August/Sept 08 edition of Perfect Sound Forever magazine
Jason Gross
PSF gallops into modern web technology with:
- A new RSS feed you can subscribe to at <http://www.furious.com/
perfect/feed.xml>
- Facebook fan site:
<http://www.facebook.com/pages/Perfect-Sound-Forever/15867989884?
ref=mf>
featuring video clips of Richard Hell, Boredoms, Cluster plus live
photos of Henry Cow's non-reunion, dB's actual reunion
And... in the latest issue of Perfect Sound Forever <http://
www.perfectsoundforever.com>, you'll find (among other things):
AMON DUUL II
Komische interview
"As one of the titans of 60's/70's German psychedelic rock (aka
Krautrock, aka Komische), most rock fans think they know about Amon
Duul II but do they really? We know about the great albums, the line-
ups and the discography but how much detail do we really know about
that band? As it turns out, very little, which is surprising for a
group like this. Their storied history is actually very sparse in
details. How could that be? Part of the problem is that there is
isn't much interview material out there to cover all the gaps, until
now.
WILLIAM CORBETT-JONES
Bay Area honors music prof
"Dr. Corbett-Jones is in his 70's and a more vital man would be hard
to imagine. His grueling schedule would dwarf most people half his
age. Jones loves to travel and his teaching and master classes have
taken him all over the globe- he's been to China five times and more
recently to Western China, traveled three years in a row in the
Autonomous Region and has been guest professor at the Xinjiang College
of the Arts and also at Yining University. He also performs and
teaches master classes at the Central Conservatory in Bejing. He
studied Mandarin in order to communicate with his students in China. "
ERIC DOLPHY
God bless the child
"Eric came to prominence during a transitional period in jazz. In the
evolution of the alto saxophone, his horn bridged the gap between
Charlie Parker and Ornette Coleman and helped usher be bop into the
uncharted realm of the avant-garde or the "New Thing." His unique
sense of harmony and jagged melody lines had more in common with the
fractured piano of Thelonious Monk than any horn player of his time.
His lyrical leaps from one register to the next spanned a broad range
of emotion and expression that few musicians then or now have been
capable of. Dolphy's vocabulary ranged from a gentle whisper to a full-
blown anxiety attack. Like Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, Eric also battled
the grim existential atmosphere of cold war era with an irrepressible
howl."
DALLAS FRAZIER
Country-soul interview
"Dallas Frazier walks like a big man who is unaccustomed to his size,
as if he stepped into the wrong pair of shoes and forgot to lift his
feet out again. He's just come on stage at Nashville's Texas
Troubadour Theater, where country singer Connie Smith has introduced
him as one of America's finest songwriters. She should know; Smith
recorded 68 of Frazier's songs at the peak of her popularity in the
1960's and '70's, including one she's already done tonight—"I Love
Charley Brown," the title track of her 1968 RCA LP."
LOWELL GEORGE
Little Feat legend
"Best remembered as the de facto leader of the classic American rock
band, Little Feat, Lowell George's distinctive style of slide guitar
and vocalizing helped create a style of music that was a unique blend
of second-line funk, gospel, Chicago blues, jazz and country balladry
that still stands today as one of the most unique developments in
American popular music during the 1970's."
BILL HARRINGTON
From Prog to Cage & Beyond
"A lot of musicians naturally, when the time came to eke out one's
existence away from the primordial nest, gravitated to employment in
record shops. Harrington somewhat followed suit but opted for the
wholesaler's side, spending a couple of years in the middle morass of
the industry, a prime spot for amassing an impressive collection of
recordings of electronic and avant-garde musics. This and his
schooling, not to mention natural talent, led to starting up as
keyboard tech for such groups as the immortal Gentle Giant... So where
to go from there? King Crimson? Genesis? Premiata Forneria Marconi?
How about Frank Zappa? Interestingly enough, Harrington somehow came
to the attention not of Zappa but of one of his keyboard players,
Tommy Mars."
TED LEO
A true punk?
"Look at the evolution of the punk tradition. From the simple,
teenaged scope of the Ramones came the viciously satirical politics of
the Dead Kennedys; from the brusque social conscience of Minor Threat
came the plague of angst and introspection that was Rites of Spring,
and so on. The original tradition of punk music has spurred more
offshoots and illegitimate children than one can easily count their
immediate appendages; look at any '80's post-punk band, '90's post-
hardcore band, the Fat Wreck Chords crew, modern day street punkers
like The Unseen. Sitting around in the upper rungs of the independent
music scene nowadays, we see two of punk's distant relatives
flourishing: Washington D.C.'s mod-rock kings Ted Leo & The
Pharmacists and Canadian pop-poets The Weakerthans."
MICHAEL PATRICK MCDONALD
Activist/punk/leader
"I was originally introduced to Michael Patrick MacDonald on MySpace.
I stumbled upon his page looking for something or another, and was
amazed to find someone the same age as me with almost the same exact
taste in music. The list was long enough, deep, and basically ran the
gamut from mid-'70's disco/soul to post punk & dub. Right up my alley.
Upon closer inspection, I discovered that not only did the guy have
good taste in music, but he had written two books - All Souls and
Easter Rising."
CHRIS MCGREGOR
Capetown jazz
" McGregor died of lung cancer in May of 1990, aged 54, living just
long enough to see his countryman Nelson Mandela freed from prison.
McGregor, a white pianist/flutist/composer and his black band mates
had left South Africa more than twenty-five years before, when finding
work for a mixed-race band became impossible under apartheid (the
legendary London jazz impresario Ronnie Scott says in his introduction
of the band on Eclipse at Dawn, "South Africa is a wonderful place...
to come from"). "
TRAVIS MORRISON
Post-Dismembered life
"Morrison would make a great music critic; his musical tastes are his
own and he's unapologetic about it. He thinks London Calling is full
of hot air, and counters Sasha Frere-Jones with a quick demonstration
of his pipes on an Arcade Fire song: "Who says that they don't make
black music?" And then he illustrates, right there in the coffeehouse,
with a few particularly soulful bars from "Crown of Love." And he's
right, of course. He also does a great R. Kelly impression."
NAZZ
Rundgren's early years
"There's certain artists that evolve over the course of their career,
that certain periods of theirs become forgotten--people like Bowie,
Iggy Pop, Lou Reed or even Neil Young in his radical early 80's
incarnation with The Shocking Pinks or whatever. They all change so
much that it's easy to love or hate or overlook certain eras of their
output. Todd Rundgren is no different in this aspect, in that he
easily has albums or periods of his career that one is bound to like
more than the others."
TELEVISION PERSONALITIES
Forget the post-punk shambles
"In the late 1970's, a young man named Dan Treacy, born and raised on
the BBC, British New Wave cinema and a society gradually, achingly
dropping the cultural values which characterised it for decades at
least. Art becoming more modern, politics more blatantly corrupt,
populism brings good (e.g. greater access to higher education) and bad
(increased Corbusier inspired tower blocks, urban sprawl with a
gardener's eye for building). There was also a mood of indifference
and cynicism. He recorded a single which took the piss out of the very
movement which was held up as the musical expression of this decline,
nihilism captured via the Sex Pistols."
TENOR SAW
Dancehall legend
"Born in 1966 in Kingston, Jamaica, Clive Bright, aka Tenor Saw, came
into the music business in the mid-1980s and his first recording was
"Roll Call" for the producer George Phang in 1984. The young recording
artiste then came under the tutelage of the singer Sugar Minott who
ran a sound system and a recording label called Youth Promotion. In
1985, Saw recorded "Lots of Sign," a tune which recycled a line from
Bob Marley's "Wake Up and Live Now" ("Life is one big road with lots
of signs"), but he really burst upon the dancehall scene with a hit
song entitled "Ring the Alarm" which was based on a "riddim," or drum-
and bass workout, called "Stalag 17"..."
VINYL ANACHRONIST
The Chinese are coming!
"I've received quite a few emails over the last few months regarding
the influx of audio equipment made in China, and whether or not it's a
good investment. I have to admit that the price/performance ratio on
some of these products are more than tempting, and I can see why
American and European consumers are starting to buy this gear in high
quantities. But in this age of deadly pet food and poisoned
toothpaste, I can understand why some audiophiles are a bit skittish
about taking the Shanghai plunge."
We're always looking for good writers and/or ideas so let us know if
you have anything to share.
See you online,
Jason