(OFF) Re: Music is a drug? LPD

[Keith Henderson]

On LPD...I agree with everybody, Eli included.

It's true, a lot of their music does very little for me too.  Sometimes entire albums (in particular I'm thinking of the Shadow Weaver albums and the Lovers one (I think it is)).  However, much of the rest of it is not only quite good, but is really engaging in a way that is truly out into another direction from just about everyone else I listen to.  Which makes it worthwhile for me to search through their ridiculously extensive back-catalogue to find the 'best cuts' (meat analogy here).

Oddly enough, I've been doing just that recently, going through much of what I don't already have on CD via Grooveshark to see what's good enough to eventually add to my collection.  With just one listen so far Nemesis Online was memorable, and some stuff from the late 80s.  (None of the earliest stuff, pre-86 say, has ever come across as anything other than amateurish noodling.)

I'd rather have a CD with 2-3 songs that are amazing and transcendent, along with 2-3 more that are just dismal, than a CD full of just ordinary so-so songs, even if they all fit my personal taste.  The latter may be non-offensive to listen to, but doesn't exactly enrich my life.

LPD really have two 'modes' this way, not unlike Hawkwind in some respects.  I'm not particularly big on lyrics as a main draw, even though great lyricists seem to cohabitate with many of my favorite bands (surely not a coincidence...i like artistic music).  So when QaSpel does these long-winded indecipherable (to me) rantings over a bed of restrained background electronics, I quickly lose interest.  But when they get down to serious heavy jams, with layers upon layers of electronics, beats, sax, guitar, it becomes wonderfully mesmerizing.  They were this way, at least in the second halves of concerts, back in the years around the turn of the century.  I don't know how they are live now, without a drummer.  I think that must limit them to a great deal, so I haven't travelled to see them accordingly (I remember missing them in Basel CH some years ago).  Plus, de Kleer keeps leaving the band repeatedly.  (Also reminiscent of HW.)

Keith

ObCD:  Hawkwind Triad (U.S. Christmas in particular)