McDonald & Giles (1971)

Back when I was in high school, my closest friends were three extremely talented musicians who played together all the time in our friend's barn. I spent many stoned hours listening to them and fantasizing about joining in, but since they were already a drummer, bassist, and guitarist, I didn't think there was anything I could contribute. Well, in part because I was a big Jethro Tull fan at the time, but also because I wanted to take up an instrument that I wouldn't have to worry about any one else playing better, I chose the flute. So, when I was looking for the second King Crimson album, In the Wake of Poseidon, at my local music store and the clerk (who happens also to be the front man in a up and coming local psychadelic band), suggested I also check out former King Crimson band members McDonald & Giles' sole album, McDonald & Giles, adding that it had really great twittering flute bits, I was sold.

There are plenty of places on the internet that can explain the lineup of King Crimson and how much it has changed over the years, so I am not going to get into that here. Suffice it to write that Ian McDonald and Michael Giles were in the band for the 1969 debut, In the Court of King Crimson. So, if you like King Crimson's first album, I highly recommend you listen to McDonald & Giles. Instrumentally, it is similar to King Crimson's first album and parts of their second album. Mood-wise though, this work is much, much lighter.

The first song, "Suite In C Including Turnham Green, Here I Am And Others" is an 11-minute sonic ride. Being a suite, there are many melodies here. Worthy of note is Steve Winwood's organ playing and piano solo.

The second track sent me looking through the soundtracks to Wes Anderson films because I was sure I had heard this track before. It has that same kind of obscure, catchy quality as so many of the songs being found on some of the more excellent independant films these days. The melody for this song, "Flight of the Ibis" was written by McDonald and the original lyrics written by Peter Sinfield. However, when McDonald and Giles left King Crimson, McDonald maintained rights to the melody of this song, but Peter Fripp kept the rights to Sinfield's lyrics. So, if you play "Flight of the Ibis" and then "Cadence & Cascade" off of King Crimson's second album, In the Wake of Poseidon, you can imagine what the original composition sounded like because that King Crimson track has the original lyrics penned by Sinfield.

The third song, "Is She Waiting?" is a quiet love song of just piano, guitar and vocal harmonies that reminds me of something the Beatles might have done.

"Tomorrow's People - The Children of Today" is a gem. This song really exemplifies what great musicians McDonald and Giles are. Michael Giles' percussion throughout this album is so completely solid. In particular, his percussion work drives this song. There is also the "twittering flute bits" in this song that perfectly exemplify why the flute is an essential element of psychedelic rock, in my humble opinion. And the horns, man, the horns here are so...this is just a great song. You can listen to it below.

The last collection of songs on this album would have composed the entire B side of the original vinyl version of this album (though I have the album on CD). There are six parts to "Birdman." This collective song takes all the melodic elements of the album's previous pieces and puts them all together in this extended opus. There are the catchier pop riffs, we have the horns, including flute courtesy Ian McDonald, hand clapping (yes!), jazz, organ, psychedelia (sounding a bit like Pink Floyd circa Atom Heart Mother), and clear, mythical lyrics. Furthermore, this song bookends beautifully with "Suite In C Including Turnham Green, Here I Am And Others."

This album should have recieved wider acknowledgement because it surely would have been appreciated had more people known about. From what I have read, aside from when it was released on vinyl, McDonald & Giles has only been relatively recently available on CD other than as a high-priced Japanese import. So, now you can get it. I fully recommend this album. It is a treat.

I have, by the way, taken up the flute again. Dreaming once more of making my way into a rock outfit, hopefully something folky and psychedelic.

Silver Apples (1968) / Contact (1969)

I can't remember right now how I found out about these guys but they are pretty far out. After looking twice while I was out of town for a couple weeks, I finally went looking for this two-for-one at my local music store, Bullmoose, and found a blank name card for them. Thinking that even this store, which tends to stock obscure music had failed me. Not so, it turned out they had categorized the Silver Apples as electronic. This genre overlap is actually quite apt for this avant garde 60's duo; it seemed fitting their name cards were in both places. I was telling my wife about this group and she immediately pointed out to me that their name is a reference to Yeats' poem, "The Song of Wandering Aengus," part of which goes thus:

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

[Of further interest: I have now also discovered that the title of a compilation album that the neo-psych-folk musician Devendra Banhart compiled, which is a good primer for this genre, is named after the last line of this poem. Probably not at all coincidental.]

So, if you are a fan of electronica, you will probably dig these guys if for nothing else than for (what should be, if it is not) an eminent place in the annals of this genre, but especially if you are also in to psychadelia. Their sound is spacey, ethereal, and busy with hypnotic, thumping and droning and pulsing and whirring and clicking beats both electronic and percussive. One of the members, known only as Simeon, constructed an eponymous machine described in the liner notes to their debut album as "nine audio oscillators and eighty-six manual controls...The lead and rhythm oscillators are played with the hands, elbows and knees and the bass oscillators are played with the feet." The drumming, courtesy Danny Taylor, compliments these aural curios with beats that seem precursory to those tracks now found on programed drum machines. Taylor used two differently tuned drum kits set up side by side so that he could switch to whichever tuning would most compliment the Simeon's sounds. The lyrics are, at times, psychedelic fairy-like musings, which makes for an unexpectedly intriguing and pleasing juxtaposition. At other times, I can't even really pay attention to the words because the sound is far more interesting.

One absolutely fascinating bit of information I discovered about the Silver Apples is that they were commissioned in 1969 by NYC's Mayor John Lindsay to write a song to act as the soundtrack for the mass viewing in Central Park of the Apollo 11 crew landing on the moon. The song was called "Mune Toon" apparently but I have yet to be able to find a place on the Internet where I can get a copy of it, not even sure it was ever recorded. According to an interview with one of the band members, the mayor declared the Silver Apples "the New York sound."


Silver Apples - Program

Animals (1977)

It seems appropriate to start with the the band and the album that flips all my switches: Animals (1977) by Pink Floyd.

This album is still as amazing to me now as when I first heard it, though I can't say as I recall when that was exactly. When I was a junior in high school, my friend and I went to stay with my aunt in London for a week during school break. Somehow I caught wind that the building on the cover of this album actually existed, was called the Battersea Power Station, and was in London. I think I had seen something in an English newspaper at the time about an attempt to do something with the defunct building. Some musical pilgrimages end at the Père Lachaise Cemetery where Jim Morrison's is entombed, some in Memphis, Tennessee at Elvis' Graceland, or for others perhaps making it to a sermon by the Reverend Al Green. For me, at seventeen, my musical pilgrimage concluded (or had it just begun?) at the Battersea Power Station. It remains one of the most surreal sights I have experienced. It was like I was looking at a giant cartoon that had been plopped down in the middle of a city. Seriously bizarre. Not like any other visual experience I have had before or since. I think parts of my brain melded or crossed over or something, I don't know. The recent movie Children of Men by the director Alfonso Cuarón aptly pays homage to this brilliant album (I won't tell you where the reference is in the film because I think it will be best to just notice it).

Being my favorite album, I could mention many things about this album both from my own life and as Pink Floyd data. I am going to limit myself to the most fundamental pieces of information to know about this album if you intend to listen to Animals for the first time. Most importantly, Animals is based on George Orwell's allegorical satire Animal Farm. Each of the songs is named after an animal (pigs, dogs, and sheep) that appears in Orwell's novel representing a particular social class. The first and last song on the album ("Pigs on the Wing, Part 1 & 2") apparently were written by Roger Waters to his wife at the time. Both of these songs are solid, but no match to the three fucking fantastic pieces that compose the core of this gem. (Could it be that these relational bookend songs are Waters' offering of a more optimistic insight on enduring such a bleak and depressing, albeit rather accurate, outlook on society?)

As an ensemble, Pink Floyd has had quite the dynamic history. Interestingly this album was produced when some significantly troubling relationship issues were emerging within the band, which ultimately, I think it is accurate to say, led to Waters leaving the band (marking, in my opinion, the dissolution of Pink Floyd). David Gilmore's guitar work is as present and necessary as Water's lyrics. Rick Wright's keyboard work, however, is sparse, though immensely effective when used, further dredging the already dark abysmal instrumental mood of Animals. Nick Mason's not-to-be-forgotten rhythmic drumming is so very solid, as always.