We all know that there are plenty of things better than Star Wars and Illcon has made this public knowledge before. I mean, George Lucas has been shitting on his fans for quite some time now, what do you owe him? Nothing. Today's record is something that is also better than Star Wars.
The little dude above is a fella called Meco, Domenico Monardo to be exact. He was a pretty big name during the 1970's as a respected producer and trombonist. Playing on and producing records for Diana Ross, Neil Diamond, Gloria Gaynor and plenty of others. Things changed however, when in 1977 George Lucas released his cash vulture, Star Wars. Meco got pretty excited by this film. Even more excited by the stirring score courtesy of the always awesome John Williams. Meco hatched on the idea of creating a disco version. Of course, it was laughed at and not taken seriously. Who would believe that could work!
Meco believed and wouldn't let up. Luckily the score became a huge hit and the top brass relented, allowing him to see his idea through. Of course he would need a pretty sweet band to achieve this feat. The Sci-Fi Disco Band Meco was born.
Seriously
Despite looking like the outcome of letting Ming The Merciless assemble the Village People, the band managed to survive on the mean streets of New York for about 4 months performing live and providing a much needed visual element to this epic onslaught of disco. And it is an onslaught. The album contains the full 15 minute Star Wars suite encompassing the opening them, Imperial March, the cool flying music bits, all those schmaltzy parts and that stupid band in the bar. It also has robots dancing on the cover.
Warning: This post contains no metal and barely any prog.
Another Warning: I HATE whimsical boopty doopty Black Adder-Downton Abbey-Harry Potter British school boy BULLSHIT but this shit fuckin' rules.
It would be pretty lame to make a King Crimson megapost on Ill Con, especially in light of their recent battles with Spotify. Every dork on the internet knows and loves KC. You would be hard pressed to find a techy guitar player that doesn't worship Red and I know I've fallen into a YouTube rabbit hole or 3 watching old Crimson footage. So hey let's not be lame, let's be awesome and post these pre-Crimson all-killer-no-filler little known recordings by one of the greatest psychedelic rock outfits ever: Giles, Giles and Fripp.
Their first and only release, 1968's "The Cheerful Insanity Of..." is exactly that. Totally drugged out, blissful, trippy and silly. A bit Bonzo Dog Band, a little Beach Boys, A LOT of Monty Python, all Fripp'd out with his jazzy shreds all over. Just a complete awesome (non-brutal) listen.
I'm not going to get into a whole bio and life story on these guys because British people are hella boring. Basically these two bros (actual brothers) wrote a buncha songs and needed a singer and keyboard player. They took out an ad and this awesome guitar player that couldn't sing answered instead. They let him live with them and proceeded to produce a ton of home demos. Their demos kicked so much ass that they got a record deal and put out that thing I just posted up there ^^. These demos circulated in the underground prog dork circles for years and now I present to you THE BRONDESBURY TAPES for your listening pleasure. I like these a lot. Better than the actual album.
These songs are pretty much the polar opposite of the cold, bleak paranoia one feels when listening to early KC. Some say this has a lot to do with the poor reception/sales of "The Cheerful Insanity Of..." Fripp was essentially beaten down by the music industry his first go 'round. A lot of that negative energy was channeled into his new band a year later and is one of the reasons those first albums are so fucking magical.
Next time: PART 2 - After Crimson! The NYC Trilogy and lots of cocaine with Eno and Bowie!
Yes, this post is about surf rock, by that I mean Surf Rock and not that Beach Boys crap. Fuck that shit. That is "rock about surf" and not surf rock proper.
Surf rock is a mostly instrumental guitar driven music (except in the early days it was fairly common for surf bands to shit out a pop single with a vocalist). It places great importance on melodic guitar lines played with heavy reverb. Reverb is key to surf rock. Surf bands use reverb the way death metal bands use distortion. It is hard to make the case that something is surf if it doesn't have tons of reverb. Also tremelo picking, whammy dips and palm muting are vary common techniques. Since it is instrumental for the most part there is less standard song structure than the other music of its day, though certain lines or themes are often repeated.
Surf originated in the late 50's by artists like Link Wray and the Ventures. But it was Dick Dale that made it is what it is today. He used a clean guitar tone with maximum reverb, tremelo riffs and heavy use of the whammy bar. His style included melodious guitar lines and incorporated elements from Middle Eastern and Mexican music. Sometimes a saxophone would carry the melody; an electric bass and drums made up the rhythm section.
The first true surf hit was his "Lets go Trippin'" from 1961 which became a regional hit in SoCal. Soon the trend became a national fad with both The Chantays and The Surfaris making the top 10 in 1963 with "Pipeline" and Wipe Out" respectively. Soon surf bands started popping up around the country in such as the quiet beachside communities of Boulder, Colorado (The Astronauts) Minneapolis, Minnestota (The Trashmen) Baltimore, Maryland (The Fender IV, featuring future Blue Cheer guitarist Randy Holden) and Sydney, Australia (The Atlantics). There was also a surf scene in Japan.
Surf rock began to decline in poularity in the mid-60's with the rise of the Beatles and other British invasion crap. But it never really died in the hearts of the true fans, and guys like Dick Dale managed to hold on in the Dark Ages. More recently with the release of Pulp Fiction and the internets surf rock is experiencing something of a revival, much like psychobilly and kiddie thrash. Much like psychobilly and kiddie thrash there is some element of dressing up, but fortunately surf rock fashion isn't nearly as bad as those genres, mostly just Hawaiian shirts. The clean cut look has died along with shitting out a pop song with a singer.
Heres a list of some of my favorite current surf bands:
The Aqua Velvets
One of the first surf revival bands, the Aqua Velvets have stuck with the genre since the 80's and are still kicking.
Man or Astro-Man?
One of the higher profile revival bands, they started off as fairly trad surf, but gradually became more abstract.
Gary Hoey
Not exactly a true surf rocker, he started out as a heavy metal shredder. He tried out for Ozzy in 88 but lost to Zakk Wylde. He did some solo type shred stuff in the 90's. In 2005 he released Monster Surf, a collection of hard rock covers of classic surf songs, pretty fuckin rad if you ask me, even if he is an Affliction tool now.
The Madeira Very progressive surf with heavy middle eastern influences. They display more dynamics than the average surf band, with acoustic passages and brooding intros.
Secret Samurai In my opinion the best of the modern surf rockers. They play a progressive style of surf with influences from exotica and spaghetti western soundtracks. No fucking around with samples and intros, just rippin surf.
There are plenty of other good surf bands out there, just search myspace, youtube and bandcamp.
Unfortunately, the surf rock community has not figured out MediaFire and stuff like that, and there is almost nothing out there to download, and no surf mp3 blogs. Anyhoo, here's The Secret Samurai's first album, Gun Sho Gun:
Metal and surf rarely come into contact, but it does happen. Examples: the aforementioned Gary Hoey, Satch's Surfing With the Alien (not metal, but close enough), the intro to "Craving Illness" by Deceased and Agalloch's "Our Fortress is Burning... I" sounds pretty surftastic to me.
A sort of white elephant in the Swedish death metal scene, Seance didn't seem to fit in with the rest of their countrymen. While the rest of the country was turning all the knobs on their HM-2s all the way up, Seance were aping Deicide. Their debut, Fornever Laid to Rest, though decent, is just not as good as Glenn n crew.
Seance must have realized this cuz one year later they came out with this filthy beast of an album. The first thing you notice about Saltrubbed Eyes is the bass sound. It's phat az phuk. Since everybody likes to use weapon analogies to describe the guitar sounds like "buzzsaw," "chainsaw" or "laser beam," I'll say that it sounds like a baseball bat covered in razor blades, because it does as much damage by cutting as crushing. It has a perfect combination of low end, treble and distortion, the closest comparison I can think of is the bass sound on The Erosion of Sanity, but better. On top of that it's LOUD in the mix, so much that it dominates the album. The bass sound on Saltrubbed Eyes becomes its defining feature. It's like the whole album is a sick bass drop. Which isn't to say the music isn't good, it is. Still heavily Deicide influenced but slower and groovier. The band is branching out, evidenced on the menacing "Angelmeat pt II" and "Hidden Under Scars." Also since the bass sound is so strong, the mix doesn't need the guitars to support it, allowing the guitars to do their own thing now and then. Some times they drop in and out of a riff, do an open chord while the bass plays the riff or go for their own leads in addition to the bass part. Drums are well played, with a great sound: nice and loud bass drums with enough pop to stand out but not klickety-klakety. Seance broke up a couple of years later, and members went on to form Witchery,Satanic Slaughter and The Haunted. They got back together a few years back, and recorded a new album Awakening of the Gods, which is surprisingly good, but not as good as this.
