Thursday, September 13, 2007

listening this week...

...to the fruits of a particularly rewarding half price run, and a further dip into teague's deep well of japrock goodness.

ray charles live in concert: i owned this when i was a snotnose too young to fully appreciate it, but this '64 tape from l.a.'s shrine auditorium stands with james brown live at the apollo and b.b. king live at the regal among the finest recorded examples of black showbiz from r&b's classic era. i especially like the fact that the guy who was running the board turns up brother ray's vocal mic a couple of words into "what'd i say" and they left it on the rekkid. that wouldn't happen today.

patti smith -- horses: what i like best about early noo yawk punk is that it doesn't all sound alike. i wasn't speerchully evolved enough to hear this when they usedta play it on nyc fm radio back in '76 (not enough loud gtrs and she seemed like too much the art-creep), but i'm here to tell ya today that the track "land" is _the goods_. and john cale gets the same pristine studio sound on thisun that he'd previously applied to the stooges, which is why both that and this sound so modern today (compared with the arena-slick production jobs some of patti's subsequent albs, which haven't aged as well).

kinks -- lola vs. powerman and the moneygoround: title hit notwithstanding, this ain't the pinnacle of "classic" ('66-'70) kinkdom; the last three songs on side two kinda blow, in fact. and christgau's right about it being the most self-pitying of kinks albs (subject matter: ray's trials 'n' tribs with the music biz). but it does contain four of ray 'n' dave's finest: "strangers," "get back in the line," "this time tomorrow," and "a long way from home." and the rockers ("top of the pops" and dave's "rats") sound _feelthy_. it's only a matter of time before i find the three-disc mono-'n'-stereo-plus-rarities village green preservation society online for cheap, i swear...

boredoms -- vision creation new sun: thisun sounds like less of a goof than some of their earlier recs; instead, it's an explosion of noisy, messy, percussion-heavy psychedelic chaos that's still less sprawling and more varied and event-filled than, say, yr average acid mothers temple sonic bath. figure this is a good way to vibe up for friday's show with kamandi.

death comes along: the title "psychedelic inferno" (which applies to three of the four tracks on this shadowy 'n' mysterious outfit's '01 outing) is apropos. the 19-minute lead track's orgy of fuzzed-out gtr and echoplex frenzy is evocative of the nightmare soundscape hendrix soundalike randy hansen came up with for coppola's apocalypse now soundtrack. installments 2 and 3 feature blitzkriegs of synth noise and amateur throat-singing.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home