Vivian Stanshall "Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead" (4*, but approach with caution)

So, what does an artist do when the record company only presses  5,000 copies your debut solo album, Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead, then promptly deletes it?

Bear in mind, before you answer that question, the company in question was Warner Brothers, an outfit whose Stateside roster included such hip but relatively low-selling names as Ry Cooder, Randy Newman and Little Feat, all of whom went on to move a relatively substantial number of units but never managed sales figures that matched their critical acclaim.

A sensitive artistic type might perhaps slink off to lick his wounds in some dingy garret, but Vivian Stanshall was hardly the shrinking artistic violet, was he? No, if you're the man behind the more extreme dadaist tendencies of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band (not that any of the other key players in the Bonzos was exactly straight) you destroy their boardroom and place a bag of bluebottle maggots behind the label president's office radiator. Cop that, young Harry!

On the other hand, even a cursory listen to Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead would, however, prompt the average listener to agree that, yes, I can understand the reservations. Those other names on the Warner Brothers roster had something approaching commercial potential, but on Men, Mr Stanshall, freed from the relative restraining collaborative influence of Neil Innes, his main collaborator in the Bonzo era, headed off to investigate the outer reaches of his considerable imagination.

Exposure to other expressions of the same outré adventurism would have the listener knowing what to expect, but, with the exception of the original Rawlinson's End on the Bonzos contractual obligation Let's Make Up and Be Friendly most of those expressions came after Men Opening Umbrellas Ahead.

While Innes was there through sessions at The Manor, Trident and Apple Studios, as were Traffic (at this point Steve Winwood, Jim Capaldi, Ric Grech, Gaspar Lawal and Rebop Kwaku Baah) and in the absence of co-writers (apart from the opening Afoju Ti Ole Riran (Dead Eyes), co-written with Gaspar Lawal) everything was written and arranged by Stanshall and, not to put too fine a point on it, it shows. Where you could count on Innes to deliver a veneer of commerciality or pop sensibility, what's on offer here veers off towards territory where the buses don't run without quite getting there and while it's not as confronting as it might have been it's hardly Top 40 potential either.

What is there, however, is the Stanshall verbal imagination, expressed in words that don't quite fit in the standard rock'n'roll lexicon and contain frequent references to the Stanshall virile member.

From the opening Afoju Ti Ole Riran (Dead Eyes) which you can’t help reading as a burst of invective against his record company in particular, the music industry in general or Western Society as a whole (or, indeed, all three) through to the concluding Strange Tongues (they’ve tacked both sides of the Lakonga / Baba Tunde single onto the end as bonus tracks, but Strange Tongues is the actual conclusion of the actual album) you’re in the recorded presence of one of the great English eccentrics, a man whose mind roamed paths that exist somewhere on the other side of linguistic inventiveness.

Swingin’ jowls, a puke-box & an ulcer here, the Avant-Gardener pruning his beard over there, one’s left wishing someone had the foresight to declare the man an International Treasure and do something to ensure his survival.

Much of it was, of course, fuelled by drink, and there’s probably no way he was going to live through to a ripe old age, but take Men, follow it with a visit to Sir Henry at Rawlinson End and an excursion to the high veld and Ndidi’s Kraal and place a tick beside the observation that Teddy Boys Don’t Knit and you can’t help wishing someone had been around to ensure more of Stanshall’s imaginings were preserved for posterity.

Oh, and if you're inclined to head over to iTunes and investigate further, click on the one with the copyright notice that reads Estate of Vivian Stanshall 2012...

Chris Ligon "Look At The Birdy" (4*)

Here’s one that takes off the wall into a whole new dimension, folks, and reminds me there are whole slabs of contemporary music that I’ve been aware of for years but still need to investigate.

I was pointed towards this album by a post on Sal Nunziato’s Burning Wood blog. Sal was talking about seeing the latest lineup of NRBQ, an outfit I remember reading about forty-something years ago when they’d abbreviated the New Rhythm and Blues Quartet to the four initials.

But you can’t, as I’ve frequently remarked, catch up on everything, and while I managed to lay my hands on their 1996 live (Tokyo) I’ve managed to negotiate my way through four decades aware of an outfit that has built up a considerable reputation as a live act and an extensive discography (twenty-plus titles at iTunes) and were the unofficial house band in seasons 10, 11 & 12 of The Simpsons without doing too much in the way of further investigation.

Guitarist Scott Ligon is one of the more recent additions to the ever-changing NRBQ line up, and this compilation of songs by his brother Chris was put together by long-term NRBQer Terry Adams, presumably selected from the eight other albums on his website. At fifteen dollars a throw plus shipping that back catalogue might attract some attention from those who have plenty of storage space on the CD shelves and happen to be flush with funds, but for the rest of us Look At The Birdy will have to do.

At least for the time being.

I’m not in the business of appropriating content wholesale from other sites, but in this case I’m inclined to quote Mr Nunziato’s assessment of Birdy as one of the most bizarre little records I have ever heard, causing Sal to sit mouth agape, in a frozen stupor for 33 minutes straight. I didn’t quite go that far, and I’m not sure I agree that Baby Books Bossa and Dr. Peanut (ahem) make the Bonzo Dog Band sound like The Archies, though the comment almost guaranteed I’d be making further investigations.

I’m a huge Bonzos fan, and sighting a comment like that was bound to pique my interest, compris?

But I have to agree that the album’s opener, Buglight, suggests Mr Ligon is operating right out there where the buses don’t run, or, if they do, the service is on the very occasional side of intermittent. How else do you categorise a track that describes the girlfriend’s erotic sensations, stimulated by the electrical zapping of insects? (When my girl sees a bug pop and drop dead / She likes to hop in bed and hug tight). Really?

Florida, following straight after that, is straight ahead pop with a twist, a jaunty little paean to the American Sunshine State complete with a chugga chugga woo woo woo woo chorus, and there’s an exercise in nostalgia on Oh What A Day, complete with cheesy synthesised trumpet and lustful yearnings very firmly in Say what? territory.

The instrumental Baby Books Bossa reminded me of the Holy Modal Rounders rather than the Bonzos headed towards Archies territory, and A Thousand Pumpkins purports to be a contemporary ballad about an attempted assassination of Abraham Lincoln that ends up taking out large quantities of vegetables. The highly experimental (there isn’t really any other tag you can apply to this warped exercise in something indeterminate) I Don't Date churns on, all fractured riff and minimal lyrical content apart from repetitions of the track title, while Look At The Birdy appears to be about a bloke taking baby photos in a shopping mall though one suspects there’s a subtext in operation.

Almond Grove is, in its own way in this environment, a fairly straightforward expression of a love that’s fated to never be, and in Dr. Peanut a girl’s slightly tipsy old chiropractor turns up on her doorstep wanting to take her out to a Japanese restaurant where they got ka-roke-ee...

There’s no way of knowing whether the same dude turns up in Bottom Buck, seeking a girl determined (bet your bottom buck) to find her. One hopes he’s not holding his breath. In Frankenstein Just Got Up a couple who moves into an apartment that the landlord promised would be quiet, only to find out their upstairs neighbour is Frankenstein and he’s forever stomping around (I wish he'd bend his knees), a situation where the only solution involves an axe.

There’s an instrumental interlude (Danny O'Day) before Randy In The Morning plugs a breakfast DJ (or maybe something entirely different, it’s that kind of album) and Girl Of Virginia comes across as relatively straightforward (again, appearances may be deceptive) and The La La Song is exactly that, with forty-nine seconds of jaunty La las. Poetry Slam has emerging poets performing under the threat of a hammer blow to the head, Halfwit has  an almost ear-wormy chorus (it’s not alone in that category) as does Fun, which brings things to a close in territory that’s not a million lyrical miles from Randy Newman’s Old Kentucky Home.

With eighteen tracks clocking in at a tad over thirty-three minutes you might question whether the $16.99 is justified, but if you’re intrigued by people who march to the beat of a different drum it’s about the right dosage.

Bowenites reading this review might be grateful Hughesy’s not polluting the airwaves these days, since Buglight, Florida, the ear-wormy Bottom Buck and Frankenstein Just Got Up would’ve seen fairly regular airplay on the old High Class Music.

Randy Newman "12 Songs" (4.5*)

By the time Randy Newman's second album came out in 1970 he’d already spent close to a decade as a staff writer for a Los Angeles music publisher and had scored enough minor hits to acquire a reputation. After Alan Price’s Simon Smith and Manfred Mann’s So Long Dad a review noting the presence of a Randy Newman song was close to a trademark of quality as far as I was concerned.

When it came to recording his own material, on the other hand, things hadn’t quite matched expectations. While he’d had plenty of experience cutting demos in the studio the heavily orchestrated Lenny Waronker and Van Dyke Parks produced Randy Newman (Creates Something New Under the Sun) delivered semi-baroque arrangements around a vocal style that was, well, idiosyncratic. It was obviously something the Warner Brothers marketing division were aware of (Once you get used to it, his voice is really something was the headline in one advertisement) and with the hindsight that comes with forty-plus years I’m inclined to put some of that down to the influence of Van Dyke Parks, who’s more than slightly idiosyncratic in the vocal and arranging department himself.

Still, the material was strong once you got past the eccentricities. I mean, how can you not like an album that contains Love Story (You and Me), So Long Dad, I Think It's Going to Rain Today and Davy the Fat Boy? You might wish he’d done them a little differently, but there was no doubting the quality of the writing.

That’s not to suggest it was a complete flop. Paul McCartney, for one, was apparently a big fan, and the album gained its share of kudos from peers and critics. The problem was that it didn’t attract a whole lot of airplay and sales were minimal.

Rather than surrounding Newman with seventy-five musicians for 12 Songs, Lenny Waronker went for the small combo approach, basing things around Newman’s piano and guitar work from Clarence White and Ry Cooder. Add some bass drums and percussion and the result is a lot more direct in the instrumental department. A lack of ornate orchestration tends to pare back the vocal mannerisms as well, and through Have You Seen My Baby? and Let's Burn Down the Cornfield things are fairly straightforward.

Baby is, to all intents and purposes, New Orleans-style R&B, and while a critic might question the lack of piano on Cornfield I’d point straight towards that slide guitar work from Mr Cooder and ask why you’d be looking to let something else get in the way. Mama Told Me Not to Come was covered by Three Dog Night, and comes across here as a wry observation on the L.A. Rock world’s party scene as seen through the eyes of an innocent abroad. Would you like whiskey with your water? indeed.

That innocent abroad may well have ended up on the end of the line in the understated Suzanne, where there’s a creepy caller who found your name in a telephone booth. Reviews at the time had the voice as a rapist, and if he isn’t there’s still no way his intentions are what we used to term honourable.

Given the sequencing, you can’t help thinking he may be the same dude who turns up in Lover's Prayer, just under two minutes of protagonist looking for nothing more involved than a quick complication-free relationship that may or may not involve commitment. He’s certainly not looking for discussion of anything controversial (I was entertaining a little girl up in the rooms, Lord/With California wine and French perfume/She started to talk to me 'bout the war, Lord/Said, 'I don't wanna talk about the war’).

You could make a fair case for the same dude (or his cousin brother) turning up on Lucinda. Summer evening on the beach and here’s a girl lyin' on the beach / In her graduation gown ... wrapped up in a blanket and the narrator, being a man of the world, could tell, she knew her way around. So what does he do? Lies down beside her, of course, and we’re probably best leaving what happens next to the imagination.

And with the approach of the big white truck and the beach cleaning man he clears off, leaving Lucinda ... buried / 'Neath the California sand. He mightn’t be the same dude, of course, but there’s a certain consistency and the three songs are delivered deadpan with maybe a hint of raised eyebrow.

So, a run of songs that could well be cut from the same piece of cloth, and guess what? He follows that with a one-two combo.

Underneath the Harlem Moon, the only non-Newman composition on the album dates back to the twenties and delivers a string of racial stereotyping that sets the stage for later efforts like Sail Away and Rednecks, but here acts as a lead in to the similarly cliche-rich Yellow Man, later described as a pinhead’s view of China (they say they were there / before we were here. Really? Who’d have thunk?).

When it comes to cliche-based satire, Newman’s not being selective in his ethnic targets. Old Kentucky Home merrily skewers the redneck narrator with a cheerful singalong chorus and a couple of lines I’ve been known to purloin for my own purposes (she didn’t grow up, she grew out, for example). I first encountered this one on Ry Cooder, but Newman’s take on it has a bit more of the old raised eyebrow to it.

The last three tracks wind things up in a low key manner. Newman drawls his way through
Rosemary, which comes across as a gentleman caller offering an evening out without a great deal of hope that his desires will be fulfilled, and he may still be around offering his services If You Need Oil while Uncle Bob's Midnight Blues wraps things up without doing anything remarkable. Maybe he needed something like I Think It’s Going To Rain Today to fill that spot, but he’d already used that last time around, hadn’t he?

Coming back to this one after a lengthy interval it’s easy to overlook 12 Songs’ considerable charms. Randy Newman had the orchestrations, the quirky vocals and a handful of genuinely great songs, while the next studio album, Sail Away, had strong material, brought back the strings and had Newman in top form vocally.

In comparison, 12 Songs, on first impressions, may come across as more subdued, but give it a bit of time to sink in and you may well end up rating it as some of his best work. The players deliver just the right amount of light and shade, nothing is wasted, the songs are focussed and Newman goes very close to nailing the vocals. Not, perhaps, as striking as its predecessor or the albums that followed, but definitely a harbinger of quality to come.

But then, after Simon Smith, So Long Dad, Love Story, Davy the Fat Boy and I Think It’s Going to Rain Today some of us already knew he was a class act, didn’t we?

Frankie Miller "Frankie Miller… That’s Who!" (4*)

At $25.99 for 87 tracks that’d be spread over four CDs if you bought a hard copy Frankie Miller… That’s Who! comes across as pretty reasonable value if you’re familiar with the gravel voiced Scot’s work and need to acquire a fair chunk of his back catalogue for a reasonable price.

For the majority of the population, however, it’ll probably be a case of Frankie Who? unless you’ve got something more than vague memories of Darlin’ or one of the other singles that garnered a little airplay for the bowler-hatted one back in the late seventies.

If you’re unfamiliar with the man and his work something in the way of a back story might be appropriate, particularly because the four disks under review represent a fair chunk of his recorded output.

Born in Glasgow in 1949, Miller’s musical tastes were shaped by his mother, a Ray Charles fan, and two older sisters who were into Little Richard and Elvis Presley. Mum and Dad chipped in for a guitar, and by the time he was nine Miller was writing songs (I Can't Change It, written when he was twelve, was recorded by Ray Charles).

By the time he’d hit his teens he was singing professionally, and relocated to London in 1971 to work with ex-Procol Harum guitarist Robin Trower, Glasgow bandmate, bass player and vocalist James Dewar and ex-Jethro Tull drummer Clive Bunker in an outfit called Jude that attracted a fair degree of attention without producing anything in the way of a recording before breaking up in the first quarter of 1972.

That attention they’d attracted, however, was enough to secure a record deal with Chrysalis Records, and Miller cut his first album Once in a Blue Moon under the supervision of producer Dave Robinson (later head honcho of Stiff Records)  with backing from pub rock outfit Brinsley Schwarz (who, of course, included Nick Lowe as well as Brinsley Schwarz and Bob Andrews, who ended up backing Graham Parker in The Rumour, but that’s a whole ‘nother story.

Once in a Blue Moon didn’t do so well, but did enough to have Miller jetting to New Orleans to cut his second album with Allen Toussaint, who allegedly tagged Miller as the most soulful singer he's ever heard, in 1974. High Life was allegedly remixed and released by the record label without Miller or Toussaint’s consent, which accounts for the apparent duplication of some tracks on this set, which includes original mix, available on official release for the first time.

The Toussaint collaboration was, however, a one-off and for his third album Miller was off to San Francisco to work with Elliot Mazer, whose production credits include Neil Young’s Harvest. Miller mightn’t have been chalking up big sales but influential people were sitting up and taking notice. The Rock took its name from Alcatraz, visible from the studio window, and marked the debut of The Frankie Miller Band, which included guitarist Henry McCullough (ex-Eire Apparent, Joe Cocker’s Grease Band, Spooky Tooth and Paul McCartney's Wings), bassist Chrissie Stewart, drummer Stu Perry and Mick “Wynder K. Frog” Weaver on keyboards.

From there it was back to London to work with Chris Thomas on 1977‘s Full House, which produced a minor chart single in Be Good To Yourself and a cover of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. A lengthy US tour followed, and April 1978 saw Miller recording with a new band and Aerosmith producer Jack Douglas at the Record Plant in New York. The result was Double Trouble, cut with drummer BJ Wilson (Procol Harum), Chrissie Stewart on bass, Ray Russell on guitar, Chris Mercer and Martin Drover on horns and Paul Carrack on keys.

Carrack stayed on board for album #6, Falling in Love, which delivered a UK Top Ten single in the form of Darlin', but as far as chart action was concerned that was, more or less, it, at least as far as material labelled as Frankie Miller was concerned. When I'm Away From You (the follow-up to Darlin’) might have failed to repeat the success but scored in the US Country charts for The Bellamy Brothers a few years down the track.

By this stage Miller was based in Nashville, where the final Chrysalis album Easy Money was recorded with a team of crack Music City session players and signalled a move into writing that yielded successful covers by, among others, The Bellamy Brothers, Johnny Cash, Kim Carnes, Joe Cocker, Etta James, Waylon Jennings, Roy Orbison, The Osmonds, Bob Seger, Rod Stewart,   Bonnie Tyler,  Joe Walsh and The Eagles.

After Easy Money, a switch from Chrysalis to Capitol Records saw an eighth album (Standing on the Edge) recorded at Muscle Shoals in Alabama, with legendary Muscle Shoals Rhythm section and Dancing in the Rain recorded in New York with several collaborations with Jeff Barry, after a plan to re-record the Crystals’ Da Doo Ron Ron fell through.

Miller continued writing and recording through the eighties, with soundtrack credits on a number of movies and television series and was in the process of putting a new touring band together in New York with Joe Walsh (The Eagles), pianist Nicky Hopkins and drummer Ian Wallace when he suffered a massive brain haemorrhage and spent five months in a coma, followed by a lengthy spell of rehabilitation which explains the relative silence from a formerly prolific writer and performer.

So that’s the Frankie Who? question answered. What about the seven albums (eight counting the original mix of High Life)?


Forty years on, Once In A Blue Moon rocks along nicely, Brinsley Schwarz bubbling away in the background and Miller in fine voice from the opening You Don't Need To Laugh through to the wry, slinky reading of I'm Ready that concludes proceedings, with plenty of interest in between. A particularly tasty rendition of Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues is probably the pick of ‘em, but there’s not a dud in sight.

The two versions of High Life have different running orders, and Chrysalis appears to have played around with some of the titles but both takes on Play Something Sweet (Brickyard Blues), Trouble, With You In Mind, Just A Song and With You in Mind demonstrate an impressive match of soulful Scot and New Orleans funk and, again, there’s not a dud in sight. Actually, running through the two versions gives you a chance to hear some impressive material twice.

The recording venue changed to San Francisco for the Elliot Mazer-produced The Rock, with a title track musing on Miller’s likelihood of ending up somewhere like Alcatraz if he didn’t have something like his music to channel his energies into. Other highlights include A Fool In Love, Ain’t Got No Money and my personal favourite Drunken Nights in the City (not that I know anything about such matters).

The content up to this point fills two CDs in the hard copy version and the third kicks off with the 1976 single Loving You Is Sweeter Than Ever b/w (that’s backed with for you young ‘uns who weren’t around for two-sided vinyl 45s) I'm Old Enough.

1977’s Full House kicks off in fine style with the magnificent Be Good To Yourself, follows it with a romp through The Doodle Song, which isn’t about what you might think, and then delivers a great reading of John Lennon’s Jealous Guy. The themes from those three tracks continue through Love Letters, Take Good Care of Yourself and (I'll Never) Live in Vain with a sidetrack Down the Honky Tonk when medication is required to ease the heartache.

Things start to fall away slightly as Double Trouble veers off towards the rock end of the spectrum, with heavier riffs. No decline in the vocals, but the material isn’t (IMHO, mileages may vary) as strong as the earlier efforts. Flashier presentation but less substance, though the album finishes on a strong note with a rousing Goodnight Sweetheart.

Falling In Love starts more strongly with When I'm Away From You, contains Darlin' (probably his best known track) but there’s a fairly ordinary reading of Bob Marley’s  Is This Love before Falling In Love With You rolls along to square up the ledger. Much of the intervening material, and the run through from Falling to the end of the album is solid, mainstream-friendly rock that doesn’t have a whole lot to distinguish it from its late seventies peers apart from the Miller tonsils.

That’s largely true of 1980s Easy Money, though the final album in the set does have its share of highlights including Why Don't You Spend The Night, Heartbreak Radio and No Chance, alongside a vigorous reading of the old Jo Jo Zep classic So Young, So Young. A slightly over the top take on Randy Newman’s Sail Away (from a 1977 EP) winds things up.

As far as the consumer goes, while the collection isn’t consistent there’s a definite economic argument in favour of $25.99 rather than a couple of $16.90’s (High Life and Once in a Blue Moon are highly recommended, and you really should take a look at Full House). The audio has been remixed for the collection, which is another argument for bulk buying and you’ll end up with close to the whole box and dice from the pub rock that kicked his career off through the harder-edged rock in the middle to the AOR friendly relatively slick stuff at the end.

And we are, after all, talking about the bloke Rod Stewart described as The only white guy that’s ever brought a tear to my eye.

Levon Helm "Ramble at the Ryman" (4.5*)

Recorded by a travelling version of the late Levon Helm's Midnight Ramble, rather than the regular sessions that have been running at Levon’s studio at Woodstock in upstate New York since 2004 Ramble at the Ryman (that’s Nashville's Ryman Auditorium, the former home of the Grand Ol’ Opry) might look to be rather heavy on past glories (six tracks out of fifteen from The Band’s catalogue) but with a crack outfit including multi-instrumentalist Larry Campbell and Helm's daughter, vocalist and mandolinist Amy alongside a number of guests (Little Sammy Davis, Buddy Miller, Sam Bush, Sheryl Crow and John Hiatt) the result is a highly listenable collection of rock, blues, country, and folk that rocks along very nicely indeed.

The Band material here, starting with the opening Ophelia  and stretching through Chuck Berry’s Back To Memphis (covered regularly as part of The Band’s live set), Evangeline, Rag Mama Rag, The Shape I’m In, Chest Fever and The Weight are significantly reworked the way you’d have to when you can’t call on Garth Hudson’s keyboards, with the emphasis on the shambling horns and guest vocals from Sheryl Crow (Evangeline), Larry Campbell (Chest Fever) and John Hiatt (The Weight).

The guest vocals are, in large part, a function of the throat cancer that damaged Levon’s vocal cords and while the predictions that he mighty never sing again didn’t materialise, it took a while before his voice was up to singing, so for much of the early Ramble era he was content to leave the vocal department to others.

Issues regarding vocal resilience come to the fore in Dirt Farmer’s Anna Lee, where his own voice might not be strong enough to carry the song by itself on his own, but choral support from the ensemble’s female members gets it over the line.

Little Sammy Davis takes centre stage for the old R&B hit Fannie Mae, which dates, I suspect, back to the Ronnie Hawkins days, and Slim Harpo’s Baby Scratch My Back, while Sheryl Crow is front and centre for the Carter Family’s No Depression In Heaven and Buddy Miller gets to do his own Wide River to Cross.  The traditional Deep Elem Blues is handed to Larry Campbell, while Teresa Williams does the full country bit on Time Out For The Blues and Levon’s back for A Train Robbery.

That vocal chopping and changing could, under other circumstances, come across as an all-star celebrity occasion, but the ensemble, with egos deposited in the cloak room, comes across as a group of talented friends who coincidentally happen to be rather fine musicians getting together to have a bit of fun, sing and play and enjoy each other’s company.

It’s the kind of vibe that you can only create by extensive playing together (as noted the Woodstock Rambles date back to 2004) and the core group creates an environment where the guests slot in seamlessly. Helm’s work behind the drum kit drives things along, the instrumental line up are equally at home in the mountains and down among the bayous, the horns are a delight and while the half-dozen Band numbers form an unavoidable core (you wouldn’t really expect Levon to ignore them, would you?) they’re reinterpreted rather than reproduced.

Ramble at the Ryman may not be the same as hearing Levon Helm play for a few dozen guests at in Woodstock, but now he’s gone you’re not going to get that opportunity anyway. One of the greats, recorded in what’s arguably the right setting.

Robin Williamson "Love Will Remain" (3.5* for the non-ISB Masses)

Back in the salad days of the late sixties I could usually find someone out of my circle of friends and acquaintances willing to admit that, yes, there was a certain something about whatever musical effort I was raving over at the time. There was, however, one notable exception.

I was, as far as I could tell, the only one out of my pre-University circle of acquaintances who’d managed to acquire a taste for the Incredible String Band. Reactions whenever Wee Tam or The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter hit the turntable were almost invariably negative, often emphatically so, and I seem to recall the almost invariable cause was the eccentric vocal stylings of Robin Williamson.

On that basis, while the rating above suggests an unimpressed listener in the Little House of Concrete, as a long term ISB fan my personal rating would be half a notch higher for anyone reading these pages inclined towards musical adventurism.

Recorded with minimal instrumental accompaniment, while time has taken the edge off Williamson’s voice it’s the characterful vocals that form the centrepiece of the album, whether it’s the autobiographical musical reminiscence of I Always Followed Music or Love Will Remain: Song for Bina, the spoken word recollections of A Road Wound Winding or the reworkings of Pink Floyd (Chapter 24), The Band (Whispering Pines) or, in what you might think is an unlikely alignment, George Jones (Stoned On Your Love All the Time).

An acquired taste, perhaps, but a taste worth exploring if you’re inclined towards adventurous inventiveness from someone who’s not using anything beyond a basic palette.

Various Artists "Sound System Scratch" and "Return of Sound System Scratch" (3.5* for the general public, 4* for reggae fans, 5* if you’re heavily into dub)

Well over thirty years after the time frame in which these sides were recorded, and given the non-proliferation of roots reggae outside diehard fan circles Down Under, the average Australian listener is going to feel a little, um, lost when faced with these two collections of dub plates from the legendary Black Ark studios and the hands of producer Lee ‘Scratch’ Perry a.k.a. The Upsetter.

After all, if you’re not familiar with the originals, how, you might ask, are you going to handle the dubs?

Well, boys and girls, before we answer that question maybe we’d better fill in a little background, like, first, who on earth is this Scratch the Upsetter dude and what in the name of creation are these things called dub plates?

Well, taking the second one first.

A dub plate, in its original context, was an acetate disc used as part of the recording process (a ‘test pressing’, if you like) before the studio moved on to a final master and subsequent commercial release of the recording in question.

As such, they were used all over the world, and you’ll find the odd collectible here and there containing an unreleased version of an album or single that has subsequently been retracked or remastered. Here’s a well-known one from Neil Young.

In Jamaica, on the other hand, in a dance hall scene dominated by disk jockeys and sound systems rather than live musicians, the dub plate takes itself off into an entirely different universe.

For a start, different sound systems were aligned to rival studios, and while they might play something from a rival studio there was a predictable tendency to stick to the sponsor’s product, particularly when it comes down to a sound clash, where rival sound systems compete to out do each other. Sure, it’s fine to play the hits, and to have your selection of tracks that are guaranteed to pack the dance floor, but when it comes down to a competition, you want an exclusive, compris?

Now, one way of getting your exclusive is to take a well known song, or more particularly a well known rhythm (or, in Jamaican patois riddim) and drop some of the vocal or instrumental passages out to give the DJ something to rap or toast over.

In that sense, if you get hold of a nice little track, that’s a little on the nudge, nudge side like Breakfast in Bed, as done by Dusty Springfield or, in Jamaica, Lorna Bennett and with a little effort transform it into something like this.

That, coincidentally, was my introduction to the wonders of dub back around 1974...

Alternatively, with a little bit of studio wizardry you can transform the same piece of music into a number of one-off items where the ‘official’ lyrics are tweaked to name check the particular sound system, remark on the operator’s extreme good taste and cast aspersions on the operators of rival systems.

So, in that sense, it all comes down to the producer, who may or may not be the studio owner. If you’ve got some dude wearing both hats (as Lee Perry was with the Black Ark Studios) you’ve effectively got unlimited studio time to play around and churn out inventive and innovative rearrangements of well known tracks and the result has been described (admittedly on the record label’s website) as some of the greatest, most complex and seriously mystical music ever to come out of Jamaica.

Now, as you might expect, there’s a wealth of material along these lines out there, and any common or garden fan’s probably only going to scratch the surface. Personally, I’ve always had a weakness for the dub melodica stylings of Augustus Pablo and tend to steer clear of the rapping toasters, so Hughesy’s collection includes the likes of King Tubby Meets Rockers Uptown and a few other odds and ends without going too heavily overboard.

Yet.

Given the fact that Scratch and the Black Ark recording studio are widely held to have headed off in inventive and innovative directions that no-one else has, even now, thought to consider (and again, we’re quoting that website, but you’ll find plenty of opinion along the same lines) these exclusive mixes never heard outside of sound system dances will probably have a sufficiently high coolness factor to attract the devoted aficionado if, like me, you don’t mind a bit of this sort of thing thrown into your musical mix these two collections are close to essential listening.

If I was a more devoted fan I’d probably have been better off going for a hard copy rather than the $16.99 iTunes digital downloads since that version would deliver a treasure trove of rare photographs and informative sleeve notes by well-known reggaeologist Jeremy Collingwood.

So, in case you’re interested, and being fully aware no one’s likely to recognise anything listed below, what’s on these two collections?



Sound System Scratch:
Lee Perry: Dub Plate Pressure
Augustus Pablo & The Upsetters: Lama Lava Mix One
The Upsetters: Groove Dubber
The Upsetters: Groove Rider
The Upsetters: Jucky Skank
The Upsetters: Chim Cherie (the first use of a drum machine in Jamaican music)
Lee Perry & The Upsetters: The Rightful Organiser
Lee Perry & The Upsetters: Stagger
Lee Perry & The Upsetters: Big Neck Cut
The Upsetters: Zeal Of The Lord
The Upsetters: Dub of The Lord
The Upsetters: Returning Wax
Winston Wright & The Upsetters: Bushdub Corntrash
Clive Hylton & The Upsetters: From Dub Four
Junior Murvin & The Upsetters: Roots Train Number Two
Lee Perry & The Upsetters: Locks In The Dublight
The Upsetters: Moonlight Version
Carlton Jackon & The Upsetters: Dub History
The Upsetters: Groovy Dub
Keith Rowe & The Upsetters: Living Dub



Return Of Sound System Scratch:
Aleas Jube: Righteous Land (previously unreleased)
The Upsetters: Righteous Rocking (dub version of the preceding track)
Junior Murvin & The Upsetters: Get Ready (Bongo mix) (reworking the Impressions' People Get Ready)
The Upsetters: Natural Dub (reworking Bob Marley’s Natural Mystic)
Candy Mackenzie & The Upsetters: Long Enough
The Upsetters: Kiss Me Mix
The Upsetters: Strong Drink (Melodica version)
The Unforgettables: Time
The Upsetters: Longer Dub
Leo Graham & The Upsetters: Revelation Time
George Faith & The Upsetters: I’ve Got The Dub
The Upsetters: Deep and Deadly
The Upsetters & Lee "Scratch" Perry: Jah Jah Ah Natty Dread
The Upsetters: Mr Dubz
The Upsetters & Lee "Scratch" Perry: Enter The Upsetter (actually Enter the Dragon, but you catch the drift)
Jimmy Riley & The Upsetters: Darkness In The City
Jack Lord & The Upsetters: Economic Crisis
The Silvertones: Rejoice Jah Jah Children