966's "Meditations," is the auditory equivalent of watching a volcano erupt. Sure, Wes Montgomery played some in Coltrane's modal style, even gigged a bit with Trane's band when Eric Dolphy was also in the lineup (now THAT woulda been a band to see!), but Wes didn't begin to incorporate the freeblowers' sonic innovations in the way that Sonny did. </div> <bR> <div>  Sharrock first came to prominence playing on Pharaoh Sanders' 1967 Impulse album "Tauhid," which bore the track "Upper Egypt" that the MC5 covered in their live show and the Stooges used as thebasis for "Little Doll" from their first album. Around the same time, he was also a member of the more commercial aggregation led by flutist Herbie Mann, appearing on Mann's successful "Push Push" and "Memphis Underground" albums (both on Atlantic). Sonny's first album as a leader, 1969's "Black Woman" on Vortex, featured his wife Linda's wordless vocalisms. I remember first encountering his work on Don Cherry's "Eternal Rhythm," a live performance with a mostly-European group recorded in Germany, 1968, and released on BASF in 1971. On that album's track "Sonny Sharrock," Sonny took slide guitar to places Robert Johnson probably never dreamed of, using it to produce wildly atonal glisses. He also performed uncredited on Miles Davis' "Jack Johnson" album, providing some eerie feedback washes. During the eighties, he resurfaced with a series of albums on Enemy, including "Guitar," "Seize the Rainbow," "Live in New York," and "High Life." You can hear his influence in Wayne Kramer's nineties stuff, as well as Tony Fate's incredible work with the Bellrays (even though Sonny doesn't have the killer vibrato that those Rawk guys do).</div> <bR> <div>  For "Ask the Ages," producer Laswell assembled a stellar cast of freeblow titans: drummer Elvin Jones, whose polyrhythmic pulse served as the sympathetic springboard for some of Coltrane's most brilliant flights (check out "Live at the Village Vanguard" or "Impressions" for examples); tenor saxophonist Pharaoh Sanders, who pushed his sound into the sky next to Trane's during the Master's most exploratory phase and was a key element of the sonic stew on albums like "Ascension," "Meditations," and "Live in Seattle;" and young bassist Charnett Moffett, son of Ornette's one-time drummer Charles Moffett, whom I once saw blow the roof off the Recovery Room in Dallas with his brothers on tenor and traps when none of them were old enough to vote.</div> <bR> <div>  Like a lot of Miles' seventies stuff, "Ask the Ages" is a jazz record that's produced like a rock record. Sonny overdubs some parts (he'd started using this technique on his solo "Guitar" album), and gets a dark, warm tone using a Les Paul. The tunes are generally long, a couple of them over nine minutes, with plenty of room for Sharrock and Sanders to stretch out. "Promises Kept" starts things off with a snaky theme featuring overdubbed harmony parts (one of 'em sounding like it's going through a Leslie speaker). Sanders takes the first solo, playing a little straighter (more tonally) than he did in the sixties, almost using Trane's voice before</div> <div> taking off into his familiar stratospheric turf. Sharrock comes in playing blistering flurries of notes, then follows them with some more melodic statements. Charnett Moffett earns his place amid this confluence of elders, while Elvin Jones, as always, plays like a whirlwind.</div> <bR> <div>  Manthon from The Rawk says "Who Does She Hope To Be?" is the most beautiful song ever written, and I wouldn't disagree with him. Also one of the saddest, but that can be uplifting too, in the same way as Ornette's blues phrases often are. This one works on me in the same way as Miles' "In a Silent Way," Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti," and some of Captain Beefheart's lyrical miniatures like "One Red Rose That I Mean" or "A Carrot Is As Close As a Rabbit Gets To a Diamond." "Little Rock" is - surprise! - a hard bop tune. It swings nicely, and Sonny builds his solo from simplicity to intensity before stepping back to make way for Pharaoh, who does his most straight-ahead blowing here. The tune fades out on Charnett's bass solo, respect to brother Paul Chambers (AKA "Mr. P.C.").</div> <bR> <div>  "As We Used To Sing" features a mysterioso theme and some of Sonny's most incandescent playing, ranging from flurries of notes and simple octaves to clotted chord clusters and wild glisses. Pharaoh, on soprano here, takes a relatively subdued ride, then lets the rhythm section take it for a few measures before the head glides back in almost imperceptibly. The dirge "Many Mansions" is the album's tour de force. Pharaoh solos first, again on soprano, then Sonny, wringing great slabs of sound from his Les Paul, sounding like a more sustained and intense extension of blues guitarist Luther Tucker's "flutter picking" technique. "Once Upon a Time" sounds like a hymn, a lovely lyrical piece built around repetitions of a simple major-key theme, like something you might expect from Robert Fripp or Carlos Santana, except it's not as mechanistic as the former or as trite as the latter woulda played it.</div> <bR> <div>  The really sad part? Reverend Coomers tells me that just before his death, Sonny was set to ink a contract with RCA that might have brought him more widespread exposure and acclaim. Respect to Sonny Sharrock, a brother who did it his own way, with heart, and produced music of great passion, emotional intensity, lyricism and beauty.</div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="1a759f00.jpg" border=0 width="89" height="240" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>"It's a little village,</B></div> <div> <B>motherfucker"...</B></div> <div> <B>too little for this</B></div> <div> <B>many "bluesmen"!</B></div> <div>  <A NAME="blues"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>MY LIFE IN THE BLUES BUCKET </B></div> <bR> <div> A coupla years ago, I was playing guitar in a rocked-up country band in Weatherford, Texas. It was a desperation move, as I was awaiting trial for a drunk driving charge and I needed to join a band so I could have permission to travel out of county to play included in my conditions of probation. We were playing at a VFW hall somewhere, and this old redneck came up to me and asked, "How kin you play thet way if'n your not BLECK?" I told him that my mother was born on a plantation (true: McBride Sugar on the big island of Hawaii), I started out playing R&B when I was a teenager, and my life SUCKS. </div> <bR> <div>  I started listening to blues when I was about 13 as a direct result of reading the songwriting credits on my Yardbirds, Animals, Rolling Stones, and Cream albums. Some early faves: a John Lee Hooker album on Everest with "Crawling Kingsnake," "Hobo Blues," and "I'm in the Mood," those early sides he cut for Vee-Jay where it's just him playing guitar and patting his foot on a 2-by-4 that he brought into the studio expressly for that purpose; the classic (and oft-reissued) Chess sides by Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf (with Hubert Sumlin on guitar), and Little Walter; B.B. King's epochal "Live at the Regal" (which sounded a little showbizzy to me back then but now seems just like heartbeat, and I've heard tell that his "Live and Well" from around the same time is even better; gotta check it out); the first two Paul Butterfield records with Mike Bloomfield and Elvin Bishop; and perhaps best of all, Junior Well's classic "Hoodoo Man Blues" LP on Delmark (with Buddy Guy, originally credited as "Friendly Chap" due to contractual problems, providing sparse-but-perfect guitar ornamentation). Not only urban blues, but the rural variety as well: the masterwork of the elusive and mysterious Robert Johnson; the even more elemental sounds of Son House, rediscovered in the early sixties by the young aficionado Al Wilson and recorded by Columbia on his "Father of the Folk Blues" album (whose "Death Letter" Captain Beefheart later reworked into, uh, "Ah Feel Like Ahcid" on "Strictly Personal"); Sonny Boy Williamson II's electrified country blues that he cut for Trumpet before moving up to Chicago in the forties (collected on Arhoolie's "King Biscuit Time"). </div> <bR> <div>  Unfortunately, when I started playing in rock'n'roll bands, most of my Long Island cohort thought that blues meant Led Zeppelin, while the black people I knew all DETESTED blues ("slave music," they called it; much too down-home for these urban sophisticates, even those who were only a generation removed from the Southern agricultural economy). In the record store where I worked, black record buyers were into some bluesy sounds like those of Z.Z. Hill on the Malaco label out of Florida, or maybe McKinley Mitchell on Chimneyville (for those more recent arrivals from down South), but for the vast majority, first Northern soul, then, uh, disco was king. </div> <bR> <div>  Then I moved to Texas in '78, a week after my 21st birthday, and after a stab at laying pipe for $4.25 an hour (after my drummer from college had assured me that I'd be able to make "nine bucks an hour for raking rocks in the road"), I weaseled my way back into the rekkid biz, and was astonished to learn that EVERYBODY in Texas dug blues. Young or old, black or white, everyone seemed to dig Jimmy Reed and Bobby "Blue" Bland. You could even see the real shit live, in places like Robert Ealey's New Bluebird Night Club at the corner of Horne and Wellesley on the edge of Fort Worth's Como district, where Ealey used to collect money in a cigar box at the door and then hold forth with bands and musicians like the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Freddie Cisneros, and the Juke Jumpers (led by transplanted Ohioan Jim Colegrove, who once had a hit with "Tomahawk" as a member of Teddy & the Rough Riders, with Sumter Bruton, who ran Record Town on University Drive over by the Texas Christian University campus, on T-Bone Walker-esque guitar). Stirring times, they were. (Around the same time, I got my first taste of live jazz of the non-fusion, hard-bop variety watching Marchel Ivery's quartet at the Recovery Room in Dallas, where Miles Davis' fifties pianist Red Garland was an occasional guest.) </div> <bR> <div>  When I worked in a record store in Dallas (where I was the oldies singles buyer and cleaned out their stock of classic Chess 45s), I was surprised and delighted to discover that a cantankerous old Yank I was working with was none other than Living Blues scribe Tim (Mit) Schuller, who'd actually written the liner notes to a Robert Junior Lockwood album on Trix that I owned. In the course of many a three-day drunk, he regaled me with numerous stories of seeing and playing with the Real Guys up in Chicago. </div> <bR> <div>  There was a fella in Fort Worth named Jim Yanaway, who worked for a record distributor and was trying to get an independent label, Amazing Records ("If it's a hit, it's Amazing") off the ground. I remember taking my future ex-wife to the Bluebird the night Jim was there shooting a video with Omar & the Howlers...very strange. When I was getting ready to move to Austin in late '79, I stopped by Jim's place and heard Thunderbird guitarist Jimmie Vaughan's little brother Stevie for the first time. Jimmie had a big rep which dated back to the sixties and his days in the Chessmen, but with the Thunderbirds, he had (wisely, I think) adopted a more minimal style, and word was that his brother was even better and HOTTER. I'll never forget the first time I heard a live tape Yanaway played me of Stevie Vaughan (the "Ray" came later). "He sounds like a young, bluesier Hendrix!" I exclaimed. (This was during a time when most guitarists, Ernie Isley, Robin Trower, and, uh, Frank[e] Marino notwithstanding, were still running scared of Hendrix.) I was even more impressed the night I stumbled out of some Irish bar on 6th Street in Austin and into a joint where Stevie (having just split with Lou Ann Barton) was holding forth with his new band, Double Trouble (which then included Jackie Newhouse from Fort Worth on bass alongside drummer Chris Layton). A coupla years later, I was in the Air Force in Korea when David Bowie's "Let's Dance" album came through, with Stevie on guitar. Around the time I got "back to the world" in July '83, his first John Hammond-produced Columbia album was just hitting the streets. </div> <bR> <div>  Now let me say this: Having lived in Texas for pretty much the complete duration of the Stevie Ray phenom (although I was stationed in Louisiana when his chopper vectored in), I am sick unto death of guys in funky hats with little soul patches playing in the SRV style (which, after all, is nothing more than a hyperdriven amalgam of guys like Albert King, Albert Collins, Buddy Guy, et. al.). There are BATTALIONS of these mo-fos treading the boards down here, even more than there were Leslie West clones on Long Island back in the early seventies. But as the astute musicologist/trust fund baby Mike Bloomfield once pointed out, to black audiences, "the best blues is SUNG blues." It isn't that instrumental virtuosity has no place in the blues aesthetic (tell it to Robert Johnson and Little Walter); it's just that it's a SECONDARY skill. The great bluesmen are all great SINGERS, and the deification by white audiences of guitarists for their guitarissimo MISSES THE POINT. Yer typical bluesjam is an exercise in terminal boredom. Too many times, I've sat for three hours, supporting the bar and listening to interminable shuffles while waiting to get my three songs onstage (if a "name" doesn't walk in). </div> <bR> <div>  My enthusiasm for blues was rekindled somewhat a coupla years ago with the </div> <div> advent of the Fat Possum label. Headquartered in Oxford, Mississippi (the town that gave the world William Faulkner), Fat Possum specializes in recording electrified country blues artists like R.L. Burnside, Junior Kimbrough, T-Model Ford, and the Jelly Roll Kings (including legendary harpist/keyboardist Frank Frost). This is some real RAW stuff (in terms of subject matter as well as instrumentalismo), and the net effect is not unlike the way one imagines it woulda been hearing Howlin' Wolf or Sonny Boy Williamson in their West Memphis "natural habitat," before they made the trek up to Chicago. Flashy, it's not; strong in fundamentals, you betchum. Burnside even made an album ("Ass Pocket of Whiskey") with, uh, the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, which is sort of akin to Sonny Boy cutting with the Yardbirds in the early sixties, or John Lee Hooker's famous collaboration with Canned Heat. I bought it 'cos some Brit writer in Mojo likened the result to Captain Beefheart's "Strictly Personal," and the comparison is apt. This was some kind of harbinger of things to come, because the last coupla years have seen an explosion of "punk-blues," with stripped-down bands, often just one or two pieces, like Chicago's White Stripes, ex-Quadrajet Chet "Cheetah" Weise's Immortal Lee County Killers, Bob Log III, taking their cue from the Fat Possum artists and going back to the most fundamental root sounds of blues (occasionally taking 'em into the realm of pure Hendrix-cum-Coltrane noise, in the case of the ILCKs). </div> <bR> <div>  Anyway, a coupla years ago, I realized a dream I'd had since I was 13: to have a band in the spirit of the Junior Wells-Buddy Guy "Hoodoo Man Blues" aggregation. I quit the country band and hooked up with a harp player I'd seen at the jams. One day I saw him in the record store where I was moonlighting, and I walked up to him and asked him, "Can you sing?" He said "Not really," but sang a coupla bars of something that sounded not unlike a deeper-voiced Albert King. "Hmmm," I thought, "this has POTENTIAL." He was Authentic (read: black), even though he was a 48-year-old degreed professional civil servant who'd picked up a harp in college after hearing, uh, Lee Oskar with War. A loose aggregation of folks who'd been jamming at my house every Sunday for a few months gradually drifted away, to be replaced by a couple of his coworkers: a Sicilian kid from Long Island, aconverted grunge guitarist, on bass; and a fusion-obsessed Mexican from El Paso on drums. I wanted to keep the spareness and sparseness of the "Hoodoo Man Blues" band, but I was the only one who did. After I resisting their attempts to bring in another guitarist (and got called a racist by my frontman for it, even though I found out later that he didn't like the other [black] guitarist much, either), I brought in another ally from the jams, a highly skilled keyboard player who worked with three other bands and would work with us when we could pay him. </div> <bR> <div>  We were the Midnight Believers, and for six months in late 1998, we played three times a week, whether we had gigs or not. It was the only band I've ever been in where nobody had to be cajoled into playing. When we started playing out, half the gigs were non-paying "opportunites for exposure" that the frontman generated. Once he had a couple of gigs under his belt, he started developing an advanced case of LSD (Lead Singer's Disease). (It's always a barrel of laughs when amateur musicians start to fancy themselves "professionals.") Whenever I hustled us a paying gig, he complained bitterly at the shortness of the money and the lack of "respect" that the clubowners showed us. The gigs were always fun, but the interpersonal dynamics and extra-musical shit were draining. There were a couple of times we played when the animosity between us was palpable. We eventually worked up three good sets, and pulled the fourth one out of our ass. We had four really good songs: an arrangement of the Gershwin chestnut "Summertime" that I remembered my mother singing to us when I was a kid; Little Walter's "Last Night;" Carey Bell's "Hard Working Woman;" and a latter-day Junior Wells tune called  "Trying to Get Over You" (the frontman always had trouble remembering to come in on the bridge). After one week where we played three gigs, I collapsed physically. We wanted a New Year's Eve gig, but the drummer elected to go home to El Paso for the holidays, and we ran out of steam. We played our last gig toward the end of January, for free, in a shoestore. I spent most of the show watching "The Shawshank Redemption" on TV. We had a blast. In the parking lot, after we'd loaded out, I went up to the frontman and told him, "That's it. I'm done." </div> <bR> <div>  I've seen him and played with him a few times since then. He's kept on soldiering, and developed his skills a lot from where they were when we played together. Myself, I have no burning desire to go back to the blues bucket, ever. I NEVER listen to blues at home anymore, although it's basically all I really know how to play. I'm still saturated with the music from all that early exposure. (The blues, the Who, and the Stooges - a strange set of influences? YOU decide!!!) I do believe, though, that the blues, the REAL shit, not the tricked-up masturbatory variety, contains a  fundamental element that has to be present in music for me to respond to it.</div> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="170c8940.jpg" border=0 width="200" height="148" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div> <B>Mitch Ryder: Hangin' in like Gunga Din</B></div> <div>  <A NAME="ryder"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>RED BLOOD, WHITE MINK - Mitch Ryder (J-Bird) </B></div> <bR> <div>      Sixties/early-seventies Detroit noise (y'know, the MC5, the Stooges, Sonic's </div> <div> Rendezvous Band an' like that) has a lot more adherents these days than in times past, largely due to the propensity of bands like the Hellacopters, Bellrays, and, uh, At the Drive-In for namechecking those early pioneers of uncompromising punk rock'n'roll. A lotta these folks might not realize just how deep and wide those root sources run; there were a hell of a lot of righteous jams emanating from the Motor City back in those days: the Amboy Dukes, the Frost, the Rationals, early Bob Seger, SRC, the Up. But it all started out with a band called Billy Lee & the Rivieras, who somehow evolved from Beatle wannabes to the absolute epitome of high-energy R&B-derived slam-bang rock'n'roll excitement and were laying it down at the Walled Lake Casino when slick Noo Yawk rekkid producer Bob Crewe stumbled across 'em and sensed a palpable hit. He redubbed 'em Mitch Ryder &</div> <div> the Detroit Wheels and produced a string of smashes for 'em ca. '66-'67: "Jenny Take a Ride," "Little Latin Lupe Lu," "Devil With a Blue Dress/Good Golly Miss Molly," "Sock It To Me Baby." For a time, they were the most exciting white rock'n'roll band in these United States: tonsil-tearing arranbee screamer Mitch (ne William Levise), Gibson Byrdland-wielding axe-murderer Jimmy McCarty, whirlwind drummer Johnny Bee Badanjek (who was as adept a singer and dancer as his employer; back in the Rivieras days, sometimes McCarty would take over the traps to allow Johnny Bee to join Billy Lee in a dual display of vocal histrionics,acrobatics and showmanship). </div> <bR> <div> After some ill-advised career moves (a cover of the ballad "What Now My Love," an attempt to recast Mitch as a Vegas lounge act), Mitch reconnected with Johnny Bee and some top local talent, including blazing guitarist Steve "Decatur Gator" Hunter and future Sonic's Rendezvous Band bassist W.R. "Ron" Cooke, to form a band known simply as Detroit. Their one Paramount album (now out of print on CD and long overdue for remastering and re-release...hey, Universal, are ya listening?) is a forgotten classic, a scorching slab of Rock Action and perhaps the last gasp (along with Seger's "Smokin' O.P.'s") of Detroit rock's glory days. The key track was a complete reinvention of Lou Reed's "Rock and Roll" - the song's author acknowledged "that's the way that song OUGHT to be played" - that remained a bar band staple for years, but the rest of the album was equally strong: the opening explosion of "Long Necked Goose," the gritty rifferama of "Is It You Or Is It Me?" and "It Ain't Easy," a credible cover of Chuck Berry's "Let It Rock," the late-night barfly's anthem "Drink," the change-of-pace shuffle "Box of Old Roses" (sung by Cooke when Ryder was late for a session). (The CD version added a smoking cover of "Gimme Shelter" that interpolated all the best bits from the Stones' live set ca. '69 into the "Let It Bleed" classic.) </div> <bR> <div> After that, Mitch kinda vanished (although he continued to record sporadically for Seeds & Stems, Line, and J-Bird), while Johnny Bee went off to form the Rockets with Jimmy McCarty (which, for a time, included Dave Gilbert on lead vox, the man who torpedoed Ron Asheton and Dennis Thompson's mid-seventies L.A. band New Order by showing up for their Big Showcase Gig, the payoff for a solid year of rehearsals, out of his mind on angel dust). Steve Hunter went on to play (in tandem with ex-Bossmen/Frost honcho Dick Wagner) on just about everything Bob Ezrin produced in the early seventies - Lou Reed's "Berlin" and "Rock 'n' Roll Animal," a slew of Alice Cooper albums, the first Peter Gabriel solo album, even Aerosmith's "Train Kept a-Rollin'" - reinventing Rawk guitar in the process. But that's another story. </div> <bR> <div> A coupla years ago, I had a chance to catch Mitch at, uh, Main Street Days in Grapevine, Texas (same place I caught a KILLER set by Eric Burdon last year),  but fool that I was, I passed (seeing no worth in an "oldies show"). My mistake. Then I heard an audience tape of a SMOKIN' show Mitch played at the Lone Star in Manhattan back in '88. "Monstrous" doesn't begin to cover it. Johnny Bee (a force of nature behind the traps if ever there was one...forget about all your Keith Moons, your Elvin Joneses) was back in the band, and the guitar tandem of Joe "Dr. Wu" Gutc and Robert Gillespie (ex-Rob Tyner's "MC5" and the Torpedos and currently working with Scott Morgan) was every bit as strong as the Decatur Gator back in his heyday. The tempos were frenetic, and the material (ranging from the Crewe hits to "Rock and Roll" and "Gimme Shelter" to some hotsoes from Mitch's "lost" years, even a cover of "When You Were Mine" that uncovers the rock'n'roll song inside Prince's pop confection) was all first-rate. So when I had the opportunity to grab some of Mitch's eighties and nineties catalog, I jumped on it. CDNow was out of stock of "Live Talkies" (from '82, on Line), so I took "Red Blood, White Mink" (cut live in East Berlin back in '88, just months before the Wall came down, and released on J-Bird) as a suitable substitute. </div> <bR> <div> Recorded before a large and appreciative (outdoor?) audience, "Red Blood, White Mink" definitely has some non-snazz aspects - chief among 'em, Billy Csernits' "blorp-bleep" eighties keyboard sound. Makes me happy I sat out that entire decade in the military, only peripherally aware of the Rawk. Tempos are slower than in the club set (which reminds me of a conversation I once had with Mick Farren on What Went Wrong with the 'oo, and Rawk in general, in the seventies - mainly, larger venues caused bands to have to slow down and emphasize Grand Gestures at the expense of the immediacy and intimacy of a club gig. The guitar action is fine - Gutc and Gillespie ALMOST smoke the memory of Hunter on blistering takes of "Rock and Roll" and "Gimme Shelter" - and Mitch shows he can still belt out the blue-eyed soul with the best of 'em (for proof positive, just check out the version of the Stones' "Heart of Stone"). Some of his latter-day material ("War" and "Ain't Nobody White" from '79's "Naked But Not Dead" on Seeds & Stems, "Bang Bang" and "Red Scar Eyes" from '95's "Got Change for a Million?" on Line) is worthwhile, too. </div> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <IMG SRC="18396f50.gif" border=0 width="150" height="245" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></div> <div>  <A NAME="tek"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>THE ICEMAN'S ODYSSEY: THE DENIZ TEK STORY </B></div> <bR> <div> Wanna start a revolution? It's easier than it sounds. All you need to do is be in the right place at the right time with the right ideas and a total belief in what you're doing. </div> <bR> <div> Imagine an alternate-universe version of America, where the MC5, Stooges, and </div> <div> "Nuggets"-style garage punk are revered as touchstones and innovators rather than reviled as trash - in the eighties! That place was Australia, and the reasons had a lot to do with a kid from Ann Arbor, Michigan, named Deniz Tek, who traveled to Oz back in '72 to attend medical school, of all things, taking with him his guitar (a rare 1965 Epiphone Crestwood Deluxe that had once belonged to Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5) and a love of high-energy Detroit jams, the Rolling Stones, Blue Oyster Cult, the Doors, the Velvet Underground, surf and soul. He wound up fronting a band called T.V. Jones that played these musics (along with a smattering of dirty blues) and had a wild stage presentation - so wild, in fact, that he was slung out of the band after the other members blamed his "negative attitude" for their inability to get gigs in Sydney after ruling the roost in the tough industrial town of Wollongong. (Their one studio recording, a Tek original called "Monday Morning Gunk," was released as a single a coupla years ago on Nomad Records out of D.C. Good luck finding it.) </div> <bR> <div> Undaunted, he joined forces with kindred spirit, singer Rob Younger (whose band the Rats played a mixture of Detroit and New York Dolls, very unconventional for the time), to form Radio Birdman, the band that single-handedly ignited a Rawk revolution in Oz in the mid-seventies. (Sure, the Saints were happening in Brisbane around the same time, but to these ears, they were just another punk band - granted, one that predated the genesis of both the Ramones and the Sex Pistols - while Birdman was offering something more unique, a blend of Detroit energy and BOC/Doors-derived minor-key mysterioso that greatly influenced the future direction of Oz rock.) Banned from countless venues for their uncompromising, confrontational stance, the Birdmen created their own scene, centered around the tavern they renamed the Oxford Funhouse, and cut a bloody swath across Australia, releasing and distributing their own records (the EP "Burned My Eye" and the LP "Radios Appear") before garnering major label attention (WEA at home and Sire in America) and undertaking a European tour on which they imploded (the second Birdman album, "Living Eyes," wasn't released until two years after the band had ceased to exist, and then only in Australia). Their </div> <div> uncompromising spirit lives on in bands like Asteroid B-612, Bored!, Brother Brick, the Celibate Rifles, Rob Younger's New Christs (who are a pretty interesting story themselves), the Powder Monkeys, and countless others. </div> <bR> <div> "Radios Appear" is a classic slab of Rawk, in either its original Australian or "overseas" (with some tunes re-recorded and others added) - or better yet, in its Red Eye/Polydor CD version, which contains all the tracks from both versions. The energy and guitar blast are all Detroit (the liners namecheck Sonic's Rendezvous Band, who Tek befriended and played with on a visit home in '77, and one song, "Hit Them Again," was co-written with Ann Arbor homeboy and former Stooge guitarist Ron Asheton), and songs like "What Gives?," "Do the Pop," "Hand of Law," "Aloha Steve and Danno," and especially "New Race" (with its "Yeah, Hup!" chorus) are rock'n'roll anthems par excellence, but the moody minor-key stuff ("Man with Golden Helmet," "Descent Into the Maelstrom," "Love Kills") and penchant for songs with lots of chord changes are pure Blue Oyster Cult. Younger's vocals are over-the-top, wild and passionate, and the band sound is incredibly full, rich, and varied, with the dueling guitars of Tek and teenaged Canadian expatriate Chris "Klondike" Masuak, the distinctive klavier (he detests the word "keyboard") stylings of Tek's medical school colleague Pip Hoyle, and the solid rhythm team of ex-Rats guitarist and Birdman poster artist Warwick Gilbert on bass and Royal Australian Navy veteran Ron Keeley on whirlwind drums. </div> <bR> <div> "Living Eyes" is a more, uh, MATURE record - influences more fully digested, Tek beginning to find his true writer's voice (although two of the songs, "Burn My Eye" and "Smith and Wesson Blues," date from the earliest days of Birdman). "Do the Moving Change" and "More Fun" betray surf influences, while "Hanging On" (with a killer guitar hook, played by Masuak), "455 SD," "I-94" (which Tek recut with Wayne Kramer on 1995's "Dodge Main" album for Alive), "Crying Sun" (on which Warwick Gilbert shares composer credits with Tek), "Breaks My Heart," and "Alone in the Endzone" are all classic Birdman. Again, the remastered/bonus track-augmented Red Eye CD, now discontinued, is highly recommended. </div> <bR> <div> Rekkid buyers who haven't yet experienced Birdman will get another chance this summer, when Sub Pop releases "Essential Radio Birdman," a CD compilation of tracks from both LPs and the "Burned My Eye" EP along with some live stuff from the band's infamous Paddington Town Hall show (which crackle with a tension unheard since the Stooges' "Metallic K.O." and must be heard to be believed) that previously appeared on an Australian box set, to be followed by vinyl reissues of both LPs on Sundazed and possibly a compilation of live material. (So far, the only officially released live Birdman besides the couple of tracks on the Aussie "Under the Ashes" box is "Ritualism," a live-in-the-studio artifact recorded while the band briefly reunited for a couple of tours in the late nineties.) Also recommended are the two volumes of "Flattery: A Tribute to Radio Birdman," released on No-Mango Records in 1999 and 2000, featuring bands from Australia, the U.S., and Europe (including the Hellacopters, Gluecifer, the Bellrays, the Nomads, and the Yes-Men)...particularly Volume 2. </div> <bR> <div> Post-Birdman, Younger fronted a Five/Stooges/sixties garage cover band called the Other Side which included several ex-Birdmen, while Tek assembled a band called the Visitors with Hoyle, Keeley, fellow Detroit expat, former Birdman "Minister of Defence"/backup singer Mark Sisto on vocals, and Houston native Steve Harris on bass (who also played keyboards in the Passengers, a band fronted by the future Mrs. Tek, singer Angie Pepper) for limited live work before he returned Stateside to perform his medical residency. Tek has expressed a preference for this single-guitar-with-keyboards configuration (the same one he had in the original Radio Birdman). The Visitors have been called "Deniz Tek's version of the Doors," and Sisto's vocals bear a certain resemblance to Jim Morrison's. Their one album, "Visitation '79," released on Birdman associate John Needham's Citadel label, contains some exceptional material ("Living World," "Brother John," "Haunted Road," "Journey By Sledge," "Sad TV," "Miss You Too Much"), as well as some of Ron Keeley's best recorded trapwork. </div> <bR> <div> The early eighties found Tek living in Detroit on the eve of "Living Eyes"' release. His wife Angie (they were married shortly before he left Australia in '79) had visited Rob Younger in Sydney and come up with the idea of putting together a band to tour Australia, coinciding with the record's release. The original idea was to recruit the Asheton brothers, Ron and Scott, who'd played guitar and drums in the Stooges. When Scott was unavailable, Ron's New Order bandmate, ex-MC5/Motor City Bad Boys drummer Dennis "Machine Gun" Thompson was brought on board. In spite of the acrimonious circumstances under which Birdman dissolved, Warwick Gilbert agreed to play bass. The tour lasted 18 days, with all the dates recorded and a repertoire drawn from the Birdman, Visitors, MC5, Stooges, and Destroy All Monsters (Ron's then-current band) catalogs. Asheton later sold some live tapes to the French label Revenge, which resulted in a couple of bootleg releases, "The First to Pay" and "The Second Wave," before the "official" album, "The First and the Last" (with some overdubbed guitar and backing vocals, as well as re-recorded lead vocals by Younger) appeared in 1982. (It's since been released on CD by Total Energy.) Allowing for the studio fixage, it's still an outstanding document of a unique rock'n'roll Moment, with great slabs of guitar damage from Tek and Asheton (probably the best thing he's recorded since the end of the Stooges, in fact), and one of Dennis Thompson's finest recorded performances. </div> <bR> <div> Around that time, Tek wrote the material and provided guitar for an Angie Pepper recording project, which also included Ivor Hay (ex-Saints) on drums, Steve Harris (ex-Passengers/Visitors) on keyboards, and Clyde Bramley (future Hoodoo Guru) on bass. They recorded six songs (including covers of the Stones' "Think" and Captain Beefheart's "Long Neck Bottles") which will be released soon on Citadel, along with the nine songs the Passengers recorded before disbanding in 1979. He also cut a single, "100 Fools"/"RPM" (with musicians from the band Really Red) in Houston, where Birdman soundman Andy "Mort" Bradley was working as a studio engineer. </div> <bR> <div> Shortly after the New Race tour, Tek headed for Pensacola, Florida, to start Navy flight school. Contrary to popular misconception, military service and playing rock'n'roll are NOT mutually exclusive, but during his decade in uniform (as a Navy flight surgeon/fighter pilot), Tek's musical activities were pretty much limited to home recordings and playing with Dust and the Rotor Heads, a band led by bassist/Marine Cobra helicopter pilot Phil "Dust" Peterson, while stationed in the Philippines. After leaving the service, Tek moved to Billings, Montana, to practice medicine, and was considering giving up music. The patchy 1989 "Orphan Track" album on Revenge was culled from tapes he gave a couple of visiting Frenchmen during this period, including some of the Angie Pepper Band material, both sides of the "100 Fools" Citadel single, a couple of home recordings ("Big Ride" and "ACM," which sounds like a squadron fight song), and a couple of Dust and the Rotor Heads tunes. </div> <bR> <div> Then in 1991, Fate (in the form of Mort Bradley "Klondike" Masuak) intervened. Klondike was with Mort in Houston, cutting an album ("Moronic Inferno") at Sugar Hill Studios with the reunited Hitmen, a band he'd formed with Birdman MC Johnny Kannis when Tek's medical school commitments necessitated layoffs in Birdman's schedule. (Klondike had also played in the Screaming Tribesmen, a metallic eighties band that was a top live attraction in Australia.) Tek played some guitar, sang backup vocals, and co-wrote "Surfing in Another Direction." (The 1999 French single of "Let the Kids Dance"/"Sweet Jane," credited to Deniz Tek and Chris Masuak, is the result of a drunken afterhours jam during those sessions.) The renewed Bradley-Masuak connection led to the true beginning of Deniz Tek's solo career: the album "Take It to the Vertical." </div> <bR> <div> Recorded with Mort at Sugar Hill and released in 1992, "Vertical" (with a cover pic of Tek in the cockpit, Birdman logo on the side of his helmet) featured a cast of players from all phases of Tek's past: Masuak on guitars and keyboards, "Dust" Peterson on bass, and Scott "Rock Action" Asheton on drums, with Angie contributing some backing vocals. For the recording, Tek and Masuak elected to use clean guitar tones exclusively, a deliberate attempt to swim against the tide of grunge, then currently in vogue (which they felt was something they'd already done 15 years earlier). It also marks Tek's debut as a lead vocalist, his workmanlike "guitar player's voice" not as strong as, say, Rob Younger's, but effective enough for the material. (After all, Eric Bloom in BOC never had a barnburner of a voice, did he?) The material is first-rate: "Run Out of Water" recaptures the intensity of "Living Eyes" and the Visitors; "Dead If Looks Could Kill" evokes the Stones' "Satisfaction" with its fuzz guitar, steady four-on-the-floor backbeat and tambourine; "Where Dreams Go" is a garage stomper with Deniz and Angie singing different sets of lyrics and some ethereal slide guitar; "Steel Beach" is a moody, BOC-like piece; "Is It Good Enough?" rocks out with Birdman-like frenzy, with a guitar coda that shows the strong influence of Brother Wayne Kramer. "Vertical" remains the best seller in the Tek solo catalog. </div> <bR> <div> The "Vertical" band (minus Dust Peterson) toured Australia to support the album, but financial mismanagement by Johnny Kannis left Tek stuck with massive debt as a result. It would be a couple of years before the Iceman (his Navy callsign, which filmmakers visiting his unit at Miramar appropriated for the Val Kilmer character in "Top Gun") would re-enter the rock'n'roll wars. </div> <bR> <div> 1994 saw the formation of the Deniz Tek Group, with Sri Lanka-born former </div> <div> Survivors/Barracudas/New Christs/Louis Tillett bassist (and able curry chef) Jim Dickson and two members of the Celibate Rifles, a Sydney punk band greatly influenced by the Birdman sound and mystique: guitarist Kent Steedman and Austrian-born drummer Nik Rieth. Dickson was an agile, almost jazz-like player, heavily influenced by the Who's "Thunderfingers," John Entwistle, while Steedman and Rieth were young, aggressive players with an experimental bent. They rehearsed for three days, then began three weeks of recording, with trips out of town to play weekend shows. </div> <bR> <div> In contrast with the clean sound of "Vertical," the resulting album, "Outside," was recorded at volume with the band's full stage setup (you can hear the bass amp blowing up at the end of the title track). From the opening blast of "Blood from a Stone" (which boasts a surf-like instrumental bridge that originally saw life as the home-recorded "Big Ride"), the album rocks hard - perhaps the reason why it's widely held to be the pinnacle of the Tek solo oeuvre. There are some signature tunes: the brooding "Waiting" reminds me of everything I liked about early seventies rock; "Searching" has an interesting combination of electric and acoustic textures and marks the return to the Tek orbit of Birdman/Visitors klaviermaster Pip Hoyle, who provides some swirling organ work; the rave-up "Rough Slide Drag;" the raging onslaught of "Outside" itself, with its lyrical references to Tek's Motor City musical heritage ("Burma's Mission [Tek played in an early band with Mission of Burma founder Roger Miller], 'Black To Comm,' Pharaoh Sanders, Sun Ra") is still the customary climax to his live set. The only non-snazz aspect is the somewhat blurred recording sound (by journeyman Oz engineer Phil Punch). In some ways, the best part of the album was the "Insideout" EP that came with some copies of the CD and includes a new song, "1968," as well as an acoustic take of "Searching" (with Kent Steedman on aboriginal ghost drum and didgeridoo), an instrumental "Rough Slide Drag" (with strong contributions from Pip Hoyle), and the "KaosMix" of "Outside." </div> <bR> <div> (In late 1994, Tek performed a few live dates on the West Coast with the rhythm section from the L.A. band the Exploding Fuck Dolls, who re-enter the story later.) </div> <bR> <div> The follow-up and Tek's last release for Red Eye/Polydor was the "4-4 the Number of the Beat" EP, which featured Pip Hoyle on a couple of songs ("Hondo's Dog" and "Mesozoic Cave") that still crop up in live sets, and a cover of the Stooges' "Not Right" with Rob Younger guesting on vocals. </div> <bR> <div> The Tek Group toured Italy in 1996, and marked the occasion with the release of the "Italian Tour EP" on Citadel. The EP included new material by Dickson, Steedman, and Tek, and marked the start of Tek's association with Dave Weyer, a former amplifier mechanic for Jimi Hendrix and Neil Young who ran a recording studio in Billings, of all places. An innovator and perfectionist, Weyer was determined (after meeting Tek and hearing his recorded work) to improve on the recorded sound of "Outside." Three of the tunes - the galloping "Tubular Dreams" (with contrasting slide statements from Tek on acoustic and Steedman on electric), "Lunatics at the Edge of the World" (dedicated to legendary acid casualties Roky Ericson and Syd Barrett) and the atmospheric "VMO" - would reappear on Tek's next album, "Le Bonne Route," while the Stones-like rocker "Shellback" was later re-recorded for the "Equinox" album. </div> <bR> <div> "Le Bonne Route," released in 1996, marked the beginning of an exploratory period for Tek (a fan of Captain Beefheart and free jazz players like Sun Ra, Pharoah Sanders, and Sonny Sharrock), influenced by both Steedman (whose work with the Rifles and his side project Crent displays a taste for out-of-the-ordinary sounds) and Weyer (whose studio expertise and pioneering spirit afforded Tek the opportunity to delve into experimentalism on an "Electric Ladyland" level). Indeed, some of the tunes on "Bonne Route" owe as much to "Trout Mask Replica" as they do to the Stooges, BOC, and Stones. "Imaginary Man" works off a choppy, James Williamson-era Stooge-like riff, with lyrics about the difficulty in knowing oneself. "Away from Here," sung by Steedman, builds tension with an overlay of menacing, interlocking bass and guitar patterns, then releases it with explosions of clattering drums and primal guitar blast. For the Beefheartian "Rabbits' Foot," each bandmember composed and sang a verse; the contrast between their Australian, American, and Austrian accents (and their electronically distorted voices) is quite amusing; the effect of Rieth and Dickson's segments, in particular, is similar to hearing John Cale recite a Lou Reed short story over a wall of relentless noise and feedback on the Velvets' "The Gift." </div> <bR> <div> Tek's vocal on "Clear Itself" sounds downright sinister. "Salted Leeches" contrasts clean and saturated guitar tones over a funky R&B groove, with a typewriter's bell for punctuation (are the "leeches" in question rock writers? YOU decide!), and percussion embellishments by Billings jazz drummer Clay Green. The frenetic "Saucer Pilot Blues," a tale of space visitors stuck at a bar in the desert, rocks like the Yardbirds on strychnine. "Ze Good Way" has a Tek guitar solo that evokes the memory of Ted Nugent's from the Amboy Dukes' '68 hit "Journey to the Center of the Mind," with more percussion assistance from Clay Green. "Dave's Insanity" is a bit of hyperdriven Berry/Stones fury, with Tek blowing distorted harp and disturbing lyrics which sound like they could have been written by Hannibal Lecter (or are they only about engineer Weyer talking to his food? YOU decide!). All in all, a satisfying outing that saw Tek breaking new ground, while still rocking out hard enough to keep his core audience of Birdman aficionados content. In this writer's opinion, it's Tek's best record. </div> <bR> <div> That same year, Tek participated in a recording project with ex-MC5 guitar terrorist Wayne Kramer and soulful former Rationals/Sonic's Rendezvous Band guitarist/singer Scott Morgan. Dedicated to the memory of three fallen comrades from the Motor City (MC5 members Fred "Sonic" Smith and Rob Tyner and original Stooges bassist Dave Alexander) and released on Alive, "Dodge Main" is a collection of covers of Five, Stooges, Birdman, and Sonic's Rendezvous Band material, along with a couple of tunes from the participants' solo careers and some new material. At Tek's request, Kramer recut his version of Jimmy Cliff's "The Harder They Come" from an early single, while it was Kramer's idea for Tek to reattack "I-94" from "Living Eyes" (in a ska-flavored arrangement) and "100 Fools." Tek also sang a new song, "Fire Comin'," that he co-composed with Kramer's bassist Paul Ill, while Kramer sang a new Kramer/Tek composition, "Better Than That." It's an interesting and energetic collection, although some listeners have taken issue with Kramer's mix, which is relatively thin (particularly where the guitars are concerned). The band also performed some live shows, including one </div> <div> particularly memorable one at the Euclid Tavern in Cleveland with the Sonic's Rendezvous Band rhythm section of Gary Rasmussen on bass and Scott Asheton on drums which was recorded but remains unreleased. </div> <bR> <div> Meanwhile, friction between Kent Steedman and Dave Weyer during the "Bonne Route" sessions led to Kent's departure from the Tek Group. That event, plus the logistical difficulties involved in working with musicians based a continent away, caused Tek to seek out collaborators who were closer to home, finally settling on Todd Eagle, a bassplayer/vocalist with roots in funk and Primus, and Tony Horton, a young drummer who played with a Korn-influenced Billings band called Crunk. (For Tek's next recording project, however, Clay Green, a superior technician, would fill the drum chair.) </div> <bR> <div> The entire year 1997 was spent writing and recording material for a new album at Weyer's studio. As a kind of holding action, Citadel released the "Bad Road" EP, a collection of outtakes and leftovers: two versions of the moody title track (electric and acoustic), cut at the "Bonne Route" sessions, two songs ("Heavy Air," a nice evocation of childhood with some jagged, atonal Steedman guitar on the tag, and the balls-out rockin' "Workingman's Shoes") cut in Sydney with Phil Punch in '95, a live version of "Steel Beach," and the original demo of "1968" from the "Insideout" bonus EP. Tek also played on singles by L.A. brats the</div> <div> Streetwalkin' Cheetahs (covers of "Do the Pop" and "More Fun") during their "making rekkids with all our idols" phase (ex-Runaway Cherie Currie and Wayne Kramer also got the treatment) and Aussie brats silverchair (a cover of "New Race" that wound up on a B-side). </div> <bR> <div> A lot of Tek fans didn't quite know what to make of the album "Equinox" when it appeared in 1998. It's definitely the farthest he's ventured from Birdman territory, largely due to the significant creative input from his Big Sky riddim boys (and the fact that bassist Eagle handled lead vocals on four of the eleven songs, "Sideways Motion," "King of the Carnival," the lounge-jazz-cum-heavy-rock "Hit 29," and "Good Citizen" - kinda ironic in light of the album's being marketed as a Tek solo album, rather than a Group effort). Weyer was a heavy presence on the record, contributing keyboards in addition to sound effects and miscellaneous studio weirdness. For the ominous opening "Seven Is," for example, Tek and Weyer tried hooking seven guitar amps together in parallel "to see how much power could be generated." On the straight-ahead rocker "Christmas Eve," Tek played a slide solo through a Leslie speaker and a bunch of old analog delay units "cranked to where </div> <div> they're feeding back all the time," then ran some parts of the solo forward and some backward on the track. "Moon" is a poppy, ethereal, almost Beach Boys-like tune with Townshend-esque guitar chording and bizarre lyrics about Hitler living on the moon, sung by Angie. Perhaps the best tune on the album is "Agua Caliente," a driving rocker with salsa-flavored piano and surprisingly funky rhythm playing from Tek. "Tone Poem" reprises the mood of "Seven Is" behind a spoken word performance by Tek (perhaps influenced by some of the stuff Wayne Kramer was doing on his Epitaph albums). </div> <bR> <div> Unfortunately, the collective rekkid buyers of the planet responded to "Equinox" in about the same way as they had to Kramer's Epitaph output - that is, by ignoring it. When I spoke to Tek a year after the album's release, he said it had only sold 50 copies worldwide, an exaggeration perhaps, but an indication of its commercial failure. However, the Iceman is a fella who sticks to his guns, and compromise with audience demands wasn't on the cards at this point. Instead, he privately released a 35-minute tape of experimental electronic noises called "Cool and Unusual Punishment" by Glass Insects (from a line in a song by Mallard, the band formed by ex-members of Captain Beefheart's Magic Band in the mid-seventies) which picks up where "Tone Poem" left off - really just Tek and Weyer fooling around, live in the </div> <div> studio, with guitars, amps, and mics (the "Dave-o-phone"). While an acquired taste, it's an intriguing lesson, reminiscent of both Hendrix in his "Electric Ladyland" daze and late-period Coltrane. Tek Group bassist Jim Dickson had heard the tape on a visit to Montana and insisted they put it out. A second Glass Insects project, to include Dickson, is planned for later this year. </div> <bR> <div> Meanwhile, Tek continued to tour Europe and Australia annually, accompanied by either the Aussie (Dickson/Rieth) or Big Sky (Eagle/Horton) versions of the Deniz Tek Group. One such series of shows, from Australia, July 1998, is documented on the limited-edition, mailorder-only release "Got Live!" Tek clearly enjoyed the challenge of the trio format and the freedom it provided, and used the opportunity to reinvent his material in performance in much the same way as Wayne Kramer did on his "LLMF." The selection of tunes covers all phases of Tek's solo career, with Birdman's "Hand of Law" and a cover of Johnny Winter's "Mean Town Blues" thrown into the mix. Rob Younger joins the band for the encore of "New Race" and the Stooges' "I've Got a Right." The added electricity and chaos factor of a live performance makes this a worthwhile set. </div> <bR> <div> 1999 saw the release of the Deep Reduction album on Get Hip. During the "Equinox" period, Tek had produced a still-unreleased album, "Contains Lead," for the Stump Wizards, a garage/hard rock band from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They hit it off so well that they went on to record a single ("Black Tulip") and an album under the name Deep Reduction. Held from release for almost two years after it was recorded, the album boasts a great deal of variety. On the opening "Last Cruise of the Owl," Tek plays some uncharacteristic jangling 12-string. There are also some pop touches, particularly in the song "Safety," sung by bassist Mike Giblin (who subsequently left the band) and surprising Tek-sung covers of the Vibrators' "Whips and Furs" and French rocker Michael Polnareff's garage thumper "Time Will Tell." Stump Wizards guitarist-singer Jack Chiara isn't quite in the same league as earlier Tek foils such as Masuak, Hoyle, or Steedman, but on "Downwind of Yourself," his wah-drenched sound provides a solid background for Tek's axe explorations, while on the warped blues "Sirius Mood," he lays down the guitar damage in the manner of Ron Asheton on the first Stooges album over Tek's rhythm. "Bring Me In" and "Mirror" could well be "Outside" outtakes, while "Really a </div> <div> Flathead" is as close to conventional "punk" as Tek's ventured, with a goin'-off finale that rivals "Outside" itself for full-on intensity. </div> <bR> <div> In September 1999, Tek participated in a reunion of the original Sonic's Rendezvous Band members at the Magic Stick in Detroit, filling the guitar slot vacated by the late Fred "Sonic" Smith. (It's interesting that for the show, he chose to use his custom-made Robin guitar in place of his trademark Epiphone Crestwood, which was once owned by Sonic.) Tek spent months before the show learning the material from cassettes of live performances, and paid tribute to Sonic by playing his signature lines before adding his own spin to the solos. He also sang three songs: Birdman's "Breaks My Heart" and "New Race," and the Stooges' "Dirt" from "Funhouse." (Ron Asheton was present in the audience, and Tek was playing through one of his 50-watt Marshalls that he'd borrowed for the show.) The show was recorded and released on Real O Mind Records as "Getting' There Is Half the Fun." </div> <bR> <div> More recently, Tek released a track ("Out of the Mood") on the Australian Vicious Kitten label's compilation "Rock'n'Roll War." A second Deep Reduction album was completed in the summer of 2000, with the added bonus of Rob Younger on vocals, the first time he and Tek had worked together in the studio since "Living Eyes." Its imminent release is eagerly anticipated. Also as yet unreleased is a live-in-Weyer's-studio session from November 2000 with Art and Steve Godoy of the Exploding Fuck Dolls, performing a mix of old and new tunes (including Birdman's "Hit Them Again," co-composed with Ron Asheton, which had never been performed in front of an audience before). Weyer's intent for the project was to record "the loudest, most uncompromising rock'n'roll set that had ever been recorded." If it's in keeping with the spirit and substance of the rest of Tek's considerable output, it shouldn't disappoint. </div> <bR> <div> Deniz Tek is proof positive that having a "real" job and a career making uncompromising rock'n'roll aren't mutually exclusive. In this Millennial age, the real Rawk gets no finer. </div> <bR> <div> (Many of the records covered in this rant are out of print, and the rest are hard to come by. Try <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#336633" FACE="Times New Roman" ><A HREF="http://www.bomp.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.bomp.com"><U>www.bomp.com</U></A></FONT>, <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#0000FF" FACE="Times New Roman" ><A HREF="http://www.gethip.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.gethip.com"><U>www.gethip.com</U></A></FONT>, and <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#FF0033" FACE="Times New Roman" ><A HREF="http://www.nkvdrecords.com" TARGET="_top" TITLE="http://www.nkvdrecords.com"><U>www.nkvdrecords.com</U></A></FONT> for starters.) </div> <bR> <bR> <bR> <bR> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B><IMG SRC="16aaaaa0.jpg" border=0 width="170" height="170" ALIGN="BOTTOM" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0"></B></div> <div> <B> <A NAME="ornette"><IMG BORDER="0" SRC="1x1.gif" HEIGHT="1" ALIGN="bottom" WIDTH="1" HSPACE="0" VSPACE="0" ></A></B></div> <DIV ALIGN="LEFT"></DIV> <div> <B>ORNETTE COLEMAN: KEN BURNS JAZZ (Sony) </B></div> <bR> <div>  <FONT SIZE="3" COLOR="#000000" FACE="Times New Roman" >    Back in the mid-seventies, when Rawk started to suck for awhile (the age of </FONT></div> <div> Styx/Journey/Foreigner), before punk hit my radar (and to this day I remain more of an unreconstructed Hard Rock guy than a Punk guy), I became a jazz snob. My first jazz rec: Coltrane's "Ascension." Amiri Baraka AKA Leroi Jones, author of the essential tome "Blues People," called it a "soul rinsing," a description I'd be inclined to agree with; take a cold winter day, a buncha whatever you use to relax, and the rec at high volume and you'll see what I mean. "Meditations" was cool, too...nothing less than the aural equivalent of watching a volcano erupt, thanks largely to the dual/dueling drums of Elvin Jones, who split from Trane's band after this date, and Rashied Ali, not to downplay the contributions of Pharaoh Sanders </div> <div> on squalling tenor; I'd been prepared for its cacophony by the Stooges' less-accomplished by superficially similar "L.A. Blues," which was originally titled "Energy Freakout Freeform." </div> <bR> <div> After awhile, being the Word Guy I am, I started delving into the litterchoor (another crucial tome: Nat Hentoff's "Jazz Is") and discovering that there were other contemporary innovators in the same league as Trane (who took the harmonic innovations of Charlie Parker to their logical conclusion, then started paring things down after participating in Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue" sessions, eventually returning to the root sounds of drums and horns in the last coupla years of his too-short life) during the years '55 through '67, most notably Cecil Taylor (who played piano like "88 tuned percussion instruments" and I had the privilege of witnessing in performance at Avery Fisher Hall with traditionalist Mary Lou Williams and her riddim boys ca. '76 - the released recording was called "Embraced," but "In Opposition" woulda been more appropriate; during Cecil's set, mothafuckas were standing up in the balcony SCREAMING) and Ornette. </div> <bR> <div> Ornette was odd. At first hearing, his music sounded like nothing more than Charlie Parker (another altoist)'s without the chord changes. Further listening revealed a pure, bluesy lyricism (Ornette's is one of the loneliest sounds in any music) and a prediliction for melodies that sound as simple as children's songs. His "harmolodic theory of music" was supposed to equalize the elemental relationship between harmony, melody, and rhythm, and totally dispensed with the chord changes that Parker and his followers had used as the launching pad for their stratospheric explorations. Reading Ornette's descriptions of said theory (and hearing him expound and philosophize in the video "Made In America" - the part where Ornette talks about wanting to have himself castrated is particularly, uh, INTERESTING) kinda made me view Ornette as A CHARLATAN (an assessment which is kinda borne out by the description of his encounter with noted Third Stream nimrod and jazz scribe Gunther Schuller in John Litweiler's "Ornette Coleman: The Harmolodic Life"), but how then could one account for his ability to transfer his method to other (gifted) players, some of whom continued to perform his tunes along with new music in the same style well into the eighties as Old and New Dreams, or the visceral/emotional impact of his difficult, challenging music? </div> <bR> <div> I didn't catch any of the Ken Burns "Jazz" documentary on PBS, although I intended to...particularly after John Bargas called me up one night after a coupla years of non-contact to rant about its shortcomings - particularly its use of, uh, Wynton Marsalis in kinda the same role that historian Shelby Foote performed in Burns' "The Civil War" and ex-Negro Leaguer Buck Adams did in his "Baseball." But recently, contact with the Rev. Coomers (and massive</div> <div> infusions of James Carter and Charles Gayle jams through his largesse) has rekindled my interest in the music, and once that happened, it was inevitable that I'd find my way back to Ornette. (During my jazz-snob days, he'd been as powerful a signifier for me as the Who and Yardbirds, MC5 and Stooges.) </div> <bR> <div> And wouldn't ya know it, but the smiling folks at Sony, as part of their "Ken Burns Jazz" series of artist overviews, have fucked up (sorry, they're the only label of which I'M personally aware which still releases double CDs consisting of two 40-minute discs; not exactly what I'd call Value for Money) and compiled what just might be The Definitive Ornette, just like the slick says...a veritable K-Tel "All the Ornette Coleman You and Your Family Will Ever Need." If you have any interest in this music at all (and I assume you DO, or you wouldn't have made it this far into what's admittedly an extremely self-indulgent rant) but aren't totally Hip to the Ornette Tip, you NEED this shiny silver disc, comprising as it does an intelligent and pragmatic selection of toonage from Ornette's vast 40-plus-year output on a plethora of labels. </div> <bR> <div> First, some history: Ornette hails from Fort Worth, Texas, Where the West Begins, where this writer has resided off an on since 1978. So do a lotta quality jazz musos...Ornette's tenor partner Dewey Redman (father of one-time Young Lion/"savior of jazz" Joshua), former Ray Charles sideman and Riverside bandleader James Clay, seventies Noo Yawk loft scene firebrand Julius Hemphill, the mighty King Curtis (dig his work on all those classic Aretha sides, y'all, not to mention his own epochal live-at-the Fillmore set on Atlantic), Stuff guitarist Cornell Dupree, Crusaders bassist and once-busy session guy Chuck Rainey...the list goes on and on (and on). I usedta frequent Edmondson's Fried Chicken on Horne Street (home of the greasy slice of white bread at the top of the box o' chicken, located just a stone's throw away from Robert Ealey's legendary New Bluebird Lounge, which is whole 'nother story all by itself) just 'cos someone once told me that Ornette's sister worked there. </div> <bR> <div> Ornette started out playing R&B, but suffered ridicule from early bandmates and audiences alike for his unorthodox approach (to the extent of having his horn broken, or so Legend has it; he'd replace it for a time with a signature white plastic alto, which seems like a gimmick unless you consider that Parker also played one at times when he'd hocked his Selmer for dope). Headed out to L.A., where he assembled a claque of musicians who shared his vision: trumpeters Don Cherry - father of latter-day pop phenoms Neneh and Eagle Eye - and Bobby Bradford; bass titan, former prepubescent radio star (with the Singing Haden Family), and father of future That Dog members Charlie Haden; and Cherry's juvenile detention-mate, drummer Billy Higgins. The "classic" Coleman quartet with Cherry, Haden, and Higgins made it to Noo Yawk, where they held down a legendary residency at the Five Spot (which garnered raves from New York Philharmonic conducter and "West Side St