Christian Death "Deathwish" 1984(release) 1981(rec.)***

I've had a few of these "dark" records sitting in my drafts folder since spring, but I thought I'd present them at a more appropriate time. Who'd like to listen to the likes of Christian Death when it's still sunny and warm outside, right? It turns out that weather has nothing to do with it: I may have previously connected the moroseness of Sisters Of Mercy and Red Lorry Yellow Lorry to the weather of their native Leeds, but Christian Death come from sunny South California: shouldn't they by rights only be singing about the sun, surf, girls?

Instead, this is how this EP starts "I see the end, and I see the end well it was open so I crawled inside/ And someone up ahead was crying, well someone up ahead was dying/ Lost in the darkness, lost in today". This is from the title track "Deathwish", a short piece with a heavy metallic riff by guitarist Rikk Agnew and dramatic vocal by singer/bandleader Rozz Williams. Agnew, already a mainstay of the California punk scene (having played for Social Distortion, The Detours, and The Adolescents) attended an early gig and, being struck by their outlandish appearance and performance, offered to join them as second guitarist. By the time of these recordings he was the only guitarist left. Before I continue the review I should warn you that these are early demos not initially intended for release, which explains/excuses the poor-to-middling recording quality. They predated their debut Only Theater Of Pain (also produced by Thom Wilson of Offspring fame) but were released a few years later, initially in Europe only. Despite the lo-fi sound they retain a certain murky charm, which is why this EP is highly regarded by many Christian Death fans. These tracks would later be added to the O.T.O.P. CD reissue, which I guess diminishes the need to seek out this EP - if not for the great booklet with the freaky engravings and gothic poetry in both English and French versions, a great vinyl edition that every Goth is sure to appreciate. I have it on CD myself, but it's still nice as CD booklets go. The song that stands out, both here and in the final version released on O.T.O.P., is the speedy post-punk classic "Romeo's Distress". "Dogs" features atmospheric synths and semi-spoken vocals, and the menacing "Desperate Hell" is full of shrieks and horror effects. The EP closes with two more early versions of O.T.O.P. tracks, the punky "Spiritual Cramp" and the more psychedelic "Cavity". The music of this line-up was generally punkier and more guitar-based than what followed, partly because of Agnew's influence. After he left, the band's sound would become less rock'n'roll and more theatrical and atmospheric. By 1985 lead singer Rozz also left, with bandmate Valor Kand taking over the reins. While the Valor Kand line-up lasted decades instead of mere years and it is the one most people are familiar with, the original Rozz Williams line-up still is the most revered by fans. They would get better in time, but these early versions also make for a fascinating glimpse into the beginnings of one of the most original post-punk/goth bands.

***** for Romeo's Distress

**** for Deathwish

*** for Dogs, Spiritual Cramp

** for Desperate Hell, Cavity 

Daniel Lanois "Acadie" 1989****

No-one expected an album by Daniel Lanois in 1989. Artists often graduate from performing to producing, but it very rarely happens the other way round. And Lanois' career as producer had really taken off for good - he produced 6 albums in 1989 alone, including late-career highs for veterans like The Neville Brothers (Yellow Moon) and Bob Dylan (Oh Mercy). Nevertheless, in the midst of all that, he found time to record his own debut. That the production is superb should come as no surprise, but the quality of the original compositions and musicianship is also beyond reproach. It helps, of course, to be able to count on friends like U2 (Lanois had co-produced their iconic Joshua Tree album), Brian Eno (another of Lanois' clients) and The Neville Brothers (ditto), all of whom play here. Lanois' singing is quite good, warm and expressive even though he lacks an especially powerful voice or range. As reviewers invariably comment, the album is a mix of New Age atmospherics and traditional Americana - the music is rooted in the New Orleans tradition, enough for me to mistake Lanois for a Louisiana cajun rather than the French Canadian he is. The first two tracks ("Still Water", "The Maker") are atmospheric ballads highly reminiscent of U2's Joshua Tree (not surprisingly, as they feature the same producer and rhythm section). The slow "O Marie" and mid-paced "Jolie Louise" are folkier Cajun material with French and English lyrics, and "Fisherman's Daughter" is a part-spoken word track with moody musical accompaniment segueing to the jazzy sax instrumental "White Mustang II", co-written with Brian Eno. "Under A Stormy Sky" is the most upbeat here, a bilingual zydeco-style tune that's sure to make you smile. "Where The Hawkwind Kills" is another atmospheric song, this time featuring slow, quasi-military, drumming and an Oriental melody. "Silium's Hill" is a melancholic acoustic piece, followed by the ambient synth sounds of "Ice" and another smooth laid-back song, "St. Ann's Gold". The album closes with a cover of traditional hymn "Amazing Grace", combining Art Neville's gospel singing with a prog-electronic, Mike Oldfield-like, backing. It makes for a relatively novel approach to an over-familiar song everybody must by now be tired of. All in all, this is an excellent atmospheric album with beautiful melodies and masterful -not too busy, not too sparse- arrangements. The only objection one may rise is the too-clean production, where -the folkier material at least- would benefit from a more earthly approach. On the other hand, this was the 80's and clean was the golden standard of the period. It makes in any case for smooth and relaxed listening - an (unsurprisingly) accomplished debut, for sure.

***** for The Maker

**** for Still Water, O Marie, Jolie Louise, Under A Stormy Sky, Where The Hawkwind Kills, St. Ann's Gold

*** for Fisherman's Daughter, White Mustang II, Silium's Hill, Ice, Amazing Grace

Marble Phrogg "Marble Phrogg" 1968****

This is one of the rarest 60's psychedelic albums - apparently only 100 copies were ever pressed to be sold at band gigs in Tulsa, Oklahoma and the O.S.U. campus in Stillwater. But rarity alone isn't enough to explain why this LP, comprised mostly by covers of contemporary rock hits, is a highly valued collectors' item. Thousands of garage bands recorded self-released LP's which, while just as rare, don't sell for hundreds of $. No, the value of this LP lies in the quality of the playing which is more than competent. More importantly, the band does not mimic the originals in everything, resulting in an album with a recognizable style throughout. Their best feature is the fantastic, fuzzed out, lead guitar which is used to great effect on Hendrix's "Fire" and Cream's "I'm So Glad" and "Strange Brew". Two Byrds covers ("I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better" and "Ryder") feature the familiar folk-rock harmonies, the overall sound being just a bit rockier than the originals. We also get a very nice hard rock cover of Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild" and a garagey lo-fi "Connection", one of the least-covered Stones classics. Other interesting psychedelic covers include Iron Butterfly's "Fields Of Sun", Donovan's "Season Of The Witch" and Eric Burdon's "Sky Pilot". Lastly, there are two songs I wasn't formerly familiar with: acoustic folk ballad "There's A Girl" and great garage-rocker "Love Me Again" - the latter features a scorching guitar solo and seems to be an original: it's attributed to someone called Norvell and, to quote a reviewer on amazon.com who is obviously a Tulsa resident "band member Phil Norvell went on to play in the Honky Dreads" - whoever those Dreads may be, usual databases yield no results. All in all, this album should satisfy all fans of 60's fuzz/acid rock. The covers are interesting, though not radically different from the originals, and the sole original kicks ass! If you can't spare 700+ ‎€'s for the original vinyl, there are some bootleg CD reissues, such as the one I have. The original back cover is a nice piece of 60's comix art which is unfortunately distorted and compressed to fit in the CD inlay. I tried to stretch it to normal dimensions to post here. Hope you like it, as well as the sample videos below.

**** for Love Me Again (Norvell), Born To Be Wild (Steppenwolf), I'll Feel A Whole Lot Better (Byrds), Fire (Jimi Hendrix), Strange Brew (Cream), Season Of The Witch (Donovan)

*** for I'm So Glad (Cream), Fields Of Sun (Iron Butterfly), Ryder (Tim Rose), Connection (Rolling Stones), There's A Girl (Dickerson), Sky Pilot (Eric Burdon)

Various Artists "Les Triomphes Du Blues" 1920-1950(rec) 2001(comp)*****

The friend who gave me this box set as a birthday present, many years ago, wasn't too shy to admit that it wasn't as expensive as it looked (not that it mattered, of course). You see this is one of the first examples making use of the E.U. legislation limiting copyright for the performers to 50 years after the first public airing - or 50 years after the original recording for unreleased performances. Copyright protection was later extended to 70 years, so post-1962 recordings -including those of The Beatles and the age of classic rock giants- are protected. This had the side effect of sending me to the shops to start re-buying my collection on CD form. Before that, I had figured I'd slowly do it over time as my favorite records become available on cheap copyright-free editions year after year. That's how I ended up owning everything twice, setting the wheels in motion for the Great Vinyl Purge - but that's another story which I've already shared with my blog readers. Well, the abundance of all those great early recordings has resulted in some very shoddy reissues, hastily compiled, badly sounding and annotated. This, thankfully, isn't one of them. The Box Set consists of 20 CD's (24+ hours of material) in cardboard cases and a nice 44-page booklet with recording details and artists' biographies - in French, since this is a French release. Each CD has a theme (e.g. Piano Blues, Female Blues Singers, Gospels & Evangelists etc) and compiles between 2 and 26 artists. Some (e.g. Leadbelly, Muddy Waters, T-Bone Walker, Lightning Hopkins, Memphis Slim) have half the CD (12-13 tracks) dedicated to them, others only 1-2 tracks. I think all major genre pioneers can be found here, as well as some only known to collectors of vintage 78's. As it was released in 2001, it only covers the years up to 1950 - meaning that the most popular artists like B.B.King, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf etc. are only represented by their earliest recordings rather than by their most famous ones. Others (Buddy Guy, Junior Wells, Bo Diddley etc) just miss the boat for a few years. Sound quality is amazing, given that there are no master tapes, and the source is probably vintage 78 RPM records. As for the quality of the music itself, it can't be faulted. These are historic recordings that formed the basis for most of modern rock. You should see how Jimmy Page or Eric Clapton talk about these old bluesmen and the influence they had on them. Given that it includes around 500 songs, it is impossible to present them track-by-track, so I'll only talk about the oldest song here: "Crazy Blues" by Mamie Smith is widely considered the first blues record, released in 1920. The song gives the account of a destructive, uncontrollable passion for an unresponsive lover, and ends with some pretty unexpected (for me) words - it's uncanny what kind of lyrics slipped by the censors in "race" records: "I'm gonna do like a Chinaman, go and get some hop (heroin)/Get myself a gun, and shoot myself a cop/I ain't had nothin' but bad news/Now I've got the crazy blues". Jeez, this black lady sung about shooting heroin and shooting cops one freaking century ago, and had even had a hit with it. Didn't Ice T put out a record called Copkiller in the 90's which was withdrawn for being too offensive? He did, and it's a rare collector's item now. Goes to show how less daring popular music has become with time. Mamie had already made other recordings for the Okeh label, but these were vaudeville and cabaret songs, while this was her first blues. It was a huge success, selling 1 million(!) copies in less than a year and opening a bright new market in "race" music, i.e. records marketed directly to African-American audiences which were up to that time ignored as a buying demographic. It turned out that despite their relative poverty they were thirsty for music and enthusiastic records buyers. Despite a successful career in film and music, Mamie Smith died destitute and was buried in an unmarked grave in 1946. 66 years later, fans began an internet campaign to buy her a gravestone. 

She had waited for a gravestone twice as long as as the so-called "Empress of Blues" Bessie Smith - she got hers courtesy of Janis Joplin in 1970. Bessie (no relation to Mamie) reportedly died in an automobile accident in 1937 after being denied treatment in a white-only hospital. Some of her wonderful blues songs make up half of this compilation's CD 4, while there's also a HBO biopic about her life starring Queen Latifah. There's such a wealth of stories on early blues connected to this compilation. What about Robert Johnson, the man who infamously met the Devil at the crossroads, and who sold his soul in return for guitar mastery? His death at the age of 27 is the stuff of endless theories (poisoning by a jealous husband? Syphilis? Congenital heart disease? no-one knows, as a black man found dead on the side of the road did not merit an autopsy at the time). On the "bright" side, Johnson has not one but three gravestones marking his final resting place, in 3 different graveyards. Possibly none of them is correct though, as a recent documentary suggests he was buried in a mass grave, near the road where his body was found. There's another biopic in the works about him which may shed some light. 

 

Nearly every artist here has an amazing life story, and some of them have been into movies: there's one about the famous jail bird Lead Belly who recorded a bunch of often-covered folk songs in prison, and there's of course the movie Cadillac Records recounting the story of Muddy Waters getting "discovered" in a Mississippi plantation, and his moving to Chicago which ended up changing popular music forever. Another story that I like (which hasn't yet had a film adaptation) is of the two Sonny Boy Williamsons: Rice Miller (AKA Sonny Boy Williamson II) built his early career impersonating the original John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson. Both were wandering blues singers and expert harmonica players. John Lee tracked Miller to his Arkansas home in 1942 to ask him to stop, only to get chased away at knifepoint by the impostor who was a huge man with a history of violence. From then on, the real Sonny Boy just made a point of learning where the fake one was playing and avoiding him - which didn't save him from getting stabbed to death in an unrelated incident in Chicago in 1948. That was "death from natural causes" for wandering musicians of the time. Fake Sonny Boy went on to record a number of excellent blues records, get international recognition, and play with young rockers/admirers including Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Eric Burdon before dying in 1965 at the grand old age of 52. You won't listen to him here, though. This collection only includes some songs by the original (John Lee) Sonny Boy. My God, there are so many stories it'd take a big old tome to fit them all. And it is, of course, unnecessary to know all of them in order the enjoy the music. Thanks to the E.U copyright legislation there's a real treasure trove of early blues available to purchase for bargain prices. This is as good a place to start as any.

Full tracklisting is too long to publish here, so here's a link to the relevant discogs entry

Pan Y Regaliz / Evolution / Cerebrum - Grandes Grupos Progresivos - Todas Sus Grabaciones Para Discos Dimension 1969-1972(rec) 1999(comp)****

I visited Valencia shortly before covid-19 hit Europe and, as always, did the tour of the city's record stores. I was in one of them called Discos Oldies and about to buy a vinyl reissue of the Pan Y Regaliz LP when I stumbled on this CD: it cost about the same, contained all of Pan Y Regaliz but also added (almost) complete discographies by two other contemporary Spanish groups, unknown to me at the time, so I opted for this one instead.

The original Pan Y Regaliz LP (****) is a highly sought-after item that changes hands for 100's of €'s, even in VG (moderate) condition, a result of their musical worth as well as of its rarity. All I knew about the band was their reputation as the "Spanish Jethro Tull". Apparently they hadn't heard much of Jethro Tull at the time, but the comparison is inescapable for any rock band using flute. Apart from that detail, this Catalan band is notable for singing in English despite having a Spanish name, as well as for the absence of any Spanish influences in their music: one could easily take them for a British, or maybe German, group of the period. The music is blues-based psychedelia akin to Cream circa Disraeli Gears, with the flute providing the more jazz/prog moments. Opener "Dead Of Love" and "One More Day" justify the "Spanish Jethro Tull" label with fluid playing, lots of flute, and psychedelic wah wah guitar. The singer is good even though he sometimes drawls and almost sounds like bleating. No such complaint, of course, for the instrumental "Thinking In Mary" which similar to the instrumentals from JT's debut. "Magic Colors" and "When You Are So Bring Down" are closer to Cream: bluesy psychedelia with heavy guitars. "Waiting In The Munster's Garden" is hippie jazz dominated by percussion and flute, and "A Song For The Friends" a most atypical trad jazz ditty reminiscent of The Bonzo Dog Band or The Beatles' old-timey "Honey Pie". The long-winding "Today It Is Raining" and closer "I Can Fly" are trippy acid rock. Some consider them to be their best songs, but I find them a bit too experimental. The second band here is called Cerebrum and have only released two 7' singles (****, 1970). All 4 tracks are included, and they're quite interesting. The music is uncompromising blues prog with tons of distorted guitar. Jimi Hendrix is obviously a reference point, but I find even more similarities with The Groundhogs' Split LP. Evolution (***) is obviously a different kind of band. A mixed German-Spanish beat band who started life as The Vampires, despite covering Spirit and King Crimson, they're closer to Soul than Prog and Psychedelia. Their music is similar to Blood Sweat & Tears or Electric Flag, featuring soulful vocals, horns, lots of Hammond organ and occasional fuzzed-out electric guitar. CD2 of this compilation gathers their complete output, including their eponymous 1970 LP and a few singles (1969-1972). They are much more commercial than the other groups here, with danceable songs like "Fresh Garbage" and the "Get Ready/Evil Ways" medley, and softer pop material like "Loving Me (Is Not The Only Thing To Do)", "I Must Live" and "Pain And Pleasure". Of the covers, "In The Court Of The Crimson King" is an OK ballad with nice flute, but pales in comparison to King Crimson's version. "21st Century Schizoid Man" is more interesting, as it's transformed to heavy rock and doesn't try to replicate the original. Original compositions "Dr. Vasquez" and "Water" present a cool mix of Jimi Hendrix and psychedelic-era Temptations. Together with fuzzed-out garage rocker "She's So Fine", groovy instrumental "I'm Walking High" and probably the soul version of "Fresh Garbage" they provide the highlights of the second CD. So here's the question: was it worth it buying this CD compilation instead of the carefully restored gatefold vinyl reissue of Pan & Regaliz? I think yes. Sure, the later would be much more beautiful as well as more collectible. But, even though they're hardly essential, Cerebrum and Evolution certainly have their moments.

**** Dead Of Love, Thinking In Mary, Magic Colors, A Song For The Friends, One More Day, Waiting In The Munster's Garden, When You Are So Bring Down (Pan Y Regaliz), Eagle Death, Read A Book, Time's Door, It's So Hard (Cerebrum), Water, She's So Fine, Dr. Vazquez, 21st Century Schizoid Man (Evolution)

*** for Today It Is Raining, I Can Fly (Pan Y Regaliz), Fresh Garbage, You Don't Love Me Baby, Loving Me Is Not The Only Thing To Do , I'm Walking High, Problems, Get Ready/Evil Ways (Evolution)

** for In The Court Of The Crimson King, I Must Live, Pain And Pleasure (Evolution)