More Music For Your Eyes

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The Madcap's Last Laugh

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

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

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

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

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

Bye

Mirco

Naná Vasconcelos

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

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

Naná Vasconcelos - Africadeus (1983)

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

See you

Mirco

Il Mio Nuovo Blog

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

101 Freddure Zen

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

S.F. Sorrow

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

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

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

Bye

Mirco

Kosmische Musik

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)

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A presto

Mirco

John Martyn In 2004

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

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)

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Bye

Mirco