The Red Skull Pt. Three (Guitar Funeral)

So, this is part three of the ongoing feature here on this blog, The Red Skull. Which is basically just me reviewing albums that I stumble upon, or old favorites, or whatever. Whatever I want, I run this blog. I can do whatever I want. I am the boss, of me. Anyway, today I'm reviewing 13 by Blur. The last great guitar album. As of yet, at least. I'd really appreciate the return of the guitar album. Anyway, I'm of the opinion that this piece needs a lot of editing, and I'd appreciate if my best editor, Amanda would edit this for me. Amanda, if you're reading, go ahead and start taking notes.

The guitar album is dead. It's been dead for a while. I can take you to it's grave, where it got the proper British funeral that it so richly deserved. It's strange to think of Blur among their many facets, as a great guitar band. Graham Coxon really only got to stretch out and make his guitar float in defiance of gravity only on the last two albums he was on with the band. Now, rumor has it that Coxon is rejoining the band, and in honor of that, I thought I'd revisit one of my favorite albums of the late nineties, Blur's 13.

13 starts out with a prayer. That prayer turns into a hymn, then a revival. And so it goes, the blueprint for the rest of 13 is laid out in the gospel rock of the opening song, "Tender". Notably, this album's superhero, Graham Coxon takes the lead vocal on this song. Instead of sending his guitar into space, as he'll do in the rest of the album, he gently reveals a choir, urging him to "c'mon, get through it". There are parts of this album that feel like they may have touched the hem of the garment of other important British bands at the time, "Tender" drinks the water that is not from the well with Spiritualized. At times, Coxon's guitar heroics might sound like they're inspired by Radiohead, but inspired would be where it stops, and then it leaves on it's own path. Radiohead would go on to abandon the guitar, and Spiritualized would go on to beat that gospel horse into sand.

The "hit" of sorts from 13 was "Coffee & TV", which, I'll probably play at my wedding. It's an ode to simple domestic bliss, escaping the music biz and settling down, like a lost Kinks song. Coxon sings lead on this song as well. The song starts off with upbeat acoustic strumming, which leads into the closest to soloing that Coxon manages on this album. The melody never leaves the song, though. And a pretty little keyboard line straight out of "Something Else By The Kinks" buoys the guitar madness. The song's video features a little lost milk carton that makes it's way through the city. Until it meets the milk carton of it's dreams (who meets a tragic end).

When I say guitar album. What do I mean? Am I talking about killer solos? Nawh, not really. So if that's what you were thinking, that's probably why you were kinda put off by the whole last guitar album thing. You can hear people doing 20 minute solos with violin bows for the rest of your life. I'm talking guitar album in the vein of "Daydream Nation" or "Loveless" or "Band Of Gypsys" or Creedence's first self titled album. Where the guitar is doing something it shouldn't. The guitar is floating, the guitar is making eggs, the guitar is making you mix tapes. Somewhere on "Battle", I'm sure Coxon probably isn't even touching his guitar. But it's making a sound that's unnatural. It's floating, it's backwards, it's ephemeral, it's, it's beautiful.

The counterpoint of "Battle", and the counterpoint of rest of the album, really, is producer, William Orbit. Which seemed like an odd choice. Orbit was at the time, (and so far), famous for producing the reinvention of Madonna #6. The one where she got all gothic and techno. You know, the one with the birds. Orbit gives the album a slight techno/dub feel. Really messing with the drum sounds, echoing them straight into outerspace. This actually works out very well. I remember at the time, when this album was about to come out, and I read that Orbit was working on it. I was kinda flabbergasted. I was (and am) a gigantic fan of their previous self titled album. 13 towers over their previous work, though. It's a little cold, there's nothing you could dance to, or play in a hockey arena on 13. But that doesn't really matter does it? You can't dance to or play "Silver Rocket" in a hockey arena. Well, they should play "Silver Rocket" in a hockey arena. And yet we all love "Daydream Nation". Now, I know. I'm comparing the greatest album of the last 30 years to a Blur album, but, you know, so what. It's no worse than NME saying The Arctic Monkeys have one of the best British albums ever, in the league with Revolver and Let It Bleed and London Calling. But I digress.

Damon Albarn, lead singer, Gorilla, and general genre jumping miscreant, was depressed when this album came out. He'd just ended a long relationship, so I'm guessing that's how he allowed his oversized personality to get overshadowed by Coxon's guitar. His depression really hits on the final song of the album, "No Distance Left To Run". It's the saddest song in the Blur oeuvre. It's being totally crushed, and giving in. It's admiting defeat, and saying "I hope you're with someone who makes you feel safe in your sleep, tonight". It's like Issac Hayes singing "Walk On By" but, without the ability to even make that awesome "wahmp-wahmp" hook. Just utterly beat and downtrodden.

Then Gorillaz happened. After that, Albarn got his confidence back, and wanted more control, wanted Blur to be a dance rock band. So much so, that he hired Fatboy Slim to produce their next album. Coxon was as appalled by this decision as you and I are, and left the band. (Fatboy Slim only ended up producing 2 or 3 songs on Think Tank.) Now, rumors are abound that Coxon's rejoining Blur. What will that sound like? Good. That's what I'm banking on. Good.

The Red Skull Pt. Two (Coal Shoveller's Pub)

this is a continuation of my post from earlier in the day. i'll give you an overview of what i'm doing here. basically we get a ton of CDs every week. if they're not promos, they're things we get from my girlfriend, Amanda's store (Ed McKay's Used Books & More), or stuff we actually spend money on. It's all more than we can actually listen to in one sitting, so some fall through the cracks, get shelved and we forget about them. Maybe I find something under the passenger seat in the car, anyway, you get the picture. In the first part of this ongoing irregular feature, I talked about Kaleidoscope, a gypsy/psychedelic/blues/mid-eastern/jugband group from the late sixties L.A. Now, I'm going to focus on one of the weirdest Kinks albums ever, The Kinks Present A Soap Opera...

So, by this point, The Kinks are about to be reborn in a sort of phoenix like situation into a giant rock spectacle. Adding big eighties crunch to their workman pop music. They're about to go back to the arenas, momentarily lose their critical cache, and make big money. They're gonna start sounding more like the Van Halen cover than the original. Before this, at the moment of Soap Opera, though, Ray Davies was reportedly batshit crazy. Staging musicals, putting British actors squabbling with each other into his songs. And that kinda describes Soap Opera. It's a kinda crazy musical with actors talking over the songs in certain points. Definitely ambitious. And the songs are very good. The idea of a musical gives Davies licence to use horns and other colors to his palette. Davies pretty much takes control of this album. It's got his populist flavor and his giant ego.
Ray Davies has always wished that he was not a rich person. Constantly writing odes to the working class that he never was. By the time they were international sensations, The Kinks were teenagers. Maybe Ray saw his dad at the pub with some other coal shoveller, but he never shoveled coal himself. Guilt over not being mediocre shaped the majority of The Kinks output. Soap Opera takes this guilt, and makes it well, operatic.
There are some very good songs on here, these songs would be on your Kinks greatest hits if it weren't for the actors talking over the songs. "Ordinary People" would be right up there with "Victoria" and "Picture Book", "You Make It All Worthwhile" would be sitting next to "Oklahoma, U.S.A." as one of their greatest ballads, but damn. Damn those voice overs.
These voice overs make me think I'm listening to the soundtrack to Little Shop Of Horrors. Songs like "Rush Hour Blues" sound like Rock Horror Picture Show if it took place in a suburban English home instead of transsexual transylvania.
As I continue to write about this album, I begin to become more and more conflicted about it. I'm not sure if I like it now, after listening to it three times than I did the first time I listened to it. Then, I hear a line like "answering phones, and dictating letters, making decisions that affect no one" from "9 to 5" and I'm back on the other side of the fence. Then, damn, "When Work Is Over" comes in after that short ballad, and I'm sitting checking out my watch at a high school musical. I can at least hold to my first position that this is the weirdest Kinks album I've heard. One of the weirdest albums that any of the British Invasion Big Three put out.

The Red Skull Pt. One (Bacon From Mars)

This is the start of an irregular feature, The Red Skull. We take in more CDs than we can possibly listen to when we first get them at our house. The goal of this feature is to go through some of these things we've picked up. The ones we got because they looked interesting, then there's the myriad questionable promos Amanda receives. I'll write about the ones that really stand out. Or write about the ones that are straight up awfulness. Today's albums are a collection of songs by Kaleidoscope called Egyptian Candy, and The Kinks Present A Soap Opera.

A large scale dumping of garage rock collections fell upon Amanda's store last month, it's taken awhile to wade through everything. It's range from the sublime (the object of this piece, Kaleidoscope, The Blue Magoos, Mouse & The Traps) to the so-so (We The People) to the embarrassing (The Peanut Butter Conspiracy). Kaleidoscope was the last of the bunch that I listened to. As I had become accustomed to the hyperbole infected liner notes of these CDs, I didn't bat much of a lash at the grand claim that "despite releasing excellent albums, made the Velvet Underground look famous in comparison". Now, taken as a statement of fact, this is true. The Velvet Underground probably sold more records while they were together. But we can all tell by this statement that Scott Isler is trying to tell us that Kaleidoscope is more obscure and yet on the same level of greatness as Velvet Underground. I really couldn't believe the balls of this guy writing the liner notes.
Then I listened to the CD. It's no White Light/White Heat, but it is very, very good. I was weary of the band because of the obvious psychedelic signs that were all over the case of the CD. The name of the band, the swirly lines on the cover, titles like "Pulsating Dream" and "Keep Your Mind Open". I was getting ready for insipid rhymes and being told that opening my mind would lift the Pentagon etc. I was wrong in all of my assumptions.
Some of the melodies have that similarity to your general summer of love hippy-dippy bullshit. The band takes your mind off that very quickly. They twist "world music" into the Arthur Lee blueprint for acceptable psychedelic rock. Goddamn, I hate that term world music. Generally dismissing thousands of genres into one. Putting Fela Kuti next to Micheal Flatley. I understand that it's hard to organize shelves in a record store into "Afrobeat" "Celtic" "Reggae" "Klezmer" etc. would be near impossible, but "world music" is just godawfully dismissive. Anyway, completely got off subject there. I was talking about Kaleidoscope.
Kaleidoscope started out as a bluegrass band. You can hear that in melodies and songs like "Baldheaded End Of A Broom" and "Cuckoo". They mix all that in with instruments that I've never heard of before, like the oud, the doumbeg, and the saz. These foreign instruments rub elbows with distorted guitar drones and banjos and mandolins. This all creates a genuinely unique sound. David Feldthouse and David Lindley the guys who play all these instruments and were the main guys behind Kaleidoscope aren't squatters in other cultures either. They are actually proficient at these instruments, unlike the swarms of sitar players that popped up after Sgt. Pepper's came out.
This band is also up on that whole gypsy thing that is getting so popular in the indie rock circles now. They just happened to do it forty years earlier than Beirut or Devotchka. (Not to deride either of these bands, because I'm totally into this shit too, guys.)
They even get all Flying Burrito Brothers on us on "Life Will Pass You By" third singer Chris Darrow sounds like the doppelganger of Gram Parsons here. It sounds fantastic. It's jaunty with high plains lonesome three part harmonies.
On "You Don't Love Me" they get their guitars at a dirty Junior Kimbrough/Black Keys tone and get impossibly bluesy. As with most of the songs on this collection, there isn't a precedent for this sound on earlier tracks.
They reach their peak on "Beacon From Mars" with it's drone and melody that totally rips off "You Are My Sunshine" (in a good way). The song was originally titled "Bacon From Mars" which would have made it one of the greatest song titles ever. The blues element of this band surfaces again during this song. It's a dark 12 minutes, not a boring dark like the 18 minutes of Love's "Revelation" at the end of Da Capo.
Any of these songs could have served as a blueprint for a passable late sixties garage band that could be lamented and called the forefathers of punk/gypsy rock/space rock/alt country/the as yet not created cross between indie rock and jugband music... instead Kaleidoscope got all of these down. Achieving an eclectic nature that few bands were truly able to achieve.
So, Scott Isler, liner note author, you came the closest out of the fantastical post-Nuggets hype men have to the truth in your hyperbole. While none of the members of Kaleidoscope were as good as lyricists that Lou Reed used to be. They did hop genres as The Velvet Underground did, just on a different side of the street.


I ended up writing much more about Kaleidoscope than I thought I would, so I will return either later today, or tomorrow with my thoughts on The Kinks Present a Soap Opera.