DAY 200.
The Stooges......................Fun House       (1970)








Opening up with a typical Iggy grunt, this album riffed along with tales of depravity, riots and drug abuse (sounds like my type of party,) and for me sounds as fresh and nasty today as it must have sounded 48 years ago.


"Fun House,"  from "Down On The Street" is blistering, with great piercing guitary bits from Ron Ashton, until we get to the title track and "L.A.Blues," "Fun House is way too long, and on this particular album I surprised myself by liking "Dirt" which comes in at 7:00 minutes, in fact I felt this was the best track on the album, Jesus, over 4 minutes and I like it, what's this book doing to me.


Summing up, some killer hooks and riffs, and thunderous drums supplied by the Asherton brothers, and Iggy Pop's ferocious, angry vocals, verging on primal screams thrown into the mix, you can't help but like it, luckily the two shit tracks are at the end of the album, which just means I'll have a shorter album to listen to when I buy It, this will be going into my collection.



Bits & Bobs;


Wrote a bit earlier in post #688 (if interested)



During the recording of the Stooges' second album, members of the band were introduced to heroin, which quickly took a heavy toll on the group. As the Stooges prepared to release their sophomore album, every member sank deeper into substance abuse (except for Ron Asheton, who became increasingly frustrated with his bandmates as instruments and gear were pawned to pay for drugs), and their excess eventually surfaced in their concerts, not only through Iggy's antics, but also in the fact that the band could barely keep a simple, two-chord riff afloat.


Fun House, an atonal barrage of avant noise, appeared in 1970 and, if it was even noticed, it earned generally negative reviews and sold even fewer copies than the debut, though it was belatedly hailed as a masterpiece. Following the commercial failure of Fun House, the Stooges essentially disintegrated, as Iggy sank deep into heroin addiction. At first, he did try to keep the Stooges afloat. Dave Alexander was fired after a lackluster performance at the 1970 Goose Lake Rock Festival, and Zeke Zettner took his place. In 1971, a new lineup of the Stooges emerged, with Ron Asheton and Bill Cheatham sharing duties on guitar, Zettner on bass, Scott Asheton on drums, and Iggy on vocals.


Several months later, Cheatham and Zettner quit the band, and James Williamson became the new Stooges guitarist, while Jimmy Recca joined as bassist. While live recordings exist of the Asheton/Williamson lineup, they never went into the studio, and for a spell the Stooges went dormant.



 

Going to have to post today and tomorrows albums now as I think my eldest hates me!


She's got 2 tickets for Morrisey tonight in Birmingham (don't ask) and muggins here has to take her, I don't mind Morrisey/Smiths music, but I can't stand his pontifications and really not looking forward to listening to him ranting inbetween numbers, but what's a Dad to do.


edit    I like to post on my PC or lap top, but wont be taking them, and the phone for me is a non starter, so will double up Wednesday night (weather permitting)

Last edited by arabchanter (27/2/2018 8:35 am)

DAY 203
Santana...........................Abraxas   (1970)







On the release of Abraxas "Rolling Stone" opined that Santana might do for Latin American music what Chuck Berry did for the blues

When the album rode to No 1. on the back of the tightest grooves the rock establishment had ever heard, it seemed even that prediction was somewhat modest.

I think the Paul McCartney album is in there solely because it is an ex Beatles' first, although I like @Maybe I'm Amazed' from it (but much moreso when done by the Faces).

Santana's Abraxas is a nice album.

And I'm a bit jealous of you seeing Morrissey, nuts as he is. I don't listen to rantings.

DAY 202.
Paul McCartney.......................McCartney    (1970)









Just finished listening to this one, and have to admit I've never been a great lover of McCartney as a solo artist, don't get me wrong, he's the consummate professional and I should imagine the songwriters, songwriter but I just found his solo albums would have one, maybe two outstanding tracks and the rest would be average at best.


Anyways, "McCartney" the album, was certainly average to my ears, "Maybe I'm Amazed" is the stand out track for me, but I don't think it's because it's a classic, because I don't think it is, I think it's because the others are very ordinary, it stands out.


As I hinted at before he's a very talented musician, indeed he plays all the instruments on this album, so if being a "big show aff" was part of my criteria for liking/buying an album this would be a shoo-in, but as it's not, it wont.




Bits & Bobs;



He originally played guitar for The Beatles, he switched to bass when Stu Sutcliffe left. John Lennon and George Harrison both refused to switch from guitar.


 
McCartney is the wealthiest rock star ever. His estimated worth over $1.5 Billion, and He is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the most successful musician and contemporary songwriter in history.


 
As a youngster, he loved old songs and show tunes.


 
He was married to Heather Mills, a former swimwear model and disabled-rights activist. Her leg was amputated below the knee in 1993 after she was hit by a police motorcycle. They divorced in 2006 - until then he was the only Beatle never to get divorced.


 
His mother Mary and wife Linda both died of breast cancer.


 
He handled logistics for The Beatles when their manager Brian Epstein died of a sleeping pill overdose in 1967.


 
 
In 1980, he spent 10 days in a Tokyo jail when he was caught at customs with a half-pound of marijuana. Said McCartney: "I knew I wouldn't be able to get anything to smoke over there. This stuff was too good to flush down the toilet, so I thought I'd take it with me." It was a life-changing event for McCartney, who broke up his band Wings soon after.


 
He enjoys painting, and has finished over 500 paintings.


 
His daughter Stella is a talented fashion designer.


 
He appeared on an episode of The Simpsons where he helps Lisa become a vegetarian.


 
McCartney is known for the "There are seven levels" controversy. When he and the other Beatles first started to experiment with drugs, McCartney got high one night and experienced a hallucination that he had to write down. When he awoke the next morning, he couldn't make heads or tails of what he had written down: "There are seven levels." Later research shows that there are seven philosophical levels of energy in the body, called Chakras. Was McCartney seeing the body's energies?


 
When the World Trade Center was hit on September 11, 2001, he was on a plane in New York about to take off. He stayed in New York that week and helped organize a benefit concert for victims of the tragedy the next month.


 
He is so strict about his vegetarianism that he insists his crew not eat meat either, at least while on the road with him. True to his vegan lifestyle, in the rider for his 2002 World Tour McCartney forbids meat and meat products to be served in the backstage area, as well as rooms to be set with furniture made of any animal skin or print even if it's artificial. He even demands a limousine with no leather seating. The ex-Beatles also has a rather detailed requirement about plants in the dressing rooms: "plants that are just as full on the bottom as the top such as palm, bamboo, peace lilies, etc. No tree trunks!"


 
In 1976, he bought the rights to all of Buddy Holly's music. He does not own the publishing rights to most of The Beatles songs because Michael Jackson outbid him for them.


 
His birth certificate garnered $20,000 at an auction.


 
He is left handed.


 
When the Beatles were breaking up in late 1969, Paul thought he was through as a recording artist. It never occurred to him to record as a solo artist or form a new band. It was his wife, Linda, who encouraged him to continue with making music. Paul has said that she used "tough love" to tell him to stop feeling sorry for himself and to make more music.


 
In the late '60s, rumors abounded that McCartney had died in a car crash and was replaced by a look-a-like. Some Beatles fans found innumerous clues in song lyrics and album covers to support the theory.


   
On March 17, 2008, Heather Mills was awarded 23.7 million pounds (about $47 million) in their divorce. Mills asked for much more, but wound up with more than the $32 million Paul had proposed. Mills was vilified in the British press for being opportunistic.


 
September 25, 2008 he played a show in Tel Aviv, his first concert in Israel. In 1965, The Beatles were scheduled to tour Israel, but their visas were canceled along with the tour.


 
When he first toured with his band Wings, he refused to play any Beatles songs. In later years, he included lots of Beatles tunes in his sets, and even used John Lennon's "Give Peace A Chance" at many of his shows.


 
Paul was inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame twice. Once in 1988 as a member of The Beatles and in 1999 as a solo artist.


 
His concert on April 21, 1990 at the Maracana Stadium in Rio set a new world record for attendance at a concert by a single artist when it drew 184,000 people. It was the last stop on his tour.


 
Paul McCartney wrote his first song, "I Lost My Little Girl", when he was 14 in 1956.


 
Paul McCartney played every instrument on his solo albums McCartney and McCartney II.




McCartney featured an assortment of tracks recorded at home and in the studio, featuring McCartney on all instruments, with the help of his wife Linda McCartney on harmonies. Several of the songs were Beatles-era rejects, such as "Junk," which was originally intended for the band's 1968 self-titled double set commonly known as "The White Album." Early versions of "Every Night," "Teddy Boy," and a snippet of "Maybe I'm Amazed" were also rehearsed by various members of the band during the next year's Let It Be sessions. The instrumental track "Hot As Sun," also performed during the January 1969 sessions, dated as far back as 1960.


 
Although Lennon had quietly quit the band the previous September, none of the Beatles said anything about the split publicly until McCartney issued a self-penned interview included in the press copies of album.




McCartney recalled how the press release issued with the reviewers copies of McCartney broke the news of the Beatles' breakup and the end of his partnership with John Lennon: "It was actually months after we'd broken up and no one was saying anything. And I was putting out a crazy little release, press release with the McCartney album, 'cause someone had said to me, 'We need some press on this, you better do something.' And I didn't want to sit down and be interviewed; I didn't feel secure enough to do that. So I said, 'Well, we'll make up a question and answer thing.' So I said to, actually it was (Beatles aide) Peter Brown, I said to him, 'Write me out a questionnaire of what you think they'd ask me.' So I just filled it all in, like a questionnaire. And it all came out weird. The press got it; it looked like I was trying to do a real number. John then thought, y'know, 'A-ha, he's done the announcement of the Beatles' split.' But, I mean, I thought months after, someone had better do it."




McCartney recalled the sessions in 1999 during the production of his Wingspan project, saying that, "Some of the songs on McCartney I had tried with the Beatles and they hadn't worked out. The Beatles were breaking up and nobody had any patience. . . So I thought, 'Right, I'll do it on my own.'"




McCartney explained that over the years, the original McCartney album -- which was recorded partially at home -- has become known as rock's first "indie" album: "It has got a sort of 'indie' thing. Y'know, its now what would be called an 'indie' thing. To me, then, it was just for me, knockin' around experimentin' with some sounds and not worrying how it was gonna turn out. I think that was one of the secrets. With this stuff it was like, I wasn't really doing it with anything in mind; it was only when I had a bunch of the songs together and people started to say, 'Well, that's your new album, is it?' 'I said, Well, not. . . no. . .' 'Well, it sounds like it.' And I was persuaded."




McCartney, who still performs "Maybe I''m Amazed" live in concert, admits that the song is a definite emotional period piece for him: "'Maybe I'm Amazed' sums up the time for me. Y'know, Linda and I had just got together and that song was my amazement at getting with this great girl. It just worked. I didn't really stress out over it. I just made this song up and thought of lyrics, like, y'know, 'hung me on a line,' 'pull(ed) me out of time,' and things -- just little phrases that occurred to me about this relationship."




The cover, which featured a symbolic photo of a bowl of spilled cherries, included the iconic back cover photo of McCartney holding his infant daughter Mary tucked into his jacket. The photo, along with the inner gatefold cover spread, underscored what McCartney claimed at the time was his ultimate message: "Home, family (and) love."




In 1999, Neil Young inducted McCartney into the Hall of Fame as a solo artist. During his speech, Young took the time to explain what he appreciated about McCartney's first solo album: "I loved that record because it was so simple. And there was so much to see and to hear, it was just Paul. There was no adornment at all, there was no echo, there was nothing. There was no attempt made to compete with things he'd already done. And so out he stepped from the shadow of the Beatles."




Although no singles were released from the album, "Maybe I'm Amazed" was regarded as an instant classic, gaining massive AM and FM radio airplay. In 1977, a live version of "Maybe I'm Amazed" peaked at Number 10 on the charts. Until recently, the song has nearly always opened the piano set of McCartney's concerts.




During Wings' final tour in 1979 McCartney finally debuted two of the McCartney album's standout tracks in the band's set lists incorporating full band arrangements on "Every Night" and "Hot As Sun."




McCartney revisited the McCartney album during his 1991 taping of MTV's Unplugged which featured "Every Night" and the live debuts of "That Would Be Something" and "Singalong Junk."




It would be a full decade before McCartney would release a true follow-up to the McCartney album. 1980's synth-oriented McCartney II, which included the studio version of McCartney's Number One hit "Coming Up," and peaked at Number Three on the album charts.




McCartney sold two million copies upon its release and topped the album charts for three weeks




Sadly, 28 years to the date of the album's release (April 17th, 1998) Linda McCartney died after a long bout with cancer. She and Paul had been married 29 years.
 

I really like 'the Madcap Laughs' particulary the track 'Golden hair'.

DAY 203
Santana...........................Abraxas   (1970)








That Santana boy's a bit special on the guitar is he no', really enjoyed this album, you can't not like an album that has "Samba Pa Ti,"  "Oye Como Va" and "Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen" on it, can you?


I realise Santana is a bit guitary, but I feel when he's playing he's actually going someplace with it, not like some of our previous guitar hero's.


I've always liked the Latin vibe, and this album has it in spades, in fact I enjoyed all the tracks, this album will be getting added to my collection asap.



Bits & Bobs;



The title of the album originates from a line in Hermann Hesse's book, Demian, quoted on the album's back cover: "We stood before it and began to freeze inside from the exertion. We questioned the painting, berated it, made love to it, prayed to it: We called it mother, called it whore and slut, called it our beloved, called it Abraxas...."



The group formed in the Latin District of San Francisco. They are named after group leader Carlos Santana, and were originally known as the Santana Blues Band. It's one of the few groups named after a guitarist in the band


 
They appeared at both the original and second Woodstock. Carlos was having a mescaline experience at the original Woodstock: "I was praying to God to keep me in time and in tune."


 
Carlos launched line of shoes at J.C. Penny in 2000. He did not design them, but they were supposed to be inspired by his music. Proceeds go to children's charities.


 
When Neal Schon entered the group, there was some controversy because he was white. Carlos Santana wanted to try a 2-guitar sound, and thought he was a great player, even though he didn't have a Latin heritage. Schon and Rolie formed Journey when they left the group.


 
When the band had some hits and became a popular live draw, some of the members started using drugs, and Carlos thought they were getting lazy at their shows. He briefly left the band, but rejoined them later on tour.


 
Carlos Santana had a huge resurgence when his 1999 album Supernatural was released. Pairing Carlos with popular young singers like Rob Thomas, Everlast and Dave Matthews was a winning combination, and made Santana relevant to a whole new generation. The album was the big winner at the 2000 Grammy Awards.


 
Some of Santana's early hits were new arrangements or adaptations of other artists' material: "Jingo" from Babatunde Olatunji, Willie Bobo's "Evil Ways," Tito Puente's "Oye Como Va," and Peter Green's "Black Magic Woman" (a big UK single for the late '60s Fleetwood Mac).


 
In addition to being husband and wife for 34 years, Carlos Santana and his wife, Deborah, have also owned businesses and started a children's charity, the Milagro Foundation, together. In late 2007, Deborah filed for divorce, citing "irreconcilable differences."



"Black Magic Woman/Gypsy Queen"


This was a hit for Santana, but few people know that this song is actually a cover of a 1968 Fleetwood Mac song that hit UK #37. Peter Green, who was a founding member of Fleetwood Mac, wrote the lyrics. The original's music sounds very similar to the sound Santana added on his version.


 
The 1:49 instrumental at the end is called "Gypsy Queen," and was written by Hungarian Jazz guitarist Gabor Szabo. It was omitted from the 1974 Greatest Hits album, even though radio stations usually play "Black Magic Woman" and "Gypsy Queen" as one song.


 
The original version is based on a blues song Peter Green wrote for Fleetwood Mac's first UK album called "I Loved Another Woman." Mick Fleetwood called the original version "Three minutes of sustain/reverb guitar with two exquisite solos from Peter."


 
The royalties generated by Santana's cover of this song helped sustain the song's writer, Peter Green, after he left Fleetwood Mac. Green gave most of his money away when he left the band, and would have found himself destitute later in the '70s if he didn't get cheques from his old hits.


 
After this was released, Peter Green befriended some people who were into black magic. In an interview with Cameron Crowe of Rolling Stone magazine, Christine McVie said these were the people who turned him on to acid, which led to Green leaving Fleetwood Mac.


 
Santana keybord player Gregg Rolie sang lead on this. He joined Journey in 1973.


 
For this song's solo, Santana played across the Latin rhythm on his Gibson Les Paul Special through the amp and rode the volume knob throughout the track to add sustain and distortion as required.




"Oye Como Va"

Salsa legend Tito Puente wrote this song and recorded it in the early '50s. While Puente was very popular in the Latin community, Santana's cover became a hit and helped introduce Puente to a wider audience. On Santana's version of the song, everything, including the guitar wails and keyboards, follow the original music.


 
The voice in the beginning says "Sabor," which is Spanish for "Flavor."


 
A "Mulata" is a woman ("Mulato" being a male) of Caucasian European and Negro African descent. The correct translation of the word "oye" is listen. The translation of the lyrics is thus: "Listen to my rhythm, good for fun, mulata!!"


 
Gregg Rolie, who sang on many of Santana's early hits, took the lead vocals on this song. Rolie was a founding member and keyboard player for Santana; he joined Journey in 1973.


 
The original version by Tito Puente was used in a commercial television advertisement campaign for Nissan.




Samba Pa Ti"

Translated into English, the song title means, "Samba for You."


 
Carlos Santana told Mojo magazine November 2008 that he felt that this was his first recording when he was truly able to express himself. He explained: "I remember being alone one evening- until then when I heard my records it was like seeing myself in the mirror and there was no me there, only a lot of other guitarists' faces: B.B., George Benson, Peter Green. That evening I heard Samba Pa Ti on the radio and I looked in the mirror and it was my face, my tone, my fingerprints, my identity, my uniqueness. Because when I recorded it I was thinking of nothing, it was just pure feeling. I have a suspicion it came from stuff bottled up inside me, that I didn't know how to express or articulate. I get angry because, 'Why can't I say what I really mean?' Then Samba Pa To comes out of me. And everybody understands it."


 
This was Santana's first entry in the UK singles chart, even though neither Santana nor their label deemed it single material when Abraxas was first released. However in 1974 it finally became available as a 45, as part of the UK promotion for a Santana greatest hits compilation.




"Mothers Daughter"



 Told from the first-person point of view, this is about a man who is tired of being mistreated by his girlfriend. At the end there's a twist... the man apparently had an affair with the girl's mother.

 
Gregg Rolie got sole credit for writing this song. From 1966 to 1972, almost all of his contributions to the band dealt with heartbreak and loneliness ("You Just Don't Care," "Hope You're Feeling Better")

arabchanter wrote:

arabchanter wrote:

Tek wrote:

I really like 'the Madcap Laughs' particulary the track 'Golden hair'.

Seemingly based on a James Joyce poem, "Lean Out Of The Window" it was the only track not written by Barrett, although he did write the music to accompany it.

Just read that back, I hope that didn't sound too cunty, it's just I like to know that kinda stuff, and thought you might be interested
 

​Not at all. I never knew that mate. Interesting piece of trivia.

​Could be wrong but was the album not produced by a certain David Gilmour?
 

DAY 204.
Syd Barrett..............................The Madcap Laughs     (1970)









Found this a pretty difficult album to sum up easily, on one hand I liked most of the tracks, but on the other hand I found even the up-tempo tracks had a thinly veiled undertone of sadness, paranoia and isolation.


There was only one song I really didn't take to and that was " No Good Trying" at first I couldn't put my finger on why, then I noticed that Robert Wyatt that bloke from Soft Machine is on this album, and you don't have to listen too intently to hear him fuckin' aboot with his Stylophone in the background (prick)


This for me was an interesting album, stripped back on most of the tracks which wont receive any arguments from me, I particularly liked "Here I Go", "Love You" and the poignant "Long Gone" also "Octopus" was fine track.


I wont be buying this album, as I don't think it would be played as often as it maybe should.



Bits & Bobs;

Syd Barrett, The Madcap Laughs: Wetherby Mansions, Earls Court Square'I know a mouse, and he hasn't got a house, I don't know why I call him Gerald.' So goes one of the lyrics to the Pink Floyd track ‘Bike’ from their debut album 'The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn’. Anyone who listens to that album knows that Syd Barrett had his radio tuned with a different aerial to the rest of us. But then he goes on to sing the sweetest refrain, ‘You’re the kind of girl who fits in with my world, I’ll give you anything, everything if you want things’.


 Sadly his aerial got bent and twisted out of shape thanks to a vast quantity of psychedelic drugs. His mind went haywire and he left / got kicked out of Pink Floyd.

 Barrett went onto record two solo albums, ‘The Madcap Laughs’ and ‘Barrett’. Both are extremely brutal recordings; the sound of a man wrestling with a very fragile and delicate state of mind. But they’re also honest and beautiful. Both albums were released in 1970 after which he became a recluse. His short recording career — spanning just three years — gave us songs that influenced people such as David Bowie, REM and Graham Coxon not to mention a style and look that has been copied ever since by musicians such as Serge from Kasabian and Robert Smith from The Cure.


 Pub quiz fact: The iconic photo on the cover of ‘The Madcap Returns’ was taken by Mick Rock who also gave us the covers to Lou Reed’s ‘Transformer’, The Stooges’ ‘Raw power’ and Queen’s ‘Queen II’ and ‘Sheer Heart Attack’.



 Barrett tried to join a religious sect before achieving success as a musician.



In the summer of 1965, as Barrett took his first steps into the music world with an embryonic Pink Floyd, he also began using psychedelic drugs with friends in the Cambridge intellectual coterie. The introspection induced by LSD and other consciousness-expanding substances led many in his circle to convert to a sect of Sikhism known as Sant Mat (literally "Path of the Saints"). Dating back to 13th-century India, the religion follows a strict moral code and principles of abstinence. "A lot of people of Syd's acquaintance were drawn quite hysterically, with massive enthusiasm, into it," recalled David Gale, a close friend of Barrett's


 One by one, young bohemians of Cambridge made pilgrimages to India and returned profoundly changed. "[They] came back home, cut their hair off, threw away their hippie clothes, got suits, got a job, became vegetarians, stopped drinking, smoking and taking drugs, married women of the same persuasion as them, only had sex for procreative purposes, were advised to be 'ordinary' and to keep their heads down," Gale continued.

 Barrett, who was anything but "ordinary," very nearly joined them. The 19-year-old traveled to a London hotel to become admitted by the sect's leader, a guru called Maharaj Charan Singh Ji – known as "the Master" by devotees. "He asked the Master and the Master said, 'I will not take an emotional request,'" says friend Andrew Rawlinson, a devout follower. "At that time it was very unusual for the Master to turn anybody down, but he did turn Syd down. He told him that his request to be initiated was emotional and not based on genuine spiritual research."


 By all accounts, the rejection crushed the young artist. Given Barrett's future mental health struggles, a simple drug-free life of structure and meditation might have been the best thing for him. But regardless of whether such a conversion would have saved the man's mind, it more than likely would have put a premature end to Syd Barrett: Rock Star.


 While the track "Arnold Layne" is chiefly remembered as the world's introduction to Pink Floyd, it's also notable as the only ode to an underwear bandit to ever hit the pop charts. The lyrics were inspired by an unknown fetishist who briefly ran amok in Cambridge, snatching women's undergarments from clothing lines – including the one in Roger Waters' backyard.


 "My mother and Syd's mother had students as lodgers," Waters said  "There was a girls' college up the road. So there were constantly great lines of bras and knickers on our washing lines and 'Arnold,' or whoever he was, had bits and pieces off our washing lines. They never caught him. He stopped doing it after things got too hot for him."
 Waters relayed the unusual story to Barrett, who was moved to immortalize the local eccentric in song. "I thought Arnold Layne was a nice name and fitted well into the music I had already composed," "Then I thought, 'Arnold must have a hobby,' and it went from there."


 Arnold's "strange hobby" of transvestitism proved too much for some, and the song was banned on the popular offshore radio station, Radio London. "'Arnold Layne' just happens to dig dressing up in women's clothing. A lot of people do – so let's face up to reality," said a defiant Barrett at the time.



By late 1967, Barrett's erratic behavior and general unreliability had made him a serious liability to the band. He spent many concerts strumming a single chord, slowly detuning his guitar until the strings went slack, or merely staring out of the crowd – if he bothered to show up at all. Given his increasingly tenuous mental state, the rest of the band deemed it necessary to hire David Gilmour, their longtime Cambridge friend, to fill in for Barrett onstage. Much as the Beach Boys had done with their similarly disturbed leader, Brian Wilson, Barrett was to be kept on as a studio member and primary composer.


 When Pink Floyd gathered in January 1968 for one of their first rehearsals as a quintet, Barrett shared a new composition he called "Have You Got It Yet?" The song sounded straightforward, but the band became confused as they tried to join in and learn the number. The melody and structure seemed to shift on each run-through, with Barrett gleefully singing a chorus of "Have you got it yet? Have you got it yet?" at them.

 Eventually they realized that Barrett was changing the arrangement each time, deliberately making the song impossible to learn. "We didn't get it for quite a long time," says Gilmour in Rob Chapman's book A Very Irregular Head. "I remember the moment and the song well. It was really just a 12-bar, but the responses were always in the wrong places according to Syd. Some parts of his brain were perfectly intact – his sense of humor being one of them."

Roger Waters also said "I actually thought there was something rather brilliant about it, like some kind of clever comedy. But eventually I just said, 'Oh, I've got it now,' and walked away." It would be Barrett's last practice session with Pink Floyd. The song was never recorded.



Syd Barrett's personal history can be hazy at the best of times, but the second half of the Seventies is a particularly dark period about which little is known. He bounced around several posh London hotels before ultimately establishing primarily residence at the upscale Chelsea Cloisters apartment complex. While there, he filled his days purchasing and discarding an enormous number of expensive items from Harrods.


 "The stuff he used to throw away was unbelievable," Ronnie Salmon, a caretaker at the Chelsea Cloisters, revealed to Rob Chapman. "One day from Harrods they delivered a Dynatron TV. It was worth about 800 pounds. He had it for two days and then called me up and said, 'Ronnie, can you take this away?' I said, 'What do you want me to do with it, Syd?' He said, 'Take it, keep it.' I had a guitar off him. Two Marshall amplifiers. The other porters got a bit jealous because he was giving me so much stuff."

 Eventually Barrett's money ran out and he retreated to his mother's home in Cambridge. A brief return to London for several weeks in 1982 allowed him to tie up loose ends before making his final exodus. He gave away furniture, televisions, guitars and even session tapes before packing a select few belongings into a small carrier bag. Leaving behind only a hamper of dirty laundry, the onetime pop star once again set out for his mother's house in Cambridge.

 This time, he made the 50-mile trek on foot. "I was not surprised at the time about him walking, he was capable of anything," his sister Rosemary Breen told Chapman. "I do remember he had some huge blisters on his feet that took a while to heal!" He reverted to using his birth name, Roger Barrett, effectively killing his rocker alter-ego for good.

 When he wasn't indulging his artistic pursuits, the retired rock icon could often be found hard at work on a variety of DIY projects. His semi-detached home, once shared with his late mother, became filled with alterations and makeshift furnishings that reflected the fractured mind of its sole inhabitant. Doorknobs were replaced with plastic toy hippos or pieces of square wood, and flimsy plywood shelves lined each room. Furniture was haphazardly painted garish hues, and floor tiles were a clashing mosaic of textures.


 "The house, he wrecked," said his sister . "Every wall would be painted a different color. The idea of painting a room with the same color was just nonsensical to him. I used to say to him, 'Do two walls the same color.' 'But why?' he'd say. 'They're all different walls.' The house was very colorful and anybody else would say it was a disaster. But that's how he liked it. We used to go to B&Q and Homebase and get all this wood endlessly and do lots of DIY projects, which were very funny. He used to laugh at them because they never worked at all."




The projects all possess a charmingly childlike simplicity. End tables, walking-stick stands, letter racks and workboxes were roughly nailed together with chipboard. Bits of wood were glued to legs of a stool in an aesthetically displeasing but functional attempt to add height. The effect is both goofy and poignant.Following Barrett's death in 2006, most of these items were auctioned off, fetching prices on par with relics. A homemade bread bin, described in the auction catalogue as "crudely constructed from sheets of plywood, screwed and glued together, the gaps filled with wood filler, with hinged fall front," netted 1,400 pounds. The auction raised 121,000 pounds in all, which the Barrett family donated to a scholarship for local art students.



 Considering Barrett's relatively slight musical output, the absence of "Vegetable Man" and "Scream Thy Last Scream" leaves a sizable hole in his canon. The former was penned in 1967 as a spontaneous response to manager Peter Jenner's request for a follow up to Pink Floyd's then-recent single, "See Emily Play." Though often interpreted as a self-portrait of his own mental disintegration, it actually vents his contempt for the vapid nature of fame and his own role as a pop star. Delivered with a sarcastic sneer, it's disturbingly direct in its anger.


 According to Jenner, the song was written in his apartment moments before leaving for the recording session. "On 'Vegetable Man,' the description of the person in there is him," he told author Rob Chapman. "What he was wearing, what he was becoming. I was with him in the room when he was writing it. He was in one corner and I was in the other. Then he read it out and it was a description of him and what was going on in his head."


 The track was recorded in the second week of October 1967 and earmarked as the band's third single, backed by another Barrett composition, "Scream Thy Last Scream." Promotional videos were recorded for both songs, but their release was canceled at the last minute for fear that they were too dark. Uncomfortable with the pointed lyrics and troubling imagery, the band also decided to leave both songs off their second album, 1968's A Saucerful of Secrets.


 Though Jenner admits that the songs expose Barrett's fragile psyche ("It's like psychological flashing," he once said), he's quick to argue in favor of their artistic merit. "I always thought they should be put out, so I let my copies be heard," he said in 2005. "I knew that Roger [Waters] would never let them out, or Dave [Gilmour]. They somehow felt they were a bit indecent, like putting out nude pictures of a famous actress. ... But I thought they were good songs and great pieces of art. They're disturbing, and not a lot of fun, but they're some of Syd's finest work – though God knows, I wouldn't wish anyone to go through what he's gone through to get to those songs."
 

Always liked The Madcap Laughs, maybe because it was trendy to like it. And some of the songs, to me, are fantastic, especially Octopus. Surprised Syd Barrett lived so long, given the amount of drugs he reportedly consumed, and his tortuous mental state.

And see the flute, it's not a terrible instrument, arabchanter, just because orangemen have hijacked it. Same as the poppy.

DAY 205.
Jethro Tull................................Aqualung    (1971)









Started listening to this last night, but gave up on track 7 "My God" when we were treated to a flute solo (how self indulgent is that), up to this point I didn't mind the flute too much as it was imo being used sparingly and mostly for rhythm,

When I resumed this morning, there was similar fare, I found this album ok, and lyrically if you read the lyrics as you listen, there is a pretty well crafted story there


Anyways, apart from the flutee shite, it was just about passable, but  can't see me ever purchasing one of their albums, this wont be going in my collection.


BTW Pat,  just watched a video of said band, and watched thon singer dancin' aboot like an eedjit, which for me only strengthens my thoughts on flutes and slappin'



Bits & Bobs;


They are named after an 18th century English agriculturalist. He invented a seed drill which planted seeds in rows. Before they adopted the name, they were known as "The Blades."


 
Along with David Bowie and Alice Cooper, Tull popularized "Theatrical Rock" during the 1970s.


 
They won the first ever Grammy for Best Hard Rock/Metal Performance in 1989 for Crest Of A Knave. Many Tull fans felt they did not belong in this category. When Metallica won the Grammy in that category in 1990, they were so upset for losing to Tull the year before that during their acceptance speech, one of them sarcastically said: "We would like to thank Jethro Tull for not being nominated this year."


 
Tony Iommi, one of the founders of Black Sabbath, was a member of Jethro Tull for two weeks in 1968. He played with them on The Rolling Stones' Rock 'n' Roll Circus special, which did not air because of poor performances, but was released on video in 1995.


 
They opened for Led Zeppelin on Zeppelin's first American tour. They also once opened for Pink Floyd.


 
For their 25th anniversary tour, they would select a member of the audience and seat them on a sofa onstage to watch the show.


 
From the late '70s until 2010, Anderson owned a salmon farm in Scotland, which helped defray some of the massive taxes levied in the UK on high earners. At its peak, it employed 400 people and was the largest independent producer of smoked salmon in the UK; one of its clients was London's department store, Harrod's.


 
Their first single, "Sunshine Day," mistakenly credited the band as "Jethro Toe."


 
When they released their first album in 1968, critics called them "the new Cream."


 Abrahams left the band to form Blodwyn Pig.


 
In 2004, David Palmer announced he had undergone a sex change operation and is now a woman known as Dee Palmer.


 
The London Symphony Orchestra covered many classic Tull tunes in the 1985 album A Classic Case: Music Of Jethro Tull.


 
In 1969, readers of the British magazine Melody Maker voted Jethro Tull the third best band - behind The Beatles and The Rolling Stones.



 
Because of the overwhelming critical lambasting that the album A Passion Play took, Ian Anderson announced in 1973 that he was going to retire as a musical performer.


 
Tull's second bassist,Jeffrey Hammond, took only a month to learn how to play the bass guitar before he joined the band.


 
Even though Tull did not play at 1969's Woodstock Festival, in the movie version of this event, one of
their songs from This Was can be heard blasting from the speakers.



In 1968, Tull's manager thought that they should take a different musical direction - he believed that Mick Abrahams should be the focus of the band and become it's frontman instead of Ian Anderson.



For several years in the 1970s, Led Zeppelin, ELP and Jethro Tull were voted the best instrumental bands in Playboy magazine's annual reader's music poll.



In the mid-'80s, Ian Anderson praised Thomas Dolby as an up-and-coming new musician and criticized the band Genesis for changing their style and, thus, "selling-out."



Bassist John Glascock died during open heart surgery. Ian Anderson would joke onstage that John's nickname was "Old brittle dick."



In 1973, they sold out three dates at the Los Angeles Forum in 1 1/2 hours, the fastest any show had sold out there. Another show was added.



Anderson learned to play the flute by listening to and imitating the music performed by jazz artist Roland Kirk. Asked by Uncut magazine why he took up the flute, Ian Anderson replied: "I decided to quit the guitar when I heard Eric Clapton in '66, early '67. I had a white Fender Stratocaster that I'd bought for £30 from Lemmy, when he was guitarist with Reverend Black And The Rocking Vicars. I part exchanged it for a flute and a Shure Unidyne 3 Mic."


Anderson added: "The flute was a whimsical moment of self-indulgence  (telt ye)  I wanted to find something to play that wasn't a part of the rock scene at the time. It sat gathering dust for about six months until I finally coaxed a note out of it in December '67 and by February 1968, Jethro Tull was born."




Ian Anderson is a morning person. He said "I wake up early in the morning. It's always good. Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night; in the middle of a period of sleep I'll suddenly wake up with an idea for a song or a line of music and run to the bathroom, scribble it down on a piece of paper, and leave it next to the toothpaste so I find it in the morning. But other times I just get up earlyish - 7 o'clock, whatever it might be - and try to be creative before the household awakes."



Anderson doesn't drive, saying he's "not temperamentally suited" for it.



"Aqualung"


This song deals with our reaction to the homeless population. Jethro Tull vocalist and flute player Ian Anderson wrote the song and called it "a guilt-ridden song of confusion about how you deal with beggars, the homeless." Elaborating in the 40th anniversary reissue of the album, he said, "It's about our reaction, of guilt, distaste, awkwardness and confusion, all these things that we feel when we're confronted with the reality of the homeless. You see someone who's clearly in desperate need of some help, whether it's a few coins or the contents of your wallet, and you blank them out. The more you live in that business-driven, commercially-driven lifestyle, you can just cease to see them.


 
In this song, Aqualung is a homeless man with poor hygiene. Ian Anderson wrote it about a character he made up based on actual photographs of transient men. Ian's wife at the time, Jennie, was an amateur photographer and had brought the pictures for Ian to look at. Many of the lyrics are Ian describing the men in the pictures.
Jennie also wrote a few lyrics to go with the pictures, which earned her a songwriting credit, so she receives half the royalties from the song. She and Anderson divorced in 1974.


 
This is Jethro Tull's most famous song, but it was not released as a single. "Because it was too long, it was too episodic, it starts off with a loud guitar riff and then goes into rather more laid back acoustic stuff. Led Zeppelin at the time, you know, they didn't release any singles. It was album tracks. And radio sharply divided between AM radio, which played the 3-minute pop hits, and FM radio where they played what they called deep cuts. You would go into a album and play the obscure, the longer, the more convoluted songs in that period of more developmental rock music. But that day is not really with us anymore, whether it be classic rock stations that do play some of that music, but they are thin on the ground, and they too know that they've got to keep it short and sharp and cheerful, and provide the blue blanket of familiar sounding music and get onto the next set of commercial breaks, because that's what pays the radio station costs of being on the air. So pragmatic rules apply."


 
An "Aqualung" is a portable breathing apparatus for divers. Anderson envisioned the homeless man getting that nickname because of breathing problems. He got the idea from watching a TV show called Sea Hunt, where there was a lot of heavy underwater breathing, and where the main character wore an Aqualung. What Anderson didn't know is that Aqualung was a brand name, and the Aqualung Corporation of North America took legal action after the album came out. The case was eventually dropped, but the threat of a lawsuit was troubling to Anderson.


 
The album cover was a watercolor painting of the character Aqualung created by the artist Burton Silverman. Jethro Tull's manager Terry Ellis commissioned him after seeing his work in Time magazine. Burton took some photos of Ian Anderson wearing his old overcoat before he painted the cover, and the resulting work looked a lot like a haggard version of Ian, who was not pleased with the painting. Despite Anderson's objections, the cover became an iconic image in rock, but it also resulted in another lawsuit over where the image could be used - Burton felt the band didn't have the rights to use it on T-shirts and other promotional materials.


 
The unusual audio effect you hear in this song is called "telephone burbles" where you remove all frequencies except for a narrow band around the 1,000 hertz mark. This is to reproduce the sound of a telephone. As Ian Anderson told us: "It's also like when you're addressing a crowd through a megaphone. Or even perhaps the tinny sound of a voice trumpet, which is a non-active megaphone. It's a form of address. It's the sound that woke up young pilots in 1941 and sent them into the skies to battle the Hun. This is the sound of the Tannoy, the calling to arms of young men going up in their Hurricanes and Spitfires. It's something that's very much part of the blood of an Englishman."


 
Like most songs on the album, this one has a cold ending. That's because Anderson knew he would have to perform these songs on stage, where he liked to have a definitive ending to a song rather than a fade out.


 
The character Aqualung is mentioned in another song on the album, "Cross-Eyed Mary," which is also a character Anderson created.


 
Martin Barre's solo in this song was rated #25 in Guitar World's 100 Greatest Guitar Solos reader's poll


 
This song is mentioned in the movie Anchorman after Will Ferrell plays a riff from it on his jazz flute and says, "Hey, Aqualung."



 Ian Anderson recorded a new version of this song, called "Aquafugue," with the Carducci Quartet for the 2017 album Jethro Tull: The String Quartets. He said: "There was never any flute on the original 'Aqualung' recording so this was written as a fugue, which means it doesn't repeat with the normal numbers of bars in it that you would find in the original recording. The idea of having the string quartet play it as a fugue to introduce it and then to kind of get into the obvious payoff rendition that the fans would recognize was a little bit of arts meets crafts. You know, the more creative approach to doing the fugue arrangement and then delivering the more artisan approach to the familiar elements that people know, including a bit of vocal just to sell it, I suppose.




But, you know, some of the songs are done in a more esoteric way. I think you've got to try and balance it up so that it's not all too clever. You've got to mix it up a little bit."   (what a sanctimonious dick)
 

 

Last edited by arabchanter (03/3/2018 12:38 pm)

arabchanter wrote:

DAY 205.
Jethro Tull................................Aqualung    (1971)



BTW Pat,  just watched a video of said band, and watched thon singer dancin' aboot like an eedjit, which for me only strengthens my thoughts on flutes and slappin'

 

That's 'showmanship!' 

I like the album, arabchanter, don't really bother about the meanings of songs and shit like that, Jethro Tull are a quite unique band, to me, with a sound others would struggle to match. They've never been a great favourite, but I always liked their tinky look.

Which brings me to a question: can you remember the Sleaz Band (from Dundee)? I recall seeing them a few times and being impressed by their raggy appearance. I'm even sure once they had dirty white clothes on which looked like they'd been daubed with sheep marker.

Great information about the Sleaz Band! Family and Jethro Tull as influences too: must have been in the dress sense, they stood out as extremely scruffy.

What sticks in my mind about them is the outdoor gig I saw them performing in their seemits and wellies, where they did a coordinated dance during a song, with high kicks and so on. And also, arabchanter, all the songs they played seemed quite short........ no huge guitar solos for example.

That list of bands they played with, lots of Scottish acts of the time which I saw too. Tear Gas went on to form the basis of SAHB, Dream Police had Hamish Stuart (future AWB) and another member went on to Marmalade. White Trash had Ronnie Leahy (Stone the Crows, Nazareth and more), the Stoics had Frankie Miller as vocalist for a time.

Great memories.