50 years ago today. (Part 1)

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Right, I’m getting nowhere with a USB simulation despite banging my head against the monitor for over a day so it’s time for one of these.

May 14th 1971 : Pink Floyd Relics.

This was a compilation of singles A and B sides and some unreleased tracks with both Syd Barrett and Dave Gilmour. My sister’s boyfriend of the time had it and so it ended up at our house. We had a stereo record player so it must have been after Christmas 1972 when I heard. I was fascinated by the drawing on the cover and by how different and strange the songs were. Yes an innocent 11 year old was introduced to psychedelic music. Even back in 1972 those early singles sounded dated to me. However, as I get older they don’t seem to change. In fact songs like See Emily Play, Julia Dream, Paintbox just get more charming.

Then there’s Biding My Time. It’s a blues / blue-rock song with a distinctive trombone solo. But I think this was the first piece of blues I can remember hearing and it started a life long love of the genre. A love that has grown over the last 49 years despite interests in rock, metal, prog rock, jazz and stuff that is none of the above but still enjoyed (such as Carol King’s Tapestry).

Dave Gilmour’s guitar solo at 2:20 onwards is sublime. No it’s not an example of pyrotechnical wizardry, but just the right number of notes at the right rate filled with emotion. Classic Gilmour with Mason and Waters drums and bass driving the song forward whilst Wright goes somewhat loopy on the trombone in the background. Listening again now it still has the ability to take me back to when I first heard it and used to play over and over again. Hell, it’s 1972, and my mother has come into the lounge to ask me to play another song now.

And of course, there’s Arnold Layne which is psychedelic gold and the nature of the song was deemed too abnormal for even pirate radio to play it :slight_smile:

Also from May comes:

Johnny Winter And Live

I bought this not long after arriving at University in 1980. It took me ages to realise the band was called Johnny Winter And… Johnny Winter played stunning blues / blues rock songs and was a pyrotechnical wizard on the guitar. Here he has Rick Derringer on guitar as well and the two of them really go to town. The more I listen to Johnny Winter the more you realise he’s a bit of a one trick pony. But it’s one hell of a trick I like very much.

The stand out track is Sonny Boy Williamson’s Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, a classic 12 bar blues played somewhat uptempo. The interplay between Winter and Derringer is terrific. If you listen on headphones, Johnny Winter is on the right and Rick Derringer on the left. The way they pass the lead and rhythm back and forwards just makes the song flow effortlessly. Though with nature of lyrics I reckon DJ’s today may have some problems getting it cleared for air time in 2021 compared with 50 years ago.

I saw JW somewhere around 2010 in a small club in Glasgow. He was a frail old man then and was helped on stage and sat down to play. It took a few songs to get going with the band doing all the work and Johnny along for the ride. But he warmed up and by the end was really letting rip. Worth 10x the ticket price.

He always played with a finger and thumb pick so you can spot his playing a mile off. That and he played Gibson Firebirds, Lazers and an Epiphone Wilshire which all have a fairly thin and gutless sound compared with Strats and Les Pauls.

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Somewhat loopy, forsooth! I reckon he’s riding the upper partials, bebop style. Always expect the unexpected with the Floyd, they were bound do something to a straight ahead blues! “See Emily Play”, however, is less than three minutes of amazingly sophisticated harmonic construction disguised under a lower class accent - sneaky!

Perhaps not your thing, Andy, but today is the 50th anniversary of the release of the first Weather Report Album, its jazz/rock funk practically defined its decade in jazz!

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Not a Weather Report fan.

I’ve only known of those early Floyd songs for 49 years. Everything bar Binding My Time sounded “very queer” to an 11 year old but they sound just peachy now and seem to get better and better the more distant we are from when they were recorded. I can’t pick a favourite between Remember A Day or Paintbox or Julia Dream of the psychedelic ones.

Another cracker for June coming up Brian.

“Moon shine, washing line”

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I remember when my eldest son, Andrew, was about eleven I played him the “Animals” album. Later his schoolmate visited and I overheard the following:
“Dad played me Pink Floyd Animals today”
“What was it like?”
“It was seriously wierd, but I liked it!”
Now a quarter of a century later he is an authority on prog and metal, has many hundreds of CDs etc, and is keeping me informed of his explorations into Japanese and Korean Prog. Tonights discovery is a band called Jambinai. You never know what you might trigger quite casually!

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This one is for Brian and I nearly missed it. Brian likes his prog.

Whilst it’s 50 years this month since ELP released Tarkus, my knowledge of it goes back only 49 years. I first heard this at my schoolfriend Ziggy’s house. His brother was 2 or 3 years older and had a huge collection of records. Well Ziggy’s parents were rather well off. I mean they had two stereo record players. Two! His dad was a doctor and had a white E-type Jaguar convertible. It’s hard to describe how thrilling it was to be given a lift home in an E-type with the roof down when you’re 10. Whilst I had a few Ferrari and Maserati toy cars, a convertible E-type was the most exotic car I’d ever actually seen “in the flesh”.

Anyway his brother had just bought this. I was fascinated by the cover art and the final track on side one, Aquatarkus with its synthesizer solo. Back then synthesizers were seriously magic. As soon as I had collected some cash I bought a copy. I know it was sunny and warm when I bought it so probably Summer but my birthday is towards the end of the year so I don’t know where I got the cash from. My sister (5 years older than me) was impressed her little brother was buying prog rock when only just into double digit age. My parents wondered what the hell was happening.

Now ELP was some serious prog and about half the music is really Keith Emmerson being Keith Emmerson and even now when I hear it I think “only a few minutes till something less prog comes on” which is probably sacrilege. But there you are. I listened to this a lot mainly because I had few records when young and as my collection increaed I listened to it less. But like my experience with Carol King’s Tapestry, as soon as I started listening to it again after a long absence I knew all the words and solos. Funny things memories.

I last listened to it on vinyl in my student digs in 1983. I remember someone seeing the cover and asking to hear it. With a “typical ELP” comment part way through. I didn’t hear any ELP tracks for years apart from Fanfare for the Common Man and Karn Evil 9 (“Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends”) till 2 or 3 years back when Keith Emmerson died and I went listening to Nice and ELP tracks. I’d forgotten just how good this was. Greg Lake’s voice and some fabulous guitar work and Keith’s keyboard prowess all driven along by Carl Palmer’s drumming. I’ve been listening again now and I quite like even the bits I don’t like.

So as I still like seeing the cover art I’ve picked 4 less prog tracks. But they’re all classics.

Stones of Years

Mass

Battlefield

Bitches Crystal

I’m sitting here with a huge Old Pultney (and it’s not my 1st tonight) as a treat having managed to get some software going much quicker than guestimated and as I listen to Tarkus I’m (brace yourself Andrew) back in short trousers again sitting in a white E type. Bloody hell the drumming on Bitches Crystal is good, in fact I must make sure I never drive a fast car whilst listening to that.

Hope this meets with approval Brian!

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Thanks Andy for putting these tracks up, I too am a lover ELP :grinning:

73 de Geoff vk3sq

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Me, too!

This week also marked the 50th anniversary of the release of Joni Mitchell’s album “Blue.” “Blue” appears on many, many Top 100 lists.

I didn’t catch up with “Blue,” other than hearing airplay of “California” and “River,” until years after its release. In 1974, however, when she was touring for the “Court and Spark” album, she came to the university where I was in my second year. Thanks to my ham radio-engendered tech background, I ended up running a spotlight for the concert.

Before she came onstage the lighting director told us she had a bad cold but would perform anyway. I don’t know how she did it, but you absolutely could not tell by her performance. I learned a lot of Joni Mitchell songs that night!

It may have been David Crosby who said that it was tough to write a song, proudly play it for her, and learn that in the same time she’d written three of her own and invented new guitar tunings for them…

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Andy,
mentioning ELP then CSN has reminded me to mention the absolutely great cover of Suite: Judy Blue Eyes performed by a covers group in their first public performance, ten years ago. It’s on Youtube of course, the group is Foxes and Fossils. Everyone probably knows about this group but they have the original harmonies perfectly performed with two female voices instead of falsetto males. I’ve spent a lot of time listening to their covers lately. One of the group does all the mixing apparently and produces something rivalling the commercial studios.

And that’s without mentioning Sara Bareilles’ remake of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, revealing the dark underbelly of that song. The performance with the orchestral backing is the most stunning of the two. And even Elton loves it… so he says.

73 Andrew

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You pipped me on this one, Andy, so I went off and listened to it again. I think I’ve still got the vinyl stowed away safe somewhere, along with my treasured Floyd and Genesis albums. TBH I didn’t like it quite as much as those treasures but Aquatarkus has certainly stuck in my mind.

PS The finish of Bitches Crystal always makes me laugh!

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My apologies for belatedly returning to this, but I came across a piano transcription of Tarkus. I found it was more progressive than I had thought. The music is constructed using quartal harmony rather than conventional harmony. A technical matter that I guess won’t be of interest to non-musicians, but briefly conventional harmony is constructed by piling up intervals of a third, that is every other key on a keyboard, but quartal harmony piles up intervals of a fourth, every third key on a keyboard. The result is somewhat dissonant and confuses a normal musical sense of direction. We now return you to your normal program!

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If you listen to musicians long enough you learn their solo patterns. So I can hear a guitar solo and know if it’s Joe Bonamasa or Walter Trout or Robben Ford just by the notes they put in their runs. Never mind the sound they select with amps/pedals/settings. Likewise you hear someone giving a piano or Hammond solo the beans and you can immediately tell it’s Keith Emmerson and I think it’s because of your comment on harmony. It’s the notes he chooses for chords and solo runs. I guess it boils down to either you like it or you don’t.

What I had forgotten was what a beast of a drummer Carl Palmer, somewhat “Animal from Muppet Show” but controlled, a lot more controlled.

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I’ve recently been watching the music programmes and documentaries on Freeview Sky Arts Channel - mainly about rock / blues artists/jazz with some live shows on the channel and interviews. Talking about drummers, I saw Zak Starkie (Ringo Starr’s son) playing drums in place of Keith Moon in a live performance of Tommy at the Royal Albert Hall. I don’t know much about drummers or drumming but did he sound good and very much to the fore. A far better drummer than his father, who wanted Zak to go to university and shun the music scene. Apparently he had a bit of coaching from Keith Moon and not his dad and that is what got him into the drums.

73 Phil

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The old joke: what do you call a guy who hangs out with musicians? A drummer! Actually I have a very high regard for drummers, but I first heard that joke from a drummer, I find that the joker in a band is usually either a drummer or a trombonist, get the two together and the real fun begins!

I didn’t like Tarkus, I still don’t, but I have the greatest respect and appreciation of it: once you have mastered the nuts and bolts of music you can step outside of likes and dislikes. Like heavy metal, I tend to not like it, but the genre is inhabited by ferociously skilled musos who navigate nonchallently at breakneck speed through rapid changes of time signature and rapid key modulations as if they are playing nursery rhyms, leaving me spellbound!

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I was 11 months old when that album came out. Over the years of flying corporate jets I’ve run into many musicians. I flew Neil Young from Montrose CO to San Francisco one evening. That was cool!

One day in the FBO at White Plains, NY a skinny rocker came in the pilots lounge and sat down. I held my excitement in check and had a pleasant conversation with Mr. Keith Richards!

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When I think of the music that turns 50 this year, first is Musical Box / Genesis and Stairway to Heaven / Led Zeppelin.

Both groups that later influenced me musically a lot (especially Genesis)

At the appearance of these pieces I was only 10 and still listened to other music… but that was then over at the latest with 14. (to the chagrin of my parents)

One year later the (for me) masterpiece of Genesis was released.
Here beautifully illustrated: Supper’s ready

73 Armin

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I so agree, Armin, a towering masterpiece!

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You have to wait for November which is a bumper month I think.

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I was tied up with business and missed the 50th anniversary of the July 12, 1971 release of Funkadelic’s album Maggot Brain. I first heard the title track, with Eddie Hazel’s mournful guitar solo, in the wee hours of the night when they played it on our region’s best progressive rock (a broader term than what became called “prog-rock”) FM station, WMMS. I was a typically alienated teenager, everyone else in the house was asleep, and I could only wonder “What is this stuff?” I may still be trying to answer that question, but it had a big impact.

Maggot brain
Maggot brain1200×1184 280 KB

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There’s a good one for tomorrow. Still gets played on UK radio and doesn’t sound 50 years old to me!

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I don’t know the album mentioned Maggot Brain but I remember a few Funkadelic / Parliament / George Clinton songs from the 1970s and 80s, such as One Nation Under a Groove. Good to to see a different genre highlighted on the 50 years thread and some black music getting a mention. In a similar groove I bought a Cameo album once but it got sold with all my other vinyl and I went fully CD before vinyl went up in value!

73 Phil