Vinyl: Lamonte Young, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Spooks in Space…
First, LPs – one old and one new. Since 2006, Eleh have released nine limited edition vinyl only lps of pure sine wave drones, using a vintage analogue synthesiser and test tube oscillators. They are in the tradition of pioneers like LaMonte Young, Terry Riley, Charlemagne Palestine and Pauline Oliveros (with whom they have collaborated on “The Beauty of the Steel Skeleton”/”Drifting Depths” (2008). Their second album, “Floating Frequences/ Intuitive Synthesis II” (2007) – tagged ‘Pure Tone. Pure Sound. Pure Analog’ – contains three tracks that explore the very low end of the sonic spectrum: ‘Black Mountain 1933′ and ‘Pulsing Tone: Study of Seven Sine Waves Pts 1 & 2′. As their slogan goes, ‘volume reveals detail’: turn them up and you get a sound as hypnotic and psychoactive as any LaMonte Young installation – like the one I saw at the Dia Foundation in 1989: ‘The Romantic Symmetry (over a 60 cycle base)’. Eleh are almost as hermetic as Young, giving no interviews and releasing limited vinyl only editions that go out of print almost as soon as they are issued – for more details, go to http://www.importantrecords.com/
Quicksilver’s third record, “Shady Grove” – which I’ve just returned to after years of neglect – is routinely ignored, but I prefer it to “Happy Trails”. After the departure of founder member Gary Duncan, the group added famed British session pianist Nicky Hopkins – famous for his work with the Rolling Stones and the Kinks, who wrote “Session Man” in his honour – and recorded this strange, discursive album over the summer of 1969. Each side begins with a solid rock number: “Shady Grove” is an early entrant in the ‘message from the country’ song stakes (see also, Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi” and “Woodstock”, Canned Heat “Going Up The Country”, Steve Miller Band’s “Going To The Country”), while “Joseph’s Coat” is super-psychedelic – a biblical parable layered with chant-like vocals, weird mutterings, a soaring John Cipollina solo, and electronic whooshes. The four ballads – two of which were written or co-written with Denise Jewkes, from the all-female band Ace of Cups – slowly reveal a serpentine, if not sensitive charm. There are another couple of rambling rockers: “Three or Four Feet From Home”, written by John Cipollina, and “Holy Moly”, written by long-standing collaborator. Nick Gravenites. And the finale, the instrumental “Edward, the Mad Shirt Grinder” is – for better or worse – a track that could only have been made in the late sixties: a mad, pell-mell piano/ guitar dash that twists and turns for nearly ten minutes. Complete with a green-saturated fold-out sleeve by George Hunter’s Globe Propaganda, “Shady Grove” made the US top 30 and stayed on the charts for over two months. That was it for that version of Quicksilver: Gary Duncan returned with Dino Valenti in tow, and from then on the group record was dominated by Valenti’s, shall we say, idiosyncratic vocals and lyrics. Like all the other first wave SF acts, they then started to make bad records and didn’t stop for several years.
There’s a great mix 12″ from 1981 that predates the commercial release of what’s usually regarded as the first cut-up rap tune: Grandmaster Flash’s “Adventures on the Wheels of Steel”. Released on Just Eyes and Teeth Records, “The Amazing Adventures of Jungle Jenny” by Spooks in Space is a sixteen minute jam – loosely based on the Tom Tom Club’s “Genius of Love” – that mixes in snatches of records by Kurtis Blow, James Brown, Timmy Thomas, Isaac Hayes – of course, “Theme From Shaft”, Jimmy ‘Bo’ Horne’s brilliant “Spank”, D-Train’s “You’re The One For Me” among many others. It reminds you of how great dance music was in the early eighties – the sense of play, fun, exploration and sheer kineticism (for more, see the “Dreams Come True” compilation) as well as being a time capsule of the break records du jour. Oh, and it has phasing. I’ve just checked discogs.com and you can pick this up fairly cheaply.
On to 45′s: Sharon Tandy’s “Hold On” (1967) is an acknowledged sixties classic that has been released on several cd’s – including Ace’s brand new, excellent compilation “Girls With Guitars” but the original Atlantic 45 is super-crunchy: a fantastic mixture of soul flash, psych guitar and Tandy’s cool but assertive vocal. You can hear the greased fingers hit the guitar strings, and the drums go right through you. Considering how constrained many female singers were in the sixties, it’s great to hear Tandy’s warning words of encouragement: ‘I can help you hold on/everything you do is wrong’. She was backed on this near-hit by freakbeat band Fleur De Lys, all of whose singles – especially “Circles” and “Gong With The Luminous Nose” – are great (and are collected on the “Reflections” cd).
Before his 70′s career as backwoods minimalist, J.J.Cale was a jobbing musician on the Sunset Strip: his first single for Liberty Records, “It’s A Go Go Place”, sought to ride the then prevalent Johnny Rivers trend. Released later in 1966, “Outside Lookin’ In” is a different beast altogether: a hypnotic slice of paranoia dominated by an almost reggae style, off-beat rhythm guitar and droning bass. The drones continue on the flip, “In Our Time”, with its weird mumbling vocal rounds. You should be able to pick this one up without difficulty – a forgotten document from the Strip at its height, caught between The Whisky A Go Go and The Trip. (For more, read Domenic Priore’s illustrated history, “Riot On Sunset Strip”).
You could play it next to another 1966 45, by an unknown Texan group called Yesterday’s Obsession. Produced by Huey P. Meaux (best known for his hit records with the Sir Douglas Quintet), “The Phycle” is a punk/mystical masterpiece. There’s a snare snap, a rolling bass and a youth coming on like the old man of the mountains as the Farfisa curls like incense smoke: ‘I have this peace/ Inside of me/ That’s lasted for/ A thousand years’. Unlike many records that sought to reproduce the initial impact of LSD, this is restrained: the wildness of the lyrics is always threatening to break out in the music but never does. And there is a strange hint of the acid mind control that would come: ”the others watch me/ As I clear the webs away/ And give them some/ Collecting all their eyes….’ The flip, “Complicated Mind”, is more standard folk rock, with more strange tales of hell rather than heaven: ‘We must be saved/Brains enslaved/ Nerves full of holes/ Complicated mind is Strange/ Unnecessary illness dominates the will’.
Published the same month (March 1967) that “The Velvet Underground and Nico” was released, Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium Is The Message” became an instant bestseller and has become a key text. Columbia Records quickly rushed out an LP of McLuhan and his colleagues Fiore and Jerome Agel reading selections from the book, which is a very high sixties product with people talking at and over each other, added found noises and distortion – which should be reissued (for more, see Johnny Trunk’s eloquent article in Mojo May 2009). The whole point was simultaneity. There was also a promo 45, which culled selected five and ten second spots for DJ’s with locked grooves (just like the Velvet Underground flexi in Aspen’s POP issue, “Loop”) with visionary/ critical slogans: ‘everything we do is music’.
