Prog Rock Saturday: Peter Gabriel

Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel (1977) - Atco Records

Hello Friends,

Another Summer is growing long in the tooth and we're celebrating the changing of seasons with one final Prog Rock Saturday.  Who do we have on the Vinyl in the Valley trusted turntable tonight? Why, its our old friend Peter Gabriel and his first solo album since leaving Genesis, aptly titled, Peter Gabriel.

In fact, this would be the first of four Peter Gabriel solo albums to be called Peter Gabriel so in most Peter Gabriel circles, to avoid confusion, his first album is usually referred to simply as Car due to the big blue car on the album's cover.  (Incidentally, his other three solo album nicknames would be Scratch, Melt & Security.)

In our opinion, Car would be the best of the bunch! (They all have pretty great album covers though!)

First, a little background.  In August 1975, when Genesis was at the peak of their prog rock prowess, frontman Gabriel wrote a letter to the English press (aka the "Out, Angels Out" Letter) that began:

I had a dream, eye’s dream. Then I had another dream with the body and soul of a rock star. When it didn’t feel good I packed it in. Looking back for the musical and non-musical reasons, this is what I came up with:

OUT, ANGELS OUT – an investigation.

Basically this letter became his resignation with the band effective upon the conclusion of their successful, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway Tour.  Stress amongst band members got to be too much for Gabriel, not to mention the stress of everyday life, his marriage to his first wife and the birth of his first child.  He gave the band his blessing to go on without him but, secretly, we're pretty sure he was hoping that they'd fail miserably! The funny thing is that Genesis continued on with drummer Phil Collins taking over the lead vocal spot and their success greatly endured in Gabriel's absence! 

In just as an unlikely scenario, Gabriel too would flourish as well as one of the most successful solo artists of MTV's Golden Era.

"Moribound The Burgermesiter" opens Peter Gabriel and it sounds pretty much like something off of Nursery Cryme with a slightly more polished production (courtesy of Bob Ezrin!)  The song seems to be about a Medieval village who comes down with the plague and the only effective remedy seems to be St Vitus's Dance.  

"This thing's really outrageous, I tell you on the level
It's really so contagious must be the work of the devil
You better go now, pick up the pipers, tell them to play
Seems the music keeps them quiet, there is no other way."

The record's second song is also Peter Gabriel's first single as a solo artist (and perhaps his best solo recording ever)-- "Solsbury Hill".  Its a real departure from the sonic escapades and cartwheels of Genesis and, instead, is a straightforward, catchy pop song which seems to be about the artist reflecting on his recent move from band-guy to solo artist:

"To keep in silence, I resigned
My friends would think I was a nut.
Turning water into wine,
Open doors would soon be shut."

And speaking of sonic escapades, the album's second single "Modern Love" sounds unlike ANYTHING Gabriel has ever done.  Its very upbeat, sharp and dare we say, dance-able? Think Face Dances-era Who redone as a New Wave album!  Do yourself and check out the video.  Its pretty fucking amazing! 

Don't worry sports fans! Things get weird again on "Excuse Me" which has Gabriel sounding like a very odd, very depressed Randy Newman fronting a barbershop quartet. 

Side One's closer, "Humdrum"-- a dreamy, slow burning ballad with cryptic lyrics like "I saw the man at JFK / He took your ticket yesterday / In the humdrum" and "Empty my mind, I find it hard to cope / Listen to my heart, don't need no stethescope" is nothing short of fantastic!  

Bob Ezrin recruited Alice Cooper guitarist, Dick Wagner (who died earlier this year... RIP!) to supply some hard rock licks on Side Two's "Slow Burn", which sounds a little like something off of Welcome to My Nightmare mixed with some more late-period Who.  An arena rock anthem that never was!

"Waiting for the Big One" is a seven-minute long jazzy torch song that comes across sounding like overproduced Tom Waits.  Its pretty clear by this point, seven songs in, that Gabriel really wanted to explore a lot more musical styles than being in Genesis would have allowed him to!  Eclectic is good, as long as its not too eclectic!  

"Down the Dolce Vita" employees some disco beats and some spaghetti western orchestrations (courtesy of the London Symphony Orchestra.)  Obviously, someone was doing a lot of cocaine during the recording of this album!  Our money's on "The Ez"-- producer Bob Ezrin. Sure the guy produced Alice Cooper, Berlin, Destroyer and The Wall, but can we really forget he was manning the controls on Music from The Elder.  "Down the Dolce Vita" is not a bad song by any stretch, but it sounds like it could be the closing credits to a dystopian roller ball movie where the winners compete to be society's most respected celebrities and the losers are gunned downed by lasers!  Hey Tiki... Get my agent on the phone! 
  
Remember earlier in this post when we said that "Solsbury Hill" might have been the best Peter Gabriel solo song.  Well we were mistaken.  That distinction belongs to the album's closer, "Here Comes the Flood".  Probably one of Gabriel's best solo pieces!  An incredibly sad and pretty song that seems to be about "the big one" that Gabriel was talking about two songs ago.  From the St.Vitus dance in the opening song to the world ending in Biblical proportions here, Peter Gabriel at its heart is a very dark and morbid record in spite of much of the music sounding uptempo and bright.  

It reminds us a little of The Killers' first record, Hot Fuss, which on the surface seemed like a danceable post-punk, New Wave record when, in reality, a lot of its theme's had to do with stalking, raping & murdering!  The good ol' rock & roll dark stuff.  No doubt, The Killers (at least on their first two or three records) owed something to Uncle Pete!

Rumor has it that Gabriel was somewhat critical of Ezrin's bombastic-sounding production on the record and we tend to agree.  Parts of this album do come off sounding a little over-done and showtuney.

Two years later, Robert Fripp (who played guitar on Peter Gabriel) would re-record "Here Comes the Flood" in a much more stripped-down, bare bones manner with Gabriel reprising his vocals.  Quite a difference! 

Drink up, dreamers, you're running dry! 

RATING: 4 Grab Your Things I've Come to Take You Home out of 5

(Bad) Movie Night: Devil's Kiss (1976)

Hello Friends,

Grab your popcorn and pull up a stool, its (Bad) Movie Night again on Vinyl in the Valley!

Now we're not exactly sure what the hell is going on in this darkly-lighted, poorly-dubbed Spanish film, The Devil's Kiss, also sometimes known as The Wicked Caress of Satan (great title!) or The Print of the Devil. 

Here's what we can tell you... a bunch of aristocrats get together at a castle in France for a party that culminates with a spooky seance.  What the occupants of the castle don't realize is that the medium who conducted the seance, Countess Claire, has a bone-to-pick with them.  She teams up with mad scientist, Professor Gruber, and proceeds to create a freaky reanimated corpse in the castle's basement laboratory that she will control with her psychic powers! There's plenty of dim-lit creepy sets, naked women, horny dwarfs & satanic scientists to go around! 

Oh and there's a pretty rockin' fashion show...

And just for the record kids, we are wholeheartedly on Team Betty! 

We got to be honest friends, this one is a pretty bad "bad" movie!  But it is creepy with a generous amount of beaver nudity so we'll still give this one two raised, um, cocktail glasses anyways!  Hey, they can't all be Citizen Kane! 

We'll see you next time, friends, until then the Tiki Bar is closed*.  

(* not really)

(Bad) Movie Night: Godzilla's Revenge (1969)

Hello Friends,

Grab your popcorn and pull up a stool, its (Bad) Movie Night on Vinyl in the Valley!

Also known as All Monster's Attack, Godzilla's Revenge (1969) is the tenth film in Toho Studio's Godzilla series and its a doozy!

The movie is about a little Japanese kid, Ichiro Miki, who is bullied at school and whose parents are too busy working to really pay attention.  In a dream, he is transported to Monster Island and becomes friends with Minilla, Godzilla's son, who is also the victim of bullying-- by the monster, Gabara.  While on the island, Ichiro witnesses the mighty Godzilla do battle with a giant sea monster (Ebirah), a giant spider (Kumonga) and some Japanese jets!  

Later he aids Minilla in a one-on-one fight with his antagonist, Gabara, and wouldn't you know it, the little guy wins!  When Ichiro wakes up back in the real world, he has the wherewithal to escape from some bank-robbing kidnappers (?) and eventually gets up the courage to fight back against his tormentors.  What's the lesson here kids?  Well if you want to grow a pair, you've got to hang out with giant monsters! 

Directed by legendary kaiju director Ishiro Honda, Godzilla's Revenge is the first Godzilla film that seems to be specifically targeted at children which makes it appear even sillier than your usual giant monster fare! Actually if you think about it, theme-wise its not too different from the book/movie, Where the Wild Things Are. (Cue James Gandolfini starring as Godzilla in the middle of an existential crisis just sitting and staring at ducks in his pool!)

The movie ain't all that great but of course we were counting on that!  One major upside is the movie's theme song. 

Touchdown!

Good bad movie!  We give this one two raised cocktail glasses!  (Because that's at least how many drinks you need to enjoy this one!)

We'll see you next time, friends, until then the Tiki Bar is closed*.  

(* not really)

Prog Rock Saturday: Days of Future Passed

The Moody Blues - "Days of Future Passed" (1967) - Deram Records

Hello Friends,

August is in full swing and we've got a certified classic on our prog-rock turntable this evening!

After their blue-eyed soul debut record, The Magnificent Moodies, The Moody Blues shuffled their lineup and totally changed their approach to music.  No longer were they interested in two to three minute R&B pop songs (think "Go Now") and instead they wanted to explore the LP as a larger art form.

Days of Future Passed was unlike anything that had been released up until that time and it could not have sounded any different from anything the band has done before!  Its not only an important precursor to the fledgling prog rock movement, but its also one of rock & roll's earliest concept records: a song cycle, told in words and music, that covers a typical day in the life from dawn 'til night.   It is also probably the first rock & roll record to utilize an entire orchestra (The London Festival Orchestra, conducted by Peter Knight) as an accompaniment to the band.  

Its also probably the first album to use the Mellotron throughout!  In fact, maybe for this record it should have been called a "Mellowtron" because this is a very, very laidback listen.  Smoke 'em if you got 'em kids, but Tiki T. and I are going to need to inject ourselves with some much needed caffeine in order to make it through this!

Side One begins with an Overture of sorts appropriately titled "The Day Begins" which concludes with a spoken word poem read by keyboardist Mike Pinder.  Lush and cinematic.  Proggy, sure, but not very rocky!

"The Day Begins" fades into "Dawn: Dawn is a Feeling" featuring guitarist Justin Hayward on lead vocals and Pinder (who wrote the song) singing the bridge.  A slow, lazy, lush symphonic pop song featuring orchestra as well as drums, guitar, bass & mellotron.  Very English-sounding, but then again, mostly everything by the Moody Blues sounds particularly English.

The wispy and wistful, "The Morning: Another Morning" featuring the band's flautist, Ray Thomas, on lead vocals is next and that leads into a Gershwin-inspired musical interlude which concludes with the record's most upbeat rocker, "Lunch Break: Peak Hour" written and sung by bassist John Lodge.  Actually, "Peak Hour" is probably our favorite track on the record. A great little 1960's pop song.  Great harmonies reminiscent of The Zombies with music reminiscent of some Syd Barrett-era Floyd.

Side Two opens with Justin Hayward's lush-sounding baroque pop song "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)" better known simply as "Tuesday Afternoon".  One of the bands most recognizable hits.  Its quite a pretty song with Justin Hayward's genteel vocals complementing the soft acoustic picking and wavering Mellotron chords. Never realized before how much this song probably owes to The Beatles' "A Day In the Life" which came out earlier in 1967.

Tuesday afternoon blends into John Lodge's "(Evening) Time to Get Away" a dark counterpoint to "Forever Afternoon (Tuesday?)" that starts out sounding a little like Greg Lake-fronted King Crimson and winds up sounding like Something Else-era Kinks.

Mike Pinder's "The Sunset" sounds more like something we'd hear on a Martin Denny record. An exotic, tribal-sounding chant with vocal effects, mellotron, flute and Pinder plucking a Bulgarian tambura. 

The third "evening" song on the record is Ray Thomas's "Twilight Time", a short, brooding, psychedelic song that again sounds very Syd Barrett-like, if Syd Barrett smoked pot instead of scrambling his brain on massive amounts of hallucinogenics.  

The album's climax, "Nights in White Satin", became the band's biggest hit since their "Go Now" period and would do even better (reaching # 2 on the Billboard charts) when it was re-released in 1972.  

The song fades out into "Late Lament", a final flurry of orchestration in which Mike Pinder reads part two of the poem he started on the album's first track.  Things have come full circle, friends!

Good record.   Probably pretty mind-blowing at the time of its release.  In our opinion, however, it loses a little bit over time.  It definitely sounds dated and doesn't quite hold up as well to modern ears as bands like Pink Floyd, Genesis or Crimson.  Obviously, we're pretty cynical but some of the orchestrations tend to sound a little light and airy.  If the album took more darker turns, we think it would have held up better!  Oh, and those spoken word bits... geesh... what did they rip off some 13 year old's math notebook?

RATING: 4 cold-hearted orbs that rule the night out of 5

Movie Night: Class of 1984

Hello Friends,

Grab your popcorn and pull up a stool, its Movie Night again on Vinyl in the Valley!

Tonight we're watching the 1982 cult classic about High School kids-gone-bad, Class of 1984 and its pretty f'ing AMAZING...

Brilliantly weird & violent movie in the same vein as Warriors & Over the Edge.  Class of 1984 takes place at Lincoln High, your average American high school in the early 1980's (Actually, this was filmed in Canada, but you get the gist!)  Gangs of punks and thugs roam the hallways.  There's metal detectors at the entrances (can you imagine?)  Drugs are ingested and dealt right out in the open.  Students and teachers go to school in utter and absolute fear of these drug-addled marauders!


Enter Perry King as Andrew Norris, the school's newest music teacher.  He has no idea what he's in for, but he's not going to take any shit from anyone!

The film features Roddy McDowall as a jaded and disgruntled biology teacher; Timothy Van Patten as the gang's ringleader; and even a young Michael J. Fox in his first movie roll as Arthur, a do-gooder whose best friend gets hooked on heroin and plummets to his death after climbing to the top of the school's flagpole!

Directed by Mark Lester, who would later direct the Schwarzenegger-classic, Commando, and Stephen King's Firestarter, crafts a cynical, violent & dystopian not-so-distant future. The great Lalo Schifrin created a haunting, synth-heavy score and Alice Cooper even lends his talents to the movie's theme song, the awesomely-terrible, "I Am The Future" (here). L.A. punk band, Fear, contribute a couple of songs to the soundtrack as well!   



They don't make them like this anymore kids!  We give this one two raised cocktail glasses!

We'll see you next time, friends, until then the Tiki Bar is closed*.  

(* not really)

Pink Eyed Blues

Johnny Winter - "Still Alive and Well" (1973) - Columbia Records

Hello Friends,

We were so amp'd after hearing Johnny Winter And's Live album that we dug through our archives and pulled out this record from 1973, the ironically-titled Still Alive and Well (ironic because he died last month, ya dummy!)

Hard thumpin', swampy, sleazy blues from start to finish.  The type of electric blues that really came into its own in the early 1970's.   Let's down some shots of tequila and have a listen...

The record kicks off with the oft-covered Big Bill Broonzy song, "Rock Me Baby" that Winter approaches with no subtlety.  Its loud, sleazy and in your face from the opening guitar lick to the growling vocals.

"Can't You Feel It" (written by Dan Hartman who also wrote the song, "Free Ride") sounds like a bluesy Gene Simmons singing lead for The Faces.

Rick Derringer (who produced the LP & plays some guitar) wrote the boozy ballad, "Cheap Tequila" (which also features Todd Rundgren on mellotron!)  For the life of us, we can't figure out how this song wasn't a huge hit!

"All Tore Down" & "Rock and Roll" close out the side.  Both feature some pretty hard rocking blues, the latter sounding a lot like fellow Texans, ZZ Top.

There's two Stones' covers on Side Two.  "Silver Train" fucking rocks and was released by Johnny Winter months before the Stones released it on Goats Head Soup.  Honestly, after hearing his version, they probably should have shelved it!  Winter's version cranks in comparison!

"Ain't Nothing to Me" makes us wish that Johnny Winter did more swampy, backwoods Country tunes.  Its fantastic and authentic sounding! 

Rick Derringer also wrote the title track for Winter, "Still Alive and Well".  Decent, but pretty much sounds like "Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo, part 2".

Johnny wrote the slow, druggy, walking blues, "Too Much Seconal" featuring great lyrics like:

"Baby, I don't believe you no good at all.
Well woman 'cuz you've been drinking too much whiskey,
I believe you're takin' too much Seconal"

Nice!

The album closes with another take on a Rolling Stones' classic, "Let It Bleed".  Winter's version rocks a bit harder and boogies out a bit more.  Once again he's able to outsleaze the original which is no small feat!

Great album with some great underappreciated songs and some fine raunchy guitar work which teeters between vintage classic blues and a dirty, rusty chainsaw. 

Terrible, terrible album cover.  I think it gave me nightmares!

RATING: 4 Roses In Your Low Rent Tomb out of 5

Prog Rock Saturday: Atom Heart Mother

Pink Floyd - "Atom Heart Mother" (1970) - Harvest

Hello Friends,

On tonight's edition of Prog Rock Saturday, we've got Pink Floyd's 1970 oft-overlooked release, Atom Heart Mother.    

Oft-overlooked, you say?  Why's that?  Well, for starters, its kind of in that gray area between the early Syd Barrett stuff and the juggernaut the band would eventually become in the Seventies.  It tows the line between whimsical psychedelic pop and weird, "out-there" experimental prog rock.  It also seems like the band wasn't really overly satisfied with the record.  None of the material really ever became live staples and the best song on the record, Richard Wright's "Summer '68", was never performed live!

Actually, its a pretty great album, just not as great as what was to follow-- including the outstanding Meddle, the fairly normal-sounding Obscured by Clouds and the classic Dark Side of the Moon!  Atom Heart Mother is the sound of seeds being planted and laying the groundwork for the in-studio virtuosity that was just around the corner! 

The album's cover artwas designed by Hipgnosis-- the English designers who created most of the band's iconic album covers.  Reportedly, the band requested the cover to be "something plain" and not psychedelic at all.  I guess they got what they wanted with ol' Lulubelle!

Side One is completely occupied by the titular suite.  Part spaghetti western, part free form, psychedelic jam, "Atom Heart Mother" sounds like it could be the soundtrack for a Stanley Kubrick movie!  (In fact, rumor has it that Kubrick wanted to use this music in his Clockwork Orange film but was reportedly denied by the band!  Here's a video of what the intro to the film might have looked like if Stanley got his way!)

Written by the entire band plus composer, Ron Geesin, the "Atom Heart Mother" suite is a pretty trippy composition.  Very soundtracky.  Lots of ambiance.  With a definite beginning, middle and an end.  Lots a quiet-loud-quiet.  Crescendos.  Repeated themes. Some great David Gilmour guitar work (especially on the suite's Fourth movement, entitled "Funky Dung".) There's no singing, but there are wordless vocal choruses.  Its no "Echoes" or "Shine On You Crazy Diamond", but its not too far off.

Incidentally, some original titles for the instrumental piece were "Theme From An Imaginary Western", "Epic" and "The Amazing Pudding".  The title "Atom Heart Mother" was lifted from the headlines from the Evening Standard newspaper from an article about a pregnant woman who received an artificial nuclear pacemaker! 

Side Two contains four songs each sort of displaying the talents of the four individual members of the band.

"If" is a gorgeous Roger Waters ballad.  Say what you will about Waters, the dude could write a ballad and "If" is cranky Roger at his introspective, vulnerable and paranoid best.

"If I were a swan, I'd be gone.
And if I were a train, I'd be late.
And if I were a good man, I would talk with more often than I do.
If I were to sleep, I could dream.
If I were afraid, I could hide.
If I go insane, please don't put your wires in my brain."

Some great guitar work as well.  Not many could bend the strings quite like Dave Gilmour could!

Keyboardist Richard Wright's aforementioned, "Summer '68" is next.  An upbeat (by Pink Floyd standards), Beatles-ish romp featuring some great Wright piano playing as well as some interesting overlapping harmonies. The song seems to be about hooking up with a groupie that you're really not all that interested in:

"I hardly even like you, I shouldn't care at all.
We met just six hours ago and the music was too loud.
From your bed I gained a day, and lost a bloody year...
My friends are lying in the sun, I wish I was there. 
Tomorrow brings another town, another girl like you."

Ouch!

David Gilmour contributes the acoustic "Fat Old Sun", another fantastic track that if heard with the right ears echoes the Kinks' "Sunny Afternoon" on Seconal.   Very pastoral... a perfect song for a late Summer's evening:

"When that Fat Old Sun in the sky is falling,
Summer evening birds are calling.
Children's laughter in my ears,
The last sunlight disappears."

And our favorite line on the album, "New mown grass smells so sweet..."

One of the problems with an album like this, and with a lot of prog rock in general, is when a band wants to display the talents of each of the members collectively and individually.  Lots of times this forces a non-songwriting member of the band, usually the drummer (in this case Nick Mason), to contribute something individual.  This is always a problem on a ELP records or on something particularly bloated like Yes's Topographic Oceans.  No one wants to hear a 20 minute drum solo!!!  Mason's contribution here is "Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast", a soundscape that revolves around some ramblings by Floyd roadie, Alan Styles.  (An idea which would be fleshed out with roadie, Roger "The Hat"'s insane-sounding musings appearing throughout Dark Side of The Moon.)  Also like on Dark Side, there are sound affects galore; frying eggs, pouring cereal, sipping coffee, faucets dripping, banging pots and pans, etc.

Aside from some fantastic Dave Gilmour acoustic / lap steel guitar work on the middle section, the tune itself is pretty forgettable!          

RATING: 4 Dark Sides of the Moo out of 5