After marching with Occupy Wall Street the last two days, my baby and I took some time to blow off steam and relax with some friends last night. Well, in the cab ride home, Franny cues up the perfect James Taylor song on her iPhone. Even more appropriate 35 years later…and a fun jam. Nice one, Fran :) Dig.
(and yes, my ‘JT’ is James Taylor, not Justin)
James Taylor-Money Machine
Talk about power-trio! Fuckin’ A, Radio Moscow is the shit. THE GREAT ESCAPE OF LESLIE MAGNAFUZZ is the Californian-based band’s third album for the highly-regarded Alive Naturalsound Records. It’s out October 11th, but you must taste you some now…and do yourself the favor of CRANKING IT!
Radio Moscow-Little Eyes
*flier by Justin Gabbard
I’m extremely psyched to welcome the Entrance Band to Beyond Beyond is Beyond this Thursday…
The killer West Coast psych trio will be performing live on EVR and we’ll chat about what’s going on in Entrance Land. Tune in at noon eastern at EVR.com.
They’ll be headlining at Glasslands on Thursday night and supporting The Kills and Cold Cave at Terminal 5 on Friday. I know which one I’d rather be at. ;)
Here are more tour dates:
April 28 – Brooklyn, NY – Glasslands – TEB Headlines
April 29 – New York, NY – Terminal 5*
April 30 – Montreal, QC – L’Olympia*
May 01 – Toronto, ON – Sound Academy*
May 03 – Detroit, MI – Majestic Theatre*
May 04 – Chicago, IL – Vic Theatre*
May 05 – Minneapolis, MN – First Avenue*
May 08 – Vancouver, BC – Commodore Ballroom*
May 09 – Seattle, WA – The Showbox*
May 10 – Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom*
May 11 – San Francisco, CA – The Fillmore*
May 13-15 – Minehead UK – Butlins Holiday Centre – All Tomorrows Parties
*with The Kills & Cold Cave
And dig this cover of Arthur Lee and Love’s ‘A House Is Not a Motel’, which was just released on 7″ on Record Store Day on Black Tent Press…
I can almost hear the chorus of “who???” I choose Peter Farrelly for this series for one moment in my teenage concert going years. Peter was the bassist/vocalist with Irish prog-rockers Fruupp. Waist-length hair, a Gibson Les Paul recording bass, and knee-high boots, he cut a dashing figure, alternating the music with spoken passages, for which he would retire to a wing-backed armchair, by the light of an old standard lamp, reading their peculiar myths and legends. But the moment that had my jaw hitting the floor as an impressionable young lad was when they launched into their song “On a clear day”. Intricate bass lines underpinning his vocal, seemingly impossible to perform at the same time! It was the first time I’d seen live a bassist exhibit such skill, and it had a profound effect on me. He also designed most of the bands artwork for their album covers – and played the flute!
Fruupp released four albums in the early seventies, the final one, Modern Masquerades, being produced by King Crimson’s Ian McDonald (later to be part of Foreigner) who also played sax on the album. They developed something of a following in the UK and supported both Genesis and Queen on tour in 1974.
They finally split in 1976.
There were rumours of a reunion in 2006, and who knows , it may still happen. But do yourselves a favour, and check out the music of this undiscovered gem of a band!
Recommended listening: Tracks: One a fine Day, Janet Planet, Gormenghast
Albums: The Prince of Heaven’s Eyes, Modern Masquerades
Check out the new AC/DC tune. It sounds like something that would fit in on a classic AC/DC album like Back In Black, For Those About To Rock, or Flick of the Switch!
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba4xujkWeQ4&hl=en&fs=1]
A-maze-ing, no? Alice Cooper said that he was flattered when he heard that in a recent interview, Brian Johnson was complimented by the interviewer on the new album, and Brian said, “Yeah, but have you heard Alice Cooper’s new album?!” Nice. You likey?
…And it was great to see Saturday night at the Lower East Side’s Cake Shop! We were there to see the band Apache, whose debut album is excellent, and I wanted to see how they translated live. Well live is where the band really lives! It was complete sweat-drenched, classic style garage/glam rock & roll… reminiscent of the old Detroit masters of that game… the MC5, the Stooges, and even early Alice Cooper.
And we got there in time to see one of the bands that went on before Apache called Electric Shadows, who rocked equally well and grittily…and who gave us a great Kiss “Strutter” cover! It was obvious that these guys have been touring with each other at least for a while, as they were all buddies and there were lots of Shadows playing with Apaches, and Apaches playing in the Shadows set. It was like one big happy rock family!
Check out these bands on Myspace now…that is, if you like to rock!
And also check out this other band that went on first that night, who I missed, but loved their songs on Myspace…
Hey you’s guys…I’m going on a mancation, like now-ish, with my dad and brother to St. John, V.I.! I can’t wait to get there…I wish we could just skip the waking up at 5:00 am and going to JFK, where we will be molested by security and jacked around by American Airlines, who has been in the news the last couple days for a luggage-losing fiasco. But that’s what one does to travel in these-here post-9/11 days. It WAS nice to hear from Lou Dobbs on the radio that Exxon-Mobil reported record profits today for the last quarter ($12 billion!)… which is the largest quarterly profit EVER reported by a US company! And it was not actually nice to hear that…that was sarcasm.
So now I cheer up and finish packing. But I wanted to leave you all with something before I left, and it is this:
Right now, you can go to Amazon and download a 256 kbps, DRM-free mp3 version of Nick Drake’s classic Pink Moon album for only $2.99! That’s a frickin’ steal for an excellent album. So, if you don’t have it…go get it now!
Anyway, it’s gonna be quiet here for a few days, but I’ll be returning mid-week with some more RT and probably some great St. John pics!
Cheers!
You might remember that I wrote a piece about the Welsh band, MAN, a few months ago when I was still a newbie to their music. Since then I have received some mind-blowing MAN albums, bursting with their eclectic blend of West Coast psychedelia, hard rock, blues, progressive rock, funk, Beatlesy harmonies, and top notch jamming. These albums have been beautifully remastered with excellent bonus material and packaging and new liner notes from one of the MAN legends himself, guitarist/singer/songwriter, Deke Leonard. The most recent reissues include the three albums, Back Into The Future, Slow Motion and Maximum Darkness.
I’ve got to say that these MAN reissues have been in very heavy rotation in my iTunes and iPod for the last couple months. I have gone from a complete ignorance of this band, not even having heard of them before 2008, to being converted to an unmitigated MAN fan by mid-2008. Why is MAN such a horribly overlooked band, you might ask? I’m really not sure, but my guesses are a) perhaps mismanagement (a la Moby Grape) and b) lack of radio hits. At least the Grateful Dead had “Truckin’” and “Casey Jones” But this isn’t necessarily mainstream music here either. This is music for music’s sake. Here’s my completely-biased account of the most recent set of MAN albums that have just been re-released on England’s Esoteric Recordings this summer.
Click on through for the juicy details…
