I'd Love to Turn You On #239 - Brian Eno - Before And After Science (1977)

An argument could be made - and I’ve made it - that Brian Eno is the most pivotal artist of the rock era. If one lays his output on a graph with music history it seems like he has been constantly either breaking up the past or predicting the future. His work with Roxy Music took a hatchet to rock and prog convention, making concept over technique a willful and meaningful choice. His first four solo albums played with the idea that pop music could be more challenging than we had been led to believe. Combining a love for rhythm, heavy beats, and prog instrumentation with avant production he created a body of work that stands up well next to Bowie and Can as the tip of the spear of what might have been called cutting edge in the mid-1970’s. With Before And After Science he reached a new level of tea leaf reading. Released in 1977, this album is split into two parts: side A is angular, joyous proto-New Wave, and side B is a gentle and beautiful preamble to his ambient period which would preoccupy the next decade or so of his solo releases. This album took Eno two years to complete, and the ten songs included were whittled down from one hundred he wrote during this period. Each one of the chosen songs feels momentous and integral to the whole.

Also relevant to Before And After Science is the fact that it was the first album in which Eno employed his recently invented Oblique Strategies cards. These production tools were a series of “oracle cards” which when drawn from a deck at random would make suggestions like “Go slowly all the way round the outside.” Eno and his fellow musicians would attempt to act on these instructions without question. This method of creation shares DNA with William Burroughs and Brion Gysin’s Cut Up method of writing. There was intentional art, and there was entrusting the process to the whim of the universe, and each of these ideas was given equal merit. The result was magnificent as nothing on Before And After Science is predictable and everything sounds new and unexpected.

Opening with the chaotic rhythms and phased vocals of "No One Receiving" we are immediately thrown into a woozy world of off-kilter cadences that seem to come out of the mix like lead instruments instead of their usual background position. With accompaniment by members of Cluster, Brand X, King Crimson, Can and Roxy Music among others, Eno finds the perfect musicians for his vision. With minimal instrumentation he creates a symphonic version of rock music. Infallible melodies are coaxed out of the barest use of drums, bass and synths. No matter how carefully one examines the songs and their instrumentation there remains a certain magical Eno-ness to each number that gives it immediate and permanent mnemonic properties. You can’t exactly tell why, but they live in your head forever. "Kurt’s Rejoinder" will make you feel like you are in a pop music house of mirrors as synths soar above crazy time signatures with unforgettable Lewis Carroll-like lyrics. Track four, "Energy Fools The Magician," is the first hint of the ambience to come - a slinky instrumental led by Percy Jones’ slippery bassline and Fred Frith’s spooky guitar. Side One comes to a close with what I have always considered one of the first punk songs. "King’s Lead Hat" (an anagram for Talking Heads, whom he had just seen for the first time and would go on to produce) storms out of the gates with Andy Fraser’s crashing drums, marching handclaps, and clanging metal, and is punctuated by a deranged Fripp guitar solo. It bristles with spiky energy that would have fit in on a Magazine or Buzzcocks album.

If side A is a sonic report on rock’s contemporaneous state, side two is a never ending dream balm. Faultlessly melodic, "Here He Comes" is a beautiful and simple song with Phil Manzanera’s guitar and Paul Rudolph’s fretless bass solo playing off each other ecstatically. As side B progresses, we can hear Eno working his way toward ambiance. "Julie With" is a whisper of a song whose lyrics evoke beauty, eroticism and dread equally. Nothing but sparse keyboards, droning guitar and bass provide the gentle background. Eno intones "I am on an open sea, just drifting as the hours go slowly by/ Julie with her open blouse is gazing up into the empty sky." It is the audio equivalent of a Renoir painting - hazy, dreamlike, lovely. The album closes with the sublime "Spider And I" which finds Eno alone with synth waves, moody bass and the lines "We sleep in the morning, we dream of a ship that sails away…a thousand miles away." Eno’s muse was about to set sail. When Eno followed this album with more than half a dozen contemplative instrumental albums which plumbed the quiet recesses of modern art, it should have surprised no one at all. Side two of Before And After Science sounds like a man quietly slipping under the inky surface of his own artistic impulses with no intention of breaking the surface anytime soon. It is a sublimely quiet and singular listening experience. My highest endorsement is that for years I would go to sleep to side two of Before And After Science, and I never had any nightmares.

- Paul Epstein

I'd Love to Turn You On #148 - Brian Eno/David Byrne – My Life in the Bush of Ghosts

After Talking Heads released their fourth album and masterpiece, Remain in Light, the band went on hiatus while its members explored side projects. Guitarist Jerry Harrison released The Red and the Black, an underrated solo album which built on his work with The Modern Lovers and Talking Heads. Rhythm section and married couple, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, formed Tom Tom Club with Tina’s sisters and members of the Remain in Light touring band. Tom Tom Club’s debut functions like a release valve for the pressures building on Remain in Light and endures as a funky, energetic party album. Lead singer David Byrne and Brian Eno, producer of three Talking Heads albums, set off to create an album that draws upon similar archetypes as Remain in Light, but stands apart from anything these considerable talents have created before or since. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts sounds like Byrne and Eno discovered a way to tune into the radio signal of this entire planet and distill it into 40 minutes of genre-blurring, hypnotically engaging, and beautifully layered music.

Three and a half decades after its release, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts remains a ground-breaking and brilliant tangent from the minds of two of the most idiosyncratic and cerebral artists in popular music. Whereas Tom Tom Club seized upon the incredible pool of talent that had formed around Talking Heads and aimed it in a loose, upbeat, and fun-loving direction, Eno and Byrne set out on a concentrated, enigmatic, and exploratory mission into the unknown. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts contains some of the same DNA of poly-rhythms, experimentalism, and pastiche as Remain in Light, but this album grows into its environment without the frames and guidance of Byrne’s observational characters or recognizable song structures. Although both Eno and Byrne were known at this point for their skills and abilities as lead singers and songwriters, it may come as a surprise to some that this album features neither their voices nor their lyrics. The album’s liner notes credit both Brian Eno and David Byrne with, “guitars, basses, synthesizers, drums, percussions, found objects.” In place of Eno and Byrne’s vocals, nine of the eleven songs on the album contain elements cited in the liner notes as “voices” and include samples of radio hosts and callers, preachers, an exorcist, and singers from Egypt, coastal islands near the state of Georgia, and Lebanon. Among the eleven musicians who worked with Eno and Byrne on this album, eight are percussionists and three play bass. Eno and Byrne combine this robust rhythmic engine with the found, fragmented vocals to create a set of self-contained, evocative snapshots that, when regarded as a whole, reflect back to the listener like a mosaic formed from the pieces of a broken mirror.

Eno and Byrne reunited in 2008 for Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, an album that serves as a high point for both artists’ output in the last twenty years but bears no discernible connection to their first collaborative album. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today features some of Eno’s best recent production work as well as some of Byrne’s most natural vocals and most compelling lyrics since Talking Heads, but feels strangely orthodox and prosaic compared to the radical poetry contained within their first joint musical endeavor. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts merges elements of art rock, experimental music, funk, electronic music, African pop, folk music, field recordings, and minimalism into a highly influential sum, but few of its successors can compare with this fascinating musical exploration.    

John Parsell

I'd Love to Turn You On #138 - 801 - 801 Live

In 1976, Phil Manzanera, of the temporarily disbanded Roxy Music, got together with his ex-bandmate Brian Eno (then still going just by Eno) to form a new band for a series of live shows. Dubbed 801, from an Eno lyric, the group included several members of the prog scene and young drummer Simon Phillips who would go on to be one of the premier session players in rock and jazz. The material came primarily from Eno and Manzanera's solo work as well as containing a pair of classic covers, cleverly reworked. Most of the live set (and resulting album) alternates between instrumental and vocal tracks with Eno singing lead. With everything Eno has accomplished in the years since, and with the reputation that has grown up around him, this album seems like an oddity to look back on. This is primarily a prog/fusion group and it may seem like heresy to some to hear a few of Eno's classic songs performed in such a fashion. But at the time, they were all part of the same scene and it's great to hear this excellent material performed by a highly talented group of musicians, even if Eno claimed to be a "non-musician."

The album opens with "Lagrima," a Manzanera solo guitar piece, which serves as an intro to a radical reworking of The Beatles' psychedelic classic "Tomorrow Never Knows." The song is turned into a funky, spacey workout with particularly excellent bass lines from Bill MacCormick. The complex instrumental "East of Asteroid" follows and is the album's most purely prog selection. Next comes the ballad "Rongwrong" which contains a surprisingly gentle vocal from Eno, who breaks out of his usual monotone style of singing. This leads to the first appearance of an Eno composition, "Sombre Reptiles" which originally appeared on Another Green World. The tape loop-enhanced original actually translates nicely to a full band format. Unfortunately, the time and space limitations of old LPs force the track to fade out before the performance is complete. Another Eno tune follows and "Baby's On Fire" get transformed from an intense slow-burn to an all out rocker. Manzanera takes center stage on "Diamond Head," the title track of his solo album from the previous year. This is a true guitarist showcase with Manzanera moving from clean melodic lines to fiery solos. "Miss Shapiro" was also taken from the Diamond Head album but was co-written with Eno and actually sounds more like an Eno track than anything else here. Just as "Miss Shapiro" reaches its musical climax, in pops one of the most recognizable riffs in rock, The Kinks' "You Really Got Me." The venerable classic is given a complete makeover that manages to be whimsical while still rocking out. The album concludes with a thunderous version of Eno's "Third Uncle" that finds the entire band charging at full speed.

801 Live may not be the first record that comes to mind when discussing the long and varied careers of Eno and Manzanera. It is somewhat of a relic from the time when prog and glam were fading but punk had yet to assert itself.  It's essential listening not just for Roxy/Eno/Manzanera fans, but fans of prog, fusion and art rock.

            - Adam Reshotko

I'd Love to Turn You On #134 - The Neville Brothers - Yellow Moon

Yellow Moon represents a high point in the careers of both The Neville Brothers and producer Daniel Lanois. For their part The Neville Brothers had made three moderately successful albums since forming in 1976. Their previous albums, especially Fiyo On The Bayou had hinted at something bigger than their funky, New Orleans-centric style of good-time R&B, but anyone who saw them perform in the years leading up to Yellow Moon understood that there was something more to this band: something deep and spiritual. They had also built a powerful touring band with Willie Green on Drums and Brian Stoltz on guitar. Simultaneously, producer Daniel Lanois, riding incredibly high on the mega-successes of Peter Gabriel’s So and U2’s The Joshua Tree, was developing a whole new sound at his home/studio in New Orleans. In the first part of 1989 he had overseen a major career resuscitation of Bob Dylan with Oh Mercy and created a minor-masterpiece with his own début Acadia. His year continued on a high as he smartly kept The Neville Brothers’ potent touring unit intact (with a few deft additions by the likes of Brian Eno and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band) and helped them choose a perfect selection of songs with which to finally realize their potential as recording artists.

Yellow Moon hits all the marks of greatness because it so brilliantly uses The Nevilles’ natural assets - the trance like drums, the Black consciousness, the snaky rhythms and, of course, Aaron’s gift to and from the universe, his voice, and then smothers them in Lanois’ unearthly, modern production style. The combination produces magical results, giving The Nevilles their greatest album and Lanois what might be his most creative year. The album is basically broken into three types of songs, those that deal with political/social issues, those that deal with spiritual matters and those connected in some way to the nebulous but potent spell that the Crescent City places on musicians who fall under its thrall. The political material is usually handled by youngest brother Cyril who offers up his Mardi Gras Indian-meets-Rastaman vision on songs like “Sister Rosa,” “Fire and Brimstone,” “Wake Up” and most effectively on album opener “My Blood,” which offers up a nice preview of the Neville/Lanois union - equal parts funk, jazz, rock, the second-line rhythms of New Orleans, and Lanois’ signature use of reverb, big drums and lots of guitar textures. He doesn’t let up throughout. The entire album throbs with saturated bass and drums that sound like a thousand New Orleans funeral marches. Love him or hate him, Lanois has a unique and recognizable sound. Personally, I love him, and think he has assisted many important artists make their greatest statements. He definitely provided the most sympathetic palette for Aaron’s voice. The core of Yellow Moon are five songs sung by Aaron. The title cut is a Neville classic, all spooky jungle drums and brother Charles’ seductive horn lines. Then Aaron’s voice rises, like some rare flower blooming in the Amazon, both invoking and warning us about the impending yellow moon. It is scary and uplifting at the same time. The first ballad is a complete stunner, Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come.” It’s hard to imagine Cooke’s version being bested, but Aaron’s version is literally hair-raising. Lanois manages to surround the voice with thick layers of sound, billowing clouds of echo, yet Aaron’s remarkable instrument shines through it all like a lighthouse cutting through a thick fog. He accomplishes the same on a pair of Dylan classics, “With God On Our Side” and “The Ballad Of Hollis Brown” where he doesn’t so much best the originals as much as create an entirely new beast out of them. They are beautiful versions of already classic songs, essential additions to the Dylan catalog as well as the Neville’s.

The final three songs on Yellow Moon close the album on an uplifting note. First Aaron soothes with a completely appropriate “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” followed by Charles’ hypnotic instrumental “Healing Chant” and finally a return to earth and New Orleans specifically with the celebratory “Wild Injuns” which leaves the listener breathless and The Neville Brothers where they belong: at the top of the American music scene for the next twenty years.

- Paul Epstein

Fables of the Reconstruction: Another Green World

I first met the kid who would become my best friend in high school when we were on a chartered bus bound for a cross-country meet in Fort Morgan. His name was Dave Sherman, and he was a skinny little freshman with a big nose, just like me. We had our Walkmans out and our cassettes were spilled across the empty seats between us. He asked me what I had and I read off the names: The Clash, The Dickies, The Circle Jerks. Dave laughed when I said Circle Jerks, and when I played him “You Drive Me Ape, You Big Gorilla,” he laughed so hard he slid out of his seat. He liked all those arty longhaired groups I was rebelling against—Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, ELO. Back and forth we went naming names until we finally hit one in common, Brian Eno. We became best friends. All through the years when music defined us and we were constantly changing, through our teens and early twenties, from punks to Puppet Heads to Dead Heads to just plain freaks, and even down divergent paths, me into gangsta rap and grunge and him into Sufi dancing and post-rock, Eno and Another Green World remained a bond.

            I first came across the album when I was in junior high and on the hunt at the public library for anything that would transport me away from feathered-hair conformity of my little Midwestern hometown in the early eighties. I wanted new wave and punk, and there wasn’t any of that in the record bins at the public library, but the simple, cool, bright-colored design on the cover of this album that made me think it might be close. I took it home and listened to it and I definitely got my wish to be transported to somewhere else. Another Green World has a lot of synthesizer in it, and that appealed to my new wave side, but here it’s in service to songs that are less like songs than lush aural environments, some dense with tropical rhythms, others ethereal and vaporous. Quite a few are instrumentals that slowly rise from silence and fill the air with colorful, shapely sounds and drift back into silence. But there are also tunes you can sing along to, and they’re quite catchy, especially “St. Elmo’s Fire,” with its elating chorus that goes, “In the blue August moon,” and my instant favorite, “I’ll Come Running,” a bouncy, dreamy pop song that would fit perfectly in one of those movie scenes where two lovers run toward one another in a hazy meadow, but it’s funny because the song’s title is paired in the chorus with, “to tie your shoe.” It’s all very easy to listen to; no sharp edges or violent shifts. At the same time, it’s not sentimental or soft; there’s a sinisterness lurking around throughout, a barely perceptible discordant thread that made the record acceptable even when I was a close-minded hardcore punk (after all, even thrashers need some chill music from time to time).

            I never owned Another Green World on vinyl. Through high school and most of my college years I carried the cassette I’d made of the copy I found at the library. But somewhere along the way, probably during one of my many moves in my 20s, I lost it. Then right after I graduated and I was struggling to find a decent job, I got a call from a friend who said that Dave had died of a drug overdose. Dave and I had drifted apart; I hadn’t talked to him for the better part of year. At the funeral, his mom remembered me as his best friend, even though we really weren’t any more, and she asked me if I would meet her at his apartment to go through his things. I wound up taking a lot of stuff – a food processor, a lamp, a rug, things like that – as a favor to her because it was obvious that she couldn’t bear to throw any of it away. But I didn’t go there for any of that. I wanted an artifact to remember him by. The first place I looked was his music collection. There wasn’t much there that I was interested in. He’d taken a liking to cosmic experimental stuff that bordered on new age. But there among all the crap I didn’t like was a copy of Another Green World, on CD, with a cracked case. Full circle, just like the day we met.

What Are You Listening To Lately (Part 11)?

Sly & the Family Stone - Stand!
If it were not for the just-OK "Somebody's Watching You" and the slight excess of "Sex Machine," this album would be perfect - the absolute inverse in its brightness, drive, and optimism of There's a Riot Goin' On's murk, languor, and pessimism. There's nary a hint of the darkness that would consume Sly a year or so after the making of this album - it's all hope and optimism and direct confrontation of problems, none of the resigned negativity he'd essay on the next record. And it's beautiful for most of its length, with "Everyday People" standing as not just one of Sly's best songs, but one of the best pop songs of all time. A true, indelible, A+ moment. But it's only one standout of Sly's grand statement of purpose - or at least of the purpose he espoused in 1969. On nearly any other record, "Everyday People" would be a career-topper the artist would try forever to recapture. On Stand! the song, brilliant as it is, finds at least three others on par with it - the bruising funk of "Sing A Simple Song," the tense equality plea of "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" and the nearly-surpassing-it masterpiece of "I Want to Take You Higher." It's a landmark album, kept half a star short for me only by some minor flaws which in truth never cross my mind while it's playing, only in reflection afterwards.


Meat Puppets - II
In a way, their best because it's got the most breadth but it's also a little on the side of wild youth - they got wiser as they continued, and I for one appreciate that. But even so, they're pretty damn smart even this early on in their career and I don't think they were ever more fun, singing however they feel it without worrying about, y'know, pitch and stuff and playing their wacked out guitar/bass/drums the same way. Which just means that Kurt & co. cleaned them up a bit for their respectable stab at the MTV crowd, not that Nirvana improved on the melodies or the words. Cobain was right to pick three songs from this album for their big acoustic special because it's the Puppets' catchiest, their easiest to absorb (especially in the cleaner Nirvana versions) and he knew as well as anyone that "grunge" fans fans not acclimated to the underground that spawned Nirvana would be able to glom on to these shoulda-been hits more readily then the thrash of the first record or the wide-eyed (or should I say wide-pupiled?) psychedelic wonder of some of the later ones. So yeah, I guess it really is their best, a repository of melodies, riffs and memories, even though I find that I don't always go to this for my Puppets fix, which just means there are more great ones lurking out there.


Various Artists - Produced by Trevor Horn
Before I had any idea who Eno was, before I made any connection between Phil Spector and the multitude of hits he produced, I could identify a Trevor Horn production within a few bars. So his 80's material collected here holds a special place for me. He's the magic link between ABC, my heroes in Art of Noise, my favorite Pet Shop Boys song, the wacko "Buffalo Gals," and my otherwise inexplicable attraction to Yes and Godley & Creme. I don't necessarily need his 90's and 00's stuff the way I love his 80's, but neither do I mind hearing how he's developed (though I have yet to develop my own tastes enough to enjoy t.A.T.u for more than 2.5 minutes at a time.). Like the key AoN releases, like "Buffalo Gals," like "Owner of a Lonely Heart" and "Cry," the bulk of the 80's material here takes me to a sentimental place that I enjoy visiting. And if I don't love it all equally, this is a fundamental piece of my musical development. Eno and Spector came later and I can't in truth say that they've meant more to me.

Gabriel's Angels

It has been hard times. A long, troubled, bleak time. A time of confusion. A time of drought, a time of want. But now is the time for change. Now is the time of enlightenment. A time of adventures, a time of discovery. For, finally... the third and final installment in the Genesis reissue series is here.

At last, Genesis have seen fit to give the world what it wants - a sexy box set covering its golden period with Peter Gabriel and Charisma records (1970-1975). Crammed with audio and video goodies and inevitable deluxe packaging, this completely remixed/remastered set has given Genesis fans like me a reason to live of late.




PART ONE The enigma of the Lamb

To kick off, I want to talk about my favourite (sic) Genesis LP. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is the multi-hued sheep of the Genesis family, i.e. something of an oddity. A Labyrinthine tale told through a murky, psychedelic haze, some clever people say The Lamb is the Genesis masterpiece, and the pundits may be correct on this one. It is also starkly different from every other Genesis release; gone is the very English whimsy of the early albums, the Victoriana, the fairy tale macabre, the sweetness. Like much of the Gabriel-era Genesis stuff, these are surrealist tales, but this time they are fed through a vile, twisted metropolis instead of the English countryside. The Lamb is a striking mélange, full of forboding, street talk, the supernatural and the grotesque, and even, gasp...short hair. Yes! The reverse mohawk, giant flower and foxhead of yesteryear have, by the time the Lamb hit Broadway, morphed into a shorn Puerto Rican street tough with cabalistic tendencies.

As a story (like most concept albums), things get pretty baffling by the 4th or 5th track, but the steady flow of provocative ideas engages and enthralls throughout. The Homeric journey of the protagonist Rael (think: Gab-Rael) is simply the method actor frontman's own cod-schizophrenia played out in a nightmarish Gotham wonderland. Only contemporary Bowie in his ambitious Diamond Dogs period can hold a candle to Gabriel in his role of a lifetime.

There are no weak moments on this LP. The Lamb is a double album of great pop songs ("Counting Out Time," "It," "Lilywhite Lilith"), prog epics ("The Cage," "Colony of Slippermen"), gorgeous ballads ("The Lamia," "Carpet Crawlers") and sublime slices of classic rock ("Back in NYC," "Chamber of 32 Doors," "The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway"). There are also several tracks of great experimental music; quasi-musique concrete and free jamming that still sounds superb. Although he doesn't play on the LP, Brian Eno is credited for assisting with effects and general mood. This is most evident on instrumental tracks like "The Waiting Room" and "Hairless Heart." All in all, The Lamb ought to appeal to any fan of quirky 70s rock.

Genesis deserve to be rated among the finest art-rock acts of the 70s, y'know- Roxy Music, Kraftwerk, Bowie, The Pistols. As a musical unit, they were endlessly melodic and creative, and with Phil Collins on board, Genesis were a major powerhouse. The kick drum on this record is a rival to Zep IV as best ever. For Phil, believe it or not, is Prog's greatest drummer. You heard me, Mr. Bruford.

The Lamb is enigmatic not only because of the strangeness of the recording, but also because of the filmic images that accompany it. The cover (a Hipgnosis gem), liner notes, costumes and stage show all have an otherworldly vibe, and because the original tour was never filmed (do I need to say that again?), we can only imagine the power of the original, and so the enigma grows. Listen on headphones, and gaze at 1974 tour photographs and you too will feel a sense of wonder.


With the release of this tremendous box the world ought to realize how cool Genesis were.


- Ben Sumner