The Meddle-Tini

It's been so long, friends!

Tiki T. here, reporting from the outer reaches of space. And let me tell you one thing...these Prog Rock Saturdays are makin' me thirsty! 

My recipe advisement for a "Meddle-Tini" is more loose interpretation than anything else. Since the weather is heating up so quickly, you should be making ingredients like limes, cucumbers, mint and vodka your best friends. 

Try making a "Moscow Mule" type drink in a mason jar if you have one on hand. A Siberian cocktail that well compliments the desolate landscapes of this kind of music. Ice, lots of wodka, splash of ginger beer, mint and limes. Kick back under the stars and sip yourself into oblivion while listening to "Echoes". 

Or perhaps good lemonade, vodka and a couple of cucumber slices. If that doesn't cool you down, then I just plain give up!

We've also been enjoying rum on the rocks with a sprig of mint for garnish. A promising new brand called "Bully Boy" (website) has just sprang up out of a Boston distillery. If you can get your paws on it, I'd recommend a taste. 

Well, until the next record, I suppose....

XO, 

Tiki T. 

Prog Rock Saturday: Meddle

Pink Floyd - Meddle (1971) - Harvest Records

Hello friends! 

Smoke 'em if you got 'em kids 'cuz tonight we're back for another Prog-Rock Saturday! 

On tap tonight is Pink Floyd's 1971 masterpiece, Meddle featuring some fine pre-Dark Side of the Moon psychedelic prog!  

The album opens with the sound of distant, swirling winds that are interrupted by the loud, thumping of a delay-driven bass line.  "One of These Days" is a crazy, intense and downright scary instrumental that mutates into a spacey jazz jam.  Sounding like a demon, drummer Nick Mason's slowed-down spoken word bit probably ruined a lot of good trips back in the day!    

From the intensity and future-sounding, "One of These Days", the album takes a much softer and melodic turn with the next two tracks-- featuring some excellent David Gilmour acoustic guitar work and vocals-- "A Pillow of Winds" and "Fearless".      

Side One concludes with two comparatively weak tracks, the Roger Waters' soft jazz, "San Tropez", and Gilmour's traditional blues, "Seamus".   

The crowning achievement of this LP is Side Two-- which is home to just one song-- the 23 minute epic, "Echoes".  Wow! is all we can say.  There's clicks & hisses, pinging & ponging, and quiet & loud parts.  Ambient and alien noises dance around a highly melodic series of verses about albatrosses, "labyrinths of coral caves" and a "million bright ambassadors of morning."  Not sure what the fuck is going on or what the song is about, but who cares?  Its PROG ROCK!

Meddle does what a good prog rock album should do and that is create an atmosphere, a landscape.  Its certainly not as intimidating or as musically-challenging as other prog rock classics, but its weird and moody and different-sounding enough to make it a classic in its own right!       

RATING: 4.5 idiots facing the crowd out of a possible 5  

You Asked For It!

Ferrante & Teicher - "You Asked For It!" (1966) - United Artists

Hello friends!

Our favorite dueling pianists are back with "You Asked for It!"-- a pretty straightforward living room lounge LP with lush arrangements and familiar cover songs. Not as experimentally-minded or exotic-sounding as some of their earlier records, but by the late 60's, lounge music became redundant and very vanilla.   

Their instrumental version of "You Don't Have to Say You Love Me" is pretty good, but how can you screw that song up?   Their original composition, the fast and frantic "Firebird" is probably the LP's highlight!  Glad to see the boys still have something in the tank.

Fun Fact: According to Stephen Davis in his book, Walk This Way: The Autobiography of Aerosmith, frontman Steven Tyler states that Arthur Ferrante & Louis Teicher would practice playing piano at his grandmother's house in New York while they were students at the Julliard School of Music!

"You cats know 'My Big Ten Inch'?"

RATING:  2.5 spaghetti nights at Grandma Tallarico's out of 5

Gettin' Lucky with Mr. Lucky!

Henry Mancini - "Music From Mr. Lucky" (1960) - RCA Victor

Hello you cool cats, 

Tonight, we're gettin' dressed up fancy-like and drinking some sparkling wine while listening to Henry Mancini's snazzy soundtrack to the short-lived television series, Mr. Lucky.  The TV series might have only of lasted 34 episodes, but the music on the soundtrack LP is timeless!

Mr. Lucky (CBS TV) Credits

A great listen, this album is more "jazz for the Sears crowd" as I like to call it-- a genre pretty much defined by Mancini.   

At the heart of each of the songs is an easy listening orchestration that's both smooth and familiar. Mancini then adds a jazz element to flesh out the tunes-- a pinch of bebop here, some walking bass lines there and a healthy dash of latin rhythms to boot.  Finally, some of the songs are punctuated by the grinding sharpness of a skating-rink organ making for some very swingin' stuff!   

Also, the album is produced by a guy named Dick Peirce.  How can you go wrong with a producer like that??  

RATING: 4 One Eyed Cats out of 5 

Bring a Nickel, Tap Your Feet

Creedence Clearwater Revival - "Willy and the Poor Boys" (1969) (Fantasy Records)

Hello friends,

We're cranking some Creedence tonight and we're loving every second of it!

This record has a real "hootenanny" feel to it!  Its as if John Fogerty & company are inviting us all to join them "down on the corner" for a good old fashioned jam session.  

(Maybe this was Fogerty's attempt at doing the down home American-version of Sgt Peppers... Thoughts?)

"Down on the Corner" opens the album and introduces us to the band's alter ego, Willy and the Poor Boys.

"It Came Out of the Sky" is a rockabilly rocker.  "Feelin' Blue" is a swampy blues jam.

"Cotton Fields" and "Midnight Special" are two Leadbelly covers.

"Fortunate Son" remains an all time great punk-protest song.  

"Side o' the Road" sounds like a classic Booker T & the M.G.'s instrumental.  

The album concludes with the dark and haunting ballad, "Effigy".  Fucking Effigy! With the plodding drums and swampy guitars this might be the band's best song-- which is really saying A LOT! 

Effigy - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrL00AxBNJk

Greatest American band of all time?  Quite possibly!

RATING: 5 fires burning on the palace lawn out of 5

Reconstruction of the Fables

R.E.M. - Fables of the Reconstruction (1985)

Hello friends,

The Reconstruction was a period in U.S. History-- from the end of the Civil War to 1877-- in which the Southern states tried to assimilate back into the Union.  On R.E.M.'s third album, entitled Fables of the Reconstruction, there's a band striving to sound slightly more "grown up" while still maintaining their independent and idealized southern roots.  Assimilate they did not.  

Like its predecessors, Fables is steeped in the sound and feel of America's (gothic) South.  There's more jangly & murky music interwoven with cryptic lyrics, themes & characters.   Making the occasional cameo are string quartets & horn sections (on "Feeling Gravitys Pull" and the single, "Cant Get There From Here", respectively.)

"When the world is a monster, bad to swallow you whole"

Like the best REM songs, deciphering the lyrics is like figuring out a puzzle!  There's a song about a comet, "Kohoutek"; migrant-workers, "Green Grow the Rushes"; an eccentric old timer, "Old Man Kensey"; and a train conductor, "Driver 8"-- which is probably the closest the band has gotten to a straight narrative up to this point.

"The power lines have floaters so the airplanes won't get snagged"

As usual, Peter Buck's guitar provides the perfect foil to Michael Stipe's twangy, surreal lyrics.  And Mike Mills and Bill Berry aren't just along for the ride.  Their rhythm section and harmonies provide the perfect complement to the larger landscape. Just listen to a song like "Life and How to Live It" and you'll see what I mean!

"My carpenter's out and running about, talking to the street"

Found a mint-condition copy of this LP recently at a flea market!  (Yay Flea Markets!!!)  Listening to this on vinyl on a warm spring night really took me me back to younger, simpler times.  I remember listening to this over and over again with headphones on trying to figure out what the lyrics were and what the songs were all about.  Now you can just Google things.  I suppose that's progress.  With all that time I would have saved, I could have been talking to girls!    

"When you greet a stranger, look at his shoes"

5 Man Ray kind of Skies out of a possible 5

(Hey that's three reviews in a row that are third albums!  Pretty neat!-- Ned)

Non-Stop

The Box Tops - Non-Stop (1968) (Bell Records)

Hello friends!

All aboard for Non-Stop, the third LP by Memphis's The Box Tops.  There's no chart-topping hits on this one but its a pretty decent sampling of late 60's blue-eyed soul.  

Young Alex Chilton sounds particularly gravel-voiced on this record; on "Yesterday Where's My Mind" it sound like he might be trying out for the Muppets!

Buried on side two is Chilton's first original Box Tops' composition, the bluesy "I Can Dig It".  Other songs are written by producer Dan Penn, Spooner Oldham, Eddie Hinton and Wayne Carson Thompson (who wrote the megahit, "The Letter" for the 'Tops a year earlier!) 

Overall, not a bad album, just nothing spectacular.  It's interesting for fans of Chilton to see where he was at this point in his career: post-"The Letter" fame and pre-Big Star obscurity.  

RATING: 3.5 Choo Choo Trains out of 5