The Great Chaquito Big Band - Latin Classics Vol. 1 (1990 compilation)

From the late 1950s to mid '70s, a series of budget LPs appeared first on the Fontana label then on Philips, marketed as "the authentic sound of Latin America" and credited to bandleader Chaquito.  What wasn't widely known outside the easy listening industry (and I didn't know this until about 20 years ago, having grown up with this stuff around the house as long as I can remember) was that "Chaquito" was actually the London-born John Gregory (1924-2020), and the players responsible for this "authentic" Latin sound were all British session musicians.

Regardless of lack of authenticity, this music has stuck with me all my life as it's so much fun to listen to, and really well played and arranged.  Picked up this compilation because it included the Chaquito version of Guantanamera, one of my earliest musical memories from a various artists tape.  It's a great arrangement of the tune, really atmospheric in the intro and coda and in the way it builds then falls away again.  Other Latin classics given the "Great Chaquito Big Band" treatment are Brazil, One Note Samba, Desafinado, Frenesi and lots lots more.  All have superb playing and arrangements, with intricate percussion and occasional fun little vocalisations.  More next week.

 

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Luc Ferrari - Interrupteur / Tautologos 3 (1970)

Two pieces of avant-garde minimalism & free jazz/rock hybrid oddness, courtesy of French composer Luc Ferrari (1929-2005).  Ferrari was one of the founders of Groupe de Recherches Musicales along with Pierres Schaeffer and Henry, and worked extensively with tape music, electroacoustic sound, and also musical melanges like Interrupteur & Tautologos 3.  Those two pieces made up this classic 1970 LP - reissued in 1999 with the cover art above.

Interrupteur/Tautologos 3 was released on LP by EMI La Voix De Son Maître/Pathé Marconi as part of the Perspectives Musicales series - see also these entries by Xenakis; EIDMC Paris cond. Simonovich again supply the ensemble parts.  In both pieces, Ferrari was trying out a form of musical stasis that would self-evolve with a series of random events.  Interrupteur runs for 19 minutes (on CD, both works are split into possibly arbitrary track divisions) against the backdrop of an ongoing drone, with a kind of avant-garde classical meets free-jazz style overlay.  Tautlogos 3 is more random and jagged in nature, but a chugging guitar gets it into gear at points, as does an imitation of an ambulance siren that develops with more instruments adding to it.  Both are fanastic pieces of musical experimentation, well worth headphone immersion.

Original LP cover, 1970

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Erroll Garner - Concert By The Sea (1955)

A legendary, bestselling jazz live album that came about purely by chance - Columbia had no intention of taping this September 1955 performance in Carmel By The Sea, CA by Erroll Garner's trio.  Garner's manager Martha Glaser just happened to spot an American Forces Network engineer making a recording during the concert.  She took the tape to George Avakian at Columbia, and little over a month later it was in record stores as an edited LP (a complete version would eventually be released in 2015).

 

The acoustics might have been less than ideal in the hall, and the tape sounds a bit spotty and low-fi, but as soon as your ears adjust there's absolute gold here.  Swinging through some classic standards, plus a composition for the occasion, Garner's rhythmic, melodic and chordal genius takes in his influences from boogie-woogie and stride piano forebearers and Latin rhythms to create absolutely joyous music.  Classical influences too - love his little Debussy quote in They Can't Take That Away From Me.  In terms of a favourite from the album - swelling and receding like the ebb and flow of the sea, Garner's take on Autumn Leaves is my standout track here.

Original LP cover, photo by Art Kane - image at top is a 1970s-era imitation

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Pierre Henry - Variations Pour Une Porte Et Un Soupir - Voile D'Orphee (1987 compilation)

 

Couple of ear-bending slabs of early tape music today, courtesy of French musique concrète pioneer Pierre Henry (1927-2017).  Taking up most of this 80s CD is the 48 minute Variations Pour Une Porte Et Un Soupir - it's in 25 sections but all runs as one track, so can be a bit daunting to approach, but it's well worth getting immersed in.  The 'variations for a door and a sigh', with a musical saw in there too, were assembled in 1963 from Henry using this small group of basic sounds, manipulating them on tape and with various effects, to turn a squeaky attic door into a veritable orchestra of different tonal qualities.

Skipping back a decade for the second track on the disc, Voile D'Orphee (Veil of Orpheus) is one of the primordial pieces of tape music that still sounds extraordinary today - it's like a proto-Nurse With Wound track, but dates back to a time when Steven Stapleton was only four years old.  Voices, orchestration and a harpsichord are twisted out of shape over 15 minutes of stunning, groundbreaking sound-shifting, to evoke the epic tragedy of the Greek myth that gives the piece its title.

 

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Frank Zappa - The Grand Wazoo (1972)

Frank Zappa spent much of 1972 recuperating from serious injuries, after being pushed into an orchestra pit by a disgruntled audience member.  He used his convalescence period well, with this album following hot (rats?) on the heels of Waka/Jawaka, and furthering his composing and arranging skills for a larger jazz-fusion ensemble.

The Grand Wazoo is one of a number of albums that has shape-shifted over the years due to Zappa's tinkering, so here we have the latter-day canonical running order that starts off with the 13 minute title track (I quite like For Calvin... sitting at the 'end of side one' position).  Starting from a sunny, swinging groove, The Grand Wazoo passes through great solos for trumpet and trombone, variations with guitar solos, then recaps its main themes with a late Minimoog feature for Don Preston in there too.  Next come the only sung lyrics on the album, a nice short verse of funny-creepy nonsense in For Calvin (And His Next Two Hitchhikers), before the track delves into more solos.

The album's second half is fast becoming one of my favourite album sides in Zappa's entire discography.  Cleetus Awreetus-Awrightus is like a Peaches En Regalia sequel, a perfectly-formed three minute earworm that never fails to put a big dumb grin on my face, especially when George Duke, Ilene Rappaport and Zappa vocalise the melody at the end.  Speaking of George Duke, here come two of his most sumptuous performances on electric piano, introducing the jazzy brilliance of Eat That Question, then laying the foundation of the gorgeously mellow Blessed Relief.  As with last week, the whole album sounds fantastic - my previous knowledge of Grand Wazoo is limited to a memory of one of the very early CD pressings from way back, but this 2012 remaster is again original analogue tape-sourced, and is very well regarded.

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Lumpy Gravy

Waka/Jawaka

Roxy & Elsewhere

The Perfect Stranger (live 2018)

Rogier van Otterloo - On The Move / The French Collection (2011 reissue of LPs from 1976)

All of one album and almost all of another by Dutch conductor and film composer Rogier van Otterloo (1941-1988).  These records date from the start of van Otterloo's time on Polydor in the 70s, when he was styled as something of a Quincy Jones-like arranger of both smooth and funky orchestral jazz, and were exquisitely remastered by Dutton Vocalion for this reissue that saw On The Move receive its first digital release.

On The Move was recorded in the UK in late 1975 and released the following year.  Not only furnishing these eight tracks with sumptuous arrangements, van Otterloo also composed seven of them.  The opener, Go On Forever, is an extended arrangement of the Dutch hit song We Zullen Doorgaan by Ramses Shaffy that sounds absolutely gorgeous, with new lyrics sung in English at the end.  Otherwise, from Rogier's pen we alternately get exquisite slow numbers like Alfie's Lullaby, Alone At Last and The Eternal Triangle, or funky grooves like the title track, My Dearest Fluffie (with vocals again) and the slowly-building closer The Flattened Tenth.

The French Collection, recorded in London in September 1976, is an album of interpretations by French writers as per its title.  There's a track missing from the LP, Cent Mille Chansons - perhaps for reasons of space, although Vocalion often do 2-CD releases when paired LPs top 80 minutes, so who knows.  The eight tracks here are mostly on the high-quality easy listening side, superbly arranged, and Les Gars De Rochechouart gets a catchy light funk groove going with great drums, wah'ed guitar and electric piano.  In fact, every track on this CD just sounds so damn good I can't stop listening to it at the moment - wish more van Otterloo albums were reissued.  He did a few more with Polydor, then took up the Metropole Orkest baton in 1980 (they're currently conducted by Jules Buckley), before he sadly died of cancer at age 46.

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Boulez Conducts Boulez (and Varèse and Stravinsky) (BBC Proms 2002)

Dug out this great archive concert as Boulez and Varèse seemed liked a good follow-up to Zappa.  Re-broadcast as one of the "Past Proms" last summer, this performance from August 2002 saw Pierre Boulez (1925-2016) reunited with the BBC SO: he was their conductor at various points in the 60s and 70s.

Edgard Varèse's Intégrales is the concert's curtain-raiser, with its sharp bursts of orchestration and percussion; a full overview of Varèse's music can be found at a previous post here.  The next two works are a "Boulez conducts Boulez" immersion: both date back to the 1940s (with various revisions since, including for this concert), and both are cantatas that use verse by French poet René Char.  The longer of the two is the five-section Le Visage Nuptial, with the soloist backed by a shimmering choir and twinkling percussion.  Le Soleil Des Eaux contrasts the summery, anthropomorhic romance of its flowing introduction with a more strident Char poem later on about protesting fishermen.  To end the concert, Boulez conducts the original score to Stravinsky's Petrushka in fine style.

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Le Marteau Sans Maître (also uses Char's poetry)

Sonatine For Flute And Piano

Frank Zappa - Waka/Jawaka (1972)

Sometimes known as "Waka/Jawaka - Hot Rats" from the cover drawing, and even written as such on some releases, this 1972 slice of prime Zappa functions pretty well as a sequel to, well, Hot Rats.  Not least on the side-long opener Big Swifty, a Son Of Mr Green Genes/Gumbo Variations-style jazzy theme and lengthy variations.  Close your eyes at certain points during this track and you could be listening to a Miles Davis track from the same era.

Oh, and this 2012 original-tapes remaster sounds fantastic, sans Zappa-instigated digital reverb that marked my generation's first exposure to many of his albums via Rykodisc.  Big Swifty sounds finely detailed throughout; the two short tracks with vocals improved too.  The country-rock inflections and unsettling voice effects of One-Shot Deal come through better, making it an utterly bizarre standout even by Zappa's standards.  Then the closing title track (per Zappa, Waka/Jawaka is "something that showed up on a ouija board" - I remember assuming it was onomatopoeia for wah-pedal guitar) is another breezy jazz-fusion masterpiece, including Don Preston's great Minimoog performance and Zappa's guitar solos.

Next Monday: as if one jazz-fusion masterpiece in 1972 wasn't enough, Zappa made another one.

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Lumpy Gravy

Roxy & Elsewhere

The Perfect Stranger (live 2018)

Tangerine Dream - Le Parc (1985)

Most Tangerine Dream fans have a cut-off point or preferred run of albums - this has been discussed in the comments of a previous TD post here.  Some krautrock purists only favour their first four albums; others might love the breakthrough Virgin era but not much else.  For me, the ending of the Johannes Schmoelling era with Le Parc is something of a cut-off, in that the three or four records beyond it are listenable, but by the time I get to Optical Race I'm in serious guilty pleasure territory.  I do like what I've heard of the more recent "Quantum years", though.

Le Parc, then, was Schmoelling's last Tangerine Dream album before he departed for a solo career, and was also the first studio album of the band's "blue years", named for the vinyl labels on Jive Electro's LPs.  It was conceived as a tribute to parklands around the world; perhaps a soundtrack album for natural/built environments rather than for films (although the album's title track was in fact used as the theme for a short-lived US TV show).  Edgar Froese once described TD's music as "travel music, adventure music, much of which has been inspired by the places we've visited over the years", and this time, the parklands in the titles made the inspirations clear.

Returning to preferred Tangerine Dream eras, some long-time fans found the shorter, concise tracks of Le Parc off-putting (the Clare "Great Gig In The Sky" Torry-voiced closer is the longest at six minutes), but I reckon the balance is just about right.  There's still a clear thread in some tracks to the sound of Hyperborea/Poland, where this lineup arguably peaked: opener Bois De Boulogne, Gaudi Park and The Cliffs of Sydney, for instance.  In the shortest, poppiest offerings like Central Park and Hyde Park, the technological skill and compositional strengths of the three members are still very much present.  On that note, Tiergarten - just three minutes of piano-driven loveliness - is probably my favourite track of all here.

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Phaedra (scroll past main post)

Stratosfear
Encore

Cyclone
Force Majeure
Tangram
Logos: Live At The Dominion
Hyperborea

Poland

Miles Davis - A Tribute To Jack Johnson (1971)

Soundtrack to a 1970 documentary about heavyweight champion boxer Jack Johnson (1878-1946), and also just an incredible electric-period Miles Davis album; perhaps an even better John McLaughlin album, given the guitarist's starring role.  First released as simply "Jack Johnson", with the LP cover below, all subsequent releases switched to the monochrome image of Miles (which apparently should've been the proper front cover in the first place), and added "A Tribute To" to the title.

Most of the music on the album's two side-long tracks was recorded on 7th April 1970, with inserts from earlier sessions.  Wanting to put together "the greatest rock 'n' roll band you've ever heard", Davis chose McLaughlin, Michael Henderson on bass guitar, Billy Cobham on drums and Steve Grossman on soprano sax to tear through the spontaneous rock groove of Right Off.  Eventually they were joined by Herbie Hancock, who happened to be passing through the studios and was plonked in front of a grungy organ to further electrify the groove at its midpoint.

Yesternow is an altogether weirder listen, with Teo Macero wielding the tape blade for a concoction that even has a brief excerpt of Shhh/Peaceful from In A Silent Way in the mix.  The first thirteen minutes are a much more slow-burning piece a la Ife on Big Fun, then post-Shhh the track jumps to another completely different session from February 1970.  The lineup here includes Sonny Sharrock on second guitar (not sure if it's him or McLaughlin doing that volley of laser-blast effects in the right channel), Chick Corea, Bennie Maupin, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette.  At the very end, a calm orchestral outro features a Jack Johnson voiceover performed by actor Brock Peters.  Altogether, A Tribute To Jack Johnson is one of Miles' most scorching electric records, and one that deserves to be just as well appraised as the better known classics like Bitches Brew/Silent Way.

Original LP cover

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Miles Davis at SGTG:
Conception
Walkin'
Blue Moods
Bags' Groove
Miles Ahead (with Gil Evans)
Sketches Of Spain (with Gil Evans)
Quiet Nights (with Gil Evans) 
On The Corner

Big Fun
Agharta

Luigi Nono - La Fabbrica Illuminata / Ha Venido... / Ricorda Cosa Ti... (1968)

Early 90s reissue of a classic Luigi Nono LP on Wergo, which was the first to be fully devoted to the iconoclastic Italian composer.  This disc came with a promising 20 pages of liner notes, but like Shigeaki Saegusa a few weeks ago, only in one language - in this case German.  So it's off to Google I go, in search of background on these two haunting pieces of tape music, with a choral piece in between.

Ricorda Cosa Ti Hanno Fatto In Auschwitz (Remember what they did to you in Auschwitz) (1965) has actually appeared on SGTG before - see the Complete Works For Solo Tape link below - so information is available there on how this eerie Holocaust memorial work was edited down from a larger project, Die Ermittlung.  The Wergo CD benefits from a somewhat clearer mix, all the better to get immersed in the ghostly horror that Nono evoked in the wake of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trials.

That leaves Ha Venido, Canciones Para Silvia (1960), a short atmospheric acapella choral work composed by Nono on the occasion of his daughter's first birthday (might as well work in reverse order of tracklist), and La Fabbrica Illuminata (1964).  Dedicated to the steelworkers of Italsider in Genoa, 'The illuminated factory' uses voices and sounds recorded at the steelworks, other synthesised studio sounds and improvisations by a soprano voice.  Nono conceived of the work as a "scenic action" that would expose the "lives in danger of fetishisation by technology", and it's a superb piece of tape music that's utterly engrossing on headphones.

Original LP cover with "Jlluminata" typo, 1968

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Previously posted at SGTG:

Complete Works For Solo Tape

La Lontananza.../Hay Que Caminar

Como Una Ola De Fuerza Y Luz

Y Su Sangre Ya Viene Cantando

Tangerine Dream - Poland (1984)

Back into my favourite TD era of Froese, Franke & Schmoelling for this Friday and next, with a stunning double live album captured on their December 1983 visit to Poland (with some later studio overdubs).  The liner notes evoke a major triumph over adversity, with political/bureaucratic hurdles giving way to freezing weather conditions that wreaked havoc on the tour, but it was all worth it to produce such great music with this TD lineup at the top of its game.

On record, Poland was split into four side-long tracks, with the second side encore Rare Bird occasionally split out into its own track on releases such as this one.  First up is the album's title track, establishing a hypnotic pattern very much in keeping with Hyperborea tracks like No Man's Land and featuring some great solos, before moving into a slow section that eventually gets into gear with its sequencers.  Tangent is similarly multi-faceted (as are all the tracks, in fact), including the catchy third section that was excerpted for a 12" single release as Polish Dance, as was the short track Rare Bird.

From side three of the original vinyl, Barbakane is in three sections, with the first and third being starker, spacier pieces, and in the middle is the beautifully melodic Warsaw In The Sun, which headed up the aformentioned 12" single.  Last but not least is Horizon, that initially harks back the most to the ambient, gaseous TD of old.  It too picks up after four minutes though (and those sequencers in the final section are absolutely ferocious!), to remind us that we're in the slick, rhythmically-driven Schmoelling era - for my money, the very best of Tangerine Dream.

Disc 1 link

Disc 2 link

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Previously posted at SGTG:
Phaedra (scroll past main post)

Stratosfear
Encore

Cyclone
Force Majeure
Tangram
Logos: Live At The Dominion
Hyperborea

Doldinger's Motherhood - Motherhood (1970)

Just before he started the successful jazz fusion outfit Passport, Berliner saxman Klaus Doldinger had this early-Deep Purpleish heavy prog band on the go for a couple of albums, of which this is the second.  If you were looking for a German comparison, I suppose Xhol Caravan wouldn't be a million miles off.  Lots of grungy organ (Doldinger handled all the keys as well as the reeds) and fuzz guitar make for a typical late 60s psych-tinged hard prog sound, particularly effective on the lengthy opener Devil Don't Get Me, and on Song Of Dying which follows - that one suggesting they might've been listening to early Black Sabbath.  Side One is rounded out by a brief novelty instrumental, aptly titled Circus Polka.

The album's second half might start on the album's low point with Men's Quarrel - seriously, there's lyrics here that even Spinal Tap might have drawn the line at - but it picks up again.  Turning Around and the closer Yesterday's Song are really nice psych-pop efforts at giving the album a bit of light and shade, and in between is another groovy workout, Degeneration.  Yet another one of these albums that's very much of its time, but as longtime readers will know, I love digging out little snapshot-of-the-era curios like this every so often - plenty of great fun to be had giving this a spin.

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