DAY 307.
Kraftwerk......................................Autobahn   (1974)















I owned this in the mid 70s, it really was like nothing I'd ever heard before, which meant not a lot of other people had heard it, which also meant get the album quick and try and be the cool dude in the playground, "Kraftwerk ? Yeah, been into them for a while. hope that don't get too commercial" you know that type of shit you talk when your 15/16, looking back I was probably only the cool dude in my dreams.



So to the album, side one almost twenty three minutes? what was I thinking back then? I have to be honest here, I actually still liked from the start to the finish, I also enjoyed the other tracks, "Kometenmelodie 1" ("Comet Melody 1") "Kometenmelodie 2" ("Comet Melody 2") also "Mitternacht" ("Midnight") and "Morgenspaziergang" ("Morning Walk") 


 The thing about this album is, for me at least, was it isn't really get your arse on the floor dancing music, nor was it anthemic sing-a-long fodder, in my humbles it was more of an excellent "get on wi' your jobs aroond the hoose" not background music, but proper good music, but music you don't have to listen to intently, if you missed a couple of minutes here or there, it really wouldn't spoil the plot.



 Whether nostalgia or just to have decent music that I can tune in and out of without feeling I'm missing out I don't know, but this album will be added at some point,





Bits & Bobs;




Kraftwerk is from Dusseldorf, Germany. Founding members Ralf Hutter and Florian Schnieder released an album in 1968 named Tone Float. It featured 5 experimental tracks, the longest of them being the 20:45 title track. The album is not in general release, and only a few original copies remain in circulation (be prepared to pay top dollar if you see one). The band's name at that stage was Kraftwerk-Organisation.


 
In 1970, Kraftwerk 1 was released, again featuring the two original members. It contained just 4 tracks, again quite experimental, but did contain signs of what was about to come in later releases. In 1971, Kraftwerk 2 was released, which again featured just the two original band members. It contained 6 more refined tracks, yet was still in the experimental stages of their development. "Kling Klang" was the longest of these tracks, running 17:36. In 1973 they released Ralf And Florian, a montage of 6 tracks that were more refined and structured.


 
In late 1973, Ralf and Florian were joined by 2 "electronic percussionists" in the form of Wolfgang Flur and Karl Bartos. The result was the now critically acclaimed Autobahn album, which was released in 1974. This album is heralded by many critics who consider it a landmark of electronic music. Bands like Depeche Mode, OMD, The Human League and Gary Numan have praised the album and cited it as an influence.


 
1975 saw the release of Kraftwerk's 6th album, Radioactivity, themed on the effects and activities of radio waves and radioactivity as a result of nuclear testing. This was a real "Statement" album with 12 tracks. The cover features a photo of a black old-time radio.


 
Their 1977 album Trans Europe Express helped launch Kraftwerk to popularity in Europe. The cover features for the first time, the 4 members of the band, dressed impeccably. They followed this up with their 1978 album The Man Machine, which included the first German #1 hit in the UK, "The Model," which became a hit when it was released as a double "A" side with "Computer Love" in 1981. The Man Machine also features Kraftwerk's first real attempt at a "Love" song: "Neon Lights." Other tracks from this album include "Spacelab," "Metropolis," "The Man Machine" and "Robots." The album cover again features all of the members, standing on a stairwell, dressed very strikingly in red shirts with black ties.


 
At at time when home computers and electronic technology was in it's infancy, Kraftwerk's 1981 album Computer World introduced the world to computer technobabble, which many critics considered way ahead of its time. The album featured "Pocket Calculator" and the title track, which has been used on many occasions as background or title music for television programs, most notably Tomorrow's World on the BBC. The album, yellow in color, featuring a graphic design of a home PC with the band members faces on the screen, was an experiment with sounds and languages.


 
After a gap of 5 years, Kraftwerk released Electric Cafe, featuring the track "Music Non-Stop," which brought them another UK hit. This album wasn't received well by the critics as it wandered too far away from Kraftwerk's melodic tunes.


 
Kraftwerk The Mix, released in 1991, features remixes of most of their earlier works.


 
Their single "Tour De France" was released in 1997, but it did not appear on an album until 2003, when Kraftwerk finally released Tour De France as their first studio album in over 12 years. It features 3 remixes of the title track, plus the original. The theme of the album is a marriage of the physical and mechanical of the Tour De France, and features the songs "Electro kardiogram," "Vitamin," "Minimum-maximum" and "La Forme". The cover shows 4 cyclists racing.


 
Released in 2005, Minimum Maximum features all of Kratfwerk's works on one album. All the tracks are live, and the videos that play in the background as they perform tell the stories of the tracks.


 
Kraftwerk's song "The Model" was covered by the tanz-metall group Rammstein in German and released under the name "Das Modell." Kraftwerk reportedly hates the cover.


 
In the 1998 movie The Big Lebowski, there is a German techno-pop band called "Autobahn," which is a parody of Kraftwerk. When The Dude is going through Maude's albums, he pulls out the fictional "Autobahn" album, which is behind Herb Alpert's Whipped Cream And Other Delights, which is a real album.


 
From 1970 - 1974 the lineup changed continuously, most notably with guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger who left later to form the Krautrock band "Neu!". The lineup considered Classic (the one listed) came up with the album Autobahn and the following tour in 1975. Flur left in 1986, Bartos in 1991. The current line up is the founders, Hutter and Schneider, as well as Fritz Hilpert (since 1990) and Henning Schmitz (since 1991)




"Autobahn"

This was part of a music genre known as "Electro Pop." It was the first song in that style to chart in both the UK and US. Kraftwerk was a very influential band and helped give rise to the British new romantic movement, hip-hop and techno.


 
The album version is 22 minutes long and it was intended to reproduce a journey on the motorway. Band member Ralf Hutter recorded the passing cars in the background by dangling a microphone out of his old grey Volkswagen window as it traveled down an autobahn. However, these recordings were not suitable for the song, so they recreated the car sounds using synthesizers.


 
Autobahn is the German word for a major high-speed road usually linking one or more cities and towns, similar to motorway or freeway in English-speaking countries. In the 1920s the Weimar Republic built the first autobahns on a limited scale. Shortly after the 1933 Nazi takeover, Hitler enthusiastically embraced an ambitious autobahn construction project and soon over 100,000 labourers were working at construction sites all over Germany. These autobahns formed the first high-speed road network in the world.





Florian Schneider and Ralf Hutter first met as classical music students at the Dusseldorf Conservatory. They formed the group Kraftwerk (German for "power station"), in 1970 and began to immerse their music in the fledgling world of minimalist electronics. Their debut album Kraftwerk 1 was released in 1971. The duo were joined in 1973 by Wolfgang Flur and Karl Bartos as electronic percussionists and the following year they made their international breakthrough with their album Autobahn. The album is often credited for bringing electronic music to the public for the first time.


 
In America the edited version of this song was Kraftwerk's only hit, but they had many more in the UK. In February 1982 their double-A-side "The Model" and "Computer Love" topped the British charts, making Kraftwerk the first German act to reach #1 in the UK.


 
The album cover, which features a colorful drawing of a motorway on a summer day, was painted by Emil Schult, who also co-wrote the lyrics to the song.


 
The Autobahn album contains five tracks. This song takes up all of Side A and the other four are on Side B.


 
Mojo magazine November 2009 asked Hutter whether with his classical training he wrote scores when composing for Kraftwek. He replied: "We made little notes. When I composed Autobahn with my partner Florian, we don't need many words, we just (mimes making notes or sketching), 'Yes, cars, tyres, asphalt, landscapes…' By using keywords, we could fantasize the whole symphony. That's how I make notes."


 
Hutter's vocal would become his trademark delivery. "It's called Sprechsingen," he told Mojo magazine October 2012. "It means 'talk-sing'. It's like a form of rap. This started with Autobahn."


 
The rhythm of the words is virtually identical to the cadence of The Beach Boys' 1965 single "". A big fan of the American group, Hutter commented to MojoBarbara Ann, the Beach Boys, "managed to concentrate a maximum of fundamental ideas. In a hundred years from now when people want to know what California was like in the '60s, they only have to listen to a single by The Beach Boys."


 
It was engineer Conny Plank who introduced Kraftwerk to synthesizers. The first use to which they put their new Moog keyboard was the "car" sounds on this song.




"Morgenspaziergang"


The title of this ambient pastoral translates into English as "Morning Stroll." Kraftwerk vocalist Ralf Hütter told Uncut: "'Morgenspaziergang' is what we wrote when we came out of the studio. We were always working at night, then in the morning, everything seems fresh and our ears are open again. Everything silent."
AUTOBAHN

(Mute/EMI, 1974)

Kraftwerk’s mainstream breakthrough, marking their emergence as revolutionary electro-pop minimalists. A condensed version of the mesmerising 22-minute title track became an international hit, leading to tours on both sides of the Atlantic. Some even saw its “fahren fahren fahren” refrain as a sly Beach Boys homage…



 “Autobahn was about finding our artistic situation: where are we? What is the sound of the German Bundesrepublik? Because at this time bands were having English names, and not using the German language. Some people have said we introduced German rap, but it’s not really rap, its sprechgesang – spoken word singing. And from these rhythms and sounds we developed musical landscapes.


 “It’s not about cars, it’s about the Autobahn. People forget that. It’s a road where we were travelling all the time: hundreds of thousands of kilometres from university to art galleries, from club to home. We didn’t even have money to stay in hotels so at night we’d be travelling home after playing somewhere. That’s very important, it’s not about cars, it’s about the Autobahn. It’s also a road movie, with a humorous twist.


 “The white stripes on the road, I noticed them driving home every day from the studio, 20 kilometres on the Autobahn. And then the car sounds, the radio – it’s like a loop, a continuum, part of the endless music of Kraftwerk. In Autobahn we put car sounds, horn, basic melodies and tuning motors. Adjusting the suspension and tyre pressure, rolling on the asphalt, that gliding sound – pffft pffft – when the wheels go onto those painted stripes. It’s sound poetry, and also very dynamic.


 “In the case of The Beach Boys, that song is about a T-Bird: ‘She had fun fun fun until daddy took her T-Bird away.’ But ours is about a Volkswagen or Mercedes. The quote is really more ethnic. People said: are you doing surfing on the Rhine? Yes, maybe, but we don’t have waves. It’s like an artificial joke. But no, it’s not a Beach Boys record, it’s a Kraftwerk record.


 “All the tracks are like film loops, short films. ‘Morgenspaziergang’ [roughly translated as ‘morning stroll’] is what we wrote when we came out of the studio. We were always working at night and then in the morning, everything seems fresh and our ears are open again. Everything silent.


 “We toured with Autobahn for the first time outside Germany. Just once in Paris University was our first time outside Germany, I think in ’73. But with Autobahn we also toured a very long time in America, then a shorter tour in England. But Germany had to be cancelled because there was no interest. That was in ’75.“The record was a very big success but nobody could imagine it live – is this a studio record? Or electronic? Nobody thought about going to see Kraftwerk behind the Autobahn record. Before that we toured in Germany all the time, from the late ’60s up to 1973. But then three years later nobody wanted to see us again. We came back in 1981, but still it was nothing like other countries.”



The group turned a warehouse space into their headquarters, recording entire albums and manufacturing their sounds and stage shows from the Kling Klang studio in Düsseldorf, Germany (although it was later relocated to Meerbusch-Osterath). Kling Klang ended up not only being their own vanity label, but has operated as both a music publishing company in the U.S. and is the organization that sells all of their merchandise through.


For his 1976 Station to Station tour,
Bowiewanted to haveKraftwerk open up for him, as he'd been a big fan of their Autobahn and Radio-Activity albums. Kraftwerk declined, but technically still opened for him, as  while showing the silent film Un Chien AndalouBowie would play Radio-Activity would play on a big screen as crowds entered the arenas for his live shows.


Kraftwerk's performance style and aura can be pretty intense, and to keep up with both their image and precision of their performances, the band made rules like not being drunk or on drugs while performing in public, with group member Karl Bartos stating that "it's not easy to turn knobs on a synthesizer if you are drunk or full of drugs. ... We always tried to keep very aware of what we were doing while acting in public."




Back before settling into their more experimental/electronic ways,Kraftwerk was placed under Germany's "krautrock" scene, with two of the members (Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger) leaving after their stint in the early 1970s to form NEU!, seen as one of the most influential groups in the krautrock scene.


On the 1975 Autobahn tour, Kraftwerk were supported by a folk singer from Somerset called AJ Webber. “They weren't the easiest [people] to talk to, probably due to the language barrier,” she writes, via email. “But they were polite and reasonably welcoming. They drew a certain 'following'! We warmed to each other as the tour went on.” She also supported Frank Zappa (“I loved Frank!”) supporting bigger bands, as it was just her and her acoustic guitar, so no fancy changeovers were needed in the interval. She also seems to remember that one of them said they had ancestry that went back to Beethoven, but can't remember the details.



Hardcore fans of electronic music will know this already, but Schneider put his first analogue vocoder on eBay in 2005. Made in West Germany's national institute for science and technology, this Barth Musicoder had been customised for Schneider, but it had been gathering dust in the basement of Kling Klang for years. It was first used on 'Ananas Symphonie' (Pineapple Symphony), the final track on 1973's Ralf und Florian; the next track Kraftwerk made after that was 'Autobahn'. Its starting price at auction was $500, but it was finally won by Daniel Miller, CEO of Mute Records. The damage? $12,500.



Schneider also owns one of the earliest-ever electronic instruments. Not long after selling the Musicoder in 2005, Schneider found out that there were some primitive electronic instruments in a cellar below an observatory at the University of Bonn. After going there, he found an unfinished prototype for a modern vocoder, made by German physicist Werner Meyer-Eppler, who died of kidney failure in 1960. This meant that a vocoder had been successfully created in the decade before Robert Moog and Raymond Scott's revolutionary machines.



Two of Kraftwerk's most famous sound effects came from a speaking-aid for deaf-mute children, and a popular toy. The Vortrax was invented in Detroit in the early 1970s. A hand-held machine that looked a bit like a pocket calculator, it produced the distorted vocal choir sound that can be heard on 1975's 'Uranium', which was later sampled in the opening build-up of New Order's 'Blue Monday'. The tones in 1981's 'Numbers' came from a Texas Instruments Speak & Spell; the Japanese lyrics on the album came from a Texas Instruments Language Translator. Kraftwerk didn't have a sampler at that time, so recorded all these sound effects live. [The last three facts come from Dave Tompkins' brilliant book How To Wreck A Nice Beach: The Vocoder From World War II To Hip-Hop – treat yourselves.]



Florian's father was the architect of Germany's first multi-storey car park – oh, and Bonn Airport. Paul Schneider-Esleben's buildings were designed in a modernist style, prioritising the use of concrete and glass.

It's hard to appreciate how alien Kraftwerk appeared back then. The first advert for Autobahn in the black-and-white NME looks particularly shocking: a bright blue sign from the future, under a feature on country music divorcees. At the time, the song was dismissed as a gimmick by the press – but not by fans who made it a No 11 hit.
 Then came the xenophobia. The war was still a recent, scorching cultural memory, so perhaps it's not a surprise that a Barry Miles live review was headlined "This is what your fathers fought to save you from". The NME reprinted a feature by US critic Lester Bangs, in which Hütter was asked if Kraftwerk was "the final solution" for music. The image with the piece was even more tasteless: a press shot superimposed on to a Nuremberg rally.



The band's songs started to feature words in different languages; they got inspired by James Brown's funk, and even punk (years later, Hütter admitted that the start of 1977's Showroom Dummies – "eins-zwei-drei-vier" – came from The Ramones' "one-two-three-four").


  David Bowie adored Kraftwerk, writing the track V-2 Schneider for his 1977 album Heroes (the band would namecheck him back on Trans-Europe Express). African American DJs also found an odd kinship with the Germans. Keen to find a new musical language, they were familiar with the urban sounds Kraftwerk were using; 1978's The Robots became particularly influential on the dancefloor, and in the burgeoning B-Boy and breakdancing scenes. Afrika Bambaataa fused the melody of Trans-Europe Express and the rhythm of 1981's Numbers to create Planet Rock, one of hip-hop's pioneering tracks. Trailblazing electro group Cybotron used a loop from 1977's Hall of Mirrors; its founder, Juan Atkins, would create techno, and from there came modern dance culture.


 Back in Britain, New Order would sample Uranium on Blue Monday, while synth-pop inspired by albums such as 1978's The Man-Machine would set the decade's pop mood. Kraftwerk would even get a No 1 single, The Model, in February 1982, four years after its first release. It was if the world was finally catching up with them.



Ever since, using a Kraftwerk sample has been shorthand for credibility. Jay-Z's 1997 Sunshine sampled The Man-Machine, while Coldplay's Talk made a melody from Computer World into a stadium-rock riff. Music producer DJ Food, a collector of Kraftwerk cover versions, says the band's influence can be heard today among the micro-genres that have evolved from dance and R&B. "Hear dubstep producer 6Blocc's cheeky reinterpretation of Numbers/Computer World 2 disguised under the title, Digits. Or across the pond, juke and footstep producers such as Traxman have shoe-horned Kraftwerk samples into songs such as The Robot. Kraftwerk have been part of the lineage of dance culture since the late 70s – approaching it without them is impossible."

I was late to the party with Kraftwerk and several other Krautrock bands. Great stuff to listen to today, I like the repetitiveness and sterility of it all.

DAY 310.
Queen............................................Queen ll   (1974)









Queen ll was the groups first UK hit album, although it's chart entry resulted in Queen's debut album joining it a week later. Their first (eponymous) album had been recorded when Trident Studio, the company that also managed Queen and producer Roy Baker, was empty, in the three hours from 10am, and in the middle of the night.


The results were so manifestly worthwhile (especially in the United States, where it made the top 100) that this second LP, and particularly "The March Of The Black Queen," was allotted "every conceivable musical and production technique" according to Baker.



"We're a very expensive group; we break a lot of rules......my dear."


Freddie Mercury,   1977  

PatReilly wrote:

Van Morrison: another I've never really 'got'.

But good for a Viz joke or two:

DAY 311.
Roxy Music...........................Country Life   (1974)









American version;  








Country Life (1974)
One glance at the Country Life artwork and you’d be hard-pressed to believe Ferry didn’t enjoy a fling with Constanze Karoli and Eveline Grunwald, the two German Roxy Music fans who were all too happy to remove a few layers for Ferry and co. Having met the singer in a bar in Portugal, where Ferry had decamped to write lyrics for the album, they also helped him translate a portion of the song ‘Bitter-Sweet’ into German. Arguably the most controversial of the Roxy Music album covers, the Country Life artwork proved too racy for the US market, which issued the album with a picture of the foliage, sans models.


It is impossible to tell if the album would have been as successful in America without the cover controversy.. In the UK, however, critical response on it's release was most positive.


Roxy Music were previously positioned between glam-orientated art rock and sophisticated , elegant pop.. With the departure of Brian Eno after the band's second album, the band was noticably  shifting away from it's original concept  but it would still be a while before the adult pop of "Avalon" would eradicate the traces of their past.(and poorer for it, in my humbles)


Can I just add, it's good to see the old bush on the front cover, being of a certain vintage this was the norm back in the day, recall exploring through "the jungle of love" on many occasions, it seems to be bad form not have a wee tidy up these days, but I think both have their merits, unless some white weeds appear in the "Lady Garden," then appropriate measures should be taken post haste, but please don't be in a such hurry to dis "the divot"

Last edited by arabchanter (16/6/2018 11:22 am)

DAY 310.
Queen............................................Queen ll   (1974)









Listened to this album for the first time in yonks, and can't say I like It any better than the first time around. Queen for me were a band I would loved to have seen live, not particularly for the music more for the entertainment value of one Freddie Mercury, what a showman he was, will always remember that performance at "Live Aid" not only did he have the Wembley crowd eating out of his hand, but also the millions watching on their tellys.


I'm not gonna tell you I hated this album, neither can I say I loved It, it was just fair to middling. I'm not a great lover of concept albums, there have been a few exceptions, but on the whole no really for me, this one only had a couple of tracks that stood out for me, and it was the last two tracks on the album "Funny How Love Is" and "Seven Seas of Rhye," this is just a personal thing but I tend to think they do go a bit overboard on the production side at times.


If I had to buy a Queen album on vinyl it wouldn't be this one, to be fair I haven't heard all their albums, but the one I like the best out of the ones listened to is definitely their debut album "Queen," with one of my favourite Queen songs "Keep Yourself Alive"



This album wont be going into my collection.



Bits & Bobs;


Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar, went to boarding school in India, and came to England with his parents in 1964. His birth name is Farookh Bulsara. Due to racial abuse he had suffered in his early teens, he legally changed his name to Freddy Mercury in 1972.


 
Mercury died of AIDS the day after announcing he had the disease. He died the morning of November 24, 1991 at age 45.


 
May is an accomplished scholar. He studied astronomy and physics at Imperial College in London.


 
All 4 members wrote at least one of their hits. Since they all wrote, it gave them very diverse sound.


 
Before forming Queen, May and Taylor were in a psychedelic band called Smile.


 
Brian May's guitar is called the Red Special, and was made with the help of his father, who was an engineer, while Brian was still in high school. The body was made from an old mantelpiece that a family friend had discarded while renovating his house and the whammy bar was made from parts of an old bicycle kick stand. It is the interesting mix of materials that make May's guitar tone impossible to duplicate and why he sounds so original. It has a unique tone, which has become his signature, and it allowed him to create various sound effects found on many of Queen's songs, such as "Get Down, Make Love."


 
They first toured the US as the opening band for Mott The Hoople in 1974.


 
In 1981, they did the soundtrack for the movie Flash Gordon, which was a huge flop.


 
All of the members are very intelligent. In addition to May's degree in astronomy, they had degrees in biology (Taylor), illustration (Mercury), and electronics (Deacon).


 
They proudly declared that no synthesizers were used in their music until 1980.


 
When Mercury moved to England in 1959, he lived less than a football field distance from May, but the two never met until 1970.


 
There is a statue in honor of Mercury at the University of London. He is the first rock star to be honored in England with a statue.


 
Mercury's stamp collection was purchased by the British Postal Service for almost $5,000. It is currently on display at the National Postage Museum.


 
May and Taylor have continued to represent Queen and play together at various events. Taylor chose not to participate, but gave them his blessing.


 
In 2004, in Japan, a very popular TV drama called Pride, featuring SMAP's Kimura Takuya and about an Ice Hockey player, featured a mainly Queen soundtrack. This brought the Queen Greatest Hits album to a record breaking #1. The show and music appealed to people of all ages - just like Wayne's World, this brought Queen to a whole new generation. 2005 May and Taylor took Queen on the road again with Paul Rodgers, best known for his work with Bad Company and Free.


 
Although Freddie Mercury was the primary vocalist for the band, all the members of the group except Deacon sang lead vocals on different songs. Deacon did, however, provide backing vocals during live shows.


 
The Official International Queen Fan Club was set up in 1973 after the release of the band's first album. At its peak, membership exceeded 20,000. It is certified by Guiness World Records as the longest running Rock group fan club.


 
Queen is really famous. They were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame in 2001. In 2003, they also became the first band to be inducted into the Songwriters Hall Of Fame. They were inducted into the UK Music Hall Of Fame in 2004, and have a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.


 
Widely considered as one of the greatest vocalists in popular music history, Freddie Mercury possessed a very distinctive voice. Although his speaking voice naturally fell in the baritone range, his singing voice was that of a tenor. His recorded vocal range spanned nearly 4 octaves (falsetto included), with his lowest recorded note being the F below the bass clef and his highest recorded note being the D that lies nearly 4 octaves above. In addition to vocal range, Mercury often delivered technically difficult songs in a powerful manner. However, due to vocal nodules (for which he declined surgery), he would often lower the highest notes during many concerts. Mercury claimed that he never had any formal vocal training.


 
According to the official UK charts company, Queen have sold more albums than The Beatles from 1955-2005 in the UK. Queen's Greatest Hits (5,407,587) has sold a little over half a million more copies than The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (4,811,996), and almost 2 million more than Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon (3,781,993). The results are based strictly on sales figures, not fan voting or expert analysis. This begs the question that if, as John Lennon once suggested, The Beatles were "More popular than Jesus," what does that make Queen?


 
In 1984, Queen performed in South Africa during the Apartheid era, which caused some controversy as most artists were boycotting the country because of the racist policy. Any ill-will was erased by their performance at Live Aid a year later, where their set was one of the highlights.


 
Freddie Mercury designed their "Queen Crest" logo. He had a degree in Art and Graphic Design from Ealing Art College in England.


 
Brian May was named Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University in 2007.


 
A study by Austrian, Czech, and Swedish researchers released in 2016 concluded that Freddie Mercury had a rare and unique singing voice. The study stated that Mercury likely employed subharmonics, in which the ventricular folds vibrate along with the vocal folds. Most human vocal patterns never use the ventricular folds, with the exception of Tuvan throat singers. In addition, Mercury's vocal cords just moved faster than other people's. While a typical vibrato will fluctuate between 5.4 Hz and 6.9 Hz, Mercury's was 7.04 Hz. To look at that in a more scientific way, a perfect sine wave for vibrato assumes the value of 1, which is pretty close to where famous opera singer Luciano Pavarotti sat. Mercury, on the other hand, averaged a value of 0.57, meaning he was vibrating something in his throat even Pavarotti couldn't move.
A month after releasing their debut album, Queen returned to Trident Studios to commence work on the follow-up, tentatively titled ‘Over The Top’ – an idea that didn’t amuse EMI any more than ‘Dearie Me’ had for its predecessor. Despite positive reviews for  ‘Keep Yourself Alive’ the individual members still weren’t convinced Queen was a going concern and maintained outside interest in physics (Brian May), electronics (John Deacon), Freddie Mercury and his art studies and potential dentist, Roger Taylor (or Roger Meddows-Taylor as he liked to be known) keeping on their side-line of a Kensington Market stall because who knew how long this thing would last?


 Still they were anxious to resume work before going back on the road and preparing for a tour with Mott the Hoople so they grabbed a vacant August slot in Trident and began making the record that is many a fan’s favourite. It is certainly the first time one hears their trademark multi-layered overdubs, those rich harmonies and the sheer joie de vivre of a group of young men refusing to be hindered by boundaries and conformity. So while other rock stars went on their holidays Queen worked like Trojans…


 All four took to the recording process like a duck to water with the notable assistance of Roy Thomas Baker and in-house man Robin Geoffrey Cable, an ally of the band since he’d produced Larry Lurex aka Freddie Mercury on a spectacularly operatic attempt at the Phil Spector-Ellie Greenwich-Jeff Barry masterpiece ‘I Can Hear Music’. Also on that session was engineer Mike Stone, yet another highly talented sound man who’d learnt his trade at Abbey Road, sitting in onThe Beatles, Beatles For Sale album and more recently thrown some magic dust over Nursery Cryme for Genesis and Joe Walsh's heavy guitar gem The Smoker You Drink, the Player You Get. Quite a team in other words, and May and company had plenty of their own ideas to bring to the party.


 What became Queen II was done and dusted in that hot month. Realising that as songwriters Mercury and May had radically different lyrical agendas – Brian the guitarist preferring a personal or emotional slant, while Freddie the singer liked to operate in realms of the phantasmagorical – it was decided to give the record a loose concept, splitting the material into ‘White’ and ‘Black’ sides to match the light and shade of the songs. The gatefold sleeve and the album’s label reflected the B&W mood and when they hit the road to support it they invested in monochrome stage gear designed by Zandra Rhodes. Photographer Mick Rock was hired to shoot the cover on the strength of his striking images of David Bowie, Iggy Pop (Stooge) and Lou Reed, and he had the band posed to look suitably moody and vampish a la Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express. Freddie, of course, couldn’t resist the faintest of smirks as he looked up at Rock with arms crossed.


 For the debut Queen’s friend Douglas Puddifoot had depicted Mercury holding his soon to be familiar short microphone stand, performing in a spotlight on what looked like an arena stage. A fine conceit, considering Queen were far from that status yet, it didn’t really give the viewer a sense of what lay inside. Mick Rock’s photograph, which the boys thought was slightly pretentious at first, showed them to be a band or a gang and this time the potential purchaser was left intrigued by the potential content.


 Inside there were many wonders. It starts with ‘Procession’, played by May in funeral march time on multi-tracked guitar, the Red Special hand-built by Brian and his father, Harold, when the aspiring musician was a teenager. The instrument, also known as the Old Lady or the Fireplace, became iconic for Queen fanatics.


 Brian’s ‘Father to Son’ was written with Harold in mind and combines metal guitar bridges and introspective piano played by the writer as well as John Deacons’ acoustic guitar and a neat vocal harmony.


 The fortuitously titled ‘White Queen (As It Began)’ was a song Brian had written in 1968 when he was just about to go to Imperial College to study physics. Inspired by the Robert Graves treatise on poetry and myth, The Golden Fleece, May also had a female muse in mind, a girl from his A-Level biology class at Hampton Grammar, and the combination of courtly love lyrics and an ideal of feminism struck a chord with Queen’s audiences who would soon realise this wasn’t just another standard glam rock group.


 May makes his debut as sole lead vocalist on ‘Some Day One Day’ and also contributes startling guitar overdubbing, with the outro section featuring three instruments playing different parts rather than meshing together in synch. Trident’s 24-track came into its own and Brain was exultant to achieve the sound he’d always craved.


 Drummer Roger’s ‘The Loser In The End’ closes out the ‘White’ side with a variation on the Mother to Son theme, albeit with a slightly tongue in cheek or ambiguous humour in the verses and some lovely marimba work.


 If Freddie’s contributions thus far were sporadic he took over for the ‘Black’ side. ‘Ogre Battle’ was carried over from the first album and given a proper arrangement, a damn heavy one with chilling vocal screaming and a taut thrash of guitars and drums, a classic gong and plenty of sound effects to herald a suite that is Queen at their most progressive. Mercury wrote it on guitar and his heavy metal riff was leapt on with relish by May for its martial power and would became a staple in their live sets over the next four years.


 ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke’ was inspired by frequent visits to the Tate Gallery, taken by Freddie and the others to admire Richard Dadd’s nightmarish painting of the same name. To replicate the strangeness of Dadd’s canvas the band employed heavy stereo panning, Fred’s piano and harpsichord parts, Roy Thomas Baker’s castanets and multiple vocal overdubs and harmonies. Claustrophobic and deranged, the medieval fantasy world of the artist was brought to life with startling success. The reference to the “quaere fellow” in the lyric is nothing as obvious as some people imagine, rather another literary reference to Brendan Behan’s play, The Quare Fellow, given an arcane spelling.


 ‘Feller’ flows in segue form with Mercury at the piano picking up the closing three-part harmony to introduce ‘Nevermore’. Freddie and Robin Cable would also play pluck or string piano (again no synthesisers) on a song that deals with relationship breakdown, with a nod at Edgar Allen Poe’s poem The Raven.


 The octave bending, polyrhythmic ‘The March Of The Black Queen’ was written by Mercury at the piano and developed as an electric and acoustic guitar extravaganza with May adding symphonic tubular bells. As such it was virtually impossible to replicate live but remains an album highlight.


 Another segue leads the listener into ‘Funny How Love Is’ a Mercury song blessed with one of his most poignant and lovely lyrics (“Funny how love is coming home in time for tea”). The singer felt more comfortable working with Cable on this track and the pair revisited the Wall of Sound technique they’d employed on ‘I Can Hear Music’. It was Freddie in a nutshell.


 And so to the finale – ‘The Seven Seas Of Rhye’ – a song first heard by many when Queen snapped up David Bowie’s cancellation of a Top of the Pops engagement to debut ‘Rebel Rebel’. The show’s producers asked Mike Stone if he could recommend a replacement and so Queen made their first major TV appearance on 21st February playing the newer, fully fleshed track before the cameras and landing in living rooms with such panache and insouciance that switchboards jammed. The song was released as a single two days later.


 Noted for it’s panning and arpeggios and a cross-fade that leads into a brief rendition of ‘I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside’ (with Baker on stylophone, still not really a synth!) this is a magnificent piece of work on every level. A classic glam rock item of the era, one that recalls the brutal intensity of The Move, it peaked at #10 in the UK and drove the album to #5 while also boosting sales of the debut. Good work all round.



 Queen II is now acknowledged as a landmark in the band’s development and while it is hardly obscure, in America it is considered to be a cult artefact revered by the likes of Billy Corgan, Steve Vai and Axl Rose, and remains an obvious influence on everyone from U2 to Muse. Even Bowie sat up and took notice, no doubt allowing himself a wry smile at Queen’s arrival due to his no-show and probably basking in some of their limelight. Finally, some competition.


 But while the album was ready to go by September, fully mixed etc., it was held back by EMI since the first album was still in its infancy. The oil crisis of 1973 also led to a shortage of vinyl as Britain slumbered in the three day week, galloping inflation and increasing political and social unrest. Even so those who heard the album when it did come out on 8 March 1974 were impressed and spiritually uplifted. Queen had arrived in style and Freddie could give up his weekend job and concentrate upon the great times that lay ahead. Goodbye Kensington Market, hello the world.



"Seven Seas of Rhye"

 
This was Queen's first entry in the UK single chart. Brian May in Q magazine March 2008: "Our first breakthrough, made with the idea that if radio was going to play it, everything had to explode. And it did work."


 
As the song fades out, part of a British seaside song called "Oh, I do like to be beside the seaside," is sung.


 
Freddie Mercury penned the song basing it on a fantasy world called Rhye that he had created with his sister, Kashmira. They were brought up on the African island of Zanzibar in the Zoroastrianism religion, founded in Iran, and these fuelled Mercury's flights of fancy. Several other of the Queen singer's early songs feature the mysterious land of Rhye, including  Lilly Of The Valley, My Fairy King and The March Of The Black Queen.


 
The song's success enabled Mercury to quit his day job working at a stall in London's Kensington Market.


 
The success of the single earned Queen their first ever appearance on Top of the Pops, the musical variety show that The Beatles, and many other British bands, aspired to be on when they started. Judging by In the Days of our Lives documentary Queen appears to have mixed view on their appearance. Roger Taylor was critical: "There was a strike on at the BBC so we recorded it in the weather studio. It was rubbish, no one actually played, just some aging disc jockeys. And the drums were plastic, so they made this 'dook' noise when you hit them."




Brian May on the other hand was more positive: "it was an exciting experience, because hey here you are on Top of the Pops and it's all happening."

 

That Queen album's ok, but it's another band I was never really in to. The single of it, Seven Seas of Rhye, is the stand out track, for me.

Looking at Brian May's hair, you'd have to say the Roxy cover wins on the bush stakes.

DAY 312.
Tangerine Dream...................................Phaedra   (1974)










Brian Eno gave ambient music it's name, but Tangerine Dream pioneered the sound. The group formed in Berlin in 1967, their leader and only constant being guitarist Edgar Froese. Inspired by surrealism and the dadaist art movement, he had worked with Salvador Dali and opened for Jimi Hendrix. Other players came and went, leading to a German-label debut in 1970.


DJ John Peel declared 1973's "Atem" to be his album of the year, earning the space innovators a major contract with Virgin Records. Virgin debut "Phaedra" was a commercial and stylish landmark. The trio used Moog and sequencers for the first time, enabling their vast instrumental soundscapes to be composed rather than improvised.


"Phaedra" cracked the UK top 20 and made No.196 in America. It remains essential listening for fans of electronic music, a mesmeric precursor to trance, techno, and dance music of the future.


I've always kinda dodged listening to this band/music, but will give it a listen tonight.

Tek, what happened to your post?

Agreed with you 10/10 bud  

arabchanter wrote:

Tek, what happened to your post?

Agreed with you 10/10 bud  

I think he removed it, as is his right as curator of the site 

And maybe, being a good bit younger, he re-thought the political correctness of it all...........


To the album: another great from Roxy, really prolific with their 4th album in less than 30 months. And as it's been written, every song is very different in style (although they all have style, of course) from the others.

Ferry must have had all these ideas stored up for a number of years before, because surely nobody could have come up with such variety in such a short time frame.

Tek wrote:

Decided in the cold light of day (sobriety) that the one on the right had a face like a melted welly.

7/10

Have you seen the shidders on her? She'd toss me aroond the bedroom like a rag-doll, and to be honest at my age I could probably do wi' the help , still 10/10
 

I'm falling behind a bit, and going to the Zoo today, but I'm keen to read your views on Sparks (my 2nd favourite US band), and I'll have to relisten to Tangerine Dream later.

DAY 314.
Supertramp...................................Crime Of The Century   (1974}









By the time Supertramp convened for their third album, the writing was on the wall. The whole band had quit after 1971's "Indelibly Stamped", leaving the creative hub of Roger Hodgson and Rick Davies needing to regroup and write a masterpiece to save their A&M recording contract. This was especially important after Dutch millionaire benefactor Stanley Miesegaes also abandoned ship, having written off $90,000 worth of loans. Supertramp had been so broke they had even backed Chuck Berry.


Crime Of The Century changed the picture entirely. The tuneful, tightly played songs, pristine clarity of sound, and myriad imaginative sounds effects, helped create a lucrative album, the success of the intense, keyboard driven "Dreamer" helped Crime....pay by sending the album all the way to No.4 in the UK charts.