FM, straight outa Toronto, hit the so-called prog-rock scene just as everything was falling apart amid the combined assaults of punk, disco, overall societal skepticism toward heavy and bloated concepts. But their first album Black Noise was still a cosmic delight, particularly One O’clock Tomorrow. “It forever abstracted my sense of space-time-everything, though LSD was also a factor.” (Philip Random)
Neil Diamond‘s Hot August Night, possibly the greatest live album ever released, starts well indeed with Crunchy Granola Suite, the power of which is only slightly negated when you realize it really is about eating well, lots of nuts and berries. From the album’s liner notes: “Then softly, the music begins, the lights dim. The music rises, the stage is a smoky, opalescent jewel in the darkness. But one light shines brighter than the others, a white pool in the brilliance, and for an instant, sound hangs suspended, only the air breathing. Then he’s there, the crowd exploding, Neil Diamond, casual, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world, those 5000 people demanding his soul. And for the next 107 minutes, he gives it to them.”
One of those Leonard Cohen songs you just never seem to hear. Possibly because it’s too long, though more likely because it’s thus far eluded the grasp of half-baked MOR interpreters. “Some people seem to hate this song. Probably because it is so long and relentless in its truth, as simple as a man with his hand out on the winter street, bitterly cold, barely hanging on, and all he asks is that you not ignore him, that you not just pass him by one more time.” (Philip Random)
“I stumbled onto Tom Waits through the movies (the songs he did for Francis Coppola’s One From the Heart mess, the beat hipster he played in Coppola’s Rumblefish, the idiot on the run in Down By Law) so I guess it makes sense that I think of him more as a showbiz guy than the essential musical force that some seem to. Yeah, he can lay down the gravely depths, but how much of that is just acting, pretending, NOT real blues, soul, whatever. But then you hear something like Hang Down Your Head, which is the kind of song Bruce Springsteen only wishes he could write, and you realize you’re probably wrong.”
“In which the Spacemen 3 sing the somnambulant praises of being so f***ing high, you may as well be hanging with God’s own son. Found on their first album and a bunch of other places, it’s rumoured to be completely concerned with heroin. But don’t be fooled, kids. Heroin’s a liar. Ain’t no heaven on earth.” (Philip Random)
Speaking of that Indonesian monkey chant that Vic Coppersmith-Heaven had so much fun with in the early 1980s, here’s Jade Warrior from almost a decade previous, taking it on from a more acidic angle. Jade Warrior being one of those outfits that made the pre-punk 70s such an endlessly cosmic delight, dropping a steady diet of instrumental non-hits, that mostly tended to just float along, with occasional eruptions.
Randophonic 
