Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart in full-on freak mode from 1969’s Hot Rats. Dare a freak ask for more? Yeah, actually, or more to the point, less of the noodly jamming that eats up so much of the nine plus minutes running time, and more of the Captain being the Captain. But really, who’s complaining?
In which the synth-pop weirdoes known as Fad Gadget tell a necessary truth: all those beautiful new people out there, they just keep collapsing. And thus the world gets a necessary anthem for that point in time (1984) when all the delightfully extreme fashions and hairstyles of the late 1970s, early 1980s finally collided with the mainstream. And yes, there were victims, innocent and otherwise.
They called Rank + File cowpunk at the time of their first album, because key members, Chip and Tony Kinman had previously done time in punk contenders The Dils. But it was really just kickass countrified rock and roll. Big beat, lots of twang, and in the case of The Conductor Wore Black, a train to hell, like there’s anywhere else for a train to go.
“Yello being one of those outfits that defy categorization. True, their greatest renown has come from their dance floor stuff, but dig into any of their albums and you’ll find nothing if not variety. In the case of Si Senor The Hairy Grill (no idea what any of that means), it’s techno beats and textures crashing into full-on metal wailing. And it f***ing works.” (Philip Random)
“If machines have souls, then Kraftwerk would be holy men working the metaphysical grey area between them and us, coaxing forth the magic therein. Or something like that. All I know is Radioland (found on 1975’s Radioactivity) is exactly the kind of music I’d expect to hear in a funeral mass for a much loved machine. Mechanical, mysterious, contemplative, beautiful.” (Philip Random)
“I discovered Eric Burdon + The Animals‘ entirely OK take on Johnny Clash’s classic at least thirty years after the fact. But man, if the timing wasn’t perfect. Mid-1990s. Drinking too much, drugging too much, stumbling through some mid-life blues, it seems I was falling into my own ring of non-heavenly fire. But suddenly there was Mr. Burdon to not so much catch me as welcome me, sounding like a Tom Jones that was actually cool and experienced enough to get what the crazy psychedelic ’60s thing was all about – something to do with saving the entire universe by letting one’s freak flag fly, even if that meant going personally to hell in process. A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” (Philip Random)
Randophonic 