Monthly Archives: June 2019

151. Zoom

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Zoom is about the future apparently (the 1973 album in question being called 1990), a trip to the moon to be specific, though men had already been walking the moon for four years by 1973, smacking golf balls around even. Either way, this is the Temptations (arguably the greatest all male vocal group ever) together with their producer Norman Whitfield boldly and beautifully going as far (and as long) as they ever would, indeed as far as man ever has, a thirteen minute trip, which if taken at the speed of light would actually get you past Mars. Not bad for a bunch of guys †from the wrong side of the tracks, Detroit.

152. listen to the lion

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“It’s true. Van Morrison‘s Listen To The Lion is exactly what you want to have playing when you finally emerge from a prolonged season in hell, a dark night of the soul, an entanglement in Chapel Perilous (choose your analogy). It won’t miraculously save you, make you whole again, but once you (and whichever gods and/or demons and/or friends and/or organizations may have stooped to redeem you) have done the heavy lifting, it’s there to welcome you, take your hand, tell you you’re not alone … and remind you that you’ve got a lion inside you that needs to roar, rage, tear righteously free at least some of the time, else it will tear you apart from within and love shall never come tumbling. In other words, you’ve just got to let it go sometimes. Your soul, that is. Believe in it and, if necessary, get to growling.” (Philip Random)

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Van Morrison: 9 Great versions of “Listen To The Lion”

153. the power of love

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“It’s obvious now, but for some reason (maybe the Christmas themed video confused me), it didn’t really strike me at the time that The Power of Love was about AIDS, the holocaust that was currently tearing through the world’s male homosexual population (and beyond). Indeed, Frankie Goes To Hollywood‘s Holly Johnson, who sang and co-wrote it, would soon be infected and, in the belief of the time, fated to a slow horrible death from the vampire that had got in the door. Of course, last I looked, Mr. Johnson is still alive as are many who were once doomed (all hail, medical science), which doesn’t in any way detract from the power of Power Of Love – one of those rare songs about that most complex of four letter words, that doesn’t diminish it, doesn’t whore it for cheap emotions, maybe sell some flowers and chocolates on Valentines Day. And I think it’s very much because of that vampire line at the beginning, the truth it nails, figurative and otherwise.” (Philip Random)

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154. voodoo chile

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There are two Voodoo Chiles on Jimi Hendrix‘s four-sided masterpiece Electric Ladyland, the second one (the Slight Return) being the one everybody’s heard perhaps too many times (even if it is full-on genius). But the first version which takes up the bulk of side one – that still sounds as fresh and immediate as the fifteen minutes or so in which it originally came to be. Stevie Winwood‘s the guy that dropped in to groove away on the Hammond organ in what amounted to pretty much a free jam. As for the rhythm section, that seems to have been the Experience’s Mitch Mitchell and Jefferson Airplane’s Jack Casady who just happened to be hanging around. It was that kind of scene, that kind of album.

(photo: Ron Raffaelli)

155. Invaders of the Heart

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“I first stumbled across Jah Wobble via his Bedroom Album, which was truth in advertising. It sounded exactly like a guy alone in his room with a multi-track recorder and various instruments, mucking around with various grooves and atmospheres, all cool and weirdly dreamy and easy to get lost in. But then a few months later, one of those moods (the one called Invaders Of The Heart) showed up in 12-inch extended play form, four dubbed up (and out) and ultimately quite powerful versions of the same track, bass now as big as a continent, everything else vibrating exquisitely from there. I’d never heard anything like it. I still haven’t really.” (Philip Random)

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156. Song for Europe

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“The easy and wrong position to take on Roxy Music is that they were only good as long as Brian Eno was onboard (ie: the first two albums), ‘…a 1970s band playing 1950s music for the twenty-first century‘. It’s true that things changed with Eno’s rather abrupt departure. How could they not? But as their third album Stranded makes abundantly clear, Roxy still had more than enough rings for a proper circus. With Song For Europe an epic romance that offers verses in not just English and French, but Latin too, all toward … well, I don’t know what exactly, or where. It just sends me there, sweetly, strangely, and finally powerfully. Which I suppose is where Roxy did finally lose it for me – when they stopped delivering the power and the strangeness, opting for those misty water-coloured moods of Avalon which definitely shifted units, but just drove me resolutely elsewhere. Anywhere else really. Oh well.” (Philip Random)

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