Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band - Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) 1978

Rest in peace, Mr. Donald Glen Vliet. Thank you for all the music you've left behind. I'm gonna go ahead and plug a bunch of your records.

I'm gonna give you my favorite of his later period stuff, and that's 1978's Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller). It's accessible but still arty as all hell; the band is a tightly knitted sweater of weird grooves, the Captain retains his trademark growl- it's considered his comeback album and has a bunch of leftovers from his more (dare I say) commercial attempts (Bluejeans and Moonbeams, etc...) that existed as instrumentals and snippets of songs that were given a full-on re-model here.

I'm gonna up his duet record with Zappa (Bongo Fury) in the next few days as well; it's probably the greatest record from the mid-70s (that gets better and better upon every listen). So without further ado; here's the Captain. 

Wherever you are, you are loved everywhere by music nerds like me...

Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band - Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller) (1978; Warner Bros. Records)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - The Classic Years

Taking their name from a Japanese documentary about an outlaw motorcycle gang, Montreal's Godspeed You! Black Emperor (often stylized as GY!BE) are to me the best example of the term Post-Rock; a sprawling, cinematic grandeur set to music. They evoke wind-swept and desolate plains in one movement, then on to a post-apocalyptic crumbling cityscape a few minutes later and then back to a dense and forested, seemingly endless orchestration piece after that; all in the confines of one song (sometimes lasting just short of half an hour).

Started in 1994 by Efrim Menuck (guitar), Mauro Pezzente (bass) and Mike Moya (guitar); GY!BE would undergo so many line-up changes and configurations, (sometimes up to 20 members would be performing on stage at one time) the number of credited members for most of their albums would settle somewhere around nine. Adding cellist Norsola Johnson, guitarist David Bryant, Thea Pratt on French horn, violinist Sophie Trudeau, Thierry Amar on bass, percussionists Aidan Girt & Bruce Cawdron, Grayson Walker on keys, James Daytron on guitar, bassist Gregory Borys, multi-instrumentalist James Chau, some guy named simply "Christophe" and guitarist Roger Tellier-Craig, the full scope and tenor of the band's sound would adapt itself around the strengths of the musicians involved.

To listen to GY!BE is an activity in and of itself; what they demand from the listener is unlike any other musical experience I've encountered before or since. I'm basically posting their entire discography here, save for their early cassette-only release All Lights Fucked on the Hairy Amp Drooling (from 1994) and the 2004 Tiny Silver Hammers EP. My favorite of theirs (and my second favorite album by any band of the new millennium) is Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven; it's an hour-and-a-half, four-song magnum opus that runs the gamut from chamber music and classical ensemble pieces interspersed with post-rock guitars and bombastic drumming, building to explosive crescendos replete with field recordings; all the while experimenting with drony textures and and ambient passages.

If you like any of these albums, please support this band by buying their records or checking out their current (or "side") project A Silver Mt. Zion...

f#a#oo (1997; Constellation Records)

Slow Riot For New Zerø Kanada (1999; Constellation Records)

Lift Yr. Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven (2000; Constellation Records)

Yanqui U.X.O. (2002; Constellation Records)

The Golden Palominos - The Golden Palominos (1983)

I'm obviously drawn to things in the avant vein, so when I see an album that has a bunch of previously featured Out Sounds artists, I most definitely sit up and take notice. Two members of the early-80's downtown New York collective known as The Golden Palominos have already gotten their due; you may remember my Passover-related John Zorn post, or my tribute to prepared guitar wizard (and Oakland resident) Fred Frith. Those two musicians, along with drummer/composer (and former member of seminal new wave band The Feelies) Anton Fier, bassist Bill Laswell (who I learned of through his more recent work with Tabla Beat Science) and guitarist/singer Arto Lindsay (of No Wave-legends DNA) came together in 1981 to create an experimental funk-rock-jazz band that borrowed greatly from the No Wave movement as well as the avant-garde music and performance art of that whole downtown scene.

Conceptually; it's one piece of music that is broken up into its constituent parts; stylistically it flows pretty seamlessly from one track to the next- it sounds like a highly structured jam session where the bass and drum interlock perfectly with Laswell and Fier creating a pocket in which all the soloists improvise their respective parts; Frith and Lindsay weave guitars around each other, sounding at times like buzz saws and electric drills and other times hashing out intense riffs. Zorn's sax is either bubbling just below or comes at you full-force in the face, and "guests" like Jamaaladeen Tacuma on bass, Nicky Skopelitis on guitar and percussionist David Moss are all featured on various tracks. Knowing a little something about the nature of the musicians involved, I can almost guarantee that none of it is really "structured" per se; all the artists involved have carved out huge followings for their improvisational skills.

Now to the "why this record is important"; it features the first turntable scratching (from turntablist M.E. Mitchell) outside of a hip-hop record- and it doesn't sound the least bit out of place. Remember, rap music was still pretty new in 1983, so to hear this outside of a Grandmaster Flash or Rammellzee record might catch ears as strange.

The Golden Palominos - The Golden Palominos (1983; Celluloid Records)

Red Krayola - The Parable of Arable Land (1967)

I rank this landmark record by Red Krayola right up there with the other classic psychedelic standout albums from that era; it might be one of the first "rock" records that was made up of purely free noise experiments. It sits directly in the middle ground between the free jazz of Albert Ayler and baroque folk of Love. More than half of the record is various versions of a Free Form Freak-Out, main Krayola Mayo Thompson basically invited about 50 people back to the studio where they were recording and told them to bang on things, wail like banshees, etc. to achieve the desired effect.

Changing their name from The Red Crayola (for obvious copyright infringements), guitarist/visual artist Thompson, drummer Frederick Barthelme and Steve Cunningham crafted an intense and sometimes scary psychedelic wonderland (they were once paid $10 to stop playing a show in Berkeley, of all places!) that was as much a visual trip as an auditory one, mixing music with art and blurring the line between audience and performer.

If you're looking to get into this awesome band from the psychedelic era; look no further than this- if you like it I'll probably be posting their follow-up records Coconut Hotel and God Bless The Red Krayola and All Who Sail With It. Enjoy!

Red Krayola - The Parable of Arable Land (1967; International Artists)

Glenn Branca - The Ascension (1981)

There's a Phillip Glass quote I found somewhere about Glenn Branca; something to the effect that "(he) has one foot in punk and the other in experimentation". That's a pretty apt descriptor of the whole No Wave scene in general, and here on Branca's debut solo record he explores sound via a four guitar army (one of which was Lee Ranaldo, who would go on to form Sonic Youth with another Branca disciple, Thurston Moore), played with a punk rock attitude.

Branca (along with Fred Frith) was an early pioneer of the use of prepared guitars, as well as exploring textures and "sheets of sound" through droning and repetition, alternate tunings and excessive volume. These "songs" on The Ascension aren't as much songs as the ideas (or "sketches") they represent, performed with all the above devices and effects. Under all that feedback and distortion there's an array of sounds and things going on that appear and re-appear upon subsequent listens. It's more or less an adventure.

Best when listened to loud; really, really loud...

Glenn Branca - The Ascension (1981; 99 Records)

-link opens to YouTube-

Butthole Surfers - Rembrandt Pussyhorse (1986)

This record feels like an accident. I mean that in the nicest way possible- it's a fractured, dissonant, psychotic blend of experimentation and noisy post-punk; going from odd piano-driven tracks about creeps to insane babbling mayhem to quiet, almost funereal organ dirges to funky-ass, down-home psychedelic dirt blues soul rock.

This is the missing link between all that late-'60s acid-damaged stuff like Beefheart, Syd Barrett-era Floyd and '70s satirists/experimenters The Residents and today's bands like Liars and Black Dice. You can file the Surfers somewhere midway in that lineage; at least their first three records. If you have any of that radio-friendly alternacrap stuff from the nineties (especially Electriclarryland) please smack yourself in the face.

I'd recommend listening to this album at full volume in a dark room.

Butthole Surfers - Rembrandt Pussyhorse (1986; Touch and Go Records)

This Heat - Deceit (1981)

First time I ever heard this record, I was really high. Like insanely paranoid and high. Needless to say, this album terrified the shit out of me. I vowed to never listen to it again.

I listened to it again years later, totally stone sober; I finally understood what it was This Heat was trying to do- completely deconstruct the layers of what can be considered a "song" and break it down to its basest, most common denominator: noise. Pure, awesome unadulterated noise (and its relative constituent parts). It's probably the most avant-garde and experimental of the whole early-'80s "post-punk" scene; that's probably why I love it so.

I hope you give it a chance to terrify the shit out of you too...

This Heat - Deceit (1981; Rough Trade Records)
-link opens to YouTube-

Tom Waits - Rain Dogs (1985)

This is another record I point folks to when they make the ridiculous claim that the '80s sucked as far as music is concerned. 

For every Toto, there's a band like The Replacements. 

For all the Foreigners, there's the Minutemens. 

For every Bryan Adams, there's a Tom Waits...

Tom Waits - Rain Dogs (1985; Island Records)

Can - The Classic Years

Can is the most under-rated band of all-time.

Probably for several reasons; one (the biggest) was that they weren't American (or even British), so they didn't have the luxury of over-exposure (they called Cologne, Germany their home-base). Had they been an American (or British) band, they'd have been as big as The Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd; as improvisers they were just as talented, and as far as locking into a groove; they were un-matched (stickman Jaki Leibezeit was like a human drum machine). They could be as funky as George Clinton's bands or as free as Sun Ra's Arkestra.

Before you shoot flames at me for not acknowledging original lead singer Malcolm Mooney's contributions (ironically he is from the United States), I'm choosing to focus on their three best albums, the ones with Japanese-born Damo Suzuki as their lead singer. He was a street poet that basically scat-sang, usually an unintelligible mix of English, Japanese and screaming.

Another reason they were so under-rated; they were so ahead of their time. Light years ahead. Just like their influences, The Velvet Underground, Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention, electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen; they were more or less misunderstood, another fact that hinders their recognition because again (god-dammit!) even those bands aren't as appreciated as they should be.

In terms of who they influenced, let's start with the entire Krautrock scene; Brian Eno's forays into ambient dream-scapes; all those post-punk bands (especially Mark E. Smith, penning the homage I Am Damo Suzuki on The Fall's This Nation's Saving Grace), P.I.L. (who collaborated with bassist Jah Wobble in the '80s), even Joy Division and Siouxsie Sioux have named Can as a primary influence. Other groundbreaking artists that kneel at the altar: Radiohead, David Bowie and Talking Heads.

If any of the aforementioned artists are on your list of favorites, and you've still never listened to Can, skip the rest of the reading and start listening to these records! 

Here's some neatly arranged bullet points to further assert my position in this essay:

• They were incorporating rock instrumentation into "World Music" before the term even existed, experimenting with tribal drum patterns, dub basslines and primal screaming.

• They spent hours in the studio recording then later going back and editing said sessions into "songs", the track Yoo Doo Right from the album Monster Movie was edited down from a 24-hour jam into a 20-minute song. This was all done by hand, called micro-editing; meticulously done with razor blades and splicing tape- I can only imagine the frustration (and the time involved) to cut down 24 hours of reel-to-reel to a twenty-minute edit.

• Bass player/engineer Holger Czukay studied under Stockhausen for three years, as well as keyboardist Irmin Schmidt- who was a well-established concert pianist/composer with the Vienna Symphony.

• Guitarist Michael Karoli was a classically trained cellist and violinist before picking up the six-string, even playing violin on a few albums (although uncredited).

• They more or less anticipated and influenced entire movements of music (see above).

I'm just going to say listen to the whole lot of these records, find them on vinyl, get the CDs, the re-issues, the remasters; three of the greatest albums of all-time...

Tago Mago (1971; United Artists)


Ege Bamyasi (1972; United Artists)


Future Days (1973; United Artists)

David Bowie - Low (1977)

When I first heard Low a few years ago, I didn;t know what to make of it. I was fresh off a serious early-era Bowie jag; the more glammy period starting with 1969's self-titled (re-issued in '72 as Space Oddity) up to the awful covers album Pin Ups from 1973. Then there's the next era, where Bowie transformed himself into a soul crooner called The Thin White Duke, experimenting with funk and R&B on Diamond Dogs through Station to Station.

This album is the start of the Berlin trilogy (Low, "Heroes" and Lodger) when David up and shipped himself off to Germany to rent a flat with Iggy Pop and get straight from the piles of coke he'd been snorting for most of the 1970s. It was a great idea, Bowie would not only put out two of his best records, he worked with Iggy on The Idiot and Lust For Life. 

Enter Brian Eno as well, he worked alongside Bowie with the second half of the record on the more ambient-based tracks (here as a musician and consultant to his friend, the actual producer role fell to Tony Visconti); this album is the synthesis of the whole Krautrock movement, listen to Tangerine Dream's Phaedra or Klaus Schulze's Timewind to get Bowie's inspiration.

So here's David Bowie's Low from 1977, an album totally ahead of its time...

David Bowie - Low (1977; RCA Records)

Pink Floyd - Ummagumma (1969)

I always thought this early version of Pink Floyd (right after Syd left) was the impetus for the whole Krautrock movement; listen to Can's Monster Movie or Faust's Faust or Amon Düül II's first two records and you'll hear what I mean.

This is as concept-driven as the idea of a "concept album" would allow; the first disc is four tracks from two live performances in late April and early May of '69, and the second disc has four "solo" albums that were recorded the following week. These solo records are interesting in that each member of the Floyd took on the role of band-leader (after Syd's departure, there was no clear "leader" of the Floyd camp, hence the following decade would be a bit of a creative push-and-shove between band members, tensions were instigated by Roger Waters and David Gilmour's insistence on being their leader) so it's interesting to see exactly where Pink Floyd was as a band here, and where they'd be going. Experimentally-inclined as always, it's a nice primer to the casual fan to see and hear what they were doing in the years leading up to Dark Side of the Moon.

This album was requested by my friend Martin, so here's Ummagumma in all of its glory, folks...

Pink Floyd - Ummagumma (1969; Harvest Records)

Brian Eno & David Byrne - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (1981)

Take Brian Eno's penchant for electronic experimentation and David Byrne's Afro-beat leanings and what you have is one of the more innovative records of the early '80s, it wasn't the first commercial music album to feature sampling, but it is considered landmark in its achievements. When asked if he invented sampling, Eno said in an interview:

"No, there was already a history of it. People such as (Can's) Holger Czukay had made experiments using IBM Dictaphones and short-wave radios and so on. The difference was, I suppose, that I decided to make it the lead vocal on the album My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts..."

(from Q Magazine, July 2001)

So there you go, an album that's both funky and ground-breaking. This is the 1990 re-issue, and missing from it is the track "Qu'ran" which was considered offensive to Muslims because it used real samples of recitations of the Islamic holy book, recorded in an Algerian mosque. In its place is the B-side to single The Jezebel Spirit, titled Very, Very Hungry.

Brian Eno & David Byrne - My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts (1981; Sire Records)

Fred Frith - Gravity (1981)

A friend of mine turned me on to Henry Cow a few months ago; I was immediately hooked. While doing some reading on them (as I do whenever I find a band I connect with, I have to instantly know everything about them; locations, times, most importantly band members and their backgrounds).

Thus enters Fred Frith- guitarist extraordinaire. After Henry Cow's first record, Frith recorded an album called Guitar Solos, at the time considered a landmark album because of his use of prepared guitars, the method in which items (screwdrivers in the case of Sonic Youth's Lee Ranaldo) are placed between the fretboard and strings. Frith would basically throw a capo on the guitar while adding a bridge at some random spot, in effect giving him two guitars in one. He then placed alligator clips all over the frets, making an infinite number of possibilities and sounds.

Here on Gravity, Frith's first record since Henry Cow broke up, he crafts a fully realized record, utilizing the Swedish band Samla Mammas Manna and American band The Muffins as his backing bands. What I hear is a wonderful pastiche, incorporating every type of music/rhythm/instruments/technology available at the time. Called an "avant-garde dance album" because it actually swings at the same time it confounds the listener; it's a must have for any music collector that considers themselves on this side of "weird". Local notes: Frith now resides here in Oakland and teaches music composition over at Mills College.

This version has some bonus tracks, as it's the re-issued version from 1991...

Fred Frith - Gravity (1980; Ralph Records)

Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996)

I'm pretty sure I was coerced into liking Stereolab, sometime in the mid '90s. Yeah, it was definitely one of those cute shop girls clerking at Repo Records in Rosemont, PA. You know how it is:

Me: Yeah, um, what's this playing now?

Repo chick: (glaring) Uhhh, hello... it's the new Stereolab...

Me: Oh... Cool.

Repo chick: Totally.

Me: ...

Repo chick: You should get it.

Me: I think I will.

Repo chick: Cool.

You see that? How she bullied me into buying Emperor Tomato Ketchup? Practically twisted my arm right there. It was totally worth it.

Anyway; the funniest thing I ever read about Stereolab said something to the effect that "this is what both Can and the Velvet Underground would have sounded like if they weren't so self-serious, had a half decent lead singer and their lead guitarists didn't totally suck." Ouch, buddy. I love both of those bands, but to be totally honest, you kind of got a point there...

Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996; Elektra Records)