Odds and sods

[Stephan Forstner]

Here's some input on some recent topics. Sorry for mashing them all
together. Even more sorry for inflicting them on you.

>Just won Steve Swindell's album "Fresh Blood" on ebay for $US6.00.
>Has anyone got this?

Well, everyone has been more or less positive about this one, so I'll be the
grinch here. I like Steve's work with the Hawklords, and though it's not to
everyone's taste, I think the synth solo on 'Valium 10' is something of a
minimalist masterpiece. But as for 'Fresh Blood' - I got this way back when,
complete with promo sticker on the front saying 'Suggested cuts' and a
tracklisting with little boxes to be checked off (does that increase or
decrease the value I wonder?) Steve looks sort of like a very
middle-of-the-road 80's rocker on the cover and inside sleeve and to be
honest that's how the music in general struck me as well, so I never really
warmed to it. The musicians are of course good and you can't fault their
performance, and Steve actually has a very good voice and does a thoroughly
professional production job. For me it's all just TOO professionally bland,
too obviously an attempt at mainstream commercial viability. Nothing wrong
with that of course, it just isn't the kind of thing that excites me, unless
done really, REALLY well. So I give it thumbs down, but for pretty
subjective reasons. Interestingly enough, if I had gotten this before 'Live
79' and tried to guess which song had been a Hawkwind track, 'Shot Down in
the Night' would have been my second choice - the opener, 'Turn it On, Turn
it Off' would have been my first guess. I think it's lyrics have a slightly
Calvertian feel to them, and some of Brock's early 80's themes are present.

> Captain Mikel Anubis
>
>Cosmic BrotherHood of Ra       Temple of Isis
>
>International Fellowship of Isis
>
>I live by the Divine Order of Ma'at, the Sacred Principles upon which ISIS
>Herself created the Planet Earth.
>
>Ankh Udja Seneb!!!

Last weekend I was at the Brooklyn Museum of Art and saw the 'Eternal Egypt'
exhibition - highlights included some papyrus pages from various 'Books of
the Dead', including one nice sequence where the deceased's soul is being
weighed against the feather of Ma'at by jackal-headed Anubis while
ibis-headed Thoth records the outcome, the dread devourer waits hungrily
nearby, and the other gods watch. Luckily the traveller is judged favorably
and he moves on to the Field of Reeds. Of course, if you believe
Stargate-SG1, Isis and the other Egyptian gods were actually evil alien
parasites.

>On Thu, 17 Jan 2002 19:17:00 -0500, Tim <ma-paharper at IOPENER.NET> wrote:
>>Now i've got some more choices, and a shortage of money,so i need your
>>votes,please:
>>amon duul 2 -live on bbc radio 1
>>gong - live on tv 1990
>>ozric tentacles - pungent effulgent
>>      "                  - erpland

Doug replied:
>I'm probably the wrong person to ask, since I would strongly vote against
>all four.  Although you can probably ignore my vote against the Ozrics
>discs, just 'cause I personally don't like 'em (remind me too much of the
>Grateful Dead, and not enough of Gong - YMMV).  Even if you DO like them,
>buying an Ozric Tentacles album before owning all of Gong's best albums
>would be sort of like buyinga bunch of Farflung & MQB albums without
>owning 'Doremi Fasol Latido' and 'Quark, Strangeness & Charm'.

I do enjoy occasionally listening to the Ozrics, and Pungent Effulgent and
Erpland are 2 of my 3 favorite OT albums (Strangeitude being the other).
Live Ethereal Cereal would round out my picks for the best OT material.

>For the other two bands, you'd do MUCH better to start with their albums
>that include Hawkwind members.  Amon Duül's first two albums (with Dave
>Anderson), 'Phallus Dei' and 'Yeti' are BRILLIANT!

Yes yes yes. And I see that CDNow lists remasters of these w/ bonus tracks
as being available at the end of this month, though they were already
available as imports for a while. Yes yes yes.

>And the next three, 'Carnival In Babylon', 'Dance of the Lemmings' and
>'Wolf City' (all without Anderson) are also very good.  The Radio 1 show
>was recorded a couple years after those.

Yes again. Also very good is the disc titled Live in London (Rodney Matthews
alien attacking Big Ben on the cover art) - an excellent and energetic live
show with material from Yeti and Dance.

>Grakkl (FAA) ... who would rather listen to the full-length restored rock
>opera version of Made in Germany (Repertoire) by Amon Duul II than listen to
>all of Yeti, which is fantastically blasphemous I know, but I think Side 3
>is the essence of something that works perfectly well at 6 min. (as on Side
>4) (so why play it for 20?)

Ooh, blasphemy indeed! (Making the sign to ward off evil). Not only is Yeti
brilliant and my favorite ADII album (side-long track and all), it is also
one of my favorite albums period. I find the improvs on there to be so
listenable that what is good at 6 minutes is twice as good at 12, and 3x as
good at 18! Having said that, it is now my turn to blaspheme (against
nature, Doug, and spacerock), and admit that, aside from the odd track here
and there, I do not own any Gong recordings. This, along with the absence of
any early Pink Floyd, is probably the most obviously gaping hole in my
collection and something that I'll eventually have to address. I do intend
to one day get hold of at least the Radio Gnome Invisible trilogy as Doug
recommends.

Farflung on Falcata-galia:
when IS this coming out? I think Keith is right about F-G being linked to
Transparency, but I can't contact Transparency, they seem to have gone off
the air, probably suffering from the New Year internet drop-off syndrome -
that's when you come back after Christmas vacation and suddenly find lots of
websites and e-mail addresses that have disappeared or stopped working,
presumably due to failure to renew the lease. And the F-G website also lists
Falc-0062 - 'The Brain' TBA - is that going to be a new release from Grenas/Fox?

Last but not least, does anyone have a source for the Lexicon Devil VocoKesh
reissue?

Thanks for your time,
Stephan