Music Review

The Song Does Not Remain The Same

Gary Lucas — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 22:49:51 +0000

The Song Does Not Remain The Same Gary Lucas August 10, 2026 - 18:49

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The Beefheart Vantage! (Turn Image 90º To The Right for Normal View)

Sometimes all it takes is hearing a random sound out of context… a whiff of a subtle scent wafting your way…or coming upon a strange but naggingly familiar scene or tableau to trigger images buried deep in the past in your subconscious mind, memories you might have resigned as being lost to the ages if you ever recalled them at all. It's the old Proust and his madeleine effect. Here, an involuntary mnemonic device which comes to you out of nowhere and brings you up short and sharpish into the twilight world of phantoms and dreams…before the scene evanesces, and you are plunged back into what James Joyce referred to in Ulysses as the "shattering daylight of no thought."

The other day while walking in the West Village I came upon just such a recondite scene that brought to the surface of my cranial soup an entire chain of lost memories regarding my life in the West Village circa 50 years ago…which led to a vivid memory of a song lost to the ages involving me and my dear friend and collaborator Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet).

I had just turned the corner of Bleecker Street and Seventh Avenue on a stroll to Faicco's Italian Specialties, when...

Horrors!! Shrouded in construction netting, 285 Bleecker St., a 19^th-century cast-iron tenement near the corner of 7th Avenue now being renovated for the first time in 50 years, to the best of my knowledge. A 19th-century walk-up tenement building and the first place we lived in the West Village circa June '77. On the ground floor: the legendary Village butcher shop Ottomanelli's, with dead rabbits and other wild game hanging on hooks in the window and all sorts of offal on display (yecch). Right across the street, the legendary Matt Umanov Guitars. Down the block, Italian pastry joint Rocco's (best cannolis in NYC). A great location!

During the super-hot, sweaty Summer of Sam, we lived 4 flights up in a railroad flat, a middle-aged dominatrix operating her by-appointment-only trade next door (lots of spanking and barked commands could be heard emanating through her door at random times of the day, on the order of "Bend over, I'm gonna stick my big toe in your ass!"). Then there was the young couple who screamed at the top of their lungs for hours at each other until eventually having loud make-up sex in which the female would bawl her brains out between bouts of balling. At night I would sit in a comfortable chair gazing out the huge window at the Brechtian Street Scene below. Lots of foreign tourists always, the endless passing parade slowly funneling down to the real Human Zoo around McDougal in the central village on Bleecker east of 6th Ave.

At around 9 pm nearly every night until mid-summer, the French mime Philippe Petit, several months away from walking the World Trade Center, rolled up in full whiteface make-up and tattered frock coat on a unicycle directly under my window, quickly gathering a big crowd of rubberneckers as he strung a taut rope hitched from a fire hydrant to a lamppost at a 45-degree angle, and pranced up and down the rope from bottom to the top while juggling bowling pins, somehow managing to stay upright. I had a front row seat every night and a water pipe! Folks showered him with tips, and then he would cycle off to who knows where, coming back there night after night for at least most of mid-June into early July. One night he looked up rapidly, spotted me sitting in my 4th floor window perch (he was aware of everything going on around him), and gave me a quick wave.

And then came the BIG BLACKOUT of July 13-14th. The power went off all over the city around 9:30 pm, but somehow the phones kept working. The New York Times had recently run an article about what they dubbed "The Feral People," the homeless living for years in the sub-basements of Grand Central Station many levels under the tracks, who rarely came up for daylight, and then usually only to forage for food (a very lurid article that made them sound kind of like the race of troglodytes lurking in the London Metro in the 1972 UK horror film Death Line, entitled Raw Meat in the US. When the lights went off, my pal and horror film actor Bill Moseley called me and insisted we get flashlights and somehow make our way to Grand Central, go down into the basements, and explore the catacombs, so to speak. A notion I was unable to sign on to...

Years later, after I'd moved out to more salubrious lodgings in the farther West Village, a one-bedroom with a fantastic view of the Hudson out one window and the Empire State Building out the other, I became passionately involved in Captain Beefheart's music and overall care and feeding. We, the members of his Magic Band, were required to go out and purchase miniature Sony cassette recorders to capture on the fly any of Don's imperious pronouncements or oracular observations, some of which might make it into subsequent lyrics or titles of paintings or poems. Don LOVED the sound of words, and frequently deployed some good ones—"giggy ghee," "expoobident," "frowsy," "insultuous"…

One night in 1981 during a period when I was between wives, Don rang me at 3 am, rousting me from a very deep sleep. He insisted I fetch my tape recorder, as he wanted to run down a new composition over the phone. I sleepily got up to retrieve it, and coming back to the phone, I jammed my mini-recorder into the phone's earpiece to catch the full flavor of his new composition.

"You ready?"

Don started to whistle tunelessly—"pssss shoooooeeeee wheessh sheeee whee woowie whooooo"—producing nary a melody or a rhythm or an actual musical tone, the fundamental necessary skeletal building blocks of music per se that might give one something to hang on to and base a song on. His whistling, which on a good day could charm the birds out of the sky, had here devolved into a mere pushing of random air through pursed lips with no apparent compositional design overarching—Aleatory? Yes. The basis for a new song? Well…

"Didja get that?" he asked breathlessly when he'd finished. Yeah, I got it, Don.

"Gooood! Now learn that on guitar!"

Oh yeah.

He went on: "It's a new song of mine called" (wait for it)—"MELODY ARMS." Good title. Poetic—romantic even. Wish I'd heard anything halfway resembling a melody in there though…but still.

Go on…

Don waxed enthusiastic:

"It's a song about a hotel, or a boardinghouse, called 'THE MELODY ARMS.'"

Wha???

The old rascal had set me up and just pulled the rug out from under me.

"Each room in the building has a different character or characters living inside. Every verse describes a different room and tells a story about the lives of the folks living there." Sounded a bit like Nico's song "Chelsea Girls" (co-written with the Velvet Underground's Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison), in which Nico devotes a verse each to Warhol Factory denizens like Brigid Polk, Pope Ondine, and Ingrid Superstar who were then all living at the Chelsea Hotel. But I doubt Don had heard that, or maybe it was inspired by the cheesy "Tenement Symphony" as sung by Tony Martin in the Marx Brothers' late clinker The Big Store.

But I kept shtum.

Immediately I flashed on an image of 285 Bleecker Street in 1977…and the characters who dwelled within its chipped plastered walls (especially the dominatrix). That crummy little building could have been "THE MELODY ARMS." I started getting into the idea.

THIS SONG COULD WORK!

Next day though, "Melody Arms" had become the One That Got Away; yet another potential masterpiece lost way back in the queue inside the hyperactive compartmentalized psyche of Don Van Vliet, who was off in the ether and otherwise occupied—busy painting, sketching, whistling, singing and humming myriad new songs composed right on the spot—and growling at any Magic Band member that wandered too close into earshot.

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No Distance Too Great

Robert Cochrane — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 11:04:29 +0000

No Distance Too Great Robert Cochrane August 7, 2026 - 07:04

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singer songwriter

JOHN HOWARD: Overnight Bags (Think Like A Key)

From that foreign place known as the past, English singer-songwriter John Howard has magically conjured up an album of quiet nostalgia, but surprisingly little resentment or regret. A beautiful exercise of the kind an artist can afford when no longer pandering to the expectations of those dreaded men in suits. Expansive, eloquent and evocative, it presents a gentle sequence of cascading postcards. Images and lines that will caress and gently haunt the souls of those fortunate enough to experience its understatement and artistry.

"Chelsea in the morning

Everybody looking good

And glad to greet the day

Mama Cass is playing Sergeant Pepper

Through her open window

Singing harmonies with Rita Meter Maid

They'll never take away

The Crazy Chelsea Daze"

And so, the stories begin with "Chelsea Daze," a piece heady with sixties verve in a McCartney-flavoured Music Hall setting that references scenarios now marooned in the amber of the decade's pop mythology. A consequence of nods and winks and "say no more."

The theme of better days and that passing of the years is evoked in "Songs Of Old Times," which delivers a maudlin and poetic eloquence based on characters who once frequented an old pub, and would occasionally burst forth with an impromptu song. Were Billy Joel English, the lady in question could have been his creation, or from the achingly empathetic pen of the late Shel Silverstein.

"I was once a beauty

My hair was golden as the midday sun

I lay with those who needed comfort

And with a kiss as they slept, I was gone"

There's a dreamlike ambiance, a lullaby with a darkly lyrical edge that is almost psalm-like, to "In The Pursuit Of Love." The song sways, swirls, and almost hypnotizes with its mildly dervish-like chant, with darkness at its heart.

"Love scars and it wounds

It teases and grooms me

It sails me on seas

Then leaves and maroons me"

"Abbey Road, April 1974" is Howard's autobiographical paean to a dream realized, his sublime recollection of a long-wished-for moment, the recording of his songs in that legendary place. Possessed of an up-tempo cheekiness, it sounds reminiscent of The Zombies with a sly glance of acknowledgment to the Fab Four.

"This is the day of your life

The day you arrived into light

This is the day of your life

The day you surmised to make things right"

"A Painter's Gift (In Brushed Imaginings)" has chamber-baroque shadings. Wistful and haunting, but belied by an undertow of classicism. Those piano lessons were not wasted on young Master Howard. A certain refinement and prophetic nuance inhabits the lyric.

"When tales we told through a painter's gift

The headlands swept elsewhere

What memories joined the flood

The shores lifeblood

A watercolor wash

Of a child's imaginings

In brushed imaginings"

Dusty Springfield could have effortlessly bathed in the pop froth of "Look At Life" with the assistance of a full orchestral setting in sass, swing and sixties gusto. It is a cavalcade of evocations. A casual masterpiece, it doesn't overstay its welcome.

"Watching in a cafe

All the conversations going on

Some of them seem angry

Others holding hands in love's sweet bond

None of them I'll ever know

And wonder as they go

What futures they have planned or simply long for"

Overnight Bags by John Howard

A sunny, breezy deceptiveness of tone sweetens the sorrow touched upon in "What God Is This." That dreadful loss of a briefly youthful sense of permanence, cut even shorter by the scythe of AIDS. A carefree generation eclipsed and bowed. The title casually confronts the lack of divinity in God's followers who saw the disease as a rightful plague—the lack of grace and compassion from those supposed to exemplify those attributes.

"Tomorrow was never a place we looked for

Just lived for the moment

The urge to explore

Till the waters swept

The bodies from the shore"

There's a conversational take reminiscent of early Gilbert O'Sullivan, with a waltz-like motif and a host of polaroid-captured moments in "A Room At The Top," suggestions and themes, like questions or prayers.

"In the old attic window

I saw someone laughing

Or was it a reflection of a bird in full song"

"My Father's Prayer" has the irony of seeming like a show tune at the end of a theatrical event, and in a way it is since it reflects upon Howard's gentle and genial father, a fellow musician, and his disappearance within Alzheimer's. A piece of emotional scope and wide musical range, it is as complex as its subject matter.

"All of the people who healed

And then fractured me

Have all just abandoned me

Like a drunk in a bar

In the early hours of the morning

I look at the sky

Waiting for shooting stars waving goodbye"

We all have friends we wonder about, people who disappear but linger in the mind as a source of inner smiles. "Josie, Do You Remember?" stitches together a delightful series of diligent vignettes. Worldly wise without being world weary, a perfect reconsidering of the lost strands of an important soul, a letter of distance and longing dressed as a song.

"Josie, I've been wondering

If you're still out there and laughing

At the way your life is raveling

In the hurricane you made"

"Overnight Bags" is the closer and the title piece. A moody gem based on an actor's life on the road, it applies to anyone who performs and then moves on. Pure Howard in scope and pathos, a weaving and a wavering of eloquent reflections, it seems a kitchen sink melodrama in black and white worthy of the dulcet tones of Scott Walker, were he still here.

"We'll go down many roads

Past lives we'll never know

That brush against us

With the promise of possibilities"

If this collection of songs were to receive the acknowledgment it merits, justly and fairly, the album would be lauded, feted and observed. A discreet treasure of unfussy delights, it consolidates Howard as a master of his craft. A glam survivor from the early seventies now in his seventies, bedecked by a fabulous beard that should be embellished with glitter and stars, he remains a creative force to be reckoned with.

As Mr Ferry once so archly intoned, "A Fabulous Creation."

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Sobriety Refined

Robert Cochrane — Tue, 04 Aug 2026 14:00:00 +0000

Sobriety Refined Robert Cochrane August 4, 2026 - 10:00

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folk rock

Michael J Sheehy & The Hired Mourners: Don't We Deserve Some Kind Of Love? (Dimple Discs - Vinyl, CD, Digital Download)

When an album opens with the line "Stitches burst," it proves a perfect introduction to a raw and tender enterprise, the dark sides of songs. It is also the first effort in decades when not a drop of alcohol passed the singer Michael J Sheehy's lips. "Like Blood On Snow," the tune in question, glides along via a ghostly shimmering of guitar akin to an incidental sequence from a David Lynch vista; a semi-spoken vocal painting a unique impressionistic melancholy.

It is followed by "Full Moon, Empty Belly," which could be the late Lee Hazlewood in elegant cahoots with the mannered miseries of Chris Isaak, but with a playful skip in its steps of raw and reflective honesty.

"My wounds are deep and fresh

The mirror becomes a razor

And I carve away my flesh

I lean into the hunger

I lean into the fear

And I lean into the darkness

Till I disappear"

The ghost of Bill Fay casually haunts at his gossamer best the delicately graceful "Don't Put Yourself Beyond The Reach Of Love." A lightness of touch presides, unafraid in slow piano perfection, there, but almost not, whilst delivering an emphasis and yearning. eloquently understated by a casually refined vocal.

"And it's okay to be frightened

And it's okay to cry

It's okay to lose yourself sometimes

But don't let love pass you by"

"You Better Take Everything" possesses that dour hymnal aspect of David Ackles in what it choses to discard. a lo-fi confection from the "less is more" school of sparse nonchalance that Mickey Newbury perfected as sparse fragility. A song for the perpetually dispossessed, with aching strings and a mannered sorrowing.

"Every empty promise

Every moment of doubt

Every word I choked on

Before I could spit them out"

Like a slow dance, "Pure Deep Water" uses such a motif, a neat act in encompassing dangerous space whilst never overcrowding it. A kind of mystic perfection, "Only Drinking In My Dreams" is a hymn for the last dregs of a departing evening as tables are cleared and shutters rattle closed. It slithers like an insidious snake within the mind of listeners with neat brevity and dark humour.

"My car won't start

And my favorite porn star

Is born again

I'm out here alone

The whole world is stoned

And I need a friend"

The nifty "If Had Known It Was The Last Time" could in another life become a neatly deft cabaret ballad, but it neatly vanishes into the thinnest air just as it has accosted one's attention. A deft beguilement. Playful lushness attends "The Left Hand Don't Need To Know." A keening element of professed grief accompanied by a deft beguilement of violin implicit of darkness falling as mist settles across heads of purple heather.

"So, keep your actions pure

Without thought for reward or show

And if your right hand

Does a good thing

The left hand don't need to know"

"Don't We Deserve Some Kind Of Love" tugs at the heart in the poetic fashion of early Tim Hardin. clipped and archly bare, here is a song that Morrissey should steal, and hopefully shall.

"The damaged and the broken

The mighty and the small

The heathens who have

Seen and done most everything

And the holier than thou

Who've done nothing at all"

The closing bow arrives as "Tiny Blessings," a wry and rueful madrigal reminiscent of the deceptively lugubrious Jake Thackray. Precise, concise and effortlessly assured, it never overstays its sense of welcome.

"Always count your blessings

Even when you're feeling blue

Try to smile and remember

Someone is hurting more than you"

Full-bodied clarity, rendered in reflective maladies, raw but beautiful and never depressing, despite a somber cloaking. Carried aloft by subtle songcraft, these ten tracks gift a seemingly longer, more involved journey, a sure indication of reflective time well spent, milled and presented as a seamless stitching of disparate shadows.

Sobriety embraced and personified as brave defiance.

A tendering enterprise of considered exposure and expulsion

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My Friend Chris Cornell, An Appreciation

Gary Lucas — Mon, 27 Jul 2026 21:25:42 +0000

My Friend Chris Cornell, An Appreciation Gary Lucas July 27, 2026 - 17:25

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remembrance

I just got a copy of the new vinyl double picture disc version of Chris Cornell's Carry On solo album from 2007. I am all over this album, playing on 11 tracks out of the original album's 14, mainly electric guitar (including a couple of maniacal solos such as the barn-burner above, and also on the James Bond thingy "You Know My Name" from the Casino Royale soundtrack, probably the best-known track from the album), plus National steel acoustic guitar on one cut. This picture disc vinyl version contains 2 more tracks hitherto unknown to me which were included on foreign versions of the album (the Japanese cut, for one).

I first met Chris at a memorial service for Jeff Buckley at St. Ann’s Church in early June 1997, shortly after Jeff passed. The two were friends, and Chris later wrote the song "Euphoria Morning" for him. Chris gave me the warmest smile at this very somber event, wherein Jeff’s Telecaster (a loaner from St. Ann’s Janine Nichols) was dead center on the church’s pulpit next to a large urn containing his ashes.

I wrote Chris’s manager afterward to say hello and also to express my willingness to work with Chris on any upcoming project he might be contemplating. I was a big Soundgarden fan, and had once opened for his band solo at CBGB.

I never got a formal reply. But nearly 10 years later, quite out of the blue, I got a call from producer Steve Lillywhite, whose work I'd admired ever since hearing his earliest productions (The Members, Big Country, XTC, and on through Talking Heads and U2). He was at the time heading up the A&R department at Columbia Records, but was still allowed to moonlight as a producer. He told me Chris was eager to have me play on his upcoming album for Interscope, to be recorded in LA with Steve producing—which I readily agreed to

So I flew out there shortly thereafter with my ’64 Strat, ’44 Gibson J-45, and 1921 National steel guitar, and a bunch of effects pedals, for what was supposed to be a day in the studio with Chris and Steve. They were both very warm and friendly, and they proceeded to throw a whole bunch of unfamiliar music at me. There were charts, and also some home demos Chris had made. I’m not a great sight-reader, but I handled everything they came up with with a certain esprit de corps. Chris was impressed, and at the end of the day he came over to my little workstation set up and asked: “Can you be here all week? I love the way you play.” Sure, man!

I worked out my extended revised deal with Interscope, the car rental company, and the hotel they’d booked me into—basically cleared the decks, and went to town in the studio over the next week. Looking back objectively now (haha, how could that be), thanks to this new Carry On double vinyl picture sleeve package, I would give the album a 7 for production, an 8 for creative risk-taking on Chris's part viz, the inventive songwriting, and choice of covers (a doom-laden trawl through "Billie Jean," anybody?), and 9 for his overall vocal performance. Chris possessed the leather lungs of a Viking and was certainly one of the most authoritative and commanding singers I've ever worked with, and that includes Jeff Buckley, Captain Beefheart, Lou Reed, and Nick Cave.

Producer Steve Lillywhite, Gary, and Chris on the last day of recording my guitars in LA

Turning my attention to this objet du disque nearly 19 years on, however, I am not sure that rendering the soupy glop of PVC into picture disc photos of Chris (nice photos...but still) enhances the playback quality much (I have a pretty good sound system)—and may well cause some problems there, like mucho popping and crackling on listening back. And did I mention this package is retailing for fifty bucks? If you're really into Chris and a super fan, he looks pretty damn good on the picture discs and in the gatefold. But if you're into high-end sound, well... Me, I still prefer digital to vinyl (a heretical position I know), mainly because it's a noiseless forever upon playback. Every time you play a CD you treasure, and eventually bequeath to your daisy chain of deadbeat descendants over the years, it's always gonna sound the same to them right till the very end of the line of succession, to the last syllable of recorded time as it were—just as it sounded the very first time you played it. (Although I recall when CDs first reared their shiny little circular heads, there was fear in the land amongst collectors that over the years the playback quality would diminish/drop off/degrade; ie, a limited shelf life. I dunno HOW exactly the CD would be rendered crappy and useless; maybe bits and bytes would drop off the shiny side of the disc all over your carpet like so many motes of dust as time marches on. But lo and behold, the original CDs issued in 1979 by Phillips and Sony still sound as pristine as the day they were first opened and played.)

Vinyl, on the other hand, as we all know, captures the overall analog frequencies of the original source material better than digital recordings of the same, but it is hardly forever, the playback sound degrading further every time you take the album out for a spin, as the stylus plows the vinyl furrow deeper and deeper into the groove until it becomes a noisy rut... But I digress.

This is an excellent album, and I was honored to play on it (and hey, I get no royalties for saying that; I was a gunslinger for hire). And don't believe everything you read on Wikipedia either; the entry for this album makes it sound like I just played acoustic on it. Zeesh!

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The Impossible Dream

Bruce Bernstein — Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:09:03 +0000

The Impossible Dream Bruce Bernstein June 21, 2026 - 20:09

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documentary

Sun Ra: Do The Impossible Soundtrack (Modern Harmonic)

My only complaint about the otherwise superb documentary Sun Ra: Do the Impossible, about the above named musical genius and cosmic revolutionary, which played the festival circuit in 2025 before its television broadcast on PBS’s American Masters this past February, is that I wished it would have at some point taken a respite from all the fascinating history, colorful backdrops, far out concepts and revelatory, sometimes anecdotal, information from witnesses, collaborators and experts and let some of the work of this legendary jazz artist play for an extended period of time. How else could a newcomer truly appreciate the artistry of what this visionary has concocted in the studio or on the stage over his multi-decade career?

Personally, I would have liked to hear a lengthy, preferably cacophonous segment from Sun Ra’s pivotal masterpiece The Magic City, just for the pleasure of knowing it would probably freak out a large portion of the staid PBS audience. That 1965 album is anchored by the mind blowing 27 minute title track, (they both take their name from the nickname of Sun Ra’s home town, Birmingham, Alabama), a towering monument in large ensemble free jazz improvisation that ranks alongside such mammoth and influential recordings as John Coltrane’s Ascension, Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz and The Cecil Taylor European Orchestra’s Alms/Tiergarten (Spree).

But I can understand why the filmmakers felt that they couldn’t let a single piece of music (or even several pieces of music) stand as a representation for what this renowned Arkestra leader has endeavored to communicate over his lifetime. The scope of his career is immense. The man who legally changed his name to Le Sony’r Ra after being born Herman Poole "Sonny" Blount composed over 1,000 works and issued more than 200 self-produced records. They range from the swing era big band arrangements he wrote for Fletcher Henderson to the obscure doo-wop or R&B singles he created for the jukebox market to the various bop-derived avant-garde excursions into collective improvisation to the futuristic electronic experiments he dabbled in to the space age theatrics of his prime and finally to his contribution on a tribute album to Walt Disney towards the end of his life. It would be impossible, given the time constraints of a feature film, to use a few performances to encapsulate how Sun Ra figured in the world of jazz or music in general. Any example would beg the question of why any number of other works are being excluded.

Thankfully, Modern Harmonic, a subsidiary of the vital archival label Sundazed, has more than compensated for this absence by providing a double-LP soundtrack, pressed on high-quality, appropriately regal purple vinyl, and a Blu-ray of the film. (The soundtrack is also being issued on CD. According to the listing on Amazon, it contains 3 CDs, and I logically assume it’s actually a double CD plus the Blu-ray of the film, but I cannot be certain of this.) This is the label that, in recent years, has launched a serious reissue campaign for Sun Ra’s work, spearheaded by Irwin Chusid, who, decades ago, did everything in his power to bring back into print the all-but-forgotten catalog of Raymond Scott’s classic 78s.

While this release is indeed a retrospective of this bandleader's multiple styles, it shouldn’t be seen as a “greatest hits” package by any means. Although a few titles come from such famous albums as Jazz In Silhouette and Super-Sonic Jazz, the majority are taken from lesser-known releases, even from a few posthumous ones of recent vintage. There are four previously unissued performances: two from Denmark in 1971 and two from Montreux in 1976. For better or worse, 13 of the 37 tracks are abridged. And so, listening to this soundtrack is not at all akin to listening to, for example, a comprehensive box set issued by Mosaic Records, where all the takes are complete. Every alternate version known to exist is presented in full array, leading to an experience that can either be fascinating or tedious, depending on one’s level of scholarly interest. Rather, this set is curated and sequenced for optimal pleasure rather than scientific knowledge, for both the uninitiated and the seasoned expert. As such, it is invigorating. More importantly, it works best as a companion to the documentary, which means it was a brilliant decision to include a copy of this film, even though I suspect most people will more frequently return to the audio document than the audio/visual one. The album and the film truly speak to one another.

Highlights include the contemplative and moving solo piano piece, "Quiet Ecstasy," originally issued on Aurora Borealis in 1981. It’s an almost-lullaby that occasionally and effortlessly drifts in and out of dissonance to great effect. "Pescara Mini-Moog Solo," taken from an Italian broadcast in 1976, segues into an abridged version of "Space Probe" from the 1974 album of the same name (although it was recorded four years earlier). Combined, these trippy, intergalactic electronic improvisations sound like a transmission from Saturn, both the name of Sun Ra’s record label and the planet he claimed he was “transmolecularized” to, where he was apparently informed that “the world would descend into chaos and that he must speak through music.” Given the current state of things, it’s hard to argue the veracity of this. Two fun tracks are "El Is a Sound of Joy," originally issued on Live at Montreux (1976), and "Watusa," presumably from that same concert but previously unissued. The former is a swinging big-band romp that, without a doubt, conveys joy, primarily through the dominant trumpet solo. It’s unclear if it is played by Ahmed Abdullah, Chris Capers, or Al Evans (all trumpeters in that lineup) because, unfortunately, there are no musician credits listed on the sleeve. The latter is a lively percussive jam with a heavy African vibe. Also worth noting is the inclusion of a fairly straightforward but totally swinging big-band rendition of the Benny Goodman classic "Big John’s Special" from a 1982 broadcast recorded at the Kongsberg Jazz Festival in Norway, and an endearingly offbeat 1960 doo-wop single "Dreaming" by a combo called The Cosmic Rays. Both speak to the versatility of this maestro and his dexterity in working within the boundaries of the mainstream. Also, they are, to use a term frequented by the late jazz scholar Phil Schaap, “quite fetching.”

All told, the soundtrack is an excellent entry point to anyone who has heard of this iconoclastic twentieth-century artist, and maybe has some vague awareness of the myths and legends that surrounded him, but has never found an opportunity to do a deep dive into his legacy, possibly because there is far too much material to know where to begin. Yet it is also an eye-opener for those who have lived with his music over the course of their lifetimes, as it offers many pieces of a complex and sometimes contradictory portrait worth savoring in this collage-like presentation. While I could have done without some of the spoken-word introductions and transitions included, especially those not spoken by Mr. Ra himself, there aren’t that many, and they are all thankfully brief.

Sun Ra is currently experiencing a renaissance, thanks to the devoted efforts of record labels such as Modern Harmonic that are not only bringing some of his essential albums back into print but also unearthing newly discovered live recordings. Sun Ra: Do the Impossible is a delightful addition to his vast canon. In an ideal world, this documentary and its accompanying album would bring this virtuoso to the widest possible audience.

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The Breathing Tides

Robert Cochrane — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 05:00:00 +0000

The Breathing Tides Robert Cochrane June 19, 2026 - 01:00

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Music Review

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singer-songwriter

JOHN HOWARD: "What God Is This?" (Think Like A Key)

The poet Rupert Brooke once wrote 'Think only this of me. There is some corner of a foreign field that is forever England." That sentiment could aptly be applied to ex-pat singer-songwriter John Howard, whose replacement nook for his homeland is now Murcia in Spain. From there, in the past two decades, he has delivered an endless cascade of high-quality songcraft that shows no sign of diminishment in either torrent or tone.

His latest single, "What God I This?," is a delicate hymn that echoes the tides arriving and departing like an endless longing, an incessant breathing. The visuals for this charming exercise in wistful nostalgia are a mixture of the homo-eroticism of the kind purveyed by the recently departed David Hockney, with shades of Catholic gilding, and tones of Visconti's "Death in Venice."

The song is a time-distant reflection on the brief idyll prior to the AIDS crisis, when society seemed to turn a corner of acceptance, and reflects upon the barbaric cruelty that ensued. It also chastises the idea that such events could be the act of a loving God, as many followers sought to hatefully frame them within the confines of their faith. An elegy as a protest song, born of bitter experience and loss. But it also has a sublime sense of nostalgia. Is the man in the video remembering his own youth, or regretting those that he views as something once desired but lost? It is a beguiling ambiguity, as the song meanders like a madrigal toward its resignation to incoming waves. A lamentation to stark, layered regret; a vague chastisement of a deity who gifts with one hand whilst robbing that gift with the other.

"Lying on beaches

Watching the sea

Enjoying the golden ones

Smiling at me

Generous intentions

Shared amongst friends

Nothing was permanent

No heartbreaks to mend"

The cinematic video by Roger Houdaille, a Technicolor delight where vivid blue skies caress white-washed streets as handsome faces smile and wave from swaying boats, soothes and invites. Postcards brought to gaudy life, enhancing the occasional desolation implied by certain oblique moments.

"What God Is This?" is a meditative work of gentle contemplation.

It delivers a perfect entrée into anticipation for Howard's forthcoming album, which drops in August.

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Ice Cream For Crows

Gary Lucas — Fri, 29 May 2026 21:28:30 +0000

Ice Cream For Crows Gary Lucas May 29, 2026 - 17:28

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Music Review

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alt rock

Willie DeVille strolled into Don Van Vliet's dressing room at The Bottom Line in 1978 after Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band had delivered a fantastic return-to-form performance in NYC. This was two years before I joined Van Vliet to play on Doc at the Radar Station. I was working at CBS Records as a copywriter at the time, and I was backstage as Don's good friend.

After introducing himself to a relatively friendly Beefheart, Willie gushed:

"Hey Don — I got your tunings off your guitarist — and they're beautiful!!"

Don sprang up, fuming:

"You mean... the tunings I INVENTED??"

"Exactly!! Hey man, I gotta take a leak..."

Willie waltzed into the little toilet off to the side of the dressing room, the door closed, and Don said in a hushed, theatrical voice:

"Up, Simba!"

Loud sounds through the door of Mink as he is relieving himself.

"Down, Simba!"

Willie came out all smiles, said his goodbyes, shook Don's hand (he was a big fan), and stumbled out into the night.

I left with Don shortly thereafter. We took a taxi to an all-night coffee shop, where, over multiple cups of java, he continued fuming about DeVille's brazen thievery and his guitarist's apparent betrayal — and then we went back to his room at the Gramercy Park Hotel, where the band was staying.

Around 3 am, having worked himself into a lather over this supposed treachery, he rang the offending guitarist's room and woke him.

"HEY MAN!" he hollered into the phone. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING, giving my tunings away to Mink DeVille??"

"Don, those are standard blues tunings — Drop D, open A, open E..."

"Man, don't you understand? I've been ripped off so much! People are like CROWS!! They'll just PECK AWAY!!"

"Okay, sorry, Don. I gotta go back to sleep..."

That was my cue to leave. It had been quite a night.

I went home to crash for a few hours before heading up to Black Rock for yet another boring day working for the Man (who, as everyone knows, "can't bust our music" — in the words of a famously tone-deaf CBS Records ad of the late '60s).

But that day I was all smiles. I always loved hanging with Don.

Who once stated as a Beefheartian axiom:

"A little paranoia is a good propeller."

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GRAVITY IS THE MASTER: CAPTAIN BEEFHEART vs. (One of) THE GRUNT PEOPLE

Gary Lucas — Mon, 04 May 2026 00:55:27 +0000

GRAVITY IS THE MASTER: CAPTAIN BEEFHEART vs. (One of) THE GRUNT PEOPLE Gary Lucas May 3, 2026 - 20:55

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avant garde

The mastering of the 1980 Virgin/Atlantic album Doc at the Radar Station, which includes my first-ever appearance on a major-label album, performing the Don Van Vliet instrumental composition "Flavor Bud Living" solo, was a complicated affair.

Mastering is a very important step in the process of realizing the finished black vinyl album, all dressed up in a shiny, attractive cover packaging for sale in the marketplace, and eventually placed lovingly on a turntable by music fans. It’s an end-stage refinement, a goosing of the mixed-down two-track quarter-inch master tape for optimal playback at home, preferably on a good stereo system; basically, a tweaking of the final submitted master tape for maximum oomph in the ear of the beholder. Refinements added in the mastering process include additional EQ, reverb, and volume adjustments, plus compression where needed, with the result next to be inscribed by a cutting lathe digging one big concentric groove into the gleaming surface of a blank lacquer disc — the master template for metal stampers to be manufactured and sent out to the record plant to pump out multiple vinyl album copies. For audiophiles, a well-mastered vinyl album was like, umm, ice cream for crow, boasting crystal-clear sonics that seemed to leap out of your stereo speakers in an almost 3D reproduction of the music on record — and mastering engineers like Bob Ludwig and Bernie Grundman became legends.

In spring 1980 our recording and mixing engineer Glenn Kolotkin, who had toiled for months with Don and the guys to get a really well-recorded album in the can at Soundcastle Studios in Glendale, California, convinced us to take care of this all important mastering job back in Manhattan at CBS Records Mastering Studios —essentially a garage, which at the time was located right next to my place of employmentat at Black Rock on West 52nd Street, where I tolied as a copywriter for CBS Records — and to have this operation done on CBS's spiffy new Discomputer Cutting Lathe, supposedly the state of the art in the field, with micro-adjustments to the abolute sound made by computer.

Don and his wife Jan flew in from the desert, and I rented a car and picked them up at JFK, acting as their chauffeur (another managerial duty — my then wife Ling and I were Don’s de facto managers during that period, as he trusted we had his best interests at heart — which we did). Early the next night, I drove them over to the Mastering Studio, where we met Glenn (a really good guy) and the troll in charge of mastering our album and operating the Discomputer. The dude who handled this critically important operation was literally a middle-aged semi-inebriated "wild and crazy guy" named Stanley, who didn't get the music at all (naturally), laughed incessantly and tortured Don Van Vliet mercilessly throughout the session, who after listening through the album repeatedly began singing "I vent to see da Gypsy Vo-mannn" in a grotesque parody of the Beefheart singing voice, while futzing with the controls of this new disco-contraption.

Stanley set the mastering levels too high on the first pass, and Don’s recorded voice proved too extreme to track during "Hot Head," the first number on Doc at the Radar Station. A "chip fire" broke out midway through the first song, melting hot PVC that piled up all over the diamond-tipped cutting stylus, which jammed at that point in the song and ceased moving, refusing to inscribe the groove further, rendering this first pass useless. (Shades of Don blowing up a ribbon microphone while laying down the vocals for “Electricity” on the very first Beefheart album, Safe As Milk, in 1967 due to the sheer power of his voice. You can actually hear the mic break up and disintegrate near the end of the song, when he sings: “Eeeeeeeeee-lek-triiciteeeeeeee!"

photo by Glenn Kolotkin taken at Sound Castle Studios Glendale for recording of Doc at the Radar Station

Don freaked. He look worried and started sweating, He was normally, imperiously, cool as a cucumber and in control of most life situations unfolding around him (easy when you live in the Mojave Desert) — except when he collided with mainstream music biz functionaries in NY, LA, and London — and now he was at the mercy of this clown, this "human paraquat" (to quote The Dude in The Big Lebowski, who dug Beefheart). We'd put such care into the realization of this album, and this fucker literally did not get Don or his music, couldn't care less in fact, and seemed hell-bent on screwing up the final stage here.

Don literally laid it on the line and pleaded with him:

"Sir! Don't you understand that this album may be the LAST FAIR DEAL GOING DOWN??"

I don't think I ever saw Van Vliet desperate like this, ever. Don seemed to have no ability or agency to King Canute-like roll back the rising tide of bullshit that threatened to engulf him at this moment.

The guy just smiled uncomprehendingly at Don as if he didn’t understand what Don was worried about. Glenn quickly intervened and suggested we break for a drink at a watering hole across the street.

So we took Stanley across the street to his favorite bar in an attempt to humor/pacify the guy into cutting the crap and doing his job properly. Stanley knocked back a few more, which seemed to calm him down. And when we got back to the studio, he eventually cut an acceptable master for us on the mighty CBS Discomputer Cutting Lathe.

Saved!

The album came out a few months later to spectacular reviews (thank you, Charles Shaar Murray, among others).

The week of release, though, Atlantic severed its distribution ties with Virgin Records, and the album literally disappeared from retail shelves overnight.

We had a UK and European tour that autumn, which was a triumph, with audiences and critics alike hailing a return to form for Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band--but good luck finding the album at the Virgin Megastore on Oxford Street in London.

That was my first taste of hard knocks in the music biz...and it was not going to be my last, not by a long chalk.

They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

I'd had a taste of the poison of show-business — the endless cycle of recording and touring and promoting and publicizing, and then doing it all over again — the whole vampire circus.

And despite the defeat of our superb album ultimately crashing and burning due to a situation beyond our control, I enjoyed the whole experience. I felt alive in contrast to the deadness I felt as an employee of the corporation.

It got me adrenalized, and higher than any drug I'd ever taken — and I wanted more.

“I can't go on. I’ll go on.” - Samuel Beckett, The Unnameable

And I'm still here to tell the tale.

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New York With An English Air

Robert Cochrane — Sat, 14 Feb 2026 19:02:05 +0000

New York With An English Air Robert Cochrane February 14, 2026 - 14:02

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Music Review

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singer songwriter

EDWARD ROGERS: Astor Place (TLAK Vinyl/CD/Download)

When the singer whom Quentin Crisp referred to as "Mr Sting" immortalised him in the wonderfully apt An Englishman In New York, it conferred, even now, long after the death of its subject, a lingering sense of exclusivity to the title. Crisp never made it into the new century, bowing out a month shy of it and his 91st Christmas Day birthday in Manchester on the eve of a sold-out tour of the UK. After a long-haul flight from his adopted city, one he had been strenuously advised not to undertake on account of his failing health and advanced years, it was a suitably provincial end to a strangely international life.

There are, of course, a plethora of English exiles in Manhattan. The singer-songwriter Edward Rogers, born in Birmingham but raised in New York, whose output is both nostalgic for the music of his birth country, whilst imbued with a certain Manhattan grit and edginess, is one to consider. His new album, Astor Place, is a gaudy sequence of nostalgic postcards to an era of English songcraft by which he has been cultured and informed. A nod to here, a wink to there, sixties beats collide with a fey, world-weary glam, creating an intoxicating brew that steps free of the shadows of his influences to present a modern, eclectic cascade of memorable, poetic songs. A curious series of English thoughts and Manhattanite references rise and fade.

The title track, a tribute to the central heart of the East Village, skips into life with an exceptional yet appropriate breeziness in its gait akin to the Psychedelic Furs, whilst deploying a rumbling string arrangement of rock refinement.

"Lost stories and forgotten facts

a world of art that still attracts

a new facade with a current twist

still the spot for a secret tryst."

"The Olde Church" presents as an exceptional piece of baroque psych, with elements of Colin Blunstone, mannered yet exquisitely casual, and languid eloquence. A Mott The Hoople swagger emboldens "Lies, Cries and Alibis," a wonderfully confessional piece of down-side rock weariness with an up-tempo glide. "Romeo" could be Blondie circa 1977, devoid of Debbie Harry, a slab of Max's Kansas City meets CBGB's sweatiness and grit. The single "Magical Drum" harnesses Donovan-like whimsy in a tryst with Ray Davies at his conversational best. Effortlessly louche and melodic. Nick Drake on an upward glide.

There's a gossamer psych-folk delicacy to the madrigal "Diamonds Hidden In the Pearls." Haunting and occasionally ethereal, it drifts along and away all too swiftly, whilst "Tears In My Martini" possesses a certain late sixties "Image-era" Bowie vibe, with shades of Mick Ronson's undervalued early solo efforts. Sprinklings of glam seasoning leave a crackling of neon in its wake. "I Walk Behind Your Shadow" could be The Zombies in their baroque best, with a dash of The Left Banke, a beautifully realised paean that lingers in the mind.

"It takes two to make it perfect

It takes two to do it right

'Cause one's the loneliest number

At the end of the longest night"

"15 Eldon Road" swaggers in awash with glammy chords; "All The Young Dudes" with a certain backward glance of sad nostalgia for the loss of childhood. "Every day was summertime, at least in my mind," underscored with wonderful piano stabs and a climax of "cry in your gin" tarnished glitter 'n' regret, akin to Cockney Rebel at their shimmering and moody best. The journey completed from the dark, stark monochrome of '60/'70s Birmingham to Manhattan's vibrant East Village, accompanied by memories that taunt and linger.

"On The Other Side Of the Rainbow" is introduced by a haunting trumpet, a world weariness possessed by wisdom without descending into bitterness—a perfect balancing act of recollections, their pull, and strange power.

Beautifully produced by Don Fleming (Sonic Youth/Teenage Fanclub), Astor Place combines a poetic backward glance with an air of contemporary relevance whilst providing the proceedings with a sense of intimacy and immediacy. Adorned by a gaudy, vivid sleeve, a contemporaneous take on psych sensibilities, the perfect packaging for an album that perfectly wears its influences whilst never drowning under their weight. Eloquent, reflective, and sincere, it presents Mr. Rogers as a likely English contender for Quentin Crisp's Manhattan crown.

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New Praise of Former Glories

Robert Cochrane — Sun, 08 Feb 2026 15:01:19 +0000

New Praise of Former Glories Robert Cochrane February 8, 2026 - 10:01

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Music Review

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singer-songwriter

John Howard: Can You Hear Me OK? (2026 Prof. Stoned Remaster)

For 30 years, John Howard's sequel to his debut album, Kid In A Big World, remained unheard, unaired, and uncared for. The suits in power at CBS Records had yanked Can You Hear Me OK? from the release schedules of February 1976, and only a lone 45 crept out. Having placed their dynamic new signing in the studio with Biddu and his orchestra, it was anticipated they'd have something they could board the disco train with. What they received was a mannered, sophisticated, and artful affair, more akin to Bill Fay's self-titled, sumptuous debut of 1970 than to glitzy dance pop.

The same sad fate awaited his third offering.

Stars were aligned but not in the favour of the immaculately suited and coiffured boy from a Northern town, with a penchant for baroque balladry. Despite his debut album having shifted 15,000 copies, without the passport to greater glory of a hit single, the suits were cautious, Howard had received no BBC airplay for his brace of earlier 45s and although he wasn't making the kind of overt waves his direct piano contemporary Jobriath was regarding his sexuality, it was easy to discern the true nature of his identity, and there were zero qualms by they that could, about using that knowledge to impede his chances.

As his own career stalled, Howard drifted into a successful career in A&R, his sole album becoming a dump-bin resident that caught the eye of discerning crate sifters. When it was finally given an unexpected digital outing in 2003, reviews were rightfully enthusiastic, 5 stars in Uncut, and a miraculous second bite at the cherry of pop began.

Can You Hear Me OK? was finally introduced to a new and waiting world, even securing a much-deserved vinyl release in 2018. It has continued to be appreciated as Howard's output, twenty-one albums from an extraordinary second wave that thankfully shows no sign of running out of momentum. Now, it has been gifted a Prof Stoned remaster via Think Like A Key label, who secured his exceptional work on remastering Kid In A Big World and Howard's extraordinarily well-received 2025 release, For Those That Wander By.

"19th September" arrives with a cinematic orchestral vista before gliding into an exquisite exercise in rococo balladry, reminiscent of Jobriath: a theme for an unmade movie, lush and intoxicating. There's a distinct air of Bowie-inflected vocal mannerisms within "Frightened Now" with shades of 'Rock n Roll Suicide' whilst possessing an effortless melodic panache, neatly underscored by Biddu's strings. "Two People In The Morning" appears as a breezy sixties series of kitchen-sink vignettes. a pair of star-crossed lovers devoid of stars.

'You Keep Me Steady' is searing and soaring, a piece of Jimmy Webb lushness with a nod and a wink to "Wichita Lineman," the kind of song the late Miss Springfield ought to have made her own. With "Finally Adored," there's a sense of the poignant balladry of Badfinger, a malady of melodies, briefly sublime as they entwine above an effortlessly rolling cascade of piano. There's a decidedly plaintive American pop tempo to "Can You Hear Me Ok?," a letter to missed hopes and lost opportunities.

"You're Mine Tonight" sounds like a poppy Lou Reed on uppers. Some Coney Island Babies transported to Brighton Pier. Sleek and eloquent, it's a walk on the sorry side of yearning. |n "Missing You," Howard combines the lavish with the lush from a glammy guitar opening, it becomes a paean of longing with a prancing melody cocooned in florid piano flourishes and splendid surges of orchestration. A big production with restraint. "Play Me A Love Song" hints at the artistry Kate Bush would later make her own. bold yet seemingly effortless. The curtain closes with the album's lone single, "I Got My Lady," which could and should have fared better.

There's a bonus selection at the end that enhances and embellishes the entire exercise of excavation and discovery. Amongst these, a delightful Eddie Pumer overseeing from 1976 of "Is This My Love" composed by Hurricane Smith and two Trevor Horn productions prior to his ABC and ZTT glories, plus a live take of "I Got My Lady" rescued from a rare BBC TV appearance.

Just as old gems deserve a little TLC, so too do lost songs from half a century ago. Prof Stoned has accomplished a wonderful exercise in raising such dust that has descended as a wonderful coating of glitter. It should be noted that this album sounds nothing like a second effort by a young guy in his early twenties, but reads as an accomplishment by a long-established artist. It can only be hoped that it will soon have a further outing on vinyl and shall continue to gather belated interest and recognition as the lost and neglected classic it most definitely was, and is.