Posts (page 3)
Interestingly enough, I had never heard , until recently, UFO 's first or second LP UFO & UFO 2: Flying- One Hour Space Rock (I always loved that about the title of this album,too! Good advertising, appealing to the thrifty bong-scraping prog fan!). Let me tell you, I was not prepared for what I heard, a much diffrerent craft than the more commonly known version of the group featuring MICHAEL SCHENKER . Primarily in visionary original guitarist MICK BOLTON , whose unique scratch 'n'wah style of guitar playing prefigures most prog and Krautrock chicken-scratchers by a couple of years. The group itself actually has a history that goes back to the mid-late 1960's where they were the houseband at the legendary London nightclub of the same name, previously home to PINK FLOYD & THE SOFT MACHINE. After the first UFO album , a set of spacey versions of rock-a-billy standards such as C'MON EVERYBODY & several original tracks like UNIDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECT, came the immortal UFO2, featuring the epic FLYING,which starts of as your standard English slow blues but soon it builds to a swirling space funk groove that sustains itself on & off for the remaining half hour: at 26:30 it became one of rocks first major length tracks, and shared a side with the instrumental THE COMING OF PRINCE KOJUKU, which recalled THE WHO's UNDERTURE from TOMMY with it's identical chord progression & rhythm section bob'n'throb. But I must say, for me, the real meaty treat of this particular LP is side One's canterpiece track STAR STORM, an almost jazz-like improvisation of heavy psychedlic space-junk, which to me, sounds like a template for the emerging Progressive Rock which would dominate the English ( & to some extent American) Underground. Dig'um!
Seems to me from my old pal Burl Veneer that part of the thrill of music blogging is playing & hearing obscure hit records you ain't heard since they wuz on the radio or wherever the first time around. Here's a disco version of one I haven't heard since I don't know when, and, wow-cool, it's a disco version (which I guess means playing the song twice with a nice fade in the middle?) . Anyways, I don't really know what to say in regards, other than, according to allmusic, these two were session guys from Philadelphia, who set out to their own thing & STRUCK THE NUGGET, as I say. Please put down your latte before you start to dance, & I promise I'll go deeper for my next post, something reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaally far-out & mostly forgotten (if ever acknowledged to begin with!)
!ciao!
Hey this is just a test blog, so if it's really boring, sorry, it's not real. Anyhoo, I guess a good blog start is to talk about this obscure JOHN CALE B-side I have here, from the MERCENARIES (ready for war) 7"45 from 1980. This rarely heard original version is really not very different from the better known remake that same year from glam/goth death-punks BAUHAUS , one the earliest & most successful groups on the 4AD label, then in it's infancy. Of similar interst is the 45 released that same year (or in '81) from BAUHAUS bassist DAVID J and original BAUHAUS movement founding figure RENE HALKETT , who united for a one-off (and now EXTREMELY rare!) 45 ARMOUR/NOTHING. In doing so, the duo added further credibility to the ARCHITECTURE ROCK!
