As the nights draw in noticeably faster during these days of mellow fruitfulness, you start to think about buying a new jacket and making some cider. If you are Leonard Cohen you probably go and pen a hauntingly attractive song about the night coming on.
Whilst another Beck was hogging all the limelight in the late 60s and early 70s, this one was operating under the radar with his own take on folk rock incorporating a jazz guitar and soul seam. This number attends to the situation of his girlfriend being a slight pain in the arse at times.
Standout album opener from Alexander 'Skip' Spence's acid-fried solo LP 'Oar'. Often described as an American counterpart to Syd Barrett, Spence released this album in 1969 following a big meltdown that culminated in the sometime Jefferson Airplane drummer and member of Moby Grape venting his energy in a recording studio with a fire axe and being committed to New York's Bellevue Hospital as a result. 'Oar' is peppered with moments of brilliance and of nuttiness, but never indifference. 'Little Hands' is probably the most accessible and cogent song on there.
A tidy slice of west coast folk-rock psychedelia from one-album-wonders Relatively Clean Rivers. Their user friendly if somewhat derivative sound summons the spirit of Grateful Dead circa 'Workingman's Dead' if somewhat more constrained in tempo and expansiveness of composition. Other comparisons with Quicksilver and David Crosby's 'If I Could Only Remember My Name' might also be warranted. The whole LP coasts along at a scenic hog-ride pace.
It's the time of the season for loving. Amen to that. One of the great sunshine psychedelic pop songs of all time, layed down at the Abbey Road Studios a matter of months after 'Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band' and 'The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' had been made there. Begs the question as to just what exactly was in the water at that studio in 1967?
Continuing from the country visions of Gene Clark yesterday, here's a band Gene was affiliated with for a while along with a raft of other heavyweights including Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman and Michael Clarke. Top draw country rock with added salsa picante.
In addition to an older post about Gene Clark's jaw-droppingly good solo album 'No Other', here's the parting shot to that masterpiece. Words can't really justice to the beauty of this track.
Terry Reid's career was littered with what-if's and he is probably most famous for turning down an offer to be lead vocalist in Jimmy Page's new band after The Yardbirds - basically an embryonic form of Led Zeppelin. Aretha Franklin commented in 1968: "There are only three things happening in London, the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Terry Reid." High praise indeed. For more info on Terry including extensive biographical notes by dusty, bearded rock gnomes check out The Terry Reid Temple website.
With Christmas parties in full swing and blizzards, freezing fog and ice descending on all parts of the UK, missions home are becoming ever more sketchy for the seasonal reveller. If you're unlucky enough to be stranded in a car, airport or wheelie bin, take comfort in the knowledge that even rock deities aren't immune to the odd wayward, drunken loss of navigation.
Full moon special an evening late and obscured by fog. This is the opener to Hurley's second LP Armchair Boogie from 1971, lovingly re-issued by the mighty Mississippi Records out of Seattle. The album name gives away the kind of unhurried, benign and wistful material to be heard inside.
Mystical band name? Check. Voice of an angel? Check. Not one but two of the greatest finger-picking style guitarists the UK has ever produced? Double check. Pentangle had it all and their kaleidoscopic brand of folk rock really broke with the stuffy traditional 'folk purists' and went off in new and exciting directions. The five sides of the band really cook on this one. The interplay between Bert Jansch and John Renbourn is telepathic, Jacqui McShee's voice is as illuminating as ever, Danny Thompson plods erratically and jazzicly on upright bass whilst Terry Cox does things with his drums that sound like they should be easily replicated but really aren't. A good live version off French TV from 1972 shows the band in all their jumpered and greasy-locked finery
All about the tough drum break on this one - a bit of a departure from Donovan's usual repartie of softly contoured and sickly sweet musings about garden gnomes, hanging out the washing on a cloud of bumblebees and what not. For those that share the enthusiasm for this beat, a replica 60s studio soul band called The Sand Dollars recently did an edgy instrumental cover of this song.
