Ok, today I promised myself I’d have a few things to say about what I actually listen to on a regular basis (as opposed to what I USED to listen to ages ago). So here goes.
I have no problem declaring this album, unconditionally, a classic. What happy, complex, funky fun this whole CD is! If you like upbeat grooves that don’t take themselves too seriously (Koop, 9-Lazy-9, De-Phazz, Tosca, Ursula-1000), you’ll love this. They’ve taken a page from ’60s pop, thrown in some lush beats that might have been laid down by Manu Chao (while Yonderboi was visiting the studio) and laid down a batch of sweet tracks that can bear the weight of a ton of replay. Well done, guys.
Real drums!!! Or should I say, Real Drummer! So many "electronic" albums get tiresome in about 15 seconds because their creators rely (quite deliberately) on one bar loops. Nothing wrong with trance music; just don’t pretend it’s interesting outside the realm of tech musak. Anyway, "Amateur Girlfriends" has been on my Top 3 groove list for months. Real drums (down to swishy snare brushes), sweeping symphonic themes… In Canada, why can’t I get the latest (The Donca Matic Singalongs) from these two musical powerhouses? Do I have to hop a kayak to Norway? What the hell?? Enough jazz to keep the St.Germain fans happy and plenty of edge – so the Fluke and Juno Reactor crowd will want to crank it. If they were playing in my town I’d be first in line for tickets, sit front and center and be in the throes of ecstasy with every groove.
The best tracks are, hands down, "Psychedelic Jazz" and "Kisskiss". The latter could have been ripped straight from Nicholas Repac’s Swing-Swing: low-fi 1920s baby-voiced blues singer, funky beat, addictive as crack. Psychedelic Jazz is an animal all to itself. One of the best modern pieces for a quiet moment that I’ve heard in a long while. Those two tracks were worth the import price, big time. On the downside, I found my attention drifting during the rest of the album. I spent waaay too many hours listening to the Lounge on Radio Free Virgin, and too many tracks on Rough Cuts hit me as compitent but… uh… unrememberable. Excellent dinner music, rather than something you’d pay to enjoy at a concert.
This one goes in the bag with Xploding Plastix. Real drums and echee-karumba, does this guy know how to play ‘em. Horns to die for. Killer orchestration that has "Carefully Composed!" sprayed on from one end of the CD to the other. You like bass? This’ll have your woofers slamming you into the couch cushions. Beats that make you want to get out the vacuum just so you can dance with it? You betcha.
Ok, I’m on a retro kick today. So shoot me.
Around 1972, a friend came back from a holiday in Italy with tales of the popularity of this singer, Demis Roussos, who apparently had black hair down to his ass and performed in a floor length black cloak. Sounded cool, so next time I was at Opus 69 (the only record store in E-town that sold imports), I asked about it. The guy had a demo copy of a double album behind the counter with this singer on it. "Aphrodite’s Child – 666". I gave a few tracks a listen and couldn’t believe my ears. I pleaded and begged and though he wanted it for the store, he let me buy it. Holy shit… it changed my idea of what music could be. It was the Gothic Rock Art Holy Grail that Led Zeppelin, Genesis and Van Der Graaf Generator were trying to attain and all fell short of. I tell you, this thing rocked my world. Sad to say it’s a bit dated these days, but that isn’t to say someone couldn’t take the non-dated 90% and redo it with modern instrumentation.
Vangelis was the mastermind behind this masterpiece and he’s been hard pressed to write anything as good since. ("Earth" comes close, but nothing else is even in the ballpark. Trust me, I kept buying and hoping for two damn decades.)
Where do I start trying to talk about this thing? "The Wedding of the Lamb", "The Four Horsemen", "Altamont", the Infinity track… it just doesn’t stop. Iconic greatness in every note. And then… holy shit… he ends it up with the greatest rock art orchestral track of all time: "All the Seats Were Occupied". The thing was so much larger than my little 15 year old brain I think I grew an extra lobe just to take it all in.
The lead singer made this album for me. The guy’s name is Howard Werth, and he’s got one of those killer rock voices that’s like a hard edged melding of Robert Plant and the lead singer for Alabama 3 (the guys who did the theme song for The Sopranos). The title track is twice as good as anything else on the LP, blending Ian Anderson-type flute, David Jackson-like sax and a Southern blues edge that’s almost as dark as the first Black Sabbath. Well, maybe that’s overstating it a bit. But back when the hardest folk was Jethro Tull and Roy Harper, this was a great addition. Oh, yeah, and the album cover alone is worth the price of admission.
The hippie album to end all hippie albums. There are tracks on here that were burned into my brain with a cattle brand in 1970 and they’re still smoking. Cedric Smith has such a smooth, solid voice he could melt the gold fillings right out of your head. Anthemic folk tunes, Dylan Thomas, great guitar playing, sound effects and general goofiness. What would these guys have done if they weren’t stoned? Or did the whole thing come about because they were stoned? Don’t care. A Canadian classic that in one effortless track makes Leonard Cohen’s entire opera seem like too much work. "The goddess Fantasia / Bore a child of whimsy…"
