King Crimson at Old School Square, Delray Beach, FL, July 23, 2021

KC Schawag.

Program, and "tour book," actually two CDs and a 24-page full color pamphlet packed in a DVD-style case. CDs feature 40 rarities and alternate tracks from all phases of the band's career, most of them on disc for the first time.

Evidently, they've been selling yearly versions on tour since 2014.

Show was of course remarkable, jaw-dropping musicianship and a distinct ability to recreate the sound of their studio recordings live.

Jakko Jacszyk (probably sp, right?) impressed me not only with that awesome Court guitar, but also with his ability to creditably sing the songs, whether they had originated with Lake, Wetton or Belew. It was a tiny bit sad during "Epitaph," realizing that three of the four original vocalists are now gone . . . how must Fripp feel?

"Epitaph" was nice to hear, and exquisite, but after they'd concluded with "21st Century Schizoid Man," I realized that they'd played three songs from Court, but none from Lark's.

Two from Red, though, which ruled.

And can't not mention the three drummers. Jeremy Stacey, front and center, doubled on drums and keyboards. Has *anyone* ever done that before in a tour environment?

There was a pre-recorded announcement just prior to the band's taking the stage about the intermission and no photography, but no bandmember said a word into a mike the entire show. I did think some acknowledgement of what the crowd in our open courtyard was going through during the steady rain that accompanied the first third of the show might have, I dunno, engendered some crowd-band camaradarie.

Whenever I go to a show, I'm always afeared that the drive to the venue might suck, or that parking could be a bitch, and Friday night, both fears proved true. But all that shit will drop away, and i will be left with memories of a tremendous, tremendous show.

Set list

Miles Davis - In A Silent Way

So . . . . . the hoped-for reappraisal.

Man, have I been on an electric-period Miles jag for the past two weeks or so, with at least another week--just based on incoming purchases--obviously in store. And yeah, I had to buy Pangaea and finally pick up Get Up With It on disc, and check out Dark Magus, and Panthalassa, but if I was gonna do all that, I think I was kind of required to re-listen to something that hadn't made a heavy impact the first time around.

I first bought In A Silent Way when I was 19 or 20, Bitches Brew in the rearview.

And despite having pretty much liked what it sounded like when Miles Ran the Voodoo Down, In A Silent Way really made zero impression on me. I do remember being somewhat surprised by this at the time, but it wasn't happening and the album sat unplayed. Some of the impressionistic shortfall, I think, was that McLaughlin didn't sound like he did on Birds of Fire, and if that was it, I think I may have been listening under unreasonable expectations. Another key component of the music's failure to excite simply may have been the expectations (or fears) created by titles. The way was "silent" and the time was "peaceful." And oh yeah, "Sssh."

I can definitely remember being skeptical about the concept of ambient back then, and if I was adventurous enough to buy the thing, I wasn't enough detoxed from the punk rock and the Iron Maiden to get past the preconceptions.

Maybe. I dunno, maybe it was something else.

But I'm actually kind of happy right now, because, after having a long while ago given away the vinyl I purchased as a young pimply adult, I'm really digging the Columbia Jazz Masterpieces/BMG Music Club CD I bought on Discogs last week. It's mostly electric piano tone clusters and rhythmic vamping underneath some tasteful and restrained sax and trumpet solos, with some nice electric guitar and double bass snippets interspersed, and nothing wrong with that. It ain't rock and it ain't ambient, so let's call it quality jazz, even if Miles really would fly the coop sometime thereafter.

I have of course in the past been disappointed when I find that my mid-50's self and my snivelling potsmoking younger version agree on something. So here I get to dismiss my younger self's taste, which is nice.

But one thing I'm wondering and if you can clarify please do, it's Wayne Shorter and the way he's credited with tenor sax on the 1999 CD I bought, when there are spaces in the music that certainly sound like soprano. Looking around, I see that Lester Bangs in his contemporary review also had Shorter playing tenor, but that Wikipedia, adapting the credits "from the album's 1969 liner notes" has him on soprano. And here's a serious jazz site that says In A Silent Way was Shorter's debut on soprano.

This isn't usually the kind of thing I'd get hung up about, let me be emphatic, but it *is* the kind of thing serious jazz people make a habit of worrying about. And usually end up straightening out as a result. Regardless of my original opinion on the thing, this is considered to be a classic record, right? Yet it appears there's some question about who played what. Which is kind of weird.

File under: Directions in Music

My Galaxie 500 Story

For me, Galaxie 500 will always be music for vacuuming your car.

When you're newly single again, your schedules can get a little fucked up. If no-one needs you at home at 10:30 PM on a Sunday night, there's no reason, for example, not to go to the gas station and vacuum your car out, if you've been putting it off for weeks and feel a little lonely and ineffectual as another boring weekend closes itself out.

In the early oughts, I was living on an island in the middle of Biscayne Bay, buncha condos, buncha restaurants and the one Shell Station. So I drive the 3/4 of a mile over there, and all the restaurants are closed, there's no-one around and very few cars are even driving by.

Cerveza had just given me a tape he'd made with a bunch of Galaxie 500 on it, so I popped that in, and cranked it up. Gotta hear it over the vacuum motor, right?

This was my introduction to the band, so not sure which of the three albums, or whether it was a mix, or whether "Tugboat," their masterpiece, was included on the tape, or what, but I've got it loud and it sounds pretty good to me, all the dreampop surf guitar and the melancholy keening vocals.

And then as I'm leaning down into the passenger side seat with the vacuum hose, I get the shit scared out of me. I hadn't heard him over the various roars, but some dude must have been walking by, I swear I have no recollection of what he even looked like, but he called to me from five feet away and asks, "Hey! who's that band?"

I don't know what to say, but I twist around in the driver's seat towards him and yell, "they're called Galaxie 500!" and I have no follow up at all. Again, I've barely heard of them, and this is the first time I've heard. You always want to say something like, "they're my favorite band," or "my sister knows the bass player," or "they're gonna be in town next week," or even like I should have said, "too bad they broke up," but I had nothing. No knowledge, no stories, just the somewhat inappropriate volume, and sounds issuing forth from the Pontiac's 6 x 9's, of this pretty, sad little atmospheric dreampop band. So I just stare at him silent for a ten seconds or so, reverbed guitar blowing past us under the filling station lights, at a complete loss for anything at all to say, and then he nods his head, turns around and walks away, hoodie flapping in the nighttime bay breeze.

And then I finished vacuuming my car and drove back to my apartment and went to sleep.

File under: Music for a lonely Sunday Night on an island and without a girlfriend

https://rastronomicals.tumblr.com/post/651912856359616512/nocommonwealth-written-by-kaya-oakes-for-kitchen

Iron Maiden - "Phantom of the Opera" from the album Iron Maiden

Having emerged from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, which very famously took a lot of their inspiration and their energy from British punk, Iron Maiden, at least initially, probably had to be a little careful about acknowledging the progressive features in their music. Later on, of course, when they could do whatever the fuck they wanted, they'd cover Jethro Tull and Nektar, play guitar synths, and write songs about "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner".

But if the band in its youth wasn't talking about prog elements, really, all you had to do to find them was listen to "Phantom Of the Opera." The band wasn't going to divide the song into subtitled movements with Roman numerals attached, but they totally could have.

0:00   I. Introduction and Phantom Theme -- The theme is stated at 3/4 speed four times, then we're off and running.

2:06   II. Opera Ghost -- Breakdown, including the Chorus. The breakdown is the toughest and dirtiest and most punk section of the song, but those backing vocals ("Don't you stray") totally remind me of Yes

2:48  III. Christine -- Dave Murray's lyrical solo anticipates the harmonies to come.

3:20 IV. Stairway to the Cellars -- Harris' bass run a descending stairway, as Stratton and Murray enter in harmony, high above, in the eaves of the opera house, I guess, looking below upon the Phantom as he takes the steps down to his torture chamber. I suppose Stratton--a huge Wishbone Ash fan--wanted more harmony parts like this, and that's why he was fired.

4:34  V. The Phantom's March -- The riff is inexorable. Nothing can stand before it. Bedrock over which first Murray, then Stratton solo. And don't you think Stratton's is the better one?

File under: Works adapted from the original by Gaston Leroux

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d's Pee AT STATE'S END!

So, I finally received the new Godspeed You! Black Emperor CD on Wednesday and have been listening to it during drive time since. When I first got wind of the record, I'd heard that they were using short wave radios as an instrument, and that really piqued my interest because my favorite ambient album of all time (by Holger Czukay) does that and it's really really weird and all-around spooky.

So I was excited about the record because of that--but they really don't do that much with the idea, using the recorded radio broadcasts basically as introductory prescript and then dropping them after that. A wasted opportunity in my mind.

BUT-- at the end of the third track, there is a beautiful passage of about five minutes, perhaps named "Ashes to Sea or Nearer to Thee," that is absolutely *stunning*.

The album is solid throughout, and features the electric guitar moreso as their recent albums have done, but that one section makes the album worth getting, worth listening to, and worth knowing.

File under: Canadian Post-rock Ensembles, Numbers Stations

Neil Young & Crazy Horse - re-act-or and what I wrote at Allmusic

So, almost a week ago, Neil Young released another live album in what has become a most remarkable Archive Series. This one was called Way Down in the Rust Bucket, and I haven't bought them all, or even heard them all, but it's safe to say I was all over this one. I had my copy on the morning of the 27th.

The set was recorded in Santa Cruz, California, late in 1990, chronicling a gig which served as a warm up for the legendary Arc/Weld-Gulf War arena tour the following year. But as interesting as even *that* is, what really piqued my interest in acquiring the double CD (if not the deluxe set with the DVD) was the inclusion of two songs from re-act-or, which I have long felt is Young's most underappreciated work.

And there's a great version of "Farmer John" and a very good one of "Bite the Bullet" from American Stars and Bars, but if I was looking for versions of "Surfer Joe" and "T-Bone" that reflected the way they were played on re-act-or, well, it wasn't happening. What a strange version of "Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze" we get! Neil nicks a few notes from "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" and plays a grand interpretative overture, as if Surfer Joe was some Mexican emperor, or Moe the Sleeze a great lost love. And then they play the song at half speed . . . .

And "T-Bone," it doesn't have horns, but it's definitely the Bluenotes arrangement.

Listen, it's all grist for the mill. Almost everything Neil does is at the least interesting, and these two songs from re-act-or are definitely that.

But I have to admit I've been thinking of the power and the speed of that album since I gave Rust Bucket its three requisite drivetime spins.

So much so that I found myself on Allmusic today, reading user reviews for re-act-or. The thing was, even the people who liked it were damning it with faint praise! "Lightweight" said a guy who gave it 4-1/2 stars. Well, first off, it's five stars, so then I left this review:

Garfong reference aside, if On the Beach was honey sliders, and Tonight's the Night was tequila, then re-ac-tor is pure uncut crank. It's easily Young's fastest album, his most furious, probably his heaviest, and it recasts Crazy Horse as three guys gobbling speed just trying to keep up with their maniac boss.

I've read where Neil was supposedly mentally absent for these songs, being preoccupied with his son, but have the people who wrote that stuff actually listened? If you choose not to see the lyrics to "T-Bone" as the zen koan for the chronically shortchanged that it is, and if you want to say "Rapid Transit" is aping the Talking Heads of all people, well, good for you, hope it gets you through the night. But Young is *not* absent:, he's as in-your-face as he's ever been.

Young clearly hadn't gotten all the Johnny Rotten out of his system with Rust Never Sleeps (after all, the punk rock there was only on the second side). It's fair to say that re-act-or emptied the cistern. When Young returned with the Horse again, there'd be a swinging laid back character to the roar that they've retained to this day.

Ol' Neil's interesting even when gets it wrong, keep in mind, but when they played "T-Bone" and "Surfer Joe" at the Catalyst in 1990, the songs practically bore no relation: the speed and the fury that re-act-or had was gone. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it helps you realize: re-act-or is a unique document of a band in a place it went to precisely one and a half times.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/re-ac-tor-mw0000717742/user-reviews