Longtime Yes-bassist Chris Squire passed away this past weekend. "The Fish" was the only member of the band to play on every single record that they released in all their various forms. In fact, Yes have some scheduled shows later on this summer and it will mark the first time the band ever takes the stage without their founding member and bassist. Chris Squire, his ethereal harmonies and thudding Rickenbacker bass lines, will be missed. Godspeed Starship Trooper!
Another great song and another cool video by the rocking German duo, The Picturebooks! A band we really like, we just hope they don't turn into The Black Keys!
This clip of The Faces is taken from concert filmed in 1971 on the BBC television program, "Sounds for Saturday". Great song by a great, great band! Won't need to much pursuading I don't mean to sound degrading But with a face like that You got nothing to laugh about... Ouch!
Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 - "Look Around" (1967) - A & M Records
Hola Friends, The weather is getting warming and tropical drinks are flowing! There's nothing like some Sergio Mendes to spruce up some fancy patio cocktails! Look Around is the third album by Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 and probably represents the band at their peak. It features Mendes as organist and arranger, jazzman John Pisano on guitar, Bob Matthews on bass, Joao Palma & Jose Soares providing the drums and percussion, and the dynamic duo of Janis Hansen and Lani Hall (aka Mrs. Herb Alpert) sharing vocal duties. Its an album full of upbeat, user-friendly bossanova favorites that pairs perfectly with a tall and frosty caipirinha. There's a swinging, Brazilian bachelor pad cover of the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends"; a snappy version of Gilberto Gil's "Roda"; an english version ("Like A Lover") of the Brazilian standard, "O Cantador"; a tropicalia take on the David-Bacharach classic, "The Look of Love"; and two Mendes originals, "So Many Stars" & "Look Around." It feels like Carnival tonight at the Vinyl in the Valley headquarters! Now if I could just figure out how to give myself a Brazilian wax... RATING: 3.5 like a lover the river wind sighs and ripples its fingers through your hair out of 5
Jeepers... I'll be the first to admit that the term "genius" is thrown around far too readily these days, but when it comes to Tonetta, its undeniable!
Some genius decided to take Martin Denny's version of "Misirlou" and set it to a scene from Fritz Lang's 1959 adventure film, The Indian Tomb. It's diabolically sexy and borderline unbelievable! Take that Tarantino...
By the way, the brunette hottie performing the snake dance is Debra Paget who also appeared in Cecil B. Demille's The Ten Commandments & Elvis Presley's film debut, Love Me Tender. Give this girl an Oscar!
Procol Harum - Procol Harum (1967) - Deram Records
Hello Friends,
We're skipping the light fandango tonight on Vinyl in the Valley!
Our first album to kick off another Summer of Prog Rock Saturdays is Procol Harum's self-titled, debut LP.
Now this is definitely more of a proto-prog record than the more traditional progressive rock of the likes of Yes, King Crimson or Genesis. The songs here are relatively short and digestible, and the musical arrangements are interesting, but not overly complex. Most of the songs here follow a traditional blues structure, but with heavy Classical influences and lots of big, almost otherworldly, organ sounds playing throughout. The lyrics, too, seem to be coming from another world with loads of psychedelic, mythological (demonic?) and death-inspired imagery. One can even make a solid argument that Procol Harum's first single and most well-known song, "A Whiter Shade of Pale", is one of the earliest examples of what would eventually become progressive rock.
"Her face at first just ghostly, turned a whiter shade of pale..." A great song, that may or may be about a girl dying from a drug overdose or the band playing a closing number at a slow dance in some haunted netherworld, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" is to the late sixties what Glenn Miller's "Moonlight Serenade" was to the late 30's & early 40's. Its instantly recognizable and familiar. There's no doubting from what era the music comes from when you hear those first few notes. If we were making a movie and wanted to flashback to a hippie party in 1967, we'd probably use "Whiter Shade"; just like if we wanted to film a slow dance scene between a WWII GI and his girl the night before he ships out, we no doubt would use a few bars of "Moonlight Serenade". Good thing we're better at slinging back drinks than we are at making movies, kids! "She Wandered Through The Garden Fence" is a whimsical blues that sounds a little like Steve Winwood recording a song on Piper at the Gates of Dawn (which, incidentally was released just a month before this LP!) Actually, there's a lot points on the record where the singer and pianist, Gary Brooker, sounds A LOT like Traffic-era Stevie Winwood! Death makes another appearance on "Something Following Me", a slow, soulful blues tune about a guy wandering around 42nd Street as he keeps seeing his own "engraved marble" tombstone following him around. The borderline-annoying "Mabel" actually sounds like something Ray Davies might have perfected a few years later on Muswell Hillbillys. "More slide-whistle!" said no one, ever. Side One concludes with the five-minute psychedelic death trip "Cerdes (Outside the Gates Of)" which features unicorns, mermaids & some downright dirty Hammond organ playing and guitar soloing (courtesy of Matt Fisher & Robin Trower, respectively.) "Cerdes" is the Goofus to "White Shade of Pale"'s Gallant. Its dark & trippy, loose & foreboding and features non-sensical lyrics like: Phallus Phil tries peddling his pewter painted pot But Sousa Sam can only hear the screams of Peep the Sot Who only sips his creme de menthe from terra cotta cups And exhales menthol scented breath whilst spewing verbiage up Yowsa! We'll have what he's having! On Side Two the weirdness continues, kicking off with the sludgy, "A Christmas Camel", a song about amazon brides, Santa Claus, Arabian sheikhs and "madmen in top hats and tails impal[ing] themselves on six inch nails." Hey kids, DO NOT put this on your next Christmas Cocktail Party playlist! The great, "Conquistador" is next. Here they are performing it on German TV in 1976.
The psychedelic "Kaleidoscope" and blue-eyed soulful "Salad Days (are here again)" follow and the record concludes with the satanic sounding instrumental, "Repent Walpurgis". A great, organ-heavy instrumental featuring some more bleeding Hammond organ and note-shredding guitar soloing.
This leads us to a couple of questions, were Procol Harum the first rock & roll band to employ both piano parts and organ parts into their songs? Seems like a simple enough idea now, but at the time that lineup (guitar, bass, drums, piano & organ) had to be a pretty far out concept!
Also kids, there's got to be something Satanic with this band, right? From the weird, ghostly cover art to the fucked up lyrics throughout, these guys have definitely conjured a demon or two at some point, no? Even their name, Procol Harum, loosely translates to "Beyond these things" in Latin aka the devil's language! On 1969's A Salty Dog LP, they would even record a song called, "The Devil Came From Kansas".
Well, we're convinced!
Hail Satan! RATING: 4 Vestal Virgins Who Were Leaving For the Coast out of 5
Wow! We're not really sure where to start with this sucker!
Todd Rundgren's Utopia started out in the mid-1970's as a progressive rock band formed to pretty much allow the studio savant/infamous control-freak Rundgren to work more in a collaborative band-setting. The intention, I guess, was to be as different as possible from the "Hello It's Me"/"I Saw The Light" jangly pop nuggets that Rundgren had huge success with in the early 70's. Utopia would allow him to break out of the soft rock/pop rock mold, allow him to utilize more complex song arrangements, more elaborate live stage shows and help keep his ego in check (presumably!)
By the late 70's, Utopia (now a quartet) fully abandoned its proggy roots to become a full-fledged pop band that fused art rock, power pop, new wave and even disco styles. Basically they were on their way to becoming "Todd Rundgren for the MTV Crowd". But things came to a screeching halt of sorts with the 1980 release, Deface the Music, a thirteen song, 30 minute long record whose sole purpose was to parody the Beatles.
It comes off sounding a lot like a Todd Rundgren pet project (see 1976's Faithful), a little too clever for its own good. To call it overindulgent would not be an understatement. The main problem is that as a parody, its just not that funny. Much of the joke is lost on the listener and the best that can be said about a lot of the songs is that they sound like a second-rate Jellyfish or a third-rate Wings. Deface the Music is certainly no Rutles! Its no Weird Al! Its no B Sharps! No Fad 3! Side One seems to mostly parody the Beatles merseybeat days up through the Help!-era. Things get kicked off with the album's first single, "I Just Want To Touch You"...
Side Two gets slightly more interesting with nods to more psychedelic tunes. "Hoi Poloi" is a tip of the hat to "Penny Lane". "Life Goes On" is a synthy send-up of "Eleanor Rigby". "Feel Too Good" sounds like a mash-up of Sgt. Peppers' "Getting Better" & "Fixing A Hole". "All Smiles" sounds like vintage Queen!?! And the final song, "Everybody Else Is Wrong" is Utopia's answer to "I Am The Walrus".
I guess the best you can say about this record is that pretty much the whole time we were listening to it, it just made us appreciate the actual Beatles even more!
Yawn.
RATING: 2.5 you can lead a horse to water, you can lead a lamb to slaughters out of 5
