ULTRAVOX! @ 45

 

Celebrating its 45th anniversary today is the eponymous debut of Ultravox!, which was released on February 25th, 1977. Produced by Brian Eno, the album may have failed to make an impression in terms of sales, but it nonetheless struck a chord within the underground music scene in a way that would inspire the likes of Gary Numan, Japan and Visage and set a signpost that would ultimately point to the future of electronic music.

By the time this album was recorded, the band had been around in one form or another since early 1974. Initially known as Tiger Lily, by 1976 they’d developed enough of a reputation with their live shows that they started to find themselves garnering some attention and getting swept up in the rising tide of the “punk” phenomenon that was starting to garner headlines in the British press. This ultimately landed them a record deal with Island Records, even though they were still waffling on a band name. They were in the late stages of completing this debut album in October when they finally came up with the name “Ultravox!”. Though they may have adopted some of the superficial trappings of the punk scene, albeit more “glam” inspired, musically they were far beyond mere three chord thrashing, owing more of a debt to precursors like Roxy Music & Hawkwind and the German experimental scene as indicated by their name being augmented by an exclamation mark in homage to Krautrock pioneers, NEU!.

Thematically, the band’s then front-man, John Foxx, drew a lot of inspiration from writers like J.G. Ballard, which, again, put them beyond the simple nihilism of punk. It brought in a kind of dystopian futurism that would become an essential component within the post-punk and electronica scenes which would build on their groundwork. Foxx even proclaimed his intention to live “without emotion”, a sentiment he put to music in I Want to Be a Machine. With its 7+ minute runtime, it certainly didn’t align with the 3 minute trash of what was happening with the punks.

Ultravox! would last in more-or-less this incarnation until 1979 when Foxx departed and went on to a successful solo career. The band would undergo a rebuild with the arrival of Midge Ure and finally find its commercial feet, but early albums like their debut would end up being revered by those who were inspired by them.

THE RESIDENTS - FINGERPRINCE @ 45

 

February 15th marks the 45th anniversary of The Residents’ fourth LP, Fingerprince, which was released on this day in 1977. Technically, it was their third album to be released after Meet the Residents and Third Reich 'N Roll, but that’s only because their second album, Not Available, was withheld from actual release until 1978. It could also be considered their fifth album if you count the abandoned Warner Bros LP that was scrapped before releasing Meet the Residents in 1974. It’s all very confusing.

The original concept for Fingerprince was to issue a triple sided album, basically a double LP with the fourth side blank. This plan was eventually shelved due to budgetary restrictions. What was released on the album was the first two thirds and the remaining material was later issued in 1979 as a 7” EP called Babyfingers. All three parts of the album were finally reunited in 1987 when the album was reissued on CD. Subsequently, they have remained as a unit ever since. The 2018 pREServed edition of the album adds a second CD of unreleased outtakes, demos, live recordings and other bits of ephemera related to the album.

Musically, The Residents were in a transitional stage when recording this material as they were starting to evolve away from the raw, primitive approach of their first albums and were moving into more refined and concise compositions with streamlined, minimal arrangements. The rough edges are still there, but there’s more use of electronics coming to the fore and guitarist, Snakefinger, has a larger part in more of the songs. The production values for the recordings were also becoming more sophisticated. The album is split between sections of short songs on the first side with a long multi-movement instrumental “ballet” piece for the second side. The third “Babyfingers” movement reverts back to the short songs and then back to a longer piece to conclude the set.

Critical reception of the album was mostly positive with Jon Savage writing in Sounds that they sounded like a heavily warped hybrid between “Steely Dan” and “Frank Zappa”. Andy Gill wrote in NME that the extended instrumental, Six Things to a Cycle, brought to mind Harry Partch. The group were still lurking in the backwaters as independent oddballs, just the other side of “cult” status, but they were on the verge of cracking into more significant appreciation within the next couple of years. Historically, Fingerprince sits alongside the rest of the early catalogue as an essential listen from their “golden age”.

BOARDS OF CANADA - GEOGADDI @ 20

 

February 13th marks the 20th anniversary of Boards Of Canada’s sophomore album, Geogaddi, which was released on this day in 2002, in Japan, and on the 18th in Europe. For this album, the Scottish duo decided to create a decidedly darker, more harrowing “trial by fire” sonic journey, though they resolved to eventually bring the listener into the light before its end. Released with virtually no advance notice, the album was premiered simultaneously at listening parties in six churches scattered across the globe: London, New York, Tokyo, Edinburgh, Paris, and Berlin.

The album is bolstered by various occult and numerological references, like having 23 tracks and making the full runtime total exactly 66 minutes and 6 seconds, just to reinforced their devilish intentions. It is even reported that ripping the CD to WAV files using CDeX yields a total file size of 666MB. Such characteristics resulted in some controversy and accusations of “Satanic” intent being leveled at the group. They remained typically tight-lipped, however, and only granted a single email exchange interview with NME to discuss the album. Their silence on the subject has lead to a plethora of baseless theories, speculations and assumptions being bandied about by both fans and detractors. The group has consistently been dismissive of all of it and has never bothered to confirm nor deny anything. If anything, the group have emphasized only an academic interest in such subjects rather than any belief in or adherence to any kind of spirituality.

In terms of its sound, the album continues their warm, fuzzy approach to electronics, though there is a far greater emphasis on acoustic sounds this time around. The album was recorded over a two year period throughout 1999 & 2000 with its tracks being culled from a pool of some 90 pieces recorded for the project. I have no idea what happened to the material not used for this album. The title is essentially a nonsense word created by the group by hybridizing several other words, though what those source words were has never been revealed by the group, who prefer fans to come to their own conclusions.

For me, it stands with the best of their work as an essential listen for fans of psychedelic downtempo electronica. It is most definitely “tripping” music of the “top shelf” variety, preferably with the the best cognitive enhancements you can get your hands on. It’ll certainly take you to the thresholds and beyond of the most magical altered states.

FANNY - FANNY HILL @ 50

 

Released in February of 1972, Fanny Hill, the third studio album by all female rock band, Fanny, turns 50 this month.

Fanny have become somewhat legendary as one of the first all female rock groups to be signed to a major label and experience notable, if modest, chart success. It wasn’t an easy road for the band, who were trying to make a name for themselves during a period when the male domination of the industry was at its peak. Getting anyone to take them seriously meant they had to work harder than most other bands to prove themselves and that effort certainly shows in the quality of the music they released over their brief half decade of existence in the early ‘70s. They had their champions, especially in the form of David Bowie, who praised them for their work, and they even became Barbara Streisand’s backing band for her album, Barbra Joan Streisand, in 1971, but none of this recognition came easy.

For their third LP, again produced by Richard Perry, they left LA to cross the Atlantic over to London to record at Abbey Road studios with Beatles engineer, Geoff Emerick. In addition to the group’s original compositions, each side of the LP is kicked off with a cover song. Side one features Marvin Gaye’s Ain’t That Peculiar, while side 2 features The Beatles, Hey Bulldog, both delivered in rousing, high energy renditions. The former also features sax from Rolling Stones session man, Bobby Keys. The title for the album is derived from the 1748 erotic novel of the same name, which was, in the 1960s, repeatedly prosecuted and republished. The album peaked on the Billboard charts at #85 and received a glowing review in Rolling Stone.

I didn’t discover Fanny until very recently when I came across some YouTube videos of them performing live on TV. I was immediately struck by their intensity and the fierceness of their performances. The quality of the songs also jumped out at me. The fact the band were fronted by two Filipino immigrant sisters added to their uniqueness beyond being all female as it brings in that “American dream” mythology.

It’s easy to see why they’ve become something of a cult sensation lately as they were so under-appreciated during their initial career. I’m still needing to see the documentary about them, Fanny - The Right To Rock. There’s an integrity and honesty to their music that has stood out from the very first notes I heard. On Fanny Hill, the song, You’ve Got a Home, strikes hard as a heartfelt expression of love and commitment from a struggling single mother to her child. It’s an atypical yet universal subject for a rock song that could only be expressed as poignantly by this band.

Fanny may have been all girls, but they never traded on obvious, cheap sex-appeal. Their stock was musicianship, song-craft and performing chops, which they honed to perfection. I suppose it’s better late than never to give them their dues, but it is a shame it took half a century for this music to be more fully recognized.

MICHAEL NESMITH - TANTAMOUNT TO TREASON, VOL. 1 @ 50

 

Marking a half century since its release is Michael Nesmith’s fourth solo LP after leaving The Monkees, Tantamount to Treason Vol. 1, which was issued in February of 1972.

While the previous triptych of LPs were credited to Nesmith and “The First National Band”, after dismissing all his musicians, save pedal-slide player, “Red” Rhodes, he hired a fresh crop of players and re-Christened them “The Second National Band” for this album. Among the new faces for the album was none other than José Feliciano on congas! The rest of the band consisted of Michael Cohen, who had worked on Mike’s previous LP, on keyboards, big-band drummer Jack Ranelli and bassist Johnny Meeks (who had played lead guitar years before with Gene Vincent). Though the end results were another exceptional set for Nesmith, this would be the only album where this incarnation of his backing band would appear.

Stylistically, though he was continuing to explore the crossroads of country and rock music as he had done on the previous records, for this outing, the electricity seemed to be amped up a bit more and the production introduced a few more surreal effects and editing to give the end result a distinctly psychedelic feel. I guess you could call it “acid-country-rock”, for lack of a better term. Though the presumption of the title implied the intent for a followup “Vol. 2”, no such record ever materialized and, despite the rumors that one was recorded and then shelved, Nesmith dismissed them as no more than hearsay. To date, no unreleased material sufficient enough to constitute a “missing LP” has ever surfaced.

As with all the albums released by Nesmith during this period, he was innovating in a vacuum, breaking new ground while being systematically ignored. It was a singularly agonizing position to be in as Nesmith later watched artists like Eagles soar to towering commercial heights doing much the same as he was doing. But Mike was cursed at the time to shrivel in the shadow of the bubblegum fake TV band that gave him his fame and then swept him under the rug for a decade. Aside from some middling chart success with his first singles like Joanne and Silver Moon, the public mostly turned their backs on these records and forgot about them for a long time. It’s only in the new millennium of the 21st century that people have excavated his early solo career and recognized the incredible creative achievements that were quietly revolutionizing the concept of hybridizing musical genres.

DAVID BOWIE - EARTHLING @ 25

 

February 3rd marks the 25th anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s 21st studio album, Earthling (stylized as EART HL I NG) , which was issued on this day in 1997. It’s an album which showed that, while Bowie was celebrating half a century on this Earth, he was still able to move with the times, though maybe not be as ahead of them as he’d been in the past.

Earthling is often seen as Bowie’s “drum ’n’ bass” album, a label that might be overstating the influence as there are actually only three of the album’s nine original tracks which can be slotted into that category. However it is, overall, a very electronic record. The debate over how innovative it was at the time is something which continues to divide historians and critics. By 1997, the DnB scene was well established and waning, so it’s hard to credit the album as being particularly “cutting edge”. At the very least, it’s an example of Bowie indulging his passions of the times and giving them his own personal stamp. Whether or not he was being “trendy”, it did manage to get him some commercial attention, particularly with the success of Little Wonder as a single and its accompanying video. In some ways it was one of his most memorable singles since Blue Jean over a decade earlier.

Structurally, Bowie considered the album much more simplistic than the work he’d done on the previous LP, Outside. He'd started working on Earthling on his laptop after the conclusion of the Outside tour in a deliberate attempt to work more “electronically” and without a guitar. The primary collaborator for this album was Reeves Gabrels, who handled synths and programming along with guitar duties. The album was recorded at Philip Glass’ Looking Glass studio in NYC, mostly between August and October of 1996. In addition to the DnB influence, there is a certain “industrial” edge to it, which is exemplified by some of the remixes done by Nine Inch Nails head honcho, Trent Reznor.

From my own perspective, I have to say that I was mostly disconnected from Bowie’s work after Let’s Dance and didn’t particularly pay attention to much of it until Blackstar came out and we were all knocked sideways with the shock of his death on the heels of its release. Of all the records he put out from the mid ‘80s until his passing, Earthling was probably the one that I remember the most. I’ve since done a lot of backtracking through his catalogue for this period and, personally, find it one of the more enjoyable releases of that decade. It’s not what many people consider “classic” Bowie, but it’s still a jolly good record.

DONOVAN - MELLOW YELLOW @ 55

 

Marking 55 years on the racks this month is the fourth studio album from iconic UK psychedelic singer/songwriter, Donovan, with Mellow Yellow being released in February of 1967. The album came about during a period when Donovan was trapped in a legal limbo where he was unable to release albums in his native UK. The result of this is that his usually optimistic mid-sixties utopian sound is tempered by a world weary sense of frustration as he pondered the prospect of being driven into retirement in his early 20s as lawyers destroyed his career prospects. So, on the one hand, you have upbeat songs like Sunny South Kensington playing against more pessimistic numbers like Writer in the Sun where he muses about being put out to pasture by his legal woes.

Of course the centerpiece of the album is the title track, which was a massive hit single and an idyllic representation of the times. It’s also a song that continues to drive a lot of misconceptions as far as its subject matter. The primary assumption about it was that it referred to a belief that smoking dried banana peels could cause mild hallucinogenic effects, a presumption that persisted for years before being debunked. Yet the simple answer lay in plain view all along as the lyric “electrical banana” hinted at the sunshine yellow ladies vibrator which Donovan had spied advertised in a magazine and which was the actual inspiration for the song.

Among the more notable guest musicians who appear on the album, you can find future Led Zeppelin members Jimmy Page on guitar and John Paul Jones on bass for the title track and Paul McCartney chipping in a few bass parts as well.

TODD RUNDGREN - SOMETHING / ANYTHING @ 50

 

Celebrating its 50th anniversary this month is Todd Rundgren’s third solo album, Something / Anything, which was released in February of 1972. It marked the peak of his success on the pop charts and also the end of his indulgence in that particular music form, at least for his own works.

By the time this album came about, knocking out catchy 3 minute pop songs was becoming too easy for Rundgren and he didn’t want to be just another “singer/songwriter”. He was also somewhat frustrated with the studio musicians he’d been working with, so he set about recording the entire album, from the ground up, on his own. He wanted to play every instrument and utilize multi-tracking to allow him to build them up, one by one. Three quarters of this double LP was done like this with Rundgren starting on the drums and humming the song in his head in order to figure out where to put in changes and fills. From there, he’d add in bass, guitars, keyboards and whatever else until he’d built out the song enough to add vocals. If he made a mistake and put something in the wrong place, he merely changed the arrangement to incorporate the mistake rather than keep rerecording to conform to the original arrangement. It was a process of essentially working in the dark and trying to anticipate where a song would go, leaving spaces for subsequent overdubs to fill in. He also didn’t use a click track, so the end result was actually very “live” and natural sounding, though he admits if he had used one, his performances might have been a bit tighter. Even though he wasn’t particularly adept at some of the instruments he was approaching for the first time, he was confident enough in the cumulative results to feel like he’d managed to communicate his idea sufficiently so that any deficiencies in his performances simply weren’t noticeable or relevant.

Most of the work was done at I.D. Sound Studios in LA, though he also set up an 8 track system in his his rented home on Astral Drive in Nichols Canyon. Working there allowed him to take his time with some things, like programming his VCS3 synthesizer, without worrying about wasting anyone’s studio time. It also allowed him to be a workhorse, taking minimal time for breaks or eating. Though he was constantly in high gear, it wasn’t a stress for him and he attributed his productivity to a combination of Ritalin and cannabis, stating that the drugs "caused me to crank out songs at an incredible pace." Work continued in LA until an earthquake hit and Todd decided to relocate to the Record Plant in NYC for the next set of sessions to complete the album. Once there, rather than continue on in the one-man-band mode, he went and flipped the script and hired a gaggle of local session musicians to work on the final suite of tracks, recording each live in the studio after only minimal rehearsals. The results constitute a “Pop Operetta” which became known as “Baby Needs A New Pair Of Snakeskin Boots”. Final recording, mixing and overdubs were done at Bearsville Studios in Woodstock.

Reception for the album after it’s release was exceptionally positive and the album spawned hit singles including I Saw the Light, It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference and Hello It’s Me. However, as previously mentioned, this album was the endpoint for Todd insofar as delivering radio friendly pop music. From here, he’d take a hard left into progressive rock territory, particularly when he founded his band, Utopia, and on his next solo album, A Wizard, A True Star. Todd has been a mercurial creative powerhouse throughout his career and he made making hit records seem like child’s play before he sped off into other directions, though his production stamp graced many popular records throughout his career.