“Silver Rocket may well be the perfect Sonic Youth nugget. On one level, it’s a ripping cool pop song about riding a silver rocket, I guess, or perhaps heroin. On another, it’s a metaphysical hand grenade that blows a gaping hole through the reality barrier into the next nineteen dimensions. And it accomplishes all of this in barely three minutes.” (Philip Random)
“I don’t know why I never really dove in and listened to Tuxedomoon. Maybe the records were just too hard to find. As it is, Incubus found me in the early 80s via Best of Ralph, a compilation that went a long way toward turning essential parts of my brain and soul inside-out and sideways, all in the interest of driving home the point that the world wasn’t just stranger than I imagined, it was stranger than I could even begin to imagine imagining. Thanks, Ralph.” (Philip Random)
“Kool + the Gang are one of those bands that sadly had to change because of the Disco eruptions of the mid-1970s, which sucks. Because they had a great thing going (as Funky Stuff clearly indicates) before all dance music suddenly had to be 4-4, boomp-boomp-boomp with cheesy strings on top. Even James Brown was afraid of them, or so I’ve heard.” (Philip Random)
Performance, the movie, needs to be seen. It’s the one where Mick Jagger plays a sort of Satanic rock star who’s messing with the mind of gangster who’s on the lamb, mainly out of boredom, it seems. But that sells it way short. Look no further than the soundtrack and the inclusion of a song like Wake Up N*****s by the Last Poets. It has no particular reason to be in the movie. Other than to be that cool, that on the mark of what was really going down in 1970, with the pulse of revolution very much in the air.
“I first heard Kraftwerk‘s Computer World at Michael’s place. A sort of slimy guy that we used to buy dope from back in the late 70s, early 80s. He lived in a high rise near English Bay, always had the stereo on loud, usually playing shitty soft rock. Except this one time, a beautiful day, sun glowing in off the bay – it was this cool machine music. Kraftwerk, I would’ve guessed, except Kraftwerk weren’t around anymore, were they? A couple of gimmicky robot records back in the mid-70s and then back to Germany. I was right. It was indeed Kraftwerk, still cranking out the future. I was wrong. They were anything but a gimmick. Suddenly, I had a pile of exploring to do.”
“I mostly ignored the Grateful Dead at first, had them shrugged off as brain damaged hippies or whatever. But then I heard some of their less than normal stuff, like the Blues For Allah suite found at the end of the album of the same name. That was hard to ignore. Hard not to embrace as genuinely cool and deep progressive music of high attainment. A trip to a place that no exists on no map, but it’s there regardless, and necessary. You had to come here, with Allah himself sitting right next to you at the edge … of all eternity.” (Philip Random)
Randophonic 