Obscure moody and broody garage psych from another one and done group from Michigan
You gotta love the intense mandolin and misanthropic sentiments delivered with tormented desperation by singer Bob Glese and those mournful dirge-y backing vocals... all in a pop song that coulda got played on the radio.
You could imagine them playing this in a dusty saloon in a scene from a south of the border acid western.
In the great British tradition of singles not included on albums. Roxy Music's second single came out a month prior to their second LP For Your Pleasure but was not included on that record.
It's crazy that such sonic weirdness dressed up as pop made the UK top 10 back in 73.
It all begins with an outstanding intro with notable drummage then the tune floats along on a surreal electric marshmallow with an underlying ecstatic aquatic feel. Next is a totally off kilter studio manipulated sax, unconventional arrangement of words for pop ie. no chorus applied with Ferry's unpredictable quivering tones, cool disorientating guitar shenanigans, further toppermost drum action with added maracas and an ace fade out.
Eno said this tune shouldn't have been released as a single but he was so wrong, as he often is, because for many of us Pyjamarama is Roxy's greatest single and one of the best chartbusters of the 70s.
*When I started this blog most songs and albums didn't have their own wikipedia pages but now everything's got an entry which engulfs the efforts of the little bloggers and kinda makes blogs redundant. However wikipedia are still often inaccurate and just don't have the Space Debris touch plus the once neutral wikipedia website is now slimy and ideologically captured with their not so subtle hidden agendas, smear campaigns and biases. For proof just seek out any interview with original cofounder Larry Sanger from the last five or six years.
Scuzzy Acid fried surreal space rock musique concrète.
The soundtrack to your horrifying nightmares becoming reality.
Chaotic junkyard psychedelic noise recorded by a couple of deranged cyber-punk sailors of the mind.
The astonishing psycho-geographical sound of a lysergically altered brain.
Far out man.
Really though you need to listen to the Half Machine Lip Moves LP in its entirety in one sitting. Zombie Warfare out of this context is strange... well I mean it's already strange but it's weird for me hearing it on its own not surrounded by the rest of the album's insanity... so...
[1979]
I was only seven when this came out so I missed it at the time. In the early 90s we knew of this record because Chrome had been mentioned by groups like Butthole Surfers, Pavement, Jesus Lizard and I'm sure a few years later Steve Albini wrote about Half Machine Lip Moves once in Melody Maker. However finding their records or cds in Melbourne was hard because they were out of print so for many years I only had a tape of this with the previous album Alien Soundtracks on the other side thanks to an old friend and bandmate. Now all you young folk and late-comers have it all immediately available at your fingertips which is kinda cool but also kinda weird because you didn't have to invest the money, time and travel to gain the knowledge to anticipate getting a hold of and eventually listening to such a coveted artefact. Also renting music on streaming sites is an odd and poxy concept. You really need to own the music otherwise you don't own the music, know what I mean.
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, quicksilver vocals and anthemic 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.
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.
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, it was just too smooth. None of their singles were hits. These fellas would have to form Mr Mister to finally achieve international chart success a few years later.
Hits and memories with the gold soundz of the 90s.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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..
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.
Back to the good ole days when I was twenty. Me and my mate Tony would stay up late, drink and smoke, when the girls had gone to bed, listening to all the new and groovy sounds on the cd player. I'd totally forgotten the epic grunge-gaze and kaleidoscopic sax-haze of Never Lose That Feeling/Never Learn. Alan Moulder sprinkles some magic at the mixing desk.
What a jam.
Glorious.
Cars Converge On Paris [1993]
Unbelievably this tune, one of their greatest, was exclusively tucked away on the import only US version of The Last Train To Satansville cd EP.
Cars Converge On Paris might be Swervedriver's most psychedelic moment. Like a hazy mirage the desert highway with a mesmerizing intergalactic bass that swirls to infinity and vocals, drums & guitars falling upwards backwards in a disorientating dreamy daydream.
Glorious.
Last Train To Satansville [1993]
Speaking of which here it is one their most famous video moments. An edited down version of Last Train To Satansville. A classic 90s guitar pop tune from these eternally underrated grungy shoegazers. A get home from the pub late and watch Rage classic.
Duel [1993]
Ok ok I can't stop now. There's just no way you can go past this remarkable historic tune.
It's another one of their singles but this isn't the video because the original six and half minutes shouldn't ever be cut down. I mean it starts out pretty blissed up right from the get go but the sprawling euphoria keeps growing then it just keeps on expanding into wide screen ecstatic peaks so that by 1:35 the elation is reaching unbearable levels. The dreamy psychedelic exhilaration gets overwhelming then later in the comedown lulls it becomes a bit melancholy that is until it starts its upward trajectory again. Then the take it down now fade-out gradually winds down to a a splendid sonic seaside scenario.
One of the the most sublime guitar tunes of the 90s.
Cult glammy power pop tune from forgotten or perhaps never remembered 70s Long Island group. The twerps from Milk'n'Cookies recorded some of the most astonishingly poxy vocals ever committed to vinyl. These scuzzy wimps of late-bubblegum had a way with a hook though and their themes of adolescent lust are universal, timeless and a whole lotta fun.
You gotta love that they got funded to make a entire LP of this shtick which became one of Island Records most unsuccessful records ever. This record still winds people up to this very day which just adds to their aura.
Another toppermost poppermost cheerful singalong tune from Britain in the 70s. Duelling pianos in a sorta faux funky glam mode that's surprisingly excellent. It's gonna get stuck in your head for days, sorry.
Gotta love Gilbert O wearing a jumper with his initial on. G for Gilbert O.
Gilbert O even attempts in the video to bring a girl from the audience into the limelight like what The Boss and Bono would do ten years later with much more success ie. dancing and pashing. Gilbert O could only manage to to put his arm around her for a second and move her a few steps towards his piano before she shyly retreated, oh well Gilbert O.
Wide open skies trippy Californian folk and soft rock stylings heading into breezy jazz zones somewhere between Joni, The Croz, John Martyn and god knows what.
Not much info about our one album wonder Tom MacDonald from Nevada City anywhere but check out his vibe on the cover. Our breezy jazz-folk man of mystery is not havin' any of this sex rejection bullshit. Come on ladies! You need to check out his naked body. He's feelin so damn good about himself you need to offer up your body for some sweet sweet love-making. His mullet shall not be denied.
