The Gurus - Closing Circles

 

Unlike the vintage '60s imagery that's dressed up the covers of the Gurus' previous albums, 2010's Closing Circles is adorned with a photo of a man falling from the sky to the ground -- while the back cover features a subtle but inescapable image of the same man after he's met the pavement. It's almost as if the Gurus are trying to tell us something is over and done, and though this group still clearly loves classic folk-rock and psychedelia, they're obviously less interested in replicating the sounds of the past, aiming for a more subdued feel and subtler textures on this set. By easing back on their shtick, the Gurus make a better case for their talents on Closing Circles; rather than suggesting they're trying to re-create some lost recording of another age, here they concentrate on writing good songs and bringing them to life in the studio, and they do it quite well. Psychedelic textures still play a significant role on this album, but the Gurus focus on atmosphere and mood rather than obvious trippiness, and the open, sun-dappled sound of "Strange Believer" and "Lunatic Lover" is all the more effective for avoiding the usual clichés. And there's no getting past the retro influences of "I Don't Care About It," "I Put a Spell on You" (an original, not the Screamin' Jay Hawkins' classic), "The Trip," and "Necromonicon," but the Gurus have effectively blended them into their style rather than letting them rise to the top like an oil slick, and the confidence of Emilio Ramirez's guitar, Sergio Bartel's bass, and Josep Pons' drumming goes a long way toward making this music click. With Closing Circles, the Gurus have finally crossed the border from being a group of '60s revivalists to a contemporary band who use elements of '60s pop to make their music work, and that's opened them up to make one of the most satisfying albums of their career.AMG

 

Listen: HERE

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Ride - Smile

 

A pairing of Ride's first two EPs, Smile is a batch of eight muddy, shambling wrecks that run dangerously close to obscuring great pop songs. In fact, much of Smile makes My Bloody Valentine's blurry Isn't Anything sound as polished as a Steely Dan record. What makes the tunes remarkable is the spirit of the band, along with a complementary mix. The band probably knew exactly what they were doing, but wanted to sound clueless. It's the sound of four art students losing themselves in their record collections, wanting to sound naïve and fresh but well-studied. Mark Gardener sounds like he couldn't sing to save his life on "Chelsea Girl," but it's no matter. The relentless rush of Loz Colbert's drums and distorted guitars of Gardener and Andy Bell carry the song, topped off by a nifty wah-wah climax. Though the mid-tempo, chugging "Drive Blind" could be taken literally, it could double as a metaphor for throwing oneself headlong into a relationship -- closing your eyes and not caring if a brick wall or cliff is up a mile ahead. The remainder is filled out with sticky riffs and melodies which avoid sounding like the standard pop fair. It sounds a bit amateurish, and Gardener and Bell hadn't quite found their footing vocally. Nonetheless, Smile brought something new to the table, and the U.K. audience and more adventurous U.S. fans clutched onto the sound for dear life. Rightfully so. [Oddly, Smile's mastering comes from the vinyl versions of the EPs. If you can track down the CD versions of the EPs separately, you'll notice a difference in quality. Also, the disc was remastered and reissued by Ignition in the U.K. in 2001; unlike the other releases in the campaign, the new version has no bonuses.]  

Listen: RIDE

The Monkees -The Best Of.

 

My Saturday mornings as a child would not have been the same without The Monkees and following the death of Davy Jones yesterday, it seemed rather fitting to post a Monkees album today.  Enjoy!

Davy Jones, 1945-2012

 "Hey hey, we are the Monkees/You know we love to please/A manufactured image/With no philosophies." In 1968, the Monkees addressed their own reputation in the song "Ditty Diego (War Chant)," which summed up the bad rap they'd received in the music press since they first emerged in the summer of 1966. The Monkees were talented singers, musicians, and songwriters who made a handful of the finest pop singles of their day (as well as a few first-rate albums) and delivered exciting, entertaining live shows. But at a time when rock music was becoming more self-conscious and "serious," the hipper echelons of the music press often lambasted the Monkees, largely because they didn't come together organically but through the casting process for a television series, and they initially didn't write the bulk of their own material or play all the instruments on their records. The fact they later took creative control of their music was often overlooked, and the quality of their music, which featured the work of some of the finest session players and songwriters of the 1960s, often seemed to be beside the point. Time has ultimately vindicated the Monkees, and their music still sounds fresh and engaging decades after it was recorded, but in some circles they never fully shook being branded as "the Pre-Fab Four," no matter how far they moved from the circumstances that brought them together.

The Monkees story began in the fall of 1965, when Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider, a pair of producers whose Raybert Productions had a deal with Columbia Pictures and their TV branch Screen Gems, came up with an idea for a television series about a rock group. Inspired by Richard Lester's groundbreaking comedies with the Beatles, A Hard Day's Night and Help!, Rafelson and Schneider imagined a situation comedy in which a four-piece band had wacky adventures every week and occasionally burst into song. The NBC television network liked the idea, and production began on The Monkees in early 1966. Don Kirshner, a music business veteran who was a top executive at Colgems Records (a label affiliated with Columbia/Screen Gems), was appointed music coordinator for the series, and Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, a producing and songwriting team, signed on to handle much of the day-to-day chores of creating music for the show's fictive band. A casting call went out for four young men to play the members of the group, and Rafelson and Schneider's choices for the roles were truly inspired. Michael Nesmith and Peter Tork were musicians with solid performing and recording experience who also had a flair for playing comedy, while Micky Dolenz and Davy Jones were primarily actors but had also dabbled in pop music and had strong vocal abilities. As the show went before the camera, Kirshner had Boyce and Hart take the four leads into the studio to begin recording the songs that would be featured on the show each week. While initially the cast was only going to provide vocals for material Boyce and Hart had already recorded, the producers were impressed enough with Nesmith's songwriting skills that they chose to use a few of his tunes and let him produce them. With this, the Monkees took their first step toward evolving into a proper, self-sufficient rock band.  AMG

Listen:HERE

The Yardbirds - Five Live Yardbirds

 

Five Live Yardbirds was the first important -- indeed, essential -- live album to come out of the 1960s British rock & roll boom. In terms of the performance captured and the recording quality, it was also the best such live record of the entire middle of the decade. Cut at a Marquee Club show in 1964 , Five Live Yardbirds was a popular album, especially once Eric Clapton's fame began to spread after leaving the band. Although the album didn't appear officially in the United States until its CD release by Rhino in the late 1980s, four of its tracks -- "Smokestack Lightning," "Respectable," "I'm a Man," and "Here 'Tis" -- made up one side of their classic U.S. album Having a Rave Up, and the British EMI LP became a very popular import during the early 1970s as a showcase for both the band and the playing of Eric Clapton. That album had astonishingly good sound, which was not the case with any of the reissues that followed, on vinyl or CD -- even Rhino's compact disc suffered from blurry textures and noise, though it was an improvement over any release since the original EMI LP. The 1999 Repertoire Records reissue is the first CD that matches the clarity and sharpness of the original LP, and along with that improvement, their original concert has been very sensibly expanded with a half-dozen live cuts from roughly the same period, recorded at the Crawdaddy Club. Among them is a killer live version of the Billy Boy Arnold classic "I Wish You Would."There's also a pair of live tracks from German television in 1967 -- "I'm a Man" and "Shapes of Things"; the two, in a flash, make up for what they lack in perfect fidelity.   AMG

Listen: HERE mfire file

THE THEME - MOD/POWER POP - Live UK Dates

Some live dates for this most excellent band, if you are near any of the venues, do yourself a favour and go and have a great night out!!!!

Billeracy Football Club -  9th march
Scala , Kings Cross - DJ Set from Wombats - 24 march
Southend, The Riga Bar with The Most - 14 april
Islington O2  - 18 april
Ally club, Cambridge - 12 may
Fleece - Bristol 22 june
Help for heroes mod rally -  Birmingham 9 june
Clapham -  Granf 13 july
Fiddlers Elbow -  28 july

 Photo by: Neil McCarty

The Kinks - Live at The Rainbow 24th December 1977

 

I am not sure if this is an official bootleg, I don't believe that it is, it is however very obviously, a soundboard recording and the quality is excellent.

The Kinks were on the Sleepwalker tour at the time and the recording features many songs from that album as well as the classics. 

Tracklist

01 Sleepwalker
02 Life on the Road
03 Waterloo Sunset
04 All Day And All Of The Night
05 Slum Kids
06 Celluloid Heroes
07 Get Back In Line
08 The Hard Way
09 Lola
10 Alcohol
11 Skin And Bone
12 You Really Got Me
13 Juke Box Music

Get it: HERE

Telepathic Butterflies - Breakfast in Suburbia

 

Over 40 years after the Beatles grabbed North America's musical consciousness by the lapels and gave it a friendly shake, their brand of guitar-based pop is still influencing bands here, there, and everywhere, and the third album from Winnipeg's the Telepathic Butterflies, Breakfast in Suburbia, shows that plenty of good things can still be built from the Fab Four's model. The Telepathic Butterflies aren't devoted to the Beatles at the exclusion of all else — "Telescope" shows flashes of both the Hollies and the Kinks, and "If It's All Too Much" suggests someone in this band listened to a lot of Who records. But the clean melodic lines and energetic guitar figures of the Beatles circa 1963-1965 clearly loom large in the Telepathic Butterflies' pantheon of influences, and they certainly do right by their role models. Réjean Ricard's guitar work is sharp and engaging, and he's a first-class songwriter to boot, sounding equally clever as a lyricist and tunesmith, and Jacques Dubois and Eric Van Buren are an excellent rhythm section, giving the songs plenty of snap and crackle while pushing the tunes forward with just the right degree of force. Though it isn't difficult to suss out this group's influences, the Telepathic Butterflies aren't overwhelmed by them, or living in a bygone era; these are simply bandmembers who understand the virtues of a smart, well-crafted pop tune played with fire and skill, and they have the talent to apply those lessons to their own work. Breakfast in Suburbia is superb pop/rock in the classic style that anyone who still believes in the curative power of the electric guitar will want to hear. -AMG

Listen: HERE  Link refreshed and working.