AMM 2021 Feature Album Day 4

 

Kahvas Jute were a heavy and loud blues based rock band, who made this one incredible album and then kinda went nowhere. The album is now highly collectable, and I wish I owned it. It was released in early 1971 on Infinity Records through Festival, and never scored a repress, so originals are scarce. It sounds incredible and the remaster on Aztec circa 2006 sounds brilliant. Bassist Bobby Daisley has a field day here, and so does teenage guitarist Tim Gaze. Gaze went on to re-join Tamam Shud after this album (he was in the Shud before he split to form Kahvas Jute) and Daisley went to England and played in Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne in the 80s, among many others since. 

100 LPs Shortlist #45: Big Brother and the Holding Company - "Cheap Thrills"

It's a rare album whose legend exists as much for the music as it does for its album cover. The second album by San Francisco's psych-rock legends Big Brother and the Holding Company features an iconic cover that is so rich in detail and so fascinating to look at that it almost eclipses the music.

How on earth did I ever find an album that was so far outside of my "time"? As a 90s teenager I found an out-of-print book chronicling the artwork of the album cover from the birth of rock and roll up until the late 1970s called "The Face of Rock and Roll" by Bruce Pollock and John Wagman. It was an LP album sized full colour illustrated book with a stack of fascinating looking album covers that one day I'd hoped to own or at least listen to the contents of.



All these years later I still haven't listened to them all. I haven't even found half of them to purchase yet. But I did find "Cheap Thrills". And it is an album for the ages.

After discovering Janis Joplin some 20-odd years after she'd died, via the "Pearl" LP, it was only natural that sooner or later I'd bump into Big Brother and the Holding Company. And of course, Janis' vocals in this record are the stuff of legend. They solidified her status as the most powerful vocalist of her generation.

Not bad for a record that ended up completely differently to the way it was supposed to be.

After releasing a very tame sounding LP on a tiny independent Jazz label Mainstream, after the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 major label A&R men started swarming around San Francisco looking for hip new bands. Columbia/CBS scored Big Brother, and they were quickly tasked with the job of making an album.

The original plan was supposed to be to release a compilation of tracks recorded during two nights of concerts at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, but the producer wasn't too fond of the sound of the tapes. They then tried working in the studio, but that didn't work out either. This was one of the most anticipated releases of 1968 and the media, the fans and the label were getting impatient so they released a mix of the best bits of the two - some studio, some live. From the seven tracks on the original LP, four were live, two were studio tracks and the remaining one was a studio track with a rowdy invited audience.

Columbia's then CEO Clive Davis wasn't overly happy with the album, but felt vindicated in his signing when the album hit the top of the US Billboard album charts, He especially singled out the cover of George Gershwin's "Summertime" as being a great way to get the "kids" interested in Gershwin's music again. Clive played it for Richard Rogers (one half of Rogers and Hammerstein) and he hated it. Go figure.

The long version of "Ball And Chain" is probably the one track that turned Janis into an immortal. If she never recorded another thing after this album, she would be forever regarded as one of the best. This live version is one of the most chilling and powerful performances on record. She gives 110% in this and every note comes from the core of her broken soul. Her pain is real on this: this is the most honest performance I've ever heard. I've seen it reduce people to tears, such is its power.

It could be debated how long Janis' voice would have lasted if she had lived. She sang above and beyond her physical capabilities every night, leaving no-one watching in any doubt that she had given everything of herself on stage that night. But how long would she last doing that?

One of the greatest albums of any era, and not just of its time. Great music is ageless and timeless and this album proves it - it sounds great almost 50 years after being recorded.

Take a listen below:

Vale Sam Andrew and Lesley Gore

In quick succession we have lost a couple of great musicians from the 1960s.



Sam Andrew, one time Janis Joplin sideman and founding member of San Francisco psychedelic pioneers Big Brother and the Holding Company has died at age 71 of complications following surgery for a heart attack.

He was one of the two guitarists in Big Brother and he was one of the main songwriters in the band, he left in 1969 when Janis left to start her own band. Once Janis' Kozmik Blues Band morphed into the Full Tilt Boogie band, Sam decamped back to Big Brother. The Big Brother imploded in 1972 and he continued to perform sporadically until a few months before his heart attach in late 2014.

His unique guitar style and contribution to rock music will be remembered, and he will be missed. Vale Sam.



Also today, 60s pop singer Lesley Gore passed on from Lung Cancer.



She was discovered at age 16 by none other than Quincy Jones, signed to Mercury records and then proceeded to make some of the more memorable singles in the early 1960s, such as "It's My Party", "Sunshine, Lollypops and Rainbows" and the early feminist anthem "You Don't Own Me".

Later in her career she wrote songs for other people and contributed songs to films such as "Fame", as well as making many television appearances.

Vale Lesley.

The Dave Miller Set - "Mr Guy Fawkes"

In the history of Australian Music there is always going to be someone who is all but forgotten about amid the rush to celebrate anniversaries and define legacies. It's hard to remember every musician who ever released a single, but the history of popular music created in this country is so deep and rich that inevitably someone is going to miss out.

The Dave Miller Set released a number of singles for Festival sub-label Spin between 1967 and 1970, pushing the barrow locally for Psychedelic music. They largely performed elongated covers of overseas hits, like "Get Together" by the Youngbloods and Chicago's "Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is?". However, their biggest success was taking an obscure album track by an odd British act and turning it into one of the defining psychedelic singles this country has ever seen.

The band took a track by a now-forgotten band called Eire Apparent (who apparently were championed initially by Jimi Hendrix). The song "Mr Guy Fawkes" was a strange experience in the hands of its original creators, the vocalist having a rather odd timbre to his voice. In the hands of Dave Miller and pop producer du jour Pat Aulton, it is a masterpiece.

Taking a slight left turn away from the typical sunshine-y psych pop, this song takes a melancholic, almost sinister edge to it, making for some compelling listening. As such, it is highly regarded as a classic freak-beat single in high demand for collectors (with the inseparable high prices that go along with it).

It sounds as though house producer Aulton threw every resource they had available at the time into the production of this track, almost as if to compete with Russell Morris' hit "The Real Thing" which was also released in 1969. Bomb blast sound effects, strings, phasing and flanging, you name it - its all on here, crammed into 4 and a half short minutes. Considering the very limited, 4-track mono recording equipment Festival Studios had to content with, the richness of the production is truly a marvel of audio engineering.

It is a strong arrangement, with plenty of instruments hogging the limelight, but the runaway star of the record is the bass player, who is running all over the fretboard for the entire record, creating counter-melody after counter-melody. The use of the strings is chilling, giving an extra dimension for added goosebump effect.

I discovered this song in 1991 in the resources of the music department at my high school. It completely fried my little teenage mind and it still sounds fresh today.

Take a listen below.

Vale Ray Manzarek, of the Doors

Ray Manzarek, keyboardist for the Doors, has passed away from Bile Duct cancer, aged 74.

A colleague of mine remarked this morning that he felt Ray was the "brains" of the band, and I cannot disagree with that. Too often the doors are considered by many to be the band with the wild, mysterious, charismatic frontman...and the other three dudes. However, it was Manzarek that encouraged Jim Morrison to try singing and to hear his songs. It was Ray who encouraged the band to go out and get gigs and to write their own music. And it was also Ray that carried on the band long after it probably should have...

Ray really was the soul of the Doors. He was certainly the most musically accomplished. The fact that he played two keyboards at once (a Fender Rhoads for the bass and a Vox Continental for the lead parts) speaks volumes. The band never had a bass player, so Ray filled in the bottom end. On their last two records however, they used a session musician to play bass guitar.

History has shown the band to be influential in developing the psychedelic sound more than any other band. By incorporating long, winding keyboard and guitar solos, swelling dynamics and deep, inscrutable poetry, their music defined an era and it opened up the possibilities as to what was possible on record.

Too often, The Doors mystique overshadows their contribution to music, thus defining their legacy beyond all else. Sadly, a lot of fans regard Jim Morrison as some sort of mystical pseudo-deity, celebrated for his good looks, wild behaviour, legendary drug diet, sweet tenor voice, incomprehendable poetry and ass-hugging leather pants. This is at the expense of the other three members. The fact is, without Ray Manzarek there probably wouldn't be a band at all. That we have such great music from the band is something we should be profusely thankful for.

Suggested listening:

The Doors have something of a chequered discography. They made a great start with their self titled LP, which is one of the rare records where critics universally regard as one of the greatest records ever made. The Follow-up album "Strange Days" was recorded with the leftover songs that didn't make the first album, and as such it can only be a pale imitation. The next two records "Waiting for the Sun" and "The Soft Parade" were somewhat mediocre - while not terrible, they're just not as strong as the first two. "Morrison Hotel" and "LA Woman" were much better, drawing heavily on their original blues influence while being a little less philosophical. Jim Morrison died within weeks of "LA Woman"'s release in 1971. Ray, Robbie and John kept the band alive for 2 dismal records "Other Voices" and "Full Circle" before limping towards the inevitable dissolution. 8 albums in total and one live LP ("Absolutely Live" in 1970) during their time together. But there have been many, many compilations drawn from those albums.

For those looking for a place to start, the best compilation is the 2007 Rhino release of "The Very Best of the Doors", which has remastered the original tapes in high definition sound for the first time ever. For the hardcore fans, you can hear bits and pieces in the mixes that you may have missed previously, or that weren't there before. Things like "Break On Through" is featured here with the middle-8 uncensored, a longer fade-out on "Hello I Love You" and Jim's previously subliminal expletives in the crescendo of "The End" are lightly louder in the mix. There's a few little bits of studio banter at the top and tail of some tracks, add to that "Light My Fire" is presented in its pitch corrected version (the original release and subsequent releases were pressed from masters played at the incorrect speed) but in general, the sound quality of this release is by far the best of any compilation in the band's catalog.

"The Very Best of the Doors" is featured below. Get your fix of Ray Manzarek's transcendent keyboard playing...and the Lizard King's poetry while you're there.

Vale Ray. Thanks for the tunes.