For anyone who loves the early Pink Floyd sound and despises their later stuff, it’s worth noting that Roger Waters basically kicked Rick out of the band just as they were starting to suck, probably because Wright refused to suck as much as the Seventies crapola-fest fans demanded. And so the wonderfully psychedelic phantom of the opera keyboard sounds that made their first albums sound so good fell at the wayside.
Piper at the Gates of Dawn and A Saucerful of Secrets are such monumental albums, and such influences on my own keyboard experiments. Somewhere in Lucifer’s shining barleycorn mansion in the heart of the sun, Syd Barrett and Rick Wright are working up an album to send beams of celestial rabies right into Roger Waters’ brain.
I just picked up a copy of Cluster & Eno, the collaborative effort between Brian Eno and the electronic Krautrock duo Cluster recorded in 1977. It’s beautiful, atmospheric music that doesn’t seem blah or prog, and it’s delightfully repetitive even though there were no sequencers used, just echo machines, tape recorders, guitars, bass (sometimes played by Holger Czukay of Can), and of course, “early polytone Farfisa synthesisers!”
Here’s a little documentary about Cluster’s early days. Boy, I wish I had that many cool noise boxes on top of my Farfisa!
This is one of my favorite garage bands from Germany–and I’m including the Monks and the early Beatles in that list! The Satelliters discs on Dionysus have always rocked, and this new video’s tremolo keyboards don’t disappoint.
It’s been a rough couple days as far as money goes–most people in this country can relate, I’m sure!
To cheer myself up, I’m creating a new category of blog, in which I’m celebrating my favorite songs that incorporate the mightiest of all electric keyboards, the Farfisa! The first inductee for Farfisa Hall of Fame is the Revillos, a combo that might seem an unlikely nomination, what with their being punkers from the Seventies. But eclecticism being the rule of law in those early days of punkdom, they actually used the Farfisa organ as the lead instrument in this song, “Where’s the Boy for Me?” They don’t show it in the video (a Farfisa probably didn’t look New Wave enough), but you can hear the shit out of it in the actual song.
P.S. You might know them as “the Rezillos.” Basically, it’s the same band, but with ever-so-slight line-up changes that made them decide changing the name by one letter would be cute. This fucks up my iPod’s playlist royally.
Yesterday, my baby and I rolled on out to the High Desert to Pappy & Harriet’s to see Winter Flowers, the Chapin Sisters, and a bunch of really amazing bands at the Manimal Festival.
We left L.A. early, didn’t hit much traffic, and about an hour in I put in the first CD from the Zabriskie Point soundtrack, which was recorded in 68 and 69 and had songs by Pink Floyd, the Youngbloods, the Kaliedoscope (U.S.), and even, gasp, Jerry Garcia solo (yes, I have finally made the fifteen year transformation from spit-gobbing punk rocker to road-trippin’ hippie. Jerry Garcia’s solo stuff was the final threshold I needed to cross. Good morning, Starchild!).
Anyway, all the tracks sounded remarkably good coming out of my car’s speakers as we cruised through the desert, but once we got off the Interstate and were zipping up and down through boulders and burnt-out cacti, Pink Floyd’s “Come in Number 51, Your Time Is Up” started coming through my speakers. Maaaaan, there is nothing better for boulder-hopping than a good strong case of Rick Wright’s farfisa playing and the groovy sound effects from the Space-Rock era of Pink Floyd. Fuck Dark Side, this song is where the gettin’ is good.
The next day driving back, lysergic delights now dimmed but not fully dissipated, and sleep and refreshing coolness being only distant memories, the CD worked even better, though this time it was the country-rock that really helped us take a load off. The cool, alienated feeling of these songs felt so similar to what was rattling around in my head, that it made me feel like “okay, I’m normal, this music is normal, my environment around me is at peace with my mental state, so who cares that I have to drive two hours to Los Angeles with no sleep and a belly full of gross?”
On another note: aside from the Burrito Brothers, this album seems to be where Beachwood Sparks got all their ideas. And I love them for it.
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