Shirley Collins & Davy Graham - Dearest Dear

Philip Catherine - Nairam

The triumphant return of Philip Catherine to these pages, and the triumphant return of "Nairam": I posted another version of this tune the other day. This version is probably better, but the band name on the earlier post was cooler, so it evens out.

And the only thing better than the sleeve pictured above is this sleeve:

Robert Fripp - Silent Night

The Phantom Band - Rolling

The triumphant return of Jaki Liebezeit (="Love Time"?), that supernaturally good drummer, to these pages. He's made recent appearances here and here.

David Stoughton - The Summer Had No Breeze

A lifetime doesn't last
And too much has already passed
It takes a while to realize that it's better to love than to despise
And too much of a lifetime is how long it takes to learn what lifetime is.

Right on, man. Right on. More cosmically, I'd like to add that the melodic motif that appears for the first time at 00:19 brings back pleasant memories of this.

Marcos Valle - Deixa o Mundo E o Sol Entrar

"A door at the end of a hallway... I come nearer... I must open it... It can't be... It is? Yes! A portal to a sea of stars, now spilling into the room. The sidereal tide rises... I must clutch tightly to my guitar."

The triumphant return of M. Valle to these pages. Reissues now going for cheap from Light in the Attic.

P.S. It's the suspended chord or whatever it is at 0:48 that makes this song for me. Oh, and the slight sputter in the double-tracked vocals at 2:09.

Justine and the Victorian Punks - Beautiful Dreamer

Slept on this when DFA reissued it in 2010, and when Thunderbals posted it in 2008, and when Colette released it in 1979, and when Stephen Foster wrote it in 1862.

I was hoping to find a version from pre-1920 to post alongside this, but couldn't. I did find this.

Stephen Foster, the author of "Oh! Susannah" and "My Old Kentucky Home", never lived in the South and visited it only once, in 1852. He died aged 37 in 1864, while residing in a hotel at 30 Bowery Street, about fifteen minutes on foot away from Electric Lady Studios, where Justine & co. recorded their version of "Beautiful Dreamer."

Angel Maimone Entreprise - Question Piège

Your guess is as good as mine on this one.

Michel Pagliaro -
Lovin' You Ain't Easy
Some Sing, Some Dance

Recorded at Apple Studios, London.

Love the labyrinthine bridge on Lovin' You Ain't Easy (the bit at 1:02 and following). Takes a few listens to be able to sing along with it. Is it even a bridge?

Gabriel Fauré - In Paradisum (from Requiem, op. 48)

Shiny Two Shiny - Waiting For Us (12" mix)

This was just reissued on Captured Tracks (thanks!), so I took the link down. Let's notice that the 12" mix places the snare drum on "1" and "3", with bass drums on "2" and "4", while the album version does not. In other words, the drumbeat is backwards. Off the top of my head, I can think of only one other song that does this, and there it happens only for a few bars (at the 2:12 mark).

Who can name some other songs that do this?

Tia Blake And Her Folk-Group - Turtle Dove

Hamilton Bohannon - Keep On Dancin'

Featuring Fernando Saunders on bass. Does he play any two-bar unit exactly the same, or is each one different, like snowflakes?

Paul McCartney - Rode All Night

Saturday Night Special

Pastor T.L. Barrett & The Youth For Christ Choir:
Ever Since
Nobody Knows

Now that my son is in full-day pre-K I had a minute to work on alphabetizing my CDs and actually listened to this full CD that I got four years ago. Dear me. Phil Upchurch on bass (didn't even realize he played bass?), the return of the twin-tambourine shamanistic attack, and arguably the greatest handclap sound ever committed to tape. Soultransfigured and soultransfiguring stuff here from Pastor Barrett and his flock.

Still available from Light In The Attic!

Noël Akchoté - Carlo Gesualdo: "Moro, lasso, al moi duolo"

"So a twenty-first century guitarist recorded all of Gesualdo's madrigals after transcribing them for five guitars? Huh. I'm still listening. But were they recorded on, you know, a cassette recorder, yielding quite a bit of background noise? And were they also recorded in, you know, like a zoo or whatever, so you can hear some kind of bird or something chattering away in the background, and also many cars driving by? They were? OK, cool. I'm in."

N.B. If memory serves this is the first we've heard of Renaissance music performed on modern guitars since this one, but there's myriad more on offer at Noël's bandcamp page.

Miaow - Belle Vue

Moments of harmelodic interest at 1:45 and ff. Mining a sophisto-amateur seam similar as this.

Carmen - Schlaraffenland
Die Doraus & Die Marinas - Tulpen Und Narzissen

In a pre-ANGST frenzy, a trawl through the bumrocks 2004 archive turned up this brace of washed-out heartless German teenwave winners. 

Kraftwerk - Taschenrechner

The lads from Kraftwerk released four versions of this in four languages: English, German, Japanese, French. I strongly prefer the German. Nice to hear whoever it is adding impromptu filigrees to his theme circa 0:22 and ff.

Stay tuned for a couple more songs I found while trying to figure out what to play at last night's event.

EIGHTH ANNIVERSARY MEGAPOST!

Thelonious Monk - Thelonious
(recorded "live" in Paris, December 1969)

Ye Olde Blog turns 8 today, and sort of like Thelonious in '69 (if so flattering a comparison be permitted), it's a little bit older and a little bit slower, and yet we still manage to amuse ourselves now and again, as Thelonious does with his mysterious outro at the 3:48 mark. See how he allows himself the briefest of smiles at 13:32 in this video:



Nota Bene: We're officially entering our "late period" now, so don't be surprised if things get weird. To wit: it looks like tickets are still available for this Thursday at Lincoln Center!

John Cale - Days Of Steam

For similar educational filmstrip soundtrack styles, refer back to this one (listen here).

Plaza Hotel - Bewegliche Ziele

EVENT INVITE!
Dear party people, please join me on Thursday, November 6th, at the Walter Reade Theater (Lincoln Center), for a special screening of ANGST (1983), a disturbing German Austrian horror film!

Event details here.

I'll be DJing the afterparty. The subject matter isn't quite as lighthearted as last time, so I'm not sure what to play. I'm thinking possibly 80s, possibly Klaus Schulze-related, possibly German, possibly scary/funny. Probably this one will make an appearance. Anyone got any other ideas?

Should be a great mix of people at the event considering what sort of person would seek this film out. Looking forward to seeing everyone there!

Captain Sensible - Happy Talk

Thanks to extended family member Greg Condon for alerting me to this one (indirectly) in this great mix. Hearing the refrain of Dizzee Rascal's "Dream" I thought, "This is great, but with all due respect, there's no way Dizzee Rascal wrote this." Upon learning that Dizzee had sampled Captain Sensible I thought, "A-ha! But with all due respect, there's no way Captain Sensible wrote this." (Rodgers and Hammerstein did, in 1949.)

Nice to hear our old friends The Dolly Mixture on backing vocals.

Earle Mankey - Mau Mau

At post #1776, we come to Earle Mankey. You'd be forgiven for assuming this was a cover of this. (It's not, yet somehow I'm getting back-to-school vibes from this one too.)

Just the slightest dab of melancholy in the chord changes at 0:23 and ff. is all this writer needs for a good time.

The 39 Clocks - DNS

Thanks ever so much to the redoubtable Anonymous 2 for hipping me to this one in this classic thread. It took just 27 months for me to realize I had to post it. As with this one (recommended in the same thread), the band re-recorded this song for the subsequent LP, but I like the original better, in part for the frighteningly blasé vocal delivery.

One wonders if any band member had a clear plan for the bit at 2:22 and ff.  Or maybe the plan was no plan.

And by the way I'll be DJing at this on Thursday November 6th and quite probably playing this jammer!

Niagara - Sangandongo (excerpt)

Another great hi-hat to ride cymbal climate change at the 4:19 mark.

For other such moments, see:
here,
here,
and
here (sort of, at various times around the 13:00 mark).

Yes - Sound Chaser

Every album should begin like this, with the band members quietly discussing aesthetic matters in a lovely park somewhere, with two band members seated on a bench and the other band members seated on grass quite nearby.

The listener is challenged to find an aesthetic flaw in the proceedings. Granted, maybe Steve Howe fucks up at the 3:22 mark, but other than that?

Alex Caso - If I Can't Have You

Yet another brilliant peel-off from Duane. And once again the orphic artistry of Barry, Robin, and Maurice graces these pages. Such a classy move to start the chorus early on the "3" like that (see 0:53 and ff). Not to mention an 11-bar verse structure (followed by a 4-bar pre-chorus).

More treats on offer at the Alex Caso soundcloud.

The Barron Knights - You're All I Need

There's something nice and surprising about that octave leap at 0:34. Thanks to Wombletunes for the tip on this one. Somehow I ended up with a mono copy? It's always something.

J.S. Bach - Concerto in D minor after Alessandro Marcello, BWV 974, II: Adagio

Performed by Glenn Gould. Recorded at Eaton's Auditorium, Toronto, Canada, on Monday, June 11th, 1979.

Enormous thanks to Mother Chimney for the tip on this one. And thanks as well to Christian Grey:

When I wake it's still dark. ... I hear music. The lilting notes of the piano, a sad, sweet lament. Bach, I think, but I'm not sure. ... I wrap the duvet around me and quietly pad down the corridor toward the big room. Christian is at the piano, completely lost in the melody he's playing. His expression is sad and forlorn, like the music. His playing is stunning. ... He's such an accomplished musician. He sits naked, his body bathed in the warm light cast by a solitary freestanding lamp beside the piano. ... I'm mesmerized, watching his long, skilled fingers as they find and gently press the keys, thinking how those same fingers have expertly handled and caressed my body. I flush and gasp at the memory and press my thighs together. ... I notice now that he's wearing PJ pants. He runs his fingers through his hair and stands. "You should be in bed," he admonishes.

"That was a beautiful piece. Bach?"

"Transcription by Bach, but it's originally an oboe concerto by Alessandro Marcello."

"It was exquisite, but very sad, such a melancholy melody." 

--excerpt from Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, Vintage Books, London, 2011.

I'd also like to mention that the Picardy third at the end reminded me of yet another church bell classic.
 
One is also reminded of this, of course:

Ghédalia Tazartès - Tazartès' Transports (second excerpt)

You'd have to travel all the way back to this one to hear more churchbells on this website.

Betty and Karen - I'm Not Satisfied

Léonie - Mozart

Another one from the hitmaking duo of Léonie and J.C. Vannier. And yes, this sounds like side two of Abbey Road, but I'm not going to tell you which part (of side two).

Véronique Sanson - Dis Lui (De Revenir)

a slight return for Véronique.

Archie Shepp & Horace Parlan - My Lord What a Morning

Good Lord.

Dick Raaijmakers - Ballad 'Erlkönig'

I find this piece uplifting, but it sounds like Dick was maybe on a little bit of a bummer when he "wrote" it. Here's the composer in his own words (translated presumably from Dutch by Keith Freeman):

"Ballad is an epic, melodramatic piece. All the sounds which occur in it are originally radio-telegraph and radio-telephone signals: signs of survival from the slums of the realms of the ether - the domain of the short waves. Ballad is characterized by the absence of both acoustic and cultural DEPTH. It has only LENGTH (= duration) and HEIGHT (= loudness). Ballad takes place in the poor man's realm of formlessness, from where incomprehensible messages, couched in tiny signals, noises, rattles, notes, chords and voices, emerge in an unbroken stream; apparently at each other's expense, but also sometimes in unsuspected blossoming configurations, they form reflections of as many human attempts to live and to survive. This reign of shadows, where meaningful and meaningless aspects of the in origin always significant human sounds continually change places, is dominated by cries, hardly by speech, and by music not at all.
In Ballad the amalgam of these cries forms the labyrinth where Erlkönig (a ruler of the Underwold) manifests himself to a little boy, who is fatally ill and is taken by his father on a swift and wild journey on horseback through an inhospitable region of darkness and threat to a castle which holds the boy's salvation. It will be recalled that Erlkönig, the father and the little boy fail to communicate with each other satisfactorily during the journey, each of them interpreting in their own way the passing nocturnal landscape and the fate it holds in store for the boy. Ballad is an account of these events: it reproduces the ever changing moods of the three in a paramusical meeting of the linguistically rich lines of Goethe on the one side with on the other hand the linguistically impoverished multi-interpretable signals from the domain of the ether.
When the cloud of dust the father has raised across the land of those bereft of language or music has dispersed to some extent, and Erlkönig's kingdom with its fairies, lakes, noises, draperies, phantoms and illusions collapses before the eyes of the accessary boy, through what we would nowadays call a neglected cold, the singing from the ether continues uninterruptedly, passing on reports of a grey continuing existence without prospects."

recording realized in the studio of the Royal Conservatory of The Hague

The date of composition is 1966, but the record's from 1981. Does that mean this was committed to tape in '66 but not pressed on wax until '81? Thoughts and suggestions welcome.

The file is 48 megabytes, btw.

Betty Lavette - Never My Love

The triumphant return of Betty Lavette to these pages.

Bobby Rush - Chicken Heads

Brigitte Fontaine - Areski Belkacem - Baby Boum-Boum

The Selectors - Pleading For Your Love

Bobby Rush - Mary Jane

Terry Melcher - High Rollers

Who is Sonny Tusk?

John Klemmer - Brazilia (Brasilia)

Hot sun and warm breezy evenings--relaxed lazy days with smooth syncopated rhythms. Thought space to dream and love--smile and cry. Time to think of things you'll never do. Ocean breaths that rush softly and strongly against sands of centuries. Old men telling tales of wisdom and truth. Joy and laughter with the community of man in a carnival of freedom. Open blue skies to fly with the birds. Exotic scents that pull you into mind and body.
    This is Brazilia. Geographically located behind the eyes and between the ears.  It's all in the way you see and feel.

(From the liner notes, but the sentiments are thoroughly endorsed.)

Léonie - En Alabama

Apparently this is how crazy things can get when J.C. Vannier writes a tune instead of just arranging one. Featuring (maybe?) the scintillating return of that sound we're thinking is strummed piano strings, as heard previously in this.

It just occurred to me that the bassline on the intro is a descendant of this.

Get ready for a refreshing flood of only the best neurotransmitters at the 0:35 mark.

Orbidöig - Nocturnal Operations

If this is midsummer, it must be time for hymns.

Perhaps this song inspired a mania for churchbells which reached its apotheosis in this.

The Mighty Clouds Of Joy - Time (extended)

So I'm kicking back on Fire Island a few weeks ago and celebrating the birth of disco (sort of) with this mix from forty summers ago... ...and I'm liking this song "Time" and I think, "Hey, is this the Mighty Clouds Of Joy? I might already have this album, if it's the same album with that life-changer from five summers ago."  And lo.

So here are some more Clouds for your delectation. Extended mix à la Moulton by yours truly. Enjoy the high-level artistry of the guitar player on the instrumental.

Regarding that bassline: Disco Inferno sounds like this, and this in turn sounds like The Four Tops, "I Can't Help Myself."

Inner Space - I'm Hiding My Nightingale 

Marie France - Daisy

Peter Gabriel - Jetzt Kommt Die Flut

Dies ist meine Marmelade.