Features

This article originally ran in issue #16 of The Tracking Angle, published in the Fall of 1998. It's run here with minor changes reflecting the happy fact that many of these titles have since been reissued on high quality vinyl. Thanks to all of the talented writers who contributed.

It's 1970. Brian Jones is gone, The Beatles are on their way out, and The Stones have just reached their first peak, after an interesting pop-psychedelic period and a fine roots-country album, 1969's dark, powerful Let It Bleed. Keith Richards handled almost all the guitar on that one, and masterfully too, but he prefers the give-and-take of working with a partner, and on this set he is: trading licks with Mick Taylor, who toured with The Stones throughout the year. The result is this stunning document.

THE GRATEFUL DEAD
Live Dead
Produced by The Grateful Dead, Bob Matthews, and Betty Cantor
Engineered by Bob Matthews, Betty Cantor, Owsley, and Ron Wickersham
Warner Bros. 1830 (2 LPs)

Music:11
Sound:11

So many musical icons have bitten the bullet this decade, so friends have asked me why Jerry Garcia's death bothered me more than the demise of Frank Zappa, John Cage, or Sun Ra. Are they less significant? Not in the least. The analysis is simple: Frank Zappa is best remembered for his recorded legacy - and he had enough warning (unfortunately) of his demise that he properly documented and established distribution arrangements for his collected recordings, including unreleased material.

Site mascot Eno, celebrated his 11th birthday today, July 18th, 2005—a major milestone for a Bernese Mountain Dog.

This breed has an average lifespan of around 8 years due to size (big dogs have shorter lifespans in general) as well as a variety of health issues includng cancer.

Back in 1977 while shopping for Sun Ra records in my favorite Philly store, I discovered this bizarre-looking album.  The cover featured the artist, Gary Wilson, posing in an early-'60s mod suit and funny sunglasses, in what turned out to be his parents' basement.  The back jacket was another basement shot of Wilson, this time in his underwear, lying amidst a tangle of recording tape, wires and covered with baking flour.  There were also song titles and the artist's address in upstate New York, but nothing else.

I had to buy it.

“Canvas the town and brush the backdrop…”

Brian was already smoking pot by late 1964, and his first efforts combining reefer and music were promising: most of the songs on side two of The Beach Boys Today, particularly “Please Let Me Wander”, showed Brian expanding on the beautiful, innocent vulnerability which began with “Surfer Girl”. His arranging skills in particular were growing into something completely different by this time, and culminated with the burnished spiritual gauze of Pet Sounds. Brian later revealed that the gleaming introduction to “California Girls” was composed following his maiden L.S.D. voyage. But, Brian Wilson, a man of delicate psyche to begin with, was probably not someone who should have taken large amounts of psychedelics. But along with this, speed - especially a compound called Desputol (sic) - was becoming more and more prevalent in Brian's world. The result was a man with many of the casebook symptoms of abusing the drug, the biggest and most obvious being overwhelming paranoia. Brian began talking about Murry bugging his house, Phil Spector (and his 'mind gangsters') attempting to freak Brian out via director John Frankenheimer's film “Seconds”. Brian's mind must have been like a spooky house of mirrors at the time. Van Dyke later commented, “If you go to the dark side of the moon, you're lucky that you don't get burned up on re-entry…”