My Musical Journey. Part 15: The Fugs.

Ed Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg, and Ken Weaver wanted to call the band they formed in 1964 "The Fucks." That obviously didn't fly in those days, so they borrowed the sound-alike that Norman Mailer had used in "The Naked and the Dead:" "fug."

Sanders and Kupferberg were poets and part of the NY scene that included Allen Ginsberg and William S. Burroughs. I liked Ginsberg's "Howl" and was blown away by Burroughs, especially "Nova Express." I discovered The Fugs in 1966 mainly due to their antiwar stance. I was 18 and struggling to stay out of the draft, so their savagely satirical, scatological lyrics against the war appealed to me greatly.

I especially loved their third album, "It Crawled Into My Hand, Honest." "Wide Wide River" is still a pretty accurate description of the situation we find ourselves in. 

The album also includes one of the weirdest and greatest songs ever written: the Country-Western lament "Rameses the Second is Dead, My Love."

The Fugs continued to play and record into the 2000s, jamming with the likes of Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Patti Smith, and Ray Davies.

P.

My Musical Journey. Part 14: The Mothers of Invention.

Frank Zappa wanted to call his band "The Mothers," but Verve Records and the rest of the music industry in 1966 weren't cool with that, so the Mothers of Invention were born.

Zappa was a brilliant and innovative musician, and also an outspoken political satirist. He was angry and he was sarcastically funny. That combination was like catnip to me, since I was angry and sarcastic and I aspired to be funny.  The first three albums, "Freak Out!", "Absolutely Free," and "We're Only In It For The Money" fueled my growing disaffection with the conventional pieties of mid-sixties America with classics like "Hungry Freaks, Daddy," "Plastic People, and "Brown Shoes Don't Make It."

The wonderful "Sgt. Pepper" parody cover.

Still one of my favorite songs:

Even though Aunt Jemima is no more, I still love this song:

The lyrics and the attitude were what attracted me at first, but later I came to appreciate Zappa's compositions and the band's musicianship and tight arrangements, as well as their talent for improvisation in the albums "Uncle Meat," "Weasels Ripped My Flesh," "Burnt Weenie Sandwich," and "Hot Rats." All still masterpieces.

Zappa later became too jokey for me, pursuing money with juvenile novelty songs like "Don't Eat the Yellow Snow" and "Valley Girl." I stopped listening during this phase of his career, but rediscovered him in the early 80's when he released "Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar," a triple album box set of his guitar solos.

I really have a hard time listening to his later lyrical efforts, but his instrumental albums are still excellent, especially "Make A Jazz Noise Here" and "The Grand Wazoo." I love the way he uses unusual time signatures, often having different band members play in different tempos at the same time. Really amazing stuff.

P.

My Musical Journey. Part 13: The Jimi Hendrix Experience.

When Jimi first hit the radio, he sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. Hell, he sounded like nothing anyone had ever heard before. The growls and shrieks of feedback, the backward guitar tracks, the stunning guitar work—you could readily believe he was indeed experienced.

And he just got better as he went along. His experimental 3-D soundscapes on “Electric Ladyland,” pointed to a a new mode of music that unfortunately he didn’t live to explore. As much as I love his live work, his studio work was truly visionary, so much so that Miles Davis cited him as an inspiration for his electric fusion direction that began quietly on “In A Silent Way,” and exploded on “Bitches Brew.” If you can inspire Miles, you’ve really got something.

I often wonder where Jimi’s vision would have taken him if he’d lived. It’s a loss I feel greatly.

The great blues jam session "Voodoo Child."'

Here's an interesting article from Rolling Stone.

https://www.rollingstone.com/.../jimi-hendrix-experience.../

And here's a cool "making of" video of "Are You Experienced?"

 https://youtu.be/F2zavD9w98E

P.

My Musical Journey. Part 12: Bluesbreakers

My love for electric blues really took off when I discovered the Bluesbreakers. Eric Clapton was indeed God in my book. Later I would discover Otis Rush and all the other Chicago bluesmen that Mayall’s style derived from. 

Still the Bluesbreakers did a masterful and respectful job of bringing blues to the rock audience and a whole new generation. Their love for blues inspired me to seek out a wide range of roots blues, from Robert Johnson to Vera Hall to Blind Willie Johnson. And it’s still a great album featuring some of Clapton’s finest guitar work. 

Mayall continued to make excellent music even after Clapton left the band. Clapton went on to co-found Cream and then joined several other short-lived bands before his long solo career. He done a lot of good stuff over the years, but, for me, none of it ever has reached the pure, time-stopping ferocity of his solos here.

P.

My Musical Journey. Part 11: The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators.

I have to admit that I bought this record just because it looked too loony to pass up. I was right. The deranged liner notes were clearly written by someone who had done way too much acid, and the lyrics were weird. But I came to love many of the songs and finally to appreciate the later career of the lead singer, Roky Erickson. Hospitalized for paranoid schizophrenia at one point, he also claimed that a Martian had inhabited his body.

He died last year, but between 1966 and 2019 he created a unique body of wonderfully crazed music.
From 1985, his classic, "Don't Slander Me.

Sample lyrics: Don't slander me, don't slander me, mama

Never say don't I don't know why

Don't slander me just, just for you, me, and I, I

Don't slander me, don't slander me, mama

Let the red lights riot, let the red lights riot

The Martians won't put you in a bad zoo

A bad form of the blues are nothing is not too hot for you

Not too hot, not too hot, not too hot for you.

Perhaps his most sublime effort: "Two-Headed Dog," which he wrote about the infamous experiment by Soviet scientist Vladimir Demikhov.
The lyrics need to be appreciated in full:
Two-headed dog, two headed dog
I’ve been working in the Kremlin
With a two-headed dog

Peace brought back, bought back
Relaxed be nyet brought back
Did you dry her out
Wind her out like jerky?
To me she’s healed to attack

Two-headed dog, two headed dog
I’ve been working in the Kremlin
With a two-headed dog

Children nailed to the cross
Pain does not look our hell
Certainly is not a spell
Sweet waste from a well

Two-headed dog, two headed dog
I’ve been working in the Kremlin
With a two-headed dog

Winds quiet in the night
Her body just blows messiah
Sickening sweet sight left or right
Is all right does not please my appetite

Two-headed dog, two headed dog
I’ve been working in the Kremlin
With a two-headed dog.

Vlad and his dog.

P.

My Musical Journey. Part 10: Break On Through.

The first rock concert I ever attended was the opening of the new Anaheim Convention Center in June 1967. Jefferson Airplane headed the bill and the first act was The Doors. 

Like everyone else I loved “Surrealistic Pillow” and Grace Slick, but I also loved the new band I’d been hearing on the radio—The Doors. “Break On Through” was in heavy rotation at the time and I was looking forward to seeing them live.

Unfortunately, a lot of my fellow concert goers did not feel the same. By the time Morrison was screaming his way through 11 minutes of “The End,” people were booing and yelling to “Bring on the Airplane!”

The Doors left without an encore.

I loved The Doors. Jim Morrison’s passionate poetry and soulful screams, Ray Manzarek’s formidable musicality, Robby Krieger’s gorgeous guitar lines, and Skip Spense’s jazz-inflected drumming just clicked with me. They started to go downhill for me after “Waiting for the Sun,” though. Morrison lost it and I lost interest. For a brief moment, though they truly opened the doors of perception for me.

P.

recorded fall 1966 - lyrics: You know the day destroys the night Night divides the day Tried to run Tried to hide Break on through to the other side Break on...

My Musical Journey. Part 9: Rubber Soul.

I took my first acid trip in May of 1966, just before LSD was declared an illegal drug in California. It was an incredible trip in many ways, and the soundtrack was Rubber Soul by the Beatles.

I was not a Beatles fan at the time. I saw them as cynical purveyors of teenybopper pop with a fan base of screaming girls. Rubber Soul was different. The songs were more serious, more musically accomplished than anything they’d done before. “I’m Looking Through You” especially took on a cosmic significance that day. I was convinced that I could communicate telepathically with my friends. And I had a vision of God that still resonates with me today.

So “Rubber Soul” has a special place in my life. I became a Beatles fan, I loved “Revolver,” still their best album in my book, and of course “Sergeant Pepper.” I was less enthralled by their later efforts, though they continued to put out some great songs from time to time.

I took a few more LSD trips, but the purity of the acid that was available to me was not great, so I lost interest. I lost interest in the Beatles, too, as far as their new music went. But I still love their stunning middle period when they were the most innovative and influential music creators on the planet.

P.

My Musical Journey. Part 8: The Baroque Beatles Book.

In 1966, I took a music appreciation class at Orange Coast College. As part of the section on baroque music, the teacher played us some selections from this oddity by Joshua Rifkin. 
I was amused by the idea of transcribing the Beatles' (who I still hadn’t come to appreciate) music into a period setting. It’s quite well done. And it did help me begin to understand the Four Moptops’ unique musical genius. I listened. I laughed. I learned.

P.

My Musical Journey. Part 7: The Sound of Silence.

"Hello, darkness, my old friend."

Now that was a lyric that hooked me immediately. And I soon got immersed in Paul Simon’s poetic lines. He and Bob Dylan did much to convince me that pop music could address serious topics in a meaningful way. I also appreciated the beautiful harmonies he and Art Garfunkel created together.

“Sounds of Silence” was a big influence on my musical tastes, but an ephemeral one. After “Bookends,” their third album, I lost interest in Simon & Garfunkel. I never really got into Simon’s later music, though some of his solo songs are great. And I totally soured on Garfunkel after witnessing him pitch a hissy fit when the manager at Le Cirque wouldn’t seat him immediately without a reservation. Sadly, sometimes your idols prove to have feet of clay.
P.