2007: The Flying Luttenbachers - Incarceration by Abstraction
An artifact of neglected genius: that’s what we have here. After grinding The Flying Luttenbachers stone for 15 years, Weasel Walter has finally come to the conclusion that the band, concept, and their thoroughly impressive opus will never garner the attention or respect that they duly deserve. He was forever moving upwards and onwards to the ends of staying an outsider to any musical clique that might be burgeoning with popularity, yet was consistently praised by the audience he did have as an innovator and inspiration -- too completely absorbed in his vision to worry about his perception by his audience, peers, or even his collaborators. If you don’t dig it, hell, he’ll push forward without you. Another casualty of the oft-cited phenomenon of being too far ahead of one’s time.
I can only surmise that the rising tide of the internet’s proliferation of ever more and weirder music that has lifted so many boats, but failed to buoy that of the Luttenbachers, drove the final nail in their coffin. And what a shame, since those who are flooding in are surely aware of the cultural trope of the misunderstood genius. Truisms are truisms for a reason, and one is that some art is just too hard to swallow without the benefit of the mastication of several generations, even for the purportedly open-minded and adventurous.
What hath this neglect wrought? How about Weasel’s most succinct and accomplished compositions forced into the most awkward of arrangements? Having, to some extent, economically abandoned the project (probably out of deference to those that have performed and labored nigh-gratis previously on his recordings), Weasel’s only recourse for getting the music in the can was to revisit the arduous path taken on Systems Emerge From Complete Disorder and perform the entire work himself. Bear in mind that this is still a rock album, no matter how divergent from the mainstream predilection it may be. And rock music, even as cerebral as TFL's, thrives on syn-/en-ergy, and a massively overtracked recording is where both go to die. To wit, Weasel labels these “definitive solo versions of each piece… for the sake of documentation.” Not exactly the verbiage of transcendent rock power.
While not benefiting from any of the aural or psychic bleed of a live recording, Incarceration by Abstraction is entirely adequate. I first fell in love with The Luttenbachers to the sonically equivalent Systems, so to properly receptive ears, none of the brilliance should be lost. TFL has long been (since Infection and Decline, at least) an exercise in pitting the systematic and mechanical against the metaphysical and beautiful against the absurd and irreverent, but previous works have given precedent to each of these aspects in their own turn, whereas here, each is given equal treatment. In that respect, this certainly has the feel of an ambiguous end to a cycle, which is put to words in the first libretto of the cycle.
With any luck, it was the tidiness of this being a summary work that led to the cessation of TFL’s operations, and Weasel will revive the project. But rest assured, he trudges forward, constantly nudged from his beeline path, but never relenting, always paying lip service to having learned his lesson. Maybe this time he has, and he’ll focus on that for which there’s a receptive audience. But something tells me he is, at his core, a slave to his vision and might just be content to strive for greatness at the expense of happiness.
RIP The Flying Luttenbachers.
1. Assault On Apathy
2. Electrocution
3. Medusa
4. Violent Shade
5. Triplex (For Ed Rodriguez And Mick Barr)
6. Crypt Emission
7. The Serialization Of Cruelty
8. The First Time
Bee Gees - Odessa
Reviewing Odessa without sounding like a total fan boy is difficult, but not totally inappropriate. Before you take my gushing five-star review at face value, it should be mentioned that this boxset is directed toward die hard Bee Gees enthusiasts rather than the casual fan. Fair enough; this long-awaited collection gives an incredibly detailed look at one of the trippiest, most complex examples of soft AM pop ever. While the band's first three albums experimented with arrangements and were ambitious in their own right, Odessa shows The Bee Gees at their most far-reaching. With tentative titles such as Masterpeace and An American Opera, there’s no doubt they were thinking about the album as a whole, not just songs and singles. But despite the conceptualization, incredible songwriting, and a 'This is our album and we’ll do whatever the fuck we want’ sort of approach, Odessa has always been a dark horse next to albums like SF Sorrow, Sgt. Pepper's, and Days of Future Past.
Although their previous records shared a melancholic undercurrent, there are moments in Odessa that are downright devastating, forever raising the bar for sad music. The opening and title track, saturated in hallucinatory reverb, tangles a lost-at-sea story with a man's desperate attempt to contact an old love. Themes continue to spiral downward during the next three songs, with sinister lyrics like “It makes me laugh/ You’ve got no friends,” “I followed a river/ Where the dead man would lay” and “15 kids and a family on the skids/ I’ve got to go for a Sunday drive.” At the bottom of the well is “I Laugh in Your Face,” one of the darkest, most brutal soft-pop songs of all time.
Through a maze of oceanic analogies and cryptic portrayals of Americana (something they picked up after writing portions of the album in New York), The Bee Gees' revel in conflicting emotions. It’s all very obtuse, to say the least; the creative band/brother struggle that developed during Odessa’s making produce some significant stylistic leaps. And while a lot of double albums might have been more successful if condensed into a single LP, Odessa plays without any filler. Even the purely orchestral pieces, though slightly superfluous, lend themselves to an overall tone without sounding completely misguided.
It’s only natural that fans' expectations would be high after years of deluxe-treatment rumors. Fortunately, Odessa was put in the hands of reissue supervisor Andrew Sandoval, who obviously holds the album in very high regard, sparing no expense in creating the most detailed, bible version of the album. From the spot-on reproduction of the red velvet artwork to liner notes detailing where, when, and why each song was recorded, this three-disc version is about as comprehensive as we're going to get (especially given that the two living brothers, Robin and Barry, seem to ignore this phase of their careers.)
Disc one contains a remastered version of the album’s U.S. stereo pressing. Coming much closer to the original vinyl mix, it’s a vast improvement over the previous CD issue, which sounded washed out and loaded with tape hiss. The second disc contains the UK mono mix, which, although different from the U.S. version, is not as drastic as the opposing mixes from their first three albums. The bass thumps nicely and -- typical to mono mixes of the time -- the drums are heavier. The band is placed in the forefront, with ornamental orchestration used more as a backdrop than on the U.S. version. The mono mixes reveal that, at its core, Odessa is much looser than your typical Bee Gees album. It's an acoustic record in disguise, fairly casual and off the cuff, with guitar strings buzzing and double-tracked vocals often falling out of sync. Go mono!
Then there’s disc three, loaded with alternate takes and demos. We learn that naming their British ship “Veronica” was a rather arbitrary decision and that their homage to Thomas Edison used to be about some lady named Barbara. While songs like “Marley Purt Drive” don’t sound terribly different from their final mix, others (such as “Never Say Never,” which had an insane fuzz-guitar part erased in favor of more orchestration) are drastically different. On early mixes, psychedelic mellotron parts often sit on the surface, prior to being drowned out by live strings. It’s an amazing window into their creative process.
Unfortunately, all other versions of Odessa remain out of print. Long time fans should have nothing to complain about, while casual listeners will likely find this deluxe edition a little redundant. I can only hope newcomers are inspired to continue digging into the Bee Gees’ catalog. Following Odessa, Robin left the band and recorded his solo masterpiece, Robin’s Reign, which has never been officially released on CD. Barry and Maurice continued with the Bee Gees title, releasing Cucumber Castle, another great and undervalued record. Convincing them that Odessa is essential to music history seems like a tall order, but hopefully this reissue will remind them of how cool and complex they were before the leisure suits.
Disc 1 (stereo), Disc 2 (mono):
1. Odessa (City on the Black Sea)
2. You’ll Never See My Face Again
3. Black Diamond
4. Marley Purt Drive
5. Edison
6. Melody Fair
7. Suddenly
8. Whisper Whisper
9. Lamplight
10. Sound of Love
11. Give Your Best
12. Seven Seas Symphony
13. With All Nations (International Anthem)
14. I Laugh in Your Face
15. Never Say Never Again
16. First of May
17. The British Opera
Disc 3:
1. Odessa (demo)
2. You’ll Never See My Face Again (alternate mix)
3. Black Diamond (demo)
4. Marley Purt Drive (alternate mix)
5. Barbara Came to Stay
6. Edison (alternate mix)
7. Melody Fair (demo)
8. Melody Fair (alternate mix)
9. Suddenly (alternate mix)
10. Whisper Whisper – Part Two (alternate version)
11. Lamplight (demo)
12. Lamplight (alternate version)
13. Sound of Love (alternate mix)
14. Give Your Best (alternate mix)
15. Seven Seas Symphony (demo)
16. With All Nations (International Anthem) (vocal version)
17. I Laugh in Your Face (alternate mix)
18. Never Say Never Again (alternate mix)
19. First of May (demo)
20. First of May (alternate mix)
21. Nobody’s Someone
22. Pity
23. Odessa Promotional Spot
The Rolling Stones - The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus
For nearly 30 years, The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus was a legendary, unexperienced piece of pop detritus, cousin to Smile and Jerry Lewis’ holocaust movie The Clown That Cried. The project -- a big-top-themed concert featuring the Stones, The Who, Taj Mahal, John Lennon, and others -- was supposed to be shown on television, but was never broadcast. Reasons for its absence abound, but the most accepted theory is that Jagger and co. were unhappy with their performances and felt upstaged by their colleagues.
It’s a reasonable concern. The bands on the roster -- aside from the play-by-numbers Jethro Tull -- are in top form, especially The Who, who had just come off a tour and were about to unleash Tommy. They perform a blistering, fevered rendition of their classic mini-opera “A Quick One While He’s Away,” leaving the unrehearsed, creaky Stones outmatched.
Nonetheless, the headliners' scaled-back performance has definite appeal. It’s interesting to hear The Rolling Stones with a little less energy than usual and more interesting still to hear them perform for a small audience. After an introduction from John Lennon (in its entirety: “and now”), the band starts their set with “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” followed by “Parachute Woman,” “No Expectations,” “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” “Sympathy For The Devil,” and show closer “Salt of the Earth.” It’s a solid set, and if the rumor about the project’s shelving is true, it’s a shame the Stones didn’t have enough faith in their fans.
Elsewhere, the ’60s rock cameos come fast and furious: Marianne Faithful gorgeously singing “Something Better,” Jethro Tull phoning in “Song For Jeffrey,” Taj Mahal stomping through the murky funk of “Ain’t That a Lot of Love.” The best track, however, is also the most tossed off: a cover of the Beatles’ “Yer Blues” by a band called The Dirty Mac -- featuring Eric Clapton, Keith Richards, Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Lennon on vocals. The song sounds exactly like you’d imagine, with Lennon wailing his misery while Richards’ and Clapton’s notes bend within an inch of their lives. It’s the perfect song choice for these icons; if they had tried to tackle “Hey Jude” or “All You Need Is Love,” the result would have been a watered-down mess.
There’s nothing bad here, just minutiae -- a carnival orchestra, an itchy 12-bar blues with shrieking Yoko Ono vocals, and witty banter between rock stars. The concert doesn’t live up to its reputation, but it was never meant to be taken seriously. Instead, it’s an informal experiment in variety, a throwaway work by legends who regularly threw away legendary things.
1. Mick Jagger’s Introduction Of Rock and Roll Circus
2. Entry of the Gladiators – Circus Orchestra
3. Mick Jagger’s Introduction Of Jethro Tull
4. Song For Jeffrey – Jethro Tull
5. Keith Richards’ Introduction of The Who
6. A Quick One While He’s Away – The Who
7. Over The Waves – Rosas
8. Ain’t That A Lot Of Love – Taj Mahal
9. Charlie Watts’ Introduction Of Marianne Faithfull
10. Something Better – Marianne Faithfull
11. Mick Jagger and John Lennon’s Introduction Of The Dirty Mac
12. Yer Blues – The Dirty Mac
13. Whole Lotta Yoko – Yoko Ono & The Dirty Mac
14. Jumpin’ Jack Flash – The Rolling Stones
15. Parachute Woman – The Rolling Stones
16. No Expectations – The Rolling Stones
17. You Can’t Always Get What You Want – The Rolling Stones
18. Sympathy For The Devil – The Rolling Stones
19. Salt of the Earth – The Rolling Stones
Glenn Branca - The Ascension
At the New Music America Festival in 1982, John Cage attended a performance of Glenn Branca’s Indeterminate Activities of Resultant Masses. He was deeply troubled by what he heard, leading him to famously liken Branca to a fascist. As a matter of course, if an artist is able to provoke extreme disgust -- and particularly if the disgusted party happens to be the exalted father of American avant-garde music -- that artist probably has something going for him. Branca’s symphonies are still met with derision from certain quarters of the crusty classical coterie, but thanks in part to his association with the No Wave movement and Sonic Youth, his place in punk’s history books (they have those now!) is cemented.
The Ascension was written directly before Resultant Masses, when Branca was still playing rock clubs and working up the nerve to call himself a composer. Released on what’s widely considered to be the coolest record label of all time, 99 Records, The Ascension achieves a level of sophistication that even the most ambitious New York noise punks had only hinted at. Crossing the seemingly insurmountable divide between punk and classical, The Ascension stands apart from both traditions as simply essential 20th-century music.
Instead of offering my own account of an esoteric scene that died before I was born, I’ll defer to the recent throng of coffee table No Wave books (and at $29.99, you can’t call this cheap nihilism). The primary sources are probably more deserving of your time and money, though: Metal Machine Music, The Ramones, Brian Eno, No New York, minimalism, theater of cruelty, Rhys Chatham’s Guitar Trio, Branca’s own Theoretical Girls, and of course John Cale and The Velvet Underground. Branca’s piece managed to invoke the Lower East Side’s noisy cultural legacy while predicting the future of indie guitar rock.
Critic/martyr Lester Bangs once argued that the alien screeching of Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music was really just urban ambient music, “great in Midwestern suburbs, but kinda unnecessary in NYC.” That holds for the more extreme side of No Wave in general: It’s music to prove a point to, good for advancing passive violence on those around you, maybe attractive to Catholics with self-laceration complexes, but by design a moral and aesthetic dead end. Take The Velvet Underground's “Sister Ray” which after 15 minutes of hard fought perseverance finally succumbs to its insidious disease and degenerates into unadulterated white noise. The Ascension works the opposite way; it takes white noise and harnesses it to create something highly organized and possibly even life-affirming.
Branca begins “Lesson No. 2” with an agit-bass riff before his guitar army joins in, adding grinding and whirring feedback to his insistent pulse. It sounds like the rehearsal of a particularly tight and imaginative No Wave band. The tune runs its course and then derails; Branca’s shout-out and kiss-off to the scene that fostered his artistic development. It ends in crashes of cacophonous guitar executed with chilly precision on top of a steady drumbeat.
With a name borrowed from Situationist theory, “The Spectacular Commodity” initially continues the mood of cynicism and foreboding, a sonic depiction of industrialization’s corroding effect on the landscape and the human spirit. A monstrous chord rings out seven times in slow succession like the toll of church bells -- strident metallic chimes. Three guitars, each playing on a different octave, are accompanied by bass and drums as they work their way through a series of tempo changes, rave-ups, and blowouts. The musically untrained among us won’t understand everything that’s going on, and it makes no difference. It’s immediately discernible that, despite all the dissonance, each note played has its place in this 12-minute leviathan. At roughly 8:50, high, open-sounding chords begin to float above the grit, while the other two guitars drop in to perform exultant accompaniment. Climactic doesn’t begin to describe it. This could make the perfect soundtrack to Fritz Lang’s silent Metropolis or a triumphant battle tune for that fated day when humans will have to take up arms against the machines. Guitarists of the world, unite!
“Structure,” built on recurring noxious harmonics, is all suffocated aggression and claustrophobia (on a related note, the pointed song titles helpfully guide the listener’s free association responses to the work). The second side begins with “Light Fields (In Consonance),” which basically consists of one note, but garners its momentum through rhythmic interplay. The composition is somewhat reminiscent of Rhys Chatham’s 1977 “Guitar Trio,” which was probably the first piece to marry punk guitar with minimalist composition. However, Branca was no strict minimalist, and “Light Fields” suddenly becomes dynamic in its final two minutes, as the riffs begin shifting and climbing upwards until they reach the octave.
Last act “The Ascension” is as ambitious and lengthy as “The Spectacular Commodity,” though otherwise an entirely different beast. It's a less muscular and methodical buildup, relying largely on the overtones created by extreme guitar feedback (one can only imagine how loud and powerful this must have been live). You know how weird guitar sounds are always referred to as “ethereal” now? Well, here’s the blueprint. At times the center can barely hold and the song becomes almost completely abstract, yet during the last 30 seconds I would swear there were strings playing if I didn’t know better. It's like a redemptive response to the godless Metal Machine Music.
The sense of otherworldliness in “The Ascension” is created in part by the random disorienting nature of feedback, as well as the song’s Cage-ian silences and unpredictable tempos. Yet “The Spectacular Commodity” remains the show-stopper here for all the reasons Cage hated Branca’s work: its shattering volume, its triumphant romanticism and Wagnerian hulk. One of Cage’s misgivings was that too much of Branca’s own personality was in his work, and indeed The Ascension bares the heavy hand of its maker. When I want ego-less sound, though, I’ll just open my Brooklyn window or turn on my rain machine, thankyouverymuch. With both classical and rock, the listener’s sense of empowerment often comes vicariously through the artist. Like the paroxysmal art-punks in Robert Longo’s iconic Men in Cities series -- to which the striking cover art belongs -- sometimes we need the shock of loud, angular guitar to catalyze our own private liberation trip.
1. Lesson No. 2
2. The Spectacular Commodity
3. Structure
4. Light Fields (In Consonance)
5. The Ascension
Amon Düül II - Wolf City
Amon Düül II are perhaps best known as a krautrock band that grew out of a 1970s hippy commune in Munich. But dropping out of modern industrial society was always the farthest thing from their minds. Amon Düüll II wanted to change the world with their music, and for a long time they believed they would. "I never was a hippy!” recalls lead singer Renate Knaup in a 1996 interview with The Wire’s Edwin Pouncey. “I was a fighter. We were all fighters."
“Avant-garde” in the most literal sense, Amon Düül II hammered out their space rock jams at the frontlines of the 1968 student rebellions in Germany, providing a live soundtrack for protests and sit-ins and brandishing the slogan "everyone is a musician" -- a kind of youth-culture echo of artist Joseph Beuys’ "everyone is an artist." Like their more militant West German contemporaries (including the terrorist and strangely glamorized Red Army Faction), Amon Düül II seemed to blur the boundaries between politics and spectacle. But guitars and amplifiers were their weapons of choice, favoring group exaltation and expanded political awareness over bombs and bank robberies.
After splitting from what guitarist and songwriter John Weinzieri has called the “non-musical” members of the group, popularly known as Amon Düül I, the five remaining members set about creating a more traditional rock band. Although they never lost their taste for the long-winded group improvisations of the commune’s early years, their 1970s discography describes their evolution from a clan of wayward freedom-seekers into a mighty revolutionary unit.
With Wolf City (1973), their sixth album, the group yielded their most accessible offering to date and perhaps their most beautiful. The tracklisting alone signifies the overall tightening of their sound, with six out of the album’s seven tracks clocking in under six minutes. If the era of the 20-minute shamanistic freakout was over for Amon Düül II, this concentration of musical space left room for new vocal talent. And that talent was founding member Renate Knaup, whose stentorian alto had gradually crept its way up to the front of the mix, commanding enough to make even the most hard-nosed rock ‘n’ roller pick up a book of études.
People who believe overtly political art is bad art are usually not that far off the mark, but Wolf City steers clear of one important pitfall: though brimming with references to world hunger, economic imperialism, and prison reform, its structure is challenging enough to prevent it from descending into left-wing propaganda. As they leap between ice-slick bass grooves and explosions of rusty violin, loud-speaker diatribes, and German operettas, Amon Düül II pull off the kind of epic harmonic surprises that are usually found in classical music. We can hear this even in “Green- Bubble-Raincoated-Man,” the album’s most compulsively listenable number, where a simple chord change transforms a lockstep warrior chant into a cosmic guitar whirlwind.
For anyone who has ever wondered what it must have felt like to be in Germany or France during the late '60s and early '70s, Wolf City is probably a good place to start: the riffs on this album are positively blood-pumping, and it's hard not to feel like you are the edge of a historical precipice when you listen to it -- especially today. But Amon Düül were not looking for cheap thrills; more than rile up the masses, they reminded us that in order to bring about a change in attitude, music must also change the way we listen.
1. Surrounded by the Stars
2. Green-Bubble-Raincoated-Man
3. Jail-House-Frog
4. Wolf City
5. Wie der Wind am Ende einer Strasse
6. Deutsch Nepal
7. Sleepwalker’s Timeless Bridge
8. Kindermörderlied [bonus track]
9. Mystic Blutsturz [bonus track]
10. Düülirium [bonus track]
Preston School of Industry - All This Sounds Gas
When Pavement released the just-okay Terror Twilight in 1999, it was easy to believe the jig was up. The band had progressed from chaotic fuzz machines to slick popsters, and while the Twilight songs were catchy, they had little life in them. Pavement announced their breakup a year later, and it seemed things had run their course. Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus put out a self-titled debut in 2000, and the ensuing media blitz obscured Preston School of Industry, another post-Pavement band who released their first record six month later. The group’s leader was Scott Kannberg, a.k.a. Spiral Stairs, Pavement guitarist and songwriter.
The record in question, All This Sounds Gas, sounds great in 2009, and it must have sounded even better in 2001 to Pavement fans who feared all was lost. It’s certainly not a Pavement record -- there are few rough edges, and Kannberg’s voice is a little more melodic than Malkmus’ yelp -- but it has the let’s-make-a-record charm that made his old band’s best work so appealing. First track “Whalebones,” for example, is a slow burner with a distorted guitar line that sounds like it was taken from a Built To Spill B-side. It’s a perfectly solid lead-in to a perfectly solid record, and a good indication of things to come.
“Falling Away,” super catchy and breezy as hell, follows. Although it would have been better placed midway through the disc, it’s a pleasure to hear the track so early in the proceedings, as if Kannberg is confident he won’t need to pick up the pace later on. “A Treasure @ Silver Bank (This Dynasty’s For Real),” with its bright steel guitar and wood block percussion, is yet another winner; it reveals the reason you’ve been bobbing your head for the last eight minutes: Kannberg has a knack for emphasizing every downbeat, whether on electric guitar or what sounds like a J. Geils-circa-“Centerfold” organ. He knows what it takes to keep a song moving.
Some of the credit for All This Sounds Gas also goes to bassist Jon Erickson and drummer Andrew Borger, both of whom played with the Moore Brothers, another act anchored by melody and strong arrangements. Their clockwork rhythm section provides the perfect backdrop to Kannberg’s rugged guitars and relaxed vocals. In fact, the record works best when using the bass and drum’s momentum, so deeper cuts like “Doping For Gold” get where they’re going through pure gravity. The best songs on the record, such as the poppy “Solitaire,” pair that momentum with truly catchy instrumentation, and the results are wondrous. When this combination doesn’t happen, such as on the dark “History of the River,” the results are simply uninteresting.
Pavement’s mystique has only grown since the band broke up, and each Malkmus release is greeted -- sometimes deservedly, sometimes not -- with a flurry of Pitchfork news updates. Kannberg, however, deserves perhaps more attention for providing both his old band and Preston School of Industry with what every good act needs: focus.
1. Whalebones
2. Falling Away
3. A Treasure @ Silver Bank (This Dynasty’s For Real)
4. Encyclopedic Knowledge Of
5. History of the River
6. Doping For Gold
7. Solitaire
8. Blu Son
9. Monkey Heart and the Horses’ Leg
10. The Idea of Fires
11. Take a Stand/All This Sounds Gas
