OFF: Re: other bands

[Jon Jarrett]

On Thu, 16 Jan 2003, Amphetamine Embalmer wrote:

> Great thread. Mine, not limiting to 10:
>
> Kingston Wall (I agree with Scott Heller on this band.
> Where is Carl Edlund Anderson when you need him?)

        A good question. He got married recently, but I saw him more
recently still and he does still exist. He will be at the Cambridge
Hawkwind gig for those wishing to run into him.

        While I'm at it, I might as well have at this thread myself,
everyone else did...

        Let's leave aside, well, HW & BOC themselves, and with reluctance
their immediate Relations (most reluctantly of all ICU and High Tide and
of course Motorhead)...

        and the obvious things like Black Sabbath and Deep Purple and
Pink Fairies and Led Zeppelin and Orange Goblin and Monster Magnet and
Ozric Tentacles and Tangerine Dream...

        if I have to keep it down to ten (probably best I do) I'll pick
'em for variety or simply not being able not to leave them out. That gets
you, in no particular order:

        Jimi Hendrix. Yes, another obvious one but a very very important
one. Practically a cornerstone of as much faith as I have. One of the most
important sources of beauty in my aural life. Whether Experience, Band of
Gypsys or whatever.

        Clutch. One of the finest bands currently going and one that I've
tried evangelising here with no luck many times before. They started as a
hardcore band in the American South (first album has a track based
on Moorcock's _Behold The Man_) but they have too much wit to stick with
that. The singer has a new personality for each song, can do the
death-metal cookie-monster style par excellence or out-verbalise Eminem at
his sharpest, and occasionally actually sing; the rest of the band also
play as a jazz group sometimes. They can play. Especially the drummer who
is one of the very few drummers I would happy to see play by himself for
my money. And the lyrics contain passing references to nursery rhymes, the
Founding Fathers, bits of European geography, Visigoths, elephants,
Dodge Swingers, yetis, Tim Leary, Stravinsky... Can I get one person, just
one, to look at <http://www.pro-rock.com> and discover this band
please. Thankyou.

        Daevid Allen and all his works. Well, I'm still exploring, maybe
not all his works, but with particular attention thus far to New York Gong
and of course The University of Errors about whom I shall continue to
jump up and down on this list and elsewhere. Another fabulous source of
words and a very important, almost the only real, source of glissando
guitar, both of which things it is of course impossible to live
adequately without.

        Farflung. I was struck to the core when Tommy Grenas said he was
folding Farflung. They have been (and may yet be again) the only band that
comes close to making the music I would like to make if I had money and
time, and in the realm of space there is currently no-one to touch them,
as long as you believe that space is dark, murky, populated with
occasionally passing very heavy rocks and dusty clouds, and of course
analogue not digital. _The Belief Module_ is possibly the best piece of
spacerock other than _The Space Ritual_ for my values of what space-rock
should be.

        Goatsnake. Started as a Southern-fried doom band with a stoner
leaning and have made the precise crossing point on which they stood their
own. The drummer can now drum in the odd time signatures they begin to
favour, the singer actually can, they are a fabulously heavy greasy doom
thing. And their first album bears on the sleeve a longship with a
Confederate flag for a sail sailing up a river along whose bank rides a
huge bearded biker with chick a pillion on the now-traditional hog, so,
you know it's going to be good before even you open it and discover the
legend "Goatsnake use only Gibson guitars and basses and Sabbath riffs
because they want the best."

        The Heads. Mostly feedback and intensity, this Bristol-based four-
piece would probably have more of a profile if they ever gigged... On the
rare occasions they do they manage that most surprising of feats for a
clear bunch of stoners, being ridiculously tight and
interconnected. Another fan described their style as "head down and give
it plenty", and that's about it, though they're more sixties than
seventies given the stoner tag. If you like guitars that make noise,
and you'd describe it like that with enthusiasm, you should really check
this lot out.

        Man or Astroman? That same Carl Anderson, after due consideration,
termed this lot "space surf". They built their own theramin, pepper their
work with B-movie samples, have a guitarist who sounds like Dick Dale and
a drummer who makes songs skid when he hits them, and they are Lots of
Fun. Examine <http://www.astroman.com> for further evidence.

        Steely Dan. Yes, I know, but I refuse to be ashamed. First band I
was ever fanatic about, I had all their albums till the swines reformed
and made two more. Indulgent, yes, but also brilliantly-drilled and
controlled and the highest concentration of bitter irony this side of
Mark Antony's speech over Caesar.

        Porcupine Tree. Well. Once. Once they were the band that first
gave me the Idea about psychedelic music (and I'd never have gone and seen
them but for Craig Shipley of this list so if he's still around I thank
him again), then they had a nasty lush angst-pop commercial break and
now... well, they're still unavowedly commercial but you can't say it's
affected the quality this time, uncompromising arrangements and
hard-hitting protest amid some finally well-tuned sentiment. I might now
respect them again but I don't think I'll ever love them as I did. _Up The
Donwstair_ remains a breathless example of how space-rock and trance
ethics really *should* be fused and there's none of the first four albums
I wouldn't recommend to anyone into head music. _In Absentia_ you'll have
to make your own mind up about.

        Queens of the Stone Age. Everything else from the ashes of Kyuss
(whom I assumed were too obvious to list separately) has stalled rather,
which is a pity given how fabulous John Garcia's voice is, but QotSA go
from strength to strength. Another one that's hit the level of being
commercial and *good* at the same time, every album hits new highs and
freshly raises its lows.

        Electric Wizard. Now sadly defunct, but for a while making the
other side of that music I want to hear, the doom end, with minimalist
soundscaping and hatred-dripping vocals over the heaviest sound yet to
come out of my speakers. A band you had to endure live rather than enjoy,
but one of whom we are unlikely to see the like again.

        ST37. There are of course other ways to make space-rock and being
mad, Texan, heavily influenced by Krautrock and Hawkwind but also by 80s
punk and a whole bunch of local weirdo performance poets and artists is
this way of doing it. The Texan underground must be a bad place to live
but visiting it via these guys' records is a fair old trip by itself.

        That's ten, isn't it? Oh no, it's twelve. Well, never mind. So I
leave aside the little bands by whom I have only one great record, like
Lotus, Ten Benson, The Satellite Circle, Wool and The Atomic Bitchwax.

        I suppose I could own up to a few guilty pleasures too. I still
often play the first Elastica album. I cannot force myself to sell my
Eagles best of. Or, worse still, a Hall & Oates one. I used to be a
fanatic U2 fan, right up until and including _Pop_. Oh well. And The
Pretenders were and are fabulous, though I'm not quite sure about some of
the points in between. It might also be necessary to put Ten Benson in the
guilty pleasures list but nobody has ever heard of them so I'm safe. Yours
all,
     Jon

Ob2LP: Warhorse - _As Heaven Turns To Ash_
--
"I recognise that I have transgressed many of the precepts of the divine
law, and that I am subjected by various vices and iniquities, disobedient
to the words of the divine mystery brought unto me and a worshipper of the
delights of this military age." Marquis Borrell of Barcelona, 955 A.D.

             (Jonathan Jarrett, Birkbeck College London)