Hey folks - there's a new blog in town. I've started a prog blog; for those of you who are so inclined, check it out at www.progplace.blogspot.com

Thespacebaronmylaptop(fromwhichIusuallyblog)isbroken.UnlessIdecidetobecometheJamesJoyceofbloggingI'llhavetogetitfixed.

SSA listening session:
Those daring, discreet, dormouses of popular culture assembled yet again to disseminate vinyl obscurities. Though only two members of the canny cabal were able to be present, the primo selections were many, as seen below:

Santa Fe - I'm Leaving (Santa Fe LP)
Dewey - Rainbow Level (Callin' It Quits LP)
Dewey - Creole (Callin' It Quits LP)
Mason Bricke - Janie (Mason Bricke LP)
Eric Hysteric - I Wanna be a Kid Forever (45)
Eric Hysteric - Fool Around (45)
Dust and Ashes - Ballad of a Recluse (The Lives We Share LP)
Harumi - Talk About It (Harumi LP)
Daddy Longlegs - Gambling Man (Oakdown Farm LP)
Forum Quorum - Monologue (Forum Quorum LP)
Seguin - Refus Global (Festin D'Amour LP)
The Tea Company - Come & Have Some Tea With Me (Come & Have Some Tea With...LP)
Providence - Mountain (Ever Sense the Dawn LP)
White Witch - Dwellers of the Threshold (White Witch LP)
Ecology - We're All in this Together (Environment/Evolution LP)
The Limit - Do It (45)
The Staton Brothers Band - I Need to be Alone (Staton Brothers Band LP)
Self Control - Elastic (45)
Wolfe - Ballad of the Unloved (Wolfe LP)
Faceless - Slut (Fake EP)
Patrick Vian - Tunnel 4, Red Noise (Bruits et Temps Analogues LP)
Logarhythms - Coffee (45)
Positive Noise - Charm (45)
Freiwillige Selbstkontrolle - Im Westen Nix Neues (45)
Artful Dodger - Who in the World (Babes on Broadway LP)
I Nuovi Angeli - Frangipane Antonio (Anna da Dimenticare LP)
The Eloise Trio - Shake, Shake Senora (The Eloise Trio LP)
Abwarts - Roboter in der Nacht (45)
Oxpetals - What Can You Say (Oxpetals LP)
Tom Northcott - Crazy Jane (Upside Downside LP)

PS - as always, if anybody would like further info on any of these artists or tracks, feel free to contact me.

I've got to get through the bulk of this batch of records so I can move on to other stuff, so here we go, down and dirty.

The Eloise Trio - s/t

Eloise is the singer/guitarist in this Bahamian calypso trio. I'm guessing this album is from the early-to-mid-'60s. It's got a lot of calypso standards like "Zombie Jamboree (Belly to Belly)" and "Shake Senora," but also some original tunes penned by Eloise, who strums a hollow-body electric guitar and sings, with bass and maracas adding minimal but effective lilt. There are even a couple of tunes where she throws in some weird semi-dissonant chords that turn the ear in an interesting way and almost seem like a primitive attempt at jazz harmony.


Providence - Ever Sense the Dawn

Interesting. I never heard anything quite like this before, sort of a folk/baroque/prog group. I forget where they're from, Colorado maybe? They're definitely American. Apparently they toured with the Moody Blues in the mid-'70s, and this is on the Moodies own label, Threshold. Excellent singing, playing and arrangements. There's a touch of Moodies folk-rock-pop-prog here and there, but they definitely had their own style, with more classical chops (and compositional sensibilities) than you usually find in prog-oriented bands no matter how much they ape classical tradition.


Mudcrutch - Depot St. 45

This single is (please correct me if I'm wrong) as far as I know the only recording by Mudcrutch, who made the 45 for Leon Russell's Shelter label in the mid-'70s. Shortly thereafter, the band would change it's name to Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and you know the rest. What does it sound like? Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers! Surprise! Except with a lower recording budget. And the A side even hints at a reggae undercurrent.


Positive Noise - Charm 45

In between being a scritchy-scratchy, doomy Wire/Gang of 4-like post-punk band led by singer Ross Middleton (with two other Middleton brothers in the group, if I remember right), and becoming a slick, peppy synth pop dance band (who also had some fine moments nevertheless), Scotland's Positive Noise was a groovy, arty, PiL-inspired post-punk-dance-rock band. The A side is them at their peak, with very effective horns and a moody production that's nevertheless full of forward motion. If you care, Middleton left after this to form Leisure Process with new-wave sax sessionman Gary Barnacle. Ironically they sounded pretty similar to the latter-day synth-pop sound of Positive Noise, and had a minor hit in the UK (I think) with "Love Cascade," which is worth checking out.

Time out for some good clean literary fun:

Look, I liked High Fidelity as much as the next guy, but Nick Hornby is clearly out of control. Not content with being a pop novelist with a musical inclination, he's got it in his head that he's a bona fide music critic. Problem is, he's both a stultifying aesthetic dullard and a dangerously reactionary/neo-conservative polemicist. His recent piece in the Times was just too much to bear, so I was delighted to see it gleefully dissected by the estimable Sasha Frere-Jones on his blog. Not to be a spoiler, but my personal favorite moment is: "if you're looking for someone who can't confront or discern the present moment, there is no greater spokesbaldy than Nick "Mojo Magazine Invented Me In a Diabolical Laboratory And Now They Can't Kill Me" Hornby. "

You'll laugh, you'll cry, etc.

http://sfj.abstractdynamics.org/archives/002997.html#more

(sorry, I don't think I can make html links here, just paste the address into your browser)

OK, continuing with my hit-and-run roundup of new arrivals:

Rip Rig & Panic - I Am Cold

I don't know why more of a fuss isn't made over this band, what with the early-'80s revival and all. They were a UK group that mixed avant-garde jazz, funk, pop, and post-punk in an extremely distinctive and exciting melange. Neneh Cherry was the singer and her dad Don dropped in now and then to play some trumpet. Imagine a cross between ESG and the Art Ensemble of Chicago, with one crucial thing a lot of funky post-punk types lacked: a sense of humor.

60,000,000 Buffalo - Nevada Jukebox

Despite having one of the all-time great band names and a great singer, these guys don't do much for me. I picked it up because the singer/co-songwriter was Judy Roderick, who made a fantastic acoustic folk-blues album in the '60s, Woman Blue, the kind of thing that prefigures not only Lucinda Williams but Bonnie Raitt. If I remember right, she died young, and I don't THINK she made another solo album, but apparently she was a member of this group in the early '70s. Other than the godawful drummer (I believe it was Robert Christgau who said that good drummers were hard to find in the hippie era), the band is good, and the songs hold up pretty well, but stylistically it's just too blues-rock for me, I can't hang with that kind of thing. I was hoping it would be a little more countryish or something.

Andy Kim - Rainbow Ride

Props to my man Bill Z for turning me on to this one (and finding a one-dollar copy for me!). Andy Kim is a Montreal-born singer and songwriter who came to the States to be a tunesmith, and he co-wrote "Sugar Sugar" with Jeff Barry, as well as a few songs for the Monkees and others. He had a couple of AM pop hits on own in the late-'60s/early '70s (though the only thing on his Greatest Hits album that i recognize by name is the rather icky "Rock Me Gently"). HOWEVER....somewhere along the way (1969 to be exact), he made his "heavy" album. Now those who've read this blog diligently know how much I love records where mainstream pop artists get all groovy and psychedelic, so on that score alone this would be a no-brainer for me. The thing is, even beyond that, there's just some really great stuff on here. The songs move from soft-psych ballads to catchy pop-rockers, and there are even a couple of grittier, heavier tracks. Both the songwriting (Barry lends a hand) and the singing are on point, and the requisite psychedelic effects are judiciously sprinkled throughout. Hands-down winner though, is "Nobody's Ever Going Anywhere," a mid-tempo folk-rock tune that's sort of like Dylan in a really bad mood, or Leonard Cohen with a bug up his ass. It's a mordant, existential ballad that sarcastically bemoans both the political climate and our place in the universe. Against all odds, it's pithy, (intentionally) funny, and downright catchy. Jeez, I might have to cover this thing.

OK, as promised I'll continue the quick run-throughs of my most recent acquisitions:

Charles Ives - Piano Sonata No. 1 (Nonesuch, 196?)

Ives wrote two piano sonatas, and this is supposedly the lesser known of them, though it's certainly not for lack of quality. Presented in solo-piano format, it moves through some widely contrasting sections, injecting/subverting/deconstructing the melodies from a number of hymns along the way, and using the kind of precocioiusly unconventional structures and harmonies that are Ives's stock in trade. Full of passion, humor, and knotty, very American brilliance.

Seguin - Festin D'Amour

I picked this up as part of my ongoing French-Canadian psych/folk/prog preoccupation (and it only cost about two dollars). It turns out to be a prime example of mid-'70s Montreal folk-psych, mostly acoustic but very richly arranged, with a gentle folk feel that's uniquely French-Canadian. Not unlike a Gallic Pentangle.

Ecology - Environment/Evolution

I picked this up because I found out that it included late Blue Things frontman Val Stoecklein (whose lone solo album is nothing to sneeze at either, but that's a story for another time). Given that it was obviously a hippie concept album about--you guessed it--ecology, and that Stoecklein was not the primary songwriter, I steeled myself for a possible trainwreck of gargantuan proportions. However, I was delightfully surprised. It's not unlike what the Blue Things might have sounded like if they'd stuck around for a couple more years, which is to say somewhat Byrdsy folk-rock with some country flavoring and a few psych touches, with excellenting singing, songwriting, and production.

Bill Cowsill - Nervous Breakthrough

This was one of the biggest dissapointments of the bunch. Most of you probably know that Billy "Bud" Cowsill was part of the briefly famous sunshine-pop family group the Cowsills, who had a couple of big hits and were the model for the Partridge Family. That's an interesting enough history on its own, but considerably fewer people know that in the '80s Billy moved to Canada and started the Blue Shadows, one of the best roots-rock bands of the era, who made one fantastic album (On the Floor of Heaven) and then seemingly vanished, as far as I can tell. From the cover I was expecting this to be some kind of quirky, post-hippie country-rock album, but instead it's a totally bland singer-songwriter record with no good songs and some downright embarrassing cover tunes. Sorry, Bill.

Kensington Market - Avenue Road

Canadians again, but not Frenchies this time. The first of two albums by this late-'60s band, this is rather Beatlesque, harmony-laden pop-rock with a fair number of ballads but a few rockers for good measure, and some really high-quality songwriting and musicianship. Eugene Martynec, who would soon become ubiquitous on the Candian music scene, playing with Bruce Cockburn and others, is the lead guitarist.

More to come soon!