Bert Jansch / Ralph McTell- "Moonshine" (1975) Live Television Performance

While all the headlines are going on about the death of Steve Jobs, today saw another death that is far more significant to me- perhaps the greatest folk guitarist I've ever heard, Bert Jansch. Rest in peace Bert, I've learned much from you and you will be greatly missed.

The Slits- "Typical Girls" Video (1979)

Dubby post-punk madness- one of my all-time favorite "girl groups"

Velvet Underground Series, #5: Lou Reed & John Cale- Songs for Drella (1990) / Songs for Drella: Live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, 1989 (1990) / Songs for Drella: A Work in Progress, St. Ann's Church, NYC, Jan. 7-8, 1989 (Bootleg) MP3 & FLAC

"My skin's as pale as an outdoors moon, my hair's silver like a Tiffany watch. I like lots of people around me, but don't kiss hello and please don't touch."

Throughout the four and a half decades that Lou Reed and John Cale have known each other, their relationship has had few constants other than its consistently tempestuous nature, something that was evident from the very beginning. When they were initially introduced in 1964, Reed was working as an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records (a job he has since likened to being "a poor man's Carole King"), writing commercially-oriented pop songs by day while exploring more experimental forms of songcraft (such as an early version of "Heroin") by night. The classically-trained Cale had recently arrived from London armed with a sponsorship from Aaron Copeland and plans to further his music education with American uber-elite avant-garde composers such as John Cage and La mont Young, and almost immediately, Cale was invited to play viola in Young and Tony Conrad's drone-oriented ensemble Theater of Eternal Music aka the Dream Syndicate. While Cale was none too impressed with Reed's lack of polish as a musician, he both admired and related to Reed's experimentalist tendencies, which took the form of alternate guitar tunings, droning effects, and lyrics that were both graphic and literary. They also discovered a mutual disdain for conventional artistic expression. John Cale on his first impressions of Lou Reed: "He seemed extremely vulnerable and with a very visceral sense of claiming his identity, in that it seemed like his identity was really clear when attacking things. And not that there was an ingrained hostility to everything on Earth, but I guess that's a common trait in many people that they think the best way to define themselves is to really attack, and this unnerving and psychologically disturbing persona was struggling to have an artistic expression, that was being stifled by this confusion between his surroundings and himself. This description could very well apply to myself as well [...] trying to find a role in classical music that really had anything to do with the outside world was certainly not clear in my mind."

John Cale

After recruiting Sterling Morrison, a former college roommate of Reed's, and Angus MacLise (later be replaced by Moe Tucker), an avant-garde percussionist whom Cale had met while playing in Theater of Eternal Music, Reed and Cale briefly formed a band called The Primitives; however, when Tony Conrad turned the band on to a book about the sexual subculture of the early sixties called The Velvet Underground, the band instantly adopted the name, recognizing a thematic continuity with the increasingly dark subject matter of Reed's lyrics (he had just written "Venus in Furs") and feeling that it was also evocative of underground cinema. While Reed and Cale were more than happy to accept the patronage of Andy Warhol after being "discovered" while playing a tourist trap called Cafe Bizarre, their time under Warhol's tutelage saw them become increasingly antagonistic over the direction of the band. Reed, being The Velvet Underground's primary songwriter, kept the band, whether intentionally or not, somewhat grounded in recognizable pop song structures even if they did have a strict "no blues" policy. Cale, as the band's other creative force who, musically, was far more experimental and technically proficient, functioned like a foil to Reed's singer-songwriter approach. This set up a tense intra-band dynamic that was responsible for both their unparalleled sound on the first two albums and, at least to some degree, Cale's exit from The Velvet Underground in fall 1968.

Lou Reed in the Mid-Seventies

Cale's dismissal from The Velvet Underground has been cloaked in mystery for decades, as all parties concerned have steadfastly refused to reveal any particulars about what actually took place; however, a close friend of Robert Quine, Reed's guitarist during much of the eighties, has offered some insight: "Lou told Quine that the reason why he had to get rid of Cale in the band was that Cale's ideas were just too out there [....] Cale had some wacky ideas. He wanted to record the next album with the amplifiers underwater, and [Lou] just couldn't have it. He was trying to make the band more accessible." One of the unfortunate effects of Reed's decision was that for nearly two decades, he and Cale had very little contact, with the 1972 Bataclan concert with Nico as the only notable exception. It wasn't until the untimely deaths of both Warhol and Nico in the late eighties that Reed and Cale renewed their working relationship. It was the artist Julian Schnabel who first suggested that Cale should do some kind of requiem for his former mentor Warhol. In fact, Cale was hard at work on an all-instrumental composition dedicated to Warhol when he and Reed crossed paths again in 1988 and decided to set about working on a Warhol-related project called Songs for Drella, "Drella" (a contraction of Dracula and Cinderella) being a nickname given to Warhol in the mid-sixties by Factory regular Ondine (actor Robert Olivo).

Warhol and his band of Velvets

John Cale in 1989: "When we started playing together last May, it began as just the two of us having fun throwing ideas around [....] Gradually it turned into songwriting. It was a great opportunity to pick up the threads of The Velvet Underground and draw our original ideas about arrangements and subject matter to a conclusion. Obviously we're bringing a lot of baggage to the project, but we are doing it with a lot of love. Andy was an incredibly generous spirit." Lou Reed: "We tape everything we do [...] Musically, we begin with simple chord progressions to which John adds his Welsh riffs. The lyrics are a reflection of everything we talk about. Each of us has a notebook filled with ideas. I'm the official typist." What resulted from this collaboration was a multi-perspective song-cycle exploring many of the events and inter-personal relationships that defined Warhol's life. After playing several unadorned live shows under the title, Songs for Drella: A Work in Progress, the pair entered the studio to record the album, a process that by all accounts revived old animosities and creative tensions, leading Cale to vow that he would never work with Reed again (although he would soon renege on this claim when the original version of The Velvets would briefly reform in 1993).

Upon its release, Songs for Drella was met with a series of tepid critical reviews, most expressing disappointment that the album didn't sound more like The Velvet Underground, but such expectations were missing the point: on Songs for Drella, the narrative takes center stage, while the spartan arrangements, comprised of guitar, piano, keyboards, viola, & vox, though largely modest and unobtrusive, add greatly to the considerable emotional power of the songs, which is one of the reasons that, in the twenty years since its release, the album has come to be considered one the best post-Velvet Underground recordings by either Reed or Cale. One reason for this is that there is an intensely personal feel to many of the songs, something that helps the album, even though it is subtitled A Fiction, avoid any trace of romanticization or idealization in reference to Warhol despite the, at times, theatrical approach, a prime example of which is the opening song, "Smalltown," an ironically bouncy stage number that touches on the origins of Warhol's prodigious sense of ambition. Lou Reed: "'Small Town,' the first number, seemed the way to ease into the show, because we thought, 'people are bringing a lot of notions to this show before we ever play a note. How can we get their toes in the water without smacking them over the head, and before we let the electric instruments go as far as they're going to go?' It seemed like that little cabaret number was the thing that answered that. I think it disarms you a bit; it's not what anyone expected." One of the most beautiful and affecting moments in the song-cycle is "Open House," which features Reed describing, from Warhol's perspective, the bitter loneliness of the artist's early days in NYC before he had made his indelible mark on the New York art scene, a narrative for which Reed's wryly vulnerable, understated vocals are perfectly suited. On Cale's songs, his stately vocal-style tends to portray Warhol, whether by design or accident, in a slightly more glamorous light; thus, when it came to one of the centerpieces of the album, "A Dream," a long spoken-word narrative based on Warhol's diaries, Reed and Cale fought bitterly over which narrative voice to use, Reed favoring the "warts and all" approach. Songs for Drella concludes with one of Reed's finest moments on tape, "Hello It's Me," a painfully honest confession of guilt, anger, and loss that not only reveals his deep admiration and complicated love for Warhol, but also reveals something about what has made Reed so special in his own right: "I really miss you, I really miss your mind. I haven't heard ideas like that in such a long, long time. I loved to watch you draw and watch you paint, but when I saw you last I turned away." Goodnight Andy.

Spiritualized- "Come Together" Video (1998)

J. Spaceman as Lee Harvey Oswald ironizing John Lennon. I know, I know, but it works!

Scars- Author! Author! (1981) / Adult/ery/Horrorshow Single (1979) MP3 & FLAC

"Leave me in the autumn when darkness comes too soon and snow is on the way, but you'll be far, so far away, I'll think of you every day."

While fellow-Edinburgh natives Josef K are usually the first band mentioned when it comes to discussing the Scottish Post-Punk scene of the late-seventies and early-eighties, an argument can be made that Scars' all-too-brief journey from the art-punk abrasiveness of their early singles to the more textured and melodic (though still spiky) brand of Post-Punk found on their debut and swan-song, Author! Author!, represents a legacy just as compelling if not more so than their more commonly name-dropped counterparts. In fact, Josef K. lead singer Paul Haig has admitted that TV Art, an early version of his band, "were inspired by Scars." From their inception, Scars' unique sound was in evidence. Equal parts Glam attitude, Punk aggression, danceable rhythm, and arty ambition, early songs such as "Horrorshow," while clearly indebted to the U.K. Punk scene of the late-seventies, seemed eager to explore a sound marrying a more moody, pop-art-informed intellectual approach to Punk's raw emotional power. During their first three years together, Scars spent most of their time touring relentlessly (their gritty live performances are now legendary) and issuing occasional singles, which caught the attention of John Peel, who invited the band to record two sessions (1980, 1981) for his BBC radio show. By 1981, when Scars finally got around to focusing more on recording, their sound had evolved significantly, and what they delivered on their lone LP, though generally little-known, easily stands with the best of the original Post-Punk movement.

Characterized by the expressively insular vocals of Rob King (which occasionally recall Ian McCulloch before he began to court the ghost of Jim Morrison), the razor's edge chime of guitarist Paul Research, and the propulsive rhythm section of John Mackie and Steve McLaughlin, Author! Author! epitomized, in the words of NME critic Paul Morley, "the post-punk new seriousness that ha[d] radically re-activated pop music, destroying the dichotomy between intelligence and emotion and confronting a whole range of different fears and desires. New pop that treats the transient thrill seriously." Poetic abstractions aside, Author! Author! consistently displays the traits that made the best post-punk bands such a stimulating antidote to the increasingly regimented and sectarian aspects of the Punk scene. Produced by Penetration's Robert Blamire and issued on Pre Records, a subsidiary of Charisma that was also the home of Delta 5, the album yielded one single, "All About You," which, due to its periodic inclusion on a few anthologies over the years, single-handedly kept Scars from falling entirely through the cracks of popular memory, and one listen leaves no doubt as to why.

Taking the abrasive guitar-based textures and moody lyrics that previously defined their sound and seamlessly transplanting them into a more straightforwardly pop context yields stunning results on this particular song, and leaves one wondering how Scars failed to achieve the kind of success a band such as Echo & The Bunnymen enjoyed. On the album's other standout track, "Leave Me in the Autumn," the atmosphere is much darker, and King's slightly frantic vocal performance beautifully conveys the sense of painful isolation that runs thematically through the song's lyrics. However, the star on this song is Mackie's bass-work, which initiates the proceedings and never lets up, effectively creating the palpable tension that gives the song its emotional power. Author! Author! represented a huge leap forward for the band sonically, but it also ushered in an image change, which ultimately may have helped do the band in. In a move that in hindsight seems inexplicable given the band's gritty Post-Punk reputation at the time, they decided to adopt a look reminiscent of Viviene Westwood's World's End pirate-inspired collection (a look made famous by Adam Ant), and in doing so, they unknowingly aligned themselves with the New Romantic movement, whose music bore little resemblance to the tense, jagged pop genius of a band such as Scars. Too pop for the punks and too genuinely arty for the Duran Duran crowd.

David Bowie- "Be My Wife" Video (1977)

Classic Bowie from his "Thin White Duke" years. This song can be found on the first album of the Berlin Trilogy, Low:

Adam and The Ants- Dirk Wears White Sox (1979) / Kings of the Wild Frontier (1980) / Prince Charming (1981) / Peel Sessions (1991) MP3 & FLAC

"You may not like the things we say, what's the difference anyway?"

Adam Ant: "Look, I'm a punk rocker. I always was; I'm not a New Romantic. But I was a punk rocker who wanted to get more than one fuckin' album. The Pistols were great, but they only did one fuckin' album. Not enough! Sorry!"  It's easy to forget how fleeting the original U.K. Punk scene was before the media storm over The Sex Pistols' infamous appearance on Thames Today turned the whole thing into a simultaneously demonized and co-opted caricature of itself. In addition, with its prized rejection of technical proficiency as a criterion for musical expression (a philosophy that opened the scene to virtually anyone with a guitar, something to say and the bollocks to say it), few of the participants in the early Punk movement were interested in thinking about the music in careerist terms, as "no future" was more than just a catch phrase; it was an ethos. However, as many of the original Punk bands began recording albums and developing as musicians as well as song-writers, the aesthetic limitations of the basic Punk sound- three chords played really hard and really fast- became apparent; as a result, bands such as The Clash, The Damned, Siouxsie & The Banshees and Penetration (to name only a few) began experimenting with and integrating other musical elements and influences into their work.

Malcolm McLaren

The new music scene (not yet labeled "punk") began to catch fire in early 1976, and Adam Ant, then known as Stewart Goddard, had recently dropped out of prestigious Hornsby College of Art to pursue a music career, a venture that originally took the form of playing bass in a pub band called Joe and The Bazookas. However, during one of their gigs, an opening band called The Sex Pistols changed everything. Inspired by what he had seen and heard, Goddard soon adopted his famous moniker and made a number of abortive attempts to form his own band. It was during this time that Adam Ant found his way into the orbit of the burgeoning Punk scene's uber-elite, who congregated at Malcolm McLaren and Vivienne Westwood's fashion boutique SEX. Ants guitarist Marco Pirroni: "Without the shop [...] there would have been no punk, no Sex Pistols, just a load of pub bands who would have made no impact on anything. Malcolm is of course a complete liar but what is true is that he invented the punk attitude and made the Pistols act it out for him [....] To ask how important clothes were to the early scene (not called punk, not called anything in fact) is ridiculous. Clothes were the scene. It was not fashion; it was totally anti-fashion to everything that was going on at the time. The scene was tiny and totally hated the outside world [....] It was about telling the world that you weren't what it wanted you to be; you weren't anything except what you wanted to be. And what better way to tell England that you would not accept any of its upper class, lower class, middle class know your place, we are your elders and betters, fucking feudal society than wearing offensive pornographic clothes on the street?"

Adam Ant in his punk phase

Adam Ant's most important connection at SEX was Jordan (Pamela Rooke) who, in addition to being one of the original architects of the now-iconic look of the London punks, served as Ant's manager and occasional vocalist after he formed Adam and The Ants in the spring of 1977. In many ways, this early version of the Ants stood in stark contrast to their Punk scene contemporaries, as they adopted a very theatrical stage presence (something that would also characterize the band's later, more pop-oriented incarnation) and employed explicit sadomasochistic imagery both lyrically and visually. It was these tendencies and Jordan's connections that landed Ant a part in the Derek Jarman film Jubilee, which also featured the band playing a particularly chaotic version of "Plastic Surgery." Due to a number of line-up changes, work on the Jubilee soundtrack, and a dispute with their soon-to-be ex-record label Decca, Adam and The Ants didn't get around to releasing their debut album until the fall of 1979. The self-produced Dirk Wears White Sox is easily the darkest and most divisive album of Adam Ant's career, and while many portray the debut as having little relation to the more polished, energetic, chart-savvy work that followed it, the chaotic blend of Glam excess, Punk minimalism, and Post-Punk melancholy that characterizes songs such as "Cleopatra" and "Tabletalk" does occasionally hint at the direction Adam and a new set of Ants would take a year later on Kings of the Wild Frontier.

Post-Punk Pirate

Despite gaining the band a sizeable cult following, Dirk Wears White Sox was a commercial failure, which greatly disappointed Adam Ant, as chart success was something he had desired all along: "I wanted to be a graphic designer until I saw the Sex Pistols play live. This was 1975. That's when I knew I wanted to be a pop star, and that for me was like being a matador, a boxer." In an effort to change the band's commercial (mis)fortunes, Ant approached Malcolm McLaren about becoming the band's manager, the result of which was McLaren convincing the Ants to jump ship in order to form Bow Wow Wow with 14-year old lead singer Annabella Lwin. It was also around this time that McLaren had given the soon-to-be ex-Ants some world music recordings from which to gain inspiration for their next recording project, including The Royal Drummers of Burundi. When Adam Ant caught wind of his band's planned defection, he reportedly took these recordings with him to utilize with his new band, which, in addition to guitarist Marco Pirroni, also included two drummers. Once the new version of the band had been assembled, they were now in direct competition with Bow Wow Wow to record a batch of songs employing the Burundi-style percussion, a race Adam and The Ants won easily by, irony of all ironies, adopting a McLaren-style media-savvy image (Native-American pirate dandys) and releasing Kings of the Wild Frontier, an album that would make Adam Ant the pop star he so badly wanted to be. 

Simply put, Kings of the Wild Frontier sounded like nothing else at the time. Displaying the same brand of androgynous swagger that had characterized the best of the Glam scene nine years earlier, employing stripped-down Burundi beats, Duane Eddy riffs, Native American chants, and a mish-mash of historical allusions, the second incarnation of Adam and The Ants managed to tap into the ominousness of the debut album while offering up a great slab of irresistible pop that was as daring as it was derivative, as biting as it was cartoonish. Nowhere is this summed up better than on the lead track "Dog Eat Dog," a song that clearly signals a new day has dawned for Adam and The Ants, as it goes far beyond anything on Dirk Wears White Sox in terms of accessibility. Beginning with a prelude of tribal beats mixed with whistles and howls, Pirroni's dark, spaghetti western guitar twang soon kicks in to set the stage for Adam Ant's defiant opening ultimatum: "You may not like the things we do, only idiots ignore the truth." Despite the tremendous commercial success of Kings of the Wild Frontier, the band only recorded one more LP together, Prince Charming, before Adam Ant embarked on his circuitously ill-fated solo career, and while the album features a few of the Ants' best songs, such as "Stand and Deliver" and the title track, overall it lacks the consistent quality of songcraft that made the previous album so memorable. Ultimately, there is one question that always seems to linger about when trying to re-evaluate Adam and The Ants: vacuous foppish trash by a Punk sell-out hell-bent on becoming a pop star? or a masterful re-imagining of the kind of image manipulation that defined the Glam-era married to an unapologetically post-modern bricolage of disparate cultural signifiers all woven into something daring, entirely disposable and eternally delicious? Can the answer be both?

Lou Reed & John Cale- "Slip Away (A Warning)" (1990) From Songs for Drella

Intensely beautiful tribute to Warhol that was more or less my introduction to Drella, who turned out to be a lifelong interest of mine. This was Reed and Cale's first reunion since Bataclan '72.

A Change Concerning the Paisley Underground Series Going Forward

Hello Everyone,

A few nights ago in the midst of a migraine headache,  I came up with a new approach for the Paisley Underground Series: to alternate the series' posts between (La) luna and Plastic Palace People. The way it will work is as follows:

the Paisley posts on (La) luna will continue to feature the lengthy reviews (and pretty colours), while the Paisley posts on Plastic Palace People will feature a brief introduction followed by the goods. Simply put, I still have a huge amount of Paisley material to post, but there's only so much one can write about some of these bands. This will allow me to expedite the series, which is good for you: more Paisley-related music more often, and for me: it both lessens the writing load and shortens the life-span of this behemoth series. 

Look for Paisley Underground Series, #25 on Plastic Palace People  next week and #26 on (La) luna soon thereafter. Also, upcoming Paisley posts include: Long Ryders, Steve Wynn, Last Days of May, Chris Cacavas, 28th Day, Mazzy Star, Bangles, Green on Red, Radio Tokyo Tapes, Thin White Rope, and more.   ~voixautre

Paisley Underground Series, #24: The Three O'Clock- Sixteen Tambourines (1983) / Baroque Hoedown EP (1982) MP3 & FLAC

"Jet fighter man that's what I am 'cause tanks go too slow. Airplanes fly
and yet I feel so low."

As was the case with more than a few fledgling L.A.-area Garage-Rock bands during the late-seventies and early eighties, Salvation Army got their first real exposure by having a demo played on Rodney Bingenheimer's legendary L.A. radio show, Rodney on the Roq, which eventually led to a recording contract with Frontier Records and the release of their eponymous debut album in mid-1982. However, when the actual Salvation Army threatened legal action over the band's appropriation of its name, Michael Quercio & co. decided to rechristen themselves The Three O'Clock (the time of day they would meet to rehearse), while Frontier decided to promptly shelve the album the band had released a few months earlier as Salvation Army (it would re-appear under the moniker Befour Three O'clock a few years later). During the same period, the band experienced some personnel changes that resulted in the addition of Danny Benair, who had previously played drums for bands such as The Quick and The Weirdos, and ex-Great Buildings keyboardist Mike Mariano, both of whom helped shape the Garage-inflected Power-Pop that soon became The Three O'Clock's trademark.

On the back of these changes, the band, along with former Sparks guitarist Earle Mankey in the production booth, began recording the tracks that would comprise their first release as The Three O'clock: The Baroque Hoedown EP, which proved to be a significant step forward for the band artistically as well as sonically, as it captured them taking their first steps toward melding strands of Psychedelia, Power-Pop and New Wave into a sound that would, as much as any other, come to define the Paisley Underground scene. Leading off with the nonsensically titled classic "With a Cantaloupe Girlfriend," an extremely accomplished slice of Jangle-Pop bliss that is propelled by Quercio's fey vocals and Benair's energetic drumming, Baroque Hoedown boasts a handful of The Three O'Clock's finest moments on tape. While "I Go Wild" captures the sheer euphoria at the heart of the psychedelic experience better than just about any other song that comes to mind, it is the band's brilliant mod-beat-style cover of The Easybeats' classic song "Sorry" that stands above the rest. With Louis Gutierrez's stuttering guitar sound and Quercio's childlike yet swaggering vocals, the band accomplishes the rarest of feats: actually bettering a mid-sixties Garage-Rock gem.

After releasing Baroque Hoedown, The Three O'Clock immediately re-entered the studio, once again with Mankey at the helm, to record Sixteen Tambourines, an album that continued the band's evolution toward a brighter, jangly, more technically accomplished sound, but did so at the expense of the Punk aggression that had always been implicit in their sound. Nevertheless, the album features a number of paisley-tinged Power-Pop gems, including "Jet Fighter," which garnered the band a significant amount of exposure outside of the confines of its Southern California home base. Perhaps the highlight of Sixteen Tambourines is "Fall to the Ground," a wistful, Beatlesque song that finds the band dialing down their wide-eyed exuberance a bit in favor of a more baroque sound that clearly indicates the rapid growth they had undergone as songwriters. A year after releasing Sixteen Tambourines, The Three O'Clock left Frontier to sign with the higher-profile indie I.R.S. Records, a move that, at the time, seemed like a logical step for the band, but one that never lived up to its promise, as I.R.S. was more interested in having them record more songs like "Jet Fighter" than providing the kind of support and financial backing that would have made it possible for them to evolve their sound in new directions rather than to slowly, album-to-album, devolve into the faceless twee-pop band they had become by the time they disbanded in 1988. Despite this, it would be hard to name another band who captured the spirit of the early Paisley scene quite as joyously as The Three O'Clock.

Adam and The Ants- "Ant Music" Video (1980)

Music's lost its taste so try another flavor- Anyone for some Ant music?

Tim Buckley Series, #10: Tim Buckley- Blue Afternoon (1970) MP3 & FLAC

"There ain't no wealth that can buy my pride. There ain't no pain that can cleanse my soul."

Following the release of what many believe to be Tim Buckley's most enduring album, Happy Sad, on which Buckley had introduced a new palette of Jazz-inflected textures to his Folk-based aesthetic, he decided the time was right to make some radical changes in both sound and approach. To begin with, during the months he spent touring in support of Happy Sad, Buckley had grown increasingly disenchanted with playing to the expectations of both the music press and his fan-base, both of which, it seemed, were steadfastly invested in seeing him embrace the role of torchbearer for a folk music scene, that, by the late sixties, was quickly losing steam in the U.S. As the tour progressed, Buckley began introducing new material that was based on a highly improvisational minimalist Jazz approach; he simultaneously began exploring new minimalist-informed arrangements of his older material as well. And, inspired by avant-garde vocalists such as Cathy Berberian, Buckley soon began to push his multi-octave voice to new, decidedly un-Folk-like, extremes. He was also at a crossroads in terms record labels: Elektra, whom he owed one more record, was about to be sold by Jac Holzman; his old manager and close friend Herb Cohen was starting a new label, Straight Records, with Frank Zappa; and, as part of a distribution deal, he owed an album to Warner Bros. As a result, in mid 1969, Buckley recorded three albums in one month, two of which he produced himself.

Two of these albums constituted a significant and startling sonic departure for Buckley, as on Lorca and Starsailor, he explored his burgeoning interest in minimalist Jazz using a largely free-form compositional approach. However, Blue Afternoon, recorded immediately after the extremely unconventional Lorca, in many ways reaches back to the sound and approach of Happy Sad. Lee Underwood: "By the time Tim had evolved into the beginnings of his avante-garde phase with Lorca, it was conceptually regressive to go back to Happy Sad's aesthetic perspective for Blue Afternoon." Nevertheless, "[s]ome of Tim's all-time great songs are on that album [....] True, Blue Afternoon was a collection of old songs, but it was not a collection of unreleased out-takes from previous recording sessions. We recorded them new and fresh specifically for that album [....] Tim knew Lorca was unlikely to be a big hit in the marketplace. He loved Blue Afternoon's old tunes, which had found no home elsewhere. He was shifting labels, moving from Elekra to Herb's new label, Straight, and he wanted to help give that label a commercial launch. For all those reasons, Tim and the rest of us worked as hard as we could on Blue Afternoon, even though it was a conceptual step backwards [....] it was also an effort Tim wanted and needed to make."

Underwood might have characterized Blue Afternoon as a case of conceptual regression, but it would be hard to argue that it is anything other than an artistic triumph. While it was critically reviled upon its release, the album has grown in stature to a significant degree in the decades since its release despite being out of print for much of that time, and though it is usually characterized as little more than an extension of the Happy Sad sound, careful listeners will detect subtle signs of Buckley's more avante-garde inclinations occasionally shining through. The Blue Afternoon sessions were recorded in New York City using the same musicians who had worked on Happy Sad with the addition of drummer Jimmy Madison, while many of the songs themselves were compositions that had failed, for one reason or another, to find a place on Buckley's earlier albums but were deemed too good to remain orphans. While the earlier versions of these songs, which can be found on Works in Progress, are beautiful and revelatory in their own right, Blue Afternoon stands as perhaps Buckley's purest distillation of the Folk-Jazz hybrid that he, along with Fred Neil, either invented or entirely transformed. One of the album's gems is "I Must Have Been Blind," which is easily the equal of anything on Happy Sad, and while on one level it is a fine piece of modern Folk, the unconventional choice of instrumentation, especially the prominence given to David Friedman's vibes, lends the song a strange ethereal feel that compliments one of Buckley's more retrained vocal performances. And then there's "Blue Melody," one of Buckley's best compositions and jaw-droppingly beautiful in this languidly jazzed-up version. What makes Blue Afternoon such a timeless album is its emphasis on dynamics, as the loose interplay between vibes, percussion and Buckley's haunting vocals results in a fluid form of musical expression that differentiates this album from virtually anything else falling under the broad categorical term "Folk." Tim Buckley: "Music. It's the total communication between people in a room. You can take me to a political rally and the relationship between the politics and the people is pretty far removed, so that room doesn't cook. I see music and religion- like the gospel thing- and that cooks. But I see the music as separate from God. The people may do it out of praise for God, but what happens in that situation happens because the people are singing their souls out."

Tim Buckley- "Blue Melody" (1970) Live on Boboquivari, KCET

Buckley & Lee Underwood playing live- this exemplifies the word "sublime"...

W1dowspe@k- S/T (2011) / Harsh Realm EP (2011) / Gunshy EP (2011) MP3 & FLAC

"An empty home, a vacant hell. I knew you in the harsh realm."

It is sobering to realize that it has now been a decade and a half since Mazzy Star's last release, Among My Swan, and though the ensuing years have brought many attempts to replicate their narcotic brand of bluesy psych-folk, none have been able to convincingly capture the alluring darkness that characterized the collaboration between David Roback and Hope Sandoval. The closest, in my estimation, was Miranda Lee Richards' brief stint in The Brian Jonestown Massacre, which yielded some brilliant, sleepy psych-folk such as "Reign On" from the Bringing It All Back Home Again EP; however, that was before I had heard Widowspeak, who appeared on the scene in early 2011 with their single "Harsh Realm," a deliciously sullen bit of Mazzy-worthy navel-gazing dressed in heavily-reverbed fifties-style paranoia, which was reportedly recorded after having only played six shows together as a unit. A Brooklyn trio with roots in the Pacific Northwest, Widowspeak belie these origins by conjuring a Southern California Paisley vibe, while giving it their own twist by cutting it with the kind of fifties and early-sixties musical references that would make David Lynch proud, as well as introducing a subtle but gritty Garage-Rock element, both of which lend Widowspeak a bit more sonic variation than what can be found in the iconic sound of their obvious main influence.

Lead-singer and rhythm guitarist Molly Hamilton:

"I think during the first practice, in my apartment, we talked about the 50′s- Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, early Elvis, and we initially wanted the band to have that sound. I don’t think that happened, but that first practice was cool because all of our weird obsessions came out. Michael and I share an encyclopedic knowledge of the grunge era because of our Northwest upbringings, as well as a love for the Sonics and 60′s garage. Rob’s more into the 70′s, Television and the Stones. Rob and I love Pavement, but Michael is crazy and prefers Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks.  We all dig the Velvet Underground.  I also listen to a lot of really old country and blues and 90′s pop music. We cover “Wicked Game,” but we’ve also talked about covering the Cranberries and the Carter Family, if that says anything about how weird our influences are."

While it is the band's memorable cover of Chris Isaak's classic David Lynch-inspired slow-burner "Wicked Game" that has created much of the buzz surrounding Widowspeak in the early-going, it is actually their beautifully crestfallen self-titled debut album that is most deserving of attention. Admittedly, throughout the course of the album, the ghost of Mazzy Star is almost always within earshot (especially in relation to the lead vocals); however, Molly Hamilton, Michael Stasiak and Robert Earl Thomas never succumb to pure tributary. Instead, by deftly integrating a range of distinguishing influences and emotions, Widowspeak  is able to stake out its own sonic territory, thus earning the right to be heard on its own terms. The lead track, "Puritan," is a case in point; while for much of the song, Hamilton seems to be channeling Hope Sandoval to an uncanny degree, she also occasionally adds unpredictable phrasings to her vocals that lend the song a distinctly non-Mazzy glimmer of emotional lightness. This, coupled with Thomas' Morricone meets surf-rock guitar-style, allows Widowspeak to offer up a glimpse of what might make them truly unique down the road. Likewise, on their second single, "Gun Shy," the band adopts a more upbeat, hook-filled approach, thus finally providing Hamilton with a vehicle for transcending the chorus of Sandoval comparisons, something she takes advantage of to great affect. At first blush, it is tempting to embrace Widowspeak simply for softening the sting associated with Mazzy Star's sixteen years of silence, but on closer inspection, the quality of the songs and the album's range of material both suggest that Widowspeak have more on their minds than playing the role of pysch-folk surrogates.

Widowspeak- "Ghost Boy" (2011) Live @ 285 Kent Ave.

Yeah, I know it sounds a lot like Mazzy Star, but since they have gone into permanent hibernation despite periodic rumors to the contrary, Widowspeak is a capable substitute with a few sonic wrinkles of their own...

I Can't Believe It Has Been Nine Months

Hello everyone,

Nine months ago today, I made my first post on (La) luna, which was then called The Killing Moon, and in doing so, I started my blogging odyssey. Little did I know way back then how quickly the blog would grow and how much it would change from its original incarnation. This blog also led to the creation of a second blog, Plastic Palace People, which has also grown immensely in a very short span of time. Both blogs continue to be an incredibly rewarding experience for me, and I wanted to thank all of you, the readers, for your interest, time and comments. One of the tough things about maintaining a blog like this is remaining consistently inspired day-to-day because without inspiration, the quality suffers significantly. In my case, I draw my inspiration directly from my interactions with the readers- truly, you have been the best part of my blogging experience.

The only tangible ways I have of gauging whether you find the blog interesting and/or enjoyable is through the comments that are left on the individual posts and by the number of members the blog has.  As such, I wanted to take this opportunity to encourage all of you to leave comments when you can (and certainly when you feel inspired) and, if you haven't already done so, please click the "Join" button in the side bar toward the top of the blog. It is greatly appreciated. We are currently at 285 members and I would love to make 300 by December 17th, our one year anniversary, so if you can, please help out.

Finally, I also wanted to mention some upcoming changes and features. I am currently working on some new Andy Warhol-inspired artwork for either the header or the blog's background, and in the coming months, I will be adding a page in the tab bar devoted to Amour & Discipline, a new organization devoted to providing music sharers the opportunity (entirely voluntary of course) to donate funds directly to the artists whose work they download on blogs like (La) luna & Plastic Palace People. More to come on that soon. I am also in the very very early stages of conceiving a multi-authored online magazine devoted to music reviews/interviews/recommendations/internet censorship issues/etc., which I see as a natural extension of (and at some point possibly a progression from) (La) luna.

Once again, thank you so much for reading and downloading from (La) luna and Plastic Palace People. I have some great posts in the works for you, so stay tuned!!!  ~voixautre

Suicide- from the documentary "Punk Attitude"

Here's a taster for an upcoming post: Alan Vega & Martin Rev's legendary proto-post/punk duo Suicide, whose collected works are the only music I keep on my iPod (for long train trips and family gatherings)