The 'In' Crowd · Bryan Ferry

[1974]

One of those songs that nobody ever says is one of the greatest but...

What a sound! Everybody's favourite louche lounge lizard with one of the heaviest and most brazen guitar-centric things he ever did.

The 'In' Crowd was an old 60s soul tune that Ferry rendered unrecognisable with this glorious racket. Also preempts Bowie's plastic soul period.

Menacing bass, hard riffage, dissociated vocals and ominous horns... wait for the 3:18 moment when the guitars go bananas, well the whole song gets wonderfully unhinged at this point and doesn't let up til the end. He really was doing something different, I don't think they've named whatever this is properly yet. It's hard to pin down while somewhat psychedelic it's dramatic, heavy and dark, seedy yet glamorous, and obtuse, arty and intense as well as being loud hypnotic funky sleazoid music for soundtracking disreputable discotheques everywhere.

Play it again Sam.

Daddy Maxfield - Rave 'n' Rock

[1973]

Glam insanity. 

A delirious one of a kind psychedelic glitter scuzz jam. 

If you chucked David Essex, Neu, Hendrix and Glitter Band into a blender...

The sort of thing you imagine Helios Creed and Damon Edge were probably into... I mean if you stripped the vocals off here it would resemble Alien Soundtracks/Half Machine Lip Moves era Chrome.

For your next acid rock glam disco party.

Wired Up - Hector

[1973]

Like Chicory Tip gone feral. 

An explosive stomper that's scuzzy to the core. 

Wired Up is a dynamite synth laden fuzz monster to soundtrack the havoc of a teenage riot or as someone said music to smash up telephone boxes to. 

How this didn't storm the charts I don't know. It'd be a few years before this sort of pop mayhem would catch on with the young folk.

Pages - Only A Dreamer

[1981]

I thought back in 1985 "Geez this dude from Mr Mister is pretty old. What's he been up to? Where's he been till now?" Forty years later I've finally found out the answer, he was the dude in Pages. Turns out two of the dudes from Mr Mister were in Pages. 

Pages were a soft rock duo, consisting of Richard Page and Steve George, who formed in LA in 1977. They did three LPs of soft rock with jazz and soul inflections, I guess the kids would call this breezy AOR shtick Yacht Rock these days.

Only A Dreamer is a lovely laid back tune with melodious sweetness and breezy harmonies whilst covering adult themes concerning a bleak relationship scenario. Tasty guitars supplied by none other than Jay Graydon, the dude who played the guitar solo on Steely Dan's Peg.

 

Smooth.

 

Nice.

Perhaps too smooth for some but smooth nonetheless.

How was this not a worldwide chartbuster? Surely it charted in Canadia at least. A quick interweb check reveals this wasn't even released as a single. None of their singles were hits. These fellas would have to form Mr Mister to finally achieve international chart success a few years later.

Web In Front - Archers Of Loaf

[1993]

The genius of a song like this was that despite being seemingly generic this was absolutely undeniable even in the face of the facts that we were coming to the end of slacker rock. Dinosaur Jr had been around for almost ten years, Pavement were about to reach saturation point, David Baker was departing Mercury Rev and the uncommercial Trumans Water had already arrived. The whole idea seemed to be running out of juice and you knew that slacker rock was on its last legs. Then out of nowhere an unknown group from of upstarts bursts onto the radio with one of the most vital bangers of the era. Audacious.

Web In Front still has that fresh energetic sound today. Hook laden youthful exuberance doesn't get any better. 

Rewind!

CHiPs' - Theme Song

[1977]

I loved CHiPs when I was little, even had CHiPs pyjamas. Friday nights were the best. When CHiPs finished we then got ace replacements like Nightrider and the A-Team.

This theme is much more way out than I remember. 

Crime-funk going wildly cosmic. 

Check it out.

Built To Spill - Car

[1994]

More slacker anthems. Catchy singalong indie rock for wasting your days away.

*Trigger warning: Music video contains wasted 90s slacker rockers smokin fags!

Take A Run At The Sun - Dinosaur Jr

[1997]

A lot of bands were doing Beach Boys influenced stuff in the 90s. The Moles, The Fauves, Mercury Rev, Flaming Lips, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine, Boo Radleys etc. etc. etc. It was all pretty enjoyable. 

This one was totally unexpected and beautiful.

It's a forgotten song now but one of the best Brian Wilson tributes.

Dinosaur Jr. ~ Green Mind

Water [1991]

I've always been perplexed by Green Mind and some people's opinions of it since it came out. I mean surely we all thought it was pretty crap after the astonishingly exhilarating electrifying insanity of You're Living All Over Me and the masterfully crafted devastation of Bug's mess of noisy slacker grunge and the sweet slacker-daisical vision of The Wagon single. Weren't we all disappointed with the lack of fuzzed up loudness on Green Mind? Once they'd released this half baked effort I thought they were finished as a cool, credible and influential cult group. I mean if you weren't absolutely killing it or pushing the envelope musically it was time to move on to somewhere else. There was an abundance of excitement, innovation and peak musical creativity in this era. There was no point hanging around listening to sub standard artistical statements. 

I mean J Mascis can be found talking about Green Mind on the youtubes saying:  "Maybe it didn't work out as well as it could have"

Yet some people liked it and five years ago many more were getting misty eyed and nostalgic about the 30th anniversary of Green Mind. I didn't get it and thought they'd all lost their minds. Somewhere in the back of my mind though lurked some doubts that maybe I'd been wrong all along about this album. So finally I had a little re-listen and while I haven't had a full revelation or complete reversal of opinion, I've had a surprisingly significant change of heart. I'm pretty sure before I traded in my Green Mind cd in the early 90s I thought it all sucked except for the first and last tracks but now of those eight despised songs How'd You Pin That One On Me is the only one so irritatingly offensive that I have to skip it. 

I get why the album was all so startlingly weird and disappointing at the time. A lot of the grunge noise and dreamy haziness had been stripped away for acoustic guitars, stark loud drums and an unnecessary close up focus on J's vocals. On those previously mentioned records the beauty was when J's warm lethargic but melodious vocal hooks were couched in just the right amount of distorted guitar overload for their classic signature languid maelstrom sound.  

It's Water that has become my new favourite forgotten Dinosaur Jr. song. In a way it's a precursor to the Neil-isms and crushing melancholia aesthetic which was the blueprint that would be deployed on their 1993 classic Where You Been. Water's got that cool lazy slacker sound. Wait for that 2:28 moment when it accelerates into gorgeous melodic ecstasy. It's J's best trick and it's irresistible. 

 

Blowin It/Live For That Look [1991]

Dinosaur Jr. do the segue song thing once again and it's pretty glorious. I mean I still have my reservations about this record's production but these conjoined songs are undeniably top Mascis tuneage. 

*God what next? Am I gonna give Without A Sound another go next to see if maybe my disappointment about that cd was wrong too?  

Dinosaur Jr. - The Wagon (Sub-Pop Singles Club 7" Version)

[1990]

One of their finest pure pop moments. Still sounding remarkably fresh today.

This recording is an absolute anomaly for Dinosaur Jr. For one single only they were a five piece. Lou's gone but we've got Donna Dresch on bass, Don Fleming on guitars, J doing his thing and two drummers: Murph in one channel and Jay Spiegel in the other.

The Wagon was later remixed by J Mascis with some parts totally edited out for the cleaned up version that appeared on the Green Mind LP the following year..

Swervedriver - Rave Down

Son Of Mustang Ford [1990]

So I was still in high school when the first couple of Swervedriver EPs came out. These were Rage classics that we taped on VHS months before we could ever get our hands on the records. I mean we lived in the bush mate! This tune to me and my mates was just a grungier, more testosterone fuelled version of You Mad Me Realise. Which didn't make it any less great. I mean it rocked like a high octane drag racing mutha fucka didn't it. 

Rave Down [1990]

Then five or six months later came the Rave Down film clip and EP. 

Creation Records were on a fucking role with Loaded, Come Together, Glider, Ride, Play, Fall, Nowhere, Slowdive and these first two Swervedriver EPs. 

Rave Down's a glorious fuzzed up heavy psychedelic noise-rock tune of the highest order.  All sorts of swirling waves of sound, layers of textured noise, driving riff-a-rama, wild drumming and hooks galore.

Blistering, bouncy and blissed out... the best!

Peak 90s rock.

Zedhead [1990]

Another stellar rocket fuelled noise rock work out.

Sandblasted [1991]

Just over six months later came the third ep. Epic noisey psychedelia with dream-gaze passages and gorgeous hooks. They really packed it all in here! 

*I still kinda don't get why they weren't the premier noisey shoegaze band after My Bloody Valentine because at this stage they were very fucking killing it and had the highest strike rate of all the gazers of shoe. I saw both Ride and MBV live in Melbourne in '91 but Swervedriver didn't even tour down here until much later in like 94 or 95 when I finally got to see them at the Corner Hotel in Richmond.