Log #162 - The Veedon Fleece Brothers Undress

Some treats this week. We spin Beck's latest (although a new album Hyperspace is out later this month) and also The Felice Brothers' latest. Top of the magazine we have two classic albums in the smooth jazz rock form of Steely Dan and Donald Fagen (one half of Steely Dan of course and Donald's first appearance solo at the blog). Centre midfield is taken up by one of Van Morrison's greatest albums and the revolutionary samplefest debut from DJ Shadow.

Steely Dan Aja

Donald Fagen The Nightfly

Van Morrison Veedon Fleece

DJ Shadow Endtroducing
The Felice Brothers Undress

Beck Colors

Compiled almost entirely from samples DJ Shadow's groundbreaking Endtroducing received critical acclaim on its release in 1996. No doubt a technical achievement the fear might be that the means trumps the end, but actually the album is very cohesive and contains excellent tracks of down tempo trip hop.

A full list of samples used track by track is shown at this website -  http://www.musicismysanctuary.com/dj-shadows-endtroducing-sample-list

Of most interest to me the list includes artists Pink Floyd, Tangerine Dream and Nirvana, not that you'd be able to tell.

Veedon Fleece is a truly beautiful album. Somewhat over(dj)shadowed by the greatness of its surroundings. Released in 1974 Veedon Fleece was possibly Van Morrison's last great album (for a while at least) following in the footsteps of a run of classics like Moondance, Astral Weeks of course, and St. Dominic's Preview, plus the live double Too Late To Stop Now which came out earlier the same year. It would be another three years before the underwhelming A Period Of Transition would demonstrate a change in style.

Live, human, and dynamic. Richly atmospheric loose-limbed arrangements that parallel ‘Van the Man’s’ tenderly gentle and wildly explosive deliveries. 

Griffin Anthony

Veedon though is slow and easy with Van at his most soulful - I don't think I've heard his voice pitched so high on any other album, possibly channelling his Al Green or Marvin Gaye. Where Astral Weeks is stringy and Moondance is brassy, this one is pianoey.

Some artists sing about individual personal feelings, some are more outward looking and will comment on the state of the world and politics for instance. Then you get the uniqueness of an artist like Dylan who tells long dense stories littered with proper nouns (for better or worse Ian Felice is similar). But I don't think I know of an artist whose songs recall such a sense of place. 

Often this is implicit, 

but sometimes explicit 

as in Streets Of Arklow. Arklow is a town on the east coast of Ireland Morrison visited in 1973 (he was living in the US at the time):

And as we walked
Through the streets of Arklow
In a drenching beauty
Rolling back 'til the day
And I saw your eyes
They was shining, sparkling crystal clear
And our souls were clean
And the grass did grow

I'm also intrigued what Linden Arden Stole The Highlights means:

Linden Arden stole the highlights
With one hand tied behind his back
Loved the morning sun, and whiskey
Ran like water in his veins
Loved to go to church on Sunday
Even though he was a drinking man
When the boys came to San Francisco
They were looking for his life

Morrison described this made up character as "an image of an Irish American living in San Francisco - it's really a hard man type of thing".

I still don't understand how he stole "highlights".

Reviewing Van's discography I'm frankly shocked to realise there are 2 albums up to Veedon Fleece that I don't think I've actually heard in their entirety. They being Hard Nose The Highway and His Band And The Street Choir. I don't know how this has happened and I  promise to rectify immediately Ed. with a visit to ebay. Sure I'd find these for £3 or so at World of Books or Music Magpie.

Undress is the latest album from The Felice Brothers. The band, being generally media darlings, usually get great reviews for both their studio work and their live shows, and this is no exception. However on initial listens I have to admit I was slightly disappointed. Of the dozen tracks there are 4 or 5 that are up to the Brothers' usual high standards, which ain't bad by anyone's measure, but also two or three that are on the weak side. The balance are literally middle of the road.

The lyrics, mostly from Ian Felice who is often compared to Dylan, are important in the Felice Brothers' songs, and many reviews highlight a shift from introspection to a more outward looking view on the state of our political world such as in the sing-a-long Special Announcement:

I can promise more berries
On Blueberry Hill
I can promise you this
Charlie Parker on the ten dollar bill
I'll gather up all the cash
Toss it to the birds
Burn down the Stock Exchange
The Federal Reserve (It's going down)
I'm saving up my money
To be president

and the title track:

Smell the chrysanthemums
Republicans and Democrats
Undress
Even the evangelicals
Yeah, you
Lighten up, undress
Shake the maracas
Everyone's nude on Family Feud
Undress
Under the mushroom cloud
The Pentagon
Undress
Lady Liberty
Crimes against humanity
Undress
Caesars of Wall Street
Brooklyn Bridge
Undress
Comanche and Iroquois
Exploitation, genocide
Undress
Bank of America
Kellyanne
Undress
Read me the Riot Act
Vice President and President
French Kiss

Many of the songs on the new album are motivated by a shift from private to public concerns. It isn’t hard to find worthwhile things to write about these days, there are a lot of storms blooming on the horizon and a lot of chaos that permeates our lives.  The hard part is finding simple and direct ways to address them.

Ian Felice

However, like Dylan, it's the odd genius line of juxtaposition that delights in Felice's lyrics, like exchanging pleasantries under pleasant trees.

Despite my lukewarm feelings about the album the Felices, to be fair, are a band who have rarely stood still, each release pushing new boundaries which can confuse their fans at first. Here original brothers Ian and Felice are joined by new bassist Jesske Hume and drummer Will Lawrence (third brother Simone left in 2009 - his subsequent output as The Duke and The King and as a solo artist are due an examination at a later date). They've also lost long term fiddle player Greg Farley which goes some way to explaining how this record has taken a step away from their popular ramshackle brand of rootsy americana (never more ramshackle as on the previous release Life In The Dark) into a more polished mainstream rock sound.  

The Brothers are touring the UK in January and I also see The Black Deer Festival have pulled off a blinder for next summer:

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Log #50 - Some of Neil Young's Greatest Acoustic Numbers Together at Last

1. Afro Celts Sound System- I
2. Quantic - The 5th Exotic
3. Neil Young - Rust Never Sleeps
4. Lambchop - Nixon
5. Steely Dan - Aja
6. Cat Stevens - Icon

News of two musical deaths have reached 6 Album Sunday HQ this week: Walter Becker from Steely Dan and Holger Czukay of Can. Surviving founder member Donald Fagen of Steely Dan has committed to continuing and has just announced a tour. Their classic album Aja makes a reappearance here. Czukay's passing barely registered in the press. Three Can members have now gone - Czukay joining Liebezeit and Karoli at the Great Gig in the Sky. Can formed in the 60s and were not young then - both Czukay and Liebezeit were in their late 70s.

Becker and Czukay 

Still going strong is Neil Young. I heard he was releasing a new album and gave it a spin on youtube (before it was taken down). Hitchhiker isn't actually a new album in so much as it is a release of a recording made in 1976. Some of the songs have been released elsewhere either in part, or in their entirety, or in different versions. For example there is a beautiful acoustic version of Powderfinger which is mournful and sad, revealing lyrics I've not picked up before in the electric version on my featured album Rust Never Sleeps.

Fascinatingly there are also parts of these songs that have gone on to form different songs and it is fun to try to remember where. It's like meeting a very familiar face but not being able to put a time, name or place to it. For instance parts of the autobiographical title track Hitchhiker resurfaced some years later and in the most unlikely of places - on Young's ill advised electronic album Trans as Like an Inca. An electric version of Hitchhiker also appeared on Young's Le Noise album which I've tried many times to like but frankly is pretty lame. Actually up until about Sleeps with Angels time I bought every Neil Young album. Hitchhiker sounds wonderful and will probably be my first Neil Young purchase in quite a few years.

It is odd (although not surprising knowing Young's unpredictability) that such a well rounded acoustic album was overlooked in preference for some below par or less than consistent releases around the mid to late 70s such as American Stars 'n' Bars, Comes a Time, Hawks and Doves, and Long May You Run. It's also odd that a classic track like Campaigner, with its famous "even Richard Nixon has got soul" line, has not before been released on any official album other than in edited form in the Decade boxset.

Hitchhiker sounds wonderful and will probably be my first Neil Young purchase in quite a few years.

In a bid to recreate the vibe at home, from my existing collection, and to check differences in Pocahontas, I popped Rust Never Sleeps in the player with an emphasis on side one. This album contains some of Young's greatest songwriting presented in contrasting acoustic and electric settings. Check out the lengthy Thrasher with Young's thinly veiled criticism of his CSNY colleagues (and a couple of understandable memory stumbles!).

Below is a handy tracklisting for Hitchhiker courtesy Wikipedia. Some fans have said this collection is unjustified on account of the paucity of new tracks but as an albums man I disagree - this again demonstrates an album summing to a greatness beyond its individual parts.

Search for Neil Young's Hitchhiker

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Log #11 - Who Were Those Roxy Music Cover Girls?

Back to some basics this week with some (mostly) unplugged Americana albums from The Felice Brothers and the incomparable Bonnie "Prince" Billy, plus a unique fusion of country and acid (yes, you read right) from Brixton's Alabama 3, and a look at the 70s album covers of a classic glam rock band.

Last week I mentioned The Felice Brothers in the same breath as Wilco, Tom Waits and Bob Dylan. Since listening some more and reading a bit more about them I revise that to stand in agreement with the frequent comparisons with The Band (Music From The Big Pink era), Neil Young (Tonight's the Night era), and yes, Bob Dylan (Basement Tapes era). You couldn't ask for more really could you? Lead singer Ian Felice name checks Tonight's the Night in an interview about their new album, Life in the Dark (straight on the Christmas list), and his singing and lyrics are both very Dylanesque (in reference to the extended narrative songs and punchy nasal delivery of Dylan's early years, more than the inaudible bark of now).

It's nice when an album grows on you. I've had The Felice Brothers for a few years but hadn't played it more than half a dozen times up until last week. Playing it more and sampling the new album the decision to get a ticket for next month's show became an absolute no brainer. It's gonna be a real stormer. The songs are naked and authentic with super melodies and devastating lyrics of sex, booze and guns.

The Brothers then - in The Band gear

The Brothers now - more rock indie

1. Arbouretum - The Gathering
2. The Felice Brothers - The Felice Brothers
3. Roxy Music - For Your Pleasure
4. Alabama 3 - Exile on Coldharbor Lane
5. Steely  Dan - Aja
6. Bonnie Prince Billy - Beware

The Alabama 3 album is absolutely brilliant. Great songs, great grooves, and oodles of humour. I saw them at a festival once and assumed they were a genuine American gospel band from the deep south. They are actually from the deep south... of London... and the preaching, Texas drool and stage names are all in parody. They actually started out under the name of The First Presleyterian Church of Elvis the Divine with an ambition to fuse country music with acid! And it works with great melodies and pulsating electronic gated rhythms. This album should have been massive but it's little known and the band have pretty much sunk without trace despite some commercial fame when their Woke Up This Morning featured on The Sorpranos credits.

Please be upstanding for Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love and his Alabama 3

After hearing them at the festival and buying the album I went to see them a second time at our local Concorde2. This time around they were a disappointment with a chaotic set hampered by technical problems and bad tempers - The Very Reverend Dr. D. Wayne Love (front left) inviting a heckler outside for a fight! You never really know what you are going to get live especially with bands like this infamous for outrageous performances.

The Arbouretum album was a favourite of mine for a period of time when it came out in 2011. Their music is slow and heavy grunge with distorted guitars reminding me most of The Foo Fighters or Neil Young. Most of their tracks are quite lengthy with thick guitar melody lines. They can also do sweet and lovely as heard on the gorgeous cover of Jimmy Webb's The Highwayman. I haven't heard many versions of this famous song but this has to be the best cover out there and jumps straight on to my playlist. Great lyrics too:

I was a highwayman
Along the coach roads I did ride
With sword and pistol by my side
Many a young maid lost her baubles to my trade
Many a soldier shed his lifeblood on my blade
The bastards hung me in the spring of twenty-five
But I am still alive

I was a sailor
I was born upon the tide
And with the sea I did abide
I sailed a schooner round the Horn to Mexico
I went aloft and furled the mainsail in a blow
And when the yards broke off they said that I got killed
But I am living still

I was a dam builder
Across the river deep and wide
Where steel and water did collide
A place called Boulder on the wild Colorado
I slipped and fell into the wet concrete below
They buried me in that great tomb that knows no sound
But I am still around
I'll always be around, and around and around and around and around...

I'll fly a starship
Across the Universe divide
And when I reach the other side
I'll find a place to rest my spirit if I can
Perhaps I may become a highwayman again
Or I may simply be a single drop of rain
But I will remain
And I'll be back again, and again and again and again and again...

Bonnie "Prince" Billy, real name Will Oldham, is the embodiment of laid back, low-fi, americana/country. I don't know this 2009 album too well in comparison with some of his earlier Palace Brothers music and solo albums. This one seems more country than usual with plenty of pedal steel. I love his fragile voice and gentle guitar strumming and he is top of my gig wish list (he played a small church in Brighton a few years ago but the gig was sold out immediately before I heard). Much more on Will will follow.

Girls Girls Girls... Those Roxy Music Cover Girls

Even after listening to music for 40 years there are still new "old" bands to discover. When I say "new" I actually mean new to me as obviously Roxy Music are a very old band, but one I've never listened to before. I knew a bit about singer Bryan Ferry of course, and quite alot about knob twiddler Brian Eno, but had dismissed them as one of those throwaway glam rock pop bands of the early 70s like T-Rex or Slade. Then I got talking to someone in a pub about music (I can't even remember who now) and he recommended I take a listen to them, and to this album in particular.

There is some great rock on For Your Pleasure (their second album) and some interesting extended electronics which I feel is foreshadowing Eno's Berlin work with David Bowie moreso than his ambient solo albums. Probably only Do The Strand is a well known single, certainly the only one I recognise and as often the case that's probably a strength of the album.

Like a number of bands, including Little Feat mentioned in an earlier log, Roxy Music were famous for their album covers which featured various glamour models, some of whom were Bryan Ferry's girlfriends.

The artwork for their early albums imitated the visual style of classic "girlie" and fashion magazines of the time, featuring high-fashion shots of scantily-clad models.

The model for the debut album was Kari-Ann Muller who was reportedly paid £20 for the assignment. She also appeared in the Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service and is now a yoga teacher living in London with husband Chris Jagger, brother of Mick.

It was very ... ice-creamy, in a way. The colours remind me of a marshmallow, like something really delicious.

Amanda Lear appeared on the cover of our featured album walking a blank panther and is perhaps the most mysterious of Bryan Ferry's muses. She was reportedly a mistress of Salvador Dali and Rolling Stone Brian Jones before having affairs with both Ferry and David Bowie. Bizarrely there were also persistent rumours that she was actually a transsexual man!

But what of those rumours?

Hah hah! That was bullshit, a phony publicity stunt in order to sell records. No-one wanted a boring girl like any other. But it was the time of the Rocky Horror Show, and I was around, looking glamorous, and people always dream, don't they? The lady is a girl, and that's it.

To read more about her fascinating life (you couldn't make this stuff up) please have a look at https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2000/dec/24/focus.news

Marilyn Cole was the girl on the album Stranded. She was a Playboy model and eventually married Victor Lownes, president of Playboy Enterprises, after a brief involvement with Ferry.

Perhaps many people's favourite (certainly of teenage boys) is the Country Life cover which features two random German fans the band met in a bar in Portugal, (l to r) Eveline Grunwald and Constanze Karoli. I don't know how rare a name Karoli is in Germany but it always surprises me how often a common name does indicate a blood relationship and in this case Constanze was Can guitarist Michael Karoli's cousin, and Eveline was his girlfriend. It continues to be a small somewhat incestuous world.

Roxy fans Eveline and Constanze looking surprised on the cover of Country Life

Without looking too closely I always thought this was a shot of the girls lying flat on the grass but they are actually standing against a pine tree and posing as if suddenly caught in the glare of car headlights.

We just had to look weird and surprised.

Some album covers of the 70s (particularly of heavy rock or metal bands - Blind Faith, Whitesnake, The Scorpions etc) were pushing the sexual boundaries and this cover was banned in many countries on release which was actually saying something in those days. Incidentally does anyone remember those truly awful Top of the Pops compilation albums our parents used to buy?

Where have the girls gone? The censored version of Country Life.

I often think it must be strange to be remembered for one tiny (insignificant at the time) thing in life that happened forty years ago – literally a "15 minutes of fame".  Neither Country Life girl went on to become models. Eveline became an art teacher and Constanze is a practising psychotherapist. Rather cool to have such a dinner party subject to bring up though. Imagine flicking through a host’s CD collection and chancing across Country Life and revealing your secret!

Without doubt Jerry Hall is the most famous of the Roxy models and appeared on the Siren cover literally as a siren washed up on some rocks in Anglesey, North Wales. One of the original, if not the original, super models, Texan Hall dated Bryan Ferry for some time before meeting Mick Jagger. Her recent marriage to Rupert Murdoch was a surprise to many.

Love on the Rocks - Hall and Ferry in Anglesey

Again not looking closely enough I thought the model on the front of Flesh and Blood was one person but it actually shows Aimee Stephenson and Shelley Man casting javelins. Aimee Stephenson (the nearest to the camera) later worked in film (script writing and production). She tragically died in 2001 from burn injuries sustained from exploding fireworks on a bus in Peru (I know, it sounds so unlikely but when your time is up, your time is up, and as I said above you couldn't make this up - the bizarre and random twists of life). As for Shelley Man she is literally residing in the "where are they now" file, gone and forgotten at least as far as the internet is concerned - hopefully this indicates she is enjoying a quiet happy family life somewhere in the Cotswolds, free from controversy, rumour or tragedy.

Once more initial appearances can be deceptive with the realistic dancing "models" on the front of Manifesto actually being mannequins.

Having spent the 70s enjoying many a tryst with his band’s cover stars, Bryan Ferry finally made a long-term commitment to one of them in 1982, when he married model Lucy Helmore who starred (albeit anonymously with back to camera and wearing a medieval helmet) on the front of the Avalon album.

Ferry with Avalon lady Lucy Helmore

The above owes a debt to an interesting article on the subject from https://threeinacrowd.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/roxy-music-cover-model/

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Log #10 - A Steely Dan of Sonic Perfection

I remember reading once that the cover album this week was, in its time (1977), celebrated for it's amazing sound quality to such a degree that it became the "go-to" record hi-fi equipment shops would use for demo purposes. I wonder how many hi-fi shop staffers were actually aware of this dictum - it was probably an urban myth rarely put into practice on the high street.

Aja (named after a girl of that name - and although I've never noticed before there is a girl's face in the cover) is indeed a sumptuous jazz / rock / funk / R&B / fusion masterpiece with it's perfectly intertwined funky bass, smooth electric piano and drum shuffles, played by a revolving door of crack session players.

The band actually took their name from a brand of dildo featured in William Burrough's "Naked Lunch"

I had assumed the name Steely Dan was something to do with the two core players, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, but not at all, the band was named after a dildo. Eh hem. Donald Fagen's later Nightfly album was also a favourite during my university years.

1. Ketil Bjornstad and David Darling - Epigraphs
2. The Felice Brothers - The Felice Brothers
3. Traffic - John Barleycorn Must Die
4. DJ Shadow - Preemptive Strike
5. Steely  Dan - Aja
6. AC/DC - Back in Black

Ketil Bjornstad and David Darling are a pianist/cellist duo recording for the new age ECM label. The instrumental music is verging on minimalist classical of the Philip Glass (particularly his solo piano work) and Arvo Part school - very down tempo with lots of space.

The Felice Brothers are coming to a concert hall in Brighton in the new year which made me reach for my CD. It's actually a copy someone gave me without a cover so I wasn't even aware of which album it was. The music is round the campfire accordion washboard foot stomping bar room americana most similar to Wilco with a Tom Waits/Bob Dylan feel. Hear the honky tonk piano and horn on The Greatest Show on Earth.

I'm in the lobby of the motel 8
Waiting on my lovely date
Her name is Doris Day
I'm in a suit of burgundy
There's a deer-head looking at me
It's blowing my mind away
Everyone knows she's the killing kind
She keeps a 38 Smith and Wesson at her side
I put a pistol in my pants
Cause were going out to dance
Where the water drinks like cherry wine

Tell me mama, so it seems
Your son's been a bad marine
They're shipping him home tonight
Tell me mama wheres your other son
In jail with the other one?
You must'nt of raised them right
I heard your low-life husband shout
It got me to wondering what the scene was all about
He said I'm breaking my parole
Going down to Jericho
Get me that money, or I'm gonna beat it out

Oooh happy days are here!
It's the perfect summer night
And the moonlight's shining clear
Put a pistol in your purse
Cause we're going to Gettysburg
To the stand of the Greatest Show on Earth!

Is that your daughter Mr. Kissinger?
Better keep an eye on her
She been looking me up and down
Is that your woman in the coat of fur?
Better keep an eye on her
This is a ravenous part of town
I know about you and the deputy
And how they found him shot dead in a Mercury
Some say you're paid to kill
Like that mean ol' Buffalo Bill
Watch it buddy! Don't draw no gun on me!

Oooh happy days are here!
It's the perfect summer night
And the moonlight's shining clear
Put a pistol in your purse
Cause we're going to Gettysburg
To the stand of the Greatest Show on Earth!

You get the picture! Great stuff, I'm looking forward to it.

The Traffic album is a classic. Rather like Aja it's a perfect blend of multiple styles and all the remarkable for a band comprising of only three very talented musicians. I saw multi instrumentalist Steve Winwood playing at Cropredy Festival a few years ago and was blown away as he raced through Traffic, Spencer Davis Group, and Blind Faith classics, moving effortlessly from organ (with bass foot pedal) to guitar, and that voice of course too. The encore was Dear Mr. Fantasy... play us a tune!

There are some great bass lines and languid drum beats in the DJ Shadow album. The centre piece is the four part near 30 minute What Does Your Soul Look Like? His 1996 debut Entroducing album was famous for being composed (or compiled more like) entirely from cut and pasted samples. Not traditional musicianship of course but quite a skill nontheless. I saw a full band at a festival recreating that album.

AC/DC's Back in Black album was their first after the death of lead singer Bon Scott. Brian Johnson certainly proved an able replacement and has lasted the course with the band right up to this year when hearing problems (no shit Sherlock) forced him to temporarily step aside for Axl Rose. Back in Black isn't quite as good as AC/DC's landmark Highway to Hell album but has plenty of classic stadium filling rockers. There is something irresistible about the AC/DC template of single line riff, followed by 4 by 4 drum beat, followed by one note bass. It hooks into your brain.

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