COMPILATION SPECIAL #2!

ok, so here's three more groovy compilation albums, today with a more electic taste. I think we can say that these compilation specials occur when I wake up with a hangover! I need proper focus for a regular review, but these are short and sweet.
Today's involve Daevid Allen, Funkadelic and Miles Davis:

Daevid Allen: The Man From Gong The best Of Daevid Allen

Daevid Allen is widely regarded as a musical genius, and rightfully so. From Soft Machine to Gong to a successful solo career and collaborations with Acid Mothers Temple, Daevid has never stopped experimenting and playing with his own unique world of music. This little CD serves as an excellent introduction to the man, with highlight tracks such as Floatin' Anarchy (with Planet Gong), Why Do We Treat Ourselves Like We Do, and the post-punk excitement of Pearls and Bananareggae, you'll get a glimpse at an eccentric genius from another planet. His discography is vast, and you should all dive in!

Funkadelic: You Got The Funk We Got The Funk

2 CDs of pure Funkadelic, what can go wrong? Featuring trademark tracks One Nation Under A Groove, Electric Spanking Of War Babies and Maggot Brain, you know this disc is for true funksters only. George Clinton propelled Funk into a new territory during funkadelic's early albums in the seventies, and this sampler shows us the more refined P-Funk sound of the second half of that decade, grooves in total control, and an excellent tightness in the playing, whilst still staying true to the mothership. Also included are two instrumental versions of previously mentioned tracks, which are just perfect for sampling or backing tracks for jams. A good introduction to these crazy mothas.

Miles Davis: The Very Best Of Miles Davis The Warner Bros. Sessions 1985 - 1991

It's a widely held (and widely inaccurate) opinion, that Miles Davis' eighties work is cold, clinical and lacks the emotion and skill of his previous work. This is a total fallacy. Here we have a true artist going against the contemporary jazz scene (which became dominated by the 'mouldy figs' such as Wynton Marsalis, during the eighties, and still stays true to this day) and carrying on experimenting. Hip Hop production techniques brought Davis down to a real street level, enigmatic playing brought a new unease to his music, and his rendition of Time After Time turns a good pop song into a truely emotive jazz standard, and one of my favourite recordings of all time. Pure emotion that literally brings me to tears everytime I hear it. Tracks such as Chocolate Chip, Mystery, Amandla and Summertime show how Miles took jazz in new and exciting directions whilst also creating new interpretations of classic standards. A great introduction to a much misunderstood period of a great musician.

So here you go, three good compilation albums which can expand your musical understanding. The Miles Davis disc (the first of his I got) had such a profound influence on me as a young guitarist that I still try to model my playing on his horn blowing. I'd say get em all.

Procal Harum - A Whiter Shade Of Pale

A Whiter Shade Of Pale (now referred to as AWSOP for lazyness reasons) is one of those songs where, it's hard to appreciate how important it was. It's widely regarded as changing almost everything during the sixties because of it's unique sound and musicality. Kick starting prog rock, and becomming a main inspiration for the UK's style of psychedelic music. It's questionable authorship and claims of plagiarism has been in the news the past few years, (but then, the track's always known to be based on Bach anyways) have kinda sullied it's reputation a bit lately, but it's a cracking tune. Let's check it out!

Side A is quite obviously AWSOP, the sublime organ riff takes us into a dreamlike state, and Brooker's voice comes in with the defining opening line "We skip the lights fandango" and carries on singing throughout. The first verse jumps in with a more sweeping Organ playing, and we get the intro melody as well. There are also guitars and stuff as well in the background, but (rare for a rock group) they let the organ take centre stage and get mixed down a bit. An RnB style Bach track is such a weird thing, especially one about a very poe-faced relationship. The track fades out before letting the instrumentalists get carried away. It is a very enjoyable song, and obviously a very important one, but however, it has not aged as well as some sixties tracks have. It's a problem with being ahead of the crowd, it's so easy to become dated unless you're a genius like Frank Zappa or Dave Brock.

For our second side, Side B if you will, we have Lime Street Blues, a more straightforward sixties rocking track. Bouncy beat and melody, trivial lyrics. It's a great fun track to counterbalance the sombre mood of AWSOP, but it does lack the former track's individualistic spark. The neat instrumental bridges show off the band members' fine musical abilities, and show them as solid players, a nice blues boogie. The organ playing during the chorus is neat in the Strawberry Alarm Clock kinda way. Typical sixties.

So, we get two tracks here, one of pop music's all time classics, and a fun little Rock'n'roll number. I'd say that it's a great 7" single and the two tracks play off each other excellently with their contrasting moods. Opposite faces of a coin indeed. This kinda thing really shows what my generation is missing out on when it comes to what a single is, and can be. They're damn fools. It's a great single!

Marillion - Kayleigh

Having grown up in Aylesbury, Marillion are something I've been exposed to for quite some time. Their track Market Square Heroes is about the town's local market (where I've brought many records), which is in total decline these days. Kayleigh takes place during their concept album Misplaced Childhood, which is pretty good, it has moments of well written music and moments of psuedo-Phil Collins pop (which kinda let it down, though are still better than anything that baldy mustered up). We have to remember, Prog was in a very weird place in the eighties, punk had supposedly signalled it's death knell (despite the punk musicians being massive proggers anyways), but in reality, it was still going strong. It still had a massive following, but fifty minute xylophone solos representing dragons in fuedal era Japan are hardely MTV material. Luckily, a bunch of prog bands with pop sensibilities come into play, Marillion at the forefront, and achieved major success, keeping prog in the limelight until grunge and alt rock would finally remove it's mainstream recognition (again irony being that those who killed off prog were massive fans of it themselves)

Kayleigh starts off with some jangly guitars and plinky plonky eighties keyboard, Fish comes in asking if we remember, and apologises for breaking Keyleigh's heart. It's a sappy love song, yes, about trying the fix a breakup. It doesn't really build up for the chorus, just get plinky plonkier until we get a kinda allright guitar break before returning to plinky plonky land. And repeats. This track is one of those psuedo-Collins songs, and was a massive hit, still playing regularly on radio. It's not good, but it's not terrible, it's just kinda... there. Trapped in a void of the eternal eighties.

A reverbed drum beat draws us in over a light synthy chord sequence, we are now listening to Lady Nina, the B side. We are more in prog territory here, I mean, it's still very eighties pop, but is more musical. We have a fairly good guitar solo for quite a while. Kinda playing down the usual guitarist cliches though. The chorus is bouncy and suits Fish's voice, and as the song begins to wind down to a close, we get a synth solo over the top. This is more prog for sure. Then it fades out, when you'd expect it to carry on to another verse/chorus. Oh well.

All in all, Kayleigh is without a doubt, a true sign of it's times. It is inoffensive, played safe and overly polished. It's not a bad single to get, just it's not very good either. Lady Nina is a stronger track, but again there isn't really anything there that warrents a proper listen. Marillion were an albums band, and in the suites of music, they would litter these little commercial tracks. And that's all they really are, commercial tracks.

Yes - Close to the edge

Yes.... Yes, Yes, Yes... Seen by many as the height of Progressive Rock's pretentions, an example of all that should be avoided, right? Well no. Prog is hardely the dirty word it used to be, and has one of the largest dedicated audiences of any genre around. I think we all go through that phase where we're anti-prog, but in reality, it's a dumb way of thinking. I'd never really sat down and properlly listened to Yes until a month ago, I had brought this album randomly as I had just started collecting LPs, and my oh my, this was a brilliant introduction to the band.

After a short introductionary soundscape of droning and noise, like a kind of natural sound, Yes break in with a free jazz/fusiony instrumental introduction, a pure cachophony of delicious prog, broken up with  the occasional chant of 'Ahhhh' before sequeing into something more musical and melodic. It swings in a pleasant way, very musch what oyu'd expect from prog. John Anderson's vocals creep in, a higher pitched version of your typical rock vocals. There's an element of Sting in his voice? Yes, at times it almost verges on 'white boy reggae', about six years before it hits the mainstream. However it is prog through and through. The music breaks into a quiet water-like section, reflecting the subject theme of The River Man, Siddhartha. A beautiful noise breaks in as we are treated to Rick Wakeman on an organ, becoming something of a spiritual point, like a moment of ecstacy, before erupting into the full Wakeman keyboard majesty. If you have a wizard costume, put it on for this part. the main lyrical theme returns and feels more joyous.


Lyrically, the song tackles the subject of spiritual awakening of Siddhartha, based confusingly on a novel by Hermann Hesse, where the titular character (Siddhartha) is around in the same time as Gautama Buddha (who was originally Prince Siddhartha, and had a spiritual awakening...) Anyways, around this time in the seventies, rock was at a point, leaving the faux-spirituality of the late sixties behind, many had begun to really look into it, and themselves, and this spirituality is a recurring theme of Yes' music at the time. The lyrics are often nonsensical when viewed in a logical sense, but serve as an expression of the abstract ideas found in such a subject.

Side two starts with a nice gentle accoustic piece, folky and playful. Totally light like a field. Wakeman's mooging around adds a gentle breeze and Anderson starts singing, and it eventually becomes proggier, reminding me of King Crimson's 'In The Court Of The Crimson King'-meets-arena-rock. It's that kinda aspirationy sound that'd usually be found at the end of a prog epic. And that it does, It returns to the playful melody and then gets proggy. I'm sensing a pattern here. And it ends. Kinda a fade out, a whimper rather than the bombast of side one.
We're then treated to a funky prog number, propelled by a neat guitar riff, Hendrix-lite, because every guitarist has their Hendrix copying moments. Prog Hendrix though sounds a bit different from most, especially when aided by Anderson's vocals making it totally 100% yes. It plays with prog tropes all too easily, and yes Wakeman has his harpsichord sound breaking through. Howe does his solo bit, it's Howe by numbers, in a track that's totally  prog by numbers. I must admit. It's decent, and enjoyable, but I don't know, I find it kinda lacking.


All in all, Close to the edge is a really good album. The second side feels rather uninspired compared to the first, but ultimately, well worth getting. Even if just for the Rodger Dean gatefold painting. But yeah, I think every record collector should have this album, it's totally of it's time yet timeless. One of the best of the 'pure-prog' releases, and Yes' highlight. This is the first of my 'MUST HAVE' reviews.

 The dreamlike gatefold. Love you man!