This is a long one friends!
From the excellently-named album, "Girls in Peacetime Want To Dance" from Glasgow's Belle & Sebastian.
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Wednesday, July 29, 2015
Friday, July 24, 2015
The Easybeats - "Friday On My Mind" (1966)
TGIF Friends,
Is there a better way to get pumped up for a Friday night than with The Easybeats?
Doubt it.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, July 22, 2015
Black Lips - "Funny" (2014)
Hello Friends,
Great song from Hotlanta's own, Black Lips.
Modern Garage Rock at its best!
"Funny" is from their 2014 release, Underneath the Rainbow. Enjoy!
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Nothing more than feelings...
Morris Albert - "Feelings" (1975) - RCA Records
Hello Friends,
Morris Albert's "Feelings" was one of the 1970's biggest soft rock hits. His debut record, a Seventies Solid Gold gem, is the perfect foil for an oppressively humid, swampy summer evening like we're having tonight.
Dubonnets on ice all around!
Brazilian-born Morris Albert is pretty much a first ballot inductee in the One Hit Wonder Hall of Fame. "Feelings" was a HUGE international hit in the 70's and was covered by artists as diverse as Nina Simone and Glen Campbell. "Feelings" would be Albert's lone brush with fame and, in most circles, is considered the ultimate 1970's party killer. "Aw shit, is that Feelings? I think its time to go!"
Luckily, these are not our circles!
The rest of the album is a pretty milquetoasty affair. "Sweet Loving Man" is the follow-up hit that never was. "Come to My Life" and "The World Today Is A Mess" sound kinda like 70's era Elvis. Songs like "Falling Tears" (our favorite track) and "Where is the Love of the World" sound a little like early Bee-Gees(!). For the most part the record sounds like second-rate Bread (Stale Bread, amiright?) with a Latin-flair thrown in for good measure.
Actually a better description would be its more like a Jose Feliciano record without the cool covers and great finger-picking.
Still, the title of "one hit wonder" is viewed mockingly by some which we think is wrong! How many international hits do you have?
RATING: 3.5 teardrops rolling down on my face trying to forget my feelings of love out of 5
Friday, July 17, 2015
Yo La Tengo - "Friday I'm In Love" (2015)
Happy Friday Friends!
Here's a new video by seminal indie rockers Yo La Tengo covering The Cure's "Friday I'm In Love".
Great cover and even better video!
TGIF Friends, amiright?
TGIF Friends, amiright?
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
Ghost - "Cirice" (2015)
Hello Friends,
Everyone's favorite Swedish ghouls are back with a new song from their forthcoming third record, Meliora.
Cool video... reminds us more than a little of Carrie, but that's probably what everyday life is like in Linkoping anyways!
Enjoy!
Enjoy!
Saturday, July 11, 2015
Prog Rock Saturday: Larks Tongue in Aspic
King Crimson - "Larks' Tongue in Aspic" (1973) - Island
Hello Friends,
There is one king to rule them all and that king's name is King Crimson!
Larks' Tongue in Aspic, the fifth record by the British progressive rock band King Crimson, might be one of the heaviest and darkest prog rock albums we've heard.
We've been listening to it over and over again and with each listen it continues to almost hypnotically captivate our attention and thoroughly amaze us! (Well, one of us! Sorry Tiki T!)
This album marks the third version of the Crimson lineup. In addition to mainstay and guitarist Robert Fripp, the record features new members John Wetton (bass guitar & vocals), David Cross (violin & mellotron), Bill Bruford (drums) and Jamie Muir (percussion).
Like a great jazz combo, every member's presence is felt. There's nothing wasted and nothing extraneous. Fripp, the quiet genius, masterminds it all using his guitar to produce sounds like we've never heard before. Wetton comes off like a confident frontman, a hunkier version of Greg Lake. Cross's violin & mellotron parts are understated, almost sad and spooky-sounding, providing the perfect foil for Fripp's heavy and alien guitar sounds.
Bill Bruford, fresh off his tenure with Yes, provides some heavy, jazz-inspired polyrhythmic drumming but the real surprise is Jamie Muir as the additional percussionist! He's banging & blowing pretty much anything he can get his hands on: cymbals, drums, thumb pianos, pieces of sheet metal, whistles, etc. It all makes for some really interesting and layered soundscapes that are simultaneously abrasive, mesmirizing & exotic. Its like if Black Sabbath and Martin Denny got together and played a concert on Saturn!
The instrumental "Larks' Tongue in Aspic Parts One & Two" provides bookends to the album.
It starts out like some prog-rock Moldau with fluttering strings, bird calls and a genteel buildup then out of nowhere... HOLY SHIT...
After melting our minds with that 13+ minute epic, we're treated to the gentle 3 minute ballad, "Book of Saturday" featuring Wetton's vocals accompanied by guitar and violin (and some backward tracking!)
Side One's closer "Exiles" sounds the most like something that might be found on their incredible debut album, In the Court of the King Crimson. Like that album's "Epitaph", its another "quiet" song (by Crimson standards) featuring fluttering violins, weaving mellotrons, an acoustic guitar picked in an almost medieval style and Wetton doing his best Greg Lake impersonation. There's even a somewhat "bluesy" section in the middle of the song ("But Lord I had to go, My trail was laid too slow behind me") that actually reminds us more than a little of Genesis-era Gabriel.
Listening to "Exiles" you can sort of hear the groundwork for everything that a band like Sigur Ros would start doing over 20 years later. Who knew that King Crimson was one of the first post-rock bands?
"Easy Money" gets the party started on Side Two. Its also the closest the album would have to a radio friendly-sounding single.
The ominous, nightmare-inducing instrumental "The Talking Drum" is the record's weirdest and most avant-garde track. More soundscape than song, its like soundtrack music from a Science Fiction epic that will be made at some point in the future (when movies aren't projected onto a screen, but instead are injected directly into our central nervous systems so we can become fully immersed in the cinematic experience!)
"The Talking Drum" leads right into "Larks' Tongue in Aspic, part 2"-- picking up, sort of, where Part One left off. Rather than being a piece that builds in movements, Part Two is pretty much based around a repeated, driving riff that mutates in and out of itself for seven minutes. Its heavy, dark and unforgiving. It sounds a little like something Yes would have recorded if at the time they were possessed by demons.
And speaking of demons, if the devil had a playlist this record would probably be on it!
RATING: 4.5 you make my life and times a book of (Prog Rock) Saturdays out of 5
There is one king to rule them all and that king's name is King Crimson!
Larks' Tongue in Aspic, the fifth record by the British progressive rock band King Crimson, might be one of the heaviest and darkest prog rock albums we've heard.
We've been listening to it over and over again and with each listen it continues to almost hypnotically captivate our attention and thoroughly amaze us! (Well, one of us! Sorry Tiki T!)
This album marks the third version of the Crimson lineup. In addition to mainstay and guitarist Robert Fripp, the record features new members John Wetton (bass guitar & vocals), David Cross (violin & mellotron), Bill Bruford (drums) and Jamie Muir (percussion).
Like a great jazz combo, every member's presence is felt. There's nothing wasted and nothing extraneous. Fripp, the quiet genius, masterminds it all using his guitar to produce sounds like we've never heard before. Wetton comes off like a confident frontman, a hunkier version of Greg Lake. Cross's violin & mellotron parts are understated, almost sad and spooky-sounding, providing the perfect foil for Fripp's heavy and alien guitar sounds.
Bill Bruford, fresh off his tenure with Yes, provides some heavy, jazz-inspired polyrhythmic drumming but the real surprise is Jamie Muir as the additional percussionist! He's banging & blowing pretty much anything he can get his hands on: cymbals, drums, thumb pianos, pieces of sheet metal, whistles, etc. It all makes for some really interesting and layered soundscapes that are simultaneously abrasive, mesmirizing & exotic. Its like if Black Sabbath and Martin Denny got together and played a concert on Saturn!
The instrumental "Larks' Tongue in Aspic Parts One & Two" provides bookends to the album.
It starts out like some prog-rock Moldau with fluttering strings, bird calls and a genteel buildup then out of nowhere... HOLY SHIT...
After melting our minds with that 13+ minute epic, we're treated to the gentle 3 minute ballad, "Book of Saturday" featuring Wetton's vocals accompanied by guitar and violin (and some backward tracking!)
Side One's closer "Exiles" sounds the most like something that might be found on their incredible debut album, In the Court of the King Crimson. Like that album's "Epitaph", its another "quiet" song (by Crimson standards) featuring fluttering violins, weaving mellotrons, an acoustic guitar picked in an almost medieval style and Wetton doing his best Greg Lake impersonation. There's even a somewhat "bluesy" section in the middle of the song ("But Lord I had to go, My trail was laid too slow behind me") that actually reminds us more than a little of Genesis-era Gabriel.
Listening to "Exiles" you can sort of hear the groundwork for everything that a band like Sigur Ros would start doing over 20 years later. Who knew that King Crimson was one of the first post-rock bands?
"Easy Money" gets the party started on Side Two. Its also the closest the album would have to a radio friendly-sounding single.
The ominous, nightmare-inducing instrumental "The Talking Drum" is the record's weirdest and most avant-garde track. More soundscape than song, its like soundtrack music from a Science Fiction epic that will be made at some point in the future (when movies aren't projected onto a screen, but instead are injected directly into our central nervous systems so we can become fully immersed in the cinematic experience!)
"The Talking Drum" leads right into "Larks' Tongue in Aspic, part 2"-- picking up, sort of, where Part One left off. Rather than being a piece that builds in movements, Part Two is pretty much based around a repeated, driving riff that mutates in and out of itself for seven minutes. Its heavy, dark and unforgiving. It sounds a little like something Yes would have recorded if at the time they were possessed by demons.
And speaking of demons, if the devil had a playlist this record would probably be on it!
RATING: 4.5 you make my life and times a book of (Prog Rock) Saturdays out of 5
Friday, July 10, 2015
Glen Campbell - "Southern Nights" (1977)
Hello Friends,
We watched a documentary this week on Glen Campbell and his battle with Alzheimer's disease, I'll Be Me. Pretty good watch and more than a little sad as you see the legendary Campbell slowly unravel throughout dates on his last tour.
To cheer us up we watched this video of him in the full throws of his Seventies renaissance.
Rock on Glen Campbell, rock on!
Tuesday, July 7, 2015
Savoy Brown are just OK...
Savoy Brown - "Looking In" (1970) - Parrot Records
Hello Friends,
We had high, high hopes for this one kids. Just look at that album cover!
We were hoping for some dark, gloomy, psychedelic blues maybe like a British Blue Cheer or a bluesier Black Sabbath, but what we get instead sounds more akin to a second rate Peter Green-era Fleetwood Mac or a less interesting version of Ten Years After.
Straightforward blues rock boogie helmed by the band's founder & lead guitarist, Kim Simmonds. Its not that its terrible, its just not that interesting and kind of boring!
Looking In is the band's sixth album and their first as a quartet (songwriter-vocalist, Chris Youlden left the band earlier in the year).
The record is bookended by two short and pleasant sounding guitar solo pieces: "Gypsy" & "Romanoff". The second song, "Poor Girl" (written by bassist Tony "Tone" Stevens) is the albums most blistering blues tune and features some very solid psychedelic-tinged guitar playing. (Although at first, we thought the singer was singing "she's a porker" instead of "she's a poor girl" and we preferred that version over the real one!)
"Money Can't Save Your Soul" is decent, but kind of long and boring. Same with the instrumental, "Sunday Night". Stuff like this you can see at a decent local blues bar almost any time. The upbeat, blues-boogie, "Looking In" closes out Side One with some more impressive playing by Simmonds (who also served as producer on the album!)
Side Two's "Take It Easy" sounds a little like early Grateful Dead or maybe even like The Faces if they took a bunch of quaaludes. "Sitting and Thinking" is another Simmond's guitar showcase and the nearly nine-minute "Leavin' Again" sounds like an overwrought, underwhelming early Blues jam by leftcoasters Quicksilver Messenger Service or the aforementioned, Grateful Dead. A lot of fuss, just not that fun!
FUN FACT: After this album, singer-rhythm guitarist "Lonesome" Dave Peverett, bassist Tony Stevens and drummer Roger Earl would leave the band to go on and form Foghat leaving Kim Simmonds on his own to re-form Savoy Brown. He was probably a dick!
The record is bookended by two short and pleasant sounding guitar solo pieces: "Gypsy" & "Romanoff". The second song, "Poor Girl" (written by bassist Tony "Tone" Stevens) is the albums most blistering blues tune and features some very solid psychedelic-tinged guitar playing. (Although at first, we thought the singer was singing "she's a porker" instead of "she's a poor girl" and we preferred that version over the real one!)
"Money Can't Save Your Soul" is decent, but kind of long and boring. Same with the instrumental, "Sunday Night". Stuff like this you can see at a decent local blues bar almost any time. The upbeat, blues-boogie, "Looking In" closes out Side One with some more impressive playing by Simmonds (who also served as producer on the album!)
Side Two's "Take It Easy" sounds a little like early Grateful Dead or maybe even like The Faces if they took a bunch of quaaludes. "Sitting and Thinking" is another Simmond's guitar showcase and the nearly nine-minute "Leavin' Again" sounds like an overwrought, underwhelming early Blues jam by leftcoasters Quicksilver Messenger Service or the aforementioned, Grateful Dead. A lot of fuss, just not that fun!
FUN FACT: After this album, singer-rhythm guitarist "Lonesome" Dave Peverett, bassist Tony Stevens and drummer Roger Earl would leave the band to go on and form Foghat leaving Kim Simmonds on his own to re-form Savoy Brown. He was probably a dick!
Believe us, friends, we really wanted this album to be great! In an era when hard rock, British blues and psychedelia got along so well, our hopes and expectations were set very, very high. No matter how hard we tried, we really couldn't get our heads nodding and fists pumping while listening to Savoy Brown.
Still, that album cover!
Still, that album cover!
RATING: 3 rattlesnake boots, elephant bag & genuine crocodile hats out of 5
Saturday, July 4, 2015
Prog Rock Saturday - Yes - "Yours Is No Disgrace" Live (1972)
Yesterday a morning came, a smile upon your face
Caesar's palace, morning glory, silly human race.
On a sailing ship to nowhere, leaving any place
If the summer change to winter, yours is no disgrace...
Wednesday, July 1, 2015
Movie Night: Sinatra: All or Nothing At All (2015)
Hello Friends,
Grab your popcorn and pull up a stool, its Movie Night again on Vinyl in the Valley!
Tonight we're watching a 2015 documentary in two parts on the life and times of Frank Sinatra, produced by HBO and directed by Alex Gibney (Going Clear, Mr. Dynamite, Catching Hell, Client 9).
Four hours of Ol' Blue eyes? Well pour some bourbon on the rocks, we're staying up late tonight!
Sinatra: All or Nothing at All takes an even-handed, warts-and-all look at Frank Sinatra and his life as one of the most important cultural icons of the 20th Century. Using lots of first person accounts, including lots of footage from Sinatra himself, the documentary cleverly frames itself around Sinatra's 1971 "Retirement" concert in Los Angeles.
The file uses the 11 songs that Sinatra hand-picked to represent his entire career at the time of his "retirement" as chapters to in its story. In case you're wondering, here's the setlist from that June of 1971 "retirement" concert:
All Or Nothing At All
I’ve Got You Under My Skin
I’ll Never Smile Again
Ol’ Man River
That’s Life
Try A Little Tenderness
Fly Me To The Moon
Nancy (with the Laughing Face)
My Way
The Lady Is A Tramp
Angel Eyes
Sinatra's life and career is weaved into the fabric of America's 20th Century and the documentary touches on many of these aspects. Personally, we wished it would have been a little more salacious with the sex-stuff, the mob-stuff, the Kennedy-stuff, etc. But that's because we're degenerates who get off on that sort of thing!
Oh and more Ava Gardner! yowsa!
At least the documentary devotes only about 10 minutes to cover Sinatra's post-retirement career from 1971 until his death in 1998.
Drink up all you people, order anything you see...
Grab your popcorn and pull up a stool, its Movie Night again on Vinyl in the Valley!
Tonight we're watching a 2015 documentary in two parts on the life and times of Frank Sinatra, produced by HBO and directed by Alex Gibney (Going Clear, Mr. Dynamite, Catching Hell, Client 9).
Four hours of Ol' Blue eyes? Well pour some bourbon on the rocks, we're staying up late tonight!
Sinatra: All or Nothing at All takes an even-handed, warts-and-all look at Frank Sinatra and his life as one of the most important cultural icons of the 20th Century. Using lots of first person accounts, including lots of footage from Sinatra himself, the documentary cleverly frames itself around Sinatra's 1971 "Retirement" concert in Los Angeles.
The file uses the 11 songs that Sinatra hand-picked to represent his entire career at the time of his "retirement" as chapters to in its story. In case you're wondering, here's the setlist from that June of 1971 "retirement" concert:
All Or Nothing At All
I’ve Got You Under My Skin
I’ll Never Smile Again
Ol’ Man River
That’s Life
Try A Little Tenderness
Fly Me To The Moon
Nancy (with the Laughing Face)
My Way
The Lady Is A Tramp
Angel Eyes
Sinatra's life and career is weaved into the fabric of America's 20th Century and the documentary touches on many of these aspects. Personally, we wished it would have been a little more salacious with the sex-stuff, the mob-stuff, the Kennedy-stuff, etc. But that's because we're degenerates who get off on that sort of thing!
Oh and more Ava Gardner! yowsa!
At least the documentary devotes only about 10 minutes to cover Sinatra's post-retirement career from 1971 until his death in 1998.
Drink up all you people, order anything you see...
We give this one two raised cocktail glasses!
We'll see you next time, friends, until then the Tiki Bar is closed*.
(* not really)
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