Tag: Sunday with George

Back in 2009ish, (before they were our monolithic corporate overlord), Amazon used to do something kind of cool on their website.

Once a week, on their digital music page, they’d have a, “deal,” that saw them offer a digital download of a new or classic album, at a bargain price— somewhere between $1.99 and $4.99.

I would check in on this page RELIGIOUSLY.

I picked up some great albums as a result of it too, chief amongst them, Ornette Coleman’s, “The Shape of Jazz to Come,” Lady Gaga’s “Born This way,” and maybe, “Let it Bleed,” by the Rolling Stones?

I know there were many others as well, but the greatest amongst them was Between the Buried and Me’s, “The Great Misdirect.”

Now, before stumbling across BtBaM (as they’ll be referred to henceforth) on this page, I’d never heard of them.

In retrospect, I’m somewhat surprised I bought the album, because save for Mastodon, (who a few months earlier had released their crossover hit album, “Crack the Skye”) metal was not really a part of my life back then.

For the most part, my musical philosophy at this point revolved around asking 2 or 3 questions before listening to something—

1. “Did this person play with Miles Davis at any point in the late 60s or early-mid 70s?

2. “Is Robert Fripp involved?”

3. “Is this some, “scene,” shit? Some Prior Lake or Zumiez shit? Some, “skinny jeans and can’t play a guitar solo,” shit?”

If the answer was, “no,” to the first two questions, or, “yes” to any of the last three, I wasn’t going for it.

Naive, and outrageous, I know, but when you’re 22 years old at art school, naive and outrageous are your bread in butter.

In any case, BtBaM’s album was going for a steal at 5 bucks, so I grabbed it.

I’ve been listening to the album for just over ten years now, and it’s become one of my all-time favorites.

Most likely, it’s the only metal album that sits in my top 10.

As an aside, metal is a weird thing for me.

I love it, but I don’t.

Iron Maiden, Black Sabbath, Slayer, Mastodon, Deftones, and Megadeth, are all near and dear, but outside of that, things can get spotty, and go on a song-by-song basis. It’s hard to me to stay consistently engaged with with the genre, due to things that a band like BtBaM both does and does not do.

As someone whose gateway drugs into the genre were Led Zeppelin, and Metallica, it took a long time for my ears to adjust to (and appreciate) harsh or screamed vocals. Sometimes, I kinda love them now, but the “cookie monster voice” that a number of bands (including this one) choose to employ can be a bit much.

Coming back around though, BtBaM are particularly unique amongst their peers as their brand of metal pulls from a LOT of different genres.

Over the course of the six songs found on this album, the band manages to run through polka, contemporary (smooth?) jazz, country, bluegrass, prog, and something that approaches Indian raga Rock?

That sounds absurd, I know, but they pull it off, and they manage to not sound silly in the process of doing so.

The album opens with, “Mirrors,” a tune that perhaps, serves more as a device than a song— a ruse to lull the listener into a false sense of safety.

It’s a serene tune: one that features no screamed vocals or distorted guitars. Tommy Giles Rogers, the band’s lead vocalist throughout, (save for one song) sings beautifully. He could probably do the white boy R&B thing if he wanted to, but thankfully he doesn’t.

In any case, his short vocal intro gives way to a jam the features some magnificent polyrhythmic jolts, a funny time signature, especially nimble bass work from Dan Briggs, and wonderfully uncommon resolutions from guitarists Paul Waggoner, and Dustie Waring.

Things turn foreboding in the last 40 seconds, and segue directly into, “Obfuscation.”

Obfuscation sees the band kick into high gear with spiraling guitar lines, time signature changes, and some particular rough vocal work from Tommy Giles Rogers.

The song is frequently a dizzying spasm of guitar that alternates between sounding spastic and groovy.

Throughout the album, there are a number of motifs that would not sound out of place, coming from Robert Fripp’s guitar amplifier. Figures ascend and descend, not unlike the gamelan-inspired parts that he played alongside Adrian Belew in the early 80s. Needless to say, I love this, and I think a great part of my appreciation from the album stems from the fact that many parts of this music call so clearly to 80s Crimson, albeit from the realm of metal, as opposed to Talking Heads-influenced New Wave.

In any instance, halfway through the song we get a wonderfully out-of-box guitar solo from Paul Waggoner, whose note choices are not predictable in a single instance, and are frequently, delightful.

Metal guitar players like to lean on funny scales, and sometimes, things just sound too dissonant or clever for their own good, but that’s never the case here.

Disease, Injury, Madness, follows. While it begins as a rather blunt exercise in brutality, it shortly gives way to a floating section that features lots of guitar swells, fairy dust, and some drumming that wouldn’t sound out of place coming from Dennis Chambers’ kit, during his tenures with Santana.

There are perhaps shades of Tool here too, but the vocal harmonies, are a bit prettier, and the basslines are rooted more in Jaco-Pastorius-era Weather Report.

Particularly lovely flamenco-indebted guitar gives way to a return to the bludgeoning business, and it’s glorious. Shortly thereafter, a horse’s neigh is used as a transitionary device to a section that might be best described as a West Arkansas, “still chopping, still cooking,” hoe-down: one that needs only a cowbell to send things fully overboard.

The last bit of the song leans hard into a kookie carnival thing that features some swirling organ, and demented choir vocals that wouldn’t be out of place in Danny Elfman’s score for, “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”

“Fossil Genera- A Feed From Cloud Mountain” is another exercise if genre-hopping that goes all the way from ragtime or Polka-esque piano to jazz-country?

The metal bits pop up in there too, of course, but the songs closes with a section in which we’re treated to fully soaring vocals from Tommy Giles Rogers, and a string accompaniment delivered via synthesizer or the real deal.

It’s a magnificent closing blow-out, one that transitions effortlessly into the album’s most unique piece of music, that’s also the first song from the album that I fell in love with.

“Desert of Song” is the lone track from the album to feature vocals from lead guitarist Paul Waggoner. His voice is truly magnificent, one that’s in the mold of the down-home country singer.

I see it as the aural equivalent of watching a lone tumbleweed roll through a desert landscape: one replete with off-brand orange earth tones, and sparse greenery, completed by a sky that grades very cleanly from a dark brown in the sky, to orange, to yellow at the horizon.

That’s a surreal sight to be sure, but this is also a very particular respite from an album that’s tended more towards brutality than beauty at this point.

It’s a necessary, kind moment, that also happens to feature a guitar solo from Waggoner that’s rooted in good old-fashioned box blues, but with more informed note choices.

The song ends with the same set of notes that it began with, and leading the listener towards their final trek, the album’s sprawling finale “Swim to the Moon.”

“Swim to the Moon” runs 6 seconds shy of 18 minutes, and to go through the song as a whole would be a daunting task.

As a general rule of thumb, I don’t like to use the word, “epic,” as it’s overused: fully at risk of parody at this point in time.

Here though, it’s the best word for the job.

The song has more twists, turns, and segues than you can shake a stick it. It’s almost disorienting, and hard to keep up with. It’s also wildly hypnotic, so you’re kind of locked in your seat as the music marches forward.

A masterful closer, and a fairly effective summation of everything that’s come before, it’s one of the greatest closings I’ve heard on an album. Mastodon did a similar thing in the same year, in closing their album, “Crack The Skye,” with, “The Last Baron,” but “Swim to the Moon” is more impressive for my money, ascending to the heavens, and disappearing into the ether.

In closing, “The Great Misdirect” is not an album that will be met with an initial warm embrace by all ears.

It can be a rough and tumble experience in certain places, and listeners who are turned off by the harsh nature of the vocals in certain instances are well within their right to not dig the screams and growls.

If you give it a chance, and try to absorb the album as a whole though, it’s a really magnificent thing.

I can’t recommend the investment highly enough, and hope new listeners find as much to love in the album as I have, these last 10+ years.

I had two introductions to Coheed and Cambria’s music— 3 years apart from each other.

My first introduction was in 2009. Partly by chance, “The Willing Well III: Apollo II: The Telling Truth,” made its presence known to me.

I was pretty much head over heels, though I didn’t do anything about it.

There have been a few instances in my life where something like this has happened. I’ll hear a song that I love so very much, and because it’s so great, I’m somewhat terrified to seek out anything else by that artist or band, lest it not be as good.

Over the year’s there’s been, “No Cigar,” by Millencolin, this particular version of, “Strong Persuader,” by Robert Cray, and “The Visitors” by Hamza El Din.

Coheed and Cambria seemed as though they’d be relegated to a similar fate, until I became friends with an outlaw from rural Wisconsin a couple of years later.

To be clear, my friend Jaid is not actually an outlaw, but he is big on, “raising hell” and “eat(ing) cornbread,” and a wonderful person. We went to college together, but we didn’t officially meet until we were both working on 48th and Chicago in south Minneapolis. He was driving delivery for Pizza Hut, and I was parking cars at a Mexican restaurant.

He’d become one of my best friends, and I wouldn’t have had nearly as much fun as I did while living in Minneapolis had I not met him.

In any case, in addition to being friends, the two of us formed a very short-lived guitar duo, a few months before he moved down to New Orleans. One of our tunes is below, with him playing rhythm and me playing lead:

Before we got to recording our songs, we had a routine, that would involve us chilling on my screened-in porch, and listening to whatever songs he deemed worthy of our time that day.

Usually, he wouldn’t say anything before plugging his iPod in, but one day it was different.

As he made his way into the apartment, he said something to the effect of, “now, I want to play you this band today, but you’re gonna have to trust me.”

As I was on board with about 90% of what he played, I remember being alright with that, but I also kinda pestered him for more information, as he’d never offered a disclaimer before.

He eventually gave in, and said, “alright, it’s Coheed and Cambria.”

I recall moaning and groaning because of what I’d mentioned earlier about being afraid to listen to anything else by them, but I rolled with it.

He put on, “Time Consumer,” and something about music fundamentally changed for me, hearing it for the first time.

A likely assortment of my thoughts, in that moment:

– These lyrics don’t make any sense, but this dude can sing.

– There are DOG WHISTLE, S-Q-U-E-A-L-I-N-G pinch harmonics in here, and that’s all I care about in life.

– This is devastatingly beautiful.

– Is this kind of some emo shit?

– Is it okay for me to like, “scene,” music?

– Angsty high schoolers probably bump this out in Prior Lake.

– Fuck the Minneapolis suburbs.

– I have family and friends from the suburbs.

– I guess some of the suburbs are okay.

– This is really, really, good.

I wish I remember more about what we recorded that afternoon, but I don’t.

If you’re reading, Jaid, thanks for this, if I’ve never said so before.

I was going to write about, “The Second Stage Turbine Blade,” as a whole, but I’m going to talk about “The Afterman: Descension”, instead, because it’s the first album of theirs that came across my radar independent of anything else.

It features a number of my favorite songs by the band, and start-to-finish, it’s just a really strong statement by the band.

Off the rip, I’d like to make a disclaimer that I’m not really going to attempt to get into the band’s lyrics for the most part, nor will I talk about the ongoing “Armory Wars” story. I don’t understand it, and my one friends who’s followed it more closely than I, said it was essentially, a Christianity allegory.

The album kicks off in earnest, with its second song, “Key Entity Extraction V: Sentry the Defiant.”

It contains any number of Coheed hallmarks:

– Impassioned, alternately ferocious and crooning vocals from lead singer Claudio Sanchez.

– Acoustic guitar that manages to jump out from under a maelstrom of crunch.

– Drumming that has a hefty bit of swag for a, “metal,” band.

– A 4/4 time signature, that sounds mathier than that.

“The Hard Sell”, follows, and it’s a fine piece of music, but its guitar parts also doesn’t sound unlike, “Prayer,” by Disturbed in certain sections, so there’s that.

“Number City” is a much more upbeat offering, that personally brings to mind, a mix of Bruno Mars, and the music from the Casino stage of Sonic the Hedgehog 2.

On the surface, that probably sounds bizarre at best, and unappetizing at worst, but it’s actually pretty magnificent. There are some really wonderful horns in mix, and a back-mixed Moog (?) towards the end that could ruin the song, but thankfully they don’t.

“Gravity’s Union” follows, and it’s the first of two masterpieces found on the album.

Like most of the music that Coheed makes, it’s an ear-candy song, best listened to with headphones. On the verge of going overboard in the early choruses, it never crosses that line.

Persistent, in its pummeling nature, the song is a death march towards the 3:49, and then, 5:03, which is likely the aural equivalent of someone literally having their nose slapped off.

One of the better beatdowns that the band has recorded, featuring chanted background vocals, searing Robert Fripp-worthy guitar leads, and a caustic, final gasp from Claudio as the song comes to a close.

Naturally, this segues into the lovely, “Away We Go.”

A sunny piece of music that sounds like a distant cousin to My Chemical Romance’s, “Summertime,” from three years earlier, it’s a pallet cleanser, and just a lot of fun.

“Iron Fist” follows, moving into even lighter territory, complete with electronic flourishes, fretless(?) bass, and glitchy effects. It’s fine, but I feel as though its only purpose is to lull listeners into a false sense of security, before they get flattened by the next song.

“Dark Side of me” is the album’s penultimate track, and second masterpiece.

It’s one of those rare pieces of music that is friendly enough to succeed on the radio, but also a damn fine piece of legit music, not unlike Miguel’s, “Coffee,” or, Deftones’, “Digital Bath.”

While masterful, it’s also a sorrowful piece of music. At low points in my effort to find balance in an artist’s life, I saw myself in the lyrics— throwing myself at my art, then throwing myself at the wrong woman, watching my relationship to one (or both) blow up, retreating back into my art, and then repeating the cycle.

It can come across as a bleak look at love to be sure, but there’s healing in it. A brutally honest look at what doesn’t work, I see it as challenging the listener to find better solutions, if they too are struggling.

Kindly, the album ends on a very true, and optimistic note with, “2’s my Favorite 1”, a really heartfelt profession of love and dedication.

The lyrics, at their best, are moving and true, almost poetic towards the end,

“Oh, this is her,

No regrets,

I embrace your defense,

Took the best,

You were my wish,

I admit that I will never feel,

No, I will never feel alone,

I stumbled in mighty tone,

Where the records spins around,

Please turn me over,

Find me into sleep,

Oh girl,

Please wait,

Bring me home”

In closing, I don’t know if I have anything really profound to say outside of the fact that this is the most personally endearing thing the band has done.

Re-visiting it with a nice breeze blowing through my window recalls wonderful friendships, the highlights of those summers in my mid-20s, and the joy that comes with realizing that I can put the album back into regular rotation.

Give it a shot, and hopefully, you’ll dig it too.

“Fulfilliness’ First Finale”, is a piece of art.

Featuring only 10 songs, with six of them ranking amongst Stevie Wonder’s absolute best, it’s my favorite album from what people call his, “genius,” period, and it features perhaps the first song to move me to tears in my adult life.

The album came into my life partially by chance. I bought it in a second-hand record store, owned by the father of a woman who I worked on my high school newspaper with.

Shortly before I was set to head back to college for my senior year, I’d decided that I was going to make the deep dive into Stevie’s music. FFF (as it will be referred to, from here on out) was one of maybe five or six albums they had in the store. I had a little bit of cash on me in the moment, but not a lot. I wasn’t ready to put down 30 bucks on, “Songs in the Key of Life”, and, “Hotter than July”, marked the start of  Stevie’s, “commercial period”, in the mind of music snobs, so I picked up FFF.

I can’t remember the first time I listened to it, but I can remember the first time I fell in love with it.

It was sometime during the fall of that year— a particularly rough patch of my college experience.

Up until the previous spring, I thought of myself as someone who had a strong-ish relationship with God. I prayed every night, and tried to abide by the more basic tenements of Christianity, (love thy neighbor, do unto others… etc.)

To be clear, I thought the idea of church was very silly, (8 years of Catholic school song practice on Friday morning will do that to you) but yes… I thought God was a solid part of my life.

Due to a really rough winter and spring, my faith in all of that kind of evaporated. I came to scoff at the idea of a larger power.

In any case, I was in my apartment one night, trying to draw.

Unfortunately, I’d very much fallen out of love with that part of my artistic expression. Focusing almost exclusively on graphic design that semester, I felt starved, and I yearned to find joy in even just doodling again.

The night had not been going well, and then, “Heaven is 10 Zillion Light Years Away,” came on.

I began to cry.

On top of being a beautiful piece of music, and perhaps, the standout song on that album, it spoke to something that just really overwhelmed me. It’s a sorrowful piece of music in places, speaking of racism’s evils, but it also speaks to Stevie Wonder’s faith.

In that moment, it allowed me both grace, and confidence.

Also, it took 10 years, but I’m thankful to say that prayer made its way back into my life, late last year. While 2020 has certainly challenged anyone whose life includes prayer, I do believe in a higher power– something beyond human comprehension.

Likely, that higher power is something intangible, not necessarily a, “being”, as we understand the word, but I do believe in a greater energy and trajectory than we’re able to perceive as humans.

In any case, I got stuck on that song for a very long time, but I came to realize that the rest of the album is just as great, with a few particular standouts.

The first would be the album’s opener, “Smile Please.”

It’s an inviting piece of music, one that excludes warmth, and is likely, the sonic equivalent of the world’s most genuine smile— fitting considering the song’s title.

It’s a wonderful way to start things off.

“Too Shy to say”, comes up third, and it’s notable for a synthesizer melody that’s simultaneously both timid, and arresting.

While not exactly at the forefront of the mix, its ethereal and earnest. You WANT it to be higher up in the mix, but its beauty lies in its understatement. I don’t want to make it sound as though Stevie Wonder exclusively traffics in the literal, because he’s much more sophisticated than that, but the synthesizer is a perfect compliment to the song’s lyrics and theme. It’s too shy to get louder, so you have to pay attention in certain instances, to hear the love.

“Boogie on Reggae Woman”, follows, and kicks things into gear with one of the most raucous synth bass parts I’ve ever heard.

I’m sure any number of people have blown their speakers out playing it VERY loudly.

As an aside, I don’t think Stevie ever really got enough credit for this kind of thing, because he’s pulled at least a FEW of his basslines, straight out of the gutter.

Inquiring minds are encouraged to seek out his playing on his ex-wife Syreeta’s cover of his own song, “I Love Every Little Thing About you,” and his own, “Jesus Children of America.”

In any case, “Boogie on Reggae Woman”, features a top-notch groove, and a playful harmonica solo that speaks very directly to Stevie’s joy. It’s probably the most well-known song on the album, and also, the most accessible.

The next show-stopper arrives with, “They Won’t go When I go.”

A song that Alicia Keys counts amongst her favorites, it’s a haunting, outrageously powerful piece of music. Stevie’s vocal performance here is of particular note, as he throws his voice around like a rag doll, popping octaves, and making his vocal chords quiver in a startling, humbling way.

It’s certainly, the most down-beat song on the album, but it’s also a sonic-masterclass that is rewarded by repeated listens.

The last showstopper on the album arrives in the form of the closer, “Please Don’t Go.”

A plea, and a profession of love, it’s a forceful performance that features some of Stevie’s most impassioned piano playing, closing out the album, just as strong as it began.

It’s lovely.

I’ve been listening to FFF for over 10 years now, and it only delights me more and more, as time goes on. Truly one for the ages, and just as enjoyable on a Sunday morning, as it is on Tuesday night, I can’t recommend it highly enough.

It’s always kind of bothered me that George Duke gets left out of the conversation regarding the 20th century piano and/or keyboard giants.

Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarret, and Chick Corea might have had better chops (and they all played with Miles Davis) but I’ll take a George Duke album over something by them, almost every day of the week.

Mr. Duke first caught my attention on a Frank Zappa song called “Eat that Question”.

Duke’s keyboard solo runs almost half the song and sums up his MO pretty well. All it lacks is a headfirst dive into perhaps his signature weapon, the mini-Moog.

Many a keyboard player has gone to war with said instrument, and in the early 70s, it was still somewhat of a novelty— perhaps the greatest weapon that a keyboard player could use, if they wanted to compete with the guitar pyrotechnics that were in vogue at the time.

And Mr. Duke does manage to get any number of guitar voicing and colors out of his instrument. The way he bends his notes makes it so he doesn’t really need a guitar player in his bands, and for the early part of his solo career, his albums were usually guitar-free.

“Faces in Reflection” is not Mr. Duke’s most commercially successful album, and it might not even be his crowning achievement, depending on what day of the week you ask me. It’s fully magnificent though, and the last album that he recorded that was a mostly instrumental affair.

The album begins with, “The Opening”, a particularly propulsive number that shows drummer Leon “Ndugu” Chancellor will be running a very tight ship. Fresh off stints with Miles Davis and Santana, but before he’d record “Tail Spinnin’” with Weather Report, Chancellor plays like a more efficient Billy Cobham, whom Duke would actually form a band with in the coming years.

It’s followed by, “Capricorn,” the first song on which Duke sings.

It’s hard to say which is more impressive— Duke’s voice, or his keyboard playing. Both are truly wonderful, but his voice is truly unreal.

Thundercat is certainly a fan as he’s more or less has made it his career-pursuit to sing EXACTLY like Duke, to the point that I thought he’d actually recruited Duke to sing on his cover of Duke’s, “For Love (I Come Your Friend).”

A slower number, “Capricorn,” is a showcase for the more sexy things Duke can do with his mini-moog. The specifics of the notes and bends he’s able to coax from said instruments are the centerpiece of his respective solos— very soulful and slick stuff.

Two piano solos follow, appropriately named, “Piano Solo 1,” and, “Piano Solo 2.”

Here Duke flexes some classical muscles in addition to injecting some afternoon beach flavor into the mix.

“Psychosomatic Dung” follows, and continues the upbeat energy from the first track. The track sounds like a hybrid of early 70s Mahavishnu Orchestra by way of Herbie Hancock. Chancellor’s drumming is particularly airtight here, and some of his flourishes are particular impressive, especially a few of the percussive tricks from his tenure with Santana that he pulls out of the bag, towards the song’s middle section.

The two songs that follow, “Faces in Reflection No. 1,” and “Maria Tres Filhos” act as both a palette cleanser and appetizer for the album’s centerpiece, and perhaps Duke’s crowning achievement, “North Beach.”

A song sampled by the likes of A Tribe Called Quest (“Midnight”) Pete Rock, J Dilla, and Slum Village, “North Beach” is a sonic odyssey that demands darkness, a cool breeze, and headphones.

I’ve not visited L.A. in over 10 years, but it’s my dream to cruise through the Hollywood Hills at about 2 in the morning with the top down listening to this as the wind blows over my head.

If there’s ever been narrative in sound, it’s to be found here. Duke’s keyboards sing, stutter-step, seize, and belch for just over 6 minutes, much to the delight of the listener. Recorded in 1974, this song still sounds 30 years ahead of the curve, and is 100% mandatory listening for anyone even mildly interested in texture or sound.

“Da Somba” is an exclamation point at the end of a grand statement, featuring top-drawer performances from Duke and Chancellor, and a particularly nimble (fretless?) bass solo from John Heard.

The album closes with “Faces in Reflection No. 2” in which Duke finally unleashes his singing voice’s full potential. In places epic, and in others understated, it ends the album nicely, teeing up the next part of Duke’s career in which his vocals would more or less come front and center.

I had the opportunity to see Mr. Duke once in 2012 and I passed, because the ticket price was too rich for my blood at the time.

I regret that. To have been able to bear witness to his obvious joy, and true love for music in-person would have been humbling to say the least.

If you’ve never heard his music, I hope this album makes you a life-long fan. Most all of his work with Frank Zappa is top-tier, and he has a few other album outside of this one that are 100% worth tracking down and investing in.

Play it with headphones, and play it with love.