The Cosmic Jokers were a sort of unofficial Krautrock supergroup including Klaus Schulze and Manuel Gottsching. Apparently unbeknown to the musicians their jams were recorded and later released. Gottsching first heard "his" record in a store in Berlin and had to ask who it was! Schulze was so angry he actually sued the record label responsible.
It is scarcely believable that The Cosmic Jokers actually went on to be credited with 3 studio albums and several compilations and remixes (all released in 1974). This album is their first. It's a shame it was released under such unsatisfactory circumstances as I think it is actually one of the best albums I've heard from the so-called second string of Krautrock artists. It consists of two extended instrumentals - side one being more rock based, side two more ambient. The Gottsching influence dominates and side two particularly could be an Ashra or solo piece.
Cosmic Jokers Cosmic Jokers
Guru GuruUFO
Manuel GottschingE2-E4
Beuno Vista Social ClubBeuno Vista Social Club Nils FrahmAll Melody
Coldplay X&Y
The Guru Guru album (their 1970 debut) is of much more basic rock. With it's screeching guitar, driving bass and crashing cymbals, it sounds much like Jimi Hendrix (not quite so good of course) and Interstellar Overdrive psychedelic era Floyd. The tracks are all instrumental and of not much particular interest apart from the experimental title track. I'm not a huge Coldplay fan but X&Y is a grower and much heavier than I had previously given them credit for. Where does it rank in the echelons of Coldplay? Well, firstly I'm surprised to learn they've only made 7 albums. This is a good thing, or should be, in the quality over quantity stakes. X&Y was their third released in 2005. A cursory google browse suggests this album ranks somewhere in the top/middle range. Is the view (one I've previously held) of the band being middle of the road, intellectual, nice guys, and a less interesting copy of Radiohead, justified? I think there may be more to them and I'll play this album, and the other one I have (Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends) some more to find out.
Although many people will be familiar with the Bonzo Dog (Doo-Dah) Band’s biggest hit Urban Spaceman (produced by Paul McCartney under the name Apollo C. Vermouth!) and the anarchic The Intro and the Outro (where the band members plus notable guests are introduced with their bizarre instruments) the comprehensive Cornology collection brings together five fully fledged albums and a selection of solo offerings in a sumptuous 3-CD box set.
The three CDs each have subtitles. Volume one is entitled The Intro and contains the original albums Gorilla and The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse. Volume two is subtitled The Outro and contains the albums Tadpoles and Keynsham. Volume three is entitled Dog Ends and contains the band's final original album Let's Make Up and Be Friendly along with early Bonzo Dog singles, odds and ends and solo material.
The band are fondly remembered for their silly humour and dandy tailoring which most obviously influenced Monty Python but aside from the comedy they were also accomplished musicians being masters of a range of genres.
Drawing largely on their unique readings of trad jazz standards (pumping tubas) and music hall novelties (plumy English accents) the Bonzo’s repertoire is supplemented by eccentric front man Vivian Stanshall’s own comic observations and Neil Innes’ finely crafted Beatlesque pop songs.
He was wearing Billy Bunter check trousers, a Victorian frock coat, black coat tails, horrible little oval, violet-tinted pince-nez glasses, he had a euphonium under his arm, and large rubber false ears. And I thought, well, this is an interesting character.
Neil Innes on meeting Stanshall for the first time.
The Bonzos were admired by contemporaries of London’s swinging 60s scene sharing a residency at the famous London UFO club with Pink Floyd and appearing in the Beatles’ Magical Mystery Tour. Despite such exposure lasting commercial success eluded them and they remained an underground cult band on the fringes of the art school circuit. Their quintessentially English brand of madcap humour lampooning colonialism, the upper class, and seaside holidays, didn’t travel well and a badly managed American tour was aborted; “there’s a good chance we won’t get into the country again” said Stanshall. By 1970 it was all over aside from a brief reunion for the self explanatory Let’s Make Up and Be Friendly album.
The most accessible stand alone CD for beginners is probably Tadpoles which includes some of the Bonzo’s best known songs like the singalong Hunting Tigers Out in Indiah and children’s favourite Monster Mash, as well as Space Cowboy. However this is to overlook the surprising depth displayed across the less celebrated of these 72 songs as demonstrated on this particular album by the delicate By a Waterfall and brilliant variations on traditional forms in Dr Jazz and Laughing Blues. Tadpoles ends with Stanshall’s rather apt Canyons of Your Mind resplendent with Elvis vocals and a guitar solo so terrible it is very funny:
So if you fancy something completely different, that the kids will love on long car journeys, and is guaranteed to raise a smile, take a punt on at least one of the Bonzo albums. Before long you will be singing the chorus to Hunting Tigers out loud at the office water dispenser.
Bonzo mainstay Viv Stanshall died in a house fire in 1995
The Intro and the Outro:
Hi there, nice to be with you, glad you could stick around.
Like to introduce `Legs' Larry Smith, drums
And Sam Spoons, rhythm pole
And Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell, bass guitar
And Neil Innes, piano.
Come in Rodney Slater on the saxophone
With Roger Ruskin Spear on tenor sax.
I, Vivian Stanshall, trumpet.
Say hello to big John Wayne, xylophone
And Robert Morley, guitar.
Billy Butlin, spoons.
And looking very relaxed, Adolf Hitler on vibes.
Nice!
Princess Anne on sousaphone.
Mmm.
Introducing Liberace, clarinet
With Garner "Ted" Armstrong on vocals.
[Jazzy scat singing]
Lord Snooty and his pals, tap dancing.
In the groove with Harold Wilson, violin
And Franklin McCormack on harmonica.
Over there, Eric Clapton, ukulele.
Hi Eric!
On my left Sir Kenneth Clark, bass sax.
A great honor, sir.
And specially flown in for us, the session's gorilla on vox humana.
Nice to see Incredible Shrinking Man on euphonium.
Drop out with Peter Scott on duck call.
Hearing from you later, Casanova on horn.
Yeah! Digging General de Gaulle on accordion.
Rather wild, General!
Thank you, sir.
Roy Rogers on Trigger.
Tune in Wild Man of Borneo on bongos.
Count Basie Orchestra on triangle.
[CBO:] (Ting!)
Thank you.
Great to hear the Rawlinsons on trombone.
Back from his recent operation, Dan Druff, harp.
And representing the flower people, Quasimodo on bells.
[Q:] Hooray!
Wonderful to hear Brainiac on banjo.
We welcome Val Doonican as himself.
[V:] Hullo there!
Very appealing, Max Jaffa.
Mmm, that's nice, Max!
What a team, Zebra Kid and Horace Batchelor on percussion.
A great favourite and a wonderful...
Also in the magazine this week we have what I consider Hawkwind's best album Warrior on the Edge of Time. This is probably their most "prog" album. I love the cover too. It's a simple illustration yet manages to convey the atmosphere of the album.
Bear's Den are not particularly original being another of those lo-fi acoustic groups from the Fleet Foxes school but they are definitely one of the best. Islands is full of melodic numbers beautifully sung in harmony.
I'm not sure about Coldplay. I think they are good but they also annoy me. I don't know why. Maybe their music just seems a bit earnest and possibly overrated? Good at what they do but not particularly original or exciting. I'm new to the X&Y album and on early listens it seems quite heavy which is a good thing in my book. One to return to another time.
Lead album this week is a new release from Brighton progsters Servants of Science. I am a lucky owner of an actual limited edition CD. Someone (it may have even been the band) told me the CD format is dead but... I just can't believe it. Anyway thank you S of S - I get to enjoy the local artwork in sumptuous cardboard sleeve (the band must have had fun walking down Brighton's London Road in space suits) and everyone who has read my Beck issue knows I love a cardboard cover.
The Return of the Mellotron
First chord into this new album from the Servants of Science and I was transported back to the Court of the Crimson King. It was that mellotron what did it your honour. Blame it on my childhood.
As for the music on The Swan Song I think the Servants are on to something with a form of focused chilled prog rock. The first crashing mellotron chord has King Crimson written all over it of course (of course I say, but not a sound you hear too often - not these days, or even back in the 70s to be fair - I did spend a lot of time and pocket money looking - and not even one I heard the last time I saw a recent form of the quintessential purveyors of the mellotron, King Crimson themselves). Good on you, Servants, for revitalising this vintage sound again.
From ELO to SOS
I remember when I was a teenager in the 70s - I'd cut my musical teeth on ELO (I thought it was cool to have violins in a band, and even a conductor, it claimed, on the inner sleeve blurb) and then heavy rock (and, I admit it, metal too - I maintain there is a distinction but would have difficulty defining it). From Rainbow and Black Sabbath (who I'm still playing evidently) it seemed like a natural progression to continue upon a well worn path towards prog rock - Pink Floyd were my bridge between the more base Led Zeppelin and the symphonic expanses of Yes and Genesis before I graduated with full prog rock honours and an armful of King Crimson albums on loan from my lanky friend Guy who had "girl's hair" and smoked dope.
There weren't that many to be honest (King Crimson albums, and guys like Guy) and I wasn't interested with their ill advised at the time (but brave and revolutionary in hindsight) venture into pop and dance with the Discipline trilogy in the early 80s (a shift many such bands made apparently involuntarily). So having exhausted the short lived Crimson heyday (leader Fripp unexpectedly disbanded the original incarnation in 1974) I searched for similar sounding bands, namely bands that had that mellotron bank of strings sound. I didn't even know what it was at the time but I would recognise it when I heard it.
The King Crimson Discipline Trilogy 1981-84. Disappointing at the time but now warrants a revisit.
In Search of the Lost Chord
I searched in vain for what seemed like a long time (it was probably only months). Along the way I discovered space rock like Hawkwind, and Krautrock like Can - some more obscure prog like Eloy, Nektar and Grobschnitt, and dabbled with contemporary prog like Marillion. The Moody Blues went close but proved a bit too twee and mainstream for me. The closest I found at the time was Barclay James Harvest - it was that mellotron, and they employed it as much as King Crimson although in hindsight they were missing that hard edge.
So you understand that first Servants of Science chord on album opener Another Day. It does something to me! It's an important moment. I've actually just noticed it's not actually the very start of the record (there is some Brian Eno synthesizer flutter just before) but this is the moment, like King Crimson did with Epitaph back in 1969, when Servants of Science really announce their arrival.
Swan Song sounds like Servants of Science have somehow hacked into my brain to ascertain exactly the type of music that stimulates me, and then created an album to reflect that.
Andrew Haynes
The Swan Song is a short album, granted, but short is good (while you try the album why not read Eddy's essay again if you aren't convinced) - it's actually a massive plus point - quality over quantity, continuity over random filler - and Eddy offers a big hooray for any band these days that releases an album of 7 tracks - just 7. He can almost imagine the old side 1 and 2. Who needs 14 tracks of filler?) But it doesn't end there with that one chord...
Evidence would suggest these men have some Yes albums on their shelves
...that Crimsonesque chord sets out the S of S stall for sure, but the music that follows (and I hope the band don't mind me saying) continues to trigger bookmarks of other bands I discovered all that time ago... I can hear Camel and Nektar, there are elements of Genesis and Marillion, and the conceptual interludes especially recall Pink Floyd.
Isn't it great how any music goes nowadays - we no longer have these strict fashions where certain music is in vogue. Anything can happen now, and it's fine to repeat stuff, it doesn't all have to be new. If it's good it's good.
Flaming Lips, Pizzas, and Earth
A relatively more modern reference comes in the form of The Flaming Lips. Apart from their live shows I'm not a massive fan of the Lips - mainly on account of Wayne Coyne's voice - much spectacle over little substance. But the voice here is much better, and actually reminds me of Suede for some reason (and there's a man Bret Anderson who knows how to be a front man).
Tedium Infinitum, an obvious single if such a concept existed in prog or in tangible form (let's say an obvious digital download, Ed.) is Flaming Lips covering Major Tom and could have been a massive hit in another time and space. Epic centrepiece Peripheral builds from Sigur Ros cool to a crashing Godspeed You Black Emperor climax. The eponymous track with it's echoey vocal over pulsing piano could easily be a song from The Wall although the gorgeous sustained guitar solo is very Steve Hackett. By contrast album closer, the ten minute anthemic Burning in the Cold, is more Dark Side of the Moon with a great Gilmour sounding guitar solo. Not bad references...
...and it all knits together in a coherent and satisfying whole to tell a story about an astronaut who observes the world going up in flames from space (but not before picking up a pizza on The London Road).
Free delivery within 500 mile radius
The Science of Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen is one artist I can't hear in the Servants of Science album. Which is fine as I've never really liked him and this Essential Album has literally about 39 tracks on it. That's a helluva lot of listening. I had to buy it though as it's my livelihood (or soon will be) to review such things and he's really famous and must have a lot to offer and an amazing back catalogue of music that has up until now passed me by (he's not the only one, and I'm not the only one). It was also only £1.49 in the charity shop your honour again (and it looked mint). I understand he is great live.
