Music For Your Eyes

More Music For Your Eyes

2007-11-30T22:52:00.000+01:00

YouTube almost killed this blog, so please check my channel on YouTube.

The Madcap's Last Laugh

2007-05-15T17:06:00.000+02:00

To celebrate a very special event for every early Pink Floyd and Syd Barrett's fans, Music For Your Eyes is temporarily back.
Last week I passed a few days in London and I had the luck to assist to a tribute concert for Syd Barrett called Madcap's Last Laugh, organized by Pink Floyd's first producer Joe Boyd at the Barbican Theatre.
Surprisingly, among the many artists who paid a deeply felt homage to Syd by covering some of his songs, including Kevin Ayers, Robyn Hitchcock, Mike Heron, Damon Albarn...all of the four ex-Pink Floyd appeared! First Roger Waters played his own song Flickering Flame, then at the end of the show Gilmour, Wright and Mason joined to perform Arnold Layne. The audience was so excited, we all screamed for Waters to join the band too, but he had disappeared. My impression is that for personal reasons he feel "scared" or "ashamed" to play covers of Syd's songs.
Anyway, I take advantage of this event to post a very rare promo clip of Arnold Layne. It is not that famous video that I had already posted after Syd's death, on which the Floyds play with a mannequin, but another one that only recently has re-emerged on the internet. You can see it on YouTube too, but this is a hi-resolution and downloadable version, as usual.
Enjoy it!

Pink Floyd - Arnold Layne (rare promo clip 1967)

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

Goodbye

Adieu Adieu

2007-03-27T01:57:00.000+02:00

Prepare your handkerchief because this is a touching folk song performed by a great master, and it's my last goodbye too. I thought Adieu Adieu was an a appropriate title for the last post on this blog. I've already explained why I'm not going to update it anymore, anyway I'd really like to thank all of you who supported me and those who left nice comments. We spent more than an year together and it's been good to share this great music videos with you. If you like to keep in touch do not hesitate to e-mail me.

Se l'italiano è la vostra lingua ricordatevi di leggere le mie freddure zen e lasciare un commento se le trovate divertenti.

Richard Thompson - Adieu Adieu

No password this time

Adieu

Mirco

The Knights Of Fuzz

2007-02-20T00:32:00.000+01:00

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

2007-02-15T22:51:00.000+01:00

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

2007-02-09T21:58:00.000+01:00

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

2007-02-05T22:58:00.000+01:00

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

Kosmische Musik

2007-01-27T21:06:00.000+01:00

Klaus Schulze began as a drummer (and what a drummer! Just listen to him on the first Tangerine Dream's record or on the first Ash Ra Tempel's one), but on his solo career, that started in 1972 with Irrlicht, he became the wizard of synthesizers, creating his own evocative and grandiose style that made him the main pioneer of popular electronic music.

This video is one of the manies that have been braodcasted by the German WDR channel in the past August, during two long nights dedicated to the krautrock scene. It is part of a a TV concert of 1977, the long and hypnotic track is called For Barry Graves. Barry Graves was a popular German journalist and disk jockey, so maybe this tune was dedicated to him, maybe it has been played on his TV show...or probably both things are true.

Klaus appeares sitted on the floor, surrounded by a lot of keyboards and electronic devices; he has his back turned on the audience and there is a giant mirror above him reflecting his image.

The clip is certainly interesting not only for music lovers, but also for people interested in sound technology.

Italiano: Colgo l'occasione per ricordare il giornalismo rock creativo ed anticonvenzionale di Marco Lombardo Radice, il neuropsichiatra e scrittore legato agli ambienti dell'ultrasinistra, noto per aver scritto, assieme a Lidia Ravera, Porci Con Le Ali, il diario sessuo-politico di Rocco ed Antonia, e per aver ispirato il film Il Grande Cocomero. E' stato anche giornalista musicale per la rivista Muzak; anni fa ho trovato su di una bancarella una sua enciclopedia pop, la prima guida alla musica giovane scritta da un italiano (la prima edizione era del '74).
Il numero di artisti citati è notevole, considerato anche che all' epoca era difficile reperire molti dischi, qui da noi, ma oggi la lettura è interessante più che altro per lo stile "fricchettone", inspirato un po' al flusso di coscienza degli scrittori beat. Oggi suona datato forse, comunque era un bel tentativo di dare alla critica rock un suo stile autonomo, parte di quella che all' epoca ci si ostinava a chiamare "controcultura".
Vi trascrivo una parte della scheda su Klaus Schulze (al nostro piacevano soprattutto i suoni d'avanguardia):
"...la sua musica, espressa in quattro opere imperdibili, suites pazzesche, giochi sonori ossessivi ed ipnotici, riconduce al niente, all'ignoto, al sepolto, nascendo dal tutto, dal futuro, dal Kharma più vero dell'uomo ... ed in ciò è la purezza trascendentale, la cristallina intuizione di un uomo schivo dalla comunicazione di massa, vita a scorrere sul filo della vertigine elettroacustica, fino all'essenza purissima del SUONO, e non è questo il facile entusiasmarsi a livello infantile, piuttosto il riconoscere a questo artista una porzione di genio in più, che lo colloca al di là dei grandi nomi della musica contemporanea ... Schulze e John Cage, Schulze e Strawinsky, Schulze e Riley ... il disegno trova un prato d'erba colto sino in fondo e il prezzo stesso del pedaggio verso l'Infinito ... sono opere eccezionali ... "Cyborg" ed "Irrlicht", forse il dramma romantico della nostra generazione di freaks veri che sanno come vivere nello spazio del proprio cervello, nella consapevolezza della propria cosmogonia personale.
Quella di Schulze è una sinfonia unica, sconvolgente e libera, la cui appassionata e commossa tensione fluisce giusto dai terribili momenti dei nostri giorni ..."

Cosmico!

Klaus Schulze - For Barry Graves (1977)

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

A presto

Mirco

John Martyn In 2004

2007-01-23T23:13:00.000+01:00

2004 saw the unexpected return on the scene of John Martyn, one of the most inspired and prolific British songwriters, not so famous as he'd deserve. Surprisingly On The Cobbles is one of his best records since the early seventies, a collection of touching and refined folk-jazz tunes that he recorded with some prestigious friends, like the ex-Pentangle Danny Thompson, also present on these videos, on bass. It's been a sort of artistic redemption from life's tribulations: John had just recovered from a long hospitalization, his right leg had been amputated because of an infection caused by diabetes.
The illnesses and the abuse of alcohol left their signs, he looks so old and fat that you'll hardly recognize him, but his voice and his amazing tecnique on the guitar didn't change.
Here he is guest of Jools Holland on his musical show on BBC, for a brilliant live performance.
One For The Road is one of the ten songs included on his last album, while Johnny Too Bad is taken from Grace & Danger, released in 1980.

John Martyn - One For The Road (2004)
John Martyn - Johnny Too Bad (2004)

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

See you soon

Mirco

Love With Arthur Lee

2007-01-18T22:40:00.000+01:00

Before he died for leukemia in the past August, Arthur Lee, the leader of the legendary sixties' Californian band Love, found the time to obtain some of the success that was missing from his life since a long time.
He had passed through a long troubled period, culminated with almost six years of prison for illegal possesion of a firearm, from the fall of '96 till December 2001. After he got out he started touring again with a band called Love With Arthur Lee, accompanied by members of the Los Angeles' neo-psychedelic band Baby Lemonade. Arthur and these very good musicians began performig live in its integrity the 1967 album Forever Changes, that wrote the name Love into the rock history book. In 2003 they played all over the world, obtaining an enthusiastic acclaim by audience and critics. The tour is documented by a CD and a DVD.
On November that year they appeared on the BBC 2 program Later...With Jools Holland for another brilliant gig, joined also by a string and horn section, to reproduce the lush arrangements of these old songs.
The videos are very big, but the quality is as good as a DVD.
This post is dedicated not only to Arthur, but also to Bryan MacLean, the other singer and composer of Love (he wrote Alone Again Or) who died on the Christmas day of '98.

Love With Arthur Lee - Alone Again Or (2003)
Love With Arthur Lee - Maybe The People Would Be The Times Or Between Clark And Hilldale (2003)

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

Bye

Mirco

Starsailor

2007-01-13T22:43:00.000+01:00

Today Music For Your Eyes offers a full concert that Tim Buckley performed in 1970 for a program called Boboquivari, on the Los Angeles TV channel KCET.
In those days he was at the peak of the most experimental phase of his career, four of the six songs he played are included on his mysterious and touching masterpiece Starsailor. Unfortunately this record is out of print now.
Tim is accompanied by a band of four musicians, including a trumpet player, that leads us into strange territories, closer to free jazz than to folk-rock. Tim himself uses his extraordinary voice as an instrument.
This is the tracklist:

1) I Woke Up
2) Come Here Woman
3) Blue Melody
4) Moulin Rouge
5) Venice Beach
6) Jungle Fire

The songs are played with no interruptions, as one long suite.
I have converted this 27 minutes video into a 160 Mb DivX file, and splitted it in two parts with WinRAR.
Unzip this archive to know how to download it.

Tim Buckley live at Boboquivari (1970)

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

See you

Mirco

Sei Still, Wisse ICH BIN

2007-01-08T21:44:00.000+01:00

Florian Fricke, the leader and composer of Popol Vuh, was deeply interested in cinema and in the spirituality that's behind any religion.
In 1981 he had already written the soundtrack for many Werner Herzog's movies, then he decided to direct one by himself, inspired by some books of the Old Testament. Sei Still, Wisse ICH BIN (Be In Peace, I AM The Messiah) had been filmed in the magical landscape of the Sinai Desert, near the Dead Sea and the Moses' Mountain, that was still thought to be the Sinai Mountain (the real Sinai Mountain has been identified in 1983 in Egypt).
By that time no one released the movie, only the soundtrack, played by Popol Vuh and perfectly produced by Klaus Schulze, was published on Schulze's own label Innovative Communication. It is one of Popol Vuh's best albums, on which the band is joined by the Choir Ensemble of the Bavarian Opera. The vocals play a main role, with a "mantric" effect, and the sound seems often inspired by Tibetan sacred music.
Ten years later Sei Still, Wisse ICH BIN has finally been published on VHS, then reissued in '96 by the French label Spalax with the title Sinai Desert. At this moment it is out of print again.
These are two excerpts from the movie, a perfect combination of very evocative sounds and very evocative images. Curiously the part of the Messiah is played by a girl, Vera Von Lehndorf, who wears a false beard.
The audio track Wehe Khorazin has been used also on the soundtrack of Herzog's Fitzcarraldo.

Popol Vuh - Wehe Khorazin (1981)
Popol Vuh - Geimensam Tranken Sie Den Wein (1981)

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

I'm a little late but I wish you all a happy new year

Mirco

Suonare La Voce

2006-12-18T00:14:00.000+01:00

We celebrate one year of Music For Your Eyes with two clips that are not exactly "vintage rock music videos". Demetrio Stratos is remembered as the singer of the Italian group Area but he has also been a researcher of the expressive possibilities of the voice. His solo records give an example of how he brought the voice beyond the limits of language and of any musical style. Unfortunately Demetrio died in 1979, at the age of 34, and no one had the capacity and the courage to continue on his same path.

These clips are taken from the recently released DVD Suonare La Voce (playing the voice), that contains some precious footages from the seventies. You can preview them both on YouTube; the second one is a vocal version of a traditional Greek song (Stratos had Greek origins) that was also in the Area's repertoire.

If you understand Italian you will also hear from Demetrio some interesting explanations about the reasons and methods of his research. You have to hear to believe the things he was able to do with his voice, words just can't describe. At a certain point of this documentary he says "we want to abolish the word", so...

More Demetrio Stratos' music can be heard on this page of the UBUWEB site.

Demetrio Stratos - Flautofonie Ed Altro

Demetrio Stratos - Cometa Rossa

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

Ciao

Mirco

Grateful Dead

2006-12-10T18:41:00.000+01:00

As I found some interesting stuff, I'm back with a new post, sooner than I expected.
Robert Nelson is a Californian underground filmaker who met the Grateful Dead in their earlier days, when they were still experimenting the effects of LSD in creating and listening to music, in those famous Acid Tests. In this eight-minutes experimental film, that shows the Dead during one of those jams in 1967, Nelson provides some visual effects that help creating an experience similar to a lysergic trip. The audio track consists of parts of some songs from their first self-titled LP, performed live. A much more detailed description of the film can be read here.
To balance the strangeness of this video here's also a more "normal" clip of the Dead performing at the Beat Club in the spring of 1972. They had left the experimentations behind to play a more conventional music influenced by folk and blues, but with their very unique style, as we can hear also in this beautiful Bob Weir's composition, that appeared later that year in the triple LP set documenting their tour in the old continent. The fine psychedelic artwork of their first records appears on the background of the musicians, making this clip even more attractive.

Grateful Dead (a film by Robert Nelson, 1967)
Grateful Dead - One More Saturday Night (1972)

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

The image above is from the back cover of an Italian fanzine of the nineties called Magic Fuzz, on which I used to write. Jerry Garcia had just died and this beautiful picture was deadicated to him by an illustrator called Sergio Varbella. I haven't seen him in years, wherever he is I hope he doesn't mind if I showed it on the internet.

Bye

Mirco

Openers

2006-12-01T00:07:00.000+01:00

You've probably realized that I love the music of this man: Roky Erickson. One of the reason why Roki appears here again is because these clips are not on YouTube yet, and one of the reason why the number of visits to this blog have diminished in the last months is because YouTube is getting more and more popular and huger.

The perfomance from which these videos are taken was broadcasted on an Austin cable TV channel in 1985, it is called Openers like a poems' book that Roky wrote while he was in the Rusk state mental hospital. He plays in a very intimate situation, him alone with his acoustic guitar in a TV studio. The set is made of eight songs, six of them are previously unreleased and prove how good he is in composing and playing also some touching love songs, not only in singing about scary and evil creatures. Here you can clearly hear how he has been influenced by Dylan and Buddy Holly.

It looks like someone put a digital camera in front of the TV screen, but the quality is pretty good.

If you want to hear some more brilliant acoustic stuff, with some lyrics that are actually taken from the Openers' poems, I suggest you to listen to the rough but beautiful demos included in the album Never Say Goodbye, a collection of unreleased songs, mostly from the early seventies.

Roky Erickson - When You Get Delighted (1985)

Roky Erickson - To Think (1985)

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

After almost one year I think it is normal not to be so enthusiast as in the beginning, I've also seen most of my old files deleted due to a long period of inactivity (this means that no one has downloaded them). This blog will remain on-line, but I'm not sure if or when I will continue. I won't certainly update it so frequently as I used to.

See you soon?

Mirco

Third Ear Band

2006-11-25T22:29:00.000+01:00

This very rare video has been gifted to me some months ago by my friend Baz, from the UK. I have no idea of what he's doing now, he disappeared from the web, but I hope he is ok.

If there is a band whose music can really be called "magic" this is the Third Ear Band. They started in the London underground scene, with the name of Giant Sun Trolley, experimenting their own fusion of western and eastern music, in those glorious days of 1967. It's been because of an accident - part of their instruments had been stolen - that they became an acoustic band, and discovered the secret formula of the most evocative and hypnotic sound ever, combining indian raga, celtic and mediterranean folk, free-jazz, atonal avantgarde and minimal classical music.

The "progressive" label Harvest had the courage to release two memorable albums between 1969 and 1970: Alchemy and Third Ear Band (also known as "Elements"), followed by an interesting soundtrack for Roman Polansky's movie Macbeth.

As written on the sleeve notes of Alchemy: Words cannot describe this ecstatic dance of sound, or explain the alchemical repetiton seeking and sometimes finding archetypal formes, elements and rhythms.

After the second album the strings players Richard Coff and Ursula Smith left the band, so the percussionist Glen Sweeney and Paul Minns, a fantastic oboist, joined by Paul Buckmaster on bass, decided to try to become a more accessible "pop group", after they met the guitarist and singer Denim Bridges. They worked on an album called The Dragon Wakes, that never saw the light, played on a couple of BBC radio sessions, and did a brief tour in Europe, during which they also performed at the Beat Club.

This is, as far as I know, their only video available, with a line-up that they called the Third Ear "Big" Band, including also another percussionist whose identity is unknown to me. I haven't found any informations about him even on the biography written by the Italian musical journalist Luca Ferrari.

This unreleased tune is much more conventional than their early recordings, a mellow folk-rock that still sounds enchanting anyway, Minns' work on oboe in particular is great, as ever.

I have to say that the clip is a little frustrating as you don't get to see the musicians very well, they appear as small figures with giant incense sticks in front of them and the front cover of their second album on the backgorund; the idea was probably to make them look as little devotional statues.

My dream to see the Third Ear Band back became true thanks to Luca Ferrari, who was able to find Glen Sweeney and convince him to reform the band. Between the late eightes and early nineties, with different line-ups that for brief periods included also Paul Minns and then Ursula Smith, they recorded three more records for the label Materiali Sonori and played some concerts, bringing back some of the old magic.

This post is dedicated with gratitude to Paul Minns and Glen Sweeney, who died, respectively in 1997 and in 2005.

Third Ear Band - Hyde Park (1970)

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

See you

Mirco

Steve Hillage

2006-11-16T00:15:00.000+01:00

Steve Hillage is a great guitar player, the hippiest among the musicians that emerged from the Canterbury scene. He recorded some fine psychedelic music in the late sixties with the bands Khan and Arzachel, then he ended up playing for some time with another group of freaks: the Gong.
The spacey jazz-rock music of his first solo works, in the second half of the seventies, certainly owes much to the typical Gong sound, with the addiction of a very interesting use of electronic keyboards. There are three keyboard players in these clips, Miquette Giraudy on sinthesizer offers a very important contribution to the band, she had already played with the innovative Tonto's Expanding Head Band and with Todd Rundgren.
These two jams are taken from the German Rockpalast festival of March 1977. Salmon Song is from his first, and maybe also his best record Fish Rising, from 1975, while the cover of Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy Man appeared on the second one L, produced by Todd Rundgren in '76.
Hillage disappeared from the scene for about a decade, then he returned in the early nineties with a totally new style: a trippy electronic trance music. He and Miquette Giraudy play now as duo called System 7.

Steve Hillage - The Salmon Song (1977)
Steve Hillage - Hurdy Gurdy Man (1977)

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

Bye

Mirco

Glastonbury Fayre 1971

2006-11-01T00:18:00.000+01:00

Though only 7.000 people went to see it, the Glastonbury Fayre Festival of 1971, held in coincindence with the summer solstice, is a legendary event in the history of British free festivals. The organizer Andrew Kerr was much more interested in mysticism than in getting rich with rock music. He had the idea to make a giant wooden pyramidal stage, that took eight days to be built, to concentrate the energy of the solstice. I don't know if it was because of the pyramid, but an atmosphere of magic and harmony made the festival really special, as can be seen in the documentary directed by Peter Neal. The artists appearing on this movie are: Arthur Brown, Melanie, Terry Reid, Fairport Convention, Family, Quintessence, Traffic. Unfortunately the exibitions of other musicians like David Bowie, Edgar Broughton Band, Gong, Pink Fairies, Gilberto Gil, Hawkwind, Mighty Baby, Brinsley Schwarz are not shown. Of course is worth looking also at the spontaneous happenings among the audience.

The two perfomances I chose are really compelling. The Fairport Convention plays a very loud, fast, almost frantic version of Dirty Linen, a traditional also present on their album Full House, one of the best folk-rock record ever.

The Traffic closed their concert of June 22 with an irresistible Gimme Some Loving, the famous song that a very young Steve Winwood composed when he still was in the Spencer Davis Group. On this occasion the band is joined by some African percussionists.

Both these songs are impossible to be listened to while remaining sitted on a chair.

A triple LP set, complete with a booklet and a poster, including songs from this festival and others gifted by various bands, was published in a limited edition of 5.000 copies. If someone who owns a copy of this record would be so kind to upload it somewhere I'd be very grateful.

If you can read Italian, you will find more informations about the festival and the record on this page.

Added on November 12: In the comments you can find the links to download the album, kindly uploaded by my Brazilian friend Carlos. Thank you!

Fairport Convention - Dirty Linen (1971)

Traffic - Gimme Some Loving (1971)

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

See you soon

Mirco

Man

2006-10-27T22:46:00.000+02:00

An historical band from Wales that, though it never reached a big success, is still on the road and can count on a cult-following, as proved by this very rich and detailed official website.
Since their debut in 1969 with the album Revelation, on whose cover they apperaed naked, several years before the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Man have been considered as a crossover between progressive rock and west coast psychedelia. Their friendship with John Cipollina, the legendary axeman of Quicksilver Messenger Service, is testified by the 1975 live album Maximum Darkness. Concerts are the ideal context for Man's music, a band that, through many changes in its line-up, is always been a sort of "open space" for musical improvisation.
In the beginning they received more attention in other European countries like Germany or France, so it's no surprise that they appeared two times at the Beat Club.
2.30 Definetely is a compelling rock-blues, an instrumental tune that never appeared on any official album. Would The Christians... is a long track taken from their third self-titled album, another great instrumental piece. It has an evocative atmosphere with reminiscenses of Pink Floyd, and a strange noisy electronic coda. Both these perfomances are included on a bootleg called Yesterdays Papers. Check their website for more informations about these records, and much more.

Man - 2.30 Definitely (1969)
Man - Would The Christians Wait Five Minutes? The Lions Are Having A Draw (1971)

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

Cheers

Mirco

Round To The Stars

2006-10-20T15:45:00.000+02:00

Another post about my favourite German band, this time we explore another side of their sound. In 1972 Amon Düül II released a couple of albums on which they had been able to use their experimentations to compose shorter and more accessible songs, with brilliant results, right before they became a too commercial band, very different from the old freaks' commune.

The first video is a promo clip for the single version of All The Years Round, a song included on Carnival In Babylon, that, thanks to John Peel, had been played several times on British radio. It is a wonderful psych-folk song, on which Renate Knaup's shrill falsetto vocals play a main role, with the typical Amon Düül II's gothic atmosphere. The clip is very beautiful and evocative too, it reminds of the imaginative artwork they used for their albums' covers.

I found this video in mpeg format with a size of more than 200 Mb; to reduce it I've converted it into a wmv file of just 60 Mb, with almost the same quality. You can preview it with Real Player here, I think it was also included as a bonus on some CD re-release, but I'm not sure.

Surrounded By The Stars is the opening track of Wolf City, another fascinating ballad, that here is played live in 1975, with one of the best performance I ever heard by Renate.

This last clip is one of many old German rock videos that the TV channel WDR had the good idea to get back from the archives recently.

Amon Düül II - All The Years Round (1972)

Amon Düül II - Surrounded By The Stars (1975)

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

See You

Mirco

dErailRoaDed

2006-10-17T22:13:00.000+02:00

I think that the best way to introduce in a few lines Larry "Wild Man" Fischer is to copy the sleeve notes of the Derailroaded DVD, hoping also to encourage you to try and see this brilliant documentary about the cult-artist:

"de-rail-road-ed (di ral’rod ed) 1. pt.; a neologism; one man’s psycholinguistic and schizo-musical metaphor for derailed, to have caused a train, mind or life to go off the tracks. 2. proper noun; an 86 minute documentary feature.

In this shocking and sensitive musical journey through the thunderstorms of the mind of paranoid-schizophrenic Larry “Wild Man” Fischer, we follow his discordant encounters in the music business. Institutionalized at 16 after attacking his mother with a knife, Fischer wandered the mean streets of L.A. singing his unique brand of songs for 10¢ each to passersby. He was discovered by Frank Zappa, with whom he cut his first record album, including the enduring dada rock classic ‘Merry Go Round’. A precursor to punk, Fischer became an underground club and concert favourite, earning him the title of "godfather of outsider music." Over the course of his 40 year career, Fischer has performed constantly, is the first artist ever recorded on Rhino Records, was featured on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, had a top hit in the UK Pop Charts with ‘Go To Rhino Records’, which featured in John Peel’s Festive Fifty 1976, was the subject of his own comic book, was a mainstay on The Dr Demento Show , and even sang a duet with the late Rosemary Clooney.

Extensive archival footage from Fischer’s early days, including his TV and club performances, trace his life from neglected child to tortured genius. We visit him at home, follow him on the streets, and speak with those who over the years witnessed – and survived – his erratic behavior: his family, his doctor, and industry professionals including Frank and Gail Zappa, Weird Al Yankovic, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, Solomon Burke, Dr. Demento, and Barnes and Barnes. You will be moved, amazed, repelled, and ultimately come to know what it is like to be profoundly DERAILROADED."

Fischer recorded four LP's plus a live album with Smegma. The double album An Evening With Wild Man Fischer, produced by Zappa in '68, has never been re-released. All the music he recorded for Rhino Records, most of it perfectly produced by Barbes & Barnes, had been gathered on the Fischer King box set, that is no longer available too. It looks like all you can buy is Wildmania, the number 1 album in Rhino's catalogue.

The movie, that hopefully will arouse some interest around Fischer's music, is very dramatic. Like Crumb, the documentary about the famous underground cartoonist and his family, it proves how some of the most sincere and intense artistical expressions can come from a diseased mind. Larry is a manic depressive paranoid-schizophrenic, and this brought a lot of suffering in his life.

One of the most interesting extras featured on the DVD is an amazing animation by the great illustrator Pat Moriarity, based on the song The Bouillabasse, that exposes effectively Larry's obsessions.

Check out this post on PCL LinkDump for more infos about Wild Man Fischer, and also to download two of his albums!

Wild Man Fischer - The Bouillabaisse (animation by Pat Moriarity)

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

Bye

Mirco

The Incredible String Band In 1968

2006-10-12T22:26:00.000+02:00

For this precious clip we all must thank Milan Zivancevic, a good friend from Serbia that sometimes posts comments here using the nick "123". He's been so kind to burn and send me a copy of a DVD with many rare videos by The Incredible String Band, including also parts of their performance at the Woodstock festival.
In 1968 the so-called hippy/underground (counter)culture was at the peak of its creativity, and so were Robin Williamson and Mike Heron, whose band has been one of the most creative and imaginative of that era. These two amazing songwriters and musicians were guests at the Julie Felix TV show in that year, to perform a couple of fascinating tunes. The Half Remarkable Question, written by Robin, is a quiet and meditative song; as Robin sings and plays the guitar, Mike shows his skill in playing the sitar. The song is from the double album Wee Tam And The Big Huge, whose two records are also available separately, as they had been originally published in the USA.
Painting Box, composed by Mike, is one of my favourite songs by them, taken from The 5.000 Spirits Or The Layers Of The Onion, also considered by myself, and many others, as one their best albums. Julie Felix herself joins the duo on acoustic guitar and backing vocals, making this version truly delightful, a special gem for every fans.
For some reasons, ripping this clip has been quite difficult, please excuse me if in the last minute the audio is a little bit out of synch, I hope you'll enjoy it just the same. I'm waiting for your comments.

Incredible String Band - The Half Remarkable Question/Painting Box (1968)

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

See you next time

Mirco

Parco Lambro 1976

2006-10-06T19:07:00.000+02:00

I've been asked several times to upload some Italian clips. Sincerely I'm not a big fan of the musical scene of my country, also it's not very easy to find some old videos.

The movie Nudi Verso La Follia, directed by Angelo Rastelli in 2004, documents a memorable event: the sixth Re Nudo Pop Festival of June 1976 - Re Nudo was an underground magazine - that was held in a park near Milan called Parco Lambro. The Re Nudo Pop Festivals were also called "feste del proletariato giovanile", proletarian youth's parties. The Italian underground movement mixed the hippy counter-culture with the political revolutionary ideals of the radical left. The sixth edition of the festival was the most popular, several thousands of people from all over the country reached the Parco Lambro, but unfortunately it was also the last one. In the late seventies the contradictions, the heavy drugs and the violent degeneration of the political and social tensions brought to the death of the movement.

A lot of good artists took part to this four day event, but I think that the more interesting sequences of the movie are the ones that show what happened among the audience. Anyway, this is a musical blog, so here are a couple of musical clips.

Eugenio Finardi is a talented rock songwriter who released some very good albums in those years, with the important contribution of some great musicians from his same label, the historical Cramps Records, like Alberto Camerini or members of Area. His style was quite tough and angry, his most famous song has the eloquent title La Musica Ribelle - the rebel music - but this is a fine catchy ballad dedicated to the radio; some interesting indipendent radio channels were born here in that period, this was composed originally as a music spot for Radio Popolare. The song sounds almost as a country-rock, it was included on his second album Sugo, maybe his best one.

The group Area, that performed at the end of the festival, did a very peculiar experiment with the audience. They unrolled two naked electrical wires from Patrizio Fariselli's synthesizer to the people. As the instrument played a random sequence of sounds they invited the people to touch the wires and touch one another, to increase the resistance and make the tonality of the sounds higher. This weird instrumental track was called Il Caos, and it was the introduction to another version of L'Internazionale, the socialist international workers' hymn. Unfortunately we don't hear Demetrio Stratos' voice. A very good article in English about this amazing band can be read on this blog.

In the nineties Re Nudo re-appeared as a sort of new-age magazine. The times they are a-changin'.

Eugenio Finardi - La Radio (1976)

Area - Il Caos/L' Internazionale (1976)

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

Ciao

Mirco

Surrender To Jonathan

2006-10-01T18:30:00.000+02:00

Listening to a Jonathan Richman's record is always a secure remedy against bad temper, not only because of his talent in composing infectious melodies (does anybody remember an eight minutes live version of Ice Cream Man?), but you can also clearly feel how much he enjoys living and communicating through his music. This is why seeing Jonathan in concert is an even more exciting and funny experience, as proved also by a DVD called Take Me To The Plaza, that shows a performance at the Great American Music Hall in San Francisco, in December 2002. Accompanied only by himself on acoustic guitar and Tommy Larkins on a basic drums kit (Tommy is the same guy that appears with Jonathan on the movie There's Something About Mary), he offers an hour of great entertainment. Many of the songs are taken from the 2001 CD Her Mistery Not Of High Heels And Eye Shadow, that I've sincerely never heard, so I choosed a couple of older classic tunes. Pablo Picasso is from his earlier pre-punk period with the Modern Lovers, the song had been covered also by the Modern Lovers' producer John Cale, while I Was Dancing At The Lesbian Bar comes from the album I, Jonathan.

Mentioning the title of another of his records, all you have to do is Surrender To Jonathan.

Jonathan Richman - Pablo Picasso/I Was Dancing In The Lesbian Bar (2002)

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

A presto

Mirco

Phil Ochs

2006-09-24T01:39:00.000+02:00

First of all I'd like to thank Rosa Mannen from Sweden, who ripped these clips, shared them on the web and allowed me to upload them here.
In the early sixties Phil Ochs was a very promising folk singer of the Greenwich Village scene, like his friend/enemy Bob Dylan. He probably hadn't got the same poetic talent as Dylan, just a beautiful voice, a guitar to accompany his biting or tender ballads, and a great urge to communicate. He never stopped being commited as a militant for peace, and this costed him the censorship of the medias and even some troubles with the FBI. He was present at the famous Democratic Convention of 1968 in Chicago, and he was arrested along with many other protesters.
When he started recording "pop" music, he did it with very original and refined arrangements, like in the album Pleasures Of The Harbor, on which the song Crucifixion is included. Unfortunately the clip of this tune is incomplete, but it is so good, and also quite difficult to find, that I decided to upload it just the same.
I Ain't Marching Anymore is his "almost famous" song, the anti-war hymn that the people always expected him to sing.
The videos are from an appearance at the Swedish TV in 1969.
Phil committed suicide in 1976. Thirty years after his death, his songs don't sound so dated to me...unfortunately.

Abot Crucifixion Phil said: "It's a song about Christ-killing, how all America and even, especially, New York loves to create heroes to moralize to them and then kill them violently, bloodily and dig the death so much, every detail of the death. It's a song about Jesus Christ. It's called The Crucifixion. It's a song about Kennedy. And maybe a song about Dylan."

In fact it was not about Dylan, it was about John Lennon, but Phil couldn't know it because, when he wrote the song, Lennon wasn't living in New York yet.

Phil Ochs - I Ain't Marching Anymore (1969)
Phil Ochs - Crucifixion (1969)

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

See you soon

Mirco

The Captain's Blues

2006-09-20T00:35:00.000+02:00

In these two videos Captain Beefheart defaces the blues in his own unique and ingenious way, in different periods of his musical journey, with different incarnations of the Magic Band, proving he never lost his inspiration.

The live version of Click Clack, a song included on The Spotlight Kid album, is from a 1972 concert in an historical Paris concert hall called Le Bataclan (in that same year Lou Reed, John Cale and Nico also performed a legendary concert there).

The second video is a promo clip for the title track of his last record Ice Cream For Crow. Some of his paintings and some evocative landscapes of the Mojave Desert in southern California are shown in the clip. When Captain Beefheart leaved the music business, Don Van Vliet went to live in that desert, as a painter.

I don't think his music was just several years ahead of its times, he sounded like he came from several light years away from our planet.

Captain Beefheart - Click Clack (1972)

Captain Beefheart - Ice Cream For Crow (1982)

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

See you

Mirco

The Zakary Thaks

2006-09-15T00:05:00.000+02:00

We remain in Texas and we move to a southern town called Corpus Christi, home of two great garage bands of the sixties: the Bad Seeds and the Zakary Thaks. The Thaks were a group of teen-agers (the average age was just 16 years) who released six singles between 1966 and '69. Their contribution to the Nuggets compilation is a song called Bad Girl, maybe the fastest and trashiest among the 118 tracks included on the 4 CDs box set.
At the beginning of their career they had been filmed while playing some songs, probably by their manager Mike Taylor, singer of the Bad Seeds, who used the footage to try to get them some gigs. The Zakary Thaks managed to play as an opening act for many popular bands who performed in Corpus Christi.
Luckily the film didn't get lost, so we can see this legendary band in action. Their version of My Little Red Book is certainly influenced by the Love's one, but they express their uncontrollable energy even better with Sock It To Me Baby. This clip really confirms us that punk music was born a decade before the Ramones or the Sex Pistols.

Zakary Thaks - Sock It To Me Baby (1966)
Zakary Thaks - My Little Red Book (1966)

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

Bye

Mirco

Meeting With An Alien

2006-09-10T00:17:00.000+02:00

We've already seen a couple of acoustic performances by Roky Erickson, now we are going to know the electric and wild side of his music. Like Demon Angel, Meeting With An Alien is a low budget movie about Roky, produced by the University Of Texas in Austin, Roky's hometown, and broadcasted by a local cable TV channel.

1980 is the year on which his first solo LP had finally been released. The seventies had been a very troubled period on which he had been even interned in a state mental hospital. A terrible experience, but also a very creative period during which he wrote a lot of songs, about the evil creatures that seem to obsess his mind: zombies, aliens, demons, vampires...

The fact that he has some mental health problems makes his music probably even more attractive to many of his fans, but the simple truth is that he has a very special talent as a songwriter and a magnetic charisma as a performer. Am I the only one who prefers his solo works to the 13th Floor Elevators' records?

On Meeting With An Alien Roky is interviewed and plays some acoustic stuff in a studio, but the movie also offers parts of a compelling concert with his band, the Explosives, in a club called The Lone Star. I've read somewhere on the web that this was a place in New York City...but isn't Texas the Lone Star state?

One years ago he re-appeared for a short but amazing concert in Austin, he looked in great shape. It seems that there is a group of fans/friends that takes care of him there and helps him to pay the bills. Now that Syd Barrett and Arthur Lee have just died, is somehow a comfort to know that Roky is still with us, and maybe his life is not so bad.

I wish the quality of these clips was a little better, but here they are anyway.

Roky Erickson & The Explosives - White Faces (1980)

Roky Erickson & The Explosives - Two Headed Dog (1980)

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

Ciao

Mirco

Warren Zevon

2006-09-06T00:26:00.000+02:00

This post is dedicated to Warren Zevon, who died exactly three years ago at the age of 56.

One year before his death a lung cancer had been diagnosed to him, so that he knew he had a short time left to live. As an official comment he said he was afraid to miss the next James Bond movie, confirming his typical sardonic humour. He didn't feel discouraged and went back into the studio with some distinguished friends to record The Wind, his last album, that gives us one more reason to miss him.

Though he never reached a big success he's been a great rock songwriter, who told stories about the losers of America with a solid musical style of his own, and in the lyrics he showed the same capacity of a film noir movies' script-writer.

In the clip we see him on Top Of The Pops in the year 2000, performing live his most famous song, originally included on Excitable Boy, maybe his best album. He is accompanied only on his piano, an instrument that, as you will see, he was able to play with an almost classic style.

Warren Zevon - Werewolves Of London (2000)

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

See you soon

Mirco

The Hawkwind At Stonehenge

2006-09-01T00:26:00.000+02:00

Veterans of the free festivals scene, idols for different generations of freaks, the Hawkwind couldn't be missing from the Stonehenge festival of 1984, the same on which Roy Harper played too, to celebrate the summer solstice. They played on the night of June 20 and in the morning after, the second clip also shows an evocative footage of the crowd in the stone circle by the early light of the day.
In that period the former member Nik Turner, the guy with the weird costume and make-up who plays the saxophone, had rejoined the band for a while, and this make the concert even more interesting.
A part of the performance can be heard on a CD called This Is Hawkwind, Do Not Panic, and seen on a VHS. In 2004, for the 20th anniversary, a DVD with the whole concert has been released.
You know what to expect from the Hawkwind on stage, their space-rock may be predictable but they are always guaranteed to blow your mind.

Hawkwind - Social Alliance (1984)
Hawkwind - The Right Stuff (1984)

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

See you next time

Mirco

Roy Harper

2006-08-27T23:44:00.000+02:00

Roy Harper is known by many only because he is friend with some famous rockstars: the Pink Floyd invited him to sing in their album Wish You Were Here and the Led Zeppelin dedicated to him a song on their third LP...but unfortunately there are few who know his visionary talent, the sweet bitterness of his voice and his songs.

In the sixties he was already present at the earlier free festivals, improvising with open chords on his acoustic guitar and declaiming poetries. In the year of Orwell this great outsider of the British folk and rock scene is still able to enchant, alone with his instrument, a crowd of people that gathered in such a magical place like Stonhenge, to celebrate the summer solstice.

One Man Rock And Roll Band is taken from the album Stormcock, from 1971, while Commune can be heard on the 1974 record Valentine.

Soon we'll see a couple of clips by the Hawkwind performing at the same festival.

Roy Harper - One Man Rock And Roll Band (1984)
Roy Harper - Commune (1984)

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

Cheers

Mirco

Stamping Ground

2006-08-22T23:44:00.000+02:00

In America the golden season for music festivals ended up in late '69 with the Altamont's accidents, a few months after Woodstock. In the early seventies in Europe there was still space for some "good vibrations", as proved by the Kralingen Pop festival, near Rotterdam, on June 1970. The event, documented by the movie Stamping Ground, is often remembered as the European Woodstock, because of the presence of many artists that had already played on that historical three-days concert, like Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Canned Heat, Country Joe. But the Kralingen festival also showed how vital was the British scene on that period, offering great perfomances by bands like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, East Of Eden, Caravan, Fairport Convention, Family, T. Rex...

On this clip The Family play a tremendous version of one of their best tunes, the opening track of the album A Song For Me. The great vocalist Roger Chapman, in particular, offered a memorable, impressive and powerful perfomance.

Tyrannosaurus Rex were at a turning-point in their career. They had just shortened their name, that freaky guy on percussions, Steve Took, had just been replaced by Mickey Finn, leaving Marc Bolan as the only chief of the band. Marc embraced the electric guitar, his success as glam-popstar was just around the corner, but this song still has the naive freshness of his earlier compositions.

Family - Drowned In Wine (1970)

T. Rex - By The Light Of A Magical Moon (1970)

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

Bye

Mirco

Gong 2000

2006-08-18T01:12:00.000+02:00

The Gong family, including old members like Gilli Smyth, Didier Malherbe and of course Daevid Alien/Allen, celebrated their first gig of the new millennium on April 2000, in a London club called the Subterania. This is how the event is described in the sleeve notes of the DVD from which I've ripped these videos off:
It was the beginning of a new cycle for Gong. A new album, a new label, a new drummer, a new sinthesizer wiz, and a new agency with the potential for a fresh management vision. This was our first gig of the 2000 naughty naughties & aside from three thoroughly distracted rehearsals we hadn't played together for five months. To add to the pressure the gig was going out as webcast and eventually would become a DVD & live CD.
Somehow when the day came we forgot all this & it all morphed into a huge fluorescent fancy dress party with a bunch of our old tribal pals & friends old & new in a club in Portobello Rd. - for years the epicentre of our London lifetimes.
They were promoting the new CD Zero 2 Infinity, but these are brilliant versions of two great classics from their old repertoire.
Take a look at Gilli on You Can't Kill Me, it seems to me that she was under the effect of something. What do you think?

Gong - You Can't Kill Me (2000)
Gong - Radio Gnome Invisible (2000)

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

See you

Mirco

John Martyn

2006-08-13T15:28:00.000+02:00

One the most sensitive and talented British songwriters. The story tells that it was Bert Jansch who teached John Martyn the fingerpicking guitar technique, but folk and blues were just the starting point to create his personal musical and poetical world. He developed a peculiar style in playing the instrument, very percussive, and he often roughs the sounds with the use of an electronic effect called echoplex. His particular use of the voice reminds a little of Tim Buckley, and Tim, along with Nick Drake, is an artist to which he's often been compared.
These videos show two songs from a 1978 concert in London, broadcasted by the BBC for the Old Grey Whistle Test program. On that year John had just returned on the scene after a few years of break in the mid-seventies, just when he reached his creative peak with albums like Solid Air and Inside Out. The audience gave him a warm welcome; despite the melancholy atmosphere of his songs, he is a funny and entertaining guy on stage.
On most recent years John Martyn dealed a lot with electronic sounds and dance rhythms, but talent and poetry survived just the same.
The size of these files is huge, but they have a fantastic video and audio quality. Enjoy!

John Martyn - May You Never (1978)
John Martyn - Couldn't Love You More (1978)

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

See you soon

Mirco

Com'era Verde La Mia Valle

2006-08-08T18:38:00.000+02:00

Un post diverso dal solito, ma quando ci vuole ci vuole...

C'è una valle in provincia di Sondrio, la Val di Mello, che è una specie di paradiso terrestre. Ora una certa GeoGreen S.p.A. ha intenzione di captare tutti i torrenti della valle per costruire due centrali idroelettriche. Se il progetto andrà in porto avrà un impatto terribile sull'ambiente, il paesaggio ed il turismo (quindi anche sull'economia locale). Forse firmare una petizione online non servirà a fermarli, ma vale la pena tentare.

http://www.valdimello.it/v2/User/asp/Vdm.asp?a=52

Grazie

Two Sides Of The Pentangle

2006-08-08T17:27:00.000+02:00

The Pentagle were born with the meeting of two extaordinary British guitarists: John Renbourn and Bert Jansch. Both these virtuoso musicians have been able to match in a very original way different styles like folk, blues and jazz, giving an important contibution to the rebirth of British folk music in the sixties.

Thanks to Stefan Grossman's Vestapol Videos series we can see them performing as soloists too.
A very young Renbourn appears on an historical London club called Les Cousins, playing his version of the traditional I Know My Rider, that also appears, with the title I Know My Babe, on his 1966 album Another Monday. Bert Jansch plays and sings, live in a studio, Blackwaterside, another traditional, included on the Jack Orion LP, from 1966 too. This song has almost been stolen by Jimmy Page to compose Black Mountain Side, that instrumental track on the first Led Zeppelin's album. I don't know when and where Bert performed this, but he certainly looks older than he was in the Pentangle's years. Any additional informations are always welcome.

John Renbourn - I Know My Rider (1965)
Bert Jansch - Blackwaterside

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

Cheers

Mirco

The Pentangle

2006-08-03T17:31:00.000+02:00

This blog exists since more than seven months and some of the earlier videos have already gone. On big request I've re-uploaded the very first clip I had posted here, a great live perfomance by The Pentangle in 1968. Still I haven't discovered from which TV program this comes from, but probably someone had the great idea to rip the video from this DVD.

Thanks to Stefan Grossman's Vestapol Videos, lovers of Pentangle and of folk music will soon find more interesting clips here.

Pentangle - Travelling Song/Let No Man Steal Your Thyme (1968)

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

Bye

Mirco

The Incredible String Band At Woodstock

2006-07-28T15:10:00.000+02:00

This is a performance you haven't seen on the famous movie about the "three days of peace, love and music", and nor heard on one the two double LP sets. I've always thought about the Incredible String Band as a sort of cult band, it's hard to imagine that they were popular enough to appear at the most famous music festival ever, though playing in front of almost half a million people wasn't maybe the ideal situation for them.

This really "incredible band" has been one of the most creative and imaginative of their era, their music is a bridge that united with surrealistic eclecticism the British folk revival with the psychedelic sounds and culture. The core of the band was formed by Mike Heron and Robin Williamson, two Scottish songwriters, singers and multi-instrumentalists. On that occasion they were joined by their girlfriends Christine "Licorice" McKechnie and Rose Simpson. Both these songs were unreleased then, as they have been published in 1970 on the album I Looked Up. They also played This Moment, but the available clip of that song is uncomplete.

Incredible String Band - The Letter (1969)

Incredible String Band - When You Find Out Who You Are (1969)

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

Peace & Love ;-)

Mirco

All You Need Is Love

2006-07-24T21:51:00.000+02:00

We go back to the sixties and back to California to meet another historical band: The Love, from Los Angeles. Leaded by the great composer, singer and guitarist Arthur Lee, this multi-racial combo has exposed in some memorable records a perfect combination of different styles like rythm 'n' blues, folk, pop with beautiful and fancyful arrangements. A rocking version of Burt Bacharach's song My Little Red Book, that they presented with this mimed performance on the TV program American Bandstand, was one of the gems included on the 1966 self-titled debut album. The Love's golden period continued in 1967 with the next two albums Da Capo and Forever Changes. This last one is a collection of marvellous folk-pop songs with very refined orchestral arrangements, and it's considered by many as one of the best rock album ever.
Due to Lee's despotic attitude and drug-related problems, the band began to dissolve. In the following decades Arthur Lee appeared a very few times on the musical scene, also because of some health problems, but in 2003 he reformed Love with some new fine musicians (the other singer and composer Bryan MacLean died in '98) for a tour on which they played the whole Forever Changes album, and some more old tunes. He was in great shape, as documented also by this DVD. On this clip the "New Love" play a compelling version of 7 And 7 Is, originally included on Da Capo.

Added on august 04: I've just read on the Sonic Pollutions blog that Arthur Lee has died. I didn't imagine that this post could turn into an obituary so soon. As I wrote about Syd Barrett, the man has gone but his music will still remain for a long time.

Love - My Little Red Book (1966)

Love - 7 And 7 Is (2003)

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

Bye

Mirco

Madcaps

2006-07-20T22:31:00.000+02:00

I remember when I was a very young kid, in the mid-eightes, new-psychedelia became the main trend in the underground rock scene. The musical press used to discuss about the artistic legacy of Syd Barrett, certainly the most significant figure of sixties' British psychedelia. Julian Cope and Robyn Hitchcock, two British artists too, were considered as the best heirs of Syd, not because they had simply tried to imitate him, but, taking inspiration from sixties' psychedelic pop, they both created their own eccentric and unique style. In the late seventies, during the punk/new wave age, people started to hear some modern psychedelic pop thanks also to Julian's band, The Teardrop Explodes, and Robyn's one, The Soft Boys; but it's been with their long and rich solo careers that they reached even more exciting creative goals. The people who don't know their music have a lot of gems to discover. These videos, a couple of promo clips you probably haven't seen so often on MTV, can give you just a little idea. Try Try Try is a song included on Cope's 1995 album 20 Mothers, while Madonna Of The Wasp is a single released by Robyn and his band The Egyptians on 1989. The song is also included on the album Queen Elvis, a sticker on the cover of that record introduced him as "# 1 post-modern artist".

You'll see on the videos that they both were wearing a "mad cap"!

Julian Cope - Try Try Try (1995)
Robyn Hitchcock 'n' The Egyptians - Madonna Of The Wasps (1989)

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

See you next time

Mirco

Nuggets # 4

2006-07-16T22:24:00.000+02:00

Two more precious nuggets from the mid-sixties.
The Remains, from Boston, were maybe the best New England garage band. They formed in late '64 and soon became very popular with some singles and a self-titled LP in 1966. Their fame grew even more when they played as the opening act for The Beatles and The Rolling Stones on their American tours, so they also appeared on TV a few times. This live perfomance at the Ed Sullivan Show is particulary interesting because the song Let Me Through is still unreleased on record, and it's a pity as it's a fantastic garage tune, with an exciting and frantic psychedelic instrumental coda.

The Knickerbockers, from the state of New York, also had a short life from 1964 to '66. They are remembered as Beatles' imitators, but what a great imitation they did! Lies is a song so good that it'll make you want to dance crazily as the girls in this video, showing their appearance at the Hullabaloo TV program.

Remains - Let Me Through (1966)
Knickerbockers - Lies (1966)

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

See you soon

Mirco

Goodbye Syd

2006-07-11T18:59:00.000+02:00

I read this new a few hours ago. It makes me very sad, and I'm sure that thousands of people all over the world are feeling the same way. Syd Barrett died a few days ago at the age of 60.
This old funny promo clip of Pink Floyd's first single show him as I like to remember him. He was very young and seemed to be happy with his friends.
In the last years Roger Keith "Syd" Barrett chose to live a quiet and retired life. We can't know for sure if he was really sadder and crazier than us.
There's not much to say without being rhetorical, I just wish he could hear me saying goodbye and thanks a lot. You won't be forgotten and your music will live forever.

Pink Floyd - Arnold Layne (1967)

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

Goodbye

Moby Grape

2006-07-07T21:03:00.000+02:00

Moby Grape is one of the hundreds of bands that were born in San Francisco in the late sixties, the same magical scene from which the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead and the Quicksilver Messenger Service had emerged. Alexander "Skip" Spence, who is now also remembered for a marvellous and intimistic solo album called Oar, has been the drummer in the early Jefferson Airplane's line-up, but he soon left because he wanted to play the guitar.
Moby Grape was formed by five talented musicians, and four of them were also very good singers. The result was a memorable self-titled debut LP, one of the coolest rock album ever, in my opinion, though it doesn't sound so psychedelic compared to the works of other contemporary bands. The following double record Wow/Grape Jam is more "acid", but not so inspired, spontaneous and convicting as the first one, with its perfect vocal harmonies and fantastic guitar work.
This promo clip, from some distant TV show of 1967, offers you two songs from that great debut: a powerful rock-blues and a soft evocative ballad, to give you an idea of Moby Grape's eclecticism.
I hope you'll enjoy the video as much as I did, I was so thrilled to see Skip Spence and his companions in action!

Moby Grape - Hey Grandma/Sitting By The Window (1967)

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

Bye

Mirco

Folk Mutants # 2

2006-07-04T01:07:00.000+02:00

I started uploading videos on December 2005 with a post called Folk Mutants (don't try to downlaod the Pentanlge's video as it's unavailable, I might consider to re-upload it as it is very good and some people asked me to do it). Six months later this blog is still alive and has reached 100.000 visits. To celebrate the event here is, finally, Folk Mutants # 2.
The Fairport Convention has been one of the firsts and most known bands to renew the British traditional music, and the Steeleye Span also became very popular among lovers of folk-rock music, since they were formed, in 1969, by the bass player Ashley "Tiger" Hutchings when he left the Fairport Convention.
By the time of this appearance at the BBC program The Old Grey Wisthle Test, the Fairport had already lost other talents like Sandy Denny and Richard Thompson, but their album "Babbacombe" Lee was still brilliant, maybe the only concept album ever released by a folk band. The song is the last chapter of the story of a man wrongfully accused of murder in the nineteenth century. You'll see what a great perfomer Dave Swarbrick is, on vocals and fiddle.
The Steeleye Span's video is a clip of their most successful song, n° 1 in the British charts and their first hit in the USA. A catchy tune that won't get out easily of your head and ears, with its rocking arrangement and Maddy Prior's delightful voice.

Fairport Convention - Wake Up John (The Hanging Song) (1972)
Steeleye Span - All Around My Hat (1975)

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

See you soon

Mirco

Trolls Strike Back

2006-07-01T02:01:00.000+02:00

Yes, they seem to love this blog. Many files have been deleted again. Some of them I have already re-uploaded, some others I'll re-upload soon. If you find that some videos you're interested in have vanished from Rapidshare, please be patient and try again in a few days.
Thank you.

Amon Düül II

2006-06-29T01:44:00.000+02:00

This is maybe my favourite krautrock band, and one of my favourite bands ever. Their first 4 or 5 albums are masterpieces and their hard-acid-folk-rock, full of dark and mysterious exotic/esoteric atmospheres, is something unique.
The first video is part of their appearance at the Beat Club on October 1970, it is a wild live version of a song from the memorable double LP Yeti...a real monster album! Another clip from that appearance can be downloaded here.
Amon Düül II have returned in the last years, we can see them also on this video from a concert at the German Rockpalast festival (on that occasion it became the Krautrockpalast) on December 2004. The line-up is the same as in the Beat Club performance, only the keyboard player Kalle Hausmann is missing, but they are joined by the singer Renate Knaup-Krötenschwanz, who for some reasons was absent on that day of 1970, and an additional percussionist, Jan Kahlert. They have lost some of the energy they had when they were younger, but they are still great musicians, able to mesmerize with mind-blowing performances, as proved by this version of Kanaan, the first song on their first album Phallus Dei. Back to the beginning...

Added on august 03: For more great downloadable Amon Duul II's video stuff look here.

Amon Düül II - Eye-Shaking King (1970)
Amon Düül II - Kanaan (2004)

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

Ciao

Mirco

Motorpsychodelic Trips

2006-06-24T03:09:00.000+02:00

It would not be fair to say that Motorpsycho is just a neo-psychedelic band, in fact this is just a pretext to show some clips by one of my favourite bands of the last 15 years, and one of the best live acts I ever saw.
This Norwegian trio started in the early nineties as a very heavy noisy-metal band, but their sound soon became more eclectic and refined, incorporating almost every musical form: hard rock, acoustic ballads, long spacey jams, grunge...they can play all of this and more with a very distinctive style. Being talented musicians they are particular good in improvising a lot during their long concerts.
They are stars in their own country and have many followers in Europe, where they tour every year, but unfortunately they seems to be still almost unknown in the UK and USA, so I hope I can allow some more people to know them. In case you've never heard anything of them I suggest you to go searching for the double CD Timothy's Monster, from 1995. Take also a look at these live videos, on which they play a couple of fine and catchy tunes. The first one is from the Roskilde festival in Denmark, the second one is part of a performance for the Norwegian TV and it shows the more "pop" side of the band, that they have displayed in the last years. In this occasion Bent, Snah and Gebhardt are joined by a keyboard player and a horn section.

Motorpsycho - Hightimes (1999)
Motorpsycho - Serpentine (2002)

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

Any comments?

See you

Mirco

Tropicália # 3

2006-06-19T18:40:00.000+02:00

About the Brazilian tropicália movement I don't want to add more to what I've already said in my first post about it, and in the second one too.
Here at last is a video by a very young Caetano Veloso, probably the most significant "tropicalistic" artist, and one of the greatest Brazilian songwriter ever. The clip is taken from a festival organized by the TV Record channel in October 1967, the same festival on which Gilberto Gil performed Domingo No Parque with Os Mutantes. He sings his first hit Alegria, Alegria accompanied by the Argentinian rock band The Beat Boys. He looks very excited as the audience acclaims him. This footage gives you an idea of how extroverted Brazilian people are, at least compared with most of us Europeans.
The Os Mutantes performance is part of the 1969 TV concert on which they played Panis Et Circenses too. Fuga N° 2 is a beautiful dreamy song taken from their second album, a psychedelic pop gem. The band has reformed this year, without the singer Rita Lee, for a successful concert in London, on May 22.

Caetano Veloso - Alegria, Alegria (1967)
Os Mutantes - Fuga N° 2 (1969)

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

The reason why I'm still here is to share some good vibes with the world outside my room, let my know if I succeed in it.

Happy solstice (to the people living in the northern hemisphere)

Mirco

Swingin' & Surfin'

2006-06-18T01:41:00.000+02:00

In the early Sixties, before the Beatles and the British invasion, instrumental rock 'n' roll and surf music were probably the most exciting things to hear.
Dick Dale, known as the king of surf guitar, has been one of the first musicians inspired by this sport loved by Californian people. His unique guitar style has somehow anticipated garage-rock, with his rough approach, and psychedelia, because of his use of reverberation. He's also been the first one to use a Fender Stratocaster, that later became the rock instrument itself.
This footage is taken from one of his many appearances at the Ed Sullivan Show, in 1963. He plays a medley of his most successful pieces; everyone will recognize the guitar solo of Miserlou, recorded in '62 with The Del-Tones, the song that made him famous again thanks to the soundtrack of Tarantino's movie Pulp Fiction.
Another famous instrumental surf band were The Ventures; from a 1966 concert we can see them playing a great version of the classic piece Wipe Out, first recorded by The Surfaris in 1962.

Dick Dale - Swingin' & Surfin' (1963)
Ventures - Wipe Out (1966)

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

Cheers

Mirco

More Canterbury Tales

2006-06-14T19:03:00.000+02:00

In late 1972 the bass player and singer Richard Sinclair left Caravan to form Hatfield And The North, a sort of Canterbury supergroup with Phil Miller on guitar, Pip Pyle on drums and Steve Miller on keyboards, later replaced by Dave Sinclair and then by Dave Stewart. These musicians had already been members of important bands like Matching Mole, Caravan, Gong, Egg...
Hatfield And The North relesaed a couple of fine albums in the Canterbury tradition of "progressive jazz-rock", with an inventiveness and a touch of irony that was ignored by most of the contemporary progressive band.
This footage is from a concert at the Rainbow Theatre in London, on 1975.
The band splitted because of commercial failure, in 1977 Miller, Pyle and Stewart joined Alan Gowen (ex Gilgamesh) to give birth to National Health and continue on the same path, with an even more brilliant blend of melody and surrelistic experimentation, especially on their 1978 masterpiece Of Queues And Cures. The Collapso, here performed live for the BBC program The Old Grey Whistle Test, is included on that album.
Unfortunately they didn't receive much attention too, and left the scene at the dawn of the Eightes, also because of Gowen's death in '81.

Hatfield And The North - Halfway Between Heaven And Earth (1975)
National Health - The Collapso (1979)

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

Bye

Mirco

Rust Never Gets Old

2006-06-09T17:52:00.000+02:00

I don't need to say much to introduce Neil Young. The Canadian loner is simply one of the most important rock songwriter ever, and one of the few musicians of his generation that doesn't seem to have lost much of his energy and inspiration, despite his age. No one is as good as him in playing both intimistic/acoustic perfomances and electric/powerful concerts. So here are two live clips showing both sides of his art. This version of Heart Of Gold, one of his most successful songs, included on the Harvest album, is taken from a 1971 BBC concert. He was only 26 years old and he sang "...and I'm getting old...". 25 years later we meet him at the Phoenix festival with his faithful companions Crazy Horse, for an outstanding version of another classic song: Like A Hurricane. He certainly got older but he's still in great shape.
Now I'm waiting to see him on Jonathan Demme's concert movie Heart Of Gold.

Neil Young - Heart Of Gold (1971)
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - Like A Hurricane (1996)

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

See you next time

Mirco

Demon Angel

2006-06-02T21:40:00.000+02:00

Ladies and gentlemen, here is Roky Erickson! Demon Angel, A Day And Nite With Roky Erickson is a low-budget documentary about Roky, filmed in his hometown, Austin - Texas, on 1984. In those days the Texan acid guru (singer of the legendary band 13th Floor Elevators, for the few unlucky people who do not know him...) had just returned on the scene after a troubled period, due to his mental health problems, with a new band called The Evil Look Wildlife E.T.
On this movie he is interviewed by a guy called George Cederskolg, and he speaks about his obsessions: zombies, killers, aliens and this kind of pleasantries. He also performs great versions of some of his best songs, on the Halloween night, under the congress street bridge in Austin, a very sinister place. He plays alone with the acoustic guitar on some songs, on some others he is joined by Mike Alvarez on the acoustic guitar as he plays the electric one. These bare versions simply show how good and evocative his music is, and his great charisma as a performer, he really howls and looks like a werewolf!
The full perfomance can also be heard on this CD.
I hope you' ll enjoy these clips, if so I may upload more songs from this movie, in the future.

Roky Erickson - Night Of The Vampire (1984)
Roky Erickson - It's A Cold Night For Alligators (1984)

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

See you soon

Mirco

John Fahey

2006-05-30T14:21:00.000+02:00

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)

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

Cheers

Mirco

Children Of Nuggets # 2

2006-05-24T21:56:00.000+02:00

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

2006-05-19T17:27:00.000+02:00

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)

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

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

Cheers

Mirco

Le Bataclan '72

2006-05-16T11:49:00.000+02:00

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)

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

Bye

Mirco

The Fugs!

2006-05-09T19:31:00.000+02:00

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)

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

See you soon

Mirco

On The Top 50!

2006-05-08T01:23:00.000+02:00

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

2006-05-05T16:06:00.000+02:00

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)

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

See YOU

Mirco

The Doors

2006-04-30T16:36:00.001+02:00

Hi people, I've just returned from Paris, where I've also visited Jim Morrison's tomb, so I thought it was the right time to post a Doors' clip.
Sincerely I'm not the greatest Doors' fan, I think their music was a little monotonous, and Jim Morrison has been overvalued as a singer and poet...but I'm probably one of the few on the planet who thinks so, and certainly most of you will enjoy this video.
This is the famous live perfomance of Light My Fire (the short single version) at the Ed Sullivan Show, on 1967. On that occasion they had been asked to modify the line "girl we couldn't get much higher", that could sound as a reference to drugs. Jim Morrison didn't change the lyrics and, of course, the Doors were never invited at the Ed Sullivan Show again...

Doors - Light My Fire (1967)

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

See you soon

Mirco

I'm On Vacation!

2006-04-22T03:00:00.000+02:00

Hi everybody! I'll be travelling for a week, so I won't be able to update the blog...I think I won't even touch a PC!
Excuse me if I'll activate the comments' moderation right before leaving, I received a lot of spam too lately.
I invite you to keep looking at my archive, where all videos seem to be still available.
Don't forget also to check the cool music blogs and sites that are on my links list. If you are looking for more "vintage videos" go visit Sonic Pollutions and Sonic Pollutions 2, my friend Baz offers you clips and informations you won't find anywhere else!

I see you in May

Mirco

Area International POPular Group

2006-04-18T23:32:00.000+02:00

I've been asked several times to upload videos by some Italian progressive bands. Sincerely I'm not a big fan of that scene, most of the musicians were trying just to imitate the sound of the British bands. Area (International POPular Group) were definetly something different and really innovative. With a big campaign in 1973 the indipendent label Cramps announced them as the first group of "radical music"...and their music was a caustic blend of rock, free jazz, atonal avantgarde and mediterranean folk. But what really made the difference was the powerful, ductile, unbelievable voice of Demetrio Stratos. Unfortunately this is a short clip of an instrumental track, the only Area's video I found. Demetrio is just playing the keyboards in this noisy version of the socialist international workers' hymn. Area were also a political band...I won't even try to describe the clime of social and political tension in my country during the seventies...let's just say that Area were a stimulating and controversial band in a stimulating and controversial period. This little video will prove how good they were as musicians and how uncompromising was their music.
Area ended with the end of the seventies, it was impossible to continue after Demetrio's death, for leukaemia, in 1979.

Area - L'Internazionale (1974)

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

Ciao

Mirco

Mods

2006-04-12T22:54:00.000+02:00

I'm not in the mood to write much these days, anyway here's a couple of bands that do not need many introductions. Coming from different eras, these are the two most popular mod bands ever.
The Who's clip is particulary interesting, not only because it shows shots of the musicians at a very young age, but also of many young kids from the first mod wave in England. You'll be brought back in the mid-sixties with the sound of Who's first explosive single!
By the time of the hit-single Town Called Malice, included in the 1982 album The Gift, the Jam were leaving punk rock to approach, still with a lot of energy, the Motown's soul music that Paul Weller always loved so much. The song is certainly one of the most beautiful raids in that style, that they did in the late period of their career.

Who - I Can't Explain (1965)
Jam - Town Called Malice (1982)

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

Cheers

Mirco

The Best Song Ever?

2006-04-06T14:35:00.000+02:00

Everyone of us music fans had recorded on tape, or just imagined, a compilation of his favourite songs ever. I think we all agree that these compilations can change with the changing of our mood, but there are some artists and some songs that are just essential, unavoidable. Tim Buckley is one of these artists and Song To The Siren is his best song to me. This version of the song, in particular. Song To The Siren had been first recorded in 1971 on the album Starsailor, a work on which his music get close to avant-garde and free-jazz. On 1967 Tim had already performed the song on the Monkees' TV show, accompanied on his 12 strings guitar only. This bare, simple version exalts even more the touching beauty of the melody, of his amazing voice, and the poetry of the lyrics.
An absolutely unmissable clip, if you are not moved by this it means you have a cold stone instead of a heart!

Tim Buckley - Song To The Siren (1967)

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

I have to say that is a little frustrating to see how such a small amount of people connecting and downloading from this site remember to leave a comment. Many comments report problems in downloading. I am sorry if the process is a little complicated, this is just because, since the beginning, I have always had to defend my blog from leechers and trolls. I have no problems in trying to offer some "technical assistance", but I would also like to know more of your opinions about the videos. The purpose of making a blog is interaction, share a passion with some people out there. Otherwise I think I'll soon end up feeling a lack of motivations...

Bye

Mirco

Sandy Denny

2006-04-05T11:38:00.000+02:00

A gift to all those who asked me a Sandy Denny's video, and those who enjoyed the Fotheringay's clip.
Here is Sandy performing three songs solo at the BBC in 1971.

Download the video from this beautiful blog:

Down In The Groove

Nuggets # 3

2006-04-04T19:15:00.000+02:00

We do a step back in the mid-sixties to (re)discover a couple of obscure gems that I hope will be appreciated not only by experts of the original garage-punk music.
The Barbarians came from Provincetown, Massachusets, and released four singles and a self-titled album between '64 and '66. This is the A side of their first single, a fascinating and melodic folk-pop ballad. I'm not sure if they were guests on Shindig or some other TV show...They perform surrounded by many female dancers, a typical sixties' scenography! You'll observe that Victor Moulton, the guy who beats on the drums and shakes his long hair, has a prosthesis instead of his left hand. On their last single Moulty, The Barbarians explain how he lost it in a fireworks accident at the age of 14!
The Bad Seeds were from Corpus Christi, Texas, hometown of another great garage band: The Zakary Thaks. They do a lyp-synched performance of their first single too. A Taste Of The Same is, in my opinion, a truly great song, rough sixties punk at his best! They appeared on "Channel 3"...was it a local Texan channel? The Bad Seeds recorded only three singles between late '65 and early '66.
The quality of both clips is pretty good, considering they are relics of a distant era. Unfortunately none of these two songs is included on the Nuggets 4 CDs box-set. The Barbarians appear with two other tunes: Moulty and Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl? So, the people interested will have to look for them on some other obscure compilations...

Barbarians - You've Got To Understand (1964)
Bad Seeds - A Taste Of The Same (1965)

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

See you next time

Mirco

Turn On The Generator

2006-04-02T17:55:00.000+02:00

Though generally classified as progressive rock, Van Der Graaf Generator's intense and dramatic music is hardly comparable with anything else. It has always been a vehicle for the visions of the singer-poet-philosopher Peter Hammill, but the other musicians, that he met at the Manchester's university, gave an essential contribution to create such a unique sound, able to sound the depth of the human soul and his anguishes. The gloomy Huch Banton's keyboards, the wild Nick Evans' drumming and the howls of David Jackson's saxophones (a man able to blow on two horns at the same time) are responsible for the powerful version of Theme One played on the first video. This peformance had been broadcasted for Belgian TV on early 1972, and it can be seen also on DVD.
A Plague Of Lighthouse-Keepers, the suite included on side two of the memorable Pawn Hearts album, is probably the peak of their art, an impressive tune on which tension grows in an apocalyptic atmosphere.
This same line-up reformed in the past year for a double CD and a tour that didn't disappoint old and new fans, expecially here in Italy where VDGG had been incredibly popular in the seventies and still has many followers.

Van Der Graaf Generator - Theme One (1972)
Van Der Graaf Generator - A Plague Of Lighthouse-Keepers (1972)

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

The second video has been uploaded on Megaupload, because the size exceeded the 100 Mb limit imposed by Rapidshare.

See you soon

Mirco

The Pink Floyd In 1968

2006-03-30T00:17:00.000+02:00

After the departure of their main man, Syd Barrett, The Pink Floyd almost had to face a new beginning in 1968. David Gilmour was an excellent guitarist and singer, but Syd's talent and genius as a songwriter couldn't be replaced. After they tried uselessly to record another hit single like See Emily Play, they began to change their style, emphasizing the more spacey and experimental side of their sound. So they began a new exciting phase of their career, that reached its peak in '69 with the double album Ummagumma, that also proves how they got on well together on stage on those days. On their second LP A Saucerful Of Secrets we can hear some short songs trying to imitate Syd's style (beside Syd's last song Jugband Blues), and tunes like the title-track and the ones played on these videos, that opened the new path.
Let There Be More Light is performed for a French TV program called Surprise Partie; it seems like they appeared several times on French TV in '68. It's kind of funny to see the people trying to dance at the song, but by that time rock music and dance music were still the same thing.
The second clip is a short but intense version of one of their classic tunes. A fascinating and colourful video introduced by Frank Zappa. It is part of an amazing rock documentary called All My Loving, produced by BBC, that also features acts like The Beatles, The Who, Jimi Hendrix, The Cream...

Pink Floyd - Let There Be More Light (1968)
Pink Floyd - Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (1968)

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

Ciao

Mirco

Sixties' Covers # 2

2006-03-27T00:21:00.000+02:00

Two other examples of how to pay homage to such a fertile period for rock music.
The prophets of de-evolution dare to play one of the greatest rock anthems ever, and deface it in a genial way, so to make it still sound as a classic...but totally different from the original. A new perfect anthem for the plastic generation. Devo performs their schizoid version of this Jagger/Richards composition on Saturday Night Live in 1978.
Calexico are a very good band that has appeared frequently here on 'blogland' in the last days. Their way to look at the sixties is much more respectful. This cover of Alone Again Or, taken from the memorable Love's album Forever Changes, has been played recently this year at the German Rockpalast festival. They spiced this wonderful folk-pop ballad with some of their typical mexican and desertic flavours.
Two covers that are very different one from the other, but both very beautiful...I hope you'll agree with me about that...

Nota in italiano: Mi pare doverosa viste le numerose visite che questo blog ha ricevuto dal mio paese negli ultimi giorni, in seguito ad una segnalazione sul forum de Il Mucchio. Purtroppo dalle nostre parti la devolution rischia di realizzarsi davvero :(
Grazie dell'attenzione e benvenuti!

Devo - Satisfaction (1978)
Calexico - Alone Again Or (2006)

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

Any comments?

Cheers

Mirco

Tropicália # 2

2006-03-23T23:07:00.000+01:00

For a brief introduction to the Brazilian tropicália movement you can take a look at my previous post, where you can download videos by Gilberto Gil and Os Mutantes. In that Gil's performance with Os Mutantes in 1967, most of the audience disapproved of the musicians. These two new clips, taken from a festival broadcasted by the TV Record channel in late '68, show how things changed in a matter of one year, and many Brazilian young people accepted the new style as an expression of their will for a social renewal. Unfortunately those were the days when the militar government was turning into a very autocratic régime, using the censorship to limit the freedom of expression. We know how Gilberto Gil and Caetano Veloso had to pay hard, with jail and exile, for their 'provocations'. This happened just a few days after this festival. Gal Costa performs a fantastic song written by Gil and Veloso, we can see her at the beginning of her career as a star of the so-called MPB (musica popular brasileira). He had already made a record with Veloso in '67, singing in the mellow and relaxed bossa nova style, but in the following years she used her high and powerful voice for an ecletic psychedelic hard-rock, whose quality is guaranteed also by the talent of the composers (Veloso, Gil, Jorge Ben, Roberto Carlos...) and musicians, like the Brazilian guitar-hero Lanny Gordin.
Os Mutantes appeared wearing some of their typical odd costumes to present a song inspired by the Kubrick's science fiction masperpiece '2001: A Space Odissey'. The lyrics about an astronaut lost in space were written by Tom Zé, another great songwriter who emerged from the tropicália scene. The singer Rita Lee brought on the stage a theremin to produce some spacey sounds, and Gilberto Gil is also present to play the accordion. The clamour of the audience is so loud that you can hardly hear the music.
As you can imagine the quality of this clips is far from perfect, but they are precious and fascinating documents.
For further informations about tropicália check out the official site, available in both Portugues and English languages.

Gal Costa - Divino Maravilhoso (1968)
Os Mutantes - 2.001 (1968)

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

Eu sei que tem muitos brasileiros que visitam o meu blog cada dia. Espero que vocês gostem.
Obrigado!

Mirco

Have A Nice Flight

2006-03-20T22:54:00.000+01:00

Listening to The Jefferson Airplane means understanding why the late sixties have been such an important period in rock music and culture, and why San Francisco has been such a special place then. A group of hippies that was born just to play as the resident band at The Matrix (the Marty Balin's local) soon became one of the inventors of psychedelic music and gave voice to the ideals of a new generation. This happened because all of the members of the Airplane were great musicians, with a strong personality and a distinct style, and they have been able to compose songs that marked an era and helped them in getting a big success and a strong impact on the media. This didn't happen much with other great bands from San Francisco, like The Grateful Dead or Quicksilver Messenger Service, because they were basically instrumental jam bands. So it's no surprise to see Ed Sullivan, on the first clip, introducing them as 'the number one rock group of the country', despite the controversial contents of their songs about free love, free drug and opposition to the Vietnam war.
The second video is from the Kralingen pop festival in Holland (documented on the movie Stamping Ground), one of the best musical events of the early seventies, that also featured brilliant perfomances by bands like The Pink Floyd, Family, Soft Machine, Santana, East Of Eden, It's A Beautiful Day...
The Airplane kept flying high until it claimed to become a Starship, and the inspiration began to fall, along with the decline of the so-called drug-culture.

Jefferson Airplane - Crown Of Creation (1968)
Jefferson Airplane - The Ballad Of You And Me And Pooneil (1970)

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

See you soon

Mirco

Robyn Plays Barrett

2006-03-18T17:34:00.000+01:00

Robyn Hitchcock is one the most talented an lunatic songwriters of the British scene, one of the first musicians that, in the late seventies, during the punk and new wave era, took inspiration from the most eccentric pop and psychedelic music of the sixties. His first group, The Soft Boys, had been sadly ignored and Robyn received a little bit more of attention in the eightes, when he became a cult figure for fans of the new-psychedelic trend. His first record I bought, in 1985, was the excellent Fegmania, recorded with his new band: The Egyptians. I had been attracted by titles like The Man With The Lightbulb Head, My Wife And My Dead Wife, Insect Mother, Strawberry Mind...Robyn was, and still is, a truly surrealistic talent. That's why he has been often compared to Syd Barrett, and also because his voice is very similar to Syd's one. In fact he has never hidden his admiration for the old madcap, and he is one of the few who prefers Syd's solo albums to his recordings with the early Pink Floyd. In these clips he pays a deeply felt homage to a great genius, with a couple of covers, accompanied on his acoustic guitar somewhere in the British country.
The videos have been ripped from the The Pink Floyd & Syd Barrett Story DVD.

Robyn Hitchcock - Dominoes (2001)
Robyn Hitchcock - It Is Obvious (2001)

New password: http://musicforyoureyes.blogspot.com/
It is the URL of this site as you can copy it from the adress bar...

If you want to see an amazing clip of Robyn's song The Man With The Lightbulb Head, look among the videos included in this page.

See you

Mirco

Songs Of Leonard Cohen

2006-03-14T21:14:00.000+01:00

A good song, as a good book, is like an old friend on which you can always count. Many times I found comfort in Leonard Cohen's deep voice. As an italian music fan, who have always listened mostly to songs sung in English, I never paid much attention to the lyrics. Many times, when I tried to translate, I' ve felt disappointed; the magic of the music had partially vanished. There are some good exceptions, and Cohen is certainly one of these. It is worth to take a dictionary to explore his poetical universe full of symbols. His histories of love and regret became more effective when he decided to tell them with a guitar and some simple charming melodies, inspired mostly by french songwriters like Jacques Brel.
The Stranger Song is a particulary touching song to me, for some personal reasons, and I'm glad I found this video, just a few days after I received a request to post more Cohen's music, besides the first clip I ulpoaded here, in January. This live perfomance at a TV show in '67 (introduced by the american folk-singer Julie Felix) is very intense, you can see a little shiny tear falling from Cohen's eye at the end of the song.
Though the ideal context for this kind of music seems to be a closed and intimate room (as a title of one of his albums suggests), the canadian songwriter proves, on the second video, to be able to catch the attention of a very large audience, at the Isle of Wight Festival in 1970, with his most popular classic.
I discovered that the Suzanne's clip that you can find in the old post is part of a canadian short movie, based on five Cohen's songs...I'm hunting for the other songs to offer the whole movie in the future.

Leonard Cohen - The Stranger Song (1967)
Leonard Cohen - Suzanne (live 1970)

Password: musicforyoureyes

Comments are always very apprecieted

See you next time

Mirco

Robert Wyatt

2006-03-12T00:30:00.000+01:00

Maybe the most sensitive and talented artist to emerge from the Canterbury scene. The earlier drummer and vocalist of Soft Machine started his solo career in 1970 with an unique and astonishing example of free music called The End Of An Ear. A few time later he defintely left Soft Machine, that was becoming a too straight fusion band, to form Matching Mole and follow an interesting direction between experimentation and melody. In June 1973 a terrible accident left him paraplegic and changed his personal and musical future. During the months of convalescence and the state of crisis that he passed through he composed the touching songs of Rock Bottom, one of the most deep and inspired album ever, published in '74. Experimentation and melody are finally perfectly amalgamated to create a portrait of the artist's soul, struggling between desperation and hope, and self-pity is avoided with a touch of bitter irony. These are my impressions, but I feel that everyone can relate to this music in a very personal way. Many old friends and good musicians give their contribution to the making of this masterpiece (including Ivor Cutler, who sadly died a few days ago).
Sea Song is the opening track, on which he also gives a good example of how he can use his thin voice as an instrument. This version was played in 2003 for a BBC documentary about Wyatt.
Soon after the release of Rock Bottom the single I'm A Believer brings a moment of relief from the album's gloomy atmospheres. The nice melody of the Monkees' song is made precious by Robert's voice and the refined arrangements. The video is from the Top Of The Pops archive, you'll recognize Pink Floyd's drummer Nick Mason, who produced Rock Bottom...and could it be that the guy with the acoustic guitar is Andy Somers/Summers, the future guitarist of The Police?
Wyatt never reached the inspiration of those days again, but still his rare productions are precious events that deserves all of our attention.

Robert Wyatt - Sea Song (2003)
Robert Wyatt - I'm A Believer (1974)

Password: musicforyoureyes

I hope you'll enjoy these clips

Bye

Mirco

Renaissance

2006-03-09T22:59:00.000+01:00

It's strange to think that this delicate musical creature had been created in '69 by two ex-members of Yardbirds, a band who always loved the raw sounds of blues. Renaissance was born when Keith Relf and Jim McCarthy joined John Hawken, on piano, the bass player Louis Cennamo and the singer Jane Relf, whose crystalline voice was one of the distinctive feature of their music. No reminiscences of the Yardbirds, but a mellow and sophisticated blend of folk and classical music, with just a few jazzy flavours. The sound fits good with the progressive era, without being too baroque. The song Island, included on their first self titled LP, is a beautiful example of their style.
During the recording of the second album Illlusion this line up dissolved and Renaissance reformed with totally new members.
This is a live performance from the Beat Club.

Renaissance - Island (1970)

Password: musicforyoureyes

See you soon.

Mirco

Bonzo Dog? Doo-Dah Band?

2006-03-06T22:49:00.000+01:00

Frank Zappa asked: does humour belongs in music? In fact I think that music fans take it all too seriously sometimes. This is a band that is often compared to Zappa & The Mothers. The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, formed in the mid-sixties by a group of british high school mates, were less sophisticated musically but had a better theatrical aptitude, in the tradition of the British cabaret. It is worth to see them and not just to hear, to really appreciate their act. Though the leader was Vivian Stanshall, who died sadly in '95, a member of the band was Neil Innes, later one of the Monty Python...just to give you an idea of the quality of their humour. Too intelligent for success? They lived just two brief moments of fame: in '67 with a cameo on the Beatles' movie Magical Mistery Tour (Sir McCartney was a fan) and in '68 with the single I'm The Urban Spaceman. Musically I think we could call them an iconclast new vaudeville band (?).
This song sounds to me as a truly funny Presley's caricature. Don't miss the guitar solo!

Added on March 9: I think I have to correct myself for having written that the Bonzos lived just two brief moments of fame. A British friend wrote me that in the UK they were very popular and loved instead, appearing regularly on a TV program for children. Here in Italy they are an almost unknown cult band.
Besides I didn't know about the existence of a band called the New Vaudeville Band, when I wrote "vaudeville" I really meant to talk about the musical style!
So, please apologize my lack of informations.

Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Canyons Of Your Mind (1968)

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Did you like this video? Let me know...

Mirco

High Flying Byrd

2006-03-04T15:37:00.000+01:00

Maybe I'm a little late, but I'd like to give my small contribution to the tribute to Gene Clark and the early Byrds started by hans GENE blog, then followed by Sonic Pollutions and PLANET XTABAY. These are two clips featuring the Byrds covering Bob Dylan. They had the capacity to make Dylan's songs sound even greater. Mr. Tambourine Man in particular is one of my favourite song ever, with maybe the best lyrics ever written, and the Byrds made it immortal. The video is taken from their only appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show (and the video explains why...). The second clip is from the Hullabaloo Tv program. Unfortunately they are not live perfomances, if you want to see the Byrds playing live check out this post.

Byrds - Mr. Tambourine Man (1965)
Byrds - The Times They Are A-Changin' (1966)

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Ciao

Mirco

Chrome

2006-03-02T23:27:00.000+01:00

This is the defaced look of new-psychedelia. Chrome's music comes from a mysterious place where space-acid rock meets punk and industrial music. Helios Creed's guitars and Damon Edge's synthesizers throw out any possible kind of noises, supported by hypnotic/neurotic rhythms, to create a disturbing and futuristic sound that runs on the thin border between rock songs and chaos. These two freaks from San Francisco shared the same passion for science fiction and their music anticipated somehow the cyberpunk's atmospheres, sounding like the ideal soundtrack for some Philip K. Dick's nightmares. They came in the late '70s, when the hippies ideals had died, and showed another sort of lysergic visions.
Too weird to be punk or new wave, too rock to be an industrial or experimental band, Chrome will always be an unique entity, very innovative and creative until Creed's defection in '83. They are still a cult band, that played only a very few times on stage.
This song was first released on the compilation Subterranean Modern, where Chrome appeared with other California bands like Residents and Tuxedomoon. The clip is very simple but as disturbing as the sound: this meeting is going to be frightful, there are sinister peoples in the subway looking like the Clockwork Orange's droogs.

Chrome - I Meet You In The Subway (1980)

Password: musicforyoureyes

Leave a comment, don't leave me alone in the subway!

I meet you here

Mirco

Children Of Nuggets

2006-02-28T18:06:00.000+01:00

Children Of Nuggets is the title of a 4 CDs' box set compiled by Rhino Records, that tries untidily to focus on the so called "second psychedelic era", that is from the mid-seventies to the mid-nineties. The real explosion of neo-psych and neo-garage sounds came all over the world in the eightes. I was a teenager fan of that scene, that also helped me to discover many more sixties' music. It's not easy to find some clips, because these bands never really emerged from the underground, anyway here is a couple.
The Fuzztones were the prime movers of the New York scene, they soon became a legend thanks also to their exciting live shows. The leader Rudi Protrudi embodies very well the archetype of the forever-teenager-rock-n-roll-rebel!
Hoodoo Gurus were part of the rich and brilliant Australian scene, I hope many of you remember names like Died Pretty, New Christs, Church, Moffs... They played a powerful and attractive blend of garage-punk and power -pop. This song is included in the album Mars Needs Guitars, a good sequel of the beautiful debut work Stonage Romeos.

Fuzztones - Nine Months Later (1987)
Hoodoo Gurus - Like Wow-Wipeout (1985)

Password: musicforyoureyes

See you soon

Mirco

In Search Of Space

2006-02-26T17:44:00.000+01:00

The simple and effective formula of space-rock has been invented at the dawn of the seventies by the Hawkwind, a band that emerged from the Ladbroke Grove scene in London. With catchy hard rock riffs, hypnotic 4/4 rhythms, long guitar's and horns' improvisations and a background of spacey electronic noise, they have crossed several decades without losing the affection of their many followers. Some of their science fiction lyrics have been written by the underground poet Robert Calvert, or even by the great British writer Michael Moorcock. Silver Machine has been their greatest success, it made them earn enough money to put on a trippy light show that is still typical of their concerts. This clip is from the Top Of The Pop's archives; you'll notice Lemmy, future founder of Motorhead, on bass and vocals, and the handsome dancer Stacia, that used to perform with them in those years.
In the nineties space-rock even "landed" on MTV, with this Ozric Tentacles' clip, a song taken from their 1993 album Jurassic Shift. The Ozric are the most popular among the bands that gave birth in the eightes to a sort of British neo-hippie scene, gathering in free concerts and festivals in places like Stonehenge. Their music is quite complex, they play long instrumental jams with jazzy and ethnic-new agey influences, maybe more similar to Daevid Allen's Gong than to Hawkwind. They also have a mind blowing light show, as you'll see in the video.
I saw both these bands in concert and I have to say that, in both cases, it's been a trip with no need of chemical substances!
My only criticism about Hawkwind and Ozric Tentacles is that they both made too many records, and they all sound very similar, so they ended up being boring. But it's well worth catching these videos to see these freaks in action.

Hawkwind - Silver Machine (1972)
Ozric Tentacles - Vita Voom (1993)

Password: musicforyoureyes

Bye

Mirco

Krautrock # 2

2006-02-23T22:47:00.000+01:00

Hi everybody! The technical break lasted longer than expected, but at least my PC works much faster now and I haven't lost any of the files in my archive.
I like to come back to this blog with two of my favourite videos, from the musical scene that maybe is most fascinating to me. Here we have a couple of amazing german bands from the german TV program we've all learned to love: The Beat Club.
The Can well represents the meeting of pop music with the contemporary avant-garde. At the end of the sixties two Stockhausen's students, Holger Czukay and Irmin Schmidt, realized that the rock scene offered the only chance to create something really innovative in music. So they joined a young rock guitar player, the Czukay's student Michael Caroli, a talented jazz drummer, Jaki Liebezeit, and the wild american singer Malcolm Mooney, soon replaced excellently by the japanese busker Damo Suzuki. Taking inspiration from the Velvet Underground, acid rock, funky and ethnic music...and much more, they created an unique style, sophisticated and raw at the same time, so innovative to anticipate somehow the most creative side of new wave. The song Paperhouse is the opening track of their double album Tago Mago, considered by many as their masterpiece.
Kraftwerk appeared at the Beat Club with a very particular line up. As Julian Cope tells in his essential book Krautrocksampler (which has finally been translated into italian too!) this perfomance could have been the death of Kraftwerk, but it wasn't, fortunately. In fact this clip documents the birth of a new memorable band: Neu!
In the summer of '71 the two Kraftwerk's former members Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider were joined by another couple of musicians from Dusseldorf, Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, right before this appearance. They gave a totally new direction to the sound...Hutter became so nervous about it that he left the band to perform as a trio. This is the reason why Truckstop Gondolero is an anticipation of the typical sound of Neu!, the band that Rother and Dinger formed a few time later. The "motorik beat" of this long and mesmerizing track easily reminds of some of the best Neu!'s songs, like Hallogallo, on their first self-titled LP.
Kraftwerk soon reformed as a duet too for their album Ralf & Florian, that continued on the path that lead them to become the most influencial electronic band ever.

Can - Paperhouse (1971)
Kraftwerk - Truckstop Gondolero (1971)

Password: musicforyoureyes

Free comments as usual...

Welcome back!

Mirco

A Technical Break...

2006-02-10T18:39:00.000+01:00

I won't have my PC here with me for about a week, so I won't be able to update the blog posting new videos. In the meantime you can take a look at the old posts; I have uploaded 42 clips so far and it seems they are all still available. I will connect from my job when it's possible (though I shouldn't...), so keep sending comments if you wish. Don't forget also to click on the links on my list to check some other cool music blogs and sites.

Thanks to all who have supported Music For Your Eyes, see you again very soon.

Mirco

Fotheringay

2006-02-08T23:26:00.000+01:00

As I saw that the Fotheringay's album has re-appeared on the 8 Days In April blog, and it has been mentioned also on hansZUNblog, I thought it was the right time to post this beautiful video. Fotheringay has been a sort of super-group of the British folk-rock scene, formed by the vocalist Sandy Denny after she left The Fairport Convention, with his boy-friend Trevor Lucas, on guitar and lead vocal, and the drummer Jerry Convay (both ex-Eclection), the guitarist Jerry Donahue (ex-Tumbleweed) and Pat Donaldson (ex-Country Fever) on bass. The band lasted for just one short season in 1970 and left us the self-titled album, a little gem of electric folk. As you can hear in this song perfomed live for the good old Beat Club their music had also some reminiscences of American country and west-coast music.

Fotheringay - Too Much Of Nothing (1970)

Password: musicforyoureyes

See you

Mirco

For Your Pleasure

2006-02-06T23:47:00.000+01:00

The name Roxy Music easily reminds of Brian Ferry's "kitch" and boring pop music. But the Roxy have been for a short time, between '72 and '73, one of the most exciting and "unorthodox" musical novelty. Ferry was not the only Brian in the line up, but the mad scientist Eno provided his (no)musical contribution, and there was space also for the inventions of brilliant musicians like Phil Manzanera on guitar and the horn player Andy McKay. The first two albums, Roxy Music and For Your Pleasure, are memorable works on which "decadence" is just a pretext to "Re-make/Re-model" impudently rock 'n' roll music.
There are also some footages to prove it because, thanks God, they played at The Beat Club too. So here they are, for your pleasure: The Roxy Music in 1972!

Added on March 09: I just discovered that the Ladytron video is not from the Beat Club but from the BBC program The Old Grey Whistle Test.

Roxy Music - Ladytron (1972)
Roxy Music - Virginia Plain (1972)

Password: musicforyoureyes

If you like these clips please leave some more comments, I need feedback. Thanks.

See you next time

Mirco

From The Planet Kobaia

2006-02-04T16:04:00.000+01:00

I found this video after that someone asked me if there was some clips available by the incredible french band Magma. In fact this a longer and much higher resolution version of a video you can also watch here. It is a cameo from the french movie Moi Y'en A Vouloir Des Sous. I've never seen it but I read it is a sort of satiric comedy. Here they play in a futuristic church in front of some priests (I can recognize the famous actor Michel Serrault) who don't seem too surprised by the weird music. It was 1972 and Magma were beginning to evolve from an earlier progressive-fusion, somehow similar to early-seventies Soft Machine, or Nucleus, to their own unique and very peculiar style, a dramatic, almost disturbing and complex music, with strange and evocative vocal harmonies. One of the strangest thing ever played by a rock(?) band. Headed by the impetuous drummer Christian Vander, inspired by John Coltrane in his tireless search for "music supreme", they have been telling through all their albums the saga of the planet Kobaia and the meeting of kobaian people with the people of the Earth. All of this is sung in Kobaian language, whose dictionary and grammar rules have been conceived by Vander himself.
It's a pity that the actors' dialogue doesn't allow us to hear to the whole song, because it is an unreleased one (the title is unknown) and it sounds, like almost anything that Magma ever played, astonishing.
They didn't wear those strange clothes and glasses just for the movie, this is the way they used to look like...like aliens!

Magma - Clip from "Moi Y'en A Vouloir Des Sous" (1972)

Password: musicforyoureyes

I hope this will inspire you to leave a comment.

Ciao

Mirco

Nuggets # 2

2006-02-02T00:37:00.000+01:00

A couple more of classics from the original garage-punk era. Music Machine and Seeds are fundamental bands, you need to listen to them to catch the true essence of this straight and energetic style, that wrote a great chapter on the history of modern music using only a few chords. Two bands from California, both headed by a charismatic and expressive singer, porpose their two-minutes anthems. Sean Bonniweel's Music Machine appeared on American Bandstand (I'm not sure if it was on '66 or '67...) miming their hit Talk Talk, with their dark look that can be seen on this fotograph, and that fits perfectly with the almost threatening manner of the song.
Sky "Sunlight" Saxon's band, The Seeds, plays the role of The Warts on an episode of the american TV show The Mothers-In-Law, entitled How Not To Manage A Rock Group, broadcasted on '68. They perform the legendary Pushin' Too Hard, published two years earlier, on a living room, in front of a family that doesn't seem to enjoy their noise.

Music Machine - Talk Talk (1966)
Seeds - Pushin' Too Hard (1968)

Password: musicforyoureyes

Don't forget to leave a comment.

See you soon

Mirco

The Pink Floyd In 1967

2006-01-30T22:39:00.000+01:00

Sooner or later I knew I would have posted something about the early Pink Floyd.
It's very dufficult to talk about Syd Barrett without saying something which hasn't been already said many times, about his talent, his visions, his mental illness, his disappearance from the musical scene. I'd just like to beg all Syd's fans not to try to go in Cambridge to meet him and talk to him. Please respect his choice to live a quiet and retired life. Roger Keith Barrett is now a 60 years old man who doesn't like to remember about his days as a rock musician in London. Let's all remember about Syd for the few marvellous songs he gave to us.
This live version of Astronomy Domine is probably well known by most fans, here it is for the few ones who haven't seen it yet. It is maybe the best early Pink Floyd's footage, along with the London '66-'67 DVD. The video is part of the Look Of The Week program, broadcasted by BBC-2 in May '67. The quality is excellent, it's just a pity that the Floyd had not the possibility to improvise much as they used to do in that period, but it attests anyway the visionary strenght of this music.

Pink Floyd - Astronomy Domine (1967)

Password: musicforyoureyes

Note: To the people who still reports downloading problems: this link will lead you to a very small file...open and unzip it, then you'll know how to download. It's just a little trick not to have my videos deleted from Rapidshare again.

Thank you

Mirco

The Pretty Things At The Beat Club

2006-01-27T22:53:00.000+01:00

I've been requested to post some videos by The Pretty Things at the Beat Club, and it's a pleasure for me to propose one the most underrated british bands of the sixties and early seventies. They are often compared to The Rolling Stones because the guitar player Dick Taylor was in the early Stones' line-up. They shared with them the same passion for R 'n' B, but in fact they were even rawer than the Stones, too raw for success (and you can see that the singer Phil May was the guy with the longest hair in '66!)
In 1967 they joined the psychedelic wave with the single Defecting Grey and, in '68, the album S.F. Sorrow. These are two forgotten gems of visionary music, S.F. Sorrow has been the first rock-opera ever, anticipating The Who's Tommy, a much more popular work (but also much less inspired in my opinion...). Despite the defection of Dick Taylor the following album Parachute, that includes the song Cries From A Midnight Circus, is still a masterpiece of late psychedelia/early hard rock.
So here are The Pretty Things, from different periods of their existence, but always great!

Pretty Things - Raining In My Heart (1966)
Pretty Things - Cries From A Midnight Circus (1970)

Password: musicforyoureyes

For more Pretty Things' clips take a look at the Sonic Pollutions blog.

Bye

Mirco

Tim Buckley

2006-01-26T01:21:00.000+01:00

Tim will always be remembered as a marvellous singer and a sensitive composer. He emerged from the late-sixties californian folk-rock scene with a unique approach, and his restless talent lead him to arrange his touching songs in a very peculiar way, maybe closer to avantgarde jazz.
He died in the summer of '75 and he is probably more famous now, after that his son Jeff, also very talented singer, skimmed the great success that he never reached. As everybody knows Jeff too died sadly at a very young age. It might seem rethorical, but it's easy to imagine that they are both still singing somewhere, with their angelic voices.
These footages where both shooted for the BBC, in different phases of Tim's career: the first in '68 for the Late Night Late Up program, and the second, a performance of the beautiful Fred Neil's song Dolphins, at the Grey Old Whistle Test on '74.

Tim Buckley - I'm Coming Home Again (1968)
Tim Buckley - Dolphins (1974)

The password to unzip all files is: musicforyoureyes

Comments are always much apprecieted.

See you

Mirco

Monk Time

2006-01-23T23:06:00.000+01:00

The Monks were certainly one of the rawest garage-punk bands of the sixties. Five texan soldiers living in Germany, they were crazy enough to shave their heads and dress like real monks.
They opened their perfomance at the Beat Club on '66 with a really noisy instrumental track: tribal beats, an heavy fuzz bass guitar riff, hysterical howls, people torturing the electric guitar...and the audience trying to dance at it! Then came the wild song Oh How To Do Now, with their typical use of the banjo as a percussive instrument, to obtain an even more obsessive sound.
Of course they failed to reach a big success, but became more famous for their outrageous look.
It's worth checking out their only album Black Monk Time, if you haven't done it yet. You'll be surely curious to hear it after seeing this video.

Added on january 24: as Kindly notified by Kurt, the title of the instrumental track is Monk Chant. Thank you!

Monks - Monk Chant/Oh How To Do Now (1966)

Password: musicforyoureyes

See you next time.

Mirco

The Soft Machine In 1967

2006-01-21T15:21:00.000+01:00

Another Canterbury tale. In fact we're almost at the beginning of the story, The Soft Machine were the first group that came out of that scene. They have been one of the main protagonists of the undeground scene in the crazy days of the Swinging London, playing regularly in clubs like the legendary UFO, with bands like The Pink Floyd, Tomorrow, Crazy World Of Arthur Brown...
The Canterbury kids Robert Wyatt, Kevin Ayers and Mike Ratledge had been joined by the australian beatnick Daevid Allen, who certainly helped them to bring their music into most adventurous directions.
By the time of this footage for the Dutch TV, in late '67, Allen had already left them, he was in Paris planning a new musical adventure called Gong, but the trio proves to be able to continue on the crazy paths of an exciting surrealistic/dadaistic psychedelic pop. These clips are here to show it, in the same way as the first albums, before they became, in the '70s, a more straight, but still talented, jazz-rock band. The keyboard players Ratledge will stay as the leader of the band, while Ayers (that we've already met...) and later also Wyatt (that we'll meet soon...) will begin two very important solo careers.

Soft Machine - I Should've Known (1967)
Soft Machine - Soon, Soon, Soon (1967)

The password to unzip all the files is: musicforyoureyes

Don't forget to leave a comment if you enjoy these videos.

See you soon

Mirco

Sixties' Covers

2006-01-19T16:18:00.000+01:00

Two great rock bands play their personal and overwhelming versions of classic sixties' songs.
Patti Smith has certainly been influenced by the rawest sixties' sound, like her friend Tom Verlaine, and let's not forget that her guitar player was Lenny Kaye, the musical journalist behind the original Nuggets compilation. Here the group performs Gloria at the Saturday Night Live Show on '76. Is Gloria the most covered song ever? Maybe, or maybe it's Hey Joe...
The "post-hardcore-punk" band Hűsker Dű started the most exciting phase of their career with a single in 1983 containing a cover of The Byrds' Eight Miles High. We can see them play this song at the Pink Pop Festival in Holland, on June 1987. In the same month I saw them in concert during their only italian tour. My heart is still beating for the emotion, and my ears still ringing...they were my favourite eightes' band, I'd like to post some other clips in the future, though this blog wasn't created with the intention to propose music videos from that era...

Patti Smith Group - Gloria (1976)
Hűsker Dű - Eight Miles High (1987)

The password to unzip all files is: musicforyoureyes

I hope you like these sixties' covers, I'd like to post some other ones...

Ciao

Mirco

Quest TV Show, 1964

2006-01-17T20:58:00.000+01:00

This show was recorded in February 1964 for Canadian television, and broadcasted one month later. The footage has never been commercialy released, I know that the audio version has been bootlegged several times, so maybe the same thing happened with the video. Here Dylan performs live with his acouistic guitar and harmonica in a very strange scenography, with silent actors moving around, indifferent to him and his music...
The complete perfomance also included the songs Talking World War III Blues, The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Carroll and Restless Farewell.
These clips should certainly appeal to the many fans of the young Mr. Zimmerman, he plays live and he's as good as you expect him to be. A lot of time has passed but the times has changed enough yet.
These files are in .asf format, but with very high resolution.

Bob Dylan - The Times They Are A-Changin' (1964)
Bob Dylan - Girl From The North Country (1964)
Bob Dylan - A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall (1964)

The password to unzip all files is: musicforyoureyes

If you like Dylan in his early years I might post some other videos in the future...

Bye

Mirco

Detroit Rocks

2006-01-15T19:08:00.000+01:00

Here are the leaders of the Detroit's late sixties heavy rock/proto-punk scene. These excerpt from the concert at the Cincinnati pop festival in June 1970 is, as far as I know, the only Stooges' video available (not considering the recent reunion...), the only time Iggy and his band have been shooted for television (they were not the kind of guys you would expect to see as guests on a TV show...). Despite the not perfect quality, it is an unique chance to see the young and angry Iguana on stage. His memorable perfomance has been reviewed on Julian Cope's site at this page, and also Lester Bangs was impressed enough to describe it in an article.
The MC5 bring their high-energy-revolutionary rock 'n' roll on television in 1970 too. Here they mime this song from the Back In The USA album. Though there are others MC5' s clips available among file-sharing people (they also perfomed live at the Beat Club in '72), I think this one is a little more rare, and gives the chance to look at their typical action on stage anyway.

Stooges - TV Eye/1970 (1970)
MC5 - Looking At You (1970)

The password to unzip all the files is: musicforyoureyes

So, there is a chance to see more MC5's videos in the future.

See you next time.

Mirco

Tropicália

2006-01-13T18:44:00.000+01:00

I started feeling interest for Brazilian music after I had the chance to visit Brazil several times, and I fell in love with the places, the people, the culture...
Tropicalia is the name of a cultural movement that renewed the brazilian musical scene in the late sixties. Artists like Caetano Veloso and Gilbert Gil were born in the state of Bahia, in north-eastern Brazil, the historical heart of the country, home of the afro-brazilian culture. They started playing bossanova, being devoted fans of masters like Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto, but soon they felt the urge to bring into their musical traditions the new sounds and topics of international rock music. It was a period of great cultural and social changes and Brazil was passing trough a militar dictatorship. Gil and Veloso were considered dangerous and anarchical provokers, and they paid for it with prison and two years of exile in Europe. Right now their are considered ambassadors of Brazilian music in the world, always hovering between tradition and innovation. Veloso is still incredibly creative and Gil is the actual minister of culture.
Os Mutantes, a trio of rockers from São Paulo, represented the most psychedelic side of tropicalia, their first three albums are real masterpieces of eccentric pop, crossing many different musical styles with the support of the genial arrangements by their producer Rogerio Duprat, a musician with classical background.
I think the first video is from a festival at the Paramount Theatre in Rio de Janeiro. You can feel the tension in the social clime of those years, the most conservative part of the audience was protesting because of the hippy clothes and electric guitars used by Os Mutantes. At the same time we can see a musician playing the berimbau, typical instrument of north-eastern Brazil's folklore. Anyway Gil is able to front the situation with his charismatic presence on stage.
The Os Mutantes' clip is part of a concert performed for television in '69. This fine song was also the title of a collective compilation of tropicalia artists. You can see one of them on the clip, Tom Zé, another innovative and talented songwriter, appears among the audience, with the acoustic guitar in his hands.

Gilberto Gil And Os Mutantes - Domingo No Parque (1967)
Os Mutantes - Panis Et Circenses (1969)

I have two more clips from the Os Mutantes' concert, I hope you'll like to see them.

The password to unzip all files is: musicforyoureyes

See you

Mirco

Re-posted Again...

2006-01-13T01:15:00.000+01:00

The clips that were "hardly available" on Sendspace have been re-posted on Rapidshare, here are the new links:

Captain Beefheart - She's Too Much For My Mirror/My Human Gets Me Blues (1969)
Captain Beefheart - Hothead/Ashtray Heart (1980)
Nick Drake - River Man (1969)
Leonard Cohen -Suzanne (1967)

See posts below for the infos.

Password: musicforyoureyes

See you tomorrow

Progressive Rock

2006-01-11T16:14:00.000+01:00

Well, it looks like the files uploaded on Sendspace are still unavailable, for me and most of the visitors of this blog...there's been a very few downloads in the last day, while the Beefheart's video has been downloaded almost a hundred times only on the first 24 hours!
If the problem continues I might consider to re-upload the Beefheart's clips, because they had a lot of success and have been available for a very short time, in the meantime I return on Rapidshare to offer another couple of videos.

It's hard to believe how successful have been in my country, Italy, the british progressive-rock of the '70's, including bands like King Crimson or Van Der Graaf Generator, whose intense and dramatic music where certainly not very easy and catchy. But they reached the top of the charts.
Both of these great live performances are from the old Beat Club. The King Crimson appear in their second incarnation, playing a very complex but also agressive music, that used to leave much space for improvisations by each one of the five virtuoso instrumentalists. You'll notice the surrealistic look of the french percussionist Jamie Muir, who have been in the line-up for a very short time.
Van Der Graaf Generator offers a good example of their gloomy and powerfull music, that was born when the charismatic singer and "tortured poet" Peter Hammil discovered the expressive possibilities of the electric instruments...and of his own voice.
I dont want to talk too much, I know my English is far from being perfect, so please apologize me and enjoy the music.
Expect for more progressive rock and more Van Der Graaf Generator in the future.

King Crimson - Larks' Tongues In Aspic Part 1 (1972)
Van Der Graaf Generator - Whatever Would Robert Have Said (1970)

The password to unzip the files is: musicforyoureyes

Bye

Mirco

Downloading Problems Again...

2006-01-10T17:30:00.000+01:00

I noticed that the last six videos I uploaded on Sendspace are not available, I hope the problem is only temporary. I saw that my friend BAZ on his brilliant Sonic Pollutions blog (go and check it if you haven't done it yet) is having the same trouble. I ask you to be patient about that. I'm the first one to get a little nervous and frustrated, because I've already seen some files deleted by Rapidshare...I spend a good part of my free time on this blog, and I hope I don't have to be re-uploading the same files over and over...

Your Captain's Speaking

2006-01-07T23:03:00.000+01:00

Don Van Vliet, known as Captain Beefheart, is one of the greatest eccentric and surrealistic genius in the history of popular(?) music. Also very debatable, it looks like if you don't love him you hate him. He started playing the blues and ended up upsetting the common musical rules, creating a totally new and alien style. The real Captain's fans love particulary the abstruse and astonishing masterpiece Trout Mask Replica, produced by Frank Zappa in '69. Others just dare to listen to some easier and almost normal (but still brilliant) records of the 70's, like The Spotlight Kid or Unconditionally Guaranteed.
On the first clip we can see the Captain and his Magic Band on their weirdest period (you'll notice their unusual look too...), performing two songs from the "Replica" record, during a concert in Belgium.
The second clip shows a memorable appeareance at the Saturday Night Live show in 1980. Introduced by Malcolm "Clockwork Orange" McDowell, the Magic Band is still able to play with caustic energy. At the end of the performance you can clearly hear someone shouting "shit!". Was it excitement? Disgust? Astonishment?...
A couple of years later he ended up his musical career, sick of the mediocrity in the music business scene. Don Van Vliet still lives as a painter, Captain Beefheart died more than 20 years ago, but his influence is stronger than ever for musicians trying to create somenthing out of the ordinary.

Captain Beefheart - She's Too Much For My Mirror/My Human Gets Me Blues (1969)
Captain Beefheart - Hothead/Ashtray Heart (1980)

More Beefheart's clips in the future, if you wish...

Leave a comment, even just to say: "shit!"
Password: musicforyoureyes

See you

Mirco

Byrds, Nico & The Velvets Re-posted Too

2006-01-06T00:00:00.000+01:00

Here they are:

Byrds - Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965)
Nico - I'm Not Saying (1965)
Velvet Underground - Sunday Morning (1967)

See posts below for the infos...

The password to unzip all files is: musicforyoureyes

See you soon with some new/old music videos

Mirco