MELOMANIA eases into some choice reissues and collections (hint: PROG)
says goodbye to Jeff Beck (and mentions Edgar Broughton Band and Emerson, Lake and Palmer - twice!)
CHARLIE MEGIRA AND THE HEFKER GIRL [LP](Numero/Secretly/AMPED)
The career of Charlie Megira remains a huge mystery. His music is already the stuff of dreams (2001’s beautiful “Abtomatic Meisterzinger Mambo Chic,”) and then his hazy cosmic surf tunes took a turn for mumbled veiled Goth Synth Pop in 2006. “Hefker Girl” and its grim songs but glowing sound actually lessen the distance between these two extremes. With Megira and his new love Michal Kahan, these songs are “romantic” - but like The Cure. The me-and-you-against-the-world vibe of “Till I’ll Break Again” exposes the duality of love (“Fear and Joy”) before being thrown into the fire (“Psyche and Apollo”) to either forge love or fail. Like all Megira it is woefully short but powerful.
TO ROCOCO ROT - The John Peel BBC Sessions 1997-1999 [LP](Bureau B/The Orchard)
A lot of minimal Electronic music from the late Nineties gets lumped together. Or worse, dismissed for sounding like pale imitations. Listening to the Berlin group To Rococo Rot (say it fast) emerge from their Tortoise-like drone beginnings is still highly interesting 25 years later. As they find their way to their most melodious music, they do so much with so little. Unlike the singles and albums where they are conscious of the whole vision, these sessions for John Peel resemble discovery. “Thomson Colour” uses its undercurrent of near-atonal sounds to enhance tension. While the mysterious “Prado” relaxes it with a beautiful central section of synth wash/bleep melody. At their best here, you can actually hear them looking at each other communicating the stops/starts, and navigating the other’s contributions. Weirdly, their best-known tracks “Telema” and “A Little Asphalt Here and There” sound closest to the complaints of others that they are too close to Autechre and Tortoise. Yet again, given the Peel Sessions backdrop, this is minimalism on display. TRR’s study is primarily one of thorough control.
MODULO 1000 - Não Fale Com Paredes [LP](Mr.Bongo)
Prog Rock is typically about virtuosity and fantasy. Very few Prog bands sound dark and dystopic - that inner conflict typically skews to Metal. Modulo 1000 is like a less heavy Black Sabbath. The desperation of “Não Fale Com Paredes” is tenser than say, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer’s “Knife Edge.” However, this is because it feels so light (“Espêlho”) in places but never loses that notion of the upcoming dark turn. Their intricacies are not easier lost either. The all-too-brief Deep Purple-ish “Lem - Ed - Êcalg” raises your chaos quotient before the Edgar Broughton-esque “Ôlho Por Ôlho, Dente Por Dente” frightens you with a glimpse into their funhouse mirror. Recorded for a private pressing in 1972, the acidic Prog mines the dark side of Psychedelica and even Space Rock for a bracing near-Metallic blast of the harsh light of reality.
WIND OF CHANGE: PROGRESSIVE SOUNDS OF 1973 [4CD](Cherry Red UK)
The Cherry Red compilations are always a great source for unreleased gems mixed with familiar greats. However, the latest Prog collection “Wind of Change” raises the stakes and mixes tracks with a familiar sound into a format that is out to surprise you. Typically, when a compilation works within such strenuous limits (all of the tracks here date from 1973) - the tendency is to show the differences in everything one could hear. However, in the days of Whispering Bob and album-only cuts, the refinement was in actually meshing like-into-like.
So, it is fun to see Italian group P.F.M. outdo the group that signed them, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer (“Jerusalem” opens “Brain Salad Surgery” with gusto - but does not quite have the power here) with the depth of their overlooked “Photos of Ghosts” track “River of Life.” While the second Electric Light Orchestra album was a rebuilding session for the band, programming the Move-ish stomper “In Old England Town (Boogie #2)” could inspire one to venture into the early years of a band whose selection in streaming can be refined to just the hits. Even Prog favorites like Caravan, use all nine minutes of “Memory Lain, Hugh/Headloss” to show how well they sounded on the radio at their peak - but still manage to slip in a very Canterbury midsection.
Seventies Manfred Mann continues to grow in interest and stature thanks to the well-selected epic “Father of Day, Father of Night.” While a grunting Edgar Broughton Band sounding almost Folky (with horns!) is delightfully strange in its Who-ian changes. It is even admirable how far this set goes to include a Jazzy John Martyn cut (“Dreams By The Sea,”) the Folk Rock-ian stomp of Family (the Stones-y “Check Out,”) and the incomparable Kevin Ayers who somehow always brings both warmth and weirdness to the proceedings.
In the end, that seems to be the purpose of “Wind of Change.” A grouping of tracks that lets you ease into the unexpected under the guise of familiarity.
FARE THEE WELL, JEFF BECK
In the mythology that will be written about Rock N’Roll centuries from now, the triumvirate of guitar players from The Yardbirds will ring out just as we regale those around us with tales of Mount Olympus. In the space of a mere three days in 1965, The Yardbirds’ original guitar deity Eric Clapton defiantly left on March 25th, the day of the release of their breakthrough single “For Your Love.” The remaining band members called Britain’s #2 on-call session guitarist Jimmy Page as a replacement. To avoid conflict, Page turned the job down and recommended his friend Jeff Beck. Beck accepted and played his first show with them on March 27th. (Page would join officially in June 1966.)
As astonishing as the guitar heroes of the Sixties and Seventies are, Jeff Beck was about fluidity and versatility. After the deepest possible dive into his catalog, it is so easy to be wowed by his ingenuity (in the Yardbirds for just 20 months, you can hear him use distortion, reverb, feedback, and non-blues-based trilling.) The clarion call lick of “Over Under Sideways Down” is almost perfectly matched to the clarity of a single note ringing through an entire set of changes (“The Nazz Is Blue” where he sings!)
When Beck goes solo, the opening chapter of his career goes so many different places at once. One minute he is singing the strangely optimistic “Hi Ho Silver Lining,” the next bashing it out with a future supergroup on “Beck’s Bolero.” 1968’s “Truth” is the true announcement of Beck’s reach and talent. His version of the Yardbirds’ “Shapes of Things” is now the definitive one. Standards like “You Shook Me” and “I Ain’t Superstitious” satisfied Blues purists and Rock fans. With future Faces Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood (plus underrated drummer Micky Waller,) Jeff Beck Group MKI raised the bar very high.
“Beck-Ola,” while not as consistent as “Truth,” marked Beck’s first wielding of raw power (“Rice Pudding”) and sinuous muscle (“Plynth (Water Down The Drain.)”) As Beck translates the success of this pair of albums, and the Jeff Beck Group emerges with Beck as the principal writer. His attack is now fearless as “Got The Feeling” rips apart Funk and “New Ways/Train Train” is the first of many boogie songs (sadly with the first of many mismatched vocalists.) Recording in Memphis with his idol Steve Cropper, 1972’s “Jeff Beck Group” is a more soulful version of “Beck-Ola” with a blazing version of Moloch/Freddie King’s “Going Down.” In hindsight, this period remains tough to gauge. While Beck always had some fantastic players (Cozy Powell, Max Middleton,) given how smoothly he handles the Syreeta Wright/Dusty Springfield chestnut “I Can't Give Back the Love I Feel for You” - you are left thinking “Who needs vocals?” Beck, Bogert, and Appice give it one more try with all three singing - but too often fall prey to the steady “boogie” demand of the early Seventies. (Still, the “Beckology” BBA version of “Blues Deluxe” with Beck on the Heil Talkbox - which he was given from Stevie Wonder - is mystifying.)
After “auditioning” for the Rolling Stones, Beck hired George Martin to make an instrumental Jazz album. A relentless perfectionist, Beck’s “Blow By Blow” is combining all of his skills together in one career-defining album. With Martin’s innovative strings, assists from Stevie Wonder, and continuing writing/piano support from Max Middleton, “Blow By Blow” takes some huge chances as Beck rages (“Scatterbrain,”) and releases a ballad that truly captures his guitar weeping (Wonder’s “Cause We Ended As Lovers.”) While its followup “Wired” was almost as good, it was far more mechanical. However, it would lead to Beck becoming a reliable collaborator and future hired gun.
The Jazz years demonstrate Beck’s versatility as his chops and soloing ability changed around players like Jan Hammer, Jerry Douglas, Stanley Clarke, Simon Phillips, Billy Preston, Narada Michael Walden, and others. The more he plays with these higher-caliber instrumentalists, the more his solo style develops into suppressing his jaw-dropping trickery in favor of pinpoint accuracy and emotional solos. He is not “disappearing” per se - but disappearing within the music he is playing.
In the second phase of his career, Beck was the on-call guitar soloist. His ability to fit in almost anywhere (especially given the now-dated trappings of Eighties production) was on display with Diana Ross, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger, Roger Waters, and more. On the ill-fitting version of Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young” by the legendary Diana Ross, Beck’s ending solo gives it both lift and grit. In addition, Beck very smartly saves his sparkling bird-like glissando to accent Ross’s vocals coming out of it. As a longtime right-hand man to Mick Jagger, his solos regularly light up tracks that are running out of juice (“Lucky In Love”) and can make by-the-numbers songwriting sparkle (his Spanish guitar solo on “Just Another Night.”)
All the while, solo Beck was becoming an infusion of his Seventies Jazz-Rock stylings with anything that was new. This willingness to pull from current trends was never a drawback. Every idea (even the novel ones) seemed to inspire Beck to yet pull another thrilling sound out of his six-string.
So journeyman Beck could play with anyone. He gave the youngest, hungriest talent places in his band and stretched out to play everything from the rockabilly that first inspired him, to the Blues that got him hired to Celtic music and even “Nessun Dorma.”
The guitar player that is willing to continue to learn and play has so much to give to those around them. While Beck was a legendary perfectionist and could be difficult, the more he played with musicians, singers, and songwriters from all genres and all walks of life - the more lessons he tied up in his music for everyone else to learn. Like all good soloists, Beck is nearly impossible to imitate and yet you know him the moment you hear him. He will be sorely missed.
There is a method to the madness we promise. To us, the best playlisting songs come two ways:
1. When you are just skimming an older playlist/segment - see a track - and it starts playing in your head.
When a cut surprises you. When you are listening to the random array run together and that song plays that makes you race over to find out what it is.
So thank you for reading, listening, subscribing, and supporting the artists we introduce via this online platform.
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