American Prayer

Artsy but fun, Jim Morrison’s AMERICAN PRAYER was resurrected 7 years after his death. An amalgam of stories and poems that he recorded on his last birthday, AP is a literary experience more than just another Doors album. Which is why this album succeeds as what all the previous work only hinted at.

The “single’ from the album, a bouncy ditty called ”Awake“ actually serves as a great example of how wonderful of a poet Jim was.

awake
shake dreams from your hair
my pretty child
choose the day
the sign of your day

That’s the line that should have started their first album 11 years earlier. In fact, Oliver Stone borrowed heavily from this album for the soundtrack to his bio-pic THE DOORS, indicating subtly how well this era was documented as Jim sat alone in front of a mic on his final birthday…

ELP

Hearing Emerson, Lake and Palmer in 1984 was a unique opportunity. I missed the short-lived cult of Emerson, Lake and Powell in 1986 because I was too busy researching keyboardist Keith Emerson’s soundtracks and his work in the 60s with The Nice. All of his work tends to border on frightening. In particular the satanic “Tarkus” from the ELP album of the same name. A weird metaphor for the war machine, Tarkus is a hybrid of an armadillo and a tank. Blasting the countryside in a weirder comic strip inside the gatefold, Tarkus is hell-bent on something. I’ll never venture to guess what. All that aside, “Tarkus” takes us on a Stravinski-ish joy ride that captivates and mesmerizes. Spewing forth anti-war rhetoric and in-bashing of God and law, the song reads as a 20 minute credo to Keith’s early years in The Nice when he was arrested for flag-burning. This piece was a gorgeous live number and on the instrumental jam at the end Keith would often deliver a minimalist bleeping solo that predicted electronica. Later albums like TRILOGY and BRAIN SALAD SURGERY took on these pretensions to near nausea. TARKUS simply stands as one of the finest albums made in the 70s and is fairly responsible for the more experimental sides of bands like Phish and artists like Tori Amos.

The coolest story about ELP takes place in 1970 after the band premiered at The Isle Of Wight with so many other prog bands. Jimi Hendrix saw them and wanted Keith and bassist Greg Lake to join him and Jimi’s drummer Mitch Mitchell in a new version of the Experience. Keith and Greg were barely tempted and lost any interest when Jimi arrived with bodyguards at their hotel. All for the best. Isle of Wight was Jimi’s funeral dirge and a month or so later he od’d. They then went into the studio with drummer Carl Palmer and recorded their eponymous debut. It is also a strong album. Featuring the ever-shifting “Take A Pebble” and its excursions into camp sing-alongs and classical piano fury, it is a must have for serious prog listeners.

At this point, ELP were developing a wide-scale project based on Mussourgsky’s PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION. A 35-minute bastardization of the Russian masterpiece was blasted thru Moog’s, Theremins and wah-ed out basses as Carl Palmer pounded down the Cossacks. It was their second album. A live recording that presented the bravery and the naivete of prog rock in a glaring light. A flash bomb of rock excess, it pretty much created the synthesizer industry. The strongest aspect of most of these shows was the angelic voice of Greg Lake. Although Lake later flaked in his solo career, he was pretty much a cool guy in the 70s. Often floored by Keith’s eccentric ideas (he almost left over “Tarkus”) he provided fascinating bass lines under the weaving that was Keith’s keys. They then released the aforementioned TARKUS.

TRILOGY was the most accessible album. Featuring no songs longer than 8 minutes, it gives us Keith’s rawest organ in “Living Sin” and testifies to his ambidexterity in their remake of Copland’s “Hoedown”. Sweet songs like “In The Beginning” and the first part of the title track yield Greg’s best vocals. Harsh vocal imagery of killing police and dealing with two-timing women gives the album a weird street cred that isn’t prevalent in most prog.

BRAIN SALAD SURGERY is a case of eyes-bigger-than-the-stomach in many ways and foreshadowed a horror tour that cost more than Burma’s GNP. Featuring a whopper of a suite called “Karn Evil 9” that in a distorted tale of Christ and space wars we get to hear Keith Emerson squawk thru a vocoder as a vicious computer over a noise that was just too much. It could have worked. And in places it does. The second part of “Karn” features a jazzy piano trio that truly showed the band’s synergy. But everywhere else. It just flops.

The rest of their albums suck. Somehow prog turned into a Broadway glitz-out that validated punk beyond belief. I suspect coke and butt-sex got the best of them but who’s to say.

BUMBLEBEE MOUTH

 

I have often spoken of Jon Anderson’s bravery in reference to Yes’ TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS but certainly that torch was passed to Billy Corgan with The Smashing Pumpkins’ MELLON COLLIE AND THE INFINITE SADNESS. A sprawling 2 hour epic of a boyhood to manhood passage that requires study of CATCHER IN THE RYE, Billy goes ballistic with honesty and settles us down finally with bittersweet resolve. It is an exhausting trip. I always said that if John Denver had ever done an album with Rush this would have been it.

 

Musically the map is full of pins; starting with a plaintive piano excursion to heavy metal excess to Beatle-esque harmonies. The instrumentation matches the songwriting, which are both the finest example of the Pumpkins’ work. Lyrically we are treated to some of the finest yet bitter poetry since the first NIN album. Simply SADNESS must have been an excruciating project for Billy and the band. But the radio singles notwithstanding it is a fine success for art of our generation.

 

Wish I Was Ocean Size

I was 18 and thought music had ended. In 1988 the closest rock fair was Monsters of Rock with assholes like Dokken. Poor suburban kids had very little hope despite the craziness ensuing in LA with the odd looking dreadsters of Jane’s Addiction. It was a chance bus ride that exposed me to what saved my ears from hair metal and whiskey rock like Guns N’ Roses. Here was alternative hard rock. A progressive look at the seedy underworld of LA that rivaled bands like the Velvet Underground more than the shallow aerosol spray of bands who wanted to sleep all day and party all night.

This was a party. Don’t get me wrong. But instead of a gravel pit kegger it was a shaman’s feast. Perry Farrell’s elven voice guides us thru an ether of images, a seaspray of light that demands lifetime devotion.

The Nice

 

The Nice

Nice

Columbia 1969

 

 

Before the Taliban-esque iconoclasm of Emerson, Lake and Palmer came a sparser version of keyboardist Keith Emerson. His work with the Nice was the progressive egg before the chicken, but without the whirling orchestrals of his many moogs his first band actually is a completely different sound. Based more in organ blues and piano jazz than the fusion that prog rock often slayed us with in later years, this sometimes sounds more like the soundtrack to BARFLY than a Pink Floyd space escapade.

 

On this eponymous and obituarial album the band weaves us thru tales of empty days and great live versions of “Rondo” and Dylan’s “She Belongs To Me”. The subtleties are never squashed. Not a sentence I have ever used to review prog.

Wave After Wave

 

WAVE AFTER WAVE

 

by Maurice Doubleday

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When one hears “Jacob’s Ladder” from PERMANENT WAVES by Rush, one will feel obligated to hear more of this classic album. The title came from a pun on the term “new wave”…stating simply that as fads come and go, honest musicians will continue to remain important. This is the album’s theme in many ways. Stating that individual accomplishment is far more important than a mob in skinny ties, Rush ironically had their first radio hit with “The Spirit of Radio”. This song is actually a joke on radio programming but no-one got it at the time and played it endlessly. PERMANENT WAVES is certainly their strongest album. Embracing new songwriting brevity and yet unleashing the aforementioned “Jacob’s Ladder” and the grueling “Natural Science”. The balance of these 6 songs allowed Rush to experiment even more as the years went on. Embracing synth pop and reggae, Rush were nothing in the 80s like they were before. This of course was a blow to their hard core fans who wanted 20 minute songs about space travel, but relieving to others who thought they were painting themselves in a corner.

 

PERMANENT WAVES also stands as their finest lyrics. Stripped of Ayn Rand and sci-fi, lyricist/drummer Neil Peart began his true poetic work here. Expressing anger at the lack of respect and exposure they deserved after 6 years of touring and recording, the band felt it was time to eliminate their pure cult status and break out to more fans. This worked for them. Since WAVES each album has placed in the US Top Ten and the radio plays them like AC/DC or Led Zeppelin. But this does not imply any compromise on their part. The extreme changes the band has gone thru over the 25 years since this was released is proof. Going from heavy metal to British prog to synth pop and then back to a grungier, heavier sound. Rush has maintained relevance. Considering they opened for Uriah Heep in 1975, it is mind boggling.

 

Rush may never get into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, but they remain in the hearts and minds of each fan with more reverence than being introduced by Paul Schaffer with a statue.

 

 

The Thirteenth Step Is Relapse

 

THE THIRTEENTH STEP IS RELAPSE

 

by Maurice Doubleday

 

 

 

 

When your controlling Pentecostal mother dies it seems logical to write a song or two about it. But Maynard explored his mourning on A Perfect Circle’s THIRTEENTH STEP as a concept album as pained as any novella by Sartre and as honest as any drug travelogue by William S. Burroughs. Blatantly exploring the heroin culture and its suicidal by-product, Maynard sets the scene for a grimy LA filled with tortured souls and emaciated babes. In his boyish loneliness he seeks comfort in adult theme activity. The need for pain relief here outweighs your average Olympiad. It seems often that he is speaking to others. Referring to girls turning blue from od’s, friends that are “suicidal imbeciles”; Maynard is indeed speaking to himself. He gives characters he sees as himself his needs and troubles.

 

Musically, TS is a heavy Goth experiment nearly reminiscent of Killing Joke or Bauhaus, yet there are intense moments of rhythmic interplay that is also similar to bands like King Crimson. A prog Goth album isn’t a really new concept. Sisters of Mercy and The Cult spring to mind. But Maynard’s voice, a unique caw from some vengeful crow, separates the project from any of its musical forebears. In fact, this album truly includes his best vocals. On empowered tracks like “The Outsider” and “Pets”, we hear the Pentecost thru yelps of desperation. On “A Stranger” and “The Nurse Who Loved Me” we hear the cherubic boy saddened in a lonely pew.

 

There is certainly no real linear solution to this concept. It is more of a slice of life piece. But the images in conjunction more than suggest an exodus from this life. According to 12 step program members the 13th step is relapse. Sometimes one of those is linear enough.