Gotta do this more often.

Another post coming soon, then i promise to do one a week, though nobody is reading this ;)

At least it will help me keep up some writing.

I finally got around to giving an album a go that has been on my shelf for quite a bit, Yes' Close to the Edge. I must thank my father for finding this album for me at a yard sale in Burlington, NC, as having had the opportunity to listen to it in its entirety I vastly enjoyed it. It is an interesting album, from Roger Dean's cover art that some claim the film Avatar borrowed visual ideas from, to the idea of an album that flows through movements rather than songs, with few track divisions. I counted one tiny one on Side One "Close to the Edge" and one on Side Two "And You And I". Obviously another concept of the album is to name the two sides into differing themes, and Yes was well known for loving a concept. On this album, the concepts work well, and the band really reaches a new level, with a sound that was far ahead of its time at its release in 1972.
Both sides of this album are strong and each could stand on its own as a tremendous EP, but combined as an album they are top notch. In the third movement of the Side One the band epitomizes what made them prog rock pioneers and innovators. The movement is named I Get Up I Get Down and the repeated chorus from which it received that title is a beautiful point and counterpoint of harmonies that would make the Beach Boys stand up and applaud (Mr. Wilson might remain seated, but would applaud) and exemplifies how Yes influenced the indie-psych and chill wave music of bands like Panda Bear and Animal Collective. From this beautiful chorus, an organ solo that could be directly from a horror film leads into the full on drum, key, guitar, and bass break that many associate with the "Yes Sound". It is a masterpiece of arrangement and writing that shows how well five musicians can morph into a unified force, all of their complicated and virtuoso individual parts becoming a seamless and seemingly effortless whole.
This is where the strength of Yes is, in their ability to maneuver and transition complex lines and various layers of sound into songs that seem natural and comfortable. Songs on this album can go from funk breaks to vocal parts that sound as if taken from a hymnal or a piece of gregorian chant, yet the pathway of the songs retains the listener into traveling up and down and around the various parts and vast breadth of subject matter on this album. All in all I would rate this album a 9 out of 10, as it is easily my favorite Yes album out of the 4 or 5 I have had a chance to truly listen to. If you see it in your local record store, or luck out in having your Methodist minister father find it in a yard sale in Burlington, NC (Thanks Dad!), i recommend purchasing it from wherever it comes. If you are a fan of prog rock, classic rock, or psych of any generation, there is probably something for you on this album.

Link for Close to the Edge download: http://www.mediafire.com/?zu39ofha2g2

Musical life has begun again.

We have been updating some things at home, and now with the construction (Ikea assembly) of a new entertainment center my record player has stopped skipping, and music is back for us. I know it is hackneyed to the nth, but there really is something different about putting on a record and sitting back to actually listen. I love the portability of my mp3's, and there is nothing wrong with having 32 gigs of music trapsing around with me in my pocket, but sitting back and listening to a great record is a totally unique and mystically enjoyable experience.

To welcome ourselves back to the world of vinyl we listened to a number of albums that I had collected since the debacle of the "shelf that makes the records skip" came into our home, and was pleasantly surprised. A band that I found through Thrift store purchases was the amazing funk band Slave. I originally bought their self-titled album when I saw the back cover with a collection of amazing pictures of individual members, as well as their sign and parts. (See above) Last night I pulled out another Slave album that I found at a thrift store, 1978's "The Concept".

Where the self-titled LP was pure unadulterated funk in the vein of earlier Funkadelic and Parliament releases, the Concept was just what the name promised. Slave was a collection of uber-talented musicians who truly melded their myriad sounds into beautiful harmonies. The Concept album used vocoder technologies that were popular with musicians like Peter Frampton, while staying true to the funk sensibilities that made their first album such a mainstay of my heavy rotation last year. I highly recommend any Slave releases that you can get your hands on, and enjoy some masterpieces of funk.

Cymande: Music you never knew you knew.

Happy New Year to everyone out there reading my first blog post. I have been waiting for the right music to post about to start my music blog, and thanks to my father-in-law's Christmas present it dropped right into my lap.

Cymande. The best band that you know the music of, but know nothing about. This band was formed in the early 1970's in London, England when a group of musicians from Guyana, Jamaica, and St. Vincent got together, led by guitarist Patrick Patterson (not the current UK basketball player or the famous Cricket bowler of the 1980's) and Bassist Steve Scipio. Patterson and Scipio co-wrote the majority of the band's music, developing a sound that fused the Funk, Soul, and Rock sounds of the UK and American scenes with the Calypso and Reggae influences of the members' upbringing in the Caribbean.

The results of this fusion were tremendous to say the least. One of the best tracks the band laid down had to be Dove, with lead guitar that rises and falls over calypso beats that remind you of what might have happened had Santana recorded at the Ark in Kingston, Jamaica with Peter Tosh and Bob Marley. At times, the band embraced the psych movement of the late 60's and early 70's, with minimalist beats and beautifully repetitive horn loops. A great example of this is the track Genevieve, which is reminiscent of one of my favorite Dr. John cuts, Gris Gris Gumbo. Perhaps the most well received of the band's offerings was The Message which climbed all the way to number 20 on the US Pop and R&B Charts.

All of this was made possible by a happy coincidence, when producer John Schroeder of Janus Records showed up at a Soho club for a show that was cancelled, and heard the West Indian musicians rehearsing in the basement. He immediately signed them up on Janus, a division of Chess Records, and the band subsequently recorded The Message. While the group toured the US with such legendary acts as Al Green and Mandrill, their greatest commercial success was seen almost twenty years later when their records were sampled in various forms.

Many of the songs were used by Hip-hop and Electronic artists for their beats and breaks, beginning with NYC legends Kool Herc and Grandmaster Flash who had their own Caribbean roots in Jamaica and Barbados respectively. De La Soul sampled the track Bra on their 3 Feet High and Rising anthem Change In Speak, and was also featured in the Spike Lee film Crooklyn. However, that was not the only Spike Lee joint to be blessed with a Cymande track, as The 25th Hour featured The Message, a song also sampled by the Fugees, with their own connections to Haiti, and French Rapper MC Solaar on his hit Bouge de La. Through an entirely new musical genre, and the attention of such luminaries as Spike Lee, Kool Herc, Grandmaster Flash, and Wyclef Jean, a nearly forgotten record from the early 70's got new life, and became the best album you never knew you knew.

Link for the Cymande album: http://drop.io/w21tlng#

CD's can be ordered via reprint from Collectible Records in Pennsylvania:
www.oldies.com
60 Portland Road
W Conshohocken, PA 19428-2717
(610) 649-7650