In hopes of encouraging @The late man to post some of his stuff, I'm going to stand naked before y'all and post some stuff I've recorded over the years... it has been like some kind of weird personal history lesson listening through today, exploring stuff that might be high enough standard to post, and not too embarrassing to expose... so anyway.... Dispose. 2003 This is a pretty self explanatory kind of track, and is supposed to be more an observation than a judgement ... but it is what it is.
Forestwalk. 2003 I'm not a greenie or an environmentalist, but I'm human, and I see what goes on... I had some greenie friends that lived in Northcliffe, just near Pemberton in the south west of West OZ. This was a sort of emotional response to the clear felling going on.....
Fill Up The Gaps. 2004 A sort of self examination I guess... but it was more about playing with the structure of some music I was playing around with. Recorded at home
Slumber. 2003/04 When I was making the album the first two tracks are from, I started working in the guys studio. I was editing and recording stuff for people and in the down time I knocked out a few things. I had an acoustic guitar thing I liked, and I ended up building it into this... It's an instrumental, so you don't have to hear my voice or my somewhat odd lyrics lol
Mainstream. 1995 In 1995 our band Maelstrom saved up and recorded an album... This is probably one of the more accessible tracks... maybe... We recorded 13 songs one day, and mixed them the next. My mate Dave wasn't keen on playing to a click and they didn't have room for us to set the band up... So I plugged into the desk and jammed with him while he recorded the drum parts. Then I went in and recorded the guitar, so the bass player had something to follow. Then we added the vocals and lead. After the first night the bass player and I dropped some acid and wandered around the small country town of York, getting back to the studio as the sun was coming up. Probably wasn't a good idea... he went to bed, and I had a coffee and started mixing the album with the drummer. Maelstrom may be something that perhaps @markelis may enjoy lol
Living In A Daydream. about 1990 To be totally naked, here's a song that never got recorded properly, but this is a jam I found that is reasonably well recorded. Memory lane for me... hopefully someone gets something out of all that. There should be a stack of good quality stuff, but I smoked way too much weed, and I tended to be lazy and just keep first takes, figuring one day I would get to record stuff properly lol.... Cue Supertramp Dreamer
For the record, non of those times are correct... I just slapped these together on Imovie... it's a bit shady lol
I just listened to your songs Headmaster and they are all pretty good. You do know how to play guitar and your vocals are good and clear. Honesty, there’s nothing to be embarrassed about at all. Avid The late man has nothing to be embarrassed about at all either. I have several of his albums he recorded under the name Blair which I have enjoyed. His late sister Anne also did some nice songs: Anne Serieyx
Some more Avid Recommendations in a completely random order, minus live selections, with notes from me. Just wanted to post this now before the cobwebs get any stranger (it's Saturday). This has been a fun exercise and is my way of attempting to catch up on some of these fine recommendations since I got very far behind for a couple of weeks. 46 tracks in playlist, average track length: 3:55 Playlist length: 3 hours 43 seconds Everybody's Missin' The Sun - Grin (2:47) Highly enjoyable hippie anthem emblematic of its time. Tasty slide guitar. I like the chorus vocals. Nothing else to say about this but it sounds really good. Let's Build A Pyramid - Scott McCaughey (3:55) Put simply, a timeless classic. This is really cool and I think everyone deserves to hear it. Most of the others won't get near it. Cup Of Tea - Shack (3:35) But here's an exception. Typically brilliant, I haven't heard anything by this artist that hasn't impressed me to the ends of the earth. I think I understand now why Steve62 wanted to keep this to himself. It's just too good. Walking Down A Road - Split Enz (5:26) Immensely entertaining from first noise to last. Musically the most impressive Split Enz for me so far. My attention never wandered for the full duration. I like the way their songs are assembled. They strike me as being very advanced for their time. Towards the end I am being pulled in by those glorious last notes. And then... I Don't Want You To Go - The Dogs D'Amour (3:48) Woof! My listening space is suddenly infused with a blast of pure Rock'n'Roll energy! The song is a great rocker that sounds somehow inevitable. Not at all contrived, it obviously springs from an honest place, and there is a feeling something like the word being spread by true believers. Great chorus sounds and the riff is catchy as hell. The players sound committed and the guitar interplay is fantastic. An actually rather longish song that seems to go by just like that. Excellent. In Like The Rose - Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (5:23) This is almost infinitely cool. An excellent song played masterfully. Was actually surprised to see it was by BMRC but I should have expected as much. This group is unique for me among the Avid Recommendations in that I have heard some of their stuff but don't really know what any of it was or when or what album it was from. A friend was into them but didn't tell me about their different albums or anything. I think if I had heard this song I might have inquired further. There is some amazing guitar work on it. All Alone in the Endzone - Robbin Thompson (4:28) The music is interesting right from the start, but the lyrics are not my cup of tea. He sounds like a great singer and the song is well sung, but I think the lyrics might keep me from returning to this one. How to put it? They certainly aren't terrible or badly written, but there are things in this song about life and people and the world that are some of the exact same things I listen to music to get away from. It also might be that I haven't had much beer lately, but that's not Robbin's fault. I'll be interested to hear what else he's got, as well as taking steps to remedy the beer situation soon. See What a Love Can Do - Grin (5:00) Seems like Grin would have been a huge hit at the time. They seem to have all of the necessary ingredients. I'm also surprised that this song wasn't discovered by the jam bands as a great obscure cover to revive and jam on endlessly. Seriously, I'm less impressed with this track than the first two Nils Lofgren songs I've heard so far, if only because the vocals are just a little too screamy to hold me fully captive for five minutes. Something Like You - Michael Head & The Strands (4:05) Almost immediately I am lulled into submission, willing to go wherever it leads, and it doesn't disappoint. Kerosene Men - Barrence Whitfield and Petti (3:43) Barrington's back with an extremely entertaining look at hard partying. His vocal work sounds like something that's always been around, or it should have been. What we have here is a rockabilly riot with truly crazed guitar that sounds like it would be a real showstopper live. I think Ronnie Hawkins only ever got this high and wild in his dreams. Titus - Split Enz (3:16) Not so much a song as a musical journey. I'm starting to "get" Split Enz and I'm starting to understand the Genesis comparisons. This sounds like it could have been on "Selling England By The Pound," which is not to say it is unoriginal. There is a celestial mandolin/12-string thing going on, and the way the shifting vocal melodies are glued to the firmament finds no other likeness. I like the way the whole thing builds to a big dramatic instrumental ending. I like Split Enz - they pack a huge amount of song into some fairly small spaces. Heartbreak - The Dogs D'Amour (3:19) The Dogs again with a somewhat standard classic rock workout distinguished by a heartfelt vocal, great rhythm section work and a guitar just the right amount out of tune. Musically not too adventurous but these guys have spirit and manage to pull it off. Its various and sometimes overlapping vocal parts serve as the song's focal point. Not bad! Muck Muck - Barrence Whitfield (3:41) Not sure what I expected here, but BW delivers the manic energy in spades. Chalk up another crazed and masterful vocal. Does he do any ballads? I like the way the track keeps accelerating. Nice piano playing. This selection wins today's "most entertaining if also borderline frightening" award. Cameo Parkway - The No Ones (Scott McCaughey) (4:12) I remember heaing this one around the time it was posted. The offset bass line reminds me of "Soul Experience" by Iron Butterfly. Once the song kicks in I am impressed by the musical backing. Scott uses electronic elements to great pop song effect. Some psych guitar/keyboard moves pull me into the landscape in spite of the rhythm element sounding something like digital skipping, which I notice gets a little quieter right at the point of overstaying its welcome, at which point the live drums become more prominent. The ending disintegrates nicely. Great material from this artist today. Plastic Elvis - The Bevis Frond (5:49) Monstrous sounds fit for the end of a monstrous morning (I won't go into it now). Nick sort of trying on his Julian Cope wings here. The song takes a while to gel but there is obvious logic and beauty as the full structure reveals itself. The song would have fit on The Teardrop Explodes' "Wilder" LP from 1981. I get the impression the thing to do with Nick/Bevis would be to start with the most recent and work backwards. Best of today's batch (ok, aside from Shack which is getting to be a theme here, yet another artist I'll have no choice but to track down and capture in the wild): Scott McCaughey, special mention: BMRC. There is stiff competition here, and not a single band or artist I just plain don't like. Thank you for reading and to all of our recommendation contributors!
Wow, @mark winstanley ! Nice. And quite the variety that you picked out. ‘Forest Walk’ and ‘Slumber’ and ‘Fill Up The Gaps’ are probably my initial picks.
I like 'em. It's funny listening back, and all the little things you hear that irritate you. I should have done this, I shouldn't have done that... all that kind of thing. I'm a lousy mixer and engineer, and you think, I wish someone who was good at this had the control board lol
Great work Mark! This sounds like a lost classic. If someone told me this was a name band with an outtake from their second album I would totally believe it. Didn't quite have me singing along but I could totally see learning it if I was called to help out with a live version or something like that. Bravo!
This sounds really good too. Nice instrumentation, a heartfelt and masterful sounding vocal. All the right stuff present and accounted for. Your write ups made it sound like these tracks would be a lot rougher and less accomplished. I am pleasantly surprised by what you've done here.
Are these available elsewhere for listening and/or purchase? If not, I think they should be. There is a pretty good album taking shape here.
No... They're just on my computer these days. I gave out some burned cd's for friends and stuff, but that's about it. We pressed copies of the Maelstrom album, but even I don't have a copy... I think I gave it to someone. There's probably ... idk 200 copies floating around Perth... unless they're in landfill by now lol
I’m currently reading But Will You Love Me Tomorrow An Oral History of The 60s Girl Groups and I saw the following quote from Nedra Talley Ross of the Ronettes describing an encounter w/Mick Avory she had at a party in England: “I was going up the stairs. I felt something tap tap tap on my butt…and you would have thought that I got the movie star role of the year.I turned around. I slapped him so bad. How dare you touch my butt? It was the drummer for the Kinks. I’m sure he was so shocked, but I’m like, How dare you tap with your drumstick on my butt? It was just from my gut-reflex. How dare you? I don’t even know who you are. Guess what? You’re nothing to me and you’re not even cute. I can’t even dream of you.” (p.205)
