The Great Al***s

At Reading in 1975 I saw The Heavy Metal Kids with Gary Holton. They were storming. I immediately bought their first album and have played it every decade at some time ever since. A brilliant pre-punk band who were totally overlooked. They became part of the soundtrack to my school and college days.

Finlay Quaye - Maverick a Strike.

Definetly in my top ten. Shame he hasn't touched the musical heights of it since.

Alice Cooper - Welcome To My Nightmare: another great album and IMO Alice's best once he stopped being Vincent Damon Furnier in the Alice Cooper Group and became Alice Cooper solo artist - WTMN is the album that gave us Cold Ethyl: a charming little number and the big smash hit Only Women Bleed - of course the main theme was a horror story with participation from Vincent Price (didn't some lesser artist copy that idea).

My favourite albums by the Alice Cooper Group are Love It To Death and Killer.

LITD has some amazing tracks like Still Got A long Way To Go and Caught In A Dream. plus the superb Ballad of Dwight Fry (I gotta get out of here), and an intersterst version of the Rolf Harris' classic: Sun Arise.

So three great albums from Detroit's finest and I haven't even mentioned School's Out or Billion Dollar Babies.

From Cold Ethyl on Welcome To My Nightmare:

One thing I miss is Cold Ethyl and her skeleton kiss
We met last night making love by the refrigerator light
Ethyl Ethyl let me squeeze you in my arms
Ethyl Ethyl come and freeze me with your charms
One thing
No lie
Ethyl's frigid as an eskimo pie
She's cool in bed
Well she oughta be 'cuz Ethyl's dead

and here's the video.

Time for another great album and this one is a little confusing - you see if you bought Colosseum's second album in GB and the US then you got two different albums. Fortunately, it is now sorted and you can get an expanded version of Colosseum's wonderful Valentyne Suite. This expanded collections has all the tracks from both releases.

The expanded double CD version of their second album was chosen to launch the Vertigo label in late 69 and immediately won the company a reputation for experimental progressive rock.

Built around the 16 minute title track, it is arguably their magnum opus. It contains some intriguing writing by former Cream lyricist Pete Brown. The expanded version includes 1969 Top Gear session tracks and the whole of the US album The Grass Is Greener.

To hear the marvellous title track then try Drummer World - it is a live version.

When Jon Hiseman assemble Colosseum he wanted people who put the music first - no drugs, no drunks, no lunatics: just musicians who wanted to work hard and create a great sound. Jon got his wish

Dave Greenslade - Hammond Organ, Vibraphone
Dick Heckstall-Smith - Saxophone
Jon Hiseman - Drums
James Litherland - Guitars, Vocals
Tony Reeves - Bass Guitars

Superb combination



Kettle - Elegy - Butty's Blues - Machine Demands A Sacrifice - Valentyne Suite - Arthur's Moustache - Lost Angeles - Jumping Off The Sun - Rope Ladder To The Moon - Bolero - Grass Is Greener

Valentyne Suite - a great album.

Available again on vinyl is another great album - trust me if you like early Pink Floyd then you are bound to love this. It is another great album - July by July



In the words of the Freak Emporium

One of the best UK psychedelic albums ever, made available again on vinyl!!! Originally released in 1968, includes all their best tracks like "My Clown" or "Dandelion seeds".This album is an amazing mixture of strange production effects, Eastern influences and instrumentation, plus feedback, fuzz guitar, phasing, and melodic yet weird songs that perfectly capture the feel of the UK on acid in '67. An absolute must!

Just ordered my copy.

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF

From Cold Ethyl on Welcome To My Nightmare:

One thing I miss is Cold Ethyl and her skeleton kiss
We met last night making love by the refrigerator light
Ethyl Ethyl let me squeeze you in my arms
Ethyl Ethyl come and freeze me with your charms
One thing
No lie
Ethyl's frigid as an eskimo pie
She's cool in bed
Well she oughta be 'cuz Ethyl's dead

and here's the video.

ROTF

Today people would be mighty offended by those lines. AC had a way of doing it that didn't make people gross out but see the obvious camp of what they were doing. I think I heard the Vincent Price monologue on some nostalgia radio station a while ago. Is it the bit where he describes what happens to the human body after being bit by a black Widow spider ? I know the lead singer(can't remember his real name, it was not Alice Cooper) loved old TV and Horror movies and that is his tribute to them.


BB

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
Available again on vinyl is another great album - trust me if you like early Pink Floyd then you are bound to love this. It is another great album - July by July

I have to disagree with you here. Though the tracks Freak Emporium mention are good and there are a couple of other decent songs, the album is at best second division psych. It comes nowhere near early Pink Floyd either in quality of song or impact. Obviously in my opinion :-).

Apologies Big Brother if I offended you - I can't always manage an instant reply - however here is the Vincent Price monologue from Welcome To My Nightmare

Leaving lepidoptra - please, don't touch the display, little boy, aha cute! Moving to the next aisle we have arachnida, the spiders, our.. finest collection. This friendly little devil is the heptothilidi, unfortunately harmless. Next to him, the nasty licosa raptoria, his tiny fangs cause creeping ulcerations of the skin. And here, my prize, the Black Widow. Isn't she lovely?.. and so deadly. Her kiss is fifteen times as poisonous as that of the rattlesnake. You see her venom is highly neurotoxic, which is to say that it attacks the central nervous system causing intense pain, profuse sweating, difficulty in breathing, loss of consciousness, violent convulsions and, finally.. death. You know what I think I love the most about her is her inborn need to dominate, possess. In fact, immediately after the consummation of her marriage to the smaller and weaker male of the specie she kills and eats him. Oh, she is delicious.. and I hope he was! Such power and dignity - unhampered by sentiment. If I may put forward a slice of personal philosophy, I feel that man has ruled this world as a stumbling dimented child-king long enough! And as his empire crumbles, my precious Black Widow shall rise as his most fitting successor!

I think it is Dick Wagner that did the vocal you recall.

AC was a big horror movie fan and his big tribute to genre was The Ballad of Dwight Fry from Love It To Death.



Dwight Fry(e) most famous role was in Dracula in which he played Renfield who was became mad - he was nearly always cast in such roles.

ATB Rotf

ROTF

Thanks, I asked the moderator to remove my idiotic post.

Yeah ... that's the one I heard on the radio. Great Stuff.


Regards

BB

quote:

Originally posted by Gary Shaw:

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:
Available again on vinyl is another great album - trust me if you like early Pink Floyd then you are bound to love this. It is another great album - July by July

I have to disagree with you here. Though the tracks Freak Emporium mention are good and there are a couple of other decent songs, the album is at best second division psych. It comes nowhere near early Pink Floyd either in quality of song or impact. Obviously in my opinion :-).

Hi Gary

A courteous disagreement is always healthy. However, you are right to remind me that, although July contains some high points, it doesn't match the consistency of Piper At The Gates, which is always near the top if I'm asked to list my favourite albums. Piper At The Gates is a truly great album and every bit as good as Sgt Pepper and SF Sorrow.

I always thought Piper would have been my favourite psych album if they had found room on it for the singles, but then Strawberry Fields didn't make it on to Pepper and Defecting Grey didn't make it on to the original Sorrow.

I really wish that Dave G would allow the release of some early Floyd stuff - especially Vegetable Man and Scream Thy Last Scream and was there ever a track called She Was A Millionaire - I've never heard it, but I understood is was to be the follow-up to See Emily Play.

Best regards, Rotf

Over the years Piper has continued to astonish me - it's inventiveness and originality are second to none...

...though in a purely psych-pop kind of way, the freebee album of Early Singles issued with the Shine On boxset is even better (and a reminder that, in his day, Rick Wright was a superb pop song writer at one time):

Arnold Layne
Candy and a Currant Bun
See Emily Play
Scarecrow
Apples and Oranges
Paint Box
It Would Be So Nice
Julia Dream
Point Me At The Sky
Careful With That Axe Eugene

S.F. Sorrow is only just behind Piper though.

Lloyd Cole and the Commotions - rattlesnakes.

10 perfect tracks, wonderful lyrics, excellent production.

Not a Blood on the Tracks but a wonderfully descriptive cycle of falling in and out of love, but love with a small "l".

Wonderful lyrics with a great delivery, Lloyd has a small vocal range but these all stay within it and he has the "Paul Simon/ Bob Dylan" way of caressing the words he uses.

"cheekbones like geometry and eyes like sin,
and she's sexually enlightened by Cosmopolitan"


"why must you tell me all your secrets when it's hard enough to love you knowing nothing"



and this doesn't look much on paper but it's up there with the best openings ever when sung by Cole,

"looking like a born again
living like a heretic
listening to arthur lee records
making all your friends feel so guilty
about their cynicism
and the rest of their generation
not even the government are gonna stop you now
but are you ready to be heartbroken?"


The 4 extra tracks only go to emphasise how perfect the original album is.



SJB

AL Stewart: Year of the Cat Very middle of the road but perfect nonetheless 31 years on. Good songs written and performed by Al Stewart with interesting lyrics performed by the best session musicians produced by Alan parsons and all the ingredients coming together as a whole grater than the sum of the parts.

ROTF
A bit behind with my reading!
I agree with you about Valentyne Suite. I saw Colosseum at Surrey Uni in either late '70 or early '71. They were brilliant, but it was definitely not a no-drinking band. It was Dick H-S's birthday, and he had a crate of brown ale on the stage, which had gone by the time they left!

quote:

Originally posted by acad tsunami:
AL Stewart: Year of the Cat Very middle of the road but perfect nonetheless 31 years on. Good songs written and performed by Al Stewart with interesting lyrics performed by the best session musicians produced by Alan parsons and all the ingredients coming together as a whole grater than the sum of the parts.

I have a certain fondness for that too, Acad!

Also...



James

quote:

Originally posted by Chris Kelly:
ROTF
... saw Colosseum at Surrey Uni in either late '70 or early '71. They were brilliant, but it was definitely not a no-drinking band. It was Dick H-S's birthday, and he had a crate of brown ale on the stage, which had gone by the time they left!

Just goes to show I shouldn't believe all JH says on his DVDs.

My dad used to be a postman in the 70s and on his round were Bronze records and he knew JH. JH gave him a signed copy of For Those Who Are About To Die. Dad often remarked that Jon said to him that he wouldn't like it as nobody he'd given a copy to ever did - on the contrary how could anybody not like such a great record.

Dad's also got a Juicy Lucy album signed by Ray Owen - at least I hope he still has it.

quote:

Originally posted by acad tsunami:
Year of the Cat

Good choice - I've got most of Al Stewart's early stuff - YOTC is a great album. Orange is my favourite album of his.

James,

Strange you should have mentioned the Jerry Rafferty as I had not heard of it until I noticed it on the YotC Page on Amazon in the 'Customers who bought this item also bought' section. I will check it out. Thanks.

A

quote:

Originally posted by ROTF:

quote:

Originally posted by acad tsunami:
Year of the Cat

Good choice - I've got most of Al Stewart's early stuff - YOTC is a great album. Orange is my favourite album of his.

Yes, I like all of his early stuff too. It is a very sad puppy that would not find something to like on YotC. 'Past, Present & Future' is probably my second favourite.

City to City is a great album. It's funny, I just bought YOTC a couple weeks ago, I'll have to give it a spin.

Tilt is a great album - why? It’s original. It’s confrontational. It’s evocative.



Whether you like popular or classical music, please try Tilt is extraordinary.
Great musicianship with Sinfonia (strings), Central Methodist Hall Pipe Organ, electric guitar bass, drums, chitarrones and hand cymbals. There’s the superb orchestration and organ playing by Brian Gascoyne.

Although you may think that sampling was used to provide the incredible collage of sound on Tilt it wasn’t. Scott Walker rejected studio trickery- he wanted spontaneous musical ideas from musicians.

Scott worked hard the musicians and added the vocal track later, but to keep authenticate - his vocals are done in a single take. Scott is a marvellous singer. He says he terrified of singing and he wants that terror to across.

Scott’s lyrics are unusual - on Tilt we have extracts from the trial of of Queen Caroline and the trial of Adolf Eichmann. Scott sings about South American refugees, the death of Italian filmmaker Paolo Pasolini, cockfighting and the bombing of Iraq. Scott uses words not so much to communicate, but to provide rhythm. They have to lead and drive the music by the way they sound.

You won’t hear another album like Tilt unless you buy Scott’s The Drift: an album almost as good that follows the same route.

The opening track on Tilt is Farmer in the City (Remembering Pasolini) and is as easy to listen to as the album gets. It’s theme is wry humour, beauty and grief from the last hours of Pasolini’s life set against a backdrop of horror that is there in music and the fragments of Pasolini’s and his killers voices.

And I used to be a citizen
I never felt the pressure
I knew nothing of the horses
nothing of the thresher.

The strings of the London Sinfonia reach a crescendo to support this lyric. It’ll clear the dance floor (thank god).

Next The Cockfighter is a depiction of a nightmare. It start with an ambient feel that is disrupted by metallic rhythms. Scott describes a cockfight, interposing transcripts of the aforementioned trials.

Do you swear that the breastbone was bare?
I saw it, and made my escape.
Do you remember what happened to most of the children?
You were in charge of the rolling stock.

This is different from the folk tradition that usual dominates the music I love. Shirley Collins to HMHB is really a development of that folk tradition. Scott is different. His music is more stark, less accessible in many ways. Rather than tell a story, it paints pictures. Tilt and The Drift are superb albums - everybody should at least listen to some of one of them or I’ll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway.

BTW if you like Scott then I'd recommend the far more commercial, but nonetheless enjoyable



Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel

As the blurb says: The Belgian-born Brel flourished in the Paris of the 1960s. His songs were strange, sordid little narratives populated with dissolute characters--the drunken sailors in "Amsterdam", the depraved pop icon who narrates "Jackie"--and it is likely he would have languished in terminal obscurity until his death in 1978 had Walker not become so besotted with his work.

All together now --

And if one day I should become a singer with a Spanish bum who sings for women of great virtue
I'd sing to them with a guitar, I borrowed from coffee bar - well, what you don't know doesn't hurt you
My name would be Antonio and all my bridges I would burn
And if I gave them some they'd know, I expect something in return
I'd have to get drunk every night to talk about virility
With some old grandmother who might be decked out like a Christmas tree
And tho' pink elephants I'd see
I'd sing the song they sang to me
About the time they called me Jackie
If I could be for only an hour
If I could be for an hour every day
If I could be for just one little hour
Cute, cute, cute in a stupid-ass way

Here's Jackie

Scott Walker - 30th Century Man

Scott discusses the making of The Drift

Jesse from The Drift

Call me sentimental, this one goes back to 88'.

Now thats what we need BB........a classic. Even one of Henry Rollin's favs apparently.

The bassline to Night of the Living Baseheads has to be heard to be believed.

Ryan

[QUOTE]Originally posted by ryan_d:
........a classic. Even one of Henry Rollins' favs apparently.[/quote

Henry Rollins, Henry Rollins
You're hard, you're hard
Big Jimmy Nail, Big Jimmy Nail
You're hard as well
Sainsbury's security
Like I'm dead scared
Oh what a scary world it can be

from Four Lads Who Shook The Wirral another truly great album.

HMHB explanatory note:

Henry Rollins U.S. vocalist/songwriter/actor/stand-up comendian. Mr Angry in Black Flag, Mr Tattoos in the Rollins Band, but a nice chap really.

Jimmy Nail Geordie actor, now attempting to do Country & Western.

Sainsbury's Supermarkets. Loads of 'em.

Listening to the best band in the world is not a just a music hall pleasure, it is also educational.