Rogue Transmissions - Demons, Fairies & Wailing Guitars: The Best 100 Obscured Rock Acts 1968-1976 by Ra'anan Chelled (book review)

Book reviews aren't the kind of thing normally done on music blogs, but one book deserves special mention due to its thoroughly researched excellence and its relevance.

Demons, Fairies & Wailing Guitars is a guide to 100 of the best underground bands from around the world whose first recordings fell between the years 1968-76.  More than a simple list, author Ra'anan Chelled provides insight, opinion and detailed biographies on each entry and outdoes himself by scoring multiple interviews with many of the featured artists.  Some of my personal favorite bands profiled in the book are C.A. Quintet, Leaf Hound and Blue Cheer, all of whom I've written about on this blog.  So of course, the first thing I did when this book came in the mail was to flip to those entries to compare notes.  Mr. Chelled has a wonderful power to turn an unexpected phrase and his literary powers are made all the more exceptional when you realize that English is not his native language.  It's a wonderful thing when non-English speaking writers have a fresh take on the language and discover many uncovered nuances of the language, normally hidden from native speakers due to lazy thinking and taking their own verbal heritage for granted, it's just human nature.

Some of the more familiar bands to PH readers covered in the book include Captain Beyond, Hawkwind, Budgie, Pentagram, Cactus and Sir Lord Baltimore.  But really, the beauty of a book like this isn't necessarily in reading about the bands you already know and love, although it's certainly interesting to do so and learn a bit more about those bands, it's about discovery.  Every band in this book is worth checking out.  The second thing I did when the book came in was I flipped to the back index and looked up the references to Black Sabbath and without half trying discovered a new favorite band of the period, one by the unambiguous name of Bang.  They play a garage thrashy seventies style of hard rock, bordering on proto-metal and even proto-doom, they are well worth checking out.  Other of my favorite bands with their own entries are Arzachel, The Churchills, Gandalf, The Open Mind, The Plastic Cloud and Tomorrow.

Each entry is between two and nine pages long with discography and lineup information and Chelled goes out of his way to include other references in "If You Dig:" and "Loved It? Try Also:" sections at the front and back of each profile featuring a whole host of other bands not covered in the book, but these lists are also essential in one's trolling through the backbins of time.

The book is illustrated throughout with band photos, fliers and album covers and of course, for lovers of lists there is a section of lists in the back section.  This book is altogether essential reading for anybody interested in underground psychedelic rock and hard rock from the original psychedelic era for the worlds that it opens and makes a beautiful companion piece to any music lover's collection.

Demons, Fairies & Wailing Guitars may be the best book on the subject of underground psychedelic rock since the trio of books compiled by Vernon Joynson (Fuzz, Acid & Flowers [U.S.], The Tapestry of Delights [U.K.] and Dreams, Fantasies & Nightmares [CA, AUS & NZ and S.A.]) in the late nineties, and those were really more encyclopedias but were really comprehensive.  Chelled gives prominent credit to those publications in his Foreword.  I often wonder how future generations will view this underground world of stoner rock / doom metal twenty or forty years down the road and I suspect it will be with the same reverence some of us music nerds view that wonderful period of psychedelic / hard rock from the period 1968-1976.  I can hardly wait for the re-issues, the bonus tracks, the unearthed treasures and compilations and the books like Demons, Fairies & Wailing Guitars.

The print run of this book is limited to a hundred copies and each one is signed and numbered by the author himself.

Rating: 5/5

Page Count: 501 pgs

From: Tel Aviv, Israel

Genre: Non-fiction, Music, Psychedelic, Hard Rock, Prog, Krautrock

Reminds me of: Tapestry of Delights, Lysergia.com

Release Date: January 23, 2013

Suggested reading activity for fellow non-stoners: Sit in a tree and freak out the squares, man!

GET IT HERE FOR KINDLE

OR HERE AS ePUB FOR ADOBE READER

FOR HARD COPY:

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Black Sabbath - ST (classic album review)

RETROTATION # 5

While many bands and 'groovy people' still had their 'heads on the ground and their feet in the clouds' of psychedelic fantasy, four lads roamed the tough streets of Aston under bleak industry-choked skies grasping for a way out of their ever-present reality.

It's hard to imagine a world without Black Sabbath, probably an impossible task for metal fans.  At the time of 'Black Sabbath''s release there was nothing really like it in the world of music, outside of some of the darker moods of classical instrumental music: "Night on Bald Mountain" by Mussorgsky perhaps, "Music for Strings, Percussion & Celesta" by Bartok for sure, "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" by Penderecki & the percussive rhythms of Holst's "Mars the Bringer of War".  Bits and pieces of pre-Sabbath-like music could be found spread throughout the more rat infested corners of the underground rock world, but nothing and not nobody sounded like Black Sabbath.  However, Sabbath was not born in a vacuum.  They were just one of a giant second wave of British Blues Boom bands that flooded the record buying public in the waning days of the sixties and into the burgeoning seventies.

Sabbath made their debut foray into music history with their very Deep Purpelian reading of "Evil Woman" backed with a conspicuously jazz proggy early group composition, "Wicked World", touching on themes that would come to full flower on "War Pigs".  The song didn't become a hit but the ensuing LP did, despite a vocal majority of disapproving critics.  How could this have been?

One thing that separated Black Sabbath from the pack was the distinctive voice of formerly unknown vocalist John "Ozzy" Osbourne.  His high-toned screaming-with-a-mouthful-of-marbles style put an individualistic stamp on a band that was being lumped in by the press erroneously with tabloid headline-makers Black Widow as a satanic farce and spectacle.  Compared with Bakerloo, Ten Years After, Chicken Shack, Taste, Free, Black Cat Bones, Spooky Tooth, Savoy Brown, Blodwyn Pig, Killing Floor (I could go on and on and on) and any number of terrific second wave bands, Black Sabbath were clearly different, a cut above, but imagine swapping out singers with any one of these bands with Sabbath and one wonders whether they would have been the legendary band they are which spawned an entire industry of followers.

Take the title song for example.  The song "Black Sabbath" established a new standard for heaviness in heavy blues based rock music.  To a man, Iommi, Butler, Ward and Osbourne claim the song as their magnum opus.  And which Black Sabbath fan doesn't live to hear the devil's third and Iommi's trademark hammer-ons?  But would the song have had the power to chill and enrapture generations of listeners without Ozzy's singular, tortured performance on vocals?  I'd like to posit the notion that the song would have gone down in underground lore, passed down from brother to brother, adventurous friend to adventurous friend as "the heaviest song ever" but in the underground only.

But this isn't an apologia for Ozzy Osbourne.  Anybody who has heard the demo "The Rebel" understands that Ozzy wouldn't have done it without the band and the sound they achieved.  No other band suited his style and no other singer would have suited the band.  After all, a pop star he ain't.  Famously when Ozzy called around the Butler household a family member called out to Geezer that "there's something at the door for you."  Ozzy fed off those dark and heavy tones and it seems the heavier and lower the tone, the more he shone through, there's more to it than just contrast.  No one else could have put the feeling into "Black Sabbath" that he did.

Each of the first four tracks on 'Black Sabbath' are one hundred percent classics.  When I was a young man, "N.I.B." was re-recorded by Ozzy backed by Primus for the Nativity in Black II tribute album and the song became a huge radio hit.  I felt ashamed because I wasn't as familiar with the song as others like "Black Sabbath", "Behind the Wall of Sleep", "Lord of This World", "Children of the Grave" and the entire Paranoid album.  Since then, all of THE (first) SIX (sabbath albums) have been my one constant throughout all my musical forays and explorations.  I imagine, if you're reading this blog, chances are Sabbath is as much a way of life for you as it is for me.  Really, there's not too much else to say to add to that statement other than, it all started here.  Heavy Metal started here, Doom Metal started here and while Metallica used to say, "No life 'til leather", I'd change that to, "No life 'til Sabbath".  This is where it all started.

Somehow this band hit on a magic formula that would allow their songs to live on endlessly, remaining accessible, immediate and relevant 43 years on.

Highlights include: "Black Sabbath" and "Behind the Wall of Sleep / N.I.B."

Rating: 4/5




Tracklist
1. Black Sabbath (6:17)
2. The Wizard (4:21)
3. Behind the Wall of Sleep (3:37)
4. N.I.B. (6:04)
5. Evil Woman [Don't You Play Your Games With Me] (3:22)
6. Sleeping Village (3:46)
7. Warning (10:28)
Total Run Time: 38:06

From: Aston, Birmingham, England

Genre: Doom, Blues, Hard Rock, Progressive Rock

Reminds me of: Deep Purple, East of Eden, High Tide, Sir Lord Baltimore, Velvett Fogg

Release Date: February 13, 1970

Suggested listening activity for fellow non-stoners: Purging your brain of all music files, then re-starting from here.

Leaf Hound - Growers of Mushroom (classic album review)

RetRotation #2 - Leaf Hound

Simple riffs, solid rhythm section and soulful singing under the banner of funky Led Zeppelin inspired bluesy hard rock.  This is Leaf Hound's Growers of Mushroom.

I first heard this album five years ago on a warm summer night of degenerate drinking in the park.  After Black Sabbath 'Sabotage' had finished playing we wondered what to listen to next.  I had this one album I hadn't heard yet by a group called Leaf Hound.  They were a band I'd taken a flyer on after hearing the song "Growers of Mushroom", an unabashedl Cream pastiche.  I wasn't expecting much, maybe some stereotypical British blues noodling or some out there prog meanderings, along the lines of Soft Machine or even "Blue Condition" or some such.  I wasn't prepared for what blared out of my buddy's crappy little portable speakers.  As each song ended we kept finding ourselves stopping and saying "that was  a great song."  By the time "Stray" blasted through the speakers the conversation was over and Leaf Hound owned the night.

The riffs are absolutely perfect, weaving simplistic tapestries of filth funk and headbanging grooves.  They are the stuff that stoner rock dreams are made of, every bit as seminal to the genre as Sabbath's are to doom metal.  Riffs such as "Freelance Fiend" and "Stray" are what the stoner rock fan is always hoping to hear.  Without argument these are two of the best songs of all time.

By now the lore is familiar: 1 the band had already broken up at the time of this album's original release, 2 Peter French (vocalist) bounced from band to band never finding the stardom he so richly deserved, 3 original pressings of the LP sell for upwards of £2000, etc.  But 1+2 do not necessarily make 3, logically speaking.  What happened between 2 & 3?

Someone must have finally heard the damn thing.

"Freelance Fiend" is about as fine an opening statement as one will find on a hard rock album, it has all the classic ingredients of the band in full flight with a Hendrix-like guitar intro that cowbells its way into a power groove the likes of which one can only marvel at.  The chorus rings out in a very Zeppelinian fashion, cutting out and allowing vocalist Peter French the spotlight that was (according to lore) so unjustly denied him.  Add some phasing for the outro and you've got yourself one hell of a classic.

"Stray" is just simply put one of the best goddamn songs I've ever heard.  After a quick two measure solo guitar intro, the power groove stutters and struts in with dark and heavy footsteps.  The guitar sounds like danger coming and the drums are very Bill Ward inspired, especially during the chorus.  The funkiest white boy music one can ever hope to hear.  Peter French adds a ton of urgency to the song with his strained vocal delivery.

As mentioned above, the very Cream-y "Growers of Mushroom" was the first song I heard (I also discovered "Hot Smoke & Sassafrass" by Bubble Puppy at around the same time.  Check it out.) and it really didn't prepare me for what was to come on the rest of the album.  The song sticks out like a sore thumb when taken with the rest of the album, making you wonder not only why the shortest track on the album buried in the middle of side B became the title track, but why it was even included on the album in the first place.  It's structurally, stylistically and technically different from anything else found on the album.  It's a very good song, it's just curious and is symbolic of the kind of decision making that clouded this album and its posthumous issuance like a haze of stale dopesmoke.  "Sad Road to the Sea" and "Sawdust Caesar" also puts the band's Cream influences on display, particularly in the drums on the latter, the former track utilizes a Jack Bruce-like  vocal melody and sounds like something off of 'Wheels of Fire'.  They're both great songs.

"Stagnant Pool" is a perfect example of the kind of riff and the kind of song that one might expect to hear from a stoner rock album released today.  This track in particular seems to presage the sound of Kyuss with its driving riff, sudden tempo changes and urgent vocals.  Just another in a number of all-time classics.

This would be a perfect five album if not for "Work My Body" and "With a Minute To Go", two slower numbers that were pretty standard fare at the time for this kind of album.  "Work My Body" in particular proves that as good as the band were at crafting heavy blues funk, they weren't as capable as, say, a Led Zeppelin when handling the larger, slower compositions.  "With a Minute To Go" isn't really a bad song but it goes against the grain on this album, sandwiched between high energy "Stray" and the title track, this song doesn't make for a good follow up to "Stray".  It's like having desert first, what follows, though good, just won't measure up.  Maybe this would have worked better as a closing track.

Reminds me of: Cream, The Faces, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin

My Rating: 4.5/5



Tracklist
1). Freelance Fiend (3:11)
2). Sad Road to the Sea (4:16)
3). Drowned My Life in Fear (3:00)
4). Work My Body (8:12)
5). Stray (3:48)
6). With a Minute To Go (4:19)
7). Growers of Mushroom (2:17)
8). Stagnant Pool (3:59)
9). Sawdust Caesar (4:30)
Total Run Time: 37:28

From: Battersea, South London, UK

Genre: Stoner Rock (with hindsight), Heavy Metal (at the time), Hard Rock, Psychedelic, Southern Rock

Released: November 1971

More Info
History
Interview w/ Peter French

Suggested Listening Activity for fellow non-stoners: This is beer drinkin' music.