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CARLOS SANTANA / BILL LASWELL - DIVINE LIGHT (Sony Legacy)

By far the best Santana re-issue ever, this wonderful extension of Laswell's Reconstruction & Mix Translation idea takes two albums made by the anointed Shri Chinmoy convert Devadip Carlos Santana : Love Devotion Surrender (1973) with Mahavishnu John McLaughlin and Illuminations with Alice Coltrane (1974). And John Coltrane dominates this set with quotations from him on "purifying the feelings and sounds" as well as his wonderful 'A Love Supreme' and 'Naima'. The artwork is superb, a fold-out mystical sleeve of collage-paintings by Tandarnori Yokoo who like Mati Klarwein, was an artistic arm to the recorded outpourings of both Miles Davis and Carlos.

So the music. We open with Ambience in-excelsis of 'Angel Of Air', breathed by strings and bells and horns and Indian instruments the main thrust is a entrancing bass figure and Carlos's endlessly sustaining guitar. This then halts to allow Alice her turn on acoustic harp, fulsome orchestration and at one stage a strange whirring synthesizer sound. And then there's 'A Love Supreme'. You know when musicians give up drugs for spirituality the results can be intense. McLaughlin had had a heroin habit in the U.K. while Carlos had dabbled in a mixture of psychedelics, tequila and cocaine. Here the two are drug free and giving it 101%. The familiar lurching bass figure paves the way for the most out guitar frazzle you'll here this side of Hendrix's grave. This was the Mahavishnu Orchestra meets Santana. McLaughlin's speed and distortion led attack on the Gibson was matched note for note by Carlos, here in the most wigged-out he ever got. Solo after solo after solo pounds into your head that these guys are looking up and not down for inspiration. 'The Life Divine' is even more intense, McLaughlin's speed on the fretboard burns to its limits until Carlos picks up the crescendoes with infinitely sustaining notes. Man this is intense stuff pulled up fast by the beautiful, oh so beautiful, acoustic passages 'Naima' and 'Meditation', the latter where McLaughlin plays piano to Santana's acoustic guitar. Sheer bliss. And you'll sink into the album's Alice Coltrane Ambient orchestrations as well. Incredible. See www.legacyrecordings.com

BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD - BOXED SET (RHINO / WARNERS)

I can still remember buying my first Buffalo Springfield album in a store in Dublin called Freebird with a beautiful girl named Alexis in the summer of 1980. It was their famous second album Again with the antique psychedelic sleeve. It looked English but was definitely American in sound. It had great acoustic guitars, songs like dreams and films plus those strangely orchestrated Neil Young soundtracks. A friend gave me their third album and Last Time Around and I eventually bought their first in London. I liked the Springfield because they met in a traffic-jam in Los Angeles, two Canadians in a Pontiac hearse, two Americans and who got their name from a passing train! They looked like outlaws - cowboy Indian spliffing guys with long hair who were absolutely brilliant musicians and lyricists. Their music also seemed to come from somewhere else in the American psyche. So for any fan who wants even more than appeared on Neil Young's Decade then here it is.

Initially I was perplexed by the organisation. Three CDs covering the 1966-1968 period and a fourth CD featuring their entire first album in Mono and second in Stereo. The problem comes where you have the same tracks repeated over and over making the fourth disc redundant as the other three feature the tracks and out-takes in chronological order. This means that ‘Hung Upside Down’ appears thrice as does ‘Sad Memory’ and the inexcusable ‘Good Time Boy’ twice. That apart there is still some great stuff here.

Disc 2 is a gem and the one I've most played. ‘Down Down Down’ is a song from 1966 with a waltz-time beat which Neil Young eventually folded into ‘Broken Arrow’. ‘Kahuna Sunset’ sounds like something recorded in Hawaii. ‘Buffalo Stomp’ is a freakbeat thingy subtitled a raga with some weirded out Young guitar. ‘Baby Don't Scold Me’ is a Stephen Stills track left off the first album when ‘For What It's Worth’ hit No 1 in America. There's a New York version of ‘Mr Sou’l which is rough but very compelling. Then the entire CD lifts off with an incredible psych out-take called ‘We'll See’ where Neil Young scorches on the spurting guitar, a style which sounds uncannily like Love. This burns baby, burns. There's a lovely hispanic-feeling ‘Pretty Girl Why ‘from Stills and a neat demo ‘So You've Got A Lover ‘plus his ‘My Angel’. All in all Stephen Stills emerges as the premier talent in the band! His songs are wonderfully finished at the demo stage while Neil Young's are embarrassingly half-baked or lyrically inept. Disc 2's final demo is a briiliant and moving version of ‘Hung Upside Down’ by Stills, undoubtedly the best track on the set. You'll kill for this.

On Disc 3 the cracks in the Neil Young myth appear large and wide. All the opening acoustic songs are of 1967 vintage and deserve burial at sea. ‘One More Sign’ is plainly maudlin, so sickly in its delivery that you want to turn him off. ‘The Rent Is Always Due’ is just Neil making the words up as he goes along. He thought he was Bob Dylan but this is awful stream-of-consciousness drivel. He must have thought so too as later he changed the words to ‘I Am A Child ‘and that was bad enough. ‘Round And Round And Round’ is just plain embarrassing. Just pull the plug Neil. Then a glimmer of light - ‘Old Laughing Lady’ is the best of it, but only by a whisper. On the lengthy Gold Star demos on Disc One you can hear Neil la-la-ing the missed words on ‘Out Of My Mind’. The impression is that Young could only finish a song when pushed and the sleevenotes say many of his vocals were deemed unacceptable. So Stills is the star and thus deserved his break with CSN. By the way royalty statements enclosed (brave) show that nobody made any money at all from the original records! The box comes with a scrapbook, gig list and pics. Exhaustive.

GRATEFUL DEAD - THE GOLDEN ROAD (1965-1973) (Rhino/Warners)

Forgive me, but I'm writing this as I'm about to catch a plane. I'm listening to a scintillating version of 'The Eleven' recorded live at San Mateo studio California in August of 1968. It's 15 minutes long and it's total psychedelia from beginning to end. Garcia's guitar has never sounded more succulent or quicksilver. It's one of four jams at the tail-end of Aoxomoxoa which are totally brilliant. Look the idea of a 12 CD boxed-set of Dead albums spanning the Warner Bros period may seem superfluous after the Arista So Many Roads set of a couple of years ago but hey this is the definitive archive all remastered with High Definition Stereo. There's 15 hours of music with a mind-blowing 7 hours of unreleased stuff!

Firstly the sound is incredible, the mix on Live-Dead so live you'd think the band were in your room or your head depending on how you're listening. 'Dark Star' is so different to the original as to make it a new track and don't believe the pundits when they say the album has no bonus cuts. There are exactly two (secret ones). Ever since Grayfolded, The Dead have loved putting secret tracks on their albums and they abound here - from ads to feedback to alternate takes of album tracks. The booklet is fun for the great pics , particularly of Garcia in full colour flight with his red Gibson in San Francisco.

So what do you get. A two disc thingy called Birth Of The Dead from 1965 and 1966 on Scorpio which failed to rattle my bones. Then onto the great stuff Grateful Dead (1967) with full extended versions of several songs including 'Morning Dew' as well as a 23 minute version of 'Viola Lee Blues'. Anthem Of The Sun (1968) has live versions of 'Alligator', 'Caution' and 'Feedback'. Aoxomoxoa we've dealt with but just to say that it fulfils Garcia's of " soloing in paragraphs rather than licks and riffs" after the bluegrass fiddler Scotty Stoneman or John Coltrane. Live-Dead (1969) we've dealt with. Workingman's Dead (1970) has seven live versions of album tracks. American Beauty (1970) is similar in design with live versions filling out the disc. Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses) (1971) has a tremendous remastered version of 'Wharf Rat' while the mighty Europe '72 (whose 'Truckin', 'Epilogue', 'Prelude', 'Morning Dew' suite is still jaw-dropping stuff) comes in with several 'Cautions' and 'Good Lovin's'. Bear's Choice : History Of The Grateful Dead Vol 1 (1973) has a fuller sound and four nice bonus tracks. And the box is shaped like a big sarcaphogus too. Cheeky. See www.rhino.net

LOVE - 1st / FOREVER CHANGES/ DA CAPO / FOUR SAIL (Elektra)

No intro needed from the maestro that is Arthur Lee. Bryan MacLean's ‘Softly To Me’ with its ratchety guitar intro was the very first Love song I ever heard. So here we have Love's 1966 debut re-issued in both Mono (punchier) and Stereo versions. There's a bonus version of ‘Signed D.C.’ and the strange little track ‘Number 14’. This album caused a sensation - ‘My Little Red Book’, ‘Hey Joe’, ‘Signed D.C.’ etc but I've always liked the last three cuts - ‘Colored Balls Falling’, ‘Mushroom Clouds’, ‘And More’ all have a poetic quality with thoughtful arrangements.

Forever Changes comes in deluxe packaging. We get great pictures - the hoarding across Sunset Strip, Arthur in his car, Arthur with his pigeons, the group in San Francisco. Here the extras are substantial - a beautiful acoustic track ‘Hummingbirds’, an early version of ‘I Do Wonder’, ‘You Set The Scene’ with a different ending and the 1968 single ‘Your Mind And We Belong Together / Laughing Stock’. The golden egg is a lengthy tracking session on ‘Your Mind And We Belong Together’ where Arthur heckles the band into submission through Take after Take after Take. The culmination comes when he berates Johnny Echols for what can only be described as a heavenly guitar solo. At 7:57 Arthur roars " listen Echols man, I don't understand your trip man. You stay in one range of the guitar throughout the whole thing man! 'Cos you know your the one who says you can blow in the studio man, nobody to bug you... you gotta blow man. Are ya ready to take it from the top."

Love's first 1967 album Da Capo is still a strange beast which begins with the Bacharach styled 'Stephanie Knows Who' before seguing into the delightful MacLean 'Orange Skies'. 'Que Vida' is still twee and '7 & 7 Is' jars before returning to genius with 'The Castle' (which I can play) and ending with the wonderful 'She Comes In Colours'. These tracks are repeated twice (mono/stereo) and we also get The Stones-like 'Revelation' (twice) which, contrary to cliched belief, actually takes off on the 13th minute with its jazzy horns . There's only one out-take for '7 & 7 Is' which is frankly awful. A missed opportunity.

Post Forever Changes Arthur Lee returned to the fray in 1969 with a new Love and a new album Four Sail. At last you can hear two of the most underrated Love tracks of all time 'I'm With You' and 'Nothing' which perfectly capture everything that Arthur and Love were about. Great stuff.


SIMON & GARFUNKEL - SOUNDS OF SILENCE/PARSLEY,SAGE,ROSEMARY & THYME/BOOKENDS (Columbia)

A couple of years back Columbia released a good three disc S & G boxed set in Old Friends. Now they've taken five studio albums, found more out-takes and made another boxed set - The Columbia Studio Recordings 1969 - 1970. Hmmm! There's no Graduate ST (one of my favourite of their recordings). So I've chosen three discs to ruminate over. I've always had a thing for Sounds of Silence. Released in Jan 1966 it's still a great album. The cover shows the pair walking up a country lane wearing scarves and Beatle boots. They are looking backwards at the viewer and seem the same height. Now we all know that Garfunkel was much taller than Simon thus the picture had to be taken with a telephoto lens to flatten the perspective as Garfunkel must be some way in front of Simon even though they seem side by side. This reasoning is verified by the low depth of field ie the distance is blurred! Anyway this opens with the black producer Tom Wilson's rocked up ‘Sounds Of Silence’ which hit No 1 in the U.S. Simon's immersion in British folk was evidenced throughout - ‘Anji’ (by Davy Graham) was brilliant Simon acoustic guitar stuff which would later impact directly on the work of Jimmy Page. The album has ‘Kathy's Song’, ‘Richard Cory’, ‘I Am A Rock’ and catches that moment when folk-protest turned to folk-rock. The bonus cuts ‘Blues Run The Game’, ‘Barbriallen’, ‘Rose Of Aberdeen’ & ‘Roving Gambler’ were all acoustic folk standards.

Parsley, Sage is a weird album. It always was a bit fey (just look at the drippy cover). Coming out the same year as Sounds it opened with the incredible multi-layered ‘Scarborough Fair’ before ducking into the guitar/beat laden ‘Patterns ‘one of Simon's neglected masterpieces. Then i’t dips with the embarrassing ‘Cloudy’ before regaining its poise with ‘Homeward Bound’, ‘59th St. Bridge Song’ and ‘The Dangling Conversation’. Obviously Simon was smoking reefer , his ‘Simple Desultory Philippic’ was his stab at a Bob Dylan with name checks for Norman Mailer, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Phil Spector, Lenny Bruce and Andy Warhol. He even borrows a line from Dylan's ‘Rainy Day Women’ song 'everybody must get stoned' delivered in Dylan's nasally twang. ‘For Emily Whenever I May Find Her’ is here too - again one of Simon's most beautiful creations - " pressed in organdy, clothed in crinoline of smoky Burgundy... I heard cathedral bells, tripping down the alley ways ", the song immortalised in an incredible live version on Greatest Hits. It's a lot bett’er than the packaging promises and comes with alternate versions of ‘Patterns ‘and Underground Wall’.

With Roy Halee at the controls Bookends expanded the production sound upwards. ‘Save The Life Of My Child’, the genius of ‘America’, the recurrent ‘Bookends Theme’, the jive of ‘Fakin' It’, the strangely psychedelic ‘Punky's Dilemma’, the anthemic ‘Mrs. Robinson’ and the celebratory ‘At The Zoo’. Bonus tracks are ‘You Don't Know Where Your Interest Lies’ and a demo of ‘Old Friends’. As has often been stated before - it just needed one more push for world domination.

BOB DYLAN - LIVE 1975, THE ROLLING THUNDER REVUE (Columbia)

This is my favourite era of Bob Dylan. The ‘Hurricane’ tour which included violinist Scarlet Rivera, Roger McGuinn, Joan Baez, Allen Ginsberg, Rambling Jack Elliott and assorted hobos, gypsies, trapeze artists and of course Bob Dylan. It wound its way through the Pacific North East and ended in New York with a benefit concert attended by Muhammad Ali. And it was filmed to-boot. Bits of it came out on Bob’s strange Renaldo And Clara in 1976 but this comes with a full DVD of real performances and 2 audio CDS of the kind of atmosphere Dylan was able to create on stage then. Legendary is not the name for it (and don’t forget Sara Dylan, Joni Mitchell & Joan Baez were fighting for his attentions behind and in-front of the cameras). There are some wicked takes here including a spine-tingling ‘Simple Twist Of Fate’, a spirited ‘Hurricane’ and the most committed rendition of ‘Sara’ you’ll hear this side of the grave. Look back at Sam Shephard’s Rolling Thunder Logbook and put this on and dream of genius. Gobsmacking.

TEN YEARS AFTER - LIVE AT THE FILLMORE EAST (Emi / Chrysalis)

Recorded within a year of their legendary appearance at Woodstock, Alvin Lee's band became headliners in the States and firm fixtures on Bill Graham's Fillmore circuit. Here we get interesting sleevenotes about the recording (courtesy Eddie Kramer), Hendrix's friendship, the hippies and the friendly rivalry between Ten Years After, The Nice, Family etc. The music is largely taken from their Cricklewood Green album of 1970. Excepting some drum solos the heavy blues sound is maintained throughout with exceptional versions of 'I Can't Keep From Crying Sometimes', 'I'm Going Home' and 'Spoonful'.

BLIND FAITH - BLIND FAITH DELUXE EDITION (Polydor)

It's all history now. Cream become huge. Shy guitarist Eric Clapton hates the success. Group disbands, Clapton retires to Surrey mansion. He starts working with Steve Winwood and then Ginger Baker turns up with a huge stash of hash. The trio debunk to Morgan studios in Feb 1969 and Clapton puts a Fender Telecaster through a Hammond Leslie speaker cabinet for the swirling Buddy Holly cover 'Well All Right'. Then the trio take 77 takes to get 'Presence Of The Lord' right, replete with Clapton's jaw-dropping guitar solo. By March they are jamming away, tres stoned, on material which surfaces on the bonus disc in all its meandering haziness.

But it's on Disc One that you get the real meat because with athe arrival of Rick Grech from family on bass the group was complete. Moving between Morgan and Olympic studios in the Summer of 1969 more great tracks were realised . A version of Sam Myer's blues 'Sleeping On The Ground' is perfect Chicago stylee and what is a revelation - an electric version of 'Can't Find My Way Back Home', a real find. Stones producer Jimmy Miller was brought in to oversee the project by Chris Blackwell which resulted in 'Had To Cry Today', 'Do What You Like'. Amazingly the final recorded track in June 1969 was the beautiful acoustic version 'Can't Find My Way Home', engineered by Glyn Johns over 24 takes as a live ballad. It did the trick. Blind Faith were ready for greatness. The album hit the Number One spot across the world. Deluxe version comes in fold-out sleeve, extensive booklet and pics. See wonderful Blind Faith site at www.angelfire.com/wi/blindfaith

FOCUS

In And Out Of Focus
Moving Waves
Focus 3
Focus At The Rainbow
Hamburger Concerto
Mother Focus
Ship Of Memories

These were my first serious band. I saw them doing 'Sylvia' on The Old Grey Whistle Test and ventured into Dublin city with £1.99 to buy Focus At The Rainbow which I played to death. I still have it. Akkerman was a brilliant guitarist who came from the jazz side while Thijs Van Leer was a classically-trained mad genius who loved to yodel in-between his piano/organ/flute parts. Their debut album (which I eventually bought in Amsterdam's Concerto records in 1988) is a pleasant introduction to the group but it was Moving Waves which really got them noticed. Opening with the crazy 'Hocus Pocus', with its scintillating Akkerman solos, Moving Waves changes to classical cum medieval music with the acoustic 'Le Clochard' and the mesmerising flute opus 'Janis'. Their ear for formal arrangements was indeed evident and climaxed with 'Focus 2' and the 23-minute suite 'Eruption' whose best part was the Akkerman guitar showcase 'Tommy'.

By 1973 the classic line-up of Jan Akkerman, Thijs Van Leer, Bert Ruiter and Pierre Van Der Linden were in place to cut Focus 3, considered by many to be their best album. 'Love Remembered' is just heaven - like a boat cutting through opalescent sea, its flute/guitar instrumentation still insistently powerful. Of course we get 'Sylvia' and the slow-building 'Focus 3' but the overwhelming track is the explosive 'Answers? Questions! Questions? Answers!' where Akkerman's guitar has a roughness and dexterity that many only hearing 'Sylvia' will find shocking. Their subsequent Focus At The Rainbow (also 1973) was a tour-de-force of Ambient live playing proving that instrumental music was not necessarily the antithesis of good Progressive Rock. Pierre Van Der Linden's drumming is superb throughout, anchoring the ebbs and flows of Van Leer's eerie flute and Akkerman's lithe touch on the Gibson Les Paul. But as always brilliance can only shine so long. Hamburger Concert and Mother Focus did contain some high-points and Ship Of Memories was an honourable swansong but the genius of that first wave of albums just dissipated. They are still one of my favourite groups and deserve much more attention and praise than they get. All on Red Bullet .

NEU! - NEU!,NEU! 2, NEU! '75 (EMI)

'Monumental, lofty, colossal' gushed the English music press on the re-release of Dusseldorf's NEU! catalogue this year. I've gone on record as saying this group are 'the most overrated band in music history' and looking at the lengthy spreads in Mojo,Wire and other music magazines this Summer my opinion hasn't changed one jot. They're always going on about how this music influenced 'punk'. So what, most punk was just early rock 'n' roll revisited There are endorsements from David Bowie,Brian Eno, Radiohead and plenty more. They are seen as a sort of European Velvet Underground. Michael Rother & Klaus Dinger were in Kraftwerk then left to work with Conny Plank in 1971. A guitarist and a drummer made some fairly basic music. Listening now what do you get.

NEU! (1972) opens with ten minutes of strummed electric guitar and a relentless drum beat. The best bits are the extraneous electronic sounds of producer Conny Plank. 'Sonderangebot' sounds like cymbals distorted on tape a la Stockhausen. 'Weissensee' slows down the beat with some nice guitar by Rother. 'Im Gluck' has the found sounds of a boating outing to a slight Ambient backdrop and is fine sound painting but hardly 'colossal' music. 'Negativland' opens with the sound of a pneumatic drill and continues with a nasty rock groove, Boring I say. 'Lieber Honig' is a slow-mo whinging vocal to childish plinkity-plonk piano with ends with more boating sounds. The result half an album of unfinished sketches. NEU!2 was recorded at night with little money. 'Fur Immer' is another 'motorik' thingy which goes nowhere. And the rest is frankly awful. Just noises and a whole second side consisting of vari-speed recordings of a rubbish single 'Neuschnee'. Frankly, a waste of time.

Which brings us to NEU! '75. After breaking up, working with Cluster & Eno the duo had a third album to make for Brain records. Rother was living in the country, Dinger was trying out La Dusseldorf tapes with his brother and another drummer Hans Lampe. In Conny Plank's studio they recorded a suite of strangely beautiful tracks - 'Isi', 'Seeland' and 'Leb'Wohl' which arced from Ambient piano trance drumming showcase to sound-painting of metronome, sea-scape and elegiac semi-audible vocals. On the second side they put down a trilogy of Dinger 'punk' tracks - inaudible vocals, basic music which completely ruins the album. In reality no NEU! album stands up. But in 1982 Cherry Red put out a compilation titled Black Forest Gateau which sounds better as a unit than any one of these albums. 'Masterpieces', 'Holy Trinity', 'Genius' scream the English rock mags. Don't belive a word of it.

THE WEST COAST POP ART EXPERIMENTAL BAND

Volume One (Fifo 1966)
Part One (Reprise 1967)
Volume Two (Reprise 1967)
A Child's Guide To Good & Evil (Reprise 1968)

I've always been a fan of the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band or Pop Artex which is shorter. As a teenager in Dublin I found their first Reprise album on Midi and still have it. I bought the Edsel re-issues of the late 1980s and paid a sum for a battered copy of A Child's Guide To Good & Evil in Notting Hill. Hell I even drove to Brighton to get a copy of the fourth Where's My Daddy when I heard about it only a couple of years ago. I thought I was the only one until last year Jim Irvin at Mojo did a huge spread based on American research which is freely available at http://users. bart.nl/~cvdlely/wcpaeb/history

There are as many stories about the band. Mid 1960s Shaun & Danny Harris, Michael Lloyd and Kim Fowley all meet around Hollywood's professional musicians school. They record Vol. 1 in a bedroom and it dies. In walks Bob Markley (ten years their senior), a bongo-playing law graduate,failed actor and heir to oil millions who had a huge house, loved hustling girls on Sunset Strip and hadn't a jot of musical ability. He gets them a deal with Frank Sinatra's Reprise label and their off. A love of the Velvets made the first proper album Part One seem like a West Coast response to The Exploding Plastic Inevitable with its psychedelic light show and it's lilting minimalistic songs like 'Shifting Sands' and 'It Won't Hurt You'. Markley was on hand to inject weird freakiness with '1906', 'Help I'm A Rock' and the seriously schizophrenic 'Leiyla'.

Reputedly an uncredited ex-Moby Grape Denver guitarist Ron Morgan played on all the albums and it's his scorching solos which make Vol.2 my longtime favourite of the trio. And I love the cover, Markley and the Harris brothers all silvered out in a bathroom! Rumour has it that no drugs were taken by the band but the weirdness of the music makes this a thin denial. Certainly the whole first side of Vol.2 is absolutely brilliant. Filled with paranoia, anti-war protest (the peerless 'Suppose They Give A War And No One Comes'), psychedelic sensuality ('Buddha'), the groove-laden head music of 'Smell Of Incense' and ending with the obligatory declaration that this is the WCPAE band! The main highlight of the rest of the album is the scorching feedback rocker 'Carte Blanche' and the odd 'Tracy Had A Hard Day Sunday'.

The weirdest album of all is A Child's Guide. Down to Shaun Harris, Markley and Ron Morgan (on electric Coral sitar) because Dan Harris was recovering from shock-therapy. 'Eighteen Is Over The Hill' is ensemble playing acoustic-folk-power-pop of rare beauty, 'Our Drummer Always Plays In The Nude' (Markley obsessing about girls), 'As The World Rises & Falls' (slow-mo Surreal psychedelia), 'Watch Yourself' (strident rocker warning about femme-fatales), 'A Child's Guide..' (baroque lunacy which features the line "a vampire bat will suck blood from our hands"), the truly shocking 'A Child Of A Few Hours Is Burning To Death', 'As Kind As Summer' (tape manipulated sound) and 'Anniversary Of World War Three' (1:32 minutes of Cageian silence). Many see this as their peak, their dark answer to Forever Changes. Then what happens...

The band fragment and Markley ends up a millionaire beach bum hustling underage girls. Spells in prison, a beating by a black Detroit gang who took exception to this ‘filthy hippie’ accosting a friend's young daughter and eventual incarceration in a mental hospital sealed Markley's fate as another Syd Barrett of rock. These records are some of the strangest of the psychedelic era and I commend Sundazed for re-vamping them with lots of sleevenotes, pics , gossip and bonus cuts.

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE

TAKES OFF (RCA 1966)
SURREALISTC PILLOW ( RCA 1967)
CROWN OF CREATION (RCA 1968)
BLESS IT'S POINTED LITTLE HEAD ( RCA 1968)

All re-issued with lots of bonus tracks this is the logical extension of the boxed set Jefferson Airplane Loves You.The first Jefferson Airplane album is such a spunky affair, instruments meshing in unlikely ways to produce a genuinely explosive 'folk-rock'. Remember that tracks like 'Come Up The Years', 'Don't Slip Away' and 'Chaffeur Blues' were on the UK edition of Surrealistic Pillow and many didn't spot the difference between Signe Anderson and Grace Slick. In fact I prefer the UK version which places the awesome 'Somebody To Love' at the end. Crown Of Creation has the best trio of songs at the start of any Airplane album ever: the evanescent acoustic ballad 'Lather', the incredible changing time sequences and churning groove of 'In Time' and the failed Byrds Crosby song (which saw his ejection from The Notorious Byrd Brothers sessions) 'Triad'. Then there's the live Bless It's Pointed Little Head whose centrepiece 'Fat Angel' (a Donovan original) still sends shivers. No extras on that one but the sound is great.

FAIRPORT CONVENTION - HEYDAY (The BBC Sessions 1968-1969) / LIEGE & LIEF (Island)

Many English scribes have maintained that Fairport were better in every way to the Airplane. Certainly their albums were more consistent, especially Holidays and Liege & Lief but this set just doesn't convince. You trip your way through Joni Mitchell, Richard Farina, Leonard Cohen, Johnny Cash and Everly Bros material before a spark lights on a Gene Clark song 'Tried So Hard'. The real meat here is the new bonus cuts: the cajun twang of 'You Never Wanted Me', the hard picking of 'Nottamun Town', the Sandy Denny classic 'Fotheringay' and the extraordinary rendition of 'Autopsy' from a 1969 John Peel set which is truly astonishing. Thompson's guitar fills, Denny's voice full of echo and the rhythm section which breaks into that marching beat after 1:20 still arrests the heart. For this track alone buy, buy, buy!

Most credit Liege & Lief as the first great folk-rock album of all time ignoring what happened in Ireland with Sweeney's Men and Horslips. After the tragic car crash which killed Martin Lamble and Richard Thomspson's girlfriend the group retreated to Farley Chamberlayne in Hampshire to record the ground-breaking Liege. No return to painful memories so they took the traditional songbook lexicon and ploughed a traditional furrow. Joined by Dave Swarbrick and Dave Mattacks away they went to carve classics like 'Come All Ye', 'Farewell, Farewell' and 'Crazy Man Michael'. But the real standouts on this re-mastered version are 'Matty Groves' and 'Tam Lin' where Thompson's guitar tips into Grateful Dead territory. Additional tracks and an unreleased Sandy Denny talking bit with deluxe packaging make this a must-have.

INCREDIBLE STRING BAND - BEST OF 1966-1970 / I LOOKED UP / "U" (Elektra)

Compiled by Joe Boyd in loving technicolour booklet this set begins with the incredible 'October Song', written in Ireland with Dr. Strangely Strange and featured on their 1966 debut. Williamson's Scot's valley voice still carries over the generations and the meshing guitar work is truly beautiful. His 'First Girl I Loved' from 5000 Spirits is still amazing : a song which predicts the distant future and sings of the 1960s in retrospect as though today hence never dating. " If I was lying near you know, I wouldn't be here at all. " The opening salvo from Hangman's Beautiful Daughter 'Koeeoaddi There' has the spirit of Taoist monks turning tarot cards on a be-misted mountain top in some mythical Celtic forest.

I Looked Up and U see the first light of day on CD now. I Looked Up was transitional as Heron was living in Scotland with Rose Simpson and Williamson in Wales with Licorice, their respective girlfiends. They all met in Wales in 1969 and then toured the album taking in the historic Woodstock festival. Dave Mattacks joins on drums and the girlfriends played various instruments. For once the Williamson tracks (two in excess of ten minutes) tip from formless genius to self-indulgence. Standout cuts are Heron's 'Black Jack Davey' (a real slice of folk-rock) and the peerless 'This Moment', since an in-concert Heron favourite. In November of 1969 they moved to a farmhouse in Glen Row to write " U " - A Surreal Parable In Song And Dance. Inspired by a meeting with Malcolm LeMaistre (of the mixed media troupe Stone Monkey) in the Chelsea Hotel in New York. Back in the U.K. it all came together to produce a huge double album recorded in San Francisco. The opening 'El Wool Suite' is vintage ISB with its sitar and flutes. When you get used to the hippy-dippy voices of Rose and Licorice it just floats along. You get the feeling that Stockhausen has often strived to get this loose feeling with his troupe of dancers and musicians but his stringent German serialism just won't let him. Amazingly this sprawling opus was recorded in 48 hours. Things like 'Partial Belated Overture' (a combi of fuzz guitar and piano) are just quintessentially String Band. Music hall, soft rock, Indian, mystical, ballad, psychedelic and the surreal made " U " a return to form which sold out concerts on both sides of the Atlantic. And it even has Peter Grant playing banjo on one track.

BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS - ONE LOVE : THE VERY BEST OF (Island)

Born in 1945 Robert Nesta Marley went on to outsell the Pope in Italy during a 1980 concert. Winner of UN peace medals and the most bootlegged artist in pop history next to The Beatles make him a legend. Whatever the stats this is a superb collection which includes the all-time 'hot' classics 'Buffalo Soldiers', 'Is This Love' and 'Jamming'. Put them on a disc and play them on a hot beach somewhere. The rhythm is sooooo sunshine.

CARAVAN

If I Could Do It All Over Again I'd Do It All Over You (Decca)
In The Land Of Grey And Pink (Deram)
For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night (Decca)

Caravan's second album from 1970 is a stoner's bible replete with foresty cover which we all thought was done in Canterbury but turns out to be Holland Park. Pye Hastings' guitar solo from 'And I Wish I Were Stoned' still stings and the voices on 'As I Feel I Die' sound as if they were recorded while the stoned band members were lying on the floor! The soporific intro to 'For Richard' and Jimmy Hastings' flute on there have passed into legend while the concluding 'Limits' is just bliss. Four bonus tracks of demos include the unissued 'A Day In The Life Of Maurice Haylett'. In The Land Of Grey And Pink is tighter ,more focused than its predecessor. The title track and it's 22mins 40 second 'Nine feet Underground' are peerless jazz/pop from 1971. Five bonus tracks are included : 'I Don't Know Its Name', 'Aristocracy', 'It's Likely To Have A Name Next Week' and 'Group Girl' (all unreleased) plus a new mix of the final 8 minutes of 'Nine Feet', 'Dissassociation/100% Proof'.

Richard Sinclair left and in came Steve Miller on keyboards in 1973's For Girls Who Grow Plump In The Night. Geoffrey Richardson played viola and the sound was more gutsy and aimed at a live feel. Includes four alterate takes/mixes of album tracks and the unreleased 'Derek's Long Thing'.

SOFT MACHINE

Soft Machine Turns On Vol One
Soft Machine Turns On Vol Two
Facelift

The first two discs feature studio and live improvisations featuring the core of Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers, Hugh Hopper, Mike Ratledge and on Vol 1 Daevid Allen. The sound quality is variant but the intensive psychedelic improv on say 'I Should've Known' is breathtaking. Facelift is a two-discer of a single concert in Croydon in 1970, two sets which was customary in those days. A more jazzier line-up with Wyatt, Ratledge, hopper and Elton Dean. Includes the strange instrumental reference to Irish producer/presenter ‘Eamonn Andrews’. All on Voiceprint.

DONOVAN

What's Bin Did And What's Bin Hid (Castle)
Fairy Tale (Castle)

Donovan's first two 1964 album with bonus tracks were released as Summer Day Reflection Songs in 2000. Here Castle divide them into two separate discs with bonus tracks. What’s Bin Did has the great 'Catch The Wind', 'Goldwatch Blues' and 'You're Gonna Need Somebody On Your Bond' while Fairy Tale boasts 'Sunny Goodge Street', 'Jersey Thursday', 'Universal Soldier' and 'Hey Gyp (Dig The Slowness)’. " Dylan digs Donovan " said the Melody Maker cover in Pennabaker's famous Don't Look Back and why not as these are great songs.

DAVID BOWIE

ALL SAINTS - COLLECTED INSTRUMENTALS 1977-1999 / CHRISTIANE F. - WIR KINDER VOM BAHNHOF ZOO ST (Emi)

In 1993 Bowie compiled a 2 CD set of instrumentals for his friends. Mostly done with Eno this is the ground-breaking innovative work done on Chamberlain synths and such in Berlin/France in 1977. Both 'All Saints' and 'Abdulmajid' were on the Sound And Vision versions of Low & Heroes but are now deleted. Includes the weird 'Crystal Japan', 'Brilliant Adventure' and two tracks from The Buddha Of Suburbia soundtrack. Ends with Philip Glass's version of 'Some Are' from Low Symphony (1992). The 1981 Christiane F compo for the film subtitled The Child From The Bahnhof Zoo (a high-rise area of Berlin where heroin was rife) directed by Uli Edel featured music by Bowie plus a cameo appearance. The album contains selections from Station To Station, Low, Heroes and Lodger , roughly 1976 to 1979. Its version of 'Heroes' is a bi-lingual English/German hybrid which is truly unique (and follows the Kraftwerk influence of the time). Also includes live Stage version of 'Station To Station' and a US single edit of 'Stay'. Unique.

DAVID SYLVIAN

DAMAGE (Venture 2001)
CAMPHOR (Virgin 2002)

Don't get me wrong. I've always been a fan of David Sylvian and loved his experimental instrumental work. I remember my first significant interviews were with the man and doggedly followed every nook and cranny of his career. His Dead Bees On A Cake album of recent years was an exceptional recording. I loved the Dec 1993 recording of Damage with Robert Fripp and Michael Brook not only because I was there but because it introduced a clutch of tender new songs like 'Damage' and 'The First Day'. Now David has decided to re-mix that album, changing the order of songs and putting it "from his perspective as the singer". Overall the sound is less rock and more ballad. I prefer the original, even its superior packaging. On Camphor he's decided to re-mix a wealth of instrumental material stretching back to the mid-1980s. I feel that Fripp collaborations like 'Wave' and 'Upon This Earth' have had the guts taken out of them. There are Hindu meditations like 'The Song Which Gives The Key To Perfection' while the set ends with two experiments in pure sound, the electronic 'Camphor' and tonal experiment 'A Brief Conversation Ending In Divorce'. The ltd edition bonus disc of the Holgar Czukay collabs of the late 1980s does little justice to the phenomenal originals. In a word dull.

THE THE -45 RPM (Sony/Epic)

Put it this way I bought these Matt Johnson singles when they came out and still have them. 'Uncertain Smile' from 1982 with its Oriental flute synth line, 'Perfect' from the same year which would go through many mutations to 'Perfect Day', 'Heartland' (1986), the unforgettable 'Sweet Bird Of Truth' (the Gulf War predicted to a tee) and on and on to a very very early demo of 'This Is The Day' and the new songs 'December Sunlight', 'Pillarbox Red' and 'The Deep Down Truth'. England needs more angry emotional good guys like Matt Johnson.

JOHN MARTYN

Germany 1986 (One World)
Brewery Arts Centre Kendal 1986 (One World)
Sweet Certain Surprise (One World)

I used to see John Martyn in Dublin during the late 1970s / early 1980s buying rounds of Guinness in The Bailey or being festooned with joints on stage. Either way he was a mercurial talent where one gig was never the same as the other. These are live albums from the halcyon days where 'Bless The Weather', 'Beverley' and 'Make No Mistake' would melt right into each other. Both 1986 discs have virtually the same set list and though Kendal is longer by seven songs the Germany has the edge. But if you want undisputed genius then get Sweet Certain Surprise - a 1977 US gig segued into four songs from 1981 Dominion Theatre. It's mostly clipped acoustic, our Johnnio a bit tipsy but its classic Martyn even if the last four tracks ruin the effect.


Michael O'Shea - No Journey's End (WMO/Cargo)

If it seems fanciful to review somebody you have known or a project you've been involved with then think again. O'Shea landed in Dublin when the music scene was taking off during the early 1980s. I reviewed his gigs and his album on Dome records which is the above with extra tracks recorded in Dublin with Irish provocateur Stano and poet/Celtic craftsman Larry Cosgrave during the 1980s. His instrument 'Mo Cara' (my friend) was fashioned out of his love of the sitar, his travels to France, Greece and Turkey. O'Shea had a very deep grasp of Dulcimer-like instruments and this collaboration with Lewis/Gilbert (of Wire) was the highpoint of a roving career which took him from soldier to instrument designer and beyond. Having busked and done installation work with Lewis/Gilbert and Russell Mills, O'Shea dove headlong into the rave scene but was tragically killed by a bus in 1991 at only 44. This album explores the outer-space ambiosonics of acoustic strings in a singular way. The bonus tracks just add to the myth. Sleevenotes include my original interviews but include additional research by Kevin Eden. Altogether a fine epitaph. Email WMO at wmouk@yahoo.com for more info.

The Human League - Dare (Virgin)

I remember the Human League coming into a Dublin record shop I worked in and looking for old Soul cassettes. At the time we thought they were real stars and after reading that Phil Oakey had £3500 in the bank , thought they were rich to boot. Dispensing with such naivety the sound of Dare is weedy synths and silly thwacking drums. It had a great cover of shiny white and the great hit songs 'Love Action' and 'Don't You Want Me'. The press release says " a fusion of fashion, synthesizers, lip gloss, substance and style." Comes with the entire remix album Love & Dancing.

COPYRIGHT ON ALL OF THE ABOVE RESIDES WITH MARK PRENDERGAST. ANY EDITOR’S OR PUBLISHERS WISHING TO QUOTE FROM THE ABOVE WRITINGS CAN DO SO AS LONG AS THEY ENQUIRE BY EMAIL markp@cdboxset.co.uk

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