Caravan • if i could do it all over again, i'd do it all over you (Decca, 1970)

Wandering around St. Marks last night with nothing much to do, but nursing a compulsion to just go...somewhere...I had the misfortune of spotting someone from my recent past. That event triggered another memory. About two years ago when I was working in Manhattan, I had become a host to a molecular dignitary. And as all hosts, I had to show this visiting dignitary the sights of New York. Regretfully the transfer is never easy on the host and symptoms not unlike influenza ensue. There I was hoping to show the sights of my beloved city, but I was unable to function...and at the same time I was starting a new job.

My guest understood and promised me that it would leave as soon as transfer was possible. For the sake of learning forgotten and black listed knowledge one suffers, and I did. Chills, excessive body mucus, aches, all forms of indignities. I had a new job to do - beside still housing the dignitary, so the option of sitting out and staying home could not be done.

While making my way home early one afternoon, I passed through Union Square. My guest was amazed at the upright growth of our plants. Regretfully this was in the winter so it would miss the flowering. I'm not exactly sure if the dignitary would understand the concept of flowering plants. I had once visited where it was from. It is a world of fungoid dominance and murky sky's. Just the way some places in the universe are. At the far end of the park facing the then Virgin Megastore was a group of easily 30 young people having a pillow fight. My host apologized for now the induction of hallucinations and once again stressed to his transfer point the necessity of his departure. Even I wasn't too sure if what was unfolding before me was really there - but when a feather landed gently on my jacket sleeve and I could pick it up, we both realized that this was indeed real. We stood there watching a joyful outburst of levity. Keep in mind that this was in the waning days of the Bush/Cheney administration, so at some point the pressure valve was going to blow. This is a phenomenon noted before, if you'll refer to Artaud's (1846-1948) essay on theater during plague, you will get a much more detailed explanation.

In one of the much treasured moments of synchronicity, the overstuffed feather pillows flew through the air in acts of soft edged aggression. In my iPod headphones played Caravan's second LP "if i could do it all over again, i'd do it all over you". Perfectly complimenting the heavy slow motion swings of the pillows was the laid back intensity that Caravan is noted for. While it is true that Caravan share too many similarities with The Soft Machine, from the near identical vocals between Wyatt and Sinclair and use of overamped Lowery organ, these are the same similarities that like species share. Lemurs and Chimpanzees are both primates, but there is that one or two things that keep them from being confused for each other in the dark. Caravans saving grace is their song form. While the Soft's were more adventurous in playing amorphous compositions that bordered on jazz, Caravan's strength was pop songs stretched out without sounding forced. This is best served by their ability to play slowly without sounding like they are plodding along. I must admit that I do not know much of the Caravan catalog - having only also the first and third lps, so I'm not sure if this style of playing holds out. The first record released on Verve is second tier psychedelia and had turned me off to the band, and the third record the lyrics get too close to Hobbitville for my liking but the fantastic playing over shadows.

Please click on the review title for the selected track: With An Ear To The Ground You Can Make It / Martinian / Only Cox / Reprise

The Velvet Underground • The Velvet Underground (MGM, 1969)

Everything that needs to be said about this band has been said. The perfect marriage of joyful nihilism and the infinite drone, New York's twisted stars meaning every word that they sang. All of it is true, and while I particularly love the first two records (The Velvet Underground & Nico, and White Light/White Heat), there is a part of me that enjoys the personal yet obscure song cycle of the third record.
What the gender is of the objects of Reed's observations isn't important. Man or woman, both seemed to house a mystery about love that he couldn't unravel. Love leaves you asking about where you are, and silently moves you to a place where you are alone wondering where you had been. Try rooting through a box of love letters and listen to this record in its entirety - you will get it.
After the hard as nails sonic assault of White Light/White Heat there was a wise move away from that sound. It has been assumed that due to Cale's dismissal from the band and the subsiquent theft of the band's distortion pedals was the cause. I'm not sure I buy that. Cale's first solo record "Vintage Violence" is in the same well crafted pop calmness of the third Velvet's record, only slightly more polished. Perhaps Reed saw that the band was in danger of becoming a parody of its self and he pulled in the reigns. Either way, what was produced had to be one of the more intelligent records of 1969. The lyrics would have been lost in the frenzy of the previous style of the first two records. Perhaps the only glimps of what was to come would be the song "I'll Be Your Mirror", and even then there is a menace to the words.
While their association to the underground waning from the firings of Warhol and Cale, The Velvet Underground were still capable of producing a track of sonic distress for the squares who might have been lulled into the record with its softer playing style. "The Murder Mystery" is the aural equivalent of Anthony Balach's The Cut Up's. Two audio tracks of word salads are recited simultaneously - each getting their own speaker. Read recites in a computer like monotone, while I suspect from the heavy Long Island accent Sterling Morrison reads at a rapid clip. The words intertwine around each other forming new images. Something about Nuns on the sea wall finishes the though of sailors who couldn't menstruate, but all the while nothing is really resolved. While this track seems out of place from all that has come before it, I have always wondered if it's placement was symbolic to the confusion on experiences ruminating over lost love.
Please click on the review title for the selected track: The Murder Mystery.

cosmos factory • cosmos factory (Columbia,1973)

Occasionally I am asked questions of a philosophic nature; "am I dying meester?", "will this operation bring intimacy back to our marriage", or "why do I only have one eye"...can't tell you how many times I've had to field that one...but every once in a while I get my most favorite. Coming out of the post operation anesthetic a patient will groggily ask "what is the invisible glue and cartilage that holds existence together". Now I am well versed in medical procedures, and I suspect it is because of this the common extension of logic is that I would know how things really are. Sadly to say I have been to all for corners of the universe (and yes there are four - they tend to fold in on themselves but I'll explain that another time) and I am at times equally at a loss as to what hold it all together. For a while I had thought that anger and the desire to survive was one of the essential ingredients. That theory had gone out the window when I met the fearsome Ellacultos. At that point of their evolution they hand willfully mutated into a sort of plant / machine. Somehow by that advancement in their physiology they had bypassed the problems associated by most animals. Now they only craved logic. With amazing quickness other empires had crumbled around them, and yet the Ellacultos still were dissatisfied. Now that they had survived, what was the point. There were no possible challengers in their section of the universe, and while the need for successful expansion of empire was alluring, it was all hollow victories after all. As they were now a Plant / Machine combination, individuality was extracted. When the death march of boredom started up, a new unthinkable idea was presented - suicide. In mass the Ellacultos returned to the planet that started the outward migration and proceeded to fight amongst themselves. Knowing that the direct mindedness of being part machine would get them to fight to the death, each and every one of them had a war. After roughly a few weeks the population was dead. I had always speculated that the decision for this action was not philosophical, but that of a malfunction of computer circuitry. Thankfully the electronics that made them what they were isn't that easily back engineered...that doesn't mean that it won't be, but for now we are safe...

So where does that leave us, well for me I am grateful that the fern on my mantel doesn't harbor any designs for conquest and listening to Cosmos Factory self titled first lp. I believe I have written in previous posts my affection for Japanese rock. Like most things from Japan that are based on western ideals - they get it so close, but then something goes wonderfully wrong. Where the Germans could have a fair grip on singing in English, far easterners just can't seem to do it. Something wrong happens - tongues that are not equipped to the various Latin based letters and consonants flop warily around, producing something not unlike singing backwards.

Opening with a Mort Garison / Movie of the Week like instrumental called "soundtrack 1984", we then dive head long into heavy Hammond Organ and angelic choir vocals territory of "Maybe". This song, like all the others are sung in Japanese, keeping the otherness intact. Perhaps there are some Bowie like inflections detectable, but the confidence of the band saves this from being a maudlin copycat.

Maudlin or perhaps even turgid the best way to describe the overall tone of the record. From the cover and gatefold depicting decay and abandonment, to the songs where everything is just short of pop Wagner. This is not a light and uplifting album. If everything is going to crap in your life that that moment, you may want to keep the suicide prevention hot line on speed dial. These are the Quaaluded Spiders from Mars. Thankfully there is a slightly less apocalyptic song "Soft Focus", that uses a sort of Asian sounding melody, but it is moody none the less. The second side of the record is comprised of the four part suite "An Old Castle Of Transylvania". It is everything you would expect with a title like that; mysterious organ chords, distorted guitars, spooky Mellotron fills, and more end of the world vocalizing. If Jean Rollin shot his Vampire films in Japan instead of France, Cosmos Factory would have supplied the perfect score.

I have seen this album listed as An Old Castle Of Transylvania, but nowhere is that used beside as the title for the suite. What is listed on the back cover is Merry go round. Was this at one point the working title of the record?

Cosmos Factory would go on to make three other records, that I am yet to hear. Apparently the follow up to the first record was a electronic soundtrack, and then the remaining two are in the vein of heavy metal. I hope that isn't true for the last true, I would hate to think that in a attempt to keep things going that there was a retrograde of intelligence.


Please click on the review title for selected track: Maybe.

Steven Stapleton & David Tibet • The Sadness Of Things (United Dairies, 1991)

Your good doctor is in a bit of a quandary, and taking a walk in the snow currently blanketing New York has not made things any clearer. I'm not sure if I had witnessed a car wreck, nervous break down, a bad power struggle, infidelity, anima dimorphism, imaginary lycanthropy, or any other form of what the hell was that a few months ago. Regretfully I am a man driven to get to the bottom of things. Had I only picked up a different match book and filled out the coupon, my entries would be written by the aesthetics a different hand. That appendage would be one guided by the mind of a private investigator. While my psyche has been honed to look for signs of malignant growth, or even host parasite imbalance, and these are detecting skills, I wish I was better suited to the world of mind and motivation.

When I find myself in such a state, wondering what has happened, or perhaps even my role in unfolding events, one can either chose music that numbs all thought or enhance it. To perform audio anesthetic I would opt for something ridiculous not unlike T.Rex or even Esquivel, but for moments of reflection the nod must be given to Steven Stapleton and David Tibet's apex of inner-space; The Sadness Of Things.

Sprawled out across two tracks is the fog of contemplation and melancholia. The title track begins with a slow and steady drumbeat, not unlike something one hears at the finer temples in Lasha Lasha. A mournful wooden flute pipes lonely against a indecipherable electronic fog. As this builds in stately momentum a girls voice intones "I am not born. I do not die". Her voice is assured, very much like the words of the departed - not connecting with any event in the room, but still with intention of place. This is the ritual that draws you out of your body and allows you to look down and see that the world was really constructed of back lots and extras. Mono no aware? Most certainly. There are things in this world that will never be fully understood. Nuances is all one can gather, and even then to study it too long its inner workings become various and open ended. No answer is forthcoming. Eventually all one learns is that cruelty is one of the easier actions we are capable of. You walk away muttering the sadness of things. Such is the music of the first track. With a stringent viola line working its way through the gauzy haze eventually David Tibet appears. With a somnambulists dedication he reads bewildering lines asking where the years have gone. By the simple magick of sound he has helped you through your quandary. What is unknown can be left aside, content we are that some mysteries are the sum total of themselves. Now the great work can begin.

By the second track; The Grave And The Beautiful Name Of Sadness, you are fully dislodged and now among the protoplasm and dark mater that holds existence together. With just human voice and echo, Stapleton glides you to somewhere. Yet it seems the trip is more important than the destination. Are these the voices of the departed we hear and are they just sounding off in the fog, with no definitive omens to come for the living?

It seems that this CD has gone out of print and there are no immediate plans to reissue it, which is a shame. Of the collaborations that Stapleton and Tibet have lodged under their names, not just under the designations as Nurse With Wound or Current93 this is some of their most powerful work. Equally a shame is the scarcity of the CD. Used copies are almost impossible to come by, and most due to a mastering issue have disc rot.

Please click on the review title for the selected track: The Sadness Of Things.

pearls before swine • balaklava (ESP-DISK, 1968)

My absence is unbecoming, and please accept my most humblest of apologies. Where have I been you may ask, I wish I could say that my travels have taken me to the exotic shores of Nebulae 12, with the natives neither wholly plant or machine. Or even that of the molecular with trapdoors awaiting with every ignorant turn. No, nothing as harrowing was the cause of my disappearance. My terrestrial employment had relocated to Long Island City, and the commute was not conducive to writing, I am sorry to admit.

Let us not dwell on such unpleasantness. The world can do that on it's own and it doesn't really need our help. We are seekers of sound new and old. That is our concern.

One of those Old and New sounds would be Pearls Before Swine's late 60's masterpiece - Balaklava. This jewel of folk melancholia was introduced to me by I. Vale in the mid 80's. From the spoken word opening from Trumpeter Landfrey, one of the last surviving trumpeters of The Charge of the Light brigade followed quickly by a song that sounded unlike anything that was labeled "the 60's". What was this sound? A acoustic guitar bathed in reverb, spoken word philosophy couplets, and heavy breathing. We were hooked.

Early in my listening carrier I was not a huge fan of acoustic music, it just seemed so empty. Thankfully this record set my ear afire with it's simplicity. This is not to say that it's all plain song, quite the opposite. Songs are often cradled by sound effects, and it is these effects that add to rather than flesh out the compositions. Guardian Angels, the stunning closer of side one would be nothing without the addition of 78 RPM scratches and drop outs. Could the gorgeous I Saw The World work without the shoreline sounds. It most likely would, due to the strength of the lyrics, but without it the song would be lacking. If I am stressing here the use of sound effects, it is by way of compensation. While the Pearls are now somewhat revered when remembered, at the time of my discovery most contemporary rock encyclopedias would list them as trivial LSD soaked oddities. These were the same books that heaped praise on the likes of the Almann Brothers and the Knack...and who says that that those books weren't ghost written by the staff at Atlantic or Epic...

All of the Pearls records were pretty much the vision of Thom Rapp (seated). He was most certainly responsible for the clever inward looking lyrics, but musically that's where it gets a little questionable. On this, their second record, not unlike the first, the music has a out of century quality. Just as Nico's The Marble Index could be songs from the 1500's with modern 8 track additions, the same could be said of Balaklava. The songs move with a air of American troubadour, but the whole section of backwards music smells of patchouli and modern technology.

The follow up record for Reprise, "These Things Too", continued with the Medieval art motif, but the original band was gone and the music reflects this. While never coming close to Singer Songwriter, every album after Balaklava has a creeping normality about it. This is not to say that James Taylor had anything to worry about, but the better tracks were getting few and far between. For every song like The Jeweler or Stardancer, you had Charley and the lady, or almost all of The City Of Gold LP.

Click on the review title for I Saw The World.