‘New’ music from Valenti, Choc. Watchband
February 12, 2011
“Lost’ recordings from Quicksilver founder Dino Valenti and a newly recorded “hits” package from psychedelic-garage band Chocolate Watchband have bubbled up from the underground.
The late Valenti, songwriter of the hippie anthem “Get Together,” left a bunch of unreleased recordings in storage in Northern California, leading to the new album “Get Together: The Lost Recordings Pre-1970.”
The ItsAboutMusic.com site, which is releasing the collection, is coy about the matter, but it’s quite possible the Quicksilver Messenger Service plays on some of the tracks.
“We really don’t know who’s playing on it besides Dino but some of these songs sure sound like Quicksilver Messenger Service — you decide,” the indie label says on its pitch page.
Dino Valenti played with the earliest version of Quicksilver but landed in prison shortly thereafter. (He sold his rights to the song “Get Together” while raising money to fight a pot bust.) He didn’t play on Quicksilver’s classic psychedelic albums, but rejoined in late 1969, writing most of the albums “Just for Love” and “What About Me” (both 1970) under the pseudonym Jesse Oris Farrow.
The new “Get Together” album features Valenti singing the title song, a massive hit for the Youngbloods. Several of the unreleased tracks top 10 minutes, including the spooky-heavy “Ain’t That a Shame” that flows like Quicksilver.
ItsAboutMusic’s Dino Valenti page offers downloads of sample songs with excellent musicianship and good clear sound. The indie label notes that the “lost” tapes came directly from Valenti’s son Joli and “you can rest assured that Dino’s family is getting paid.”
“You don’t know how hard it is to be an unknown legend of rock and roll,” the Chocolate Watchband laments in song these days.
“Unknown Legends” (MP3 download) pretty well sums up the band’s legacy. Many 1960s music lovers know the band’s name; far fewer know the music. Like L.A.-based Love, the band from San Jose performed mostly in California, preferring familiarity to fame.
The band is loosely affiliated with the psychedelic movement, partly because of their stoned ’60s name and their gigs with the San Francisco heavies.
The band actually dwelled in the limbo between garage rock and the newer psychedelic sounds — see the Leaves, the Shadows of Knight, the Seeds, the Music Machine and Count Five.
The band’s live sound was reminiscent of their British idols such as the Rolling Stones and the Yardbirds, while the studio work veered toward the psychedelic sounds favored by their producer, Ed Cobb (the Standells). One of the Watchband’s signature songs, “I’m Not Like Everybody Else,” is a Kinks cover.
Their best-known number, “Let’s Talk About Girls,” found the charts with vocals from a guy in another band. Lead singer David Aguilar’s vocals had been wiped out, part of a long chain of indignities suffered by the Watchband as producer Cobb used various studio musicians and even other groups on their three 1960s albums.
The new “Chocolate Watchband’s Greatest Hits” presents “Let’s Talk About Girls” as it probably would have sounded back then with singer Aguilar.
Bassist Bill Flores and drummer Gary Andrijasevich are the other two remaining members from the classic Chocolate Watchband lineups.
The band appeared in the movie “Riot on Sunset Strip,” performing “Don’t Need Your Lovin” and “Sitting There Standing.” The movie mostly featured the Standells, whose great hit “Dirty Water” was written by Cobb.
The Watchband also contributed “Are You Gonna’ Be There (At the Love-in)” to an even more exploitative movie, “The Love-Ins.”
The band’s revolving door of musicians finally stopped spinning in 1970.
All Music’s article on the Chocolate Watchband called their post-breakup situation “non-existence juxtaposed with a burgeoning cult of admirers around the world.” They reformed at the dawn of the new century and have toured off and on.
The new recordings were made last year at KVP Studio in Santa Clara, Calif. The concept was to re-create the sound found on the group’s Tower Records albums in 1966, ’67, and ’68. The recordings (based on audio samples) are the real deal, garage rock all the way.
Sixties music compiler Alec Palao (the “Nuggets From the Golden State” series) vouches for the new stuff: “The Greatest Hits package is as authentically Watchband as any of this singular group’s vintage recordings.”
If you’ve read this far, be sure to check out singer Aguilar’s hilarious history of the Chocolate Watchband. Here he is on playing the Fillmore with the Grateful Dead:
I always thought of them as a really bad country and western band that had accidentally taken too much acid. … The rest of the group thought the Dead was just about the most amazing bunch of drug addicts to ever hit the stage together at the same time.
Here is the lineup on “Chocolate Watchband Greatest Hits”:
1. Expo 2000
2. Gone and Passes By
3. It’s All Over Now Baby Blue
4. Are You Gonna’ Be There (At the Love-in)
5. No Way Out
6. Misty Lane
7. I Ain’t No Miracle Worker
8. Sitting There Standing
9. Sweet Young Thing
10. Don’t Need Your Lovin’
11. I’m Not Like Everybody Else
12. Let’s Talk About Girls
13. Inner Mystique
Dead’s ‘Euro ’72′ box set sells out, but …
January 24, 2011
That big gooey box set of the Grateful Dead’s European tour of 1972 is gone and nothing’s going to bring it back. Sort of.
The limited-edition box set — stuffed with “memorabilia and ephemera” — sold out in four days, but Dead.net now offers a “music only” collection for the same price: $450. The sets should ship in the fall.
Dead.net still promises that no more than 7,200 copies of the original box set will be created. The first lucky 3,000 Deadheads who preordered will get box sets personalized in some way. A hardcover coffee table book goes along with the memorabilia and more than 60 discs.
“Although perhaps not as cool as the boxed set, the bottom line is that the most important aspect of “Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings” is going to be made available to all, the music,” Dead.net said over the weekend. The site, exclusive seller of the Dead/Rhino box set, notes that the decision to sell the music separately came after “lengthy discussions.”
The music-only collection will house each concert in separate packaging.
Of course there’s no shortage of Grateful Dead albums on the planet, but this one hits the motherlode:
More than seventy hours of music spread over the 60-some discs. Every show, “every note” of the historic tour, mastered from the original 16-track tapes.
No doubt you recall that we’ve had a Europe ’72 set for decades. The one with the kid and the ice cream cone attached to his forehead. That three-LP album captured the Dead at their peak, as anyone who saw the group in the early years of that decade can attest.
Ron “Pigpen” McKernan left the band shortly thereafter; Keith and Donna Godchaux joined shortly before. The Grateful Dead’s previous studio albums were “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty,” both classics and signposts to the band’s future. And the Dead were … straight?
Bob Weir says a lack of dope helped the musical focus. “For that tour, everybody was pretty damn clear,” he told Rolling Stone. “Unlike in America, you couldn’t get pot over there. They had hashish. and nobody liked it much. … All we had was the music.” That didn’t stop the band from hourlong workouts on “Dark Star.”
While the old “Europe 72″ brought the band many of its fans, it wasn’t the real deal. The album had heavy overdubs on the vocals. This time out, it’s a pure shot from the sound board. Project producer David Lemieux calls the recordings “pristine.”
The news came about a week after plans for a Grateful Dead online video game were unveiled.
In other Dead recording news, “Workingman’s Dead” makes a return Feb. 1 via a Japanese import with extra tracks.
Beatles for Christmas: iTunes, Amazon sales
December 11, 2010
For the original wave of Beatles fans, Christmas meant something new from the Fab Four.
Albums released for holiday buying in the ’60s included “With the Beatles,” “Beatles for Sale,” “Rubber Soul,” “The Beatles (White Album),” “Let It Be” and “Magical Mystery Tour.” Imagine finding those platters under the tree one golden morning.
The tradition continues in 2010 with the iTunes debut of Beatles songs and albums. The long-awaited downloads came to e-market after EMI’s rerelease of the group’s catalog on CD. iTunes gift cards featuring the Fabs became instant collectors items (pictured). Meanwhile, John Lennon
And so the Beatles once again loom large over music sales as we enter the final stretch of holiday gift shopping.
Here’s at how the Beatles
On iTunes’ rock album chart, the Beatles took half of the top 10, led by “Abbey Road” (#2), followed closely by the “1967-1970 (Blue)” compilation (#5), “The Beatles” aka White album (#6), “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” (#7) and the “1962-1966″ (Red) compilation (#9).
The new downloadable “Beatles Box Set” came in at #13, followed by “Rubber Soul” (#14) and “Revolver” (#17). Also charting high were “Let It Be” (#25), “Magical Mystery Tour” (#28) and “Help!” (#32). “Yellow Submarine” sailed in last, at #178.
On Amazon’s rock CD chart, “The Beatles Stereo Box Set”
By comparison, the “Elvis 30 #1 Hits” was the only charter for the King, while the Stones could only muster two spots — for the “Hot Rocks” collection and the new version of “Exile on Main Street.”
On iTunes’ overall album sales chart, “Abbey Road” was the best performer at #47. The Stereo box set ranked best on Amazon’s overall sales chart, at #37, tailed by the Blue and Red sets.
As for the singles, the iTunes rock chart was topped by John and Yoko’s holiday classic “Happy Xmas (War Is Over).” Lennon’s “Imagine” held #7 and “Let It Be” abided at #8.
Other Beatles singles in the top 25 of the iTunes rock chart: “Here Comes the Sun” (#11), “Yesterday” (#14), “Hey Jude” (#18), “In My Life” (#20), “Come Together” (#23) and “Twist and Shout” (#25).
“I am particularly glad to no longer be asked when the Beatles are coming to iTunes,” Ringo Starr said Nov. 16, when news of the Apple-Apple deal broke.
Amazon does not have rights to the Beatles’ singles as MP3s. The music on iTunes is all in stereo, while Amazon stocks the Mono box set.
Psychedelic albums of note on the iTunes rock chart:
- 19. The Wall (Pink Floyd)
- 46. Wish You Were Here (Pink Floyd)
- 111. Animals (Pink Floyd)
- 129. Experience Hendrix collection
- 143. Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd)
- 194. The Doors
* Online sales charts are updated all day long, so these rankings are always in flux.
Hendrix rarities set: ‘West Coast Seattle Boy’
September 15, 2010
Liberation of the Jimi Hendrix archives continues Nov. 16 with the release of “West Coast Seattle Boy,” a five-disc box set.
The Hendrix estate calls the set a “definitive career-spanning collection” with more than four hours of music culled from 1964-1970.
In addition to a wealth of rare and unreleased recordings — some live, some demos and alternate takes — “West Coast Seattle Boy” includes a treat for Hendrix history buffs: a CD devoted to the guitarist’s days as an R&B sideman.
Highlights on the other three anthology CDs include a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Tears of Rage,” Hendrix’s takes on “Peter Gunn” and “Bolero,” and the “Black Gold” tapes song “Suddenly November Morning,” recorded in Hendrix’s apartment just before his death.
Disc 4 opens with three unreleased songs from the legendary New Year’s Eve shows with the Band of Gypsys: “Stone Free,” “Burning Desire” and “Lonely Avenue.”
The R&B disc delivers three numbers from the Isley Brothers and a pair each from Little RIchard, Rosa Lee Brooks (Arthur Lee) and Don Covay. Rounding out the disc are singles by Frank Howard, Ray Sharpe, the Icemen, Jimmy Norman, Billy Lamont and King Curtis. Few of these records will be familiar to non-R&B enthusiasts except for Covay’s hit “Mercy, Mercy.”
Not surprisingly, missing in action on the R&B disc are recordings with Harlem bandleader Curtis Knight, who cashed in on the Hendrix phenomenon early and often.
“West Coast Seattle Boy: The Jimi Hendrix Anthology” also contains with a DVD of the new feature-length documentary “Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child,” directed by Bob Smeaton, who co-directed “The Beatles Anthology” and “Festival Express.” Smeaton was given access to the Hendrix family’s personal letters and mementos.
The Hendrix family and Legacy Recordings in March released “Valleys of Neptune” and rereleased the three official Jimi Hendrix Experience albums. “Neptune” was a collection of unreleased (but bootlegged) studio recordings. The Experience album rereleases added some video content to the psychedelic classics but no upgrades in audio quality — to the dismay of many fans.
Experience Hendrix president Janie Hendrix said the new anthology “leaves no stone unturned.”
“It not only illuminates his years on both sides of the Atlantic and beautifully reveals his versatility as a performer, from his R&B origins to his explosion on the pop culture scene, but highlights who he was for those who knew and loved him,” she said.
Legacy Recordings and Experience Hendrix also are rereleasing “BBC Sessions,” “Blues,” “Live at Woodstock” and a Christmas EP on Nov. 2. A single-disc highlights CD from the box set is due as well.
View the Hendrix press release and CD tracks order.
Meanwhile, Image Entertainment is bringing to market “Jimi Hendrix: The Guitar Hero,” a documentary narrated by Slash. Part of the Classic Artists DVD series, Its goodies include silent footage from Hendrix’s ill-fated tour with the Monkees.
Elektra’s journey through the past
August 13, 2010
Up for some time travel? Elektra Records surveys its 60-year history via an outstanding multimedia journey that’s available online.
Curated by label founder Jac Holzman, Elektra60.com is built around a graphics-heavy interactive timeline. It launches immediately upon visiting the page, transporting visitors from 2010 to 1950 in most trippy fashion, as if they fell into a “2001″ black hole. Images flash by, roots music plays. Worth the visit alone.
Holzman signees the Doors, Love and Incredible String Band fly the psychedelic music banner. Other heavy acts include the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the MC5 and the Stooges.
“It was modeled on a world’s fair, where a visitor can walk down the center promenade and take in the sights and sounds, and step into multiple pavilions for more enriching experiences,” Jac Holzman says. Once inside the virtual tent, users can listen to a few songs, view the discography, see a video or two.
Users scroll across a bar to visit individual years, which coolly and colorfully morph into each other.
In 2007, the label released an audio box set that celebrated its glory years: "Forever Changing: The Golden Age of Elektra 1963-1973."
This time, “We decided to celebrate Elektra on the Web, the connective community of our age,” said Holzman, who sold the label to Warner in the 1970s and is now an adviser to Warner Music Group chief Edgar Bronfman Jr.
The multimedia Elektra60.com actually is an adjunct to the label’s primary web site, with content flowing between the two.
For example, the radio series “The Doors: From the Inside” originates on the main site, but fits in perfectly with the historical content on Elektra60.com. The Doors’ radio special, originally aired in 1988, takes a chronological look at Elektra’s most controversial and profitable act. Like the 60.com project, it breaks down the band’s history into six years: 1966-1971.
Another key piece of content looks at the Elektra label chiefs and the artists they signed. Holzman, of course, had the hottest hand, with Love, the Doors, Butterfield, the Stooges, Judy Collins and Queen, among others. David Geffen’s Asylum acts have been added to the mix, bringing in Joni Mitchell, Tom Waits, Dylan and Jackson Browne.
Elektra60.com remains a work in progress — there are some noticeable bugs and gaps (go to an artist’s bio and the post initially is headlined “About me” (as in Phil Ochs, About Me, ouch). The first page doesn’t have a mute or skip, so you get the full treatment every time you visit, possibly annoying.
“Elektra60.com is a living, breathing site that will continue to evolve over the upcoming weeks and months, as fresh content is added and new paths revealed,” Holzman says.
The digital agency Rokkan produced the interactive timeline.
Meanwhile, Britain’s NME marks the 40th anniversary of Jimi Hendrix’s passing with a special issue. Parts of the tribute to the greatest psychedelic guitar player of all time are available online, such as “20 Things You Never Knew About Jimi Hendrix.”
Live Jefferson Airplane CDs sound familiar
August 5, 2010
CDs of the Jefferson Airplane’s live performances have been pretty limited over the years, but that’s about to change.
The Collectors’ Choice Music Live series plans a quartet of live albums from 1966-68, including one that captures Grace Slick’s debut as the band’s vocalist. The CDs are due Oct. 26.
Knowledgeable fans won’t get too worked up. These four recordings already are well-traveled on the Internet, most prominently on the authorized online music service Wolfgang’s Vault.
Meanwhile, on the Grateful Dead beat, Warner and Rhino get back to vinyl with "The Warner Studio Albums,"
a five-LP boxed set. It marks the 40th anniversaries of “Workingman’s Dead” and “American Beauty.” List price for the Dead LP set is $135; shipping starts Sept. 21.
MP3 downloads of the same four Jefferson Airplane concerts (and many more) are for sale on Wolfgang’s Vault for $4 to $10 a shot. Audio ranges from just OK to surprisingly good.
Some of these recordings came to Wolfgang’s as part of a music and memorabilia deal with the Airplane, Starship and Hot Tuna that was announced a month ago.
Band guitarist Jorma Kaukonen said at the time: “These recordings are like a window into a time long gone and vaguely remembered. I hear them and I find myself saying, ‘We were pretty good!’ I’m glad somebody saved them for posterity.”
The CDs set for fall release are “Live at the Fillmore Auditorium 10/15/66 Late Show”; “Signe’s Farewell, Live at the Fillmore Auditorium 10/16/66″; “Early & Late Shows — Grace’s Debut, Live at the Fillmore Auditorium 11/25/66 & 11/27/66″ — “We Have Ignition, and Return to the Matrix 2/1/68.” We’re guessing these are working titles.
Packaged with the CDs digipacks are notes by Craig Trent ("Take Me to a Circus Tent: The Jefferson Airplane Flight Manual") and “rare photos.”
Collector’s Choice’s Music Live label took flight this year with releases by Johnny Winter, Hot Tuna and Poco.
Sony’s Legacy series released a live double-CD Airplane album last year as part of its well-received “Woodstock Experience” series.
The Grateful Dead vinyl set’s albums are “The Grateful Dead” (1967), the psychedelic duo “Anthem of the Sun” (1968, original mix) and “Aoxomoxoa” (1969, original mix), “Workingman’s Dead” (1970) and “American Beauty” (1970). The Dead box set comes with a 1967 single version of “Dark Star” (b/w “Born Cross-Eyed”) if you make buy via dead.net
The Dead albums come on 180-gram vinyl at RTI using lacquers cut from the original analog masters by Chris Bellman at Bernie Grundman Mastering.
‘New’ Hendrix album among 2010 rereleases?
January 6, 2010
A “new” Jimi Hendrix album of unreleased studio material could be in the wings for this year.
The widely distributed report came from London columnist Gordon Smith, whose online post mostly consists of a rehash of what’s already known about the Hendrix estate’s plans for the 40th year after the guitarist’s death.
“Incredibly, I’ve heard there is a new album in the works made up of unreleased studio material,” Smith wrote Jan. 6.
What’s known is that “definitive deluxe editions” of Jimi Hendrix’s classic albums will be released this by Sony Music Entertainment, according to the record label and the psychedelic guitarist’s estate.
The project also will include “never before heard studio recordings, alternate versions of classics, one of a kind ‘live and in concert’ performances and more.”
Sony’s “Legacy Recordings,” its catalog division, has done outstanding work on many of the ’60s and ’70s rock classics.
The core classic Hendrix albums — “Are You Experienced?” “Axis: Bold as Love” and “Electric Ladyland” — were last remastered and rereleased in 1997. “Band of Gypsys” resurfaced in 1998. These albums as well as some of the mountain of posthumous releases will be part of the 2010 campaign (those produced by the Hendrix family via the Experience Hendrix organization).
All music from the Hendrix reissues will be available digitally, according to the original Sony and Hendrix Experience press release of August 2009.
The Hendrix campaign comes a year after the long-overdue rerelease of the Beatles catalog.
The Beatles remasters: Yeah, yeah, yuck
September 10, 2009
The two new Beatles box sets are in the stores, and the reviews are flying in. They’re almost uniformly positive. Almost.
The reactions run from (the predictable) rave reviews to the (equally predictable) crabbing from Beatles audio purists. Sorting out the Fabs’ various mixes and intentions has always been a messy affair; the pair of Beatles box sets no doubt continues the tradition.
The new releases, of course, are “The Beatles: Stereo Box Set
After wading through dozens of day-and-date reviews, it looks like the consensus (of the better critics) is that the mono mixes are preferable to the stereo, at least up until “Rubber Soul.” From “Revolver” to “Sgt. Pepper’s,” the stereo wins out, with notable exceptions. (“Abbey Road” and “Let It Be” rise above the debate, as they started life in stereo, only.)
Unfortunately, Capitol Records chose not to include both the stereo and mono mixes on the CDs, which would have been an easy fit on most of the albums (the early ones run a half hour or so). Good business. Bad karma.
Another dodgy decision was releasing these treasures to CD only, when DVD-Audio and Blu-ray would have offered much higher-end audio — as well as the option of more Beatles in surround sound.
If the CD format is dying, what a way to go, though.
Here are observations scooped up from various critics; Psychedelic Sight will be reviewing the “psychedelic” Beatles albums in a few.
From the New York Times’ Beatles review:
In most cases this music has dimension and detail that it never had before, and the new packaging reflects each album’s musical and cultural importance. Over all, the new discs sound substantially better than the Beatles’ original CDs, which EMI issued in 1987. The most striking and consistent improvements are a heftier, rounded, three-dimensional bass sound, and drums that now sound like drums, rather than something in the distance being hit. … some discs are improved more radically than others, and some are hardly improved at all.
Reviewer Allan Kozinn says that “some discs are improved more radically than others, and some are hardly improved at all. Probably the most revelatory of the new transfers is the stereo ‘White Album.’ ”
MusicRadar.com weighed in on the Beatles remasters with detailed and authoritative coverage, using two critics to cover 1963-1966 and 1967-1970 separately.
“Should you buy ‘The Beatles In Mono’ and ‘The Beatles Box Set: Remastered In Stereo’? If you are a completist, absolutely. Just don’t expect the stereo box to be the last word. In some cases, better stereo mixes exist elsewhere already, and in others, the mono versions simply have more impact.”
Of the two approaches, the verdict is: “Both have strong, if not essential, selling points.”
Pitchfork.com chimes in on the revived Beatles CDs:
“The sound of these remasters, mono or stereo, is exceptional. I’ve always felt that the sound quality of the original 1987 remasters was slightly underrated. … But whatever you think of the 1987 remasters, these new versions are a marked improvement. In terms of clarity and detail, they are consistently impressive. But they’re also successful for showing restraint.”
Echoing other reviewers, Mark Richardson points to the upgrades for bass and drums, both of which suffered in the 1987 CD releases, which often sounded shrill and thin. (One reviewer actually came to the defense of those discs, but didn’t have company.)
“Listening to the new masters, the differences in sound quality generally manifest in three ways: songs have more ‘punch,’ with Paul McCartney’s bass (an absolute wonder throughout) and Ringo’s drums hitting with more force; the separation is better, so that instruments and (especially) layered vocals have more definition– when the Beatles are harmonizing, you can more easily pick out the different vocalists, and the voices have more presence; and finally, the sound in general seems just a touch brighter, with various sound effects, cymbals taps, and so on, ringing with more clarity.”
CNN singled out one of the later albums: “But it’s perhaps on 1966′s ‘Revolver’ … where the magical mystery work of Abbey Road recording engineer Guy Massey and the many others involved is most apparent.”
Entertainment Weekly went all gushy over the new Beatles box sets:
“Beatlemaniacs of all degrees who re-purchase these beloved albums are in for a listening experience that is nothing short of revelatory. … Never before have the studio explorations of 1966’s ‘Revolver,’ 1967’s ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band‘ and beyond felt quite so wondrously otherworldly. … To say the remasters sound perfect would be to miss the point, though. It’s the minute human flaws and unpredictable variations heard so clearly here that make even tunes as overplayed as 1968’s ‘Hey Jude’ (‘Past Masters’) or 1969’s ‘Something’ (‘Abbey Road’) sound improbably fresh, alive, real.”
Speaking of ‘Hey Jude,’ apparently it’s possible to hear McCartney mutter “fucking hell” as he hits a dud note about 2:60 into the anthem.
Bob Gendron of Tone Audio posted a solid critique of the new Beatles CDs:
“(There are) near-miraculous improvements in the key areas of information retrieval, hidden details, palpable physicality, expanded midrange, transient presence, and frequency response. … Without diminishing the value and impact of the stereo editions, which blow away their 1987 digital predecessors in every imaginable facet, the mono discs are where it’s at for experiencing the Beatles in the most “authentic” manner.”
“For kicks, comparing the 1987 digital issue of ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’ to the new remasters lends perspective to just how awful the former are, and how amazing Capitol’s 2009 entries sound.”
Gendron offers up a solution that’s going to prove expensive, since the mono CDs aren’t sold separately: Owning both the mono and stereo mixes of “
Rolling Stone, once the magazine of record for rock reviews, has posted an anemic look at the Beatles box sets that manages to make the case for the mono mixes:
“The 12-CD ‘The Beatles in Mono’ box set is more than a collector’s indulgence. The warmth and punch of early albums ‘With the Beatles’ and ‘Beatles for Sale’ evoke the experience of first hearing songs like ‘All My Loving’ on the original vinyl. But in stereo or mono, these albums have finally received the treatment they deserve.”
Finally, one guy wondered why all the fuss over “the Beatles, a 1960s band so obscure that their music is not even available on iTunes.” A good one, considering 9/9/09 failed to deliver the rumored news that the Fabs’ recordings would finally be available for downloading.
Beatles for sale:
Buy “The Beatles: Stereo Box Set
Buy “The Beatles Mono Box Set
Procol Harum, Dukes fuel own reissues
June 8, 2009
The members of Procol Harum and the Dukes of Stratosphear have taken charge of their vintage works by steering the albums’ reissues on CD. The albums come from the original master tapes and offer generous collections of bonus tracks selected by the artists.
Procol Harum, of course, is the English band best known for the haunting 1967 hit “A Whiter Shade of Pale” (iTunes), one of the most popular songs in rock history. Their first two albums proved hugely influential, inspiring Queen, Pete Townshend, the Band as well as the genres of prog rock and (to some extent) heavy metal.
The Dukes of Stratosphear, on the other hand, were influenced by pretty much anyone of note in Britain’s 1960s psychedelic scene. The fictional band dropped their cover story in the liner notes to the resissues of their two CDs and are now fully identified as members of the 1980s band XTC — not that the XTC side project was ever much of a secret. The two reissues of recordings from 1985 and 1987 comprise the totality of the Dukes output.
Procol Harum’s “A Whiter Shade of Pale” and “Shine on Brightly” are leaving for the U.S. coasts this week as part of the 40 Years reissue series from Britain’s Fly/Salvo labels. Those albums, plus “A Salty Dog” and “Home,” have been available in Europe since April and May.
The new version of the oft-changed debut album can be identified by its shocking pink (Italian) version of the cover. All of the reissues are marked with “40 Years” labels on the covers. Some online retailers have made a mess of the proper CD release dates and song listings of these albums, so make sure you’re getting the new ones.
Procol Harum leader Gary Brooker and lyricist Keith Reid helped the record label with the reissues, while Brooker curated the generous bonus tracks for these albums. “Procol Harum” includes the group’s two initial singles, “Whiter Shade of Pale” and “Homburg,” which weren’t on the original album (typical of the times, see the Beatles).
"Shine on Brightly" was among the group’s best albums, tight and mysterious. Guitarist Robin Trower had joined the band at this point (his best work would come on the “Broken Barricades” LP, also set for rerelease on Salvo. The “Shine on Brightly” cover, unfortunately, is not the one U.S. audiences remember from back in the day (the psychedelic green art with the mannequin and the piano).
The Procol Harum reissues come from the original masters and return production elements of the sound that haven’t been heard on previous digital versions. Early reviews rave about the audio but point out that the albums are in the original mono. Some of the bonus tracks are in stereo.
The unreleased “Understandably Blue” song on the debut album’s bonus tracks is another draw for fans and collectors.
The Procol Harum CDs are said to include online bonus materials, a la Blu-ray Live, although the label’s web site refers to a lack of content so far.
The Dukes of Stratosphear reissues also come from the original analogue tapes. Group members Dave Gregory, Colin Moulding and Andy Partridge wrote individual liner notes that are informative and typically odd. The sound seems more wide open and detailed than on the previous CD release, a compilation called “Chips from the Chocolate Fireball” from 2001.
The original Dukes record, “25 O’Clock,” was an EP with six songs. The follow-up work, “Psonic Psunspot,” was a full album. Neither has been released individually on CD until now. A healthy serving of alternate versions and demos fills out both CDs, released by Ape Records.
“25 O’Clock is named after the bogus group’s best song, while ““Psonic Psunspot”
is a more realized project. “Psunspot” songs derive from obvious influences (Electric Prunes, the Kinks, early Pink Floyd, Brian Wilson, the Beatles). It leans on the whimsical side of the psychedelic genre — think “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” not “Tomorrow Never Knows” — “See Emily Play,” not “Echoes.”
The vibe would carry over to XTC’s masterpiece, “Skylarking” (iTunes), produced by Todd Rundgren.
Partridge, XTC’s leader, noted with a big wink: “The Dukes were the band we all wanted to be in when we were at school. Purple, giggling, fuzztone, liquid and arriving. If you want to know where those cheap charlatans the Beatles, Pink Floyd, the Byrds, the Hollies and the Beach Boys stole their ideas from, well just listen to this and weep.”
The somewhat reclusive bandleader Andy Partridge did a long interview with the Chicago Tribune’s Mark Caro that’s worth a read for any XTC/Dukes fan. He has this to say about psychedelic music:
“I think a lot of the allure of that psychedelic thing and specifically psychedelic singles was that kind of compact magic, all these effects that people hadn’t heard before and everybody looking for new ways of mashing up conventional sounds in the studio. And of course these days you’d just lean on a button, and there it is; it’s all sampled and pre-screwed-up for you. But then you really would have to play an electric saw at the bottom of a well and then have that spun in backwards and stuff like that.”
Of the two Dukes records, Partridge says: “To me they just look like the next XTC records. Because ‘Skylarking,’ which happened between the two Dukes releases, is like the missing Dukes album, or vice versa. ‘Psonic Psunspot’ is the missing XTC album after ‘Skylarking.’ There’s no barrier.”
“Skylarking,” produced by Rundgren in infamously stormy recording sessions, no doubt will find a place on the Top 50 Psychedelic Albums list, along with “Psunspot.”
Both new Dukes CDs feature the promo videos for each album’s single. The packaging is sublime, bringing to mind small hardcover books printed with great care. All collectors editions should look so good.
‘Love Is the Song We Sing’: CD review
December 29, 2008
San Francisco more or less created psychedelic rock in the 1960s, although it can be argued that the first song worthy of that tag came from London, where the Yardbirds cooked up “Happenings 10 Years Time Ago.”
“Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970
Rhino’s four-CD set comes in a box-sized package, with the essays and a photo gallery contained in a 120-page book. This is a coffee table CD set, if there ever were one.
There are 77 tracks, more than four hours of music. The audio is outstanding, up to Rhino’s standards in every way.
“Seismic Rumbled” (disc 1) features early contributions from the Warlocks (later the Grateful Dead) to the Great Society (later the Jefferson Airplane) and the Charlatans (Dan Hicks, hairy).
“Suburbia” (disc 2) looks back at the edgy music being created in nearby places like Berkeley and Sausalito — and especially San Jose, which produced the proto-psychedelic hit “Psychotic Reaction” from the Count Five and “Rumors” from the Syndicate of Sound.
“Summer of Love” (disc 3) is where you’ll find most of the psychedelic music that had to be in the set: “The Golden Road” (the Grateful Dead), “Omaha” (Moby Grape), “White Rabbit” (Jefferson Airplane), “Soul Sacrifice” (Santana), etc. A preview of heavy metal comes with the sonic attack of Blue Cheer’s “Summertime Blues.”
“The Man Can’t Bust Our Music” (disc 4) looks at some of the more sophisticated offerings from the scene, as acts like the Dead and Airplane buckled down to the business of being music stars. Included are It’s a Beautiful Day’s “White Bird,” the Dead’s eternal jam “Dark Star,” and “Mexico” from the late-period Airplane.
The set was produced by British rock historian Alec Palao, whose many credits include a definitive Creedence box set. He writes in the intro that there was no such thing as a ’60s San Francisco sound. At least not one that “any rote history” would cover.
“What the bands from San Francisco did have,” he writes, “was a fellowship that actively encouraged the active exploration of rock’s outer fringes.”
Ben Fong-Torres, well known to Rolling Stone readers of the era, seconds the sentiment in a short essay.
