HARMONY IN MY HEAD

BROADCAST #31
AIR DATE: 08-01-06

Here’s what we heard tonight Fanatics! We had a lot of Miles Davis, never a bad thing and a lot of other good stuff. As you know, I am on tour playing night to night with X and it’s going very well. We’re playing well and of course, so are they. The Riverboat Gamblers are really cool and the audience is digging them too. Tonight was our first pre-taped show. We have a few more but fear not, Engineer X and I worked hard to make the shows really interesting and I think they are some of the best sets of music we’ve ever pulled together so I hope you get a chance to listen in. Anyway, below is the info on all the tracks we heard tonight. I hope you liked it. Stay Fanatic!! --Henry
     For you Europeans, Australians and New Zealand Fanatics, there is a re-broadcast time of Friday mornings, 0200 – 0400 hrs. West coast time so you all can check out the show and not have to set your alarms to too rude an hour. If you want to download this show, http://www.rollins-archive.com/ is the place to go for that.

For the first half of tonight’s show, we’re going to turn the spotlight on one of the greatest musicians of all time. That status is not up for debate, Fanatics. Let’s spend an hour or so with the legendary Miles Davis.
     There is so much one can say about Miles Davis, his accomplishments, his impact on music and culture, his presence—you could fill a book. You could fill a lot of books. People have and they have articulated the man’s overwhelming talent and its meaning far better than I ever could so when dealing with genius of this magnitude—and it is genius and it resides at a considerable height, someone in my position is best served by basically getting the hell out of the way and letting the music do the talking.
     Miles went through a lot of line-ups and a lot of phases in his career. For me, there is a line drawn in the sand in his career and that is pre and post “retirement” when Miles took a sabbatical in the 70’s to get himself together and came back in the 80’s and toured and recorded until he passed away in 1991. I don’t have any of the post retirement stuff. I have heard some and it I have not been able to connect with it as yet so tonight we’ll go up to the 70’s.
     Ok, now that we’ve made that slight guideline now what? There is so much Miles. So many line-ups, so many turns to cover the artistic stretch of this guy would take hours and hours of radio time and we just don’t have it so I am going to go for some of my more listened to tracks and hope you like it. I’m no Jazz expert but I have listened to a lot of Miles. Here we go, Fanatics!

Israel: From Birth Of The Cool. Tracks recorded in 1949 and 1950. After a few different configurations, this short-lived line-up was represented by this groundbreaking album. My mother played this one a lot. I looked up some facts on this record. This was Miles nonet. Only played out a few times. Here’s a good info page. I know dick about jazz. You heard me. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birth_of_the_Cool.

Footprints: Recorded in 1966, this is one my favorite moments from the Wayne Shorter on sax line-up. This line-up that also included Tony Williams and Herbie Hancock recorded prolifically and on the Miles Smiles album performed a Shorter composition that he released on his album Adam’s Apple. This line-up made a string of strong recordings. I remember when the complete recordings box came out. I would do one CD a night until they were all done. Great stuff from the master and his very capable men.

Early Minor: From In A Silent Way. 1969 Miles. One of the many ridiculous Miles line-ups.
Miles Davis - Trumpet
Chick Corea – Electric piano
John McLaughlin - Guitar
Joe Zawinul - Organ
Dave Holland - Bass
Wayne Shorter - Saxophone
Herbie Hancock – Piano
Tony Williams – Drums
This is one of those line-ups that is almost too good to be true. This is a amazing album. The recently released complete sessions set is also worth checking out. I have some cool bootlegs from this line-up as well, really great.

Black Satin: From the On The Corner album. This came out in 1972 and from what I’ve read, the critics were not too kind to this album. I don’t think Miles really cared about critics, he knew what he was going for. I was first turned onto to this album by my band mates back in the late 80’s. You would be hard pressed to find bigger Miles fans than these people. Apparently this was the album that had many of Miles biggest supporters dismayed. I think it’s amazing. Of course, decades later, it’s seen as this visionary building block, stepping stone, blah blah. Critics are dicks!!!! Miles is the man.

Holly-wuud: This is a single I copied from a Miles Fanatic. I have not been able to find out much info on it besides people who wish it was on CD and who ask what I want to know which is this part of a previously released jam cut down for radio or its own thing. This is what I can’t figure out. Apparently it’s from 1973 and that’s all I have on this one. It’s perfect for our show.

Moja Pt. 2: From the Dark Magus album. 1974 live at the Carnegie Hall. I love this album. It’s hard to imagine this guitar cranked assault at Carnegie Hall but he did it. This is a dark, fiercely aggressive album. Hard to think of this as the same man who made mothers cry when he played My Funny Valentine. I think I got this record in 1992 in Japan and knocked me out.

You can see how little I can write about Miles. I just dig the guy and play his records often. If can, borrow anything you can of his and check it out and see if it’s a purchase you want to make. Online there is talk about an On The Corner era box coming out at some point. That would be good. The Miles catalog has been given insane respect by Columbia and other labels that at one time housed Miles. Check the Bitches Brew box to have your mind blown. The Jack Johnson record will level you too. Like I said before, there’s so much good Miles, it’s not to be believed. Oh yes, this one last thing. Don’t be mad that I didn’t include anything from the era when he had the mighty John Coltrane in his band. That stuff’s great too but it’s stuff you may have heard too many times so I tried to go for material that was a little further down the trail. Hope you dug our moment with Miles.

How to follow up after that?! . . .

James Brown – Super Bad (mono): This is one of the first CD I ever heard. This track was taken from The CD of JB. I don’t know if it’s in print anymore. There was a time when the industry was just figuring out what to do with CDs and they were coming out with typos, incorrect information, sometimes they used the wrong masters. This came out around then. As far as I know, it’s the only way to get the mono version of this song. There’s a stereo mix on the Star Time box set with a different edit and there may be more best ofs that I have not seen. I am sure they pump the JB catalog for all it’s worth and then some.

Count Ossie – Lock, Stock & Barrel - Soon Start Quarrel: From the Tales Of Mozambique album. I got turned onto to Count Ossie by a woman at a great record store in Portland Maine. I am sure you Portland Fanatics have seen this place. it’s down the street from that theater I always play at. All they sell is vinyl. I was in there a few years ago and she was playing Count Ossie and I was immediately very curious and asked her what she was playing. She showed me the record. She had a couple of copies and bought one for myself and one for Ian, who I thought would really like it.

Television – Marquee Moon: From the album of the same name. This album deserves one of our spotlight treatments as so many of you Fanatics would agree. Clean, ringing guitars, interesting and innovative arrangements and the relentless brilliance of Tom Verlaine. At this point, if you have not done your time with this album, you’re late for class and you better get going. What a scorcher. What a monster album. Verlaine is arguably, one of the finest and distinctive guitar players ever and certainly one of the brightest lights coming out of the New York scene—a scene that was packed with nonstop talent from Suicide to the Dolls. The follow-up Television album Adventure is also great but Marquee Moon is one of those top ten records of your life. The newly remastered version sounds great and comes with extra tracks. The first two Verlaine solo records, Tom Verlaine and Dreamtime are also worth checking out.

The Moronics – Flying Saucers: This one’s not all that easy to find. This track is found on the Best Of Baltimore’s Buried LP on Baltoweird. I search for other songs by bands that are on the :30 Over DC album and we could have played the very cool song of The Moronics from it called Mr. President but I thought it would be cool for this show to play the track that’s a bit harder to come by because that’s what this show is all about. I think I saw The Moronics play once. I never saw a lot of the bands that comprised the wave that came before bands like The Teen Idles and The Bad Brains. I wasn’t all that switched onto what was happening. I was able to catch some of the bands though and they were cool. Had I been a little more on the case at the time, I would have seen a whole lot more than I did. There was a whole scene happening in DC that I never checked out. I never saw the Penetrators, White Boy, a lot of it for one reason or another, I missed. I don’t know anything about The Moronics really but what I’ve heard is cool.

The B-52's - Planet Claire: I don’t know if we’ve played anything off this album. I think we’ve only played the pre-Warner Brothers version of 52 Girls. This is the first track from the first album. It’s still my favorite album of theirs. I got the 2nd album for the song My Own Private Idaho and never really checked them out past that. I can’t get to that Love Shack kind era of the band but the earlier, stranger stuff is pretty cool.

The Fall Ten Houses Of Eve (remix): I might be a bit of a lunatic for playing The Fall this week but I have to do it. This is the remix of a track found on the1997 Levitate album. Check the singles off this record as well as the 2CD release of the album with extra tracks. It’s another great Fall album. The very unofficial Fall site address is: http://www.visi.com/fall/.

Randy Alvez & The Green Fuz / The Cramps - Green Fuz: At this point, I don’t know if songs are cool so the Cramps cover them or songs become cool because The Cramps covered them. Many times, it’s The Cramps version I heard first. Such is the case with this song. I don’t know much about Garage Punk but there’s a lot of it I like although I can’t pinpoint bands all that well because most of the exposure I have to them is on stuff like the Nuggets box and the Trash Box set that I got the Randy Alvez and the Green Fuz track from. One thing I can weigh in on a little is the album that I pulled The Cramps version from, Psychedelic Jungle. Fanatics, this is a really good record. If you have not listened to this one yet, please do. Kidd Congo on guitar, what a player. This was their 2nd album and what a great late night listen this one is. That’s when I used to listen to it when I first got it. I lived in a small apartment in the front and my friend John lived in the bedroom in back. I would come back from work pretty burnt and listen to this album and the Black Album by The Damned. They were my 0200 hrs. favorites. I can still get into either one of these late at night. I think I have written before about what it was like to see The Cramps on this tour. I saw them play at the old 9:30 Club in DC. That was a great night. We were all there. I think they may have opened with this song. If anyone has any bootlegs from that tour, let me know. It would be about 1980-1981 I reckon.

Gene Defcon - Mushroom Cloud: Another track off Mr. Defcon’s Puke And Die. I don’t know if this is his latest one. It was when last I checked. We have played his music on this show. I don’t think I’ve played too many tracks from this new one. I’ll get on that. A lot of you Fanatics might remember Gene from his previous band The Prima Donnas. Check out their Drugs Sex and Discotheques album.

The Evens - On The Face Of It: Finishing up with another track from The Evens one and only album. Not for long! I talked to Ian MacKaye (one half of The Evens) the other day and he and band mate Amy Farina are putting the final touches on their new album and it’s slated for a November release. Stoked!!