1990: Love’s Arthur Lee joins The Fuzztones at L.A.’s Coconut Teazer absolutely laying waste to his old band’s “7 and 7 is.” Thanks Scottie Diablo for the tip.
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All three major American counterculture movies of the late sixties benefited from the new vogue for rock soundtracks. The Strawberry Statement mixed purpose-written orchestral themes with mostly familiar numbers by Crosby, Still & Nash and Neil Young, plus the predictable yet appropriate “Something In The Air” and “Give Peace A Chance.” Easy Rider thrummed along to a more eclectic but still fitting selection from Dennis Hopper’s record collection: Steppenwolf, Hendrix, the Byrds and stoned oddities from the Holy Modal Rounders and the Electric Prunes. But maverick director Michelangelo Antonioni’s choices for Zabriskie Point are more enigmatic, and the story of their choosing more bewildering.

The film itself, part willfully perverse take on the late sixties student unrest, part classic road movie and part soft-porn skinflick, has been analyzed to death; you either love it or hate it. The soundtrack album by contrast has received few reviews and deserves examination in these pages. The story goes that Antonioni commissioned the then “hot” acts Pink Floyd, John Fahey and Kaleidoscope (US) to create new music for various scenes in the film including the notorious desert love scene, which they duly did, and then summarily rejected almost all of this when delivered, instead delving into the back catalogs of these acts and others. (According to legend, the spurned Fahey was so affronted he “decked” the director forthwith.) The lengthy, dusty love scene was eventually orchestrated by Jerry Garcia’s solo guitar improvisations, and even then Antonioni insisted on a fussy edit compiled from four different improvs for the final seven-minute opus.

Perhaps the oddest thing is that despite all these creative shenanigans the soundtrack still works, both in the movie and as a long-player. Floyd’s opening “Heart Beat, Pig Meat” is an organ-driven sound collage that contains enough menace to convey the tension as the students discuss the upcoming strike, and their soft, Byrdsy “Crumbling Land” provides a fleeting but apt background to the start of Daria’s desert odyssey in the Buick though, as Dave Gilmour admitted, it “could have been done better by any number of American bands.” A brief spiraling segment of the Dead’s live “Dark Star” accompanies Mark’s liftoff of the stolen Cessna from the airfield at LA, while Fahey’s “Dance Of Death,” which is somewhat discordant but isn’t actually very morbid, plays after Daria hears over the radio of Mark’s gunning-down by the cops on his return to the airfield. Patti Page’s venerable “Tennessee Waltz” is an inspired choice for the old rednecks in the desert truckstop (and would cost Antonioni a small fortune to license from the State, which owned the copyright). Garcia’s sweet, restrained playing provides a genuinely sensitive background to the balletically-choreographed desert orgy. And of course the explosive climax is tailor-made for Floyd’s climactic “Careful With That Axe, Eugene,” which appears in a re-recording unfortunately inferior to the wonderful original single B-side and with the alternative title “Come In Number 51, Your Time’s Up.”  The two Kaleidoscope tunes “Brother Mary” and “Mickey’s Tune,” Roscoe Holcombe’s down-home “I Wish I Was A Single Girl Again” and the Youngbloods’ “Sugar Babe” are all excellent, delightfully obscure country rock items which accompany various highway scenes out in the Mojave.

The movie also featured Keith Richards’s bluesy “You Got The Silver,” which for licensing reasons never appeared on the OST album, and Roy Orbison’s splendid but inappropriate “So Young” which played over the closing titles and was allegedly added at post-production without Antonioni’s permission, and is hence with some justification also omitted. The 2-CD Sony reissue offers on its first disc all the other soundtrack tunes in complete form apart from the truncated “Dark Star,” and on the other the four complete Garcia improvs and four pieces of the rejected Floyd material, most of which are interesting enough but sound rather raw and unfinished, presumably not having being polished up for the final takes, and hence really for Floyd completists only. The CD booklet offers as cover picture a bizarre solarised still of the film’s two principals au naturel and a really excellent essay on the soundtrack by David Fricke. words / l. leichti

MP3: Pink Floyd :: Crumbling Land
MP3: John Fahey :: Dance of Death
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(Album artwork: Does it indeed affect our listening experience, and if so, how? Scratch the Surface takes a look at particularly interesting and/or exceptional cover art choices.)

Expectations. We all have them, for better or worse, and with music these expectations are often heightened.

Lou Reed was supposed to be the second coming. Based on his Velvet Underground genius, some expected him to be the next “Bob Dylan,” a voice for a new generation, and while Berlin was strong and Transformer hit on most cylinders, the work Reed put out in the seventies rarely met the expectations of his audience. True, he had his fans, and select songs that could stand up to others of the period, but I think a good portion of his fans expected something else. Then you throw Sally Can’t Dance into the mix, not to mention Metal Machine Music Pt. 1, and it’s just a rebellious slap in the face to “others” expectations. A real punk rock move before punk rock even knew what it was.

I love Lou Reed, and I love most of Reed’s early albums, but I think expectations from others ultimately led to his downward soul searching spiral…that is until he found it with Street Hassle.

Street Hassle is about acceptance and power. It’s Reed finally acknowledging how much a self-parody he had become. With Street Hassle, Reed had finally both recognized and accepted his prior roles, facades and incarnations, and was now willing to face them head on. Simply put, Lou Reed was finally ready to make a “Lou Reed” album.

Street Hassle’s LP cover explains it all, exuding arrogance, confidence, and fear. From the distressed title font letting you know it’s not perfect, that he’s not perfect, to the “self portrait” with the smug shooting star glimmer in his eye. He has a new found realization and acceptance of his own self-destruction with a “fuck you” mentality. And how does he start this battle off…by sacrificing one of his own children, “Sweet Jane.”

One on my favorite Elvis albums, even though it’s a bootleg, is Cut Me & I Bleed released on Double G Records. The album is a collection of alternate studio, home, and live rehearsal recordings that present “another side” of Elvis. Pedestal removed, Cut Me & I Bleed chooses to present “The King” in a raw, more human, and often explicit manner, one that often eschews the family friendly image constructed by the Elvis foundation.

Of all the tracks (22 in all), the real gem of the bunch, and a personal favorite, is Presley’s stripped down rendition of Percy Mayfield’s “Stranger in My Own Home Town” (studio rehearsal version, July 24, 1970). I can’t think of a more appropriate song for Elvis to cover at this time in his life. Set amongst friends in a rehearsal jam session, Elvis gives one of the rawest, grittiest, yet honest and soulful performances I’ve ever heard from him.

Riffing on the blues, we hear, “I came home with good intentions about five or six years ago, but my hometown won’t accept me just don’t feel welcome here no more.”

What makes the song so powerful is Presley’s voice, attitude, and his interaction with the other musicians. It’s included in this set of songs as after Presley performs a more traditional rendition of “Stranger in My Own Home Town,” he then continues the jam with a few more verses, adding a few choice words and a personal touch all his own.

I won’t spoil it for you here, but Elvis fans will want to listen to this track with urgency. words/ m hayhurst

MP3: Elvis Presley :: Stranger In My Own Town (Rehearsal)
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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 26 (SIRIUS), and channel 43 (XM), can now be heard twice, every Friday – Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.

SIRIUS 189: Jean Michel Bernard – Generique Stephane ++ The Gories – Hey, Hey We’re The Gories ++ Canarios – Trying So Hard ++ The Arrows – Blue’s Theme ++ Screaming Lord Sutch – Flashing Lights ++ The Kinks – You Really Got Me ++ Thee Headcoats – Diddy Wah Diddy ++ The Pebbles – We Love The Beatles ++ The Mantles – Don’t Lie ++ David Bowie – Shapes of Things ++ T. Rex – Monolith  ++ The Gories – Casting My Spell ++ Thee Headcoatees – I Want Candy ++ The Sonics – Psycho ++ Untouchables – Crawlin’ (The Crawl) ++ Cheater Slicks – Crying  ++ Sparkle Moore – Killer (demo) ++ Saxons – Camel Walk ++ The Mad Daddy – Jet Speed Saucer Blast ++ The Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat  ++ Lou Reed – Satellite of Love ++ Bainc Didonc – 4 Cheveux Dans Le Vent ++ The Eyes – My Degeneration ++ The Modern Lovers – She Cracked ++ The Seeds – Can’t Seem To Make You Mine ++ The Gibson Bros. – Bo Diddley Pulled A Boner ++ Richard Swift – The Bully ++ Richard Swift – Drakula (Hey Man!) ++ The Black Keys – No Fun ++ Iggy & The Stooges – Raw Power ++ The Dirtbombs – Chains of Love ++ The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion – Chicken Dog  ++ Spacemen 3 – Come Down Easy (demo) ++ Deerhunter – Rainwater Cassette Exchange ++ Alex Chilton – Don’t Worry Baby (Fragment) ++ Big Star – September Girls (Original Ardent Mix)  ++ The Rock*A*Teens – Down With People ++ The Sonics – Strychnine ++ Reigning Sound – Stormy Weather ++ Harlem – Witchgreens ++ The Kinks – I’m Not Like Everybody Else ++ Billy Nicholls – London Social Degree ++ Harlan T. Bobo – Mlle. Chatte ++ Nancy Sinatra – Hello LA, Bye Bye Birmingham ++ Rex Garvin & The Mighty Cravers – Emulsified

*You can listen, for free, online with the SIRIUS three day trial — just submit an email address and they will send you a password.
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My friend Thomas hipped me to this track earlier today. It’s been on repeat since. The vibe is early 80s melodic post-punk crossed with a nice dose of ambient new wave and ennui.  Eddie The Wheel is the project of Eddie Whelan, based in Athens, GA. “Nearsayerfive” is culled from his new EP He’s A Scream.

MP3: Eddie The Wheel :: Nearsayerfive
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Today’s confection: Margo Guryan’s 1968 platter of orchestral pop, Take A Picture. We’ve waxed on Guryan’s excellent 25 Demos collection here in the past, but Take A Picture further succeeds in taking the singer-songwriter and placing her compositions within a smart pop context not dissimilar from the headspace Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks were working in around the same time. Think: sunshine pop meets vaguely psychedelic arrangements sans a good bit of the residual pap that tends to date and mar so much of the era’s work.

Below are a pair of tracks from the LP I chose for their dissimilarities. The first exemplifies the more “straightforward” tone of the album, whereas the second, “Love,” sounds as if it wants to blast off into the ether entirely; just barely holding on. Not surprisingly, much of the album tends to meld the two extremes.

MP3: Margo Guryan :: Sunday Morning
MP3: Margo Guryan :: Love
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“Once Bill was making extremely forward statements from behind a veil. Now he’s making veiled statements from a forward position. He’s fundamentally the same person, but stylistically almost everything has changed.”

The above quote is pulled from last Friday’s New York Times piece on Bill Callahan. Quoted is Rian Murphy, former bandmate and office manger of Callahan’s longtime label, Drag City Records. The Times piece itself is good read, illuminating, and recommended to those interested in the famously press-shy Callahan. But it’s Murphy’s quote that, for me, sums up in three sentences the essence and direction of where Callahan’s music has been moving since the end of his tenure releasing music as SMOG.

The descriptors I once used to describe Callahan’s former moniker (i.e. dark, pensive, forlorn, intense, opaque) still apply to his work under his given name, but it was clear from the first moment I put on the “Diamond Dancer” single, off 2007′s Woke On A Whaleheart, that things had changed. For a Callahan composition, “Dancer” was positively bouncy—as ‘upbeat’ as anything he had done before, or since, for that matter. While his next full-length, Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle, was a quieter affair, it did retain the “forward” position Murphy references, as does his new record, Apocalypse. To an extent, anyway.

Callahan has never been, nor I doubt ever will be, a traditional linear storyteller in song the way, say, Townes Van Zandt was. Known for eschewing traditional song structures, instead allowing his haunting baritone to weave in and out where it may, Apocalypse in many way falls very much in line with Callahan’s post-Smog canon.  But unlike its two predecessors, the songs on Apocalypse are sparser, colder. While one could imagine an alternate version of the LP comprised of different, fuller, arrangements, as a whole the stripped down approach applied here presents a unified front, stylistically, in a way that ultimately best serves the songs. (Having said that, I cannot help wonder what added gravity some of the songs might take on with some additional fleshing out in a live setting).

Above all else, the addition of Apocalypse in Callahan’s post-SMOG canon is further proof the bard has many a new tale to tell, and in his new found approach, may just be warming up.

Elsewhere: He Can Sing It, if Not Speak It (NY Time interview with Bill Callahan)

MP3: Bill Callahan :: Baby’s Breath
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