The Wall falls: Gilmour, Waters reunite
July 17, 2010
In what’s being called a temporary reunion, ex-Pink Floyd leaders David Gilmour and Roger Waters agreed to swap appearances at each other’s shows.
The sudden detente led to speculation that Pink Floyd might reunite at some point, however unlikely that might be.
Waters’ turn to perform came July 10, when he joined Gilmour at a charity event in Oxford, England.
Backed by a band, the duo sang “Wish You Were Here,” “Comfortably Numb” and “Another Brick in the Wall (Part Two)” for an audience of about 200.
The oft-battling bandmates also broke out “To Know Him Is to Love Him,” the Phil Spector-penned song that they reportedly played — with some irony — at Pink Floyd soundchecks.
“I think it was David himself, came up with this ‘Wouldn’t it be funny’, idea,” Rogers wrote on his Facebook page. “What if he were to sing the old Teddy Bears song ‘To Know Him Is To Love Him’ with me, what with us having been so famously at each other’s throats for years and years.”
Rogers says he was terrified of singing the song in two-part harmony. Gilmour apparently talked him into it by vowing to do a walk-on at one of Rogers’ upcoming “The Wall” concerts.
“Well! You could have knocked me down with a feather,” Rogers continued. “How fucking cool! I was blown away. How could I refuse such an offer. I couldn’t, there was no way. Generosity trumped fear.”
Rogers admitted their performance of song was “fucking great” after all — adding cryptically: “End of story. Or possibly beginning.”
Any hopes for a Pink Floyd reunion would be muted by the loss of keyboardist Richard Wright, who died in January 2009. Previously, the psychedelic pioneers re-formed for charity, at 2005’s Live 8.
The July benefit, at a country estate, raised something like 350,000 pounds for the Hoping Foundation, which supports Palestinian children and youth in refugee camps.
More Pink Floyd content:
Pink Floyd walls off its concept albums
“Atom Heart Mother” review
Furthur live on Sirius; town halts show
June 27, 2010
Reason to be grateful: Sirius XM is doing a live broadcast of Furthur’s tour stop in tiny Jim Thorpe, Pa.
Reason to be bummed: The July 5 show at the Shelburne Museum in Vermont was abruptly canceled because of fears of damage to the facility. One angry fan called it “Grateful Dead paranoia at its best.”
The Tuesday, June 29, concert on satellite radio comes from Penn’s Peak, a 1,600-seat club, making it the most intimate performance of Furthur’s current tour. (The concert, of course, is rock solid sold out.) The live broadcast begins at 7 p.m. ET on the 3-year-old Dead Channel.
Satellite radio fans will hear the Furthur concert on XM channel 57 and Sirius 32. The co-host of the Grateful Dead Channel’s “Tales from the Golden Road” talk show, Gary Lambert, will take calls from Deadheads during the break.
Bob Weir and Phil Lesh’s project is one of the many descendants of the Grateful Dead
Of the canceled Vermont show, the band said it was “regrettably unable to find a suitable alternate venue in Vermont,” and switched that date to the Sherman Theatre in Stroudsburg, Pa. Tickets from the Vermont show will be refunded, but not honored at the Sherman gig, which sold out in eight minutes.
The Vermont promoter complained on the Furthur web site: “For these concerns to materialize in the 11th hour and our solutions to be deemed ‘inadequate’ is short-sighted.” The show would have been part of the Ben & Jerry’s Concerts on the Green series.
The town’s fears of Furthur, apparently, were of problems with Dead heads showing up on the museum grounds without tickets.
“This is Grateful Dead paranoia at its best,” one local fan told the Burlington Free Press. “This show was no threat to the museum or anyone else.”
Paranoia about concerns certainly runs deep in the Northeast this month after a near riot in Manhattan at a free show by rapper Drake. An expected crowd of 10,000 fans turned into 25,000 and the show was canceled without the performer taking the stage.
The (latest and second) lineup of Furthur consists of Weir (guitar, vocals), Lesh (bass), Jeff Chimenti (keyboards), John Kadlecik (guitar), Joe Russo (drums), and Sunshine Becker and Jeff Pherson (vocals). The musicians have ties to the family of Grateful Dead-related acts such as Dark Star Orchestra and RatDog.
The ever-changing set list looks familiar to Deadheads, of course: “Touch of Grey,” “Looks Like Rain,” “Eyes of the World,” “Here Comes Sunshine,” “Brokedown Palace,” “Ship of Fools,” “Truckin’” and “Turn on Your Lovelight.”
Furthur is named for the 1939 school bus owned by Ken Kesey and used in the ’60s as psychedelic transport for the trippy writer and his extended family, the Merry Pranksters.
More Grateful Dead content:
- Jerry Garcia biopic brewing in Hollywood
- Grateful Dead’s history a Society affair
Vanilla Fudge: Sludge from a Rhino box set
April 6, 2010
Rhino Handmade, the specialty label hidden deep within Warner Music, appears to have located the bottom of the reissues well. Stand by for “Box of Fudge,” a four-disc collection from the psychedelic-era cover band from hell, Vanilla Fudge.
Those with a sweet tooth for psychedelia will be forking over $80 for the set, which packs in 41 “psychedelic gems,” including 15 unreleased tracks and a 1969 concert from the Fillmore.
Fudge fanciers will savor “an elaborate, foil-wrapped hardcover book.” As with other Rhino Handmade projects, the set is not available in stores.
Today, the Fudge are remembered for their name, their one hit — “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” — and not much else. For Boomers, Vanilla Fudge lurk in the memory as guilty pleasures or downright embarrassments, much like Iron Butterfly and Grand Funk Railroad (both superior bands).
In 1967, however, Vanilla Fudge were hot shit, playing with Janis Joplin, Cream, and the Mamas and the Papas.
The Fudge’s signature move was to slow down and freak out the upbeat hit songs of the day.
The Vanilla Fudge name still seems appropriate, as they were white boys specializing in thick and sticky covers of R&B/Motown hits — “You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” “Take Me for a Little While,” “People Get Ready,” “Shotgun,” “My World Is Empty Without You” and so on.
The act was defined by Mark Stein’s B-3 organ and the explosive drum work of Carmine Appice, usually applied with the light & heavy dynamics that found favor in hard rock over the coming decade.
“You Keep Me Hangin’ On,” with its funeral church organ and bursts of hard rock chops, played like a novelty song at the time. Hippie nation embraced the odd mix of the familiar — the Supremes’ already classic hit — with the heady-spooky vibes of the day. Promoters called it symphonic psychedelic rock. Critics called it crap.
The “Hangin’ On” single (3 minutes or so) reached No. 6 on the charts. The version of choice came on the self-titled debut album, clocking in at almost 7 minutes.
(”You Keep Me Hangin’ On” lands near the bottom of this web site’s roundup of the top 100 psychedelic songs, the Fudge’s only nod here.)
Further meltdowns ensued as the Fudge covered the pop stars of the day, starting with the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride.” Then it was on to Donovan (”Season of the Witch”), the Zombies (”She’s Not There”), Sony and Cher (an agonizing “The Beat Goes On”) and Dylan (”Like a Rolling Stone”).
The squares got theirs as well: Burt Bacharach, already reeling from Love’s cover of “My Little Red Book,” had his “The Look of Love” fudged up. The Bergmans and Michael Legrand saw “Windmills of Your Mind” churned, while Lee Hazelwood’s “Some Velvet Morning” was dragged screaming and kicking to hard rock school.
Oh, the humanity.
Vanilla Fudge ran dry in 1970, as bassist Tim Bogert and Appice founded Cactus
, a blues rock outfit in the vein of Humble Pie and the Shadows of Knight.
Later, the duo teamed up with Jeff Beck in the uneventful Beck, Bogert & Appice. Beck also played on a Vanilla Fudge reunion LP in 1984, one of several attempts to reheat the band. “Psychedelic Sundae: The Best of Vanilla Fudge”
was released in 1993.
A trio of other recent Rhino Handmade projects flirt with psychedelia:
- “Chicago Transit Authority” revives the band’s debut album in “true, discrete Quadraphonic sound,” taken from the 1970s Quad mixes.
- “Carnival of Sound” brings to light Jan and Dean’s move toward the sounds of the late 1960s as Berry fought to recover from his awful car crash.
- “The Birds, the Bees and the Monkees” comes with a few hits and some 1968 flower power.
Further reading:
An interesting Mark Stein interviewPink Floyd walls off its concept albums
March 18, 2010
Pink Floyd’s contract with EMI doesn’t allow the music company to cut up the group’s often-seamless concept albums, a British court has ruled.Judge Andrew Morritt, chancellor of Britain’s High Court, said the psychedelic music pioneers have the right to defend “the artistic integrity” of its albums in both traditional and online media.
Pink Floyd was seeing red over EMI Group’s distribution of individual songs from their concept albums, notably to the iTunes store. The band’s songs, of course, often run together on albums such as “The Wall” and “The Dark Side of the Moon.”
EMI argued that its contract with the band — signed ages before the creation of music downloads — gave it the right to use the songs unbundled, online or off.
The ruling on Pink Floyd’s albums
The judge said that EMI is “not entitled to exploit recordings by online distribution or by any other means other than the complete original album without Pink Floyd’s consent.”
Almost a week after the ruling, iTunes was selling “Another Brick in the Wall” and other album cuts for $1.29.
EMI said the ruling clarified a point in the contract but didn’t mean it had to change its slice-and-dice methods: “Today’s judgment does not require EMI to cease making Pink Floyd’s catalogue available as single track downloads, and EMI continues to sell Pink Floyd’s music digitally and in other formats,” the label said in a release.
“We’re huge fans of Pink Floyd,” EMI added.
AC/DC and Radiohead lodged similar protests over unbundled albums.
Meanwhile, fans in the U.K. can psyche up their letters with Pink Floyd stamps featuring “The Division Bell.”
Grateful Dead’s history a Society affair
March 6, 2010
Roll over Frederick Douglass and tell Abe Lincoln the news: the Grateful Dead have crashed Manhattan’s local history museum.Dead heads are flocking to Central Park West this weekend as “Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society” debuts.
The exhibit comes almost exclusively from the Grateful Dead archives at the University of California Santa Cruz and is its first major showing. So what’s the Dead memorabilia doing way over there in Manhattan?
The historical society has your answer in one incredibly long sentence: “(The Dead) played in and around New York City on a regular basis, from early dates at Greenwich Village coffeehouses, impromptu performances in Central Park and at Columbia University during the 1968 Student Strike; to concerts at midsized venues, including the Fillmore East, the Academy of Music and the 46th Street Rock Palace in Brooklyn during the 1970s; and, ultimately, to performances at larger halls and stadiums such as Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden and Giants Stadium.
“The Grateful Dead’s time in New York will be viewed in the context of cultural traditions and events unique to New York, but also as yet another stop on a long, strange touring trip that included dates in New York, San Francisco, and everywhere in between,” the museum explained.
Another reason: the Dead archive materials remain mostly warehoused in Santa Cruz, as the university prepares primo exhibition space as a permanent home.Goodies on display include the band’s famed psychedelic concert posters, trippy set lists, album art such as the “American Beauty
” cover, giant marionettes and other stage props, banners and crazy funky fan mail. Band documents include evidence of their early decisions to allow free taping by fans.
For those who want take-home, the gift shop is brimming with fun psychedelic stuff.
The Los Angeles Times tracked the Grateful Dead exhibit’s history, which starts improbably with Henry Kissinger, who gave a speech at the museum urging historians to look at the ’60s in order to understand the U.S. A former museum board member copped to being a Dead head and lobbied for a band exhibition as a follow-up on Kissinger’s advice.
The exhibition runs through July 4 — fittingly, as it’s a touchstone holiday for the band and its Uncle Sam.
More Grateful Dead content:
- Jerry Garcia biopic brewing in Hollywood
- Furthur adventures of the Grateful Dead family
- Furthur live on satellite radio; concert cancelled
‘Crazy World of Arthur Brown’ returns
February 8, 2010
“The Crazy World of Arthur Brown” gets another shot at salvation with the release this month of a remastered special edition. The album includes a second disc of bonus material.The hard-edged psychedelic classic returns Feb. 25 in the U.S. and Feb. 22 in the U.K. via Esoteric Recordings, which is part of the Cherry Red label group in London.
“The Crazy World of Arthur Brown” ranks No. 16 on our list of the most important psychedelic albums in rock history. (Read the full Arthur Brown review.)
The album is best known for the smash single “Fire,” with its blazing intro: “I am the god of Hellfire and I bring you fire!” The centerpiece is the “Fire Suite,” a side-long, five-track rock operetta once called “Tales From the Neurotic Nights of Hieronymous Anonymous.” (The rock opera king, Peter Townshend, associate-produced “Crazy World” with Who manager Kit Lambert.)
The CD initially came out in 1991 as a PolyGram U.K. import that, unfortunately, ruined the concept album’s concept with the appearance of four mono tracks from the album before the complete stereo version began. The 1997 release from Retroactive ran through the work before starting with the bonus tracks, which include the first three extra tracks presented here. Universal Japan put out a vinyl version in 2006, packaged in an LP cover.
The upcoming release’s bonus disc begins with “Devil’s Grip,” a 1967 single, followed by its B-side, “Give Him a Flower.” Then it’s “Music Man” (aka “What’s Happening”), the B-side of the 1968 “Nightmare” 45. (These tracks are not included in the 2003 retrospective “Fire! The Story of Arthur Brown.” The singer recut “Devil’s Grip” in 2007.)Two songs from an April 1968 BBC Radio 1 session are led off with a short interview by Brian Matthew, the influential U.K. TV and radio personality who hosted almost all of the era’s major rock acts. (The five songs from this BBC session were previously bootlegged.)
The mono tracks of the Fire Suite return (marked as “alternate mono mixes”) along with a “first” version of “Fire.” A reprise of “Nightmare” comes from the unreleased U.K. movie “The Committee,” which features a terrific sequence with Arthur Brown (wearing a flaming headdress), the brilliant Hammond organist Vincent Crane and drummer Drachen Theaker (video below).
Here are the track listing, as provided by Esoteric.
CD 1: The original album remastered
Prelude Nightmare
Fanfare Fire Poem
Fire
Come and Buy
Time/Confusion
I Put A Spell on You
Spontaneous Apple Creation
Rest Cure
I’ve Got Money
Child of My Kingdom
CD 2: Bonus tracks
Devil’s Grip
Give Him a Flower
Music Man (Stereo mix)
Fire (first version previously unreleased)
Prelude Nightmare (alternate mono mix)
Fanfare Fire Poem (alternate mono mix)
Fire (alternate mono mix)
Come And Buy (alternate mono mix)
Time/Confusion (alternate mono mix)
Brian Matthew interview (BBC session April 1968)
Fire Poem Fire (BBC session April 1968)
Come And Buy (BBC session April 1968)
Nightmare (From the soundtrack of “The Committee” movie)Strawberry Alarm Clock on Corgan label
January 17, 2010
The sound you are about to hear is the Strawberry Alarm Clock, still ticking after 40-some years.The psychedelic-era hitmakers (”Incense and Peppermints”) are back in the music media with the announcement that they’ll be recording for the new label from Billy Corgan of the Smashing Pumpkins.
Keyboardist and singer Mark Weitz told Psychedelic Sight that the band is getting back to its 1960s roots, “trying to do what our fans like. … We’re picking up where we left off, but with a modern sound.”
The Strawberry Alarm Clock
“We take listeners on trips in the form of songs — and gently let them down again,” Weitz said. “We create songs that put you in a different place.”
The Strawberry Alarm Clock’s new material is being recorded at Smashing Pumpkins producer Kerry Brown’s studio in L.A. and is in “the demo process.”
Weitz performed with Corgan at last summer’s L.A. tribute to the late Sky Saxon, and went on to tour with that nine-member band, called Spirits in the Sky. The Strawberry Alarm Clock is penciled in to perform “Mr. Farmer” on the upcoming Saxon tribute album.
Along with recording new music, the SAC is working on a project that combines material cooked up in recent years as well “revisited and rerecorded” versions of their 1960s songs.
Based on a sampling from Weitz’s stash CD, it’s impressive stuff, not easy to pin down stylistically. While the songs are all originals, you’ll hear passages that bring to mind the Who, the Beach Boys, XTC, the Beatles, prog rock and, yes, some old-school psychedelia.“Everything we do we try to ‘Clock it up’ — our signature sound of catching the ear while doing something you wouldn’t expect,” Weitz said. “Our songs never sound the same — every one is its own entity.”
Original members remaining in the band are Weitz and George Bunnell (pictured above right) as well as Howie Anderson. They’re all writing new songs for the group, as is percussionist Randy Seol.
Steve Bartek (Oingo Boingo), who played on the first SAC album in 1967, had evolved into a longtime band member but recently pulled back due to his workload with Danny Elfman’s film music. “Steve will always be involved with the band on some level,” Weitz said. He anticipates a heavier keyboard sound for the SAC given its personnel shifts.
Other groups connected with the Corgan-Brown label are the Electric Prunes
Brown said in introducing the label: “We are very excited to be collaborating with amazing artists that have made a huge impact on the underground music world. … From the psychedelic garage rock of the 60’s and the punk rock insanity of the 70’s and 80’s to the post-punk Pleiadian power-pop that is now.”
The Strawberry Alarm Clock’s catalog albums are handled by MCA. Check out the Strawberry Alarm Clock website.
‘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.
Pink Floyd performance from ‘67 unearthed
December 4, 2009
Rare and battered footage of the Syd Barrett-fronted Pink Floyd has been discovered, restored and will screen next month as part of a London preservation festival.The performance of “See Emily Play” comes from the BBC One Music show “Top of the Pops,” which aired in July 1967 just as Pink Floyd was beginning its recording career.
Steve Bryant, senior curator at the British Film Institute, said: “This is an enormously significant discovery that will generate huge interest amongst music fans all over the world, even though the surviving material is in poor condition.
“Footage of Pink Floyd from this era is extremely rare.”
Bryant said his staff had restored the performance “as much as has been possible.” The footage came from a reel-to-reel tape held by a private collector, reportedly a rock star.
Syd Barrett wrote Pink Floyd’s first three singles, of which “See Emily Play” was the second, peaking on U.K. charts at No. 6. It came from “The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
” album, largely made up of Barrett songs. The rock singer’s drug-fueled mental health problems led to his estrangement from the band and eventual departure in the months to follow.
The British Film Institute will show the Pink Floyd footage at its “Missing Believed Wiped” series screenings on Jan. 9.
The “MBW” initiative has unearthed some significant performances from the BBC pop music shows ” Juke Box Juries,” “Thank Your Lucky Stars,” “Ready Steady Go,” Oh Boy!” and “Top of the Pops.”
“Tele-recordings” were routinely erased at the time, especially those in the fading black-and-white format.
In other Pink Floyd doings, the neo-psychedelic band Flaming Lips will perform “Dark Side of the Moon” in its entirety at a New Year’s Eve show in its home state of Oklahoma.
The show at the Cox Convention Center in Oklahoma City features the Lips kicking off side 1 of “Dark Side” at midnight, with assistance from its frequent opening band Stardeath and White Dwarfs. Phish played the album in concert in 1998, Rolling Stone points out.
The Flaming Lips and Stardeath recently recorded “Dark Side of the Moon” for release on iTunes, with guest stars Henry Rollins and Peaches.
Follow this link to the Flaming Lips doing “Eclipse” on KCRW’s “Morning Becomes Eclectic” show (skip to the 30-minute mark to hear the song).
As for “Emily” …
The Velvet Underground, in person
November 23, 2009
Velvet Underground members Lou Reed, Maureen (Moe) Tucker and Doug Yule are reuniting, sort of.The art rockers will discuss their music and history Dec. 8 as part of the New York Public Library’s “Live From the NYPL” series. The conversation wrangler will be rock journalist David Fricke.
The gathering of three Velvets is quite unusual — the Library calls it “unprecedented.” MIA is (to no one’s suprise) John Cale, who has performed with the band only a few times since the 1970s. Sterling Morrison and Nico have both died.
The The Velvet Underground
. The Velvet Underground book retails for $50.
The talk is sold out, alas (tickets “may” be available at the door). Here’s the good news: The “Live From the NYPL” series is archived in audio and/or video on the library site, and video excerpts find their way to the Live from the NYPL playlist on YouTube.
Meanwhile, fans can revisit the band’s formative years with the short-but-sweet audio documentary series “Psychedelics” from Seattle’s KEXP. The series, which just wrapped, covers the Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, the Velvet Underground, the Beatles, Sly and the Family Stone, Pink Floyd, the Orb, Spiritualized, the Flaming Lips and Animal Collective.
The Velvet Underground radio docu covers the band’s history, starting with Warhol’s traveling multimedia experience “The Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” Reed recalls: “It was an interesting conglomeration. We were known all the way downtown, and then a lot of the uptown people came to it.” Cale says, “It was an attempt to be revolutionary. It was an attempt to combine both the avant-garde and the commercial.”
The Velvets, positioned as an East Coast answer to the California psychedelic bands, turned to heroin, not LSD. The band’s songs such as “Heroin” and “Waiting for the Man” generated some minor media shockwaves at the time, when drug references almost always were cloaked in rock music. The street-level reporting in Reed’s lyrics had nothing to do with peace and love, but plenty to do with reality.
Their early music was darkly experimental and trance-like, largely due to Cale’s interest in the droning musical styles of India and Tucker’s primitive drumming style, oriented more toward Africa than U.S./U.K. rock. This before the music of Ravi Shankar and other world musicians was widely heard in the West.
Listen to the the Velvet Underground radio documentary, which runs 10 minutes.