70’s Slow Sounds Showdown

First off, it’s not always slow tempo. In fact, side II of Utopia (1974) just picked its tempo up to a ridiculous speed, and this happens to be my least favorite part of this track, The Ikon, the side II-long track averaging about the same as Pink Floyd’s ‘Echoes’, released in proper three years prior in 1971 to Todd Rundgren’s first effort with his new Utopia band which would be his main project ’til the 1980’s after having a successful solo career, but of course, his biggest solo hit came in 1983, bang that drum somewhere else, with ya Emperor of the Highway, get outta hearrr.

So pragmatically, I’ve listened to Utopia both yesterday and today, just almost fully, that is, a Seventies Saturday, a Seventies Sunday. After Utopia came Led Zeppelin III, opening with  the immortally epic ‘Immigrant Song’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEGuHdKn0Lc – which is also their only single w/ b-side [Hey, Hey, What Can I Do?], which I listened to next, actually, to bridge listening to LZIII, to ZoSo (1970 and 1971, respectively), the single being released somewhere in between, So it seems.

Then I think I went crazy and listened to the Grateful Dead’s 1977 premium funk release Terrapin Station. That was wicked. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the artwork for that album, but check it out. No, not the front cover with the dancing turtles outside a scant rail depot, though that is -cute-. No, I’m talking about the Cyclops skull w/ Native American feather. Hm. Uni. Que. –> https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/89/42/39/894239993358b962f75567571b5b12d5.jpg –>

Dig that ‘futuristic’ lettering. Hmm. Wombats. So, what we have left is Black Sabbath’s epic 4-side “We Sold Our Souls For Rock ‘n’ Roll “(1976), which is just cram-packed full of too many excellent titles to mention, save but the one I have a vinyl copy cover of Mogwai doing, and that is found on the III’rd side, Sweet Leaf. Well of course Iron Man, War Pigs, and Paranoid are on there, in reverse order that is side II.

Finished off the night with L.A. Woman (1971), the seminal Doors’ release itself ending with what was a most-trancelike journeying experience last evening ‘Riders on the Storm’. I know what I am when I listen to that song. Mucha mucha more thanna L’American. Ain’tchu, too? That album was surprisingly satisfying.

So, this is a blog post. Gotta keep practicing writing. Practice makes perfect. Or at least I can say I was fucking trying (what the fuck have you done!) (wrong decade! they come later). So, I have listened to a shotgun ton of seventies yesterday, re-listened to Rundgren’s Utopia today, again, and I want so bad to listen to Sigur Rós’s ‘Von’, it lay right leaning up left next to me, so purple… so shiny…

And I really want to listen to the other two albums I have lined up over there, Modest Mouse’s ‘Good News For People Who Love Bad News’, and Mogwai’s ‘The Hawk Is Howling’, 2004 and 2009, respectively. But! I just took a berak from writing this to go peruse my record collection for what I will listen to today while I… see this is the whole reason it’s music music music… besides BECUZ is that I’ve dedicated the majority of my free time this ‘Memorial Day’ weekend to TRULY REMEMBER via Peter Levenda.

So I’m reading Sinister Forces pt I and jamming to 70’s. Now I’ve noticed that I don’t have any 1972 represented yet, and that is because I noticed I had quite a few of the 70’s ‘done’ with, and I began perusing my collection to fill out the remainder of the years, and of the records I’ve pulled to do this, I will name quickly before establishing how great sync is in this moment for I’ve just… here’s the list.

Bob Dylan/The Band – “Before The Flood” (1974)

Pink Floyd – “The Dark Side Of The Moon” (1973)

Steely Dan – “Aja” (1977)

Steely Dan – “Katy Lied” (1975)

George Harrison – “Thirty Three & 1/ॐ” (1976)

Eagles – “Their Greatest Hits (1971-1975)” (1976)

Boston – “Boston” (1976)

Willie Nelson – “Stardust” (1978)

While I have more than enough for 1976, here’s where sync just came in to play, as I see I need to find a 1979 (not the SP song), but an album proper, and I must find one prior to this midnight. That said, these are my choices, but notice that also there is no 1972 listed yet, well, I noticed, and this was a point of contention! I was rummaging, finding nothing! While rummaging, I found some Santana, first album (but it’s 1969), found my Talking Heads demos bootleg, but that’s not 1979 or 1972, far from knowing if I will find the nine, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh, heh – I shall say.

I just found out I have David Bowie reading Peter the Wolf in a clear green ‘Orchestra for Young Persons’ – was l’amazed! Forgot I found that a while back! But then I realize, what’s this? Woah! Wicked cool picture disc of Bowie I forgot getting. Nice. :Pays it no mind:

Going through https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1972_in_music Just to see if I have anything from that era I wasn’t noticing. So, I keep going through wiki, I get to June, see ‘Obscured By Clouds’, just one of a few albums that, if I had my whole collection, I’d be all set for sure, including if I had ‘Can’t Buy A Thrill’. That said, too bad ‘Gaucho’ is 1980. Damn. The other two are 1972 a piece. And Zeppelin released nothing that year. That was prior to 1973 when they released ‘The Houses Of The Holy’. That said…

I keep reading. Oh, hey! David Bowie released an album in 1972! Huh? It was ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars’. Jeez! I WISH I had THAT one. All I have is this AWESOME Peter and the Wolf clear green Bowie narration a la ‘The Snowman’, :swoon:… and this STELLAR picture disc, but like, I don’t know what album that is, with Bowie, in the street, at night, that picture disc… is… I go, like, no way, I go, like look and like… DUDE. I HAVE THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS IN PICTURE DISK??!?!?!?! Snap-dizzle. Cooly. [sync/heartmelt]

So that’s what I’m doing today. And I gotta like, get to it now. So I was productive, made a journal entry, keeping moving on forward, exercising these efforts and skills. This is getting me somewhere good, one focused creative acton at a time. 99u… need to get to re-reading that. You know. Once I’m done with Levenda’s “Sinister Forces” Trilogy. And S.K. Bain’s ‘The Most Dangerous Book in the World’. Then more 99u. ‘Coz I love J Glei’s work.

So, that’s my Slamtastic Seventies Supersounds Showdown Saturnalia… yea. Now I gotta just find The Nine. That is, 1979. Cool kids… never have the time. I only have time to find another album from 79 to fill out the required spectrum for SUCCESS. In this … meager… minor… Meaningful endeavor. Ah. And some coffee. And Blue Chemdog.

[Update] I’ve just noticed that if my PF or TR collections were more complete, I’d have two excellent 1979 choices. As it is, I’ve just perused both my collection, and the wiki on music from that year – and wouldn’t you know it. My LZ collection saves the day, with  [we came in] ‘In Through The Out Door’ [isn’t this where?] – perfect connection there. I wonder now, holy crap. I wonder now. Wow wow wow. That turned out to be a GREAT update. So, There’s my list, and to finish it off, 72 repped by Bowie’s Rise/Fall, 73 is DSOTM, 75 will be Katy Lied, 78 will be Willie’s Stardust, and 79 will be LZ’s ‘ITTOD’. – xoxo –

 

STRAIGHT UP!

Hold You Under

you are the unborn unicorn

like I am unfamiliar with hardcore porn

like the sky is made of the ground and our

bodies are made of stardust and animal breathing

witcha well washed worn and ruddy red blood lisping lips

trawling dredging hauling steeping in the full tide of my undertow

sweet in your

drowning now

hold you under you are mine

I am the blood inside your lungs and mind and veins

hold you down

loving your

eyes your eyes your eyes your eyes in me in me in me in

me

True Love Wastes

Radiohead is well-known for their anti-corporate stance along with their deep psycho-social awareness and their perma-critique on mind-control/hive-consciousness/consumer zombiestas, and, especially with Thom, a love for the environment. One would be amok! amok! amok! to think otterwoise.

So, the new album is out, this one is a humdinger. It’s exactly what we’ve come to expect in a way. This is the proper next evolution of sound which we’ve expected to come from them. In fact, to me, this seems a synthesis of the advances made on both OKComputer (to which I am listening this very moment), Hail to the Thief, and In Rainbows, all at once.

It also seems to speak to the ‘Wish You Were Here’ a la Floydian Conceptions Ltd as per the record management/hierarchy/heartless controllers loathing aspect, as symbolized in but one piece of art for that album released in 1975 by the artwork on the vinyl itself, with the space-man hand shaking hands with the mechanical/robotic-man’s hand… so one is the space-rocker, and the other is the mechanical bureaucrat. I wonder who the ‘kicking, squealing, Gucci-little-piggies’ are?

But get THIS. So it’s like, a big deal that ‘True Love Waits’ has finally been made in to a studio version, and I’m going to riff on this notion of living and creative versus dead and mechanical. Because as attitudes towards life in a sort of ‘polarity’, they garner VERY DIFFERENT RESULTS.

So upward spiral can be said to be the space-rocker, obviously the ‘good guy’ in all of this, and kin or akin or both to your dear author, of course, which goes without nary a mention, we still realize that the pure heart and the scream of the golden core of the brightest forests singing the song of nature’s good and raging excitement and ‘itness’… everything worth living for, in this dimension… and in many other ways, in other aspects, in other dimensions as well…

That said.

This is what happens with True Love Waits. Double think this one, for it’s not just a love song, but it’s also a meta-awareness of the situation and love and creation itself. See, this was a ‘fan fave’, so sayeth GQ in their latest ‘hot on top of things’ article, but they’re fuckin’ right to target this issue, for, and the article is quite readable, it is pointed out how this take feels almost… ‘jilted’… ‘sketchy’… ‘creepy’ (one might write a song titled as such).

So here’s the diggity. We know that natural love and excited relationships which are healthy are natural, they are easy, on their own terms, and they should, ideally, dissipate or change when the need cometh, should it prove to cometh.

So the recording industry is like, nah, we gon be sketchy stalker types and get all up in yr business and make yoo do shit and hold you against yr will and stalk you til you comply with our demands. We’ll even interfere with your friends and your loved ones until your comply. We’re the recording industry/unstable ex-lover. I mean, these are loose tropes, but you get the important gist.

So that’s basically what this is about – this was a ‘live’, free-flowing, sweet, loving, free and ‘innocent’ (wash your feet/dress like your niece) which IN ITS OWN CONTEXT is quirky and sweet and also being played live, it is pure, and just ‘in the moment’ and ‘for the sake of its own self’ – taoistically… PERFECT.

So they’re taking something that was recorded live, that was a live moment, that is a piece of the egregore that IS Radiohead via the three-way ‘artist/art/art-appreciator’ triangle-feedback loop that is the pyramid of the experience of art which makes art exciting and ‘a thing’ in our reality.

That said, this song can now be seen in the closing track of 2016’s ‘A Moon Shaped Pool’ as a sort of… stalker elegy made in to Johnny the Homicidal Maniac-fan-person type sketchy… dis/un-ease to the whole damn sentiment. Where it once was pure and sweet, it is now forced and craven.

So this is not only a critique on the recording industry like some sketchy Dexter locked up in a cabin in the woods with strange Truman show aliens watching and controlling it form a higher dimension… wait… what?, and not only is it a critique of not letting go when you should (we hope… that you choke… that you choke… that you choke. We hope. That you choke. That you choke.)

We hope. That you choke. That you choke.

THAT said.

The basic idea is not only is it those two sentiments mentioned but it is also a sentiment on the nature of the interactions we have with one another right now as a society, cut off largely from one another, more shaking of mechanical hands than physical ones, so there’s that too, perhaps, but whatever, that wasn’t even what my point was, I lost the other point for now, but that really does get to the core of what my concern of expressing was – that the creation of this ‘once-live-and-pure’ memories is now being turned in to something torturous and wretched and perhaps there’s something both obvious to be seen in that and as-yet-to-be-discussed’ deep and not-so-obvious left in this.

 

I’m sure there is much, much left to say, in fact, it’s damn obvious.