I'd Love to Turn You On #223 - Mastodon - Blood Mountain

I feel like I got introduced to Mastodon in completely the wrong way - I read about them before ever listening to them. Their drummer, Brann Dailer, wants to play drums like Randy Rhodes played guitar, to the extent of having a polka dot drum kit to match Randy’s famous guitar. Loving the intent behind his playing, I picked up their most recent album at the time, Blood Mountain​, without even knowing what they sounded like. I was 14, a freshman in high school, and from the massive drum fill that pummels you in the first few seconds, I became a part of their cult. If you aren't familiar with the band, immediately prior to this album Mastodon had released ​Leviathan, a concept album chronicling the story of Moby Dick in a way no other band or storyteller has. They gave the book a soundtrack and mood that nobody knew it needed. It allowed you to internalize the mentality of these characters in unheard of ways, and for some like myself, introduced me to Moby Dick as more than a reference I would see on TV or in movies. With ​Blood Mountain Mastodon took their newfound success and came out with an album that was even darker, heavier, and more progressive than ​Leviathan​. Above all else this album accomplished the ultimate goal - getting this kid to have a deep love of heavy metal ever since.

When this album starts it grabs you by the hair and drags you into a snowy cave to begin the experience that is Blood Mountain. The Joseph Campbell-inspired story is that of an unnamed character in search of the Crystal Skull to put atop the Blood Mountain - which he will later find out has dire consequences. On his journey he has to fight vicious monsters and overcome obstacles that could most definitely take his life. As our hero ascends the mountain, he comes across a Sasquatch that can see into the future and a colony of half-tree people, the Birchmen.

All of this seems utterly mad until you listen to the music that is behind it. The drum performance by Brann Dailer sounds like the footsteps of our hero as he is running for his life. Bill Kelliher’s guitar playing gives life to the mountain that is trying to protect itself. Troy Sanders' bass and Brent Hinds' guitar provide meaning and vivid images of what our hero is facing, while both of them on vocals (along with an array of guests) give the illusion of hearing voices and hallucinations. As a kid I wasn’t searching for all of that, I was just into it for the music. It wasn’t like anything I had heard before. The only metal music I knew at the time was Iron Maiden and some Metallica, but this album had very clear nods to some other favorites of mine like Yes and King Crimson, references that I heard but wasn’t able to really place. It was the first time I was able to hear the influence of prog bands in heavy music and it didn’t seem forced, it was just a part of their musical language.

By the time the album is in the final stretch with songs like "The Mortal Soil," our hero gets warned of the dangerous territory and his fate as he is approaching the peak, but that won’t stop him. "Siberian Divide" is where this album metaphorically peaks, our hero almost reaching the top, but failing as he starves to death underneath an avalanche. "Pendulous Skin" takes us out of the physical body of our hero as he ascends into the afterlife, which is what was meant to happen all along. No man is ready to conquer the Blood Mountain. After this album ends, and you look back on the trials and tribulations of our unnamed hero, it feels like the kind of folk tale that you can project your own meaning onto. Whatever your Blood Mountain is, even if you don’t succeed in making it to the peak, there is still a lot that went into the journey. All that you learned about yourself on this journey wasn’t necessary for getting to the peak of Blood Mountain, but they are things you now have for your journey into your next life which you are now ready to conquer.

-         Max Kaufman

I'd Love to Turn You On #222 - Tune-Yards - Bird-Brains

 2009 was an interesting year for music. There were no real game-changers in 2009, but there was at least one album that presaged a dominant mode of music-making in the 2010’s: Tune-Yards’ Bird-Brains. The debut record from Merrill Garbus’ discordant pop outfit is an outstanding record, not only for how it set the stage for Tune-Yards’ continued growth, but also for how it weaves the mid-00’s indie rock sensibilities with the out-there, lo-fi, rhythmic production styles that rose to even greater prominence in the recent teens. Add in some seriously engaging political rhetoric, and it’s easy to see that Bird-Brains is well worth your time.

            Recorded entirely on a handheld voice recorder (and then released initially on recycled cassette tapes), Bird-Brains has a distinctly tinny feeling. Garbus’s music offers steady, thumping rhythms that put the listener into a sort of tranced, zoned state and while the instrumentation is danceable, the lyrics are anything but; throughout the album, Garbus sings of gendered injustices, motherhood, and problems of self-image. “Hatari,” the album’s lead single, is dangerous in how much it makes you want to groove while ignoring the injustices being sung about. The lyrics and instrumentation hit that perfect sweet spot between frictional and lovely, making it easy to understand Bird-Brains as an album of contradictions and double-standards; it’s a deceptively complicated album filled with elements both harsh and tender that force the listener to listen without passivity.

Consider, for example, the interminably groovy mid-album cut “Jumping Jack.” The bass is crunchy, the xylophone seems to be hitting the upper register limits of the recorder, and the simple drum-fill takes on a Madlib-esque vocal quality. Like other great Tune-Yards songs, the lyrics rework a nursery rhyme (“Jack and Jill” here) into a modern feminist anthem that provides ample catharsis in a world overwhelmed by patriarchal standards: “Driving past in his fast car / Jill says man you are bizarre / Trying to tell me what to do / Watch out cause I’ll knock you out,” Garbus sings simply and softly, weaponizing her traditionally feminine musical impulses over the more traditionally masculine instrumentation. Garbus forces us to recognize how she’s using these musical impulses, and how the gendered presuppositions of them is ultimately a negative aspect that the music industry stands to grow from.

            There are moments like this feminist catharsis on nearly every song on Bird-Brains, and the album is better for it. “Fiya,” the album’s most well-known track, offers a nuanced, understated perspective on feminine image issues that is equal parts bitter sadness and incredible rage. Likewise, “News” attempts to critique the inherent gendered power dynamic with the act of getting pregnant; “I can get real pregnant from men and birds / Who sing much prettier than you,” Garbus conveys, undermining the masculine figure’s potential. Garbus’s lyrics are never quite heavy-handed, but neither are they understated – just like all of the gonzo rhythmic palettes throughout the album.

Yet, Bird-Brains is not entirely angry; there is a certain sweetness that pervades even the record’s harshest moments, one that, for all the rage and dissatisfaction, still envisions a better world. That stage is set by the album’s opening track, “For You,” which has Garbus sing an empathetic four bars over a tender acoustic guitar to a young girl. After she’s done singing, we hear that young girl enthusiastically playing with blueberries; there’s discovery here, an innocence yet untarnished by the overwhelmingly negative world so prominent on the rest of the album. It should come as no surprise that that young girl never comes back on Bird-Brains. Garbus could only protect her from the realities of our world for so long, but the album she made for her – whoever she is – offers a steady, helpful, groovy guide to this overwhelmingly shitty world.

So do the rest of the works in Tune-Yards’ discography. W H O K I L L, 2011’s follow-up, is a defining record of the 21^st century, expanding in interesting ways on the groundwork set by Bird-Brains. Most recently, Garbus scored one of the most emphatically political films of 2018, Boots Riley’s Sorry to Bother You, which viciously, hysterically points out the myriad of flaws in our capitalist society. Likewise, Tune-Yards’ most recent record, I can feel you creep into my private life, finds Garbus confronting the ways that she could be a better political citizen, all the while combining the powerful rhetoric with rhythmic, exuberant, groovy instrumentation. With Tune-Yards, being angry takes on a certain fun quality.

-          Harry Todd

I'd Love to Turn You On #219 - Eric B. & Rakim - Don’t Sweat the Technique

            Conventional wisdom tells you that Eric B. & Rakim debuted strong in 1987 with their greatest work, Paid in Full, and then released three more albums of slightly diminishing returns before breaking up (and then reuniting 25 years later for a live tour, but that’s another story). But my ears tell me different. They tell me that the duo started good and kept getting better as album makers, and that the classic status accorded to their first two albums rests on the strength of their (admittedly, absolutely classic) singles but not so much the rest of the songs, whereas the lesser status of the other albums is because they aren’t thought to have singles in the same league as “I Know You Got Soul” and “Follow the Leader” - this is also a false assumption. Paid In Full’s minimal beats-and-groove topped by Rakim’s speedy, word-heavy flow was a revolution in the sound of rap, taking Run-D.M.C.’s innovations a step further. Follow the Leader upped the ante by fleshing out the music. Let the Rhythm Hit ‘Em was a tentative move in the direction of expanding their music, and their forward progress culminated in Don’t Sweat the Technique, their fullest, jazziest, and most consistent of their four albums.

            The duo's music was a huge influence on rap. Though Rakim gets the lion's share of the praise, it's not just their influence on major MCs from Nas to Ghostface Killah to Eminem, but also on beatmakers and producers - it’s hard to imagine the RZA’s minimal, fragmented beats for the Wu-Tang Clan empire or the Bomb Squad's relentless productions for Public Enemy without Eric B. having done this first. But by 1992 when this record was released rap was expanding in so many directions at once - the Native Tongues movement and Public Enemy and Beastie Boys in NYC alone changing the sound of modern hip-hop, and Dr. Dre and Ice Cube redefining the West Coast sound (not to mention other regional variants) - that it got lost in the shuffle, their first (and only) regular album that didn’t go gold. Fans at the time were disappointed that they didn't stick to the tried-and-true. But Eric B (born Eric Barrier) says that they group wanted to stay on top of things. In a 2016 interview with The Combat Jack Show he notes his awareness of up-and-comers who could easily turn the group "old school" - "These guys were really right on our heels—the Nas’s and the guys coming up. So we had to go into the studio and separate ourselves on the next level." And that they did.

But it's not just the fact that the album is more diverse than its predecessors that sets it apart - it's simply a solid listen, beginning to end, in a way that the previous records aren't. The album is a mix of narrative-leaning pieces like the romantic “What’s On Your Mind?” and the Desert Storm PTSD nightmare “Casualties of War” with Rakim's more typical stream of consciousness word flow pieces like “Pass the Hand Grenade” and the title cut. But in either mode, Rakim just never stops, his flow fast, clear, and assured, augmented by Eric B.'s expanded palette of jazz bass, horn hooks, soul backup choruses, and so forth that mark each song in the memory. And if Eric B.'s hooks are what draw me back, Rakim's words are what give the album its never-ending depths. He throws down so many that I’m still deciphering parts 26 years later - not that I can’t understand what he says, just that part of the joy of this music is letting the dizzying rush of words go by, focusing in occasionally to zero in on a song’s subject, or one of Rakim’s brilliantly rhymed phrases that I just noticed this time around (as in this couplet from “The Punisher”: “Go manufacture a mask, show me after / a glass of a master that has to make musical massacre”).

Oh yeah, those killer singles I mentioned earlier? "Know the Ledge" and "Don't Sweat the Technique" have actually become acknowledged as great tracks by the duo, but "Casualties of War" and (the non-single) "The Punisher" - all in the group's faster/harder mode - are on par as well. That's four great ones right there (same as on Paid In Full), without even counting that "Relax With Pep," "Rest Assured," "Pass the Hand Grenade," and "Kick Along" smoke any of the filler cuts on the debut - or noting that there are four more solid ones beyond even those, and they may not even be your faves the way they're mine. Back on one of the duo's greatest songs, "Follow the Leader," Rakim says "Rap is rhythm and poetry, cuts create sound effects" - this is the album where they prove it in the most diverse and consistent way.

-         Patrick Brown

I'd Love to Turn You On #218 - Mötley Crüe - Motley Crue (Elektra, 1994)

I grew up in the 1980s, the decade of excess, and many of my tastes (from music and films to food and clothing) were shaped during that decade. It’s no surprise then that, given its ubiquity on radio and MTV, that I developed a serious love for heavy metal and hard rock. I not only decided that I wanted to play music like this, I also wanted to live the hard-partying lifestyle that my musical heroes lived. That’s neither here nor there. And while many people grow out of the music they loved as a kid, “hair metal,” for lack of a better term, has never stopped meaning a lot to me. And no artist exemplified the hedonism of the ‘80s better than my favorite band at the time, Mötley Crüe.

Cut to the 1990s: a decidedly tough time for many formerly successful metal and hard rock bands. While some completely faded away, others tried rather misguidedly (looking at you, Metallica) to glom onto the rising trend of “grunge” and “alternative” music. Still others, like Winger and Cinderella, put out some of the best, most focused records of their career in the ‘90s and they sadly went almost completely unnoticed. The Crüe fell into this latter category with the release of their self-titled album in 1994. But first, a bit of history.

In 1991, The Crüe released their first official career retrospective, Decade of Decadence ’81-’91 and with it, three new songs. Of those three songs, the first single was called “Primal Scream” and it was possibly the heaviest and best written song they’d ever recorded up to that point. It was a good time to be a Crüe fan and, naturally, I was excited to see if they would continue in this direction for the next proper album. The band enlisted engineer Bob Rock, who had worked with The Crüe on the hugely successful 1989 album Dr. Feelgood and set to work on its follow up. During these sessions, the band had a rather public falling-out with frontman Vince Neil which resulted in his being fired from the band. Or he quit. Neither camp can exactly remember this rather large detail correctly - and who really gives a shit now? But this left the Crüe in the rather unenviable position of replacing the widely adored voice and face of the band for the past 12 years.

Enter John Corabi, vocalist for the fellow L.A. band The Scream, of whom bassist and chief Crüe songwriter Nikki Sixx was a huge fan. Corabi brought a fresh new element to the band with his gravelly, Rod Stewart-esque voice and his rhythm guitar capabilities. This was in stark contrast to Vince Neil’s high-pitched whine and limited musical ability. Lead guitarist Mick Mars said at the time that he appreciated being able to work with a second guitarist for a change as it allowed him more room to experiment with his riffs and solos rather than “having to focus on just keeping the rhythm.” Corabi also was a competent lyricist, bringing a few of his own songs to the sessions with lyrics tackling much darker and more thoughtful topics than those to which Sixx was accustomed. “Droppin’ Like Flies,” for example, deals with environmental issues of the day and “Uncle Jack” is a scathing track about Corabi’s own uncle, a convicted child molester. The material was such a drastic departure that they even dropped the trademark umlauts from their name for the first and last time ever.

Sonically, Motley Crue (or MC94 as some fans call it) is even bigger and grittier than Metallica’s “Black Album,” making it a career defining moment for Bob Rock as well. Tommy Lee’s drumming on this album is better and heavier than it’s ever been, with pummeling beats and interesting, complicated fills, particularly on the album’s lead single “Hooligan’s Holiday.” The album still boasts the rock swagger that the Crüe are known for, like in the glam rocker “Poison Apples,” but for the most part it’s almost completely unrecognizable as a Crüe product. Songs like “Smoke the Sky” or “Hammered” would be at home on a Bay Area thrash or speed metal album, and Mars ventures into Jimmy Page territory with his lead riff on the killer “Welcome to the Numb,” my personal favorite track on the album.
           The album sold about as well as could be expected. Fans and critics alike were not ready to embrace such a drastic change from the band’s sound and, in particular, Corabi himself. That goes for myself too, by the way. I had nothing against Corabi personally. I even owned the Scream album. But I was very pro-Vince at the time and refused to buy MC94 for the longest time (even though I did secretly think “Hooligan’s Holiday” was a killer song when I first saw the video on MTV). Although the record did make it to number seven on the Billboard charts, the sales rapidly declined to the point that the ensuing world tour had to be re-booked from large arena venues to small clubs and theaters. Eventually, the tour was cancelled altogether. A far cry from the band’s ‘80s heyday.

J. Eagle - a 9-year old Crue fan

            Ultimately, MC94 is the only album that the band would make with John Corabi, as he was fired shortly after its release to allow Vince Neil to return to the fold. On the one hand, as a fan of the band’s classic material, this made me happy. On the other hand, the eventual “reunion album” that they put out in 1997, Generation Swine, is without a doubt the biggest piece of shit they’ve ever released, so it was a bittersweet reunion to say the least. In retrospect, I wish I would have given the album more of a chance but now I’m taking this opportunity to turn others onto this incredibly underappreciated gem.

                                                                              -         Jonathan Eagle

I'd Love to Turn You On #217 - The Books - The Lemon of Pink

Of the many admirable qualities of The Books’ 2003 album The Lemon of Pink, the most prevalent in my mind is its fragmentary nature; songs open and close, shift, deconstruct themselves and recohere on a minute-by-minute basis, creating some of the most interesting and dynamic listening experiences I’ve had with any single album. Its fragments are abundant; from the start-stop nature of its dense sampling to the oft-incoherent song titles, The Lemon of Pink wants you to consistently think about the nature of its construction. More than just being an exercise in self-indulgence though, The Lemon of Pink wants you to think about your own personal growth – what’s made you the way that you are? How did you get here?

            Luckily, the aesthetic journey of the album is as interesting as the personal. Songs on the album are constructed of a near-indecipherable mix of obscure samples, Paul de Jong’s bass-y and rhythmic cello, and Nick Zammuto’s understated vocals. Traditional song structures – found most often in de Jong’s penchant for thematic rhymes in his cello – are buried under the layers of samples. We hear pre-recorded voiceover from a derelict airline, musings on the rhizomatics of temporality, interviews with Einstein, among others; somehow, de Jong and Zammuto are able to find the harmony of such wildly disparate elements.

The album opens with two eponymous tracks that act as an overture, a tuning – a banjo plucking, a cello finding its home note, fragmented vocals in various languages finding a message. “All’s well that ends well,” we’re told amid it all, a comfort found just before the music really kicks in. The remainder of the opening tracks emphasizes the album’s operative mode: folk. The banjo and cello – which sound like they could’ve been found in a bin of long-lost Arthur Russell demos or Appalachian field recordings – harmonize with one another, leading us directly into the album’s adventurous middle run of songs. After “Tokyo” starts, the album doesn’t cease to move in every which way; it wants you to explore, to discover, to experience. But, like all great folk music, The Lemon of Pink wants you to feel grounded in both the good and the bad.

            The clearest encapsulation of the album’s emotional fragmentation comes in the centerpiece track, “Take Time.” Rhythmic banjos and cello underscore musings on temporality – a sample that, in reality, is a severely chopped recording of a politician reading bible verses. Between the screwball vocals and the twangy, pulsing banjos, “Take Time” is bursting with an optimistic energy – until it starts reaching its conclusion. In the final moments of the track, layers upon layers of instrumentation and vocals are slowly cut, ending with simply a harmonized vocal sample repeating the title, the same way the song began. The ending retains the opening’s energy, but modifies it to be a bit more melancholic; life moves fast, the song says. Moments become memories. Take time to crystallize them.

The back half of the record operates in a similar mood. “Don’t Even Sing About It” conjures adolescent repression, while “The Future, Wouldn’t That Be Nice” complicates youthful optimism by reminding one of the overwhelming weight of having so much more life to live. “The True Story of a Story of True Love” gives way to the crushing nature of emotional experience, letting noise consume everything else; the instrumentals get mastered louder than the vocals until the verbalized memory dissipates entirely. And then, the album resets. “That Right Ain’t Shit,” the album’s true ending, feels like a reversal; not only does the song feature an instrument being played literally backwards, but the song utilizes warm folk instrumentation to cast a hazy, summery nostalgia on the gloom that populates the second half of the album.

It’s no wonder to me, then, that on every re-listen of the album I’m reminded of something else. A dark, humid college room; the muted greens and greys of Finland’s countryside; the pains of an impending break-up; the comfort of returning home. I feel all of these things when I listen to the record, which has remained in heavy rotation since I first listened to it years ago. I feel other things when I listen to it, too. The Lemon of Pink encourages it all, helping us to crystallize the fragments worth revisiting.

-          Harry Todd

I'd Love to Turn You On #216 - Dexter Gordon - Go!

Dexter Gordon’s 1962 Blue Note record Go! is the kind of record that you can give to your friends who say they don’t understand jazz and they will love it. Like Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, or Song for My Father by Horace Silver it crosses genre lines and rises into classic territory. It has an energy and a quality to it that make it special. It features Dexter Gordon on the saxophone, Billy Higgins on the drums, Sonny Clark on piano, and Butch Warren on bass.

The first track "Cheese Cake" is a great example of some of the aspects that make this session so special. Billy Higgins is an expert of propulsion, knowing exactly when to switch between nudging with the hi-hat and snare into high gear with the ride cymbal. Sonny Clark provides great harmonic support on the piano with precise and short clustered chord voicings. When Sonny’s solo come around he switches to a single note style that weaves in and out of the changes. Dexter confidently plays the melody and the first solo displaying the sureness and swagger that makes this this record famous. As if the first solo was not enough after Sonny Clark takes his piano solo Dexter comes back for more. His ideas are exact and followed thru logically. Throughout, his improvisations are enabled by flawless technique and a bold tone. He seems to be creating and not just striving to recreate a previous great performance, open to new ideas and genuinely improvising at a master level.

In the next song, "I Guess I’ll Hang My Tears Out To Dry," Dexter explores the sentiment of a ballad without becoming sappy or flashy. The melody is straightforward and heartfelt. Even during the improvisation the melody is never very far away. The ballad seems to be an emotional vehicle, a way to convey feelings and mood rather than a technical showcase. Butch Warren provides excellent harmonic support while Billy Higgins showcases the lost art of drum brushwork. Once again Sonny Clark gives great support for Mr. Gordon until he is called upon to briefly solo over the bridge of the tune.

"Second Balcony Jump" is another midtempo number that starts out in a half time feel by the rhythm section during the melody and then opens up to a 4/4 feel as the soloists start to play. This provides an excellent springboard for the energy when Dexter gets to his solo, moving from a laid back feel to a hard swinging affair. Dexter is surely at his most impressive on this solo. He could be blazing thru hard bop licks, laying on repeated note motifs, or inserting familiar quotes (in this case “Mona Lisa”), and seem at home in his playing style. His solo is followed up by Sonny Clark, and then he trades solo ideas with the able Billy Higgins. The amazing thing about Higgins' drumming is how appropriate everything is to the music. His technique is able, but never overtly flashy. His choices always just feel correct for the music.

Higgins opens the next tune "Love For Sale" with a punchy yet relaxed pseudo-Latin feel. Sonny Clark provides a warm chordal bed for Dexter Gordon to play the melody. The rhythm switches from Latin to straight ahead swing at the bridge providing contrast and energy. In segues such as this you can hear the singularity and purpose that infuses this session. All the transitions are crisp and precise. The group is stylistically united and provides one of the prime examples of what would become known as the Blue Note sound. Dexter plays a blistering solo! He is followed by Sonny Clark on piano, and this is one of his high points on the record as well. Butch Warren ventures his walking bass lines into the higher register to compliment and intensify Clark's solo, while Billy Higgins never fails to keep a steady sense of swing and bounce to the song. That ride cymbal is pure magic, being the engine that that keeps the entire train running.

"Where Are You" is a great interpretation of a jazz ballad. It is unadorned and pure without being overly sweet or sentimental. The solos are relatively short and elegant. It is on a song like this that a listener can hear the magic of the engineer Rudy Van Gelder. Everything has its own sonic space and separation. You can hear the definition and pitch of all the instruments, including the texture of the drums, cymbals, and brushes. He is a fifth member of the band. Rudy Van Gelder records the sounds and captures them on the record for Blue Note, defining the Blue Note sound as much as any of their instrumental artists.

"Three O’Clock in the Morning" starts off with the familiar piano introduction of "If I Were a Bell" from Miles Davis’ arrangement recorded on the Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet record, but then gives way to the song "Three O’Clock in the Morning" - a clever bit of arranging to draw your focus one way before having it redirected back to the material at hand. Once again the rhythm section starts out in half time before perfectly stepping on the gas in unison to support Dexter. The easy swinging solo allows the listener to savor Dexter’s superb note choice and motivic development. Sonny Clark follows with a blues-influenced solo that leads back to Dexter taking a brief solo statement. This leads to the melody and the band plays the song out ending on the "If I Were a Bell" intro.

On the record Go! all the stars are aligning. Dexter and his band are at peak form, playing great songs while informing and crafting a stylistic language. Dexter himself is technically proficient but not playing so much that it is not musical or catchy, which has always been a barrier to jazz for some. Finally you have one of the best engineers of the century, Rudy Van Gelder, capturing the sounds for preservation in an artful and distinctive manner that deserves its own recognition, but that is for a different space. It all combines to make one the best Blue Note classics and a record I Would Love To Turn You On to.

-         Doug Anderson

I'd Love to Turn You On #214 - The Residents – Fingerprince

When I was in junior high school MTV made its debut, but we didn’t have cable so it was just something I heard about or occasionally got to watch at friends’ houses. Instead, here in Denver on KBDI, the public TV channel 12, there was a locally produced program called Teletunes that actually started before MTV and ran music videos, most of them centered on the burgeoning New Wave and post-punk music that was coming out in the video era - and definitely a weirder bunch of tunes than MTV’s pop star-centered approach. If you’re around my age and grew up in or near Denver, you’re probably thinking right now of either King Crimson’s “Elephant Talk” or The The’s “I've Been Waiting for Tomorrow (All of My Life),” which ran under the show’s opening credits and meant you were about to be treated to an eclectic mix of music. It’s watching this program through junior high and high school that I first heard music by Talking Heads, Laurie Anderson, Devo, Joan Armatrading, Art of Noise, R.E.M. and dozens of other bands whose careers (or sometimes just individual songs, the 80s being a great time for one-hit wonders) would impact on my burgeoning tastes. Mostly these were artists who were being missed by both MTV and mainstream American radio alike (at least at the time) so this was the only way I got to hear them regularly (until I got my own stereo). Oh yeah, and it’s also where I first heard the weirdo, eccentric, frequently dissonant, almost always humorous art band The Residents - and their like-minded guitar-slinging pal Snakefinger, too.

When I got to college, I started reading a lot more about music. The Rolling Stone Record Guide felt hopelessly outdated to me, mostly stuck in the idea that nothing good ever happened after the 60s (unless it was by artists who’d started there). But then I found The New Trouser Press Record Guide, a book of music criticism that largely ignored the classic rock era (Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, Dylan, Zeppelin - none of them were reviewed in its pages, though all got mentioned in reviews of the many bands that owed to their sounds) and focused instead on being an overview of punk rock and its many fallouts in post-punk and new wave, plus a few select forefathers who’d laid the groundwork for this music. It also featured lengthy writeups on every one of the folks mentioned above that I found via Teletunes, and happened to give The Residents more ink than any other band in its pages, which kept me wondering exactly why they got so much space - and what they sounded like.

Cross-checking against the Rolling Stone Record Guide made it seem like their second album, the 60’s-skewering/homage The Third Reich ‘n’ Roll was the place to start. Trouser Press loved it, Rolling Stone gave it 3 out of five stars and warned that it would be dissonant (correct), but familiar due to its many covers of 60s tunes (correct) and an easier in because of that (incorrect). Turned out that it could be pretty tough going in its many parts - but there was still something entertaining and humorous (and musical) in its two side-long suites that engaged me. So I tried the debut Meet The Residents (Rolling Stone gave it four stars, Trouser Press found it solid yet with some longueurs), home to more playfully disrespectful nods to the 60s in its cover, title and its lead-off demolition of “These Boots Are Made For Walkin’.” It was also home to something musically even stranger, yet more accessible, somehow more... Residential, if you will. Here was the band in its truest form. Still a challenge, but still intriguing. And so entered into my collection the group’s third official album, Fingerprince.

            Immediately on picking this one up I noticed a difference. Not in ideas per se, this was still an oddball take on pop music, but there was a marked uptick in the recording quality and clarity of the music. Their simple, catchy melodies stood out more, instruments and voices were craftily deployed across the stereo spread, and it sounded (gasp) almost like the musicians knew how to play their instruments and chose to use dissonance freely rather than simply not knowing how to play in tune. In this, they’re aided by Snakefinger’s guitar - just check his slide work on the opening “You Yesyesyes” and the march-like “Tourniquet of Roses” (the original title of the album) or his delicate picking on “You Yesyesyes Again,” all of which cut their synthesized weirdness just enough to make it all feel something like pop music. In short, the crudity of the earlier releases was gone, replaced by a cleanness that would mark their albums from this point forward.

The lyrics still inhabit their own weird, jokey world, but they were couched in far more listenable surroundings. And to be honest, listening back to them now 30 years after I first bought the record, they sound less like the bizarro outsider art or missives from another planet I took them for then and more like actual commentary on the real world. Certainly given an eccentric skew, but these still read like things human beings experience - relationships mostly, though “Godsong” shows the same playful insouciance toward its subject that their covers of the 60s pop canon did on their previous albums.

All of this applies to the first half, the fragmented pop tunes that make up the former A-side, just like on Abbey Road, or Bowie’s album of the same year, Low. The B-side is something else altogether, and a leap forward for the band, musically speaking, taking their larger-scale works to a new level. The instrumental, Harry Partch-influenced “Six Things to a Cycle” takes up the entirety of the second side of the album, and it’s a wonder to behold, introducing new ideas and instrumentation throughout its length, never staying in one place long enough to stagnate. It’s rhythmic enough for their claims that it was written for a ballet troupe to seem plausible (their pronunciamentos about their own music and history are always to be taken with a grain of salt), and it pushes the limits of what they’d done thus far with the unschooled yet intuitively musical talents they’d developed. Adding to the ambition of “Six Things to a Cycle” is the remainder of the material on the first disc. Allegedly conceived as a three-sided album, four songs appeared the next year on an EP entitled “Babyfingers,” and that rounds out the first disc of this set. The second disc contains various outtakes, demos, and other pieces that will produce a warmly familiar glow for Fingerprince aficionados, but may be of more limited use for the casual listener.

From Fingerprince, the group moved into “pop” (quotation marks necessary) tunes for the EPs “Duck Stab” and “Buster and Glen” (compiled on the Duck Stab album), and began work on their masterwork Eskimo, which was three years in the making and which caused a lot of unreleased product (including the stellar Not Available) to hit the shelves to keep things going for them. During this run, from 1974 through the rest of the 70s and even into their first pair of 80s albums - the cheekily titled The Commercial Album and the industrialized Mark of the Mole - the band never stepped wrong. For me they stayed good through the 80s before things began to drift, but even their later material has its passionate supporters, just as I enjoy some of their late 80s work more than the diehard fans of the 70s' work. And that’s because even if the music has changed, the group never stopped speaking to the outsiders, the oddballs, the eccentrics. They inhabit the same world of American originals as Partch, Sun Ra, Captain Beefheart, and others. 1974-1981 was a particularly fertile period, and Fingerprince gets my vote as the easiest way into their world.

- Patrick Brown

I'd Love to Turn You On #212 - TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain

           Last Wednesday I witnessed one of those magical moments that can only happen at Red Rocks. TV on the Radio opened for Father John Misty and drew an impressive crowd so early in the night. As light began to fade from the sky about halfway through their set, vocalist Tunde Adebimpe mused in a playful sing-song voice, “I see the moon and the moon sees me.” The band gave the audience a moment to turn around and regard the crescent moon rising between the amphitheater’s rock formations before launching into a blistering rendition of their biggest hit, “Wolf Like Me.” Just as the moon triggers a supernatural transformation within the song, it played a key role in morphing the relatively subdued audience into an ecstatic, howling mass during the song. The enduring appeal of “Wolf Like Me” hints at what makes Return to Cookie Mountain, one of this young century’s greatest albums.

 

TV on the Radio built on the promise of their debut EP, Young Liars, and their dynamic first full-length album, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, and delivered a mind-blowing collection of genre-defying, cathartic songs with Return to Cookie Mountain. Looking back, I remember how much I looked forward to the release of Return to Cookie Mountain in the summer of 2006. Sure, I had enjoyed the band’s first couple of releases, but I had a feeling that this new album would help me get through the very challenging times I was going through personally and professionally. Well, the album certainly didn’t disappoint me and the opening track, “I Was a Lover,” provided a well-tailored soundtrack and a much needed outlet to transcend the miserable situation surrounding me. Through the orchestrated cacophony of an overdriven bass drum, a sorrowful horn sample, layers of glitchy distortion, and countless other sonic elements, Kyp Malone and Adebimpe inject passion and anguish into Malone’s brainy, surreal lyrics that capture the fever-dream paranoia that results from the implosion of a relationship. “Province” treads on similar thematic territory, but ascends with a tentative sense of hope and optimism for what the future holds. David Bowie joins Malone and Adebimpe on vocals for this song and not only helps create one of this band’s finest moments, but also marks a highlight among his late career collaborations. When the band played the Boulder Theater three years ago, Malone introduced “Blues from Down Here” by skewing the now common on-stage banter about legal marijuana in Colorado and asked the audience if they would seek justice for those who have been imprisoned under severe drug laws. This literal application of Malone’s harrowing metaphor within the song surprised me at the time, but has helped me appreciate the layers of meaning contained in this haunting perspective of isolation, oppression, and hopelessness.

As much as I love Return to Cookie Mountain, I have to admit that a lot of what makes it such an amazing work can also weigh it down if you’re not feeling up for taking the album’s emotional journeys. In 2008, when TV on the Radio released their next album, Dear Science, I was delighted that the band offered up a bright, beautiful set of songs as complex, innovative, and satisfying as their earlier work. Two of that album’s high points, “Golden Age” and “Lover’s Day,” feel like intentional counter-balances to the heaviness of Return to Cookie Mountain. In 2011, the band released Nine Types of Light, an album I’ve liked, but never really loved (a point I’ve had to debate repeatedly with a number of TVOTR fans over the years). Three years later, TV on the Radio’s fifth album, Seeds, won me back with a set of concise, polished, and upbeat songs proving that these remarkable musicians still have plenty of room for exploration and expression.

-         John Parsell

I'd Love to Turn You On #211 - Ron Miles – Witness

Most Denver jazz fans have heard of Ron Miles, and if you haven’t you're in for a treat. Witness is his second record and it was released in 1990 on Capri Records. It features compositions by Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, Billy Strayhorn, fellow bandmate Fred Hess, and two original compositions by Ron Miles. The band is made up Denver jazz veterans. It features Ron Miles on trumpet, Fred Hess on tenor saxophone and flute, Art Lande on piano, Ken Walker on bass, and Bruno Carr on drums. This band has respect and command of the jazz tradition, and that respect and command of tradition frees them to be exploratory and adventurous within the framework of both standards and originals.

Art Lande starts out the song “Witness” with a beautiful chordal variation of the theme on piano. He is then joined by Ken Walker on bass for a more straightforward statement of the theme. The drums then join in a march feel, and the horns of Miles and Hess state the melody in full force. The piano is the first to solo, showing immediately that it is not just a straightforward blowing session by establishing a percussive rhythmic bed using an extended piano technique. Moving from decisive single note lines to clusters and chordal stabs, Lande summons the rhythm section into action. As they activate beneath him the entire feel starts to pick up energy and move from a march to a swinging, dynamic ball of 4/4 energy fueled by Bruno Carr and Ken Walker. The group then switches back to the march feel for the beginning of Miles’s solo. Miles starts out by quoting the melody but then runs into a series of melodic flurries. The main melody is never far from his improvisation. As Bruno Carr moves into a rhythmic motif on his tom toms under Miles, the trumpet player suspends tones while the tension builds. There is a certain sense of wondering if the rhythmic direction will again be pulled back to swing but the listener is drawn in as Miles stretches out dissonant tones and textural flurries. Bruno Carr hammers away on the toms maintaining the energy. Lande responds with interjections and clusters as Walker provides tonal and rhythmic anchors. As the solo ends the melody is restated for the exit out. I’m always captivated by the joyousness of this melody.

“Ugly Beauty” is a waltz by Thelonious Monk. It starts out with Fred Hess playing the melody on the flute. Miles is the first to solo and he has a gentle approach featuring large melodic leaps. Miles makes technically difficult passages sound elegant and graceful, which is a testament to his mastery of the trumpet. The next solo by Lande and Hess includes tandem flurries, playfulness, questions and answers, all within a format and structure. This displays a great concept of a duel solo, or two people occupying a space typically reserved for one individual.

“Just Like You (I Don’t Want To Be)” starts out with a unison horn head at blistering pace. It moves thru some free form soloing by Miles and then Hess before it enters an interesting composed hit-and-silence structure that replaces a traditional harmonic framework. This solo framework is expanded upon and fleshed out with an additional melody over the stop time. Miles takes another solo over this new texture, and the original melodic statement is then played again. Bruno Carr takes a solo at a ridiculous tempo and then the melody is played one last time. The structure of the song provides for a great contrast to other tracks on the CD. The untraditional structure of this song highlights the strengths of the group. They are creative enough to follow and explore where the music takes them and able enough to adeptly lead themselves back to the predetermined rallying points. A highly original tune by Ron Miles with some interesting compositional devices.

“A Flower Is A Lonesome Thing” starts out with a solo statement of the melody. The experience of the group really shines in this performance. It is as if they are playing not so much in the expected places but around them. Bruno Carr’s brush work is amazing. Lande’s comping is excellent, whether he provides direct harmonic support, answers solo statements, or provides antecedent statements. Miles’s solo begins in the upper register and descends into a playful skirmish before settling in at the bridge. A double time hint by Carr sends Miles into a final flurry of activity before he settles his solo. Lande follows by beginning his solo with some dissonant block chords before moving into single line question and answer statements. This falls briefly back to a chordal statement, followed by just a glimmer of swing before Miles is back in at the bridge to play out the melody.

“Pithecanthropus Erectus” is a Charles Mingus tune. The band lays down some heavy harmonic pads from which they can contrast further playing. This is a hard swinging tour de force take on this this tune with spirited solos by Hess, Lande, and Miles. Bruno Carr and Ken Walker are holding down the groove solidly while Lande hammers out chords. Hess takes a feisty solo which falls way to a free horn duet after which the tempo ratchets up quite a bit. Lande then churns out a technically commanding and harmonically explorative solo that eventually reinstates the original tempo and groove. Miles then begins his solo calmly but works it to a raging storm. The band then plays the melody out.

The final track on the record is “Our Time” by Fred Hess. It is a spritely, upbeat, technical number. Fred Hess is playing flute, Ron Miles is playing muted trumpet, and Bruno Carr once again shows off his masterful brush work. Ron Miles takes a couple of excellent spins thru the challenging changes and then he is joined by Fred Hess for an interlude, after which Hess speeds into a solo of his own. Ken Walker then takes a solo and shows why he is known as one of the top bassists around. He nimbly executes a solo over the challenging changes before Lande takes a quick chorus. Then we have a round of trading bars of four between Miles, Carr, and Lande. After this the interlude is cued and the melody is played out.

One of my favorite ways to enjoy this CD is to pick a particular player and listen to how they choose to interact with the ensemble. I think each one of the players has an exceptional ability to generate and stay true to an idea, or conversely, support another band member’s idea. All of the playing seems in service to the music. One of my regrets is that I didn’t see this band around this time, I’m not sure if I knew of Ron Miles then. Then again all these gentlemen, with the exception of Bruno Carr who passed away in 1993, can be seen in and around Denver. If you don’t have or know of this CD I’d Love To Turn You On to it - and go see so these guys live! You won’t regret it! In addition, please check some of Ron Miles’s other works. His original compositions are truly great and he has many more records to enjoy.

-         Doug Anderson

I'd Love to Turn You On #210 - Dan Hicks And His Hot Licks - Striking It Rich

Dan Hicks And His Hot Licks - Striking It Rich

Dan Hicks holds an interesting place in rock history. He is beloved by people who lived through the 60’s and 70’s and just the name of his great band The Hot Licks makes old hippies’ eyes glaze over with stoney nostalgia for the clever, beguiling mix of folk, swing, jazz, pop and comedy of the type that is found in abundance on their third album, 1972’s Striking It Rich. Yet, ask anyone under the age of 40 about Hicks and you will get the blankest of stares. Dan Hicks came along at exactly the right moment, and while he continued to make music until his death in 2016, his greatest impact was as a balm for the frazzled post-60’s San Francisco music scene.

Starting with the memorable LP jacket - fashioned like a flip-open matchbook - the album beckons you inside for something new, yet comfortably familiar. The basic template for Hicks’ music is uptempo swing numbers with funny, knowing lyrics and startlingly good musicianship. No drums are to be found on this album, just the warm tones of acoustic guitars, stand-up bass and the hair-raising violin prowess of (Symphony) Sid Page. Hicks’ vocals are as laconic and heavy-lidded as they are slyly behind the beat and expertly delivered - always punctuated with the flapper backing vocals of Maryann Price and Naomi Ruth Eisenberg. This form of music was a throwback to earlier times, but when it appeared on the heels of Are You Experienced or Raw Power it was soothing cool waters to a burning throat.

Side one of the LP remains one of my favorite half hours of music in my collection. No album will immediately ensure a happy mood and loud along-singing from me like Striking It Rich. Openers “You Got To Believe” and “Walkin’ One And Only” are smoothly swinging slices of hipster heaven. The lack of drums helps showcase just how proficient this band is and how sturdy the arrangements are. The sweet acoustic guitar and walking bass are underscored by Sid Page’s memorable solos and Hicks’ alternately poignant and hilarious delivery. Check out his drunkard’s lament “O’Reilly At The Bar” for the latter or the gorgeous “Woe, The Luck” (on side two) for the former.

The centerpiece of the album has to be the incomparable “I Scare Myself,” a slow-burn masterpiece which contains the single most deranged violin solo in the history of popular music. It is a frighteningly great moment in the middle of what has up to now been a pretty light-hearted affair. Page went on to have a long career scoring films and playing with a mind-boggling assortment of musicians of every stripe. It is the solo on this song for which he must be remembered though, and which takes this album from merely enjoyable to essential. The album is filled with so many other fun moments like “The Laughing Song” containing another signature Hicks vocal or their spot-on version of “I’m An Old Cowhand (from The Rio Grande)” and sweet musical moments - the sumptuous ballad “Moody Richard” or the instrumentals “Philly Rag” and “Fujiyama” - that it is no wonder this album has remained a favorite for almost 50 years. There have been plenty of groups mining similar territory after them, from Asleep At The Wheel to Lake Street Dive, but Dan Hicks did it first and the Hot Licks did it best.

-         Paul Epstein

I'd Love to Turn You On #209 - Hailu Mergia – Tche Belew

            Hailu Mergia is an Ethiopian keyboardist/arranger who worked in various bands and as a solo artist, coming to prominence in early 1970s Addis Ababa as a bandleader after forming his seminal Walias Band. In the wake of the coup d'état by the military Derg that overthrew Haile Selassie in 1974, bands in Addis were mostly either state-sponsored or tied economically to a club or hotel who owned the band’s equipment and merely hired the players to perform nightly. Mergia and the Walias Band were in in unusual situation in that they worked under their own terms - they owned their instruments, they decided where and when they would perform and record, and were not in the position of promoting either a specific club or a government-approved music program (though they did run into occasional censorship troubles).

After a string of successful singles, Mergia decided to tap his band’s talents to create an all-instrumental LP - an unprecedented move in the vocal-centered Ethiopian music scene. Mergia was influenced in his keyboard playing by jazz organist Jimmy Smith (Mergia favored the Farfisa and Godwin organs of the day) and his blues-rooted, funky jazz styles, but combined this influence with traditional Ethiopian melodies and scales for a unique blend of contemporary up-to-the-minute jazz-funk spiced with rich, traditional roots. For this record, in addition to his own work, he tapped his band’s talents for writing and arranging (plus the talents of guest vibraphonist Mulatu Astatke who appears on several tracks).

Walias Band

            To get a taste of how this sounds, start right at the beginning with the title cut. The song is propulsively funky, leading with Melakie Gabrie’s prominent bassline, Temare Haregu’s in-the-pocket drums, slightly distorted guitar from Mahmmud Aman, and Girma Beyene’s piano chords before the horn charts come in (accompanied by a wordless chorus (including singers Aster Aweke and Getachew Kassa who’d come to later fame as solo artists)) to introduce the song. After the intro, Mergia takes the front seat with his lightly psychedelic organ solo punctuated by horns and a restatement of the theme. Next comes a sax solo (by either Moges Habte or Abebe Kassa) rendered in Ethiopian scales; meanwhile the churning, rhythmic background never stops, nor do the rest of the horn section’s comments throughout the song. After the theme restatement, Mergia again takes over with another organ solo which is then handed back to the saxophone again until the fade.

Walias Band

If you’re ready to be fully hooked, proceed immediately to the album’s hit single - “Musicawi Silt,” track 4 - to hear both the catchiest and most covered thing here. Maybe you’ve heard it already; it’s been covered by Dutch avant-rockers The Ex and Ethiopian saxophonist Getatchew Mekuria, by American avant-rockers Secret Chiefs 3, by Brooklyn-based band Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra, and many others. But you don’t need to be avant-leaning yourself to enjoy this one. It’s simply a great dance tune hooked by an irresistible melody. Once you hit the main theme you’ll understand both why it was a huge hit on release and why so many bands have wanted to cover it. Mergia takes a solo with a more straightforward organ sound and shorter phrases than the dreamier lines of the first cut, but there’s an interesting feature in that you can hear the keys of his organ clacking along with the solo - at first I thought this was some eccentric guitar comping or percussive accompaniment, but after many listens I’m pretty sure it’s all Mergia. After another theme statement, Mulatu Astatke comes in for a vibes solo that is unfortunately cut short by the (way too early!) fade of the song. Still - it’s an indelible classic, early fade and all.

Mergia and the Dhalak Band

Things proceed immediately from there into “Lomi Tera-Tera,” a bright, sunny tune featuring a lovely, major key organ solo and a percussive showcase that sounds great for a lazy hot day (like today), a boat ride on a lake in the sun, an early morning drive - anything that’s not exerting yourself too much where you’re just gonna lay back and let the music wash over you! And though everything on the album sounds terrific, I’d also want to bring your attention to track 9, “Eti Gual Blenai,” written (I think) by Astatke and marked by a dramatic intro that segues immediately into a great galloping beat that’s all low drums (props again to drummer Temare Haregu), when it’s not grooving in a loose, jazzy feel up on higher-pitched percussion. It’s almost a duet between Mergia’s organ and Haregu’s drums punctuated by horn statements until Astatke takes it into a spacier middle segment for his solo, but the entire cut is a remarkable demonstration of the versatility and talent of the whole group.

The Walias gigged around Addis Ababa and other parts of Ethiopia for years, but due to the harsh political climate at home, when they took their first tour outside Ethiopia, half the band stayed in the United States during an early 80s tour, where Mergia took a job as a Washington D.C. cab driver. To this day, half the band is in D.C. and half remains in Addis, but with the reissue of this album (plus another 70s group album Wede Harer Guzo and Mergia’s oddball mid-80s Hailu Mergia and His Classical Instrument which finds him overdubbing himself on drum machine, Rhodes piano, Yamaha DX7, and

Mergia in 2017

accordion) Mergia has started making music again, releasing a very good new 2018 album (Lala Belu) and organizing a tour of Europe and the States in the coming months.  All four of his albums available domestically (released through the auspices of the well-named label Awesome Tapes From Africa) are worth your listens, but this one’s the easiest “in” to his career and very possibly his best.

-          Patrick Brown