SILVER APPLES @ 55

Released 55 years ago this month, in June of 1968, it's the eponymous debut LP from Silver Apples. It's an album which may well be the single most foresightful collection of rock music to ever predict the future.  

Silver Apples was formed in NYC by electronics wiz, Simeon Oliver Coxe III, and drummer, Danny Taylor. Simeon played a bizarre conglomerate of electronic oscillators and effects processors which were crudely affixed to a wooden frame. He played the oscillators via telegraph switches triggered with his hands, elbows, knees and feet. Drummer Taylor worked with a kit which was composed of two complete drum sets, each tuned to a different key so that he could change the key of his playing in synch with pitch changes from the electronics. Together, the duo created a sound which was completely and utterly idiosyncratic of their era. There simply were no other artists exploring anywhere near their sound.  

The use of synthesizers in pop music was barely getting off the ground in 1968, with a scant few examples of artists utilizing the recently release MOOG modular system. Micky Dolenz had picked one up and used it on a couple of songs with The Monkees, the Rolling Stones had followed a few months later, but for the most part, it was a mere novelty. It certainly wasn't the source of any band's principal sounds like with Silver Apples.

Silver Apples had started out as a fairly conventional rock band by the name of The Overland Stage Electric Band, with Simeon on vocals, but once he started bringing an old 1940s military oscillator into the picture, the other band members felt alienated and soon departed, leaving only Simeon and Taylor to rename themselves as Silver Apples in 1967. For their first album, seven of the group's original songs had lyrics provided by poet friend, Stanley Warren, including the album's single, Oscillations.  

While the album and its followup were both commercial flops at the time of their release, and a third aborted album fell into a void of lost obscurity, the music of Silver Apples would eventually find a cult audience in decades to come. As electronic music came into its own in the 1980s and 1990s, its supporters began to rediscover the prognosticating brilliance of Silver Apples, who's sound was like a blueprint for experimental electronic music which would surface a full decade after the original albums were released. In the 1990s, Simeon would revive the band as a solo outlet, performing at techno raves.  

THE ROLLING STONES - SOME GIRLS @ 45

 

Celebrating its 45th anniversary today is the Rolling Stones' classic comeback LP, Some Girls, which was released on June 9th, 1978. After slipping into a slump in the middle of the decade (they didn't call that "best of" album, "Sucking In the '70s" for nothing), the band regrouped and managed to knock out the most commercially and critically successful album of their career. At a time when they seemed destined to be drowned out by disco, or made irrelevant by punk, they managed to embrace both genres in tandem, harnessing the infectious dance grooves of the former, while embodying the brazen rawness and edge of the latter.

After kicking off the '70s with a couple of solid albums, The Rolling Stones spent much of the middle years of that decade middling around with unfocused studio albums and lacklustre live releases. As a result, the band's popularity had waned significantly and they were in serious danger of becoming relics of a bygone era. The emergence of punk culture in the latter half of the decade was branding old farts from the '60s as "dinosaurs", lumbering about the world on their great big tours and motivated solely by their avarice for ticket and merch sales. Keith Richards was also struggling with legal issues resulting from drug charges in Canada, so the burden fell on the shoulders of Mick Jagger to rally the troops and rescue the band from oblivion. By 1977, Ron Wood had secured himself the position of permanent 2nd guitarist in the group, so they had a solid lineup for the first time in years. With the younger generation's wolves snapping at their heels, the band set about getting back to basics and crafting a lean, mean collection of songs capable of capturing the era's zeitgeist.  

Keith's legal issues ended up soliciting the help of US president, Jimmy Carter, and Richards was able to negotiate release from Canada in February of 1977, securing a visa which allowed him to first detox in the US and then travel to Paris to join the rest of the band in the studio. The severity of the charges for heroine possession with intent to traffic were such that there was a very real possibility of the bad-boy guitarist facing up to seven years in a Canadian prison. This dangling sword over the band's head meant that they could be facing the prospect of disbanding and that this might be their last album for a very long time. The thought that Some Girls might be their swan-song was clear motivation for them to put everything they had into giving their best effort in the studio. With the list of guest musicians kept to a bare minimum, the group turned to each other to create a tight, tough and focused sound, the likes of which hadn't been heard for many years. Richards eventually escaped the prospect of a custodial sentence with an agreement to perform a couple of benefit Stones concerts, but the experience certainly helped get the band's house in order.

With Richards distracted by his legal woes, Mick Jagger became the principal creative force during the writing and recording of the album, taking sole writing credits on a number of tracks. The explosion of dance music culture in the discos became a very big influence and Jagger sought to bring some of that four-on-the-floor vibrancy into the band's wheelhouse. Also, by 1977, punk had made major inroads into the public consciousness. Its sense of urgency and disregard for authority or manners had reinvigorated the rock 'n' roll landscape with a sense of danger, risk and innovation, something which had been lacking since the psychedelic inspired creativity of the previous decade gave way to the MOR "yacht-rock" sounds of the '70s. This time, however, it wasn't all utopian idealism and love, but rather it's inverse, with young artists embracing a decidedly dystopian misanthropy.  

Ronnie Wood securing his full-time position in the band helped bring a fresh energy to the group dynamic, shining a new light on their relationships. This interplay meant that, for the first time since 1968's Beggars Banquet, the group were confident enough to eschew the parade of guest players and lean into their own abilities for much of the recording. The result was a collection of songs which were brimming with renewed confidence. 

When it came time to package the album, the band wanted something extravagant and designer Peter Corriston came up with an elaborate die-cut design inspired by an old Valmor Products corporation advertisements for wigs. The cutouts revealed faces printed on the inner sleeve featuring the band in drag along with celebrities like Lucile Ball, Judy Garland, Farrah Fawcett, Raquel Welch and Marilynn Munroe. Color overlays on the images varied by market. The result was quite striking, but the fact celebrity likenesses were used without permission triggered a barrage of legal threats, including one from Valmor, who did go through with a suit and won monetary compensation. The cover was quickly pulled and the celebrity images were removed (except for former Beatle George Harrison). Where they had been was plastered over with garish punk like phrases like "Pardon our appearance – cover under reconstruction". Jagger personally apologized to Liza Minelli for using mother Garland's likeness when he encountered her at Studio 54. 

Despite the controversy over the album's cover, as well as over certain lyrics (the title track attracted scrutiny with the line "Black girls just want to get F****d all night/I just don't have that much jam."), the album went on to become one of the Stones' best selling releases of all time, garnering near universal critical praise in the process. It spawned numerous hit singles, including Miss You, Beast of Burden, Respectable, and my personal favourite, Shattered. It remains one of the band's most popular albums and helped propel their career well into the next decade.  

PUBLIC IMAGE LTD - THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG @ 40

Released in June of 1983, Public Image Ltd’s most commercially successful single, This Is Not a Love Song, turns 40 years old this month. This may have been THE most anticipated record to ever keep me hounding my local record shop in my entire life.

I originally became obsessed with PiL in March of 1980, when Second Edition (Warner Bros NA version of Metal Box) showed up in Records on Wheels, an Ontario based chain that just opened up in a little strip mall next door to the Burger King I was working in at the time. I’d read a review for PiL’s debut LP, First Issue, in CREEM sometime in 1979, but never got to hear it at the time because it was not domestically released in the US or Canada. Their sophomore album got repackaged as Second Edition after the Metal Box edition sold out, and it became my musical muse for at least six months after I got it. I played it in its entirety at least once a day, minimum. As soon as I heard Wobble’s booming bass and Keith’s discordant guitar and synths, I was hooked and I collected every little nugget I could from them, including solo releases from Wobble and Martin’s Brian Brain project.  

By 1982 however, PiL were in an uncertain state, with Wobble gone and John & Keith relocated to NYC. There wasn’t a lot in the press at the time, at least since the Ritz riot in NYC in 1981, so I had no idea what was happening with them. It wasn’t until I moved from Thunder Bay, ON, to Vancouver, BC, in October of 1982 that I heard PiL was going to play in Seattle the following month. After their bizarre "multi-media" show at NYC's Ritz nightclub, with its "hired hand" old man jazz drummer, which instantly became legendary for its sheer madness, I had no idea what to expect, nor who was in the band. But I dutifully got myself a ticket and a bus down to the show. Once there, I discover that PiL had reconstituted into a surprisingly tight, potent quartet again. Martin Atkins was back on drums and Pete Jones, from Brian Brain & Cowboys International, was on bass, with John and Keith fronted the band.  

At the show, before the gig started, they played a recording of a brand new song, Blue Water, which sounded amazing and was a clear proclamation that they were working on a new album and SOMETHING was in the pipes for immanent release. During the gig, they debuted a couple of other new songs. I definitely remember Bad Life being one of them, and I think Where Are You was the other. After the gig, I managed to find a mailing address for them and wrote off a gushing fan letter about how much I loved the show and inquired as to when the new LP would be available. I was thrilled to get a response back from Martin, informing me that the album was going to be called "Welcome to the Commercial Zone" and that it would be "coming soon”, though there was no release date stated.  

This was early in 1983, so for the next few months, I was in my local record shop, Odyssey Imports, at least once every week, especially on the days I knew they got their shipments of new records. I’d be lurking around the back counter where they unpacked the boxes, waiting like a dog for a treat, to see if the new PiL record was in. I must’ve driven them nuts with my constant inquiries, and after a while it, seemed like it would NEVER materialize. Word eventually reached the press that Keith had been ousted from the band due to some falling out with John over a mix of the new single, so I was starting to wonder if anything would EVER be release.  

Finally, sometime near my birthday in June, the day actually came when I stepped into the shop and there was this inconspicuous white 12” single, a Japanese import, with a large PiL logo subtly embossed on the front and a tiny text in black with the title, THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG. Flipping it over, I was thrilled that the B-side had Blue Water, which I had committed to memory from the gig and was desperate to hear again. Rushing home with the record, I slapped it on and was immediately struck by how stripped down and minimal it was, but with a solid groove and bare-essential embellishments by Keith on guitar and synth. Martin and Pete laid down an insistent beat while John whined about “going over to the other side” and being “happy to have, not to have-not”. It was a statement of capitalistic intent which I really didn’t quite know whether to interpret as ironic or not. Blue Water sounded as wonderful as I remembered at the show, and was a much stranger animal than the A-side, showing that PiL were still able to straddle both commercial accessibility and their experimental tendencies.  

The single became a hit in the clubs and the video found frequent rotation on MTV, which was just staring to make a mark on the landscape of pop music. The single became PiL’s most successful to date and remains so to this day. But it was ultimately a capstone of sorts in the end, at least in terms of the PiL I fell in love with. A couple of months after its release, the dreadful Live In Tokyo album came out, showcasing what would become disparagingly referred to as the “Holiday Inn” incarnation of the band. John was still working with Martin, but they’d hired a trio of lounge band hacks to fill in for Keith and Pete, who abandoned ship shortly after Keith’s dismissal, and it was a completely different ballgame. While the album technically sounded great, being one of the first ever digitally recorded live gigs, the performance was mechanical, lifeless and entirely too pedestrian, by PiL’s standards. It was like a lame cover band imitating PiL.  

The fate of the Commercial Zone album was up in the air at the time that Love Song was released. The following year, Lydon and Atkins re-recorded most of the album with some session musicians finishing it off with some leftovers from Flowers of Romance and a couple of new tracks, producing This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get, It's a somewhat middling, though occasionally satisfying last gasp of the original PiL remnants. Keith, on the other hand, spirited away his rough mixes of the Commercial Zone album, which he subsequently released on his own independent label in a limited white sleeved edition just prior to Lydon’s LP in 1984. The two records ended up going head to head, attempting to make their own arguments as to who made the better album. Personally, I favoured Keith’s release, but it was like they were both incomplete and wanted to be put back together again to create a proper whole. What Commercial Zone lacked in professional polish, it made up for in soul, while the latter had all the spit & polish, but felt like a bit of put-on. Ultimately, those were the final shots fired by the band that merited much interest from me.  

After that, PiL pretty much became a solo venture for Lydon, though he’d get proper musicians after his collaboration with Bill Laswell, producing "Album". It had its moments, while it underscored the fact that Keith and Wobble brought something to the table which couldn’t be replicated by any other musician, no matter how capable. After Love Song, I don’t think I ever got as excited about a new record ever again.  

BILLIE HOLIDAY - LADY IN SATIN @ 65

 

Released in June of 1958, Billie Holiday's Lady In Satin LP turns 65 years old this month.  Recorded at a time in her career when her abilities as a vocalist were eroded by her lifestyle, the soft pop backdrop of its orchestrations created a stark contrast with her weathered vocalizations.  It's a combination which didn't suit some, but others found heartbreakingly beautiful in its world-weary fragility.  

At this point in her career, Holiday had just come off a recording contract which had her mostly recording with small jazz combos for the past seven years, but the singer was looking to do something different, aiming for a kind of sound which had become popular for Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra as they released lushly orchestrated "song book" albums of pop vocal classics.  Billie had taken a liking to the work of bandleader, Ray Ellis, and specifically requested to work with him as she embarked on this new chapter of her career.   

By this point in her life, some hard living had taken its tole on her voice, leaving her with limited range in the higher registers and a raspy, rough tone.  Within the jazz music scene, that sound could be adaptable to the material and actually enhance the emotional depth of the performances.  Trying to bring that effect into the landscape of silky smooth orchestral pop was much more of a challenge.  The end results garnered mixed responses as some simply couldn't bridge the gap between the rawness of her voice and the softness of the musical arrangements.  However, those with a more dynamic emotional sensitivity recognized the stark contrast as a statement in itself, highlighting that contrast as a creative choice.  For me, it's an album of rare fragility which veils a deeper sense of inner personal strength.  

TALKING HEADS - SPEAKING IN TONGUES @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary today is the fifth studio LP from Talking Heads, Speaking In Tongues.  It was their first album after their split from producer, Brian Eno, and their most commercially successful release of their career.  

After working on their previous LP, Remain In Light, the group took a bit of a hiatus to work on some solo and side projects.  The group's rhythm section of Chris & Tina had made some waves with their Tom Tom Club album, so they brought back some of that dance focused bounce into the group for this album.  While they had gone for an extremely layered, intricate kind of polyrhythmic approach on Remain In Light, the sound seemed more concise and stripped down for Speaking In Tongues.  This likely played a big part in helping the group to make major commercial breakthroughs as the more refined sound played out much more accessibly on US radio.  They'd also mastered the medium of the music video, so MTV were all too eager to give them plenty of airtime.  

The tour which followed the release of the album ended up being documented on film and released as Stop Making Sense the following year.  It served to further extend the band's popularity and the success of this album.  While there are earlier albums which have more personal appeal to me, this one has grown the most on my in recent years.  I neglected it a bit in the shadow of Fear of Music and Remain In Light, but it completely stands up to the level of those records, though perhaps in a less avant-garde kind of manner.

NURSE WITH WOUND - SHE AND ME FALL TOGETHER IN FREE DEATH @ 20

 

Turning 20 years old today is She and Me Fall Together In Free Death by Nurse With Wound, which was released on May 31st, 2003.  Initially available only as a limited vinyl edition, the album found Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter exploring a somewhat more conventional musical landscape, at least by NWW standards.  The side long title track verged decidedly into psychedelic rock territory, particularly akin to Krautrock pioneers like CAN and NEU!.  A constant, hypnotic drum beat drives the groove while spacey guitar intonations drift atop of the bass heavy rhythm.  Side two consists of a triptych of compositions, kicked off with a cover of the traditional folk song, Black Is the Colour of My True Love’s Hair, which features the first ever lead vocal performance by Steven Stapleton.  The remaining two tracks go into more recognizably surreal NWW style weirdness, first exploring chicken coup insanity on Chicken Concret and finishing off with some robot pornography on Gusset Typing.  The CD edition issued the following year adds two remixed bonus tracks, the first being of the title track in a “Phosphorous Mix”, and the second being a variation of Chicken Concret titled Chicken Korma.

MALCOLM MCLAREN - DUCK ROCK @ 40

 

Marking its 40th anniversary today is the debut solo album from impresario Malcolm McLaren, with Duck Rock being released on May 27th, 1983. After a decade of working behind the scenes in the music business, McLaren decided it was finally time to step out front, taking the spotlight for himself rather than living vicariously through the likes of Johnny Rotten.

Cultural appropriation is something the Brits have certainly mastered over the years and Duck Rock is a prime example of a couple of white dudes wholesale pilfering black culture for their own ends. While it’s valid to be critical of that process these days, you still can’t deny that McLaren & company managed to put together one hell of a fun album. Since Malcolm wasn’t actually a musician in any sense, a HUGE portion of credit for the creation of this record has to go to co-producer, composer and instrumentalist, Trevor Horn. He’d made a name for himself as one half of The Buggles, followed by a brief stint in the progressive rock supergroup, Yes. Between the two of them, they put together a crazy-quilt of world music influences.

After becoming infamous for managing the Sex Pistols and then helping kick off the New Romantic “pirate” trend with Bow Wow Wow, Malcolm McLaren hooked up with Trevor Horn and the two began a sojourn around the globe, collecting bits and pieces for the collaboration they were cooking up. Their travels took them to places like South Africa, Brazil and the USA, where they recruited local musicians and performers to contribute to the musical gumbo they were cooking up. Unfortunately, several of those contributions were uncredited and subsequent lawsuits ended up being settled out of court in order to provide appropriate compensation to certain slighted musicians while retaining composer credits for McLaren and Horn.

Beyond the the musical elements recorded using local talent, Trevor Horn recruited various UK musicians to help him create the remaining musical components needed to tie all these threads together. These included Anne Dudley, J. J. Jeczalik, and Thomas Dolby. Side recordings which Horn, Dudley and Jeczalik made in between takes of Duck Rock would eventually become the debut album by the Art of Noise, Into Battle with the Art of Noise. Horn was essentially defining the sound of the ‘80s, which is particularly notable given that, after these two projects, he’d go on to co-found ZTT Records and propel bands like Frankie Goes to Hollywood to international fame. In retrospect, it’s impossible to overestimate the impact he had on the world of pop music throughout the decade and beyond.

The structure of the album presents a continuous flow of music inter-cut with radio spots from The Supreme Team radio show. Altogether, the album has a stream of consciousness feel to it, bounding between styles and genres with effluent ease. Each turn reveals a new surprise - from the tribal rhythms of Africa to the rope skipping glee of inner city youth clubs. Since Malcolm had no particular musical abilities, he took on the role of ringleader, contributing speak-sung vocals to several of the tracks. Throughout all of it, he pops in periodically as a kind of travelogue host, enthusiastically highlighting the virtues of each pit-stop along the journey. In his vocals, he affects a kind of mid-western Americana joviality, which almost comes off as obnoxious while somehow managing to remain charming.

As much as this album is an exploitation and appropriation of black music, it’s still interesting to note that the success of the album helped open the floodgates for that music to infiltrate the mainstream of pop consciousness. Before this album, hip-hop was mostly an underground fringe scene known only within select urban environments. After this release, rap music was all over the place. The impact on African music was also notable, particularly when you consider that, three years later, Paul Simon would release his Graceland album, which completely leaned into South African music. Ultimately, Duck Rock was a key pathway by which much or this black culture was smuggled into white western ears. 40 years on, it still has a freshness and dynamism that feels timeless.