One day I'm going to have a 'Beefheart Day' too. I don't have near to all of it but I have a lot of it. And I decided a few years ago that winter time is the best time for me to Beefheart. I recently acquired Unconditionally Guaranteed, his commercial stab (yeah, that's funny-vliet must have laffed), but I can't wait to hear it again. Doc At the Radar Station is brilliant, and these old ears need to take it in again. I love his later 70's records. I have his live Best Batch Yet from '81 but haven't heard it. The Mallard records are pretty good too, comprised mostly of the Magic Band, I believe. Gotta listen to some Zappa now... and maybe a Mallard from my two-fer.
Hello fellow D-Heads... Right now its one of my desert island LPs or anywhere else I might be stranded.... The Many New Sides of Charlie Rich (Smash Records 1965 / mono) The summer of '65 while Dylan was busy abolishing the accepted status quo in music , Charlie Rich (a major influence on Dylan) was busy tearing up the Go-Go clubs across the USA.... & he was doing this with his A.M. hit "Mohair Sam" a bonafide blast of Sun & Blue Eyed Soul done in CR inimitable every womans man c_ _ k sure persona...boy did it sound good! MS is just the very tip of the ice berg on this great 60s RocknRoll LP... Moonshine Minnie , Everything I Do Is Wrong , Down & Out & the groove continues through all 12 songs... & It Ain't Gonna Be That Way , Field Of Yellow Daisies & I Cant Go On all predates ELVIS' 69 sound by 4 yrs , high praise , yes , but 100% warranted indeed... Oh yeah CR vocal , piano & composer genius in the RocknRoll medium has never been better represented than on TMNSOCR... & the band is tighter than Trumps hand around the throat of America at this point... TMNSOCR was CR 1st LP on the Smash Label & producer Jerry Kennedy knew exactly how to get the very best out of this Sun Records alumni... CR with his premature gray hair & much wiser than years vocals never did sound young & the cover shot of him in suit & tie would lead you to believe he was in the same graduating C&W class as Jim Reeves or Ray Price but don't be fooled... The 12 tracks on this LP drip with youth , vigor , urgency & drama , the ingredients that the best rock has always been about... I own a number of copies of TMNSOCR & tonight its a M low # Monoraul mix that is getting its TT time... The LP is essential in any mix & its a album everybody should here in its entirety at least once...once is all you need to be hooked by the way.
I confess I'm not into Zappa either. You should do something about your Beefheart condition, though. I'd swap out Phish for him if I were you...
I retract that, I should be less petulant when people like something I don't want them to. There's room for all! Keep Phish if you must. I always thought they were kind of Zappa-y in a way, I'd have guessed the fanship went in tandem a lot of times...maybe not in a really tangible way but something about the vibe.
The Kinks did go quasi-metal in their Arista years. But does that mean the Stones needed to be heavy? No. The Stones need to be bluesy-rocky-druggy, and sing about murder and rape and stuff. Meanwhile, the Kinks can happily sing about marmalade and cross-dressing, and other hardcore British subjects that I still don't understand. They're both great bands, but I give the edge to the Stones. In fact, here's how I've always thought of the following bands, expressed as a hierarchy: The Who The Stones The Beatles The Kinks Now I know I'll get a lot of crap for ranking the Beatles third, but when I was a kid, and through my college years and even beyond, I didn't give a crap about the Beatles. By the time I was in my late twenties, I recognized the wonderfulness of Revolver, Pepper's, The White Album, Let It Be and Abbey Road, but I still didn't care much for the early albums. That changed a lot with the release of The Beatles In Mono. I really finally got the greatness of the early stuff. That said, I had a sort of friend in college who was a good guitar player, or at least the best I had met to that point, and I asked him to play Norwegian Wood while we were hanging out late at night after a concert or something, and he nailed it, but I was half-joking with that suggestion. My other friend was like, "No! Not Norwegian Wood!"
Projected apology, as I'm a walking etiquette breach at this hour, having just phased in from a dull house party plagued by contemporary country on a tinny shelf system; apparently someone put beer in my beer. But Zappa would be the kingpin classic rock, avant-garde, improvisational, jazz-fusion, prog Czar if he'd have just shut the hell up on stage. I sacrificed my FZ virginity this year to the Roxy Box and got about 60 net minutes of the greatest recorded music I'd ever heard. The rest was a dull reminder of sophomoric fraternity pranks from high school and college. I guess there's always "Hot Rats". You guys rock. Out.
You're welcome. For what it's worth, that post was a model of decorum, BAC level notwithstanding. You've summed up the Frank Zappa dilemma very well.
'Tangerine' is one of my favourites of theirs. 'Gallows Pole' introduced a teenaged me to the music of Leadbelly and roots of Rock 'n Roll that date back to before 1912, played and sung by a man who was born in 1888 when the average life expectancy of the American male was 39 years. LZ III has never been at the top of my albums list, but 'That's The Way' is such a mesmerising piece that it alone is worth owning that album for .. the rest is icing on a scratch recipe and 'Since I've Been Loving You' is the band's last foray into straight blues .. when I saw Zep live in '77 they played it with all of the fire and ardor with which they laid it down on that album, however that was as far back into their repertoire as they went that evening*. At one point though, Jimmy played the first 13 notes of 'You Shook Me and the crowd uproar grew to such a frightening level, he stopped and the band went into a different song. I'm glad they didn't play it actually ~ sheer pandemonium would have ensued and people would likely have gotten trampled under foot (<- a song which they did play, btw!) * correction : I just remembered [Jimmy] did play Black Mountain Side off of LZ I
'Shakedown Street' for studio, but I would start right in with concerts, 'Europe '72' is right at. 'Steal Your Face' is pretty good too. Friend, you really can't go wrong with GD ~ but the live stuff is where the solid action is. And, welcome to the camp ! .. I guess you .... know why we're here
Yeah that was my first 12 listens to TMR probably, except picture me as a 98-lb weakling...the first time I listened to it I was on mushrooms and it was still incomprehensible (I think I made it 2/3ds of the way through "Frownland"). It took about 20 years, I started liking it but could only handle 3-song chunks for a while...at some point I started really getting into it, and it helped when I started trying other Beefheart albums into the bargain...probably not an uncommon story (other than perhaps the very long time frame), particularly TMR isn't an album many people tumble for on first listen... Honestly though it only took a few times/years to start liking the music, what put me off for a long time was the vocals. They were really the acquired taste (even though I liked Howling Wolf fine)...
Yeah that's a great one. I think this is my absolute favorite from those sessions though: Captain Beefheart - Moody Liz (Take 6)