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30 April
Side Four, Self Portrait, Bob Dylan
This is one of the most misunderstood albums of all time. It was literally REVILED when it came out. It was seen as a huge "FUCK HUGH" to the legions of fans who had declared him the "Voice of his Generation". It's ramshackle quality was looked upon as messy.. its playfulness and humour was seen as unserious for their God of Music.. What it is is fucking GENIUS... This album is all over the place and weird and strange and wonderful and thats what makes it so unique... He was in his full "Egg Drop" voice.. totally going for the classic country feel that he introduced in the brilliant "Nashville Skyline"... This album bends and whoops and smiles and sings with Montavani strings... I choose side four because of the monumental "la de dee" instrumental 'Wigwam' but I could have chosen ANY of the sides.. The acoustic guitar sound on this album is incomparable... Self Portrait is as good as any of his classic albums..
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Side Four
Produced by Bob Johnston |
Tuesday's with Longcipher Presents:
Side One, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane
Folks, as soon as you begin listening to side one, track one; "In a Sentimental Mood," you'll understand why this album side was chosen. Two Masters of Jazz, Two generations; Duke Ellington, considered among many to be the finest Jazz composer of all time, and John Coltrane, considered by many to be the most innovative Jazz artists of all time. This pairing was unique and one of a kind, and such a completely brilliant album that I have decided to share side one with y'all today. If you enjoy this side, think about picking up the entire album. Well worth the purchase.
And yes, this is the third album featuring Coltrane that I've chosen this month.
Why?
Because he was that fuckin' good, that's why...
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Side One
Produced by Bob Thiele |
28 April
Side Two, Cahoots, The Band
The Band's first two albums, "Music from Big Pink" and their self-titled album known to most fans as "The Brown Album" are generally regarded as not only their best but in the top 20 of the best albums of ALL time... Ironically, however, it was the album Cahoots that first blew me away... More particulary, side TWO of Cahoots.. For some reason I connected to this album and this side BIG TIME.. It affected my life profoundly.. It's strange melancholy vibe pervaded my entire existence.. affecting my style, my outlook, the music I wrote at the time.. I played side two over and over again for months.. Starting off with the bizarre Shoot out in Chinatown, moving on to the heart WRENCHING Moon Struck One (Richard Manuel's voice will make you cry) ending with the gorgeous River Hymn... This side is the DEFINITION of an ultimate album side.. I think my favourite side of all time...
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Side Two
Produced by The Band |
24 April
Side One, Easy Action, The Alice Cooper Band
This album is Alice Cooper BEFORE he became Alice Cooper... Its chewy, hard pop.. with a suprising Beatles influence in parts, and an interesting look into the beginnings of a sound that would later become glam metal... It was released on Frank Zappa's label, Straight Records, and didn't do very well, but in those times there was such a thing as "artist development"... a concept completely lost on the record industry today.. Anyway, I chose side one for the sublime 'Below Your Means', which is the song that brought this album to my attention in the first place.
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All songs written by Alice Cooper, Glen Buxton, Michael Bruce, Dennis Dunaway and Neal Smith.
Produced by David Briggs |
22 April
Tuesdays with Longcipher Presents:
Side Two, Saxophone Colossus, Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins is one of the true originals in Jazz music. Constantly searching for a higher consciousness, he stopped recording music in 1959 for three years, during which time he practiced under the Williamsburg Bridge, in Brooklyn, every day, searching for a new sound. He returned in 1962 with an album titled “The Bridge.”
He later took a second sabbatical from recording music from 1966 – 1978, a twelve year absence from recording, during which time he studied yoga and meditation and Eastern philosophies. In 1981 he played on The Rolling Stones´ album “Tattoo You” on the tracks “Slave,” “Waiting on a Friend,” and “Neighbors.”
But back on June 22, 1956, at Rudy Van Gelder’s Studio in New Jersey, Rollins recorded “Saxophone Colossus,” his undisputed masterpiece, with Tommy Flanagan on piano, Jazz Messenger Doug Watkins on bass, and the one and only legend of Jazz Max Roach on drums.
I chose side two for “Moritat,” a song from Bertolt Brecht’s “Three Penny Opera,” better known as “Mack the Knife” among most people. Side two also features the track “Blue 7,” which Rollins spontaneously composed on the spot. This track in particular showcases Rollins’ genius.
Folks, Sonny Rollins is 77 years old, and still playing live. If you ever get the chance to see him, Do Not Pass Up the Opportunity. He is one of the last Jazz Legends we have left, and this album is arguably one of the top five be-bop albums ever recorded.
Dim the lights, light the incense, crack open a beer, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em, and enjoy side two of Saxophone Colossus, by Sonny Rollins.
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Side Two
Released 1956 Prestige |
21 April
Side One, Frank Sinatra Sings Only for the Lonely
This might be popular music's FIRST concept album... The concept is simple: pure unadulterated loneliness.. depression.. heartache.. regret.. yeah, simple... Frank at once breaks your heart and comforts us with this collection of tunes by legendary songwriters such as Sammy Cahn and Johnny Murcer. The album cover is a classic (it actually won a Grammy for it).. As a child, I remember staring at it at my grandparent's basement fascinated by the clown makeup he was in.. I instinctively knew there was something really weird to this album.. It is the ultimate in lonely.. its as blue as an azure sky.. and the darkest depths of the ocean.. Its as blue as Sinatra's eyes and that's saying something..
So sit back, relax your crack and enjoy.. and S'cuse me while I disappear..
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Side One
Produced by Voyle Gilmore |
15 April
Tuesdays with Longcipher Presents:
Side Two, Workin' With The Miles Davis Quintet
Miles' first great quintet featuring John Coltrane on tenor sax, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Two sessions recorded on May 11 1956 and October 26th of the same year yielded four albums; this one, along with Relaxin' with the Miles Davis Quintet, Steamin' W.T.M.D.Q., and Cookin' W.T.M.D.Q.
All the tracks on this album are from the May session, except for "Half Nelson," which features Paul Chambers playing the bass line on a cello. I chose side two because of the hard bop opener, "Trane's Blues," which was credited to Miles but was really a Coltrane composition. This opener is what hard bop is all about, and it always sounds fresh.
The side ends with "The Theme," as does side one, a closing riff used in the groups' club dates to mark the end of a set. The album plays like two sets, and therefore we understand where the title of the album comes from; Workin' With The Miles Davis Quintet.
Listen to the second set here, and enjoy...
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Side Two
All tracks are from the May session, apart from "Half Nelson", from Produced by Bob Weinstock |
14 April
Rubber Soul (U.S. version)
Today were going to play BOTH sides of the US version of Beatles' Rubber Soul... enough said.
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All songs (Lennon/McCartney) except where noted
Side one
Side two
Produced by George Martin |
11 April
Side Two, Lola versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One by The Kinks
One of my favourite albums... One of of favourite sides... This album is a gem top to bottom.. What I really love about it is the dry, tight production.. there's no reverb on this album and it gives it a punchy immediate feel to it... I also love how the vocals are mixed slightly under the rest of the music demanding the listener to prick up their ears.. Dave Davies guitar is menacing and searing.. especially on his composition Rats.. I chose side two for the gorgeous "Long Way From Home" one of my all time favourite songs..
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All tracks written by Ray Davies except for *, written by Dave Davies.
Produced by Ray Davies |
10 April
Side One, Rickie Lee Jones, Rickie Lee Jones
Rickie Lee Jones' debut album is arguably among the top 10 debuts ever. Her jazz style and drunken beat poet cool drew comparisions to another fellow LA hipster (who she was dating at the time)... Tom Waits. She shot to immediate success with this album, riding the popularity of the hit single Chuck E's in Love, which also may have led to the demise of her relationship with Waits who up until then had only enjoyed very modest success and was probably miffed at his paramours instant notoriety. It deserved the accolades though. It's a brilliant album and she's brilliant on it. Every song is a gem, but none of them pack as big a punch as the moving Last Chance Texaco... I still remember hearing that song for the first time and just being blown away..
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All Songs written by Rickie Lee Jones
Produced by Lenny Waronker and Russ Titleman |
9 April
Side One, Kenny Rogers, Greatest Hits
My parents were big on greatest hits. If they liked an artist they just got the greatest hits. You name it they bought it. I always thought it was kind of a cop out. I mean greatest hits packages are just that... the singles of that particular band or artist. You never got to hear any other track than what was on the radio. However, there were exceptions. Kenny Rogers' Greatest Hits is more than just an anthology, its his signature album. This was one of my father's favourites. Imagine a crazy French guy singing these songs in a thick accent while exercising in the living room and you have somewhat of a taste of what my childhood was like. Still, this album is tremendous... Kenny Rogers could fucking DELIVER A SONG... what a voice.. so present. Great, thick and punchy production... and the best beard in show business.
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Side One
Released 1980 |
8 April
Tuesdays with Longcipher Presents:
Side Two, Lenny Bruce, The Berkeley Concert
"And I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce"
- Paul Simon
It is typical of the way in which this society anything with which it disagrees the Lenny Bruce was always referred to as a "dirty" comic.
The first thing anybody found out about him, if they took the trouble to listen, was that he didn't have to say "fuck" in order to be funny. The second thing they found out, if they listened a little harder, was that Lenny Bruce was not a comedian at all, as he said himself the night he was trusted at the Jazz Workshop in Son Francisco. When he returned to the club after being taken to the city jail, booked and let out on bail, he told the audience "I'm sorry if I'm not very funny tonight, but I'm not a comedian, I'm Lenny Bruce."
And Lenny Bruce was really, along with Bob Dylan and Miles Davis and a handful of others (maybe Joseph Heller, Terry Southern and Allen Ginsberg in another way) the leader of the first wave of the American social and cultural revolution which is gradually changing the structure of our society and may effectively revise it, if the forces of reaction which are automatically brought into play by such a drive, do not declare military law and suppress it.
Lenny Bruce said that this society is insanely paradoxical. That they call it the Hall of Justice but the only justice is in the halls. That the law is beautiful, the only trouble is the people who are in charge of it. He went ahead in his determined, logical brilliant analysis of the laws and he fought the judges and the district attorneys and the newspapers and the trade press, that incredibly hypocritical house organ for vested interest.
Lenny Bruce was the prisoner of truth and no society will tolerate the voice which tells it the truth about itself because to face that truth is to admit it and be forced to change.
So it is easier to refer to Lenny Bruce as a dirty comic, as a convicted junkie and menace to youth. What he was, really, was a menace to THEM.
Lenny Bruce was a brilliant legal mind and a terrible lawyer. That's what defeated him in the end in the courts, even though he was victorious in his appeals on his obscenity conviction in New York and the one in Chicago was automatically reversed.
Lenny's problem with the law was that he believed in it. He had a fantasy he used to speak of and which is in his book, "The Essential Lenny Bruce" (Ballantine), about a party they would all give him sometime, all the cops and the lawyers and the DAs and the judges because "Lenny you never lost faith in the law, you always believed in it." He did believe, with all his heart. He believed that if only he could get the cops and the DAs and the Judges to obey the law he would be saved. That's what made him a bad lawyer.
He would walk out on stage sometimes with the transcript of his New York trial (he does it in the film, the only performance he ever made) and discuss its hundreds of errors, the inconsistencies and the fact that he was always getting busted because some cop went to see him perform and then went to court and testified what Lenny had said and the cop "did my act lousy. "
"I found out in New York thud I was judged by people who never saw my show," Lenny said. They reduced his show to paper and then read it to the Grand Jury. "My art is public speaking and the cop did my act and he's not a good comic!"
Nelson Algren, in a brilliant talk, once told how, after he had written "Man with the Golden Arm" he was praised by all the critics. Then he wrote "A Walk on the Wild Side" and they panned him. "They discovered I wasn't kidding," he explained. They had also discovered his importance.
Lenny was greeted by everybody at first, except an assortment of prudes, as a great comic satirist but then he began to be more of a serious satirist and they couldn't take it. A society which can tolerate the TV serial of bombings in Viet Nam, the female impersonations of Milton Berle, the sadism of Mayor Daley and Joe Pyne and the rest of the scenery along Desolation Row couldn't take Lenny Bruce. He hit too close to home.
So they did the thing they always do when the voice of protest penetrates too deeply. They killed him. Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad. They kept saying they had made Lenny mad but they really hadn't. They just insisted he must be mad to continue fighting. They drove him to demonical concentration on his fight. They make him into Joseph K. in Kafka's "The Trial," blindly and determinedly struggling to get before the right judge. At the end of "The Trial " Kafka wrote "Where was the Judge whom he had never seen? Where was the High Court to which he had never penetrated?"
Lenny kept trying. And it became more like "The Trial" where there is a verdict of "ostensible acquittal" under which, the accused is told, it is possible "for the acquitted man to go straight home from the Court and find officers already waiting to arrest him again . . . the case begins all over again, but again, it is possible to secure an ostensible acquittal. One must again apply all one's energies to the case and never give in."
Lenny's first bust was in Philadelphia and, dig!, the case was dropped! He claimed in a news broadcast on TV that he'd been of lured a deal if he'd come up with the cash. In any case, the arrest was for possession of a medicinal drug for which he had prescriptions. That set off the syndrome. He got it next in San Francisco (tried and acquitted to the eternal glory of that city) then Chicago, then L.A. and then New York.
It got so bad that they used to roust him from the L.A. club and never even book him. Just take him down. When he returned to his first San Francisco date after his acquittal there, he had a house half full of cops in and out of uniform. There were squad cars parked all around the joint. Lenny look one look at the audience - half of them on the taxpayers payroll and expense account and said all the Magic Words in the first 60 seconds and then went on with the show.
His famous Los Angeles narcotics conviction was on the testimony of a sheriff's squad member who was himself at that time under suspicion for smuggling narcotics and was eventually arrested, tried, convicted and jailed for a narcotics offense. But the society in that that city- media being its representative - wouldn't treat the Bruce case as a serious perversion of justice. Had he lived he might still have worn on his appeal on that one as well. He made a good case for being framed.
Lenny's whole point was really epitomized in his trophies with lawyers. He didn't want to be defended on the basis that he didn't do it. He wanted, rather, to show that what he had indeed said was not obscene. In an incredible dialogue with the arresting officer on the steps of the paddy wagon in San Francisco Lenny, busted for using the word "cocksuckers," asked the cop if he had ever used the word. What cool!
The most incredible thing about Lenny was not that he was so brilliantly funny, but that he was funny at all under the circumstances of his persecution and in the corollary circumstances of being unable to work most of the time, for the essence of the satirist is to keep the wit sharp by constant use.
"Lenny, you're honest!" the head waiter at on Broadway shouted the night Lenny returned to San Francisco. And that honesty was the key. He was frightening because of that honesty. In a town where the top columnist, Herb Caen, has a power Walter Winchell alone never exercised in a major American city, Lenny told him to his face from the stage in full view of 308 people that he was chickenshit.
The outrage against Lenny really was caused by his honesty and by his unerring instinct. He touched everyone of us. Lenny outgrew night clubs. He look on that whole society. Entire classes of law students attended his performances. The night he did the Berkeley concert, the audience was dotted with lawyers, professors, poets and authors. All by himself, with little advance notice, he drew 2000 people to that hall, which is more than any other comic could have done, I suspect.
For a long time it was clear that Bruce essentinily was religious and a religious symbol rather than a comedian. It was not surprising that his posters are displayed on the walls of the faithful and now and then in their windows like the pictures of Jesus in The Latin American ghettos.
He was afraid of the younger generation, worried that he could not communicate with them knowing how TV had made sophisticates out of six-year-old girls. But the oncoming wave of long-haired rebels picked up on him at the end. He had some at his Berkeley concert and he had more when he played the Fillmore a few months later. And now he had the true status of a myth and a martyr with them that the pretenders like Malcolm Boyd convince TIME that they have.
Lenny didn't have to say the controversial words to be funny. Religions, Inc. and Comic at the Palladium will rank as classic American satires as long as we exist. But he did use these words, taking from them by his use their magic power to de. harm to anyone but him. He used them and he was funny with them or without them. More than funny. He was a teacher and the greatest thing he ever taught, from which the philosophy grows, is the there is only who is. And it's paradoxical and somehow dramatically perfect that he should at the same time insist on the reality of the legal dream, the reality of what, in the law, ought to be. The 'what is" of the law is deals in inequity and chicanery and legal fictions. Lenny wouldn't buy that. He insisted that the law be taken seriously. That was his trouble.
A library of Lenny Bruce tapes would raise the educational potential of the national school system to a considerable degree. They should all be made available. This is the Berkeley concert, the first Bruce full concert performance issued unexpurgated.
-Ralph Gleason.
4 April
Alright, everyone here who knew that Billy Joel started out in a cheesy two-piece metal band raise your hands... No one? We didn't think so. Were not sure what's more remarkable, that this is actually Billy Joel, or that this was actually signed by a major label... Generally regarded as one of the worst albums ever created, we here at Walrus Comix ask you to judge for yourself... It could be so bad that it is genius.. then again, maybe not... One thing is for certain, this album sports one of the worst album covers ever made.. Two dorks in Hun costumes standing in a meat locker?? What the hell were they thinking??? We chose side one because of the fantastically horrible California Flash...
Anyway, sit back and get ready for the jazz metal stylings of a young Billy Joel...
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Side One
(all Songs by Billy Joel... yes that's correct.. Billy Joel)
Produced by Billy Joel |
2 April
Side One, Histoire de Melody Nelson by Serge Gainsbourg
Serge Gainsbourg was decades ahead of his time. You can listen to the stuff he did in the 60s and think you were listening to the hippest motherfucker on the planet today. He's been copied by every indie hipster there is from Jarvis Cocker to Beck and sampled by every rapper and hip hop artist worth his salt. He was a dyed in the wool genius. Histoire de Melody Nelson is a perfect gem. A concept album about an older man and a young girl getting it on, the music is filled with tension and sleaze and whimsy and beauty. The bass guitar is simply the best sound ever put to tape and drums and guitar are so dry and tight sounding its amazing.. add to that great immediate sounding vocals and lush strings. genius beautiful songs and a funky beat and you have yourself Histoire de Melody Nelson. I choose Side one because of the gorgeous Ballade de Melody Nelson, but every song is pure genius..
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Side One
Produced by Jean-Claude Vannier |
Starting today and for all of April, you're pal and mine Walrus Comix' resident columnist and angry young man, Edvard Longcipher will take control of the turntable TUESDAYS and pull out an LP from his personal collection to play for us... so we BETTER LIKE IT.. and thus beginneth.... TUESDAYS WITH LONGCIPHER
Side One, Africa/Brass by John Coltrane
There are certain John Coltrane albums that are "must-haves" - 1957's Blue Train is one, as is1958's Soultrane, and of course1959's seminal Giant Steps. But 1961's Africa/Brass is lesser known and overshadowed by later works such as the spiritual A Love Supreme, released three years later.
Africa/Brass was unique, because it features two bassists - Reggie Workman and Art Davis - as well as Freddie Hubbard and Booker Little on trumpet, Eric Dolphy on bass clarinet, McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and a group consisting of five french horns, two baritone saxophone's, three euphoniums, Britt Woodman on trombone, and Coltrane playing tenor and soprano saxophones.
For years it has been alleged that the arrangements were by Dolphy, which made sense (especially on side one, featured here), as the arrangements are very Mingus-like in spirit. However, according to the all-knowing Wikipedia, it was in fact McCoy Tyner who arranged the selections, and not Dolphy.
Side one features the track "Africa," written by Coltrane. It is one of a kind, Coltrane as you will never hear him again; this was his first recording for the Impulse! label, and he would never again return to this bigger band sound, opting instead to explore the realms of LSD with his classic quartet, featuring Elvin, McCoy and Paul Chambers.
Africa/Brass is an un-sung hero in Coltrane's repertoire; it gives a glimpse into a what-could-have-been world of John Coltrane, and oh what an interesting world it was indeed...
Light the candles, spark that joint, y disfruta.
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Side One
Produced by Bob Thiele |
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