John Fahey

Maybe the greatest acoustic guitar player ever, father of a style called "American Primitive Guitar", John Fahey was such a devoted fan of old American folk and blues music, and a tireless collector of old records, to create for himslef a second identity in the person of an old blues musician called Blind Joe Death, since his record debut in 1959. Despite this, his virtuosistic style was so unique that lead him to bring traditional instrumental music into new territories of unknown and touching beauty, where he often came close to different styles, like indian raga.
These clips have been ripped from this DVD, they are part of a TV appareance from 1969, a very inspired year in John's long career, and they give a very good example of his peculiar and amazing way to treat the six strings instrument.
John Fahey died in February 2001, a few days before his 62nd birthday.

John Fahey - Red Pony (1969)
John Fahey - In Christ There Is No East Or West (1969)

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Cheers

Mirco

Children Of Nuggets # 2

We take another look at the neo-psychedelic scene of the eightes and nineties.
The Flaming Lips, from Oklahoma City, started in '83 as a weird noise-indie band; they were opened also to influences from classic and psychedelic rock and, despite the eccentricity of the music, it was easy to understand that the singer and guitar player Wayne Coyne had a visionary talent as a songwriter.
In 1990 they signed for Warner Brothers and their music became more commercial and refined, a sort of modern psychedelic pop full of lushy and fanciful arrangements.
She Don't Use Jelly is their most successful song, taken from the brilliant album Transmission From The Satellite Heart, published in '93. Wayne Coyne himself is the director of this and other crazy and colourful clips.
Let's not forget that the Flaming Lips managed also to publish for Warner Bros a mad project called Zaireeka, a four CDs set that is meant to be listened to by playing all the CDs simultaneously!
Mazzy Star was a delicate musical creature headed by David Roback. He had been part of the so-called Paisley Underground, the Californian neo-psych scene of the eightes, that included bands like Rain Parade, Dream Syndicate, True West and Green On Red. David composed and performed some magical songs with the Rain Parade and then with the Opal, the most acid and dreaming bands to emerge from that scene.
At the end of the eightes he gave birth to Mazzy Star with the charming singer Hope Sandoval, and the new direction was folk-rock music...a sort of "spleen folk", very decadent, ethereal and melancholy music.
Their second album So Tonight That I Might See, from 1993, is a masterpiece that also includes the song Fade Into You, performed live on this video for the Conan O'Brien show, on American TV.

Flaming Lips - She Don't Use Jelly (1993)
Mazzy Star - Fade Into You (1993)

Password: http://musicforyoureyes.blogspot.com/

See you soon

Mirco

The Pink Floyd At The UFO Club

This is a very rare Pink Floyd footage, apparently from March 1967; it was included on a bootleg DVD, and lately has emerged also on the web (I found it on Soulseek). It is part of a German film called Die Jungen Nachtwandler (The Young Nightcrawler), a documentary about the British musical scene in the sixties. The director Edmund Wolf also appears on the clip for a short comment. Unfortunately the Floyd are shown for just some brief sequences, while they are performing an amazing improvisation, probably a crazy version of Interstellar Overdrive. The camera concentrates more on the audience, we can see enough details to be sure, doing a comparison with some old photos, that this is actually the legendary UFO club! The video makes you really breathe the atmosphere of those days, an exciting experience for the fans of the early Pink Floyd who have already dreamed several times to take a time machine and be there.
The only details that I found on the web about his clip are on this italian page. There you can also read the English translation of the movie's card and of Wolf's comment.

Pink Floyd Live At The UFO Club (1967)

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I hope you'll enjoy this clip, let me know with some comments...

Cheers

Mirco

Le Bataclan '72

In the beginning of '72 three ex-members of the Velvet Underground - Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico - were touring in Europe at the same time, and decided to meet themselves for just one magical concert in a club called Le Bataclan, in Paris (for some reasons most of my latest posts have something to do with Paris...) That memorable acoustic perfomance has been documented on some bootleg CDs, and lately also on an official release, whose sound quality unfortunately is still poor. It looks like the event, or part of it, has been broadcasted by French TV too, as there are some clips available. In an intimate atmosphere they played very charming versions of songs from the Velvet Underground's repertoire and from their respective solo works. Certainly you don't have to expect a perfect quality from these videos, but they are good enough to excite the many fans of these great artists, and of the Velvet Underground of course!

Lou Reed and John Cale - Heroin (1972)
Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico - Femme Fatale (1972)

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Bye

Mirco

The Fugs!

Thanks to The Fugs rock music became for the first time the voice of counter-culture, they have been the first "underground", "alternative", "political" band.
Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, two anarchical pacifist beat poets from New York, formed The Fugs on late '64 to exploit the expressive and communicative possibilities of rock music. They announced themselves as "a total assault on culture" and, despite their rough musical technique, they became history thanks to their sarcastic and provocative attitude; each concert was a theatrical happening to attack and to tease the hypocrisies and taboos of the estabilishment.
They became so popular to even sign a contract for the Reprise label in 1968. A couple of brilliant albums like Tenderness Junction and It Crawled Into My Hand Honest proved they also became fine musicians, they losed maybe a bit of their early weirdness to play an eclectic acid folk-rock.
At the end of that year they toured Europe, and the powerful and funny perfomance shown in these clips had been broadcasted by Swedish TV.
During their trip with a van through the old continent they even tried to reach Czechoslovakia, occupied by the Soviet army, but they were stopped on the border!
By the way, The Fugs are still alive!

Fugs - Crystal Liaison (1968)
Fugs - The Garden Is Open (1968)

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See you soon

Mirco

On The Top 50!

On the last week of April the French musical magazine Les Inrockuptibles published an article about the 50 best blogs in the world, and Music For Your Eyes has been included on the list!
Funny that I was in Paris on that week and I even saw the magazine, but I didn't buy it, mostly because I don't speak French...I couldn't imagine! I received the new through an e-mail when I came back home, and of course it made me feel very proud and happy. I'd like to share my happiness with all the people who supported this site...thanks a lot!

From The Planet Gong

Daevid "Alien" Allen (a.k.a. Dingo Virgin) left Soft Machine in '67 when the British police didn't allow this weird-looking Australian guy to renew his residence permit in the U.K. The band were coming back from France, so he had to remain in Paris, in time to cath the "winds of change" of May '68. In this stimulating climate (power to the imagination!) he created his new anarchical and mystical music creature: Gong. He gave voice to his visions telling the mythology of the planet Gong, and the musical language was an unique blend of space-acid rock, jazz and a tasty sarcastic/surrealistic attitude.
This video is ripped from a DVD documenting a 1990 reunion concert in Notthingham. The song was originally a portion of the track You Never Blow Your Trip Forever, included on the 1974 album You, the last album from Allen with the first Gong incarnation. The line "You Are I And I Am You" is repeated for about eight minutes as a mantra, the concert becomes a sort of ceremony on which a perfect communion between the band and the audience is created. Beautiful!
Other original members included in this line up are Gilli Smyth (a.k.a. Shakti Yoni), Didier Malherbe (a.k.a. Bloomdido Bad De Grass) and Pip Pyle.

Gong - I Am You (1990)

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See YOU

Mirco