Author Archives: Randophonic

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About Randophonic

For now, I'm best thought of as a radio program. Sometimes it may seem I'm all the work of one person, other times many. What matters is the program.

655. Siberian Khatru

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It’s hard to put in context just how hot the band known as Yes were come 1972’s Close to the Edge, except just to say that a song as wired, as wild, as complex, as challenging, as virtuous as Siberian Khatru was pretty much required listening for anyone who was even half-serious about staying in touch with the zeitgeist. “I know where Siberia is. I have no idea what a Khatru is. Except to say it must have something to do with reaching but not quite grasping the essence of all our striving, our yearning, our dreams – the Grail itself, holy and unfathomable. But careful way out there, you don’t want to fall off. The edge, that is. Tread lightly. Enjoy the view.” (Philip Random)

656. move me

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“It’s maybe 1986 and the Commodore Ballroom is packed – some big deal band about to play. But first there’s a warm up act, a new British outfit nobody’s ever heard of called Wood-something. They open with a pumped acoustic thing that proceeds, over its three or four minutes, to amp up into something so extraordinary that we all know exactly who they are by the time it’s done. The Woodentops, who it’s sad to say, never really got any better, but man were they great that night! I don’t remember who the headliners were.” (Philip Random)

Woodentops-live

657. the end of the world

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In which Aphrodite’s Child (featuring a young Vangelis among other Greek psyche-prog weirdos) deliver a nugget of pop drama that’s equal parts syrupy and creepy in all the right ways. Come, child, to the end of world which is not all fire and brimstone, plagues and pestilence — it’s just a quiet little place I know about, far, far away from your parents and your friends. Where nobody will hear our ecstatic screams.

AphroditesChild-baby

658. I’m so tired

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“Believe it or not, it was actually half-way normal in certain circles to hate the Beatles at a certain point in the later 1980s, mainly due to twenty plus years of over-adulation, overexposure, over-everything. I remember one guy in particular, Ray, who had it narrowed down to only one song, the only Beatles track he could abide anymore, and he didn’t even know the title, just ‘from the White album, I think, the one about Sir Walter Raleigh being a stupid git for bringing tobacco to England.’ Ray was trying to quit smoking at the time, suffering insomnia as a result, so he was miles past pleasantries. The Winter of Hate, we called it – those bile filled seasons of righteous aggravation and antipathy. The polar opposite of the Summer of Love. Ronald Reagan was also to blame.” (Philip Random)

JohnLennon-smoking

659. Asbury Park

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To clarify. King Crimson first performed as a unit in early 1969, quickly knocked the world onto its head by more or less inventing so-called progressive rock, then proceeded to do just that for the next five years. They progressed. The line-up was ever mutating, as were the sounds. Only one thing remained unchanged. Robert Fripp remained seated as he played his mellotron and planet fracturing guitar. Asbury Park is a live improv from a show at the Asbury Park Casino on June 28, 1974, one of the last shows from the last King Crimson tour of the 1970s after which Mr. Fripp would shut the whole outfit down because he’d come to despise the industry he was in, and what it was doing to him. Not that he and King Crimson brand wouldn’t return half a decade later.  But that is a whole other discipline.

KingCrimson-1974-2

660. nine to the universe

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“Quoting my good friend Mark (who was no doubt stoned at the time), ‘The only essential Jimi Hendrix albums are the ones he recorded while he was still alive.’ By which, of course, he meant the ones that were released while he was still alive. But Mark did allow that 1980’s Nine To The Universe rated at least half an exception, ‘Because, man, some of that stuff is genuine proof of life after death.’ Perhaps because it was the first posthumous Hendrix release to not include dubious overdubs care of a producer who, revered as he may have been in the jazz universe, never should have been allowed near the Hendrix master tapes.” (Philip Random)

jimiHendrix-live