The Knights Of Fuzz

The Knights Of Fuzz is the title of a very comprehensive guide to the garage and psychedelic music revival from 1980 to now, written by Timothy Gassen who is also the singer of a psyco-garage band called The Marshmallow Overcoat. The book has been later published on CD-ROM and then as a DVD-ROM, with lots of extra audio tracks and video footages. It is a good opportunity to know, hear and see more about a movement that never emerged from the underground but involved and still involves thousands of bands from all over the world.
I choose my two favourite clips included in the DVD, devoted to bands from the USA and Canada.
The Miracle Workers, as Timothy points out in his introduction, "stood head and shoulders above many of their garage brothers because of superior song-writing and a dynamic stage action". The clip combines an audio track, a marvellous garage-folk tune, from their 1985 album Inside Out with a concert footage from the same year.
I saw a compelling concert by this band in 1988 here in Italy. They had just released a killer album called Overdose, with an heavier sound influenced by the Stooges.
The Plasticland are one of the most talented and long-lived neo-psychedelic bands. They are from Milwakee but the roots of their sound are in the British psychedelia of the sixties, revisited with an original and brilliant style, as you can hear in Color Appreciation. The song has been published on single in 1981 and it still sounds great performed live twenty years after by these middle-aged men still wearing paisley shirts and colourful jackets.

Miracle Workers - You'll Know Why (1985)
Plasticland - Color Appreciation (2001)

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

Bye

Mirco

Naná Vasconcelos

In the summer of '83 a nine days festival of music from the Brazilian state of Bahia was held in Rome, in the fascinating and ancient scenery of the Circo Massimo. The city of Salvador de Bahia itself is called by the Brazilians as "Roma negra" (black Rome), for the baroque style of his many churches and buildings and for being the ancient heart of the country, home of the Afro-brazilian culture.

Among the many artists that appeared there Naná Vasconcelos did an amazing performance.
Naná was born actually in Recife, capital of Pernambuco, another north-eastern state of Brazil, and it is known for being a virtuoso percussionist and for having played with a great number of both rock and jazz artists. The music of his solo works is closer to avantgarde-jazz and world music than to other typical Brazilian styles.
In Rome he hypnotyzed the audience playing an excerpt from Africadeus, the long instrumental track that gives the title to his debut album of 1972. Using only a berimbau, an instrument of the north-eastern Brazilian folklore, and his voice, he seems like a shaman that awakes and gives voice to ancestral spirits.
This performance, like many others from the festival, is included in the beautiful documentary Bahia De Todos Os Sambas, an Italo-Brazilian co-production. The clip has been ripped, with great difficulties (that's why I offer only this one), from a VHS released in Italy in the year 2000. I think the movie has been published on DVD only in Brazil.

Naná Vasconcelos - Africadeus (1983)

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

See you

Mirco

Il Mio Nuovo Blog

Non ha nulla a che vedere con questo (che continuerà ancora per un poco, credo...), ma ne approfitto per farmi pubblicità.

101 Freddure Zen

Nella Cina del boom economico un monastero buddhista del XIII secolo è stato smontato e rimontato pezzo per pezzo, per permettere il passaggio di un' autostrada, rivelando fra le sue mura un prezioso manoscritto. Lo Zen Comico era una scuola iconoclasta che si riprometteva di risvegliare la mente dei discepoli attraverso la forma di comunicazione più immediata: la freddura.

S.F. Sorrow

S.F. Sorrow by The Pretty Things is one of the most underrated rock albums, a masterpiece of the British psychedelic season. It's been the first rock-opera ever, it anticipated Tommy and even inspired Pete Townshend, but to me it sound much more brilliant than the Who's celebrated album.
Thirty years after its release The Pretty Things performed the whole album live for the first and only time in the legendary Abbey Road studios, in front of a few lucky people, where it had been recorded, almost contemporaneously with other milestones like Sergeant Pepper and Pink Floyd's The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn. This historical concert has been recorded on CD, and later a DVD has been published too.
The band is joined by David Gilmour (ex-Pink Floyd, of course) on some tracks (you can see him on the second clip) and another old friend, Arthur Brown in the role of a narrator who helps telling the story of Sebastian F. Sorrow's life.
S.F. Sorrow is born again...and still sounds great!

Pretty Things - S.F. Sorrow Is Born (1998)
Pretty Things - Trust (1998)

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

Bye

Mirco