Video: Larry Bill’s Take Off Lead Country Guitar Course

Music: Gene Clark – No Other

No Other

(via wikipedia) “On the basis of the quality of Clark’s Byrds contributions, David Geffen signed him to Asylum Records in early 1974. Asylum was the home of the most prominent exponents of the singer-songwriter movement of the era and carried the kind of hip cachet that Clark hadn’t experienced since his days with The Byrds. He retired to Mendocino and spent long periods at the picture window of his friend (and future co-writer and drummer) Andy Kandanes’ cliff-top home with a notebook and acoustic guitar in hand, staring at the Pacific Ocean. Deeply affected by his visions, he composed numerous songs which would serve as the basis for his only Asylum LP, the aptly titled No Other. Produced by Thomas Jefferson Kaye with a vast array of session musicians and backing singers, the album was an amalgam of country rock, folk, gospel, soul and choral music with poetic, mystical lyrics. The fact that No Other wasn’t a conventional pop/rock opus meant that its chances of success were greatly minimised by Clark’s relative obscurity. Furthermore, its production costs of $100,000 which yielded only eight tracks prompted Geffen to berate Clark and Kaye. The album then stalled in the charts at #144. On a more personal note, the singer’s return to Los Angeles and his reversion to a hedonistic lifestyle resulted in the disintegration of his marriage. In spite of these setbacks, he mounted his first solo tour (by road), playing colleges and clubs with backing group, the Silverados.”

Gene Clark – No Other

Top Ranking: This Heat – This Heat

In a previous post I enlightening you with the music of Lifetones. The solo musical adventure of This Heat’s Charles Bullen. Here I would like to further enlighten you with Bullen’s musical genius. This Heat’s first record is a cosmic adventure in dub, drone, noise and kraut rock through the lense of lo-fi production. Brash and chaotic full of drop-of-hat transitions from one groove into another. From ganja infested guitar upstrokes to white noise/guitar feedback to kraut rock-esque beats to sublime low-mid frequencies of sound. It’s a sonic mind fuck and it’s absolutely amazing.

This Heat – This Heat

R.I.P. Rashied Ali

“Rashied Ali is a progenitor and leading exponent of multidirectional rhythms/polytonal percussion. A student of Philly Joe Jones and an admirer of Art Blakey, Ali developed the style known as “free jazz” drumming, which liberates the percussionist from the role of human metronome.

A Philadelphia native, Rashied Ali began his percussion career in the U.S. Army and started gigging with rhythm and blues and rock groups when he returned from the service. Cutting his musical teeth with local Philly R&B groups, such as Dick Hart & the Heartaches, Big Maybelle and Lin Holt, Rashied gradually moved on to play in the local jazz scene with such notables as Lee Morgan, Don Patterson and Jimmy Smith. Early in the 1960s the Big Apple beckoned, and soon Rashied Ali was a fixture of the avant-garde jazz scene, backing up the excursions of such musical free spirits as Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, Paul Bley, Archie Shepp, Bill Dixon and Albert Ayler. It was during this period that Rashied Ali made his first major recording (On This Night with Archie Shepp, on the Impulse label) and began to sit in with John Coltrane’s group at the Half Note and other clubs around Manhattan.

In November 1965 John Coltrane decided to use a two-drummer format for a gig at the Village Gate; the percussionist Trane chose to complement the already legendary Elvin Jones was Rashied Ali. Thus began a musical odyssey whose reverberations are still felt in the music today – Trane probing the outer harmonic limits and changing the melodic language of jazz while Rashied Ali turned the drum kit into a multirhythmic, polytonal propellant, helping fuel Coltrane’s flights of free jazz fancy. The rolling, emotion-piercing music generated by the Coltrane/Ali association is still being discussed, analyzed, reviewed and enjoyed in awe as the new compact disk format introduces the era to a new host of the sonically aware. After Coltrane’s passing in 1967, Rashied Ali headed for Europe, where he gigged in Copenhagen, Germany and Sweden before settling in for a study period with Philly Joe Jones in England.

Upon his return from the continent, Rashied Ali resumed his place at the forefront of New York’s music scene, working and recording with the likes of Jackie McLean, Alice Coltrane, Archie Shepp, Gary Bartz, Dewey Redman and others too numerous to mention here. In response to the decaying New York jazz scene in the early 1970s, Rashied Ali opened the loft-jazz club Ali’s Alley in 1973 and also established a companion enterprise, Survival Records. Ali’s Alley began as a musical outlet for New York avant-garde but soon became a melting pot of jazz styles. Although the Alley closed in 1979, its legacy continues in the New York jazz scene and Rashied Ali has been busy gigging with a virtual Who’s Who in jazz, refining his music and encouraging a host of younger musicians.”
-Drummerworld.com

Swami Land: The Move – Message From the Country

Pre ELO Jeff Lynne classic rock from England. Don’t ask me why I didn’t know about this record till recently. I wont know what to say to you. Oh well. Lynne sure does like The Beatles: this record was the last from The Move (released in 1971 on EMI’s Harvest Records) and was made while they were making the transition into becoming Electric Light Orchestra.
I was talking to Ryan Smith of the band Caribou about this record and his response to me was “That’s some serious Dan Snaith aged 13 with a mullet territory you’re treading there.”
Take that for what it’s worth, I guess… I find it pretty funny imaging a 12 yr old Dan Snaith listening to The Move in his bedroom solving math problems.

The Move – Message From the Country

Best record of 2009 (thus far)

Nuclear Evolution: The Age of Love

If you have yet to pick up the new SA RA Creative Partners record, Nuclear Evolution: The Age of Love, go do that right now. Seriously some sick shit on here. I cannot stop listening to it. Takes all the elements of the previous record The Hollywood Recordings and the production from Erykah Badu’s 4th World War and goes places that I didn’t even know existed. So amazing. So inspiring.

SA RA Creative Partners myspace

More Evidence that Erykah Badu is THE GREATEST

I’ve watched this probably a million times and it blows me away every time. Erykah Badu is, in my opinion, the greatest. Sheesh.

Back home

i’m back in nyc. franz ferdinand tour was absolutely amazing. i’ll be working with yeasayer all summer. hope to see some of you at the festivals. my new record officially out on CD. LP will be out in july. 

buy the cd from insound.

See you all soon!

Manu Dibango is awesome

Lookintg for bandmates exactly like these ones. Please inquire if you know what i mean.