A YEAR IN MUSIC: FRANK ZAPPA/THE MOTHERS - Roxy & Elsewhere (1974)

A YEAR IN MUSIC: 1974
Review by: Dan Sullivan

The 1974 iteration of Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention was probably the greatest in the history of the group, and the album Live At The Roxy & Elsewhere catches them at the peak of their powers. Zappa had been recording studio albums with this group of musicians throughout the early 70’s, but Roxy/Elsewhere is a far more satisfying listen than those previous efforts. The problem with most Zappa albums is that they either tend to become a showcase for Frank’s long-winded guitar solos, or they devolve into irritating comedy skits. Here, Frank wisely focuses on displaying the incredible technical prowess of his backing band, and the result is a collection of mind-blowing jams, imbued with an infectious energy that could only have been captured in a live setting. And while there are plenty of guitar solos and plenty of comedy, the solos are all spectacular, and the comedy almost never irritates. 

To understand the brilliance on display here, look no further than the album’s centerpiece, the instrumental showcase, “Echidna’s Arf/Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing?”. The band shifts from melody to melody, constantly changing tempo, dynamics, and time signatures, yet the song never falls apart. Just imagine the hell that Zappa must have put his musicians through to perfect this arrangement. After several instrumental solos at the end of “Don’t You Ever Wash That Thing?” (including a killer drum solo by Chester Thompson), Zappa brings the house down with one of his best fiery wah-wah solos. These songs in tandem are my favorites in the very prolific Zappa discography.

The other songs are mostly excellent as well. We get an updated version of the classic “Trouble Every Day” that trounces the original, an updated version of “Oh No/Orange County Lumber Truck” that also improves on the original, and the beautiful and nostalgic “Village of the Sun” with great vocals by Napoleon Murphy Brock (he also sings on a few other tunes and his soulful voice is one of the best things about the album). Just skip “Dummy Up”, an inane skit in which Frank tries to get his bandmates to smoke a diploma, and you have the best Zappa money can buy. Definitely my favorite album of ‘74.

A YEAR IN MUSIC: KING CRIMSON - Red (1974) (2)

A YEAR IN MUSIC: 1974
Review by: Alex Alex

“Red” by King Crimson is a concept album, telling a story of two brothers.  The older brother loved the younger one very much, ever since their childhood.  When he first learned that his mother was pregnant he could not hold the tears of joy, that’s how he loved his younger brother. The older brother even could not think of his own life as a separate one from that of his younger sibling.

As teenagers both brothers spent together much time on the streets of the New York, engaging in quite dangerous, perhaps, even criminal activities. Probably, they were members of some street gang, though the story does not have that clear. It was not a rare thing that the brothers participated in knife fights, often receiving some wounds.

Then the older brother moved some other place, we are not told where but it’s an airplane flight from New York. The younger brother remained in New York, continuing his shadowy activities, and was killed one winter in a street fight, presumably by some other gangsters.

When the older brother had learned that, he immediately flew from where he was living to New York. During the flight he can not think of anything but the blood. He is trying to sleep but cannot and is seeing the blood everywhere, as in a nightmare. That’s the blood of his younger brother. At the same time he realizes that bloody nightmare will be the last thing he will remember of his brother.

The older brother safely arrives to New York. He is now calmed down and thinks of the absurdity of the providence which has led to that tragic death.

Finally he stands at the funerals. It is a bright sunny day but he is not able to see the sun. All he sees is blackness. Some old friends are trying to tell him some words of condolence but he does not really hear, nor sees them, only seeing starless and Bible blackness all around him.

The album is called “Red” because of the blood and the earth. 

The phenomenon of seeing a total blackness under certain emotional stress is described in other works of art (“And Quiet Flows the Don” is the most prominent example) and is quite a common thing to experience should you happen to be VERY unlucky.

For an equally heartbreaking tale of two sisters see this movie: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0365376/

A YEAR IN MUSIC: GENE CLARK - No Other (1974)

A YEAR IN MUSIC: 1974
Review by: Charly Saenz

To me, “No Other” is one of the top 10 albums of all time. I cannot exaggerate its influence in my life. It’s the album that some years ago brought me back to the emotion of music. 

Gene Clark, one of the creative forces in the original Byrds, was always a low profile man, the classic artist that never “gets there”. This album has a dramatic story of its own, a complicated and long production, economic losses, the usual. But the outcome is.. fantastic. Cosmic. Would it have succeeded, a Psychedelic Soul concept album was the next step. Go figure.

Meanwhile, here we have the most beautiful and deceitful “country rock” album ever; because calling it country rock is like trying to define The Beatles as “a pop group”. The music here is all over the place as defined by the title track - almost a prog rock number, with psychedelic tones, soul, blues and more. “Life’s greatest fool” (the opening number in non-US releases) is country .. with a big soul chorus ensemble in the background. But if you want to be up there with the angels, look no further than “Strength Of Strings”, every little detail, the piano track, the floydish girls chorus (Gorgeous, more than just complementing, they truly stand out), Gene’s voice, sweet and totally vulnerable… 

And If you’re still not convinced.. The acoustic intro of “Silver Raven” sends electricity down my spine to you know where. Or “From A Silver Phial” and its gentle caress, its pretty wah wah solo.. And yet, my favourite “Some misunderstanding”. The song I introduced to my nephew at 15, and he’s a prog rocker ever since. His world shaken totally. A direct child of those great hymns like “I Shall Be Released”. We should be singing this to praise the departed. Why not!? 

Forget Gram Parsons and his Grievous Angel (same year to add more disgrace). That’s just a great album. This is an epic forgotten masterpiece. Only Forever Changes comes close to my heart in terms of resonance. Cherish it. Do never let it go.

A YEAR IN MUSIC: KING CRIMSON - Red (1974)

A YEAR IN MUSIC: 1974
Review by: Roland Bruynesteyn

Red by King Crimson is the best album of 1974, and its relevance over 40 years later cannot be exaggerated for several reasons:

• Anything conceived by Robert Fripp is obviously bound to be interesting, possibly even more so if released under the KC brand name
• KC singlehandedly kept prog rock relevant by reinventing it, when others were starting to become silly dinosaurs, or tired rock stars, or both
• The musicianship is absolutely stunning. Technical virtuosity by itself is never enough, but it almost always helps
• As the big box The road to Red (that I’m lucky to own) shows, their playing is not just studio precision, KC 1974 was a thundering machine when playing live
• Red more or less set the template for several musical sub-genres, such as doom rock, prog metal, industrial (and even its popular spin offs like Depeche mode)
• Red not only preceded the aggressive punk attitude, it did so in a very sophisticated way, showing that you can channel your anger into music and words
• Starless and the title track are just two amazing songs…

FUSHITSUSHA - Fushitsusha (1989)

Review by: Roland Bruynesteyn
Album assigned by: Tristan Peterson

Never heard of them, and now I have, I’ll never forget them.

CD1, track 1 (Acchi, I think), A slow bluesy Neil Young / Crazy horse song. I hesitate to call their playing ridiculously bad or too sophisticated for my taste. The singing is pretty bad  though, and badly recorded as well. The song is way too long. Lukewarm interest to put it mildly: hmm, what have I done to deserve this?

CD1, track 2 (Ango), more of the same. Now I like my droney music, whether it’s of the krautrocky Faust/Can (or perhaps Magma?) variety of the 70’s or the more psychedelic droney music of the 00’s like Ozric tentacles, but this is going nowhere. The guitar player has a signature sound I guess, but the bass player and the drummer sound nothing special (and they are buried deep in the mix). What they lack in melody they sadly also lack in intensity: it may sound intense, and intensely focused, at first, but very soon you realise (or rather, it occurred to me) that this is a gimmick, exacerbated by the primitive recording technique.

CD1, track 3 (Suki ni Sureba li), has a nice poppy singalong chorus that makes you want to dance and . . .  oh no, who am I kidding? It’s more of the same, really. It’s a lot more quiet and less threatening. The beginning sounds like it could have been a King Crimson improv ca. 1974 (but with Belew vocalising, thereby strangely making it sound a little Pink Floydish), not bad at all. To be honest, if this was the first song, I would feel different about Fushitsusha; I like this song!

CD1, track 4 (Todokanai) Suki ni Sureba li 2.0, with added harmonica, or so it sounds. A little more up tempo drumming half way through, but this remains listenable.

CD2, track 1 Fuwafuwa: Very slow, but hiding underneath the noisy loud guitar there is actually an almost European pop song, melody-wise. Think Aphodite’s child, only with more guitar and less keyboards.

CD2 track 2 Nattan janai. Well, if you think Arc by Neil Young is loud and distorted guitar, try this! I think you can best compare it with a compilation of all the power chords at the end of all the Who songs played live in 1970 by Pete Townshend, just before he ruined his amplifier.

CD2,track 3 Maigo. During the song the tension builds up nicely until it all ends in a noise fest. If we stretch the definition of the word ‘technical’ to its utter limits, we could call the guitar playing on this track a little more technical, but a doubt remains: is this guitar playing the way of the future, or is it a three year old?

CD2, track 4, Koko starts like some of the long live tunes by Ween in their earlier days, but without the musicality. Not the brown boognish, but bland Metal Machine Music-like. Seven minutes in, it gets quieter, somewhat of a relief, getting back to that 1969 Pink Floyd vibe. I like this part immensely, but mostly because of what I had to endure before. When it gets louder, after 12 minutes or so, I still like it, he has a nice guitar sound going on there. Way too long, but ultimately the best song on the album.

What to make of it? It’s certainly different, quite challenging if you’re willing to listen with an open mind. My main problem is that it’s too intense to use as background music, and at the same time too monotonous to listen to in concentration.

A YEAR IN MUSIC: HÉROES DEL SILENCIO - Senderos de Traición (1990)

A YEAR IN MUSIC: 1990
Review by: Jaime Vargas Sánchez

When we were proposed this “A year in music” thing, I decided that the best way for me (especially for music from when I was alive) was to relate the albums to my personal history, since that gives me a sense of perspective. In that respect, 1990 is a very particular year. It was the year I finished high school and started college, with an awesome summer in between, and as such I always am surprised when I look at lists of albums from 1990 because they seem to cover a larger timespan than one year - because albums from early 1990 are remembered as “happening” to a totally different person than albums from late 1990.

But I don’t want to make this too personal, because then I’d have to select as “most important” Led Zeppelin’s Remasters (the 2-CD summary of their box set), which was only second to the Rolling Stones’ show in Barcelona in shaping my future listening self (no, I didn’t attend, I saw it on TV). So, from an overall perspective I’d say the album of 1990 in my immediate surroundings was “Senderos de Traición” by Héroes del Silencio (a band which is mainly known by 3 groups of people: a) Spanish-speaking audiences, b) Germans - if the contemporary accounts of their success there are accurate - and c) players of Guitar Hero 3). But really, in late 1990 and especially 1991 the hits from this album were EVERYWHERE, and the guys were bona fide stars. I personally didn’t like them, but I don’t know whether that was due to my recent allegiance to classic rock (“everything after 1979 is shit”) which today seems to me like the faith of the converse (yes, in the 80s I liked Italo disco and I’m not ashamed anymore), or to my dislike to what I perceived as unfounded arrogance. In fact I didn’t reconcile with the Héroes until I read some refreshingly self-deprecating comments by singer Enrique Bunbury after they had already disbanded.

Or maybe it was because they didn’t play guitar hero solos. Listening to it today, although the album historically fit into the “return to rock” aesthetic of the early 90s, sonically it’s still got some of the 80’s earmarks. Not the most plastic elements of that - Phil Manzanera’s production is organic enough - but the guitars have those clean-sound-with-reverb-echo-and-chorus/flanger earmarks of the Smiths / U2 / Simple Minds persuasion. Guitarist Juan Valdivia plays few solos, and those he plays are usually built around the chord changes instead of indulging in blues rock cliches, and prefers to devise arpeggio patterns. Singer Enrique Bunbury harmonizes with himself here and there, which together with his powerful and affected voice made him sound larger than life (that he seemed to pattern some of his on-stage demeanor after Jim Morrison in an era in which people were more or less rediscovering the Doors also helped), and the songs were a bit of a mix of hard rock attitude, goth rock sounds and pop sensibilities. Maybe a good comparison could be the then-contemporary The Cult. So, overall, an album that I remember as being in the environment rather than belonging to MY personal history, but which I can recommend today without hesitation.

A YEAR IN MUSIC: MEGADETH - Rust in Peace (1990)

A YEAR IN MUSIC: 1990
Review by: Dinar Khayrutdinov

Thrash metal was still hot in 1990, but this is not why this album was so successful in the charts and acclaimed by critics. Why was it that well-received, though? What distinguishes it from other thrash metal albums? The answer is quite simple – it simply went one step beyond everything the genre was known for: ferocious riffage, technical complexity, kick-ass speed and angry, socially conscious lyrics. Remember that movie, ‘This Is Spinal Tap’, where a rock band members really wanted to go ‘one louder’ by having their amps ‘go to 11’? This is what Megadeth did on this album (not literally, of course). Rust in Peace is an onslaught from the very opening riffs of ‘Holy Wars… The Punishment Due’ to the closing chords of ‘My Creation’, but not in the all-out crazy way either, no siree! Megadeth sure as hell ain’t Slayer. Mustaine is clever enough to amp up the songwriting, the musicianship and the production too instead of just going for speed and aggression. But the main thing is here, folks: THIS IS A CONSISTENTLY ENTERTAINING ALBUM! Every song has something to offer, be it hooky guitar lines (yes! they manage to make thrash-metal catchy!), tasty solos, time signature changes (they’re almost going prog on some of the songs!) or ironic lyrics about wars, nuclear holocausts and government conspiracies (with aliens!).

So, in a nutshell, this is why Rust in Peace is my favorite 1990 album. It pushes the boundaries of thrash-metal in every direction without ever going “out-of-the-genre”: it’s still just thrash metal, yeah, but it’s THAT good. If you’re a metalhead, you have probably already heard it. If you’re not but you have at least a passing interest in metal, this is not one to miss.