Texas International Pop Festival with Led Zeppelin, Janis, Johnny Winter, Delaney and Bonnie, Sly, Sam and Dave

Ever wondered what everyone was doing just two weeks after the Woodstock Festival? Pretty much the same kind of thing actually but this time at The Texas International Pop Festival held at Lewisville, Texas, on Labor Day weekend, August 30 to September 1, 1969. The bill featured many of the same bands who'd played Woodstock - Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, Janis Joplin, Ten Years After, and the Incredible String Band.

Amazingly, a film (of sorts) exists called "Got No Shoes Got No Blues"  featuring Grand Funk Railroad, Tony Joe White (doing a pretty good "Polk salad Annie), James Cotton, Chicago, Led Zeppelin (a segment of Dazed and Confused), Ten Years After (Spoonful) and Janis Joplin (Summer Time).

It's not great quality and most of the footage isn't synched with the music but it obviously has historical interest and also quite a lot of charm. There is all the Woodstock style footage of grooving smiling hippies, naked bathing, pot smoking, and local officials saying what a nice bunch of kids they are after all. Chip Monck is the MC and Wavy Gravy can be seen from time to time too so the vibes are definitely Woodstockian

However the movie was never finished for commercial release and what you see below is an 80-minute workprint (with time code) that was presumably edited for securing a pre-editing distribution deal.

The commentary (mocked?) from a religious radio station gives an idea of how outlandish, threatening and scary conservative America found the hippy phenomenon in the late 60s. We are informed that "hippies never wash" and their naked bathing is "just so they can get away with it". The local sheriff seems pretty cool though.

Some of the music is very good. Led Zeppelin, still to release their second album and announced as "The Led Zeppelin", put in a short but potent one hour set (see below). It's actually always been one of my favourite "unofficial" Led Zeppelin recordings. The band sound hungry, there is a primitive power to it and there is none of the self indulgent soloing of the later years.The Communication Breakdown encore is a blinder.

Most of the festival was recorded and apart from Zeppelin, there are complete sets by Sly and The Family Stone, Santana, Ten Years After, Janis Joplin, Johnny Winter and others. See below for a section of what's available at the moment on YouTube.

It is surprising though, given the historical importance and the quality of some of the music, that, if the original footage and tapes still exist, no one is looking at it again for some kind of release.
Or are they?



"Got No Shoes Got No Blues"

Led Zeppelin - edited clips 16mm I can't Quit You Baby, Dazed And Confused, How Many More Times, and Communication Breakdown.

Led Zeppelin full set audio

Johnny Winter

Sly and the Family Stone

Delaney and Bonnie

Sam and Dave

James Cotton Blues Band

Rotary Connection with Minnie Riperton
This has a long intro but stick with it. Minne Riperton had an amazing voice. What is that at the 8:00 mark?

Chicago

Ten Years After
The complete TYA set.

Ten Years After - Texas International Pop Festival (Live) (1969)

 

Janis Joplin
The YouTube uploader won't allow embedding so click here  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZMubm-pwY0
and here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OilWHLNnUbM




More info on the festival here
http://www.texaspopfestival.com/home.htm

Festival programme http://www.voicesofeastanglia.com/2012/04/texas-international-pop-festival-1969-programme.html

James Brown's Deep Funk - No synthetic effects. No safety nets... Cold Sweat.

In 1967, the year of Sgt Pepper, when popular music seemed to be trying to become ever more complex and sophisticated, James Brown decided to buck the trend and strip everything right down to the basics. The Funk. The one. He put out a record called Cold Sweat.

Cold Sweat was basically just a groove that just kept on building. From 1967 on this was pretty much JB's template on all his single releases. Forget the words or the tune, those are for "listening" to, this is for dancing.

Arguably more influential than the rest of the Sgt Pepper styled psychedelic complexity of 1967, James Brown hit on one of the most important and influential ideas of the late 60s. The funk revolution emphasized rhythm, made everything else subservient to it, including the vocals, and relegated melody and lyrics to a mere supporting role. Guitars became percussion instruments and individual parts became syncopated within the whole musical arrangement. And in so doing, he pretty much invented modern dance music and had a massive influence on rap. James Brown is the most sampled artist in the world.

However, the important thing for me is that, unlike a lot of modern dance records, on most of the old JB hits the band played live. And it feels alive. It breathes. You can hear the drummer sweat. Dance music always seems to me to be far more intense, hypnotic and dangerous when it's being played live with no mechanical input, no drum machines, no synthetic effects and no safety nets. A machine will suck out the funk. It'll be precise. It'll play on the beat. Not behind or in front. So there's no tension. There's no sense that anything could go wrong, speed up, slow down or do something weird.

I know there was a lot of discipline in JB's bands which the musicians sometimes found difficult to deal with (see the 1968 Apollo Can't Stand It clip below as a glorious example of how much that discipline paid off) but there's also a sense of unpredictability and danger. There is tension. And here is release. And when the tension builds, the release can sometimes be truly sublime. On the (superior) version of Cold Sweat on the 1967 Live at The Apollo album the band go into a solid groove during Maceo Parker's sax solo (starting around the 2:00 mark on the clip below) while the drummer, the great Clyde Stubblefield, compliments and pushes Maceo onward to the climax of the solo (around the 3:30 mark). For a very brief moment drummer and saxophonist are soloing together. Without the drummer performing the usual anchoring function the band appears to leave the ground and levitate.

Cold Sweat live at the Apollo 1967

It is evident towards the end of that remarkable performance (one of my favourite ever pieces of JB music) that this music, though apparently simple, is not easy to play. It's intense and demanding and easy to foul up. What is not played is just as important as what is played. That's the funk part. However it's the human element, the amazing proficiency and timing of everyone in that band, plus the sweat and the danger and the funk, that make it so damned hypnotic. And danceable.
And that is where the art is.



Bonus
Mother Popcorn on TV in 1969
An astonishing band performance. On Maceo Parker's solo (around the 3 minute mark) the band let the brakes off to hit overdrive while JB duets with Maceo by way of yelps, screeches and screams.

The Horace Silver Quintet - "Song for My Father" on Danish TV 1968

"Song for My Father" has one of the greatest opening bass lines. It was famously borrowed by Steely Dan for "Rikki Don't Lose That Number".

Not only that but Earth Wind & Fire also pinched it for the intro for "Clover" and Stevie Wonder used the opening horn riff for "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing".

So Horace must have been owed a bob or two.

"Song for My Father" was the title track of the Blue Note album originally released in 1965 but here is a mammoth 18 minute version recorded live for Jazz Omkring Midnat on Denmark TV in April 1968 featuring;

Horace Silver - Piano
Bill Hardman - Trumpet
Bennie Maupin - Tenor
John Williams - Bass
Billy Cobham - Drums

I'd love to know if there is any more of this show . Any ideas on precise dates and background info welcome too.

 

Wilko Johnson and the Feelgoods - Bringing it all back home

It is sad news indeed that Wilko Johnson has been diagnosed with untreatable pancreatic cancer and has chosen not to receive any chemotherapy.

Wilko is one of the great British characters on the UK music scene and is a genuine one-off.

Wilko, John B Sparks, The Big Figure and Lee Brilleaux

Dr Feelgood, in its original incarnation of John B Sparks on bass; The Big Figure on drums; Lee Brilleaux on vocals, harmonica, occasional slide guitar and punching the air; and Wilko on demented percussive staccato machine gun guitar, were one of the best bands I have ever seen. At the time, mid 70s, they were truly mind-blowing.

In the mid 70s, pre punk, when dressing up as space wizards and playing bass guitar solos through clouds of dry ice was considered normal, to see four geezers from Canvey Island walk on a minimally lit stage wearing dirty suits and playing even dirtier R'n'B was revolutionary. All they did was play their arses off. That was it. That was the show. What a brilliant idea!

The next thing that happened was Punk Rock.

Funnily enough the first time I saw the Feelgoods was also the first time I saw anyone pogo dancing. And it was a hippy. We were in front of the stage and he was doing it right in front of me. It irritated the hell out of me. He kept popping up and down like the Magic Roundabout's Zebedee on amphetamines. I also remember that, unlike quite a few other bands I'd seen at the time like Hawkwind, Black Sabbath or Richie Blackmore's Rainbow; all of whom did take the space wizards riding the dry ice path to stage presentation, the Feelgoods only played around 60 minutes. If that. Everyone else at that time was playing long 90 minute sets plus encore but the Feelgoods' hour long speedathon was the one that left us absolutely shattered yet hungry for more. The Feelgoods were a physical experience and emotional catharsis at a time when most rock bands were keen on being "listened" to... man. Sitting down... like "real" music.

Dr Feelgood were the band that brought true rock back to the 70s.
Thanks Wilko. Our thoughts are with you.

Here are some examples of the Feelgoods' early greatness.


From a TV show called the Geordie Scene from around 1975

France 1976

Home territory 1975

Wilko's interview on BBC Radio 4's Today

listen to ‘Dr Feelgood's Wilko: Cancer's made me feel alive’ on Audioboo

Redeeming the 70s - Brian Eno 1971-1977: The Man Who Fell To Earth

Redeeming the 70s
The 70s is a much maligned and oversimplified decade. Many will have you believe that the UK was on the brink of anarchy with the whole country on strike for the entire decade, that there were permanent power cuts and that dead bodies were piling up in the streets without anyone to bury them. They will also tell you that there was nothing to listen to except pretentious prog-rock and fatuous disco and that we were all delivered from this misery by punk rock and Margaret Thatcher. Complete nonsense of course, and a facile rewriting of history by Thatcherite politicians and white middle class rock journalists.

Musically, the 1970s was far more varied and complex decade than the 1960s. It is a time which defies the 60s' easy myth-making. It's true that there were a fallow couple of years for rock music before punk arrived however there was great soul and reggae music being made right up until the end of the decade. Al Green, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye were making their best records and Bob Marley became an international star. Many of the musical experiments which started in the 60s saw fruition in the 70s in jazz rock, British folk-rock, glam-rock, heavy metal, funk and disco. German bands like Tangerine Dream, Kraftwerk, Can and Amon Duul were taking the avant garde and putting it into the rock mainstream. It was also David Bowie's decade. Bowie was the leading style and musical icon of the 70s and defines the decade and its changing styles more than any other contemporary artist. Bowie's most satisfyingly creative albums are probably the Berlin trilogy of Low, Heroes and The Lodger; all albums on which Brian Eno played an influential role.


Eno: The Man Who Fell To Earth

AVRO

Brian Eno had an astonishingly prolific and influential 5 years from 1972 to 1977 and gives the lie that the 70s were any less pioneering than the 60s. He was an original member of Roxy Music and played on their first two classic LPs Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure. He then left Roxy, for reasons which may have had something to do with Bryan Ferry's envy at Eno's success with women, and put out 4 solo albums; Here Come The Warm Jets, Taking Tiger Mountain By Strategy, Before and After Science and the sublime Another Green World - one of the best albums of the the 70s and a masterpiece of languid pastoral pop.

Apart from his work with Bowie, there were also many other impressive collaborations; with Robert Fripp on No Pussyfooting and Evening Star, forerunners to Eno's later Ambient series of albums; with German musicians Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius on Cluster and Eno and After The Heat; and also with David Byrne on the groundbreaking My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.

And all this by a self-professed "non-musician".

Few other artists, whether they be from the 60s or the 70s, have matched that sustained level of creativity and successful experimentation over such a short period of time and have left such an indelible mark on 21st century music. Eno's influence can still be felt in both the mainstream and avant-garde. Jason Ankeny at Allmusic maintains that Eno "forever altered the ways in which music is approached, composed, performed, and perceived, and everything from punk to techno to new age bears his unmistakable influence."

This two and a half hour documentary examines this intensely creative period and the reasons for Eno's lasting impact on modern music.

Watch it in parts on YouTube - Part 1 here

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Embryo

The Rolling Stones' finest hour - "Get Yer Leeds Lungs Out"

This hour long recording, originally made for the BBC at Leeds University on 13th March 1971, and bootlegged in the 1970s on vinyl as "Get Yer Leeds Lungs Out", is easily the finest unissued live music by the Rolling Stones. In fact the last 45 minutes from Midnight Rambler on is arguably some of the best music they ever recorded.

After the hysteria and drug busts of the mid 1960s and the death of Brian Jones still overshadowing the band, the Rolling Stones returned to touring in 1969 with new guitarist Mick Taylor in tow. Taylor, fresh from John Mayall's band, added a virtuosity to the Stones' music which put them on a par with contemporaries like Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, Eric Clapton and other blues wailing guitar heroes of the day. The Stones were now a band with a blues maturity they had previously, in their mid 60s pop incarnation, lacked.

The 5 years which Taylor spent with the band can be seen as their most artistically creative (Let It Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, Goats Head Soup, and It’s Only Rock’n’Roll were all recorded during his tenure). As a live band, they were at their tightest and most energetic and Mick Jagger was at his youthful demonic peak. The 1969 American tour saw the band reinvent themselves as “the Greatest Rock’n’Roll Band in the World” and although terminating in the disastrous Altamont festival, the tour was highly successful and put the band back on the rock center-stage along with Dylan, the Who and the recently separated Beatles.

The Rolling Stones played Leeds University in the spring of 1971 on the penultimate date of their first UK tour since 1966. Recorded in the Refectory in front of (presumably) less than a thousand slightly stoned hippy students, it has an intimacy and informality that the later Rolling Stones' arena shows lack. It sounds like a band in a club. Jagger talks to rather than shouts at the audience. The Watts / Wyman / Richards rhythm section has the funky looseness soon to be recorded on Exile On Main Street and there is a tight rhythm guitar / lead guitar interplay between Richards and Taylor, both of whom instinctively know when to leave space for the other. Taylor’s playing is arguably better on the '72 American tour however on that tour the band tended to pay everything too fast and a lot of the funk present here was lost. This is a recording of a band with a virtuoso lead player who is however playing within, and functioning as a part of the band, rather than in front of it, as Eric Clapton, Alvin Lee or Johnny Winter would have done. It isn’t about the guitar player it’s about the music. It’s about the “roll” as well as the “rock” as Keef said. This is a prime recording of the "roll" in the Rolling Stones.

And this is the dirtiest, rawest, rudest guitar sound Keith Richards ever achieved. His amp sounds as though the speakers have gaping holes in them. Midnight Rambler burns and crackles and Brown Sugar is far more incendiary here than on the single version. The flick knife intro precedes a guitar sound which is the aural equivalent of rusty razor blades. Jagger still sounds as though he is interested in what he is singing and makes an effort to put some life in the words as opposed to the breathless barking and yelping he would be making on the 1972 tour and for quite some time thereafter. The version of Satisfaction here is slower than the single and has a much funkier arrangement that seems to owe a lot to James Brown and Otis Redding. However the overwhelming climax here is Chuck Berry's Let it Rock. It is everything you ever wanted from the Rolling Stones. Richards and Watts appear to take inspiration from the opening lines "In The Heat Of The Day Down In Mobile Alabama, working on the railroad with the steel driving hammer" and pound and hammer their way through the song to bust through into a moment of true magical inspiration when the band takes off and appears to become energized and overtaken by some higher power. Their own momentum overtakes them and it's the song itself that seems to be playing the band. I swear about half way through they all sound like they are levitating...

It'll leave you breathless.

I have no idea how often I have listened to the last 45 minutes or so of this show over the years. For me Midnight Rambler through to Let It Rock it is the quintessence of the Rolling Stones. It has all the rawness, grace, swagger and danger of what rock music was supposed to be about in the early '70s. The Stones were soon to lose their ability to conjure up those qualities but should anyone now too young to know ever ask you who were the Rolling Stones and what was all the fuss about...
Play them this.


Note; The track list for the hour long BBC broadcast is Dead Flowers / Stray Cat Blues / Love In Vain / Midnight Rambler / Bitch / Honky Tonk Women / Satisfaction / Little Queenie / Brown Sugar / Street Fighting Man / Let It Rock (the band opened with Jumping Jack Flash however the early part of the show is missing)

Midnight Rambler starts below at 14:45

Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution

There is a spirit in of a lot of post war popular music that seems to be exploratory, experimental and, dare one say it, progressive. This desire to push at the boundaries and overturn what had gone before can be seen in in post war jazz, Bebop, 1960s rock music, the music of the Beatles, Byrds, Pink Floyd and many others.

However by the end of the 70s, Jazz saw its audience dwindle (perhaps due to being exposed to a little too much free jazz experimentation) and British and US rock music seemed have become ever more corporate, business oriented, predictable and safe.

At the end of 1960s this experimental baton was picked up by a wave of German bands  intent on creating new sounds and exploring new  technologies. Kraftwerk, Can, Amon Duul, Tangerine Dream, Popul Vuh - all seemed to be bands that were determined to create something new without falling into the blues jam / prog-rock noodling that had befallen many of their British and American contermpories. Why did this happen in Germany?

"Kraftwerk and the Electronic Revolution" is a three hour documentary that explores the history of those German bands. It particularly focuses the group whose music achieved the most crossover success and  influenced so much of modern electronica - Kraftwerk.

Most of the main participants are interviewed although only Karl Bartos appears from Kraftwerk. As he says, a bunch of musicians "not raised on the Mississippi delta" had little choice but to take rock music in a new direction if they wanted to maintain any kind of integrity.


This documentary can be watched in parts on Youtube. Here is part 1.

More on stranger than known

Parallax - The Pink Floyd and the BBC 

Redeeming the 70s - Brian Eno 1971-1977: The Man Who Fell To Earth

The Return of Manta Ray - Manta Ray live 14 / 12 / 2012

Last month I saw one of the best live bands I’ve seen in years.

Manta Ray, unless you’re from Spain, is a band that is probably unfamiliar to you. They are, in my opinion, not only one of the best bands ever to have come out of Spain but also one of the most interesting bands of the last 15 years. Live they have very few equals. Slow burning potent intensity, volume, tricky tempos and a shoe gazing love of feedback and noise make them one of the most compelling live bands around.

Manta Ray are José Luis García (Vocals, Guitar), Nacho Álvarez, (Bass), Xabel Vegas (Drums), Frank Rudow (Keyboards, Percussion) and, until the end of the 90s, Nacho Vegas (Guitar) who left to have a successful solo career.

The band are from Gijon in Spain and were part of a wave of bands around the early 90s who, although quite disparate in style, all got lumbered with the “Xixon (Gijon) sound" label  – a bit like the Spanish equivalent of Merseybeat. However Manta Ray are very much their own men and followed a path which, over a decade and a half, saw them experiment with and incorporate new musical styles, however always with a burly sense of their own identity.

Their music has its roots in early 90s Grunge, post rock, punk rock, the Pixies, the Stooges, Public Image, Hawkwind, Can, Neu and surprising stuff like the heavy bass, jagged guitars and odd tempos of early 70s King Crimson. They also remind me of that strange and rather underrated period in the Pink Floyd’s history, post Syd Barrett and pre Dark Side of the Moon, when they were lost in space and at their most experimental.

From 1994 to their retirement in 2007 they recorded 6 albums - Manta Ray, Pequeñas Puertas que se Abren, Pequeñas Puertas que se Cierran,  Esperanza, Estratexa, Torres de Electricidad and the live Score (which was given away with Spanish magazine Rockdelux and is now extremely sought after). Esperanza and Estratexa are personal faves but all the albums are excellent. There is an old fashioned prog-rock sense of a band moving forward, experimenting, incorporating different textures and approaches into the albums and having fun with it at the same time. The last album, Torres de Electricidad, although excellent, is the only album that doesn't seem to offer anything new and it was after this album that the band decided to split.

Photo; La Nueva España

Manta Ray live at la Sala Acapulco, Gijon, Spain, 14/12/2012

In December 2012, after nearly 5 years off, they decided to reform in with original collaborator Nacho Vegas to play a one-off gig commemorating the 30th anniversary of “La Plaza”, the bar in Gijon around which some of the Xixon sound bands started to gather. The gig sold out quickly and there was a great deal of expectation as to whether the band would live up to former live glories. Also, with the news that Nacho Vegas was also on the bill, many hoped that he and his old band would do a few numbers together.

The albums are good but live they are something else entirely, especially if, as on this occasion, they are playing in front of a home crowd. Many of those present would have seen the band in their earliest days and there was a palpable sense of expectation as the band walked on stage and struck up the grievous hammer blow intro of Sad Eyed Evil (from Pequenas Puertas...). Immediately the difference between the records and the live band was apparent. Live there is a tension and a sense of barely repressed violence that is only hinted at on disc. The first 25 minutes of the show was some of the most intense live music I’ve seen in a long time. From that percussive dam-busting intro the first 4 songs, which were effortlessly segued, gathered momentum and reached a crescendo of force on Asalto. For a band that had been away for 5 years they were still astoundingly tight. The music was muscular, aggressive, and visceral. The rhythm section pushed the band forward with an imperative sense of urgency.

Songs coalesce unhurriedly. Guitars are used percussively, block chords pound and syncopate with an agile rhythm section in a style similar to a cross between James Brown and the Gang of Four. Unlike many of their European or American post rock counterparts, who seem to me to be a tad cold and mechanical, Manta Ray are more redolent of the 70s German rockers like Amon Duul, Can or Neu in that their music displays a passion and soulfulness which those bands had but which is now not always heard in modern rock. The end effect is mesmerizing and cathartic.

Photo: JOSÉ ANTONIO VEGA SERRANO

Nacho Vegas’ opening solo set failed to convince and in general he seemed rather disengaged. However he did return for the first Manta Ray encore to play slide guitar rather impressively with a glass (still containing what appeared to be whiskey) on Sol / Wide-O Blues. The band finished with a stunning “Cartografies” (one of the highlights from Esperanza) and was gone.

After the nearly 2 hour set I was exhausted, dazed but recharged. Just like I used to feel as a kid coming out of punk gigs in the late 70s. I can only hope that, if Manta Ray are not to reform full time, then there will at least be more of these one-off gigs in the future. This was a band which, live at least, still has some very potent music to deliver.


Wide-O Blues

Sol > Wide-O Blues (different angle)

Manta Ray Y Nacho Vegas - Sol+Wide-o Blues (Gijón, 14-12-2012) -

Concert photos
http://laespiraldejosephk.blogspot.com.es/search/label/Manta%20Ray

Diez temas para que te acuerdes de Manta Ray (Spanish website Hipersonica's Manta RayTop10)
http://www.hipersonica.com/monograficos/diez-temas-para-que-te-acuerdes-de-manta-ray

Feedback

"A Group By The Name of Love" - Arthur Lee and Love on Danish TV 1970

"En gruppe ved navn Love" (A Group by the Name of Love) is a Danish TV documentary broadcast on 17th July 1970. It features Arthur Lee and the second line-up of Love with Gary Rowles, Frank Fayad & George Suranovich playing live at The Tivoli in Copenhagen in March of that year.

Arthur is interviewed and when questioned about the band's line-up changes just grins and says "everybody is Love"

Interesting for the live footage of the band, there are also scenes of Arthur wondering around Copenhagen, walking through a snow-laden Danish wood and a perhaps not suitable for work topless Danish dancer jiving around to "She Comes In Colors".
Hey it was the 60s.

David Fricke on Rolling Stone's Arthur Lee and Love's Essential Bootlegs described the live recordings thus "Love were especially feted in Denmark: Danish TV interviewed Lee and taped five songs at the Tivoli show, including the convulsive thunder of "August," from 1969's Four Sail, and Lee's brutal update of the heroin-blues crawl "Signed D.C.," originally on Love. It is a short but rare solid-audio shot of Lee in the kind of dramatic vocal command that made him an instant, fearsome star on the Strip just five years earlier."

Not sure I agree about the version of Signed DC. It seems a little overwrought compared to the raw acoustic simplicity of the version on the first album but the band are impressive. Four Sail is a much under-rated album coming as it does after the momentous Forever Changes.

See the complete 40 minute documentary below.

See also http://love.torbenskott.dk/tour/19700312_copenhagen.aspp for more on the Copenhagen gigs.

Asturias > Eight Miles High - Roger McGuinn

A wonderful solo acoustic performance of Eight Miles High by Roger McGuinn at the Pacifico Yokohama Hall, Japan, in November 2007.

Roger brilliantly incorporates "Asturias (Leyenda)" (1892) by Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909) in the intro and later on in the solo. This piece of music was also used by the Doors on "Spanish Caravan" on their 1968 Waiting For The Sun album.

The name Asturias (Leyenda) was given posthumously for the 1911 "complete version" of Albéniz 's Suite española. Despite the name, the music is not particularly Asturian as it is more reminiscent of the flamenco tradition of Andalucia. Asturias is a region of Northern Spain and its folk music borrows more from the Celtic tradition and features the droning Gaita (bagpipe).

Eight Miles High on bagpipes... now that would be something.

Roger's solo here is impressive indeed and the arabesque flamenco motifs go well with Eight Miles High's original eastern flavour - inspired, as the song was, by John Coltrane's India.

Fairport Convention Bouton Rouge Sessions - The British Jefferson Airplane Takes Off

The wonderful performance below is from the French TV Show "Bouton Rouge". It was broadcast live on 27 April 1968 and features the original Fairport Line up of Judy Dyble, Iain Matthews, Simon Nicol, Tyger Hutchings, Richard Thompson, and the late Martin Lamble playing Morning Glory, Time Will Show The Wiser and a simply awe-inspiring mind-melting performance of Reno, Nevada.

Fairport Convention in 1968

At this time Fairport had just released their first album and were very influenced by American folk rock and psychedelic groups like Jefferson Airplane, Bob Dylan and The Byrds. The sound, look and name of the band led many to think that either they were an American band or at best just a British version of Jefferson Airplane.

The star of the show is definitely Richard Thompson who is seen here in mega guitar hero role. After a fairly muscular solo in Morning Glory he delivers an astonishing perfectly paced 4 and a half minute six string marathon in Reno Nevada - so full of power, invention, imagination that the solo seems to run away with itself. Is Richard playing the guitar or is the guitar playing Richard? For the duration of this nearly 5 minute solo they are no longer the British Jefferson Airplane copying their heroes but arguably go beyond anything the Airplane, Grateful Dead or other San Francisco bands were doing in early '68 (although it must be said that the Dead would start to achieve similar high levels of  jazz inspired improv syncopation before the year was out but that is another story and post).

And to top it all the band just look so damned cool. As the solo finishes Judy Dyble slowly gets up and wanders back to the microphone and the whole band just have a look of Hey this is nothing special. We are this shit hot every night. The epitome of cool...

After this performance they signed with Island Records, Judy Dyble left the band to be replaced by Sandy Denny and they went off to reinvent British folk rock.

Watch and wonder...
(Thompson's solo is from 08:30 to 13:05)

More Bouton Rouge sessions http://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1CoY8JtBNlU3hGVUJfuYXA

--------------------------

The Faster We Go...

Leroy Van Dyke - It's All Over Now Baby Blue

Leroy Van Dyke is a veteran country artist who scored a couple of big hits with The Auctioneer and Walk On By in the 50s and 60s.
Here he is doing an fantastic cover.of Dylan's It's all over now Baby Blue. I can't find too much info about it online so if anyone has any more to tell please comment. It's from 1965 and produced by Dick Glasser who also did some work with the Everly Brothers notably their Two Yanks In England LP. It has a classic mid 60s echo-laden Spectoresque arrangement with a great menacing riff and Leroy's solid steady voice delivering Dylan's lines with mature country story-telling finesse. This is Country / Pop / Folk / Rock crossover a while before Gram Parsons turned up to make it hip.

This is cool.

"The Tarnished Gold" - Beachwood Sparks

The first post on this blog so I thought I would kick it off with my favourite album of 2012.

I can’t really say that I keep up much nowadays with contemporary musical events. I kind of lost some of the intensity of my mammoth rock obsession towards the end of the 90s in the post Britpop gloom of Radiohead’s “OK Computer” or the Verve’s “Urban Hymns” and I'm afraid to say nothing much has really intrigued me since. However last year I heard an album that for me ranks as one of the best musical offerings of the last few decades. An absolute stunner of an album almost seemingly designed to go straight to the core of my slightly dazed psychedelic pure pop heart.

“The Tarnished Gold” is that album and it's by a band called Beachwood Sparks.

Beachwood Sparks are singer / guitarist Chris Gunst, singer / bassist Brent Rademaker, singer  / multi-instrumentalist Farmer Dave Scher, and drummer Aaron Sperske. They are  also helped out by Ben Knight (The Tyde).

“The Tarnished Gold” is the album the Byrds could have recorded after “Notorious Byrd Brothers” and before “Sweetheart of the Rodeo”.  In an alternative reality in another part of the multiverse they probably did. It’s that good. And here it is beamed to us through a crack in the multi-dimensional matrix via Beachwood Sparks.

I really cannot understand why I didn’t see it on more top ten album lists of 2012.

Like the best of the Byrds’ mid 60s oeuvre the whole album seems to float in summer heat haze. Shimmering rickenbackers and glistening pedal steel guitars glide around monolithic harmonies and everything   s-l-o-w-s      d – o – w - n …    The air is thick, listen to the waves, the past is resonating and you are not quite sure when you are...

It's one of those wonderful old-fashioned albums where the sum is greater than the parts and it is therefore best experienced as a whole rather than as YouTube clips or individual mp3 song downloads. It is perfect California psychedelic beach music and you need to give up the time to go where it wants to take you.

So I’m not going to recommend any particular songs or analyse it like some kind of rock critic and if you want the Beachwood Sparks story you can check it out elsewhere. I will just recommend that you listen to the first 3 tracks. If you are not sold on the sheer sonic brilliance of the album’s trio of introductory songs Forget The Song > Sparks Fly Again > Mollusk then no words I may employ will convince you.

The band had made 2 albums previously and then split up for a while. Compared to those early albums this is a far more mature work. The standard of the song writing is much improved and remains consistently high throughout the album (and comparable with that of their influences). There is an occasional oddity ("No Queremos Oro") but that just makes it even more Byrdsian in the tradition of 2-4-2-Foxtrot or Oh Susannah.

You may hear a bunch of Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Neil Young, CSNY and Gram Parsons influences in all of this but for me none of those people (still living) have made anything this good since their heyday. These guys are good in their own right but working with those influences they take Cosmic American Music a way further down the road.

So if you think The Byrds’ Notorious Byrd Brothers is one of the best albums ever made check this out. You won’t be disappointed. It exists in the same somewhat ethereal head space and is an album you could put on after it to maintain the mood and even, I would say, much of the quality.

Beachwood Sparks. Even the name is perfect.

Official site
http://www.thecalmingseas.com/

Watch them live on this 38 minute video from KCRW. The harmonies are just a little bit more rickety than they are on disc but it gives you an idea. So sit back and...

 

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Summer 68

Summer 68