Professor P.P. P-pants and the mean cafeteria ladies from outer space

ACDC - If You Want Blood (You've Got It) - Live

    A perfect synthesis of their first albums, with songs from High Voltage to Let There Be Rock. From the bloody coverart to their bloody genius, AC/DC is here presented in all the primal stupidity that makes their strength.

    Being able to write good songs with old tricks - namely the pentatonic scale - is indeed a strength. If you've never liked AC/DC, chances are it isn't a quality you're interested in, but if you even have a minor appreciation for a good riff, don't let Bon Scott's disturbing stare/roar combination unsettle you.

    Indeed, this album has something any other official live album from the Australians probably won't have: Bon Scott, the original singer, tearing Satan's ears apart. The Young brothers, in their guitaristic and riff-producing prime. The classic Rudd/Cliff rhythm section at the upmost of its neanderthalian efficiency.

    Before someone starts thinking "how is that different from Let There Be Rock…?", If You Want Blood has one last quality: its sound. Studio production, even when as minimal as the one usually employed by early AC/DC, polishes the inherent gnarlyness of the music to a radio friendly "let's attract hair metal fans" level. None of this here. Guitars slam in your face like the tusks of a thousand mammoths, and the rhythm section drives you to heavyblues heaven like a 1920s locomotive: it's dirty, reasonably quick, fascinating, and people make miniatures of them in their living room.

    By sticking to their methed-up Berry-esque blues about liquor and women, AC/DC always avoided a sabbathian doominess they could have very well veered into (like fellow Australians Buffalo) - same with Zeppelin-like mysticism. None of that here, just pure, amped up, SG straight in Marshall upping 4/4 beats with a drunkard merryman imposting as the street version of a comedia del'arte cantor. No fuss. Just give the kids what they want - here, it's blood, and it's served on a silver platter.

We Are Motorhead. And We Play Rock & Roll!

3.5 hours before a local epic morning event based on egghunts, but with an extra k (that's right), I am terrified to realize I haven't written much on this blog lately. I could say I've been working a lot, but that would be lying to everyone, myself included.

In order to fix this, here's a healthy slab of Rock & Fucking Roll.

Motörhead

Better Motorhead Than Dead - Live At Hammersmith

2007, Steamhammer Records

When thinking of badass people in Rock & Roll, few names stand a real chance. Lemmy is undeniably one. After being a roadie for Hendrix and a guitar stint in little known band Sam Gopal, he's hired by fellow Londonian spacers Hawkwind to replace their bass player. Finding the Rickenbacker bass model that would accompany him for the rest of his carreer in an abandonned van, Lemmy (a nickname supposedly acquired because of his tendency to ask "Len'me a quid' 'til Monday") Kilmister (his real last name - I said badass) took the job. And bloody 'hell did he do it well. 1973's Space Ritual, mentioned before on this blog, is pretty much the musical equivalent to Isaac Asimov's Foundation: epic, extended, fucking awesome. Some people advertised it as "88 minutes of brain damage": sounds like 88 minutes of pure bliss to me, even after 4 years of regular listening. And it's mostly driven by Lemmy's dirty, extremely recognizable trebly-overdriven bass sound that he still uses today.

Today, you ask? But 1973 was 37 long years ago...

No. He's still going. 

After being kicked out from Hawkwind for prefering speed to acid, Lemmy took two songs he written for them (Motorhead and Lost Johnny) and decided he'd form his own band. One he wouldn't be kicked out of (it seems to have been a trend in his early days).

Teaming up with members from the Deviants and the Pink Fairies (which you should also check out), he decided his band was going to be called Bastards. Of course, one might imagine the lack of motivation from record companies to sign a band called Bastards. Agreeing to change the name to Motörhead (american slang for speed-inclined characters), Lemmy stabilized the lineup to Philthy Animal Taylor, Fast Eddie Clark and himself. From 1979 to 1982, this trio would come up with one of the main reasons why the eighties maybe weren't that bad (musically). This reason comes in five parts. Five record parts...

- Bomber, 1979

- Overkill, 1979

- On Parole, 1979

- Ace Of Spades, 1980

- Iron Fist, 1981

(which you should all listen to)

Of course, since 1981, Motörhead has issued album at a rate of one every two years minimum. They've had some mild moments, like most mid/late 80's rock bands, where reverb just seemed to take over the entire drum kit and make the band sound like it was playing in an aluminum bathroom, and they've had some more modern successes. After issuing Inferno in 2004, Motörhead went on their regular worldwide tour, passing through Hammersmith in Lemmy's native England. There, someone had the brilliant idea to record their set (and even a little bit of Zappa's Dirty Love signifying people had to leave at the very end), which included a healthy selection of old songs, new songs, and stuff from the middle, all revamped to their current sound (i.e. massive/without reverb on drums i.e. better).

I've read somewhere that Motörhead only really plays one song, with different lyrics/tempo/variations. I guess that's where taste comes in, because myself and a cohort of fans (random mildly related fact: Lars Ulrich is the head of US Motörheadbangers, their official fan club) will agree to say it doesn't matter. Consistency is as impressive as originality, and it doesn't get much more consistent than Motörhead. They'll occasionally blow your mind with something completely different (like Inferno's "Whorehouse Blues", a two acoustic guitars/harmonica/voice piece), however as stated earlier Lemmy is badass: this involves some amount of ridicule/awesomeness, as in chosing to do the same song for 35 years +, and not planning on stopping anytime soon. For Lemmy, it also involves still drinking JD/coke at any point spent awake, chain smoking, and being unable to receive blood because his organism got used to having blood with a massive amount of impurities in it that it wouldn't function without them. Oh, and getting a ridiculous amount of girls.

Better Motörhead Than Dead?

Yes.

You Know I'm Born To Lose

And Gambling's For Fools

But That's The Way I Like It Baby

I Ain't Gonna Live Forever!

(Ace Of Spades, 1980)

JNCT

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Live Albums: You Weren't There, Me Neither - Part 3/3

3) Earthless: Live At The Roadburn Festival

2008, Tee Pee Records

If anyone from Teepee records ever reads this (secretly hoping it happens), how do you do it? How do you manage to be so endlessly right about the bands you sign? Sampler: Nebula, Assemble Head In Sunburst Sound, Ancestors, Sleep, Karma To Burn, High On Fire, Imaad Wasif, Titan, Weird Owl, Witch, Sweet Apple, Hopewel... They've been doing a nice job.

The one of interest here is Earthless. They probably listened to Agitation Free's At The Cliffs Of The River Rhine a bunch of times (or they should) because they share a few things: the abscence of vocals (although their cover of the Groundhog's "Cherry Red" proves that if they needed vocals, they could deliver them) and a fondness for epic sonic paintings. Where Earthless separates from the path drawn by their European musical forefathers is however quite obvious. Indeed, Earthless is a power trio of the best possible faction, where Agitation Free involved 5 members, including a couple of guitarists.

Therefore, it all falls on extremely inspired guitarist Isaiah Mitchell's shoulders to provide Earthless with the otherwordly sounds their band name calls for. The rhythm section will perfectly lock in on every tasty groove they find, with Mitchell first doubling the bass lines, then shooting off in inspired guitaristic tangents that are reminiscent not only of the overcopied Hendrix, Iommi and other Gilmours, but also of Manuel Göttsching's work in Ash Ra Tempel, Louis Dambra from Sir Lord Baltimore, or Ax Genrich (Guru Guru). His prolific use of delay combined with, let's admit it, glorious vacuum tube distortion, should also make the day of anyone with some taste for interesting guitar tones. 

The hour and thirty-one minutes of music on this double LP (each of which is one song) is, according to drummer Mario Rubalcaba, a "Heavy, Loud, Sonic mind melt". Which could let a few wonder if these three basement incense burners know where they're going.

They don't. 

...but if you were lost somewhere in between the Biir nebula and the Vyydbürnar constellation, would you have any idea where you want to go...?

Ian Abrahams' review (Spacerock Reviews) 

Allmusic Earthless page (no review for this album either) 

Soundweave's review copy-pasted from the Tee Pee release note (interesting links)

You weren't there, me neither: good thing someone recorded it.

JNCT
...

Live Albums: You Weren't There, Me Neither - Part 2/3

2) Spiritualized: Live At The Royal Albert Hall
1998, BMG Entertainment

 

If you are familiar with Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space (and you should be) you know what Spiritualized stands for. Anciently half of drone rock duo Spacemen 3 (the other is producing MGMT records...) Jason Pierce has been providing via Spiritualized music that will make anyone attracted by layered, electric and melodic yet powerful pop have an eargasm.

Starting with a four minute intro showcasing every instrument present in Jason Pierce beautifully chaotic idea of a band, the song (and every other one on this live record) segues into the next in a way that can just really be described as frictionless, sweet and beautiful. Seriously, imagine it like ice cream at the top of a mountain on a sunny summer day. That good.

If you had a vague idea of what crescendo means, let this band redefine it for you. This concert is an epic travel from a calm and soothing place to one where bashing your ears with oscillating organ sounds, walls of guitars and a rhythm section that makes every beat seem like you're being metronomically beaten by a baseball bat feels like a good thing, then go back to the blissful consonance of the beginning.

Lyrics are supposed to be mournful, drug induced laments about misery, spirituality and life (or something). To me, they just sound good. Pierce's voice has some mourning aspect to it, but what comes out of it in the end (for me, at least) is that underneath all the complaining Spiritualized is just trying to make some quite beautiful, and powerful, music. Not that far from Spacemen 3's sense of eternally going down in some musical abyss, Spiritualized nevertheless manages to come out of the hole the Spacemen were digging for themselves. And on this record, they do it gloriously: not by providing some grandiose climax, but by resolving the tension they accumulate through soothing fade-outs and ultimately, silence.

"You know I've been thinking about not coming down, 

You know I've been thinking about not coming down,  

You know I've been thinking about not coming down, 

You know I've been thinking about not coming down,

...

Allmusic review (4/5)

Shoegazer Alive post concerning this album

JNCT

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Live Albums: You Weren't There, Me Neither - Part 1/3

1) Agitation Free: Live At The Cliffs Of River Rhine (also called Live '74)

2008, Revisited Records

Mentioned in an earlier post, Agitation Free's Live At The Cliffs Of River Rhine (recorded live during a radio-concert at the WDR in Cologne, February 2, 1974) has a number of qualities that make it essential if you are at all interested in improvised or instrumental music. 

First of all, Agitation Free is a west-German outfit formed in 1967. According to Allmusic, "Agitation Free were a fixture of Berlin's art-rock scene, performing with like-minded bands such as Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul and Guru Guru". I'm not sure I approve of the "art-rock" term, but they definitely were part of an extremely active and productive scene that mostly took what the Anglophone world was doing at that time and made it... hmm... better. 

Have you ever listened to the Grateful Dead and thought... "this could be so much better if they just decided to not sing" or "that guitar solo was great... until it went farther than it should have" ? 

Well, there isn't a note on this record will not melt through your brain like butter on a warm toast. Where Led Zeppelin's "How The West Was Won" live sounds so good because they cranked the amps a tad and every song sounds approximately seventeen times more powerful than the studio version, Agitation Free stick to their clean studio sounds (if not turn the drive down a notch) and take you along a wordless ride from the German countryside to the Orion nebula. When they do, like my friend JB would say, "kick it into overdrive", such as on "Laila", you gain a new appreciation of what creamy saturation brings you. Some people use it on every song, its when you only use it from time to time that you realize how good it is.

"Throughout The Moods", the first song off this record, is a thirteen and a half minutes long jam that will not be found on any other Agitation Free record. Just for that, this album is worth hunting down (try Revisited Records) . Swirling keyboards, long bass notes, cymbal rattles... taking their time to introduce the mood their set is going to have, the Agitation slowly focuses over a slow drum groove, swirling oscillations on a synthesizer transforming this bucolic improvisation into an otherwordly combination (with every instrument progressively joining in on the smooth spaciness). Agitation Free is one of the few German bands from that era that truely deserved to be called Kosmische.

Orexis' review of this album

Agitation Free Allmusic page (no review for this album) 

JNCT

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