Which is not to say, Relaxin'....nor with his quintet. On this day in 1969, Miles Davis released his first fusion album, In a Silent Way.  He'd started to go electric the previous year, on initially on Miles in the Sky and more so on Filles de Kilimanjaro. While it has some grooves and uptempo material, Silent Way is a fairly quiet album that doesn't feature any of the more jarring work that one finds on Bitches Brew , Live Evil , On the Corner or Get Up With It , nor does it rock like Jack Johnson . Today's playlist features the mellow cuts from Miles during 1969-1975 his early fusion period. The complete sessions boxed sets (Silent Way, BB, JJ, Corner) from allow for the undoing of some of Teo Macero's edits. For instance, "Orange Lady", with its sitars and tablas can be disaggregated from "Great Expectations" off of  Big Fun . Likewise, the blues vamp from the middle of "Go Ahead John" can stand on its own, although it s...

B.B. King once ranked him as his favorite of the British blues guitar players. An earlier post focused on some of his non-blues work from Then Pay On and the issued at around the same time. This one includes the rest of his compositions cut with the band as well as his signature solo track, "Supernatural."

Forty-five years ago this evening, Bob Marley and the Wailers played the second of two shows at the Lyceum in London. From that show came Live! ,  a scorcher,   a truly great live album. In fact, it may be the one Bob Marley album to have if you only have one Bob Marley album. Better than Legend  or Exodus ? Yep. Better than Rastaman Vibration ? Eh.....could be. And now, it's even better. The deluxe edition contains four more songs from that show, and ten songs from the previous night's show. Drawing from Natty Dread , Catch a Fire , Burnin' and an earlier Wailer's cut, each song...aside from, maybe, "Stir it Up", outshines its studio version. When played slow, they don't drag, they groove. When played faster, they don't sound rushed. Also included in the Deluxe Edition are ten of the songs played on the night of the 17th. It sounds just as good. Stir it Up might sound a bit rushed, hard to say. Below you'll find the studio versions o...

Early Fleetwood Mac. You probably know some of their songs through covers by Judas Preist, the Rezillos, and Santana. One of their earliest hits inspired the " Sun King " by the Beatles. You likely know some version of " Oh Well pt 1 ." You might know " pt 2 " ... a nice bit of spaghetti western soundtrackery which begins the playlist below. Most are familiar with at least one cut from the Bob Welch years. While the band was touring in support of Then Play On ,  Peter Green went to some commune on the outskirts of Munich where he took some really strong acid. Jeremy Spencer -guitar #2 - said that Danny Kirwan - guitar #3 -was there as well and that the acid caused both Peter's and Danny's faces to droop. The band's road manager says that only Green was there. Green remembers having a good time. Maybe it is like Woodstock. If you can remember who took the face-melting acid, you weren't there. In any event, Spencer said they were never th...

On this day in 1969, Brian Jones was found dead in his swimming pool. He'd been fired from the Rolling Stones, the band that he had founded and named, about a month earlier. While not an acid casualty, his drug abuse seemed to have played a role in his ouster. He wouldn't practice. He failed to show up in the studio. Sometimes the band would just unplug his amp when he did show up.... As the story goes, Brian had been dissatisfied with the commercial direction the band had been taking from, say, Satisfaction onward. He wanted the band to stay true to its R&B roots. Strange, that, as he was responsible for the marimba in "Under My Thumb," the sitar in "Paint it Black" and "Street Fighting Man." When the Stones return to their roots with Beggars Banquet he leaves most of the guitar playing to Keith. On Let it Bleed , he plays congas on one song, autoharp on another. On their least rootsy album, Their Satanic Majesties Request , he plays on e...

Probably the saddest of the acid casualties was the singer and frontman of the 13th Floor Elevators, Roky Erickson. We lost him just over a year ago. He and the other Elevators were open proponents of various psychedelics, deep in the heart of Texas. Roky himself purportedly dropped acid about 300 times. In 1968 he was hospitalized after an episode wherein he began speaking gibberish on stage. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia. In 1969 he was busted with a joint. In a move to dodge a 10-year prison term, he pleaded insanity and....um....won, subsequently being committed to a state psychiatric hospital. After several escape attempts, he was transferred to another facility where Nurse Ratched gave him shock therapy and Thorazine treatments. No lobotomy, thankfully, but he was released in 1974, a changed man. From then on, he labored in obscurity, producing a solid four albums worth your attention. Doug Sahm produced his first single release - "Two Headed Dog." CCR's...

Has there ever been a band that has collapsed as quickly as the Beach Boys did in the wake of "Good Vibrations?" Probably not, and they never really recovered, which is unfortunate. They produced some good music in the late '60s that moved them past their origins. For Brian Wilson, the pressure of trying to complete the SMiLE project and his use of psychedelics had brought on or exacerbated an underlying mental illness. Acid casualty #1. In May of 1967, he abandons the project and withdraws from the leadership of the band. The next three albums, Smiley Smile ,  Wild Honey  and Friends were recorded in his home studio. The swimming pool was drained and used for an echo chamber. A detuned piano placed in a sandbox in the living room (so he could twiddle his toes in it as he played). The cat did what cats do in sand. Gone are the songs about sun, fun, surfing and cars. The sound is stripped down and low-fi. With 1968's Friends , drummer brother Dennis emerges as no...

In June 1967 Moby Grape issued their debut album. It is one of the best albums you've never heard. They were a San Francisco band, usually discussed in conjunction with the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane. If you like "Golden Road" or "Cream Puff War" from the Dead's first album, you'll probably like this one. Why haven't you heard it? It's complicated. The band began when Jefferson Airplane dismissed their manager and drummer, Skip Spence. The pair found Bob Mosley from a San Diego outfit called the Misfits to play bass, Jerry Miller and Don Stevenson from Seatle band, the Frantics, on lead guitar and drums, Peter Lewis, a Hollywood kid and guitarist for the Cornells  was recruited and Spence moved over to guitar. All five members sang and wrote. The band was a hit in San Fransisco and got a good record deal, but then things went wrong. For starters, 10 of the album's 13 songs were simultaneously issued as the A and B-sides of ...

Or, if you like,  British (and Aussie) Skinny Tie, 1975-82 : guitar-driven power pop, late pub rock, proto and post-punk.  In some cases, the guitars are crunchier than the American variant, the lyrics dour. There is likely more keyboard or quirkier music. It's great for a drive, and at 8 hours, this one will take you 500 miles while the roads are still open, gas is cheap, and the BnB rooms still empty and discounted. Don't like a song? Wait two and a half minutes for the next.

June 5, 1975....45 years ago, Syd Barrett showed up in the studio, unannounced, during the recording of Wish You Were Here   announcing he was ready to do his bit. The band hadn't seen him in five or six years. He had shaved his head (like Pink in The Wall film) and put on a lot of weight. They didn't recognize him at first. He also brought a toothbrush and brushed his teeth while jumping up and down. It is one of the last sad, crazy Syd stories. After writing most of the first album, Syd only wrote one song to the follow-up and added some Zippo slide guitar to two of the others. After that, he made two solo albums. The Madcap Laughs , took over a year and three sets of sessions, produced, by Malcolm Jones, Peter Jones, and the last by Waters and Gilmore. The second, Barrett , was produced by Gilmore and Wright. Malcolm Jones tells a story of a lucid Syd, able to nail songs in one take. He expressed disbelief in the chaotic nature of parts of the album, insinuating tha...

Let's try to define it. It could cover a wide range of styles, but in this case, our focus is guitar-driven power pop from 1975 through 1982 or so. It was, primarily, an American (or North American, as there are some Canadians represented) form. In England, it seemed to bleed over into other genres: bubblegum and glam, punk, pub rock, and new wave. As a sub-genre, it seemed to consist primarily of acts who were, at best, bubbling under. Why? Who knows. There was certainly less deserving music taking up space on the airwaves: coprolites, opera men, yacht rock, down south jukers.... This stuff is made for summer and the road. I road tested these songs on a cross country trek earlier this week. My ears are still ringing...couldn't keep the volume down. While some of these bands were national acts - in part due to early MTV exposure - most seem to have been local or regional.  While I tried to make the list comprehensive, it is biased towards some of those local and region...

It's a great, overlooked album. With Phil May's passing, you should give the Pretty Things'  Parachute  a listen. If you like Big Star, Badfinger, Todd - especially  Something/Anything? , or the Raspberries, you'll like it. Same thing if you like the VU's  Loaded , especially the pretty parts. It should have had a presence on the airwaves. At the very least, it should have been - if not in my record collection - in that of a friend so I could have made a tape. It's not just a lost classic. It's unheard. It's not even like their previous album, S.F. Sorrow , or  Oar, or the VU & Nico , albums that people know about even if they haven't actually listened to them. Aside from a couple of longish numbers - it was 1970 - on side two, 6 of its 13 tunes clock in at under two minutes...strung together, almost as a medley. That such an album should go unnoticed for 50 years is bad enough. What they had to do to get by while recording it and  S....

With Little Richard's passing, my mind turned to Jerry Lee Lewis. Who would've thought that Jerry Lee would be the last man standing? He seems ornery, to be sure...and I guess he's tough. How tough? This concert shows it. By April 1964, when this was recorded, Jerry Lee was a washed-up has-been. They had all fallen. Eddie and Buddy had died. Chuck took an underage girl across state lines and was sent to prison. Johnny took pills. Elvis came out of the army, made silly movies, took pills, and - with her parents' permission - took an underage girl into his home where he looked over her moral upbringing. Jerry married a 13-year-old...his first cousin...once removed. I think he was taking pills too. The scandal destroyed him. He went from making $10,000 a night (in 1958 dollars) to $250 a night (in 1968 dollars).  One of those nights was captured here at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany. Yes, that Star Club. He's backed by the British Invasion pre-one-hit wonders, ...

He'll be missed. In Mystery Train, Greil Marcus writes about Little Richard's antics on The Dick Cavett Show. His segment runs from about 1:00 to 1:07...but he interjects himself throughout, expounding on life, love, art, and his big toe (at 1:18, 1:37-1:40 and 1:51). Ten years or so before this appearance, he'd been on the top of the charts. Then he walked away from it...to go to seminary school. He returned to show business, guesting in Catalina Caper, which MST3K film critic, Tom Servo, surmised was done while "whacked out on goofballs". Goofballs or no, he could still rock. For my part, I caught on at some point in the 80s, after hearing "Tutti Frutti" a soundtrack. I bought a cheap cassette of his Greatest Hits  at Woolworth's, not realizing until years later that it was from rerecordings, made in the 1960s for VeeJay. Normally, these are to be avoided, but not in this case. There is a murk and ragged feel...like Exile on Main...

We polled the Dadrock 101 editorial board as to why they don't listen to  Sandinista     as much as other Clash albums. "Too long." "I used too...guess it didn't stick." "It sucks." "Bullsh!t, it's great...the Mose Allison tune is a gem." It's not an easy album. How do you follow up on a specially priced,  meisterwerk   double album ? The Clash issued a stopgap compilation of odds and sods and then put out a triple. Why a triple? The story goes that they were peeved at the fact that while they had to fight with their record company to put out London Calling as a double. Did they have six sides of music? Yes, six shortish sides, but then they padded it. Five of the songs are doubled up with dub versions of some sort...one of them a backward tape with effects. Vital and riveting, to be sure. Mickey Dread, a girlfriend (on hiatus from Meatloaf gigs), an old friend, and the keyboard player's kids all contribute some g...

On this day in 1972, the Grateful Dead were between shows (the Hamburg and Paris) on their European tour, the tour that would produce the Europe '72 album. The band had a lot of new Garcia-Hunter compositions to record. The plan was for the resulting live album to pay for the tour...at least that's what they told their record company. It was my introduction to the band and remains my favorite Dead album because of the songs and the stories they tell rather than the jams. What does that make me? A fan? Certainly. A Deadhead? Who knows? Most of the songs on the original were altered in some way. Some had the tempo altered. Others received vocal or instrumental overdubs to cover blown notes or stray harmonies. Steven Seachrist researched and documented the alterations and overdubs done to prepare it and its sequel,  Europe '72 Vol. 2 ,  and you can read about them  here . This week's concert is not really a concert. Rather, it is the source songs that make up the a...

Today, April 28 in l978, Cheap Trick recorded the first of two shows from which  Cheap Trick at Budokan  was culled. Initially a Japanese only release, it proved a popular import and was released domestically in early l979. It was my first real album purchase aside from some Beatles and Beach Boy ‘Best Ofs” and...um... Paperlace (when I was 8). I remember the booklet that came with the album  ––  the lyrics were in English, there were some tour photos and everything else was written in Japanese. Five (and a half) of the album's lO songs were from  In Color . I read somewhere that the band wasn't happy with that LP's slick production, and wanted a do-over. It certainly worked with " I Want You to Want Me " and " Clock Strikes Ten "...the other three songs on this expanded version do not disappoint. Later, during the summer of '79, my dad took me and three friends to see Cheap Trick. The Pez Band (later Off Broadway ) opened up. Dad was over 4...

For this week's show we'll go back to April 26, 1971 , to the Young Vic Theatre in London. The Who had set up residence with free weekly shows to showcase the material that would make up the majority of Who's Next , which would be released in August. Most of the songs come from the Lifehouse project. A sci-fi rock opera concept wherein people don't leave the house due to pollution. Instead, they interact with the world through "the grid"....crazy, right? Pete Townshend....what a nutter! The whole thing could've made a double album, but eventually, they shaved it down to one disc's worth, with most of the extra tracks coming out as singles, Townshend  solo tracks , and cuts on the Odds and Sods release. The running order of songs, again, comes from Setlist.fm . Most of the songs were released on a super deluxe release of Who's Next (sorry, I can't keep track of which one). "Bony Moronie" is from the Thirty Years of Maximum R...

In 1983 Iggy recorded the title song to Repo Man . It's great: dynamic drums, droning guitar, driving bass, dumb lyrics. A Doorsy monologue in the middle about "the desert sand"....points to why he was once considered as Morrison's replacement...probably my favorite Iggy tune.... ....except for something off of the first  Stooges  album. That one sounds like midtempo Ramones- maybe  Subterranean Jungle   - or the Sex Pistols: crunchy and simple. The latter's cover of  " No Fun " - a b-side  - was on the mark. I didn't find the later albums as compelling. I guess  Funhouse   is an acquired taste....like a Nuggets garage band, devolving into noise and stretched out over an album.  Raw Power ,  The Idiot ,  and  Lust for Life  had their moments...but what if Iggy were to connect with a classic punk band? He did...well, kind of. Reading up on Repo Man: Steve Jones from the Pistols played guitar....Harrison and Burke fr...

With everything still closed, this week we take in the Velvet Undergound from San Fransisco's storied  Matrix  club, recorded on the venue's in-house 4-track machine in late November, 1969. I had thought to run one of these shows earlier, but which one? The band had been touring its third, eponymous , album and was in the midst of a residency at the club. They were playing two sets a night, and  The Complete Matrix Tapes  captures their shows from November 26th and 27th. The question is, which set? I sat down with the four of them on a long, cross-country drive this week and, honestly, you can't go wrong. We have four versions each of "Heroin", "Some Kinda Love" and "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together"; three apiece of "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "There She Goes Again"; and doubles of several others. Which is the best copy of each? With "Heroin", it's hard to tell...maybe the shortest on...