Log #215 - The Sparks That Still Burn

If you are near my age and grew up watching BBC's Top Of The Pops in the '70s chances are you will only know Sparks from their weird appearance singing This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us. This song, most memorable for hyperactive singer Russell Mael's high pitched falsetto and older brother Ron Mael's deadpan keyboard playing and sinister looks to camera, was a #2 UK hit in early 1974.

[That song] was written in A, and by God it'll be sung in A. And no singer is gonna get in my way.

Songwriter Ron Mael  

And that was it? Actually no. Unbelievably this band of brothers was formed in LA in 1967 and are still going today. Their most recent album A Steady Drip, Drip, Drip, released this year, was their 24th! That's pretty impressive for apparent "one hit wonders". Were they actually "one hit wonders" Ed.?

No, they actually had several hit singles and well charting albums (including some recent ones). The band have achieved 6 Top 20 singles in the UK charts (all in the '70s). Ed.

Hearing the band in an album context for the first time I was expecting a series of similarly quirky keyboard songs along the lines of their big hit. Indeed there are a few that recall this vaudeville entertainment, but actually Sparks were more a glam rock band with a drummer and guitarist, than a novelty pop duo, and were fairly close to Sweet or T-Rex, or even Queen or David Bowie at the time. Not surprising considering this album, their 4th, also came out in 1974. 

With the times they moved to more electronic disco sounds later in the decade with songs like Tryouts For The Human Race and The No.1 Song In Heaven.

The Comet Is Coming - Trust In The Lifeforce Of The Deep Mystery

Miles Davis - Jack Johnson

Sparks - Propaganda

King Crimson - The Construkction Of Light

The Mahavishnu Orchestra - Inner Mounting Flame

Return To Forever - Romantic Warrior

Further new entries in the player this week extend my recent interest in jazz, or specifically jazz fusion, inspired by Return To Forever and, especially, The Mahavishnu Orchestra.

I continue to struggle a bit to "get" the The Comet Is Coming album which came near the top of my local record store's Top Albums Of The Year last year. It's extremely busy and the brass is pretty grating. I prefer Miles Davis' Jack Johnson which is much closer to heavy rock with John McLaughlin's gritty guitar to the fore - definitely one of Davis' heaviest albums. 

The Construkction Of Light is also one of the, or the, heaviest King Crimson album(s). I think it's brilliant and it has actually become my favourite out of the band's last 3 albums I reviewed back in log #208, and actually pretty close to one of my favourites overall. Oddly the reviews weren't great at the time and it was certainly considered weaker than the albums that surrounded it, Thrak and The Power To Believe, but for me it has strength in its individual tracks and in its overall "albumness" (a new word Ed. which I've just made up to describe the overall aesthetic of an album where the wholeness does not necessarily equate to the summation of the parts). I'm still working on my King Crimson album ranking and Construkction has potentially moved up two or three places this week.

Read More

John Martyn / Well Kept Secret

Released in 1982 just one year after the excellent Glorious Fool is it fair to ask if Well Kept Secret was the beginning of John Martyn's long decline? Sure Martyn wholeheartedly embraces the production values of the day and the tracks are submerged in keyboards and easy listening bass and saxophone. However to be fair the songs are passable retaining some hints of the immediately preceding albums, said Glorious Fool and the harrowing Grace and Danger. They just aren’t very memorable and there’s no way songs like this would have passed the quality control on earlier albums.

You Might Need A Man is a catchy upbeat number that reminds me of Perfect Hustler from Glorious Fool. Love Up is similarly upbeat but very corny with an awful sounding heavily treated guitar riff and Hiss On The Tape is light hearted/weight. The soppy lyrics don’t help as evident on the weak love song that finishes the album — maybe Martyn had been hanging out with Phil Collins too long.

Nevertheless the voice is still strong, and clear, and high in the mix. The slightly corny grizzly cracks in the vocals, which became more and more prominent on later albums, are employed with restraint. But after the impressive Glorious Fool this, his second and final album for the WEA label, was a disappointing follow up which set Martyn on the road towards irrelevant easy listening.

Read More

Log #214 - Van Morrison's Uncommon One

Common One from 1980 is a bit of a forgotten outlier in the Van Morrison catalogue. For me it sounds like a mix of Astral Weeks* and Avalon Sunset ie. the freeform stringy impro of the former (especially on the extended stream of consciousness Summertime In England) merging with the sax and organ groove commerciality of the latter (like on Satisfied). I can forgive Van banging on about all his favourite poets again in the former (Joyce, Blake, Eliot, Wordsworth, Coleridge etc).

*Having said that the dynamic brassy Spirit with its strident chorus reminds me more of the Moondance tracks.

The album ends with the ambient When Heart Is Open. This lengthy peaceful piece has elements of Small Hours by John Martyn.

No wonder the rock critics of the time didn't get it; this is music outside the pop mainstream, and even Morrison's own earlier musical territory. 

Allmusic

There's no doubt that Van Morrison was attempting something a bit different with this easy listening laid back jazz infused album. An approach that yields mixed results. Critics were initially unimpressed but over the years Common One has become a bit of a lost Morrison classic. I wouldn't quite go that far but it's certainly a pleasant unobtrusive record that I can imagine putting on in the background on a rainy Sunday afternoon (like a lot of his others actually). 

I love the cover, and it graces this week's post.

Van Morrison - Common One

Depeche Mode - Violator

Chicago - Greatest Hits

Weather Report - Heavy Weather

The Mahavishnu Orchestra - Inner Mounting Flame

Return To Forever - Romantic Warrior

The beginning of Romantic Warrior surprised me. Medieval Overture opens with a Terry Riley like keyboard pattern, before it veers off on a number of tangents. Just in this 5 minute track alone I can hear so much: Yes, Rush, Philip Glass, Uriah Heep, Jethro Tull, Pat Metheny, King Crimson and Frank Zappa. The musicianship is astounding - a particular shout out for the drummer Lenny White who ratta-tats away like a maniac.

Who were they? - well, as it turns out although I've never heard of the band I have heard of the individuals (and I have seen the album cover around before, although I may be mixing it up with the Quicksilver Messenger Service one?). 

Chick Corea – keyboards
Stanley Clarke – bass
Lenny White – drums
Al Di Meola – guitar

It's somewhere in between my other jazz fusion discoveries of recent weeks - Weather Report and Mahavishnu Orchestra, but much nearer the latter.

Like my posts? Please send me a coffee: 

 

Read More

Bonnie 'Prince' Billy at Peace? Master and Everyone

The voices in Will Oldham's head that speak to us via his Bonnie 'Prince' Billy incarnation are not peaceful ones. This is an album of universal questions, asked on a personal level. What role does traditional love hold in the modern world? How does one reconcile the undeniable evil in us all? Heavy stuff - but all these questions relate to Oldham alone. The outsider looking in.

It's a long decade since, as a post-rock contemporary of fellow Louisville legends Slint, Oldham (along with sibling Paul as Palace/Palace Brothers/Palace Sound) started searching for a new American music. With an exponentially decreasing brouhaha, successive releases have shorn slick production values until he reached the zen-like clarity of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. Last album, Ease Down The Road was a far jauntier trip, but this time it's all ambient foot-tapping, sighing electronica and hushed harmonies. This is hardly suprising as Master And Everyone was produced by Lambchop's Mark Nevers, whose Is a Woman had the same whispered vibe.

This gorgeous album however replaces Kurt Wagner's pantheistic joy in small things with a more carnal slant on life's mysteries. "Let your unloved parts be loved" he mutters in the opener, The Way. Previous reviews of Bonnie 'Prince' Billy seem to have downplayed his influence on master magpie, Beck, yet it's this track that proves the fact irrefutably.

Like Beck he's not frightened of mixing bluegrass religiosity, slacker nonchalance or even English folk rock. Duetting with Nashville professional Marty Slayton on several tracks, they summon the ghost of Sandy Denny. The title track even resembles a stripped down reel. Yet it's the ambivalent lyrics that draw you in - balancing tender love songs (Ain't You Wealthy, Ain't You Wise?) with explorations of biblical evil, only to deflate the whole enterprise with a song like Maundering (it means talking drivel - look it up). It tells you straight that he's just a very flawed man, on the lookout for redemption - and with a tendency to ramble. In the end it's all about infidelity and indifference.

Even a song called Joy And Jubilee hardly convinces you that this is a happy world to visit. As American gothic goes, this is far more compelling and convincing than, say, Nick Cave's cartoon baptisms of fire.

Finally, the key track seems to be Wolf Among Wolves, with its plea to let Oldham/Billy be loved for what he really is. The biggest question seems to be; if we are evil, why can't we accept it? This is a peaceful album, but it contains very little peace.

Review by Chris Jones (2003) shared by CC http://www.bbc.co.uk/music/reviews/2pqv/ with scoring by E.B.

Read More