"A Salty Dog" - Procol Harum (1969)

It all happened one beautiful Sunday afternoon in Beverly Hills. I walked into the Burberry boutique to view their fiendishly fashionable Prorsum line, and the first thing that hit me was “The Wreck of The Hesperus” by Procol Harum booming over the Burberry speaker system. So sweepingly cinematic, it brilliantly complimented the dramatically beautiful and quintessentially British Burberry fashions in the boutique. Matthew Fisher’s airy vocal melodiously drifted through the room, making us all feel as if we were out to sea, singing the maritime lyrics of Keith Reid:

“We’ll hoist a hand, becalmed upon a troubled sea

“Make haste to your funeral”, cries the valkyrie

We’ll hoist a hand or drown amidst this stormy sea

“Here lies a coffin”, cries the cemetery, “You will surely see”…

Majestic English horns blew fanfares while Robin Trower’s guitar conjured an endless seascape as 1,000 strings laid a melodious pattern of sheer ardor. I almost forgot I was supposed to be looking at the new Burberry Prorsum line.

It’s been an eternity since music had the power to transcend its environment, but then again I haven’t owned “A Salty Dog” in years. Although I enjoyed “Shine On Brightly” I forgot how unique “A Salty Dog” was, one of the great albums that never really received the attention it deserved.

Procol Harum released their third album in 1969, an album so eccentric, a much too British maritime-themed album that it turned American listeners away. 1969 was a year for outrageous album covers, i.e. Blind Faith, Trout Mask Replica, and the great Blodwyn Pig cover that still disturbs people, etc. “A Salty Dog” featured a take-off on the Player’s Navy Cut cigarette box; rather than show a respectable English sailor a shaggy gob of indeterminate origin wearing a cap with the name “Herod” stitched on top. That got my five dollars in a flash. I thought it was cooler looking than some ugly naked girl holding a toy plane, really.

Most of the tracks on the album are dirges, the most notable one being the title track, the lyrics articulating feelings of hopelessness on a restless and poorly charted sea. While the keyboards and strings play staccato minor notes, Gary Brooker sings mournfully,

“Across the straits, around the horn: how far can sailors fly?

A twisted path, our tortured course, and no one left alive…”

“We sailed for parts unknown to man, where ships come home to die,

No lofty peak, nor fortress bold, could match our captain’s eye…”

Ironically, while many of the songs allude to distress and despair aboard the ocean blue, the lyrics also define the despair of drug addiction. “The Devil Came From Kansas” reflects these feelings:

“There’s a monkey riding on my back, he’s been there for some time,

He says he knows me very well but he’s no friend of mine…”

“For the turning and the signpost and the road which takes you down,

To that pool inside the forest in whose waters I shall drown…”

While Gary Brooker leads a monkish sounding choir chanting the chorus, Robin Trower’s blistering metal guitar screams over a tattoo of tribal drums, setting this anti-Wizard of Oz fable in a tail-spin with descriptions of “a dark cloud just above us” and “for the sins of those departed and the ones about to go”.

The lost-at-sea analogy as drug damaged casualty is also expressed in the blues dirge of “Crucifiction Lane” (dig the pun):

“Tell the helmsman veer to starboard, bring this ship around to port,

And if the sea was not so salty I could sink instead of walk,

In case of passing strangers who are standing where I fell,

Tell the truth: you never knew me, and in truth it’s just as well”.

In spite of the fact that the tempo to every song is slow like the languid waves of a calm sea (with the exception of “Kansas” and “Hesperus”) there is enough sonic seafaring to keep the record from sounding like one monotonous moan. I don’t know why I set this one to the side, but I’m glad it’s back on my deck. And to think, a trip to Burberry Beverly Hills made it all possible. I wonder what they’re playing tonight?

All lyrics (c) 1969, Keith Reid (Onward Music)

The Out Sound of Psych Jazz

During the late Sixties/early Seventies the psych music scene opened up a jazz underground featuring bands like Blood, Sweat & Tears and the Chicago Transit Authority, who unraveled into some of the worst music ever recorded. One listen to a piece of dump like “Spinning Wheel” is as good evidence as you can get. Fortunately the European music scene had a much more exciting take on psych jazz that spawned many cool bands that only lasted a few years, but left us with some remarkable records. The fact that psych jazz has remained a virtually unheralded genre is a mystery to me, so let’s take a quick look at the best of the beast:

1. Chapter Three – Manfred Mann helmed this big band in between his English Invasion group and the Eighties-driven Earth Band. They only released two albums but the music has a seething, quiet intensity that’s compelling. The horn charts are simple to the point of being linear, but when they stretch out and solo all hell breaks loose. Recommended tracks are “Time” and “One Way Glass”. The whispery vocals wear thin after awhile, so it’s no surprise they had such a short shelf life.

2. The Flock – The only American band in the bunch (from Chicago, even), but pretty cool. Their big gimmick outside of having a badass biker looking-horn section was introducing Jerry Goodman on electric violin to the world. Fred Glicksman’s superfuzz acid-rock guitar is pretty amazing, too, but they veer into comedy territory when they employ opera falsetto backing vocals delivered with a scary earnestness. For coolness listen to “Store Bought Store Thought”, for comedy listen to “I Am The Tall Tree”. They also had the balls to take composing credit for The Kinks’ “Tired of Waiting” (complete with operatic falsetto backing vox!). Another band that lasted for two albums.

3. If – This band consisted of a bunch of session guys gone wild, so their music occasionally sounds like an orange juice commercial, but when they tear loose on “What Did I Say About The Box, Jack?” the horns twist and unravel like a bed of snakes. Their first album cover showing a bold, iron “IF” will forever be imprinted in my mind and sold the band for me. After two albums they went kinda snoozy fusion with the ugliest New Age LP artwork ever designed, so I recommend the first album only.

4. Nucleus – Ian Carr, ace British trumpeter, put together this great jazz band featuring Chris Spedding (!) on guitar. They’re heavily influenced by the new electric sound Miles Davis was toting in 1969 with a slightly rockier edge. Sans vocals, the band’s horn charts alternate from linear to complex. The great thing about the bands mentioned here is that they’re very democratic and allow every player to stretch out, a true rarity in these days of massive rock egos, so the soprano sax player gets to rip some scorching solos, too. “We’ll Talk About It Later” is the recommended album, actually once Chris Spedding left the coolness left with him. Big surprise.

5. Colosseum – Love the early records by Colosseum. If you can imagine Cream with a screeching organist and a wiggy sax player you get a basic idea of what these guys did. The Cream connection was completely intentional as their lyricist Pete Brown wrote many of their lyrics (the amazing “Jumping Off The Sun”) and they even covered Jack Bruce’s “Rope Ladder To The Moon” before he did. The band included the Ginger Baker-sounding Jon Hiseman (from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers) and the legendary Dick Heckstall-Smith (from the Graham Bond Organisation). Their version of “Bolero” is the only one I can listen to, and once you hear their art school meets carnival fairground sound you’ll be hooked.

6. John Mayall – For a few years John Mayall got tired of losing drummers, and they were too loud, anyway, so he dispensed with them for a few years. He added the excellent John Almond on sax and flute and created a completely original style of electric jazz-blues that was compelling. Around that time his lyrics were about fucking chicks in Laurel Canyon, fires in Laurel Canyon, getting stoned in Laurel Canyon, so imagine this weird, spooky music with hedonistic hippie words floating around, sort of a hippie Suicide. Guitarist Jon Mark and John Almond later formed a band with the same sound, but Mayall did it better. Because he’s John Mayall. Recommended is “The Turning Point”, and “California” is the best song, and there are many tunes about Laurel Canyon you can listen to, heh!

Several bands became famous and made millions playing their take on psych jazz but pretty much descended into blatant progressive rock, like Jethro Tull, The Soft Machine, and King Crimson, but for my money the marginal ones provided the best sounds you’ll hear. Enjoy.

The Burden of Being Eric Burdon

When I was a little boy I didn't know much about sex but the minute I heard "Boom Boom" by The Animals I thought it was the sexiest song I'd ever heard. I didn't know it was a heavily tarted up version of a John Lee Hooker song, all I know was that I felt the vibe the band projected, and I felt pretty funny all over at the time. "House of The Rising Sun" was their biggest hit, a very jazzy reading of an old Leadbelly folk tune that completely transcended the sharecropper fields by Eric Burdon's East End working class Angry Young Man voice. It definitely didn't end there!

"It's My Life" and "We Gotta Get Out Of This Place" were further raw slices of intense Albert Finney-style anger served by Mr. Burdon set to the jazziest organ in British rock. (Rod Argent of The Zombies was more classical than jazz to my ears). When Burdon drops to a baritone when he sings "I don't need your sympathy" in "Inside Looking Out" it gives me chills. His reading of Donovan's "Hey Gyp" makes more sense than the original, altering the original's "I don't need you sugar cube" to "I don't need your Cadillac, long, shiny, cool and black", pouring out more sex again. And let's not forget recalling his first sexual experience in "When I Was Young", "She was brown and I was pretty green".

Making the transition from Mod groovers to Psychedelic explorers has always been rough terrain for some bands (The Kinks, The Zombies, etc.) but for others like The Who it was a slam dunk. The Animals really took to psychedelia with sometimes hysterically bad results. Ironically, though it's really entertaining kitsch! "A Girl Named Sandoz" is a love song to acid with some tasty vibes, but then there's the cringe-worthy "San Franciscan Nights" with it's silly spoken introduction urging one and all to move to Haight-Ashbury. No matter how bad the lyrics Burdon sings with so much conviction you almost want to believe everything he sings. But common sense tells you not to.

"Winds of Change" is one of his name-drop tunes, where he tells us about the history of music, "Frank Zappa zapped...The Mamas and Papas knew where it's at". I'm not making this shit up! At least he roll calls jazz greats Dizzy Gillespie and Cozy Cole, so he's not just playing pop favorites. But the roll call continues with "Monterey" with it's Big Girl Lost in The Bigger City music stolen from The Mothers of Invention's "Call Any Vegetable" (Zappa produced an Animals album, so maybe he okayed it). The roll calls got sillier: "Hugh Masakela's music was black as night...His Majesty, Prince (Brian) Jones smiled as he moved through the crowd...Even the cops grooved with us".

If there's one thing that's unimpeachable about Burdon, it's the soulful sincerity of his music whether he's crooning a cool bluesy number like "Club A Go-Go" or goes tropical in "White Houses" ("you better get straight") or goes Disney African on us with "Spill The Wine". Whether he's at the top of his game or playing the migraine hipster Eric Burdon is never boring.

Stuff I Burned From TCM, Part 3

There are still a lot of great, super-worthy movies that have yet to see the light of day on DVD, and here are a few that I've been thrilled to rip and burn off the teevee set. Let's hope and pray these bad boys get released soon:

Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush (1967): Great psychedelic teen sex comedy from the UK starring the shrillest SOB in movies, Barry Evans. He dates a wide variety of "keen" birds, ranging from a horny church girl to a spoiled rich kid with a decadent upper crust family. Although his surroundings are drab the film gets kinetic the minute he hooks up with a new girl. The movie's notoriety exists from an excellent soundtrack featuring Traffic, the Spencer Davis Group and John's Children.

Manpower (1941): Directed by Raoul Walsh, this wild one's about two utility worker buddies played by Edward G. Robinson and George Raft, who bust up their indestructible friendship when they run across their co-workers' shady daughter, Marlene Dietrich. The movie's cool, but it's weird: all the power workers live in the same house together, just like the Monkees! Every time they need to fix power lines it's pissing rain outside.

The Man With My Face (1951): A guy returns from a business trip only to find his look-alike in his house, and his business partner and wife treat HIM like a stranger. The look-alike kicks him out and he turns to the ex-girlfriend he left behind to help him figure out how he got cut out of his own life! Weird stuff. The whole thing takes place in beautiful Puerto Rico, too, and features a hired killer who doesn't use a gun or knife but a killer Doberman Pinscher! Where do I find these nutty movies?

The Power (1968): All-star science fiction murder mystery produced by the great George Pal. George Hamilton works at a top-secret research laboratory where telekinetic killings occur to all of the members of his highly educated research team (which includes Michael Rennie, Suzanne Pleshette, Earl Holliman, Arthur O'Connell, etc.). There are some really amazing visuals that definitely titillate the psychedelic (there's that word again!) brain pan, especially in the last ten minutes, which have to be seen to be believed.