Deep Purple-In Rock

     Not even a week in and this blog was nearly ripped apart in a personally horrifying downward spiral of fartstep and "radio disney" covers of metal tunes...  Thank you Deep Purple for saving my musical spirit! Must be Jon Lord's C3 rippling down from the cosmos, guiding me back to where I belong. 
    
     In Rock ('70) issued a large change in the band's sound from their psychedelic rock style to a much louder, heavier, pioneering hard rock/metal sound that they would be known for decades later.  Everything about this formation of Deep Purple screams badass. Ritchie Blackmore(gtrs) and Jon Lord(orgn) are continually competing with each other to be the heaviest, or outdo the other through solo/improv sections ultimately pushing them to achieve the incredibly unique tones and techniques that make them work as such a great improv duo.  The arrival of vocalist Ian Gillan and bassist Roger Glover, (both from pop rock group Episode Six) as well as the incredible talent and youth of drummer Ian Paice certainly brought hard rock music of the time to it's loudest and most aggressive.
    Definite recommendations are of course Child in Time(featuring Gillan's incredible vocal range), Speed King(noting the character of Blackmore's unique guitar style),and Bloodsucker(coz it's a totally awesome studio track and includes some great competitive guitar/organ dueling).
Enjoy!

  

The Soft Machine-Bundles

Canterbury Scene
    
     I heard somewhere that putting on the Soft Machine will kill any party... Although I've never witnessed it myself, that may be a fair assumption having heard their first couple albums. A little bit disappointed considering they were pretty central in the Canterbury music scene through the 60's and 70's along with Wilde Flowers, Caravan, Camel, and Pink Floyd(60's), even performing briefly on Syd Barret's The Madcap Laughs as his backup band. And of course they were member swapping everyone from Andy Sommers(the Police) to Richard Sinclair and cousin Dave Sinclair who both appeared later in Camel. But something later in their career really clicked which I found to be quite cool.
     Somewhere around '73-'74 during one of their mass member swaps they ended up with this super badass lineup that included an additional keys/oboe/sax player and this fusion guitarist named Allan Holdsworth. They adopted much of that fusion sound, only unlike the American Jazz Fusion happening simultaneously, the Soft Machine as well as many bands the other side of the Atlantic, seemed to draw more influence from the classical music that was more traditional to the area. The result is some kind of fusion/prog hybrid and they definitely nailed it on Bundles.
     Check out this performance from the 1974 Montreux Jazz Festival.

King Crimson-Larks' Tongues in Aspic

Finding the Fuzz

     Was chatting Fuzz tones briefly last night in the Beresford porch while listening to Al Di Meola pull out some real nasty fuzztone melodies on Return to Forever's The Shadow of Lo. Craving more fuzz tone this morning, I couldn't help but throw on what I often refer to as my "favorite" King Crimson album, however that can quickly change based on which of their albums I listened to last.  This album does hold lots of my actual favorite fuzz tones though, between Fripp's thick gritty rhythm sounds, screeching leads, and Wetton's fuzzed out and punchy as hell bass tones, it certainly characterizes the majority of rock elements throughout the whole record.  Check it out in the less ambient sections of Larks' Tongues in Aspic(part1), Easy Money, and Larks' Tongues in Aspic(part2)
     All fuzz aside though, this album is absolutely fantastic, containing some gorgeous and spacious guitar led passages like Book of Saturday, even including some of their earlier more orchestral concepts (mellotrons!) in Exiles,  and dynamic improv in The Talking Drum.

   

Comus-First Utterance

First Blog Utterance
     Lp/Day is gonna happen like this now.  Even cooler than facebook don't ya think? I'll try to keep cataloged by date as this goes on too, so come back here whenever ya like to catch what will likely be lots of old prog, fusion, psychedelic, electronic, and folk music.

     Starting off right, with a pagan psych/folk band that only David Bowie could appreciate. "Comus", after the Greek god of chaos use pretty full instrumentation and on their first album entirely acoustic instruments with exception to a Fender bass but between many experimental sounds and techniques, wildly diverse vocal styles, some dark themes, and pagan influence this album hits pretty damn heavy. They released the album "First Utterance" in '71, disbanded shortly after only to reform a few years later, disband again, and out of obscurity reform nearly 40 years later for an Equinox Festival in the UK and a Prog Boat Festival in Sweden called Mellotronen. They've since released another album as well as some live material from '72?! I'm definitely hunting that down.

Comus-First Utterance