stranger than known: BBC

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Saturday, 4 January 2014

Russell Mael's 1960s LA Scene Radio Memoir

Post updated 18/11/2014.
More of the show has been added

What we have here is a fascinating audio memoir of the teenage years of Sparks' Russell Mael growing up in Los Angeles in the mid 60s.

Russell and his brother Ron grew up in Pacific Palisades - a relatively affluent suburb of Los Angeles.

Russell went to Palisades High School and was in the "Class of '65". Both brothers enrolled at UCLA where Ron began a course in Cinema and Graphic Arts in 1963 and Russell studied Theater Arts and Film-making between 1966-1968.

In 1968 they formed a band called Halfnelson which later turned into Sparks - one of the most successful and critically acclaimed bands to come out of the glam scene of the early 70s.

Here Russell fills us in on the mid to late 60s LA scene and gives us an idea what it was like growing up "cruising up and down Ventura Boulevard in the San Fernando Valley or beaching it at Malibu or some other place along the coast" at a time when the US west coast scene was at its peak.

This was broadcast on BBC Radio 1 on a Sunday night around November 1979 and I remember listening to it as a kid and immediately trying to follow up on many of the bands featured - it was quite unusual to hear this stuff on British radio at the time. I think I managed to track down a copy of the then quite rare Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era LP not long after. And from there began a life-long obsession with 60s garage rock and psychedelia.

Unfortunately this cuts in and is missing the first few minutes but it is a great listen. I'm not saying what he plays, that would spoil it, but it's kind of like a radio version of Nuggets with some superb LA pop thrown in too.

Thanks to Captain Soul for uploading this and to Tomasz for contributing the first part.

And to Mal for having the wits to grab a C120 and record it one Sunday night long long ago...

More on stranger than known
"A Group By The Name of Love" - Arthur Lee and Love

Ry Cooder and Little Feat live - Rampant Slide Zone Syncopation

Texas International Pop Festival with Led Zeppelin...

The Grateful Dead - 1969 Dark Star set to vintage film ...

The Tarnished Gold of Beachwood Sparks

Tuesday, 18 June 2013

Jonathan Miller's Psychedelic Alice in Wonderland

Shown on BBC TV just after Christmas 1966 Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland caused a similar media furor to that of the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour exactly one year later. The Daily Mail called the film X rated and it was even seen as an attack on family values. This is not therefore the Alice in Wonderland of Disney or more recent adaptations for children. This was made for adults and most of the characters are played by actors in standard Victorian dress. It also explored some of the more philosophical and existentialist themes that are often ignored in other versions of the story. Alice asks "Who am I?" and is lost in world where nothing is real.

In other words, this is 1966 and Alice is going down to Strawberry Fields...

Seen now, this film can be viewed as an evocation of the same ethereal spacey English summer afternoon that The Pink Floyd would explore on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, or The Beatles on Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds and Strawberry Fields Forever. A multitude of other British psychedelically inspired bands were also about to trip through these same fields during 1967's "summer of love" which was just round the corner. The soundtrack features the sitar of Ravi Shankar which also imbues the film with a humid air of psychedelic sensory abandonment.

US band Jefferson Airplane probably recorded the most famous ode to Alice and the psychedelic exploration of inner space with their White Rabbit but, unlike their American counterparts who took acid and headed off into both inner and outer space, British hippies took hallucinogenics and were transported back to a kind of idealized magical summer afternoon of childhood innocence. There is a very strong pastoral influence in British psychedelia which can be heard in many recordings from this period. Try watching this film with the sound off and listen to the first couple of Traffic, albums or Donovan, The Zombies, The Incredible String Band, Sgt Pepper, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, The Rolling Stones' 1967 singles Dandelion and Ruby Tuesday as well as parts of Satanic Majesties, or any decent late 60s psychedelic compilation; Mojo magazine's Acid Drops, Spacedust & Flying Saucers for instance, and you will hear the mood that is evoked by the film is also that which is explored by the music of this era

As this film was shown on TV in late December 1966 it's no stretch of the imagination to suggest that this film must have had an influence on the development of British psychedelia in the months that followed.

Miller's directing style is slow and photographic. Scenes appear at times to be staged for a Victorian photo album.The film also features some of Miller's acting friends and acquaintances and can perhaps also be seen as part of that surreal strand in British humour that was prevalent in the 60s. Peter Sellers is the King of Hearts and two of Miller's fellow cast members from Beyond the Fringe, Peter Cook and Alan Bennett are the Mad Hatter and the Mouse. Steptoe and Son's Wilfrid Brambell plays the White Rabbit, Leo McKern (who would go on to play No.2 in The Prisoner) is in drag as the Ugly Duchess and even Malcolm Muggeridge (the journalist and broadcaster famous for accusing Monty Python's Life of Brian for blasphemy) is in it as the Gryphon. Coincidentally, it also features Monty Python's Eric Idle as an uncredited member of the Caucus Race.
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So if you are in the mood for a trip back to the pastoral psychedelia of Grantchester Meadows or Strawberry Fields Forever then follow the white rabbit below.
But make sure you're home in time for tea...

Jonathan Miller's Alice in Wonderland (1966)

Directed by: Jonathan Miller
Produced by: Jonathan Miller
Written by: Lewis Carroll (novel); Jonathan Miller (teleplay)
Music by: Ravi Shankar
Cinematography: Dick Bush
Editing by: Pam Bosworth
Release date: 28 December 1966

Note on location

The scenes of Alice running down corridors of wide open windows at the beginning of the film were shot at the now demolished Royal Victoria Military Hospital in Netley near Southampton. Part of the building still exists as a museum and the stairs Alice runs down can be seen from the entrance. The museum commemorates the old hospital which was originally built in 1863 and was used for military personnel during various wars of Empire and the 1st World War. Psychiatrist R.D. Laing worked there in the 1950s when he was in the army.

The grounds are now a country park. I've often been down there walking the dog. There is a duck pond and fields and woods at the back. And on humid soporific summer days, when there's no one else around, it can still cast a spell...


Bella at Netley © David Mainwood

More
Jonathan Miller's Alice In Wonderland (1966): A Suitable Case for Treatment
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/01439685.2011.572607#.Ub7xwJySIx5

Now try this
Parallax - The Pink Floyd and the BBC
http://strangerthanknown.blogspot.com.es/2013/02/parallax-pink-floyd-and-bbc.html

Sunday, 24 February 2013

"Cool" - BBC Arena documentary

One of the best jazz films made in recent years. Even if you don't like jazz, you should watch this visually stunning 2009 BBC documentary on 1950s cool jazz.

"The classic cool combo consisted of 3, 4 or 5 musicians, a rhythm section with the voices supplied by horns and usually a piano. They'd begin with theme, improvise around it for several minutes and return to it. Young men with a studious air, in well cut suits and slim ties."

Cool jazz was cool for a number of reasons. It was cool music - a relaxed and poised counterpoint to the agitation of Bebop - but it also had attitude and style. It was a precursor of 1960s mod culture with its sharp suits and button down collared shirts.

"If you're good you should be wearing sharp clothes," - Charlie Davidson.

This excellent documentary, produced and directed by Anthony Wall, exudes a certain cool of its own. The narration is minimal and the pace relaxed. The written quotes, archive clips and photos set the backdrop of 1950s America but also compliment the music and let it tell its own story, in its own time.

"As always in jazz, its essence is the tension between improvisation and order, between freedom and discipline" - Time magazine November 1954 (on Dave Brubeck).

If the word "cool" is one of the most overused expressions of the 21st century, watch this and find out about when it actually meant something.

Featuring Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Art Farmer, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Jack Kerouac and original incidental music by George Taylor... This is the birth of the cool.

"I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry Martini" - Paul Desmond.

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Ronnie Scott and All That Jazz

A 1989 BBC Omnibus documentary on Ronnie Scott filmed on the 30th anniversary of the club he founded in Soho, London with tenor sax player Pete King.

The documentary features footage of Zoot Sims, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and interviews with Pete King, Stan Tracy, Mel Brooks and also a couple of young Westminster MPs called Ken Clarke and John Prescott. Both united here in order to show how jazz brings together people of opposing political views, however both claim in the interview is this is the closest is they have ever sat together.

Ronnie Scott often acted as club MC was famous for his repertoire of jokes and one-liners. "Our next guest is one of the finest musicians in the country. In the city, he's crap". Of the club he once said, "It's easy to make a million running a jazz club. Just start with two million". "I love this place, its just like home. Filthy and full of strangers" and "it was very quiet last night, we had the bouncers chucking people IN. A guy rang up and asked 'what time does the show start?' I said, what time can you get here? No but I really love this place, its made a very happy man old."

There is even a blog dedicated to Ronnie's humourous asides here The Ronnie Scott Jokes Page

After Ronnie's death in 1996, Pete King continued to run the club for a further nine years, before selling it in 2005.

Sunday, 3 February 2013

Parallax - The Pink Floyd BBC Sessions

Photo: David Mainwood

With the surfeit of BBC sessions CDs around nowadays it seems strange that the Pink Floyd refuse to countenance a release of any of the 3 hours worth of material they recorded for the BBC in the late 1960s and very early 1970s. One wonders why. It certainly can’t be a lack of demand. Legal Problems? Band members not agreeing? Quality control? Does David Gilmour really regard them as being substandard?

How do the Pink Floyd sessions compare to the official recordings and are they deserving of release?

The sessions run from the Syd Barrett era in 1967 through to the release of Meddle in late 1971 when they were only a year or so away from massive international success with Dark Side of the Moon. Historically therefore, they are of quite some importance. They catalogue not only the Barrett period but also the transitional experimental years when they got lost in space and wrote slightly scary songs about axes and grooving with Picts. Sound quality varies from “listenable” on the early Barrett sessions (the BBC wiped them and what survives is thanks to fan recordings off the air) to excellent mono on the 1968 to 1970 sessions, and the last “In Concert” recording from 1971 is in stereo.

BBC2 Look of the Week. BBC Television Centre, London, 14 May 1967
Fascinating Syd era performance of part of Pow R. Toc H., Astronomy Domine and interview. Musician and writer Hans Keller asks Roger Waters and a well-spoken and articulate Syd Barrett "Why does it all have to be so loud?" and then declares their music to be somewhat infantile, “A little bit of a regression to childhood. But after all, why not?”
Indeed.

Studio Sessions 1967 - 1969
1) Recorded September 25, 1967 at BBC Playhouse Theater. Broadcast October 1, 1967 (on Top Gear). Flaming / Scarecrow / Matilda Mother / The Gnome / Set The Controls / Reaction in G

2) Recorded December 20, 1967 at BBC Maida Vale Studios. Broadcast December 31, 1967 (on Top Gear). Pow R Toc H / Vegetable Man / Scream Thy Last Scream / Jugband Blues

3) Recorded June 25, 1968 at BBC 210 Piccadilly Studios. Broadcast August 11, 1968 (on Top Gear). Let There Be More Light / Murderistic Women (aka Careful with That Axe Eugene) / Julia Dream / The Massed Gadgets of Hercules (aka A Saucerful of Secrets)

4) Recorded December 2, 1968 at BBC Maida Vale Studios. Broadcast December 15, 1968 (on Top Gear). Point Me At the Sky / Embryo / Baby Blue Shuffle in D Major (aka The Narrow Way, Part 1) / Interstellar Overdrive

5) Recorded May 12, 1969 at BBC Paris Cinema. Broadcast May 14, 1969 (on Night Ride, then rebroadcast June 1, 1969 on Top Gear)
Daybreak (aka Grantchester Meadows) / Nightmare (aka Cymbaline) / The Beginning (aka Green is the Colour) / Beset By Creatures of the Deep (aka Careful With That Axe, Eugene) / The Narrow Way (Part Three)

"Lucifer Sam" Photo: David Mainwood

The first Barrett session at the BBC contains an early brisk version of Set The Controls and a snatch of the unreleased instrumental Reaction in G. The second session is perhaps the most interesting. Pow R Toc H has a slightly more jazz boogie inflected piano solo and demented Barrett guitar playing than the LP version. There are also the unreleased Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream (Old Woman with a Basket) which would have been singles had Syd stayed. However a month after this session was recorded the band “forgot” to pick him up on the way to a gig in Southampton. So Syd bows out here with a version of Jugband Blues where kazoos replace the brass band and Rick Wright provides a short eastern inflected psychedelic organ coda. After making it clear that he’s not here Syd asks, “And what exactly is a dream? And what exactly is a joke?” and then leaves us bereft to rue his madness.

Jugband Blues

Post Barrett the band was left without a major songwriter. However, it comes as no great surprise that they continued venturing into spacier and more pastoral areas as they’d already started to explore these themes in Interstellar Overdrive, Astronomy Domine, Pow R Toc H and Scarecrow.

So Julia Dream, on the first (June 1968) session without Barrett, leads us into languid idyllic summer dreamscapes of rivers, trees and meadows. I rather prefer the shorter (6:50) A Saucerful of Secrets (here called The Massed Gadgets of Hercules) as it cuts out some of the rather tedious arsing about on the LP version leaving the rather wistful finale more or less intact albeit with the voices somewhat buried in the mix.

Rick Wright has now become integral to the band’s sound. His ethereal layered keyboards lead us through a December 1968 session notable for a Barrettless Interstellar Overdrive with definite prog-rock tendencies, the flop single Point Me At the Sky and a very trippy Embryo.

On the May 1969 session the songs appear to be thematically connected and it is perhaps the most enjoyable set here. The band was developing an idea of turning some already existing songs into a piece called A Man and A Journey at this time. As Grantchester Meadows / Cymbaline / Green is the Colour / Careful With That Axe, Eugene / The Narrow Way (Part Three) segue musically and thematically into one another, this session seems to reveal the first signs of a desire to come up with a larger more integrated work. Again Wright dominates the sound as the band guide us through a layered audio mist to somewhere which, rather like on an old episode of Star Trek, seems to be another earth like planet but where all the people have mysteriously disappeared and you’re not quite sure what’s going to pop out from behind the bushes.

This last studio session seems to suggest that the band have surmounted Barrett’s loss and now have a few ideas of their own. It is also notable how much Rick Wright contributed to the band’s sound in these years. The sound of the Floyd in space owes an awful lot to his keyboard textures.

The 1968 - 1969 Sessions

In Concert 1970 and 1971
6) Recorded July 16, 1970 before a live audience at BBC Paris Cinema
The Embryo / Fat Old Sun / Green Is the Colour / Careful With That Axe, Eugene / If / Atom Heart Mother

7) Recorded September 30, 1971 before a live audience at BBC Paris Cinema
Fat Old Sun (long version) / One of These Days / The Embryo (later version) / Echoes / Blues Jam

Photo: David Mainwood

The July 16th 1970 show, introduced by the great John Peel, was the first of two one hour long “In Concert” live sessions to be recorded live at BBC Paris Cinema. Green Is the Colour is segued with Careful With That Axe, Eugene and Atom Heart Mother is performed in its entirety with choir and orchestra. To be honest I’ve never been impressed with AHM. It seems to spend its 25 odd minutes chasing its own tail and falling flat on its arse. Here is no exception.

The 1971 show is far superior and reveals a band now confident and mature. David Gilmour's guitar playing has become more prominent and tastefully compliments Wright's spacey textures. The extended version of Fat Old Sun is sublime even if it is a little restrained compared to later performances on the same tour. One of These Days really kicks into a groove and Echoes, although occasionally rather sluggish and not as polished as the studio version, is a far more successful creation than Atom Heart Mother. A much longer Embryo now comes with spooky sound effects and the band encore, as they usually did on the 1971 shows, with a straight 12 bar called Blues.

There are some gorgeous moments on this show (the extended guitar solo on Fat Old Sun especially) and it stands up well against the live half of Ummagumma. Along with the 1969 studio sessions it is some of the best music the band recorded in this rather underrated period between 1968 and 1971. These BBC sessions draw a superb outline of the band's work at a time when the Pink Floyd set off in search of deep space only to find themselves on the Dark Side of the Moon.

So yes, these BBC sessions definitely deserve a release, and as Hans Keller would have said, “But after all, why not?”

The September 30th 1971 show

Moonhead
Instrumental recorded for the BBC’s 'But what if it's made of green cheese'. Broadcast at 10pm on 20th July 1969 - the evening of the first moon landing.