Writer Andrew Earles contributes with an article on Househunters, the band whose place in the fringe punk and squatter scenes of 1980s London went overlooked. Front man Jowe Head reflects on this time and the potential of a band whose talents are now becoming more well-known.
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After starting out in rock bands, Zimbabwe singer Thomas Mapfumo dug deep into his cultural roots in the mid-1970s during a time when the country was led by white minority rule, much like apartheid-era South Africa. Mapfumo joined the Acid Band (whose guitarists imitated the traditional mbira thumb pianos) and soon drew the ire of government with his sometimes unsubtle messages, supporting the revolutionary independence movement, as well as singing in the local Shona language, which was unusual for bands at the time. After a trumped-up jail sentence, he moved on to another band, The Blacks...
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New York City, 1979. The radical post-punk movement that would be known as No Wave is in full swing. Mars, DNA, Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, Contortions, Theoretical Girls, Ut, and many more are playing noisy, tradition-destroying music at CBGB’s, Max’s Kansas City, and the Mudd Club. No New York, the Brian Eno-produced No Wave compilation, was just released the previous fall. Two years later, almost all of these groups were gone. But in Manhattan in 1979, it might have felt like you could see a No Wave group every night. If you did, chances are you also saw Blinding Headache,...
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Andy Beta contributes with an exclusive interview with legendary folk guitarist Wizz Jones - discussing his influences on Clapton, performances alongside John Martyn, and collaborations with Alan Tunbridge.
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Guitarist, composer, and author Alan Licht writes on Lubomyr Melnyk, a composer and pianist whose style in the “Continuous Mode” is often compared to the Minimilists, but may belong possibly in a genre all its own.
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Galactic Zoo Dossier's Steve Krakow chats with singer songwriter Steve Tilston about his creative origins, influences, memorable performances, and recordings that shaped this legend's unique musical career.
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Guitarist, composer, and author Alan Licht contributes with an editorial on Elodie Lauten's 'The Death of Don Juan', an untraditional operatic piece featuring Arthur Russell among others.
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Jason Gross, founder of Perfect Sound Forever, reviews three significant albums from the prolific 1970's era of Jackie Mittoo, the legendary keyboardist and vocalist who bridged the gap between rock steady and reggae.
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Contrary to what one might read, psychedelia didn't begin in 1966, and it wasn't invented by the Beatles or Timothy Leary. Psychedelic research and psychedelic culture had already existed for decades, unknown to most except an esoteric jet-set of researchers, artists and philosophers along the London - Boston/NYC - California axis. The atmosphere could be described as academic-bohemian, incarnated in a few super-educated Anglo-Saxons such as Gerald Heard and Aldous Huxley. These men had the intellectual resources to incorporate the mescaline and LSD experience into their vast knowledge of...
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Composer Alvin Lucier conveniently lays out his intent and technique used in this piece out as clearly as possible in the text that he reads for the composition: I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear then are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this...
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Frank Wright was one of the most extreme followers of Albert Ayler in terms of the freedom and ferocity of his playing, and his “energy music” approach to tenor saxophone can be traced down to Charles Gayle, Sabir Mateen, and other hard-blowing tenor men. So it might be a surprise to learn that, born in the small city of Grenada, Mississippi in 1935, Wright is of the same generation and original background as such blues greats as Magic Sam (born a year and a half later in Grenada), Fenton Robinson, James Cotton, Ike Turner, and Otis Rush. Like many of them, he soon moved to a bigger city, in...
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How was it that an odd, scraggly singer found boosters in the form of influential DJ/figurehead John Peel and label mogul Richard Branson (who each signed him to their labels) and the Doors' management who considered him to replace Jim Morrison in the band? Such is the unique appeal of the late Kevin Coyne, whose early formative years are heard in the Dandelion Years collection.
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Long before anyone had heard of ’loner folk’ or even ’acid folk’, Perry Leopold was an underground legend. He had made enough of a mark on the ‘70s club scene in Philadelphia to trigger vague reminiscences among local elders, and when word on his self-released 1970 album started getting around in the mid-1980s, its uniqueness was quickly realized. Decades later, Experiment In Metaphysics remains a dark beacon among ‘70s underground folk records, a $1000 yardstick against which recent genre discoveries are measured and usually found lacking.
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After legendary UK post-punk pioneers Young Marble Giants broke up in 1980, guitarist/songwriter Stuart Moxham carried on with his muse in a new band called The Gist. In both bands, Moxham cultivated a quiet, futuristic minimalist pop. A series of singles cumulated in The Gist's only album, the charming, lilting Embrace the Herd, originally released in 1983 and now available on Anthology Recordings. Interest never waivered in either band (counting Kurt Cobain and Kim Gordon among their fans), culminating in a series of YMG reunion shows in the last two years and now The Gist also is...
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To say the discovery of Simply Saucer in the late nineties was epiphanous for me would still be some sort of understatement. Here was the promise of everything great laid down in the late sixties made good; the UK free-fest roar, the Velvets’ street-tough chug, Syd’s early exploratory jams, even Krautrock’s primordial dirge—even the immediate influence of Eno’s oscillations were felt—and this was from mid-seventies Ontario?? The story was too good to be true—from-the-day obscurists with names like “Ping” totally out of touch with their contemporaries, in virtual isolation, morphing the best...
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Walo Carrillo—drummer and founder of Tarkus, Los Holys, Telegraph Avenue, and Tlön—chats with Steve Krakow (Plastic Crimewave Sound) on the vibrant rock scene of the 1970's, and Tarkus' acclaim as the first heavy rock LP released in South America.
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Of all the artists working in the somewhat dubiously named category of “experimental music,” there are few whose releases are as highly and consistently anticipated as those of Henry Flynt. His biography is so full of ideological turns and unexpected syntheses that pinning him down has proven to be just about as impossible as it has pointless. But the myriad forms of Flynt’s intellectual output over the last half century—which have encompassed everything from philosophical tracts to North Indian influenced solo violin pieces, from country rock to “concept art”—are by no means indicative of a...
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The question of whether Louisville punk band Squirrel Bait was a little late on a trend or ahead of its time depends on what one focuses on while listening to them, but whichever side one comes down on, nobody can deny that they made great music that has stood the test of time, sounding great on vinyl, CD, and now digital download. Certainly when I bought their eponymous debut in 1985, it was because they were being compared to the Replacements and Hüsker Dü, which were big favorites of mine. They more than lived up to the hype on a disc full of propulsive, explosive songs, with singer...
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Spend enough time with a favorite album and over the years you will find that it has worked itself into your life, in a way that transcends the immediate appreciation of the music. Private memories will be attached to the record, and they will enhance the listening experience as you grow older.
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Founded in New York City by Peter Fritsch in 1950, Lyrichord was initially devoted to unusual classical music, but quickly branched out into what is now the somewhat problematically named category of “World Music.” “Roots”, “Folk”, “Ethnographic Music”, “International Field Recordings” — a bevy of alternate and usually equally unsatisfactory titles have been proposed over the years. Whatever you decide to call it, what is clear is that as long as there has been recorded music, there has been an enthusiastic if small audience hungry for music from cultures other than their own. From wax...
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Pau Riba has been making music and working in film and theatre for almost 40 years - wowing audiences with daring performances that push artistic boundaries. Catalayan born, Riba's life has been littered with awe-inspiring experiences, from his times as a law-breaking Catalayan musician during the fascist Franco regime to his days living with an island-bound hippie commune in Spain. Interviewed by resident WFMU DJ, Rob Hatch-Miller, we are allowed this rare glimpse into Riba's artistic motivations while taking a look back at two of his classic albums.
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I have to admit I ran out and bought the wrong Soft Machine album to start with, “5” on cassette to be exact—and I just couldn’t understand how this jazz fusion group was the one that gave the almighty Pink Floyd competition in the heady 60s. Luckily I sallied forth, dug a bit deeper and found affordable copies of the first two LPs. Then I quickly saw how both bands had the killer combination of experimentation, personality, and very catchy English tunes. In fact, Soft Machine had perhaps a greater combination of true original characters within its framework, especially when one considers...
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It would not be much of a stretch to say that ESP-Disk made Albert Ayler famous and Ayler made ESP famous. Ayler had impressed some colleagues on the avant-garde jazz scene, but was little known before ESP released Ayler’s Spiritual Unity, the label’s first album of music (their first LP taught listeners the artificial language Esperanto). He had spent most of 1962-63 in Sweden after failing to find much work in the U.S., but on his return settled in New York and in 1964 put together a group with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Sonny Murray that soon made its mark.
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And I’ve heard them all. The mid-six figure rarities like The Search Party and These Trails, the variously evil things like Graham Bond, Black Widow, Coven and Monument, weird old metal, PiL’s The Flowers Of Romance, The Raven by The Stranglers… unsettling wyrd folk like Trader Horne, and then there’s Nick Drake. Well… The Ghost’s When You’re Dead – One Second makes them all wilt like girlie flowers (or as Shirley sez, “Hearts and flowers died today”).
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Plastic Crimewave aka Steve Krakow, creator of Galactic Zoo Dossier and mainman behind the Plastic Crimewave Sound takes an in-depth look at the music and story behind the mighty Gandalf!
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How did you get hooked up with Anthology for this reissue? Karl Ikola and Anopheles Records! Such a great person. He gets credit for a lot of this new attention. This is the second reissue, right? Are you surprised by the attention the album has received in the three decades following its release? Yeah, like an improbable attack without warning!Significant. Anopheles reissued the original LP with one bonus track in ’02 on clear vinyl. Now in ’08 again it will be reissued on black vinyl. So I guess that would be two times not counting the CD reissues. I can't keep count...
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To document the large spanning influence of Davy Graham would be like doing so with Bach or Dylan---the seeds they planted became the roots of so many diverse trees with branches blossoming into buds which in turn birthed flowers, fruit and other mutant fauna-- it would be impossible to begin or end in one’s assessment. I’ve interviewed members of Incredible String Band, Pentangle and COB, and all aforementioned groundbreaking folkies stopped in their tracks at the mere mention of his name—and they all offered the same credo, that Davy was simply “the man.”--aka the for-real trailblazer and...
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Ask your average music lover to name some of the 1970s' best proponents of organ-laced heavy rock with progressive tendencies and you're likely to hear names such as Deep Purple or Rush; maybe Uriah Heep, Atomic Rooster, and, pushing your luck a little, possibly Lucifer's Friend, but what about Night Sun? Probably not, but then, that's why you're here. This group from Manheim, Germany didn't go completely overlooked when they released their one and only, spine-tingling album, Mournin', in 1972, but subsequently vanished into virtual oblivion; joining the nebulous ranks of promising, but...
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I guess it took me a little while to realize Turkey had some of the finer psychedelicists on hand in the day, it really should have been obvious, as their indigenous sounds were already tripped out enough with acoustic instrumentation, but when electric flavors were added a heady stew was all but guaranteed. A few key compilations hipped me to the plethora of frequencies that came out of Turkey in the late 60’s-mid-70’s--Yes, there was a whole blasted scene, especially once English and American vibrations entered the fray, Anatolian or Andalou rock was born. Headed largely by singer/svengali...
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As Paul Witzig's eagerly awaited follow-up to THE HOT GENERATION, EVOLUTION was a further development of the same theme in both surfing and music. Again, it showcased the "home movie" style of its maker, an aspect of Witzig's productions that made them easily accessible. The lack of any narration also added to the "grass roots" homeliness of the 80 minute cinematic yarn. Chosen to supply the music score was Tamam Shud, the new name adopted by The Sunsets in their attempt to overcome any preconceived image that the earlier group name may have still conjured up for many. However, not only had...
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Like several other privately released albums that have become underground classics, Peter Grudzien’s ”The Unicorn” was first discovered by musicologist and record dealer Paul Major in New York. Back in 1988, the then unknown LP was presented in one of Major’s record catalogs: “…The most twisted LP ever in my possession! Even non-collectors flip their wigs into eternity when I give them a dose of Grudzien. And you thought Cosmic Michael was the top acid casualty, you thought Higney was the apex of a dissembled mind! Ultra bizarre blend of religious guilt, Gandalf The Gay wizard trick music...
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Despite what most people thought when Joe Bataan topped the European charts with "Rap-O Clap-O" in 1980, he wasn't a new kid on the block, nor was "Rap-O Clap-O" his first chart buster -or a very good representation of the music he was known for among his longtime fans in America. In fact, Joe had been recording for well over a decade (his first U.S. hit was "Crystal Blue Persuasion" on the Uptite label in 1969) and he was known as the "The King of Latin R&B". Singer/pianist/songwriter/producer Joe Bataan was born Peter Nitollano in 1942 of African-American and Filipino parents and grew up...
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How long was your earlier band the Krayon Angels around? How old were you then? Did you gig out? The Krayon Angels existed for around 8 months --- from beginning to end. I was 17, and we played the Marque Club/The Revolution/and a two week stint at a disco club in Bristol. We also recorded a demo album ---- to be released years later in 1998 by Dig The Fuzz records UK. I also formed the whole group for Emperor Rosko, who put me together with his brother Jeff --- who was the singer. The line up consisted of Lou Martin (Killing Floor)/ Stuart (Mac) McDonald (Killing Floor)/ Chris Gibbons/...
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Arguably the most popular act to emerge from Adrian Sherwood's highly respected On-U Sound Records, African Head Charge created a series of critically acclaimed albums dedicated to further experiments in their label boss, mentor, and producer’s patented style of psychedelic dub. African Head Charge was founded in 1980 by percussionist Bonjo I (full name: Bonjo Iyanbinghi Noah), who surrounded himself with an ever-shifting cast of supporting characters (including colorfully named henchmen like Prisoner, Crocodile, Junior Moses and Sunny Akpan), and captained their debut, My Life in a Hole in...
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It was a mad, bittersweet revel. Catharsis curbed. The Longhorn filled to the brim with a cult of close to a thousand rock n’ roll ravers writhing ‘round ‘n’ round, turning crazed little circles, bouncing up and up, throwing fists in the air, while all power sources wailed full force in a numbing finale as wacky and wonderful as Verdi’s Requiem scored for a battalion of kazoos blaring out through a mile high bank of Marshall stacks. “We can fly so high, yeah, we’re never gonna die…and there’ll be fun, you bet, even more when you get to the junction, Petticoat Junction. Toot-toot!” - The...
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Hailing from Brooklyn, New York, Sir Lord Baltimore are one of the best kept secrets of early heavy metal; a band whose business acumen (or lack thereof) derailed the promise of their talents, and whose music was therefore cursed to decades of obscurity before being rediscovered – and often recycled into new songs – by many stoner rock bands of the 1990’s (whose shall remain nameless to save them face). If anything is fair in the mostly unfortunate SLB story, it’s that the commercial success attained during their existence was as modest as the band’s inner city roots. Vocalist/drummer John...
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In the summer of 1976, after over 3 years of home recording, SHOES was in a bit of a jam. We had recorded more than 3 albums worth of material and we still hadn’t achieved our goal of signing to a major label. To top it all off, our then drummer, Barry Shumaker had informed us that he was leaving the band and moving out of the small, one bedroom flat that he and I shared amidst the array of amps, instruments, PA and recording gear. Barry was a great guy and drummer but, with the prodding of his girlfriend, he was persuaded that he was wasting his time in the band and needed to move on to...
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With the advent of the conformist nightmare that consumed most of America in the 1950s, something eventually had to break. By the middle of the following decade, it most certainly had – and the shattered evidence was plain to see. Under a California sun, the shards of Technicolor brilliance, dazzling the eyes of those who dared to look toward new frontiers. The old rules were dispensed with, scorned and abandoned as anachronistic restraints. Dividing lines between art and life melted away, and for a few fleeting moments – or even years – anything seemed possible. Once the dark mirror...
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At long last the mysterious saga of Father Yod and Yo Ho Wa 13 (or sometimes “Wha”) has come to light, and the most important thing is that this was not some hidden fringe freak-cult or anything, but an essential chapter in counterculture history—or better yet, a chapter in humanity’s history as a whole. For years, collectors marveled at their privately pressed album covers waxing poetic on how such images could have taken shape—like the messianic, robed and hairy Father Yod howling while beating a gong on one LP, yet decked out in a white pimp suit adorning a Rolls Royce on another. The...
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Baby Grandmothers were one of the most prolific and unique power-trios to emerge out of the Scandinavian psychedelic underground-scene in 1967. Although hailing from Stockholm, Sweden they only released a single in Finland, which has since become one of the most sought after pieces of vinyl from the era. The band consisted of guitarist Kenny Håkansson, bassist Bengt “Bella” Linnarsson and drummer Pelle Ekman. These musicians were later to join forces with Mecki Bodemark and became the second formation of Mecki Mark Men, who’s LP “Running in the summer night” was released on Mercury Records...
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In 1969 SAINTE ANTHONYS FYRE was the ultimate hardrock powertrio from Trenton, New Jersey. Band leader, guitar wiz and vocalist Greg Ohm was heavy into music since childhood, having played classical music in elementary and high school (1st violin Trenton High’s Orchestra). He also took some music classes in college and ended up with the group Peter's Precious Soul, who were very popular locally. But Greg grew tired of playing Top 40 cover songs and decided to start his own band. While cleaning his grandmother's attic one day in 1967 he found an old newspaper with the headline, "Ste. Anthony's...
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Each side of this album is a suite of related pieces. The underlying conceptions of the two sides are quite different, as were the means of executing the music. Rainbow Delta consists of 4 pieces composed at different times and under different circumstances. What unifies them was the intention to describe a kind of ecstasy. At the times of composition I felt a strong connection between myself and the natural world. The first piece composed, “Take the 5:10 to Dreamland” came to me on a beautiful spring afternoon while I was sitting by a flume in Dutch Flat, California, listening to a...
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Achieving mythic status o’er the years, Sir Lord Baltimore’s debut album Kingdom Come is well deserving of it, this hastily assembled band of wild brothers unwittingly coming up with some of the earliest heavy metal ever. If we were to namecheck everybody we’re supposed to, one would still tilt to the British, as 1970 gave us two Black Sabbath albums, Uriah Heep’s debut and Deep Purple’s seminal In Rock. Over on these shores, the wobbly stuff had come along and predated – Stooges, MC5, Blue Cheer – and then one had more of a cogent comparative in Mountain. Still, one would have to give the...
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Although its roots can be traced as far back as the late 1960s, heavy metal didn’t truly come of age as a full-fledged, individual musical genre until almost a decade later, thanks to the style-defining movement known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Here, at last, an entire generation of post-punk musicians took proud ownership of the ‘heavy metal’ tag for the first time, whereas even founding fathers such as Black Sabbath, Deep Purple and Led Zeppelin had previously been strangely reticent. And, along with birthing literally hundreds of brand spanking new bands all over the U.K. (and...
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You can’t keep great music down. No matter how humbly recorded, or how obscure its first appearance, anything truly creative and original will survive and in time reach its audience. Few LPs illustrate this phenomena as well as “Inside The Shadow” by Indianapolis band Anonymous. Originally released as a very limited pressing in 1976, and briefly made available again in 1981, its dazzling contents weren’t really discovered outside the hometown borders until the 1990s. In the last 15 years the Anonymous legend has grown slowly but steadily, nourished by a couple of reissues, but even more so...
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PCW--What's your first musical memories? RT--Very young, like 2 years old. My dad was a big band leader and had his own orchestra. There was always music in our home. Dad would have most of the rehearsal in a music studio he had built behind the back of the house we lived in. As I got a wee bit older (5-6 years old) I'd go to many of the rehearsals and shows he put on. Later on, he was a studio musician in Hollywood, California for many of the Big Bands like Harry James, Lou Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Dezi Arnaz. I started playing a musical instrument at 6 years old, the trombone, and the...
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The Swedish band Trad Gras Och Stenar (formerly Harvester, formerly International Harvester, formerly Parson Sound) is a true beneficiary of the CD era. Their late 60s/early 70s albums are world-class examples of dark, lo-fi psychedelia with a foot in the avant garde, but were hardly heard by anyone until they were reissued on CDs—and those releases were supplemented with bonus tracks, most of which were too long to have fit on an LP side, which were just as good if not superior to their extant output. Founder and guitarist Bo Anders Persson was originally an aspiring modern classical...
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Few musicians have been able to reinvent themselves without losing some, if not all, of their mojo. Commercial aspirations are usually to blame. Kim Salmon, conversely, took his Scientists in a far less marketable direction when they reemerged in a different city less than a year after breaking up in early 1981.
But that’s another story for another day and another reissue; here Salmon discusses the Scientists’ self-titled debut — better known as
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