The Stones at the Marquee

It's a great shame... 

...that the Mick Taylor years, during which the Stones acquired their reputation as the "greatest rock & roll band in the World", and variants thereof, are so poorly documented in terms of official live material.

Of course, there was the indispensable "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out!", released in 1970, but it would be another 41 years before more Taylor-era live recordings would get a legit release. In this case it was 1973's "Brussels Affair" and it appeared in various formats - first as a digital download in 2011, then vinyl and CD sets, and finally as a bonus disc with the "Goats Head Soup" deluxe re-release.

Many fans already had most of this material, as it had been circulating as a variety of good quality bootlegs for years, after being officially broadcast on the "King Biscuit Flour Hour". However, its eventual release ensured that a complete show - actually culled from the day's two Brussels shows - could now be heard in the best available quality. As for the performance itself, it's very fine indeed and is many people's favourite Stones live show of this or, for some, any other era.

Fortunately, it didn't stop there.

A couple of Taylor-era shows were eventually released - Leeds University and the Marquee Club, both from 1971. The Leeds show was released as part of the "Sticky Fingers" Super Deluxe edition bonus material, whilst the Marquee show got a release all of its own as part of the Stones' Vault Collection. 

Although the Leeds show is very good, the Marquee gig is even better and documents the band performing in a small club. It took place a month before "Sticky Fingers" was released and a few of the "new" songs are featured, as they were in the short UK tour they'd just finished, and during which the Leeds show was one of the ports of call. 

It's interesting to consider that these songs were the first new compositions played live by the second Stones line up. They'd previously been reliant on old material and the vast majority of songs played had never featured Taylor originally. It's almost as if there's a missing studio album in the Stones' timeline - one which features all new material recorded very soon after Taylor joined, and which could have then been toured earlier in his tenure.

The Marquee gig, which was professionally filmed, was obviously a promo show for the "Sticky Fingers" album, with "Brown Sugar", "Bitch", "Dead Flowers" and "I Got the Blues" taken from it and given a live airing. The release also features different takes of a couple of these songs, as the film seems to have been destined for wider consumption. Although it premiered on German TV in 1971, I can't find any reference to it being broadcast in either the US or UK at that time. The whole thing was then shelved for 44 years. It seems a lot of trouble to go to just to get a one-off TV screening in Germany.

The Marquee gig is pretty unique as it shows a band already committed to stadium tours but quite at home in the sort of club they'd play when first starting out. In this intimate setting, everyone seems relaxed and happy, whilst also being totally immersed in their own and each other's performance. Jagger's playing to the audience makes more sense as he'd have been able to actually see them and he sings very well. Keef seems very together, and he and Mick Taylor play off each other beautifully: a legacy of recent touring, perhaps? Bill is just Bill and plays simply what's needed. Charlie's good tonight, in'ee? Also in tow are Ian Stuart on piano, Nicky Hopkins on keys, Bobby Keys on sax and Jim Price on horns.

The size of the venue means that there aren't any long shots showing the whole stage, so it's all up close and personal, with Mick and Keef to the fore, Taylor occasionally shown, and Bill and Charlie not figuring that much at all. It's still a great video, though!

All in all, it's an excellent package with great sound - there seem to be no post-production overdubs - and sharp video.  The original release came with DVD video and CD audio recordings, along with a few bonuses in the form of alternate takes and a BBC video of "Brown Sugar".

With their own mobile studio on call, there are bound to have been more Taylor-era shows recorded. Five tracks from a 1971 gig at London's Roundhouse were released, along with the Leeds Uni gig, in the bonus material on the Super Deluxe reissue of "Sticky Fingers".

On offer here is the video and audio content of the Vault Collection release along with artwork scans. Just answer a simple question in the comment section below and linkage will appear as if by magic.

This really is live Stones at its finest!

Groovin' with Richard "Groove" Holmes

There are few drummers who fail to impress me...

...OK, as a guitarist, I can perform a different action with each hand - picking and fretting - and occasionally click on an effects pedal with my foot, but a half competent drummer can do four separate things using both hands and both feet. To me, that's practically witchcraft!

However, I think that a good organ player has drummers beaten.

By "good", I mean a player who uses both hands on the keys and both feet on the bass pedals. Of course, instruments which allowed this could once only be found in churches and concert halls and were invariably large and permanent fixtures powered by pressurised air, but the invention of the electronic organ meant that the instrument could be made portable, cheaper and thus more widely used. It also meant that one player could cover two jobs, which had an impact on the logistics of live performance.

Look at my huge organ!

In terms of popular music genres - rock, jazz and pop - the industry standard was, and still is, the Hammond organ, although few players choose to use bass pedals with it nowadays. Most forego bass lines altogether and let the bass player take care of them. Those players who do choose to play bass lines either assign the left hand to the bass register (similar to a piano-based approach) or play bass pedals with their feet. Using the feet leaves both hands free for more complex lines, of course. In effect, an electric organist has the facility to play three keyboards simultaneously.

The modern electric organ is teamed with a special rotary speaker cabinet which gives oscillating sounds and swells. Without this add-on, the organ sounds like a pipe (church) organ, which was the original purpose of the Hammond organ. The generic term "Leslie" is often used for these cabinets since Donald Leslie invented and manufactured them. The full story is well worth reading - especially regarding his clashes with the Hammond company.  Other electric organs were manufactured, with Lowry being the other main brand. Hammonds have drawbars to create different sounds, whilst Lowry organs have switches, although the sounds available are broadly similar. 

The iconic Hammond B3 - as popularised by Jimmy Smith - with Leslie cabinet on the left

Although I'd seen and heard the Hammond electric organ used in bands, it wasn't until I saw the late Alan Haven in concert that I appreciated the skill required to play what was a veritable behemoth even when tamed at the hands (and feet!) of a supremely talented player. Accompanied only by a drummer - the legendary Tony Crombie - Haven sat at his organ like some sort of NASA Mission Control console operative playing both manuals (it was a double keyboard) and moving his whole body as he played bass lines with his feet. Haven played a Lowry at this time, but the mechanics of playing were virtually identical to the Hammond.

 Alan Haven - could that guy move!

Seeing Haven really piqued my interest in jazz organ, and after exploring people like Jimmy Smith, Brother Jack McDuff, Shirley Scott and Wild Bill Davis, I came across a guy called Richard "Groove" Holmes.

Holmes had a very successful 30 year career, but it was his first few early 1960s albums which often featured just him, a guitarist and a drummer that won me over. What was so appealing about his trio work was that it wasn't terribly smooth, as some of his later work was, in common with the increasing number of jazz players who made the move towards more commercial sounds.

Holmes played a Hammond with a rather brash tone and really had to work hard with just a guitar and drums behind him. He often played with guitarist Gene Edwards who adopted quite a dirty sound with plenty of bluesy influences, and the material was largely original compositions or bop favourites, with less reliance on jazz versions of hits and standards. Consequently, Holmes' early albums on the Prestige and Pacific Jazz labels had a very earthy and raw vibe. At times, things could get downright raucous!

Holmes even scored a hit at around this time with "Misty" which, although a common standard, received a thorough overhaul that "desmoothed" it into a fast swing number. The two minute single edit is OK, but the full six minute version sees Holmes employing his trademark sustained notes which went on for several bars as the guitar and drums vamped furiously, with Holmes soloing over the top of everything and taking care of the bottom end! He also sliced and diced little phrases, almost like Monk, and laid them over the rhythm in interesting ways.

Here's Holmes in 1980 in a small group setting and the clip illustrates how he could really fill out the sound and drive the music along.

The first "Groove" Holmes album I heard was 1962's "After Hours" and I was immediately hooked - especially after listening to his version of Ray Charles' "Hallelujah, I Love Her So". Recorded over two sessions - one with Joe Pass and the other with Gene Edwards on guitar duties - it's a heady mix of hard bop covers, blues, originals and a couple of standards. Holmes uses a few different tone settings to create various moods and the trio format allows the players room to let the material breathe. 

Three years later, "Soul Message" was released and Holmes' customary trio of himself, Gene Edwards and Jimmie Smith (not that one!) on drums features on all tracks. This is where you'll find the full version of "Misty" mentioned above and it's a stunning track with Holmes taking chorus after chorus. Edwards is on fine form and he really takes some chances on the cover of Horace Silver's "Song For My Father". 

Very soon, Holmes would be marketed as "soul jazz" and later as "acid jazz". Larger and larger recording ensembles with electric bass players (Holmes didn't need them!) and too many pop covers - "Dreams of an Everyday Housewife" anyone? - diluted what Holmes was capable of doing at his best: cooking up a storm using the simplest of ingredients with punchy material, and not giving too much of a shit if there were a few rough edges showing along the way. It really was all about the groove!

Holmes died in 1991 and even got a name check on the Beastie Boys' 1992 album "Check Your Head" with the track "Groove Holmes", but I haven't heard him referenced by anyone anywhere since, apart from his inclusion on a handful of acid jazz compilation albums and an occasional blog mention. Sure, Jimmy Smith is the name that springs to most people's minds when you mention "jazz organ", but to me it's Richard "Groove" Holmes every time.

I feel sure that Lester the Nightfly would have been a fan...

A pinch of Sault

Another guest post from jon der. The band is totally new to me and sounds intriguing, to say the least!

Sault is a collective of British and American performers whose first album (entitled 5) was released in May 2019, and was followed four months later by a second album (7).  No credits identified the singers, musicians, or songwriters.  Sault had no social media presence, a rarity in this era of relentless self-promotion.

 

 The identities of Sault’s primary participants have since been discovered, but as a group Sault has no image. There is no “Lead Singer” or “Lead Guitarist”, so the sound can shift as singers & players drop in and out.  

5 and 7 incorporated soul, Afrobeat, disco and the minimal funk sound of 80’s bands like ESG and Liquid Liquid.  The social commentary in songs such as “Foot On Necks” is as current as the Black Lives Matter movement, but is also reminiscent of What’s Going On and its doppelganger, There’s A Riot Goin’ On.

One female singer sounds sophisticated and accomplished; others are charmingly unaffected.  One accent is clearly African American; others sound British or Afro-Caribbean.  Sometimes a man sings in a distorted, almost wordless voice.  

 

Two new Sault albums appeared in 2020. Untitled (Black Is) was released on Juneteenth, and Sault made its first statement:  “We present our first 'Untitled' album to mark a moment in time where we as Black People, and of Black Origin are fighting for our lives. RIP George Floyd and all those who have suffered from police brutality and systemic racism. Change is happening… We are focused.” Untitled (Rise) was released three months later.

 

In 2021, the album Nine appeared with the announcement, “Nine will only exist for ninety nine days” – after which it was removed from digital platforms.  In 2022, the orchestral album Air was released, followed by 10, a ten minute reggae-influenced single. Five new albums appeared simultaneously, free to download for five days in November, as “an offering to God”.  

 

 Writing for BoingBoing, Elías Villoro described these five Sault albums as “Soundtracks for space travel and Underground Railroads, chants, incantations, operas, protest anthems, historical invocations, stories of the daily thriving and struggle of Black people on planet earth.”  One of the albums was orchestral; another ventured into punk and hard rock.  One album featured children’s voices; another was sung by a gospel choir; yet another consisted of intimate duets.

Sault contains multitudes.

 

Links coming in the comments below!

Dance Music For Borneo Horns & more…

Koen sez: for this piece I wanted to emphasize World Music as this hasn’t been tackled before ON this great blog.

 

Back in a distant past, when boomers roamed everywhere I was back in the Low Countries, visiting family and friends, but also satisfying my craving for music…

 

During one of my numerous visits to the Free Record Shop, I found a world music compilation: Instruments - A Collection of Instrumentalists on Hannibal Records.

 

 Despite being unfamiliar at the time with any of the artists (Outback, Danny Thompson, BJ Cole, Muzsikas, a.o.), the cool cover art and a decent bargain price (10 guilders) resulted in a quick sale of course.

 

 

 

Once back home I started playing it and was (very) pleasantly surprised as the variety of musical styles was huge, to say the least; from East European to folk to Jazz and beyond, from now on I would keep my eyes peeled for other Hannibal releases!

The connection with Ryko Disc became pretty obvious after another trip to Penang (Malaysia) which I did every 3 months or so, the easiest way of continuing to stay in Thailand during those days. Compared to Bangkok Penang offered a lot more, especially when it came to music, I scored quite a few Ryko CDs there, including a very neat double disc: The Most Beautiful Sound In The World - a Ryko-Hannibal world music sampler for SE Asia only!

 

That changed completely though once Tower Records opened in Bangkok in the 1990s and I scored the excellent Big Noise - A Mambo Inn Compilations.

 

Despite the absurdity of World Music labeling (as it stands really for any non-western kind of music), Hannibal started early when there was not much else and kept the quality level (music & packaging!) high as Joe Boyd (producer of Nick Drake, a.m.o.!) was involved up till the 1990s. Teaming up with Ryko was a good move, but once Ryko was bought by Warner in 2006, it was the end of Hannibal…

But whenever I find a 2nd hand Hannibal CD, I still automatically buy it!

In order to obtain a fresh rip of this cool out-of-print "Instruments - A Collection of Instrumentalists on Hannibal Records", just let us know your opinion about ‘World Music’.

Six bells...please...

Ask people to pick their favourite track...

...from the late 1960s flower power era and you'll get quite a few rooting for "A Whiter Shade of Pale" by Procol Harum. 

OK, it was fine in its day, but now it just sounds turgid to me and the lyrics are the usual hippy-drippy nonsense. I never play it - and I'm a huge Procol fan - and if it comes on the radio, I'll either turn it off or just zone out until it's over.

However, Procol's finest track is as magnificent as "Pale" is tedious.

I refer to their 1969 single "A Salty Dog", which climbed to the dizzy heights of #44 in the UK in 1969.

By this time, Procol had settled down to their five piece post-"Pale" #1 hit line up, but organist Matthew Fisher was getting restless in spite of also landing the job as the band's producer, and Robin Trower's more blues based guitar style seemed at times to be at odds with the band's main thrust. What the pair went on to do will come up later...

However you look at it, the title track of Procol's third album - "A Salty Dog" is a remarkable piece of music. Trower and producer Fisher don't appear on it and the song is carried by Gary Brooker's piano, the superb drumming of B.J, Wilson (legendarily described as looking like "an octopus in a bath tub"), a bass guitar and an orchestral part which was scored by Brooker.

It's a longish track - just under five minutes - with no discernible chorus, and the words by band lyricist Keith Reid describe an ill-fated sea voyage, so not exactly a chart cert on paper to start with. However, there's a narrative here - unlike "Pale" - although it's not straightforward and its ambiguity makes it hard to nail down whatever meaning it might have. I think it's about our own voyage into death but, after 54 years, I'm still not too sure. 

It opens with seagull cries - appropriate, as seagulls are supposed to be the souls of dead sailors - and goes into a repeating, descending and somewhat funereal chord progression played by the strings and Gary Brooker's piano. Brooker starts singing - really, really well - and then Wilson comes in with a beautifully fractured drum roll, as the song enters a different section. That's it really - Brooker's voice and piano, the orchestra and Wilson on drums. Yes, there's a bass from Dave Knights but it mostly follows the bass notes of the piano chords. There's an interlude at about the 2:30 mark with just Brooker's piano and the strings before it resumes the verse section. It ends on the interlude section and then slows to play the final chord - a Dbsus4 for those interested: the chord it started on, although it sounds far more enigmatic at the end than at the beginning. The music stops, but that chord hangs there unresolved.

Oh, and let's not forget Kellogs on bosun's whistle. 

Brooker tended to start the song too quickly live...hear him having to slow down...

Like Procol's other albums, the "Salty Dog" album itself is a bit of a mixed bag, with Trower's guitar dominating some songs to their detriment. His playing sounds overwrought but strangely gauche at times: even, although it pains me to say it, a little out of tune on occasion. It's not a bad album, but it's wildly inconsistent.

As for Procol, Fisher left the band but stayed on as producer for a while and then Trower left. The pair would meet up and record Trower's first three solo albums with Fisher producing. Just a few years after he quit Procol, Trower sounded like a different player and his superb second album, 1974's "Bridge of Sighs", owed absolutely nothing to his past in terms of material, sound and presentation. It was power trio rock with a Hendrixy vibe, although there was, and still is, far more to Trower's playing than mere homage.

Matthew Fisher is still around, and blagged co-composer credits for "Pale" in 2006, after a court case. Robin Trower still gigs and records, although he's never surpassed "Bridge" in the studio as far as I'm concerned. Thankfully, he can still cut the mustard live. B.J.Wilson died after a three year coma following an intentional drug overdose. Bassist Dave Knights seems to have dropped out of music altogether. Gary Brooker died of cancer just last year.

"A Salty Dog" - Procol's true masterpiece.

Sound and Gramavision

Art58Koen's recent guest post about Ryko...

...got me thinking about other labels which hosted interesting artists and Gramavision came to mind. In fact, there's a direct connection between the two, as Ryko took over the label in 1994.

So, who was on Gramavision?

Like Ryko, its artist roster was very eclectic and included acts as diverse as Terry Riley, Robert Wyatt, Taj Mahal, Klaus Schultze, Kitaro, the Kronos Quartet, the JBs and Bernie Worrel. It was also the label where I managed to find albums by a couple of guitarists to whom I'd been introduced by the flexi-discs that used to be included every month by "Guitar Player" magazine in the 1980s - John Scofield and Kazumi Watanabe. Totally coincidentally, the latter of these links to another of Koen's posts, as Watanabe played on one of Ryuichi Sakamoto's Gruppo Musicale albums.

John Scofield came to prominence in the early 1980s when he was in Miles Davis' band and the Gramavision album of his that I've selected for this screed was released just after he left. "Blue Matter" was produced by Steve Swallow and features Sco with Dennis Chambers on drums, Gary Grainger on bass, Mitchel Forman on keys, Don Alias on percussion and also fellow guitarist Hiram Bullock on a few tracks. It's quite a funky album and the guitar is very bluesy in places, although Scofield has chops aplenty to go way outside the pentatonic boxes. Stand out track for me is "The Nag" which has a relentless (nagging?) backdrop as the guitarist plays repetitive figures which tug as if trying to get free. It's also the most Milesish track and would have fitted well in the trumpeter's repertoire of the mid 1980s.

Another link to one of Art58Koen's posts, in this instance to some of the dub artists he mentions, appears in the credits for Kazumi Watanabe's "Mobo I & II" Gramavision release. Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare help out, as well as Omar Hakim, Marcus Miller, Don Grolnick, Michael Brecker and Steve Jordan. Watanabe & Co take a lively approach to what might otherwise have been just another jazz rock album and there's quite a pronounced dub vibe going on at times. A certain playfulness often creeps into the compositions and arrangements so that the whole album avoids being too cerebral, although there's no shortage of technically stunning playing. "Half Blood", in particular, really boots along and Watanabe's improvisatory flair shines through. There's a lot of emphasis on groove, and some tracks feature two drummers and two bassists which keeps things interesting on the rhythm front. "Shang-Hi" could almost be a mid-1980s Miles Davis track, which never occurred to me until I started choosing the music for this screed. I guess I shouldn't have underestimated Miles' influence on people at that time! 

Just like Ryko, Gramavision released samplers but I've only managed to track one of them down - "Alternate Currents". It focuses on some of the more jazz-based artists in their catalogue and there are a few familiar names here - John Scofield, Bill Frisell, Medeski Martin & Wood, Charlie Haden and Bobby Previte. However, it's the last track, "On a Country Road", which really stands out for me. Clarinettist and leader John Carter plays a strange kind of trilling line over a sort of blues which gets a little New Orleans'ish with a cornet solo towards the end and then the track very gradually dies away after a harmonica comes in. It's a quite remarkable track - very rootsy and rhythmic but somehow cool and understated at the same time. I think I'll have to try and hear more by Carter...

I'm so out of touch with the current state of the music business that I really have no idea of what labels exist today, who's on them and who owns them. Gone is that instant recognition factor - "Ooh, that's an Island label record!" and, ditto, the curiosity - "I wonder who it's by?"

There'll be a question in the comments below if you want to win this Gramavision stuff!

Music in a Doll by Doll's house

Sometimes an album gets released that seems to exist independently of its context in musical time and space...

...and so it is with Doll by Doll's second release "Gypsy Blood". Released in 1979, it defies categorisation and could have been released at any time since then and still sound fresh and contemporary.

By then, punk had given way to more melodic and synth-driven sounds, and Abba, Blondie, Fleetwood Mac, the Floyd and Meat Loaf were selling in bucketloads. It was no surprise, therefore, that Doll by Doll, who'd formed a couple of years previously and hadn't even bothered to clamber on the punk bandwagon, preferring instead to colour their music with psychedelia, were being largely ignored by the music press. This didn't augur well for their renewed assault on the contemporary music scene, as a revamped line up prepared their second album.

Doll's frontman - Jackie Leven - started off as a folk singer in the late 1960s and went on to release a folk rock album called "Control" in 1971, under the alias of John St Field. There was no indication of what he would go on to do with Doll by Doll. However, possessed with a remarkable voice that could turn from mellow baritone to sweet falsetto in the blink of an eye, a keen ear for melody and harmony, and a poetic lyricism, Leven just needed the right framework for his innate eclecticism, which he eventually found with Doll.

"Gypsy Blood" was recorded with Leven and Jo Shaw on vocals and guitar, Robin Spreafico on vocals and bass and Tony Waite on vocals and drums. Augmented by occasional pedal steel guitar from session ace B. J. Cole, fiddle and a choir, the resulting album reveals a dazzling array of influences and allusions, all held together sonically by the glue of Leven's voice and songs and a band who were more than up to the sophistication required by his compositions.

At times, there's an almost clairvoyant nature to the music - "Binary Fiction" could almost be Belew-era King Crimson. Elsewhere, there are backwards guitars, full-blown heavily panned freak outs, phased vocals, a jazzy shuffle that sounds almost Steely Dan'ish, some jangly pop, an occasional nod to the Doors, a smattering of Celtic folk, and a Scott Walker type ballad. 

As for the title track - it could be the best song Van Morrison or Dexy's Midnight Runners never recorded, although it goes places they wouldn't ever dream of going... 

The nondescript cover shot of Leven has an interesting story behind it:

Taken at the end of a photo session around London’s then-decrepit docklands, he [Leven] had caught his foot in a length of old chain and gone over the side, facing a 15 foot drop to hard clay until he managed to grab on to something, hanging perilously for endless minutes before managing to clamber back up. The picture was taken at that moment when he stood, shaken and shattered but safe; perfect for the album.

Unfortunately, Doll by Doll acquired a reputation for being "difficult" to deal with and their intimidatory attitude towards other bands got them sacked from two support slots - first by Devo and then by Hawkwind. 

In the end, it was Doll by Doll against the world - or as Leven put it:

We cast ourselves in a set of images which genuinely closed doors for us, like shut the whole castle up, with us standing around outside pissing against the parapets going ‘Come on, ye bastards!’”

Needless to say, the album didn't bring about any sort of breakthrough and, by 1983, the band ceased to exist. The year after, Leven was the victim of an attack in the street which left him unable to speak or sing for a couple of years. This exacerbated his manic depression and he turned to heroin, which he managed to kick a few years later. After this rocky start to his post-Doll solo career, he went on to record prolifically and cultivate a loyal fanbase who supported him at his now legendary acoustic gigs. All his post-Doll albums are worth hearing. He died in 2011 of cancer.

You get used to hyperbole in the world of rock criticism, but the quote below seems more than reasonable to me: 

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Neil McCormack acclaimed it ["Gypsy Blood"] as “the lost masterpiece of British rock, by the greatest band you’ve never heard of…this lush classic of near-psychotic beauty has everything you could ever want from a rock album…With the grandeur of Dark Side of the Moon, the strangeness of Forever Changes and the bleak beauty of The Bends, it really is as good as any album ever made.”

A masterpiece? A lush classic? As good as any album ever made? You decide...

RIP David Lindley

As far as David Lindley was concerned...

...I came pretty late to the party. I was aware of the name, as a session player and as a member of Kaleidoscope, but it wasn't until a friend lent me his copy of the recently-released "El Rayo-X" album that I started listening to him and then chasing down everything he played on that I could find. This guy was special - very special indeed.

In a way, I'm glad that his solo work was my first proper introduction to him, as it meant that I never viewed him as someone who only brought their skills and talent to bear on someone else's work, but as someone who was a stellar performer in their own right, with their own sound and their own approach to music.

Lindley could play anything with strings - bowed or plucked - and not just the usual fiddles, guitars, mandolins or banjos. He took up more exotic instruments like the oud, saz and bouzouki and it was all grist to his mill. He also had a knack of combining such ethnic instruments with American roots music. I mean, who else would think of using an 11 string fretless oud to play "New Minglewood Blues"? Indeed, who else could make such a combination sound good?

There were basically three strands to Lindley's five decade post-Kaleidoscope career - as a session player and sidesman, as a band leader and as an acoustic performer.

His work with other people is very well-documented and, as I pointed out above, perhaps overshadows his own projects. So, I'm not going to cover this aspect of his career. If you look through your music collection and consult Discogs.com, you'll find that you've probably already got some of his work with others. 

Lindley's own band - El Rayo-X - featured him on electric and acoustic steel, standard electric and the occasional ethnic instrument. With a pretty much constant line up of  Bernie Larsen on guitar and vocals, Ian Wallace on drums and vocals and Jorge Calderon on bass and vocals, and, later on, George "Ras Baboo" Pierre on percussion and vocals and William "Smitty" Smith on organ, El Rayo-X were a class live act who were guaranteed to give you a good time, as this 1982 gig shows.

El Rayo only lasted from 1981 to 1989, with occasional reunion gigs, and Lindley's live shows henceforth were mainly either solo performances or as a duo with percussionists Hani Naser (no slouch on the oud himself), and then Wally Ingram. This meant that the atmosphere at gigs was more intimate, and this allowed Lindley to embroider his set with jokes and anecdotes and develop into something of a raconteur. The clip below is part one of three and describes his experience with some very bad backstage food...it's extremely funny and his playing on the Weissborn is phenomenal.

It may not have escaped your notice that he liked garish polyester clothes and he and his wife would comb charity shops (thrift stores) for the loudest examples for him to wear on stage. Indeed, he was known as the "Prince of Polyester".

So, goodbye to an immense talent and a consummate performer - we will never see his like again.

No question today - just a couple of live shows - linked to below in the comments - by which to remember him.

What's NEU!?

NEU! - a band a lot of people may have heard about, but may not have heard...

Quite how I first heard NEU! - sometime in 1973 - is lost in the mists of time, but it was probably courtesy of John Peel on the radio. However it happened, it set me off searching for their second album - the cleverly titled "NEU! 2". 

When I managed to get hold of it, everything about it was strange. The cover art was very minimalist, with the band name and title spray painted in grey and pink on a plain white background - graffiti before I was ever really aware of it. This was all very different to the often very colourful and garish Hipgnosis-style album covers that seemed popular back then.

However, it was what was inside - trapped in those black vinyl grooves - that was truly strange.

But who were NEU! and how did they come about? Comprised of the duo of Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger, they first met up in an early trio version of Kraftwerk, with Florian Schneider. They gigged only sporadically and recorded under the supervision of producer Conny Plank, but nothing came of the sessions. Schneider joined up with Wolfgang Flur, who was in an earlier quartet version of Kraftwerk, and so Dinger and Rother then formed NEU!, maintaining a working relationship with Plank, who's worth a screed of his own.

Rother, Dinger & Schneider in Kraftwerk - 1971

The album kicks off with the track which first alerted me to NEU! - the 11 minute long "Fur Immer" ("Forever"). On the surface, this is just a simple one chord vamp driven by the 4/4 drumming of Klaus Dinger and acting as an anchor for the other member of NEU! Michael Rother to layer guitars over.

This insistent drum beat has come to be known as "Motorik" and Dinger was one of its pioneers. Here's what he has to say about it:

...he did not have much time for critics who referred to his insistent drumming as the motorik beat. "That sounds more like a machine, and it was very much a human beat," he said. "It's essentially about life, how you have to keep moving, get on and stay in motion."

When you consider the constant rhythm of the human heart, what Dinger says makes perfect sense.

Both musicians contribute the electronics which are either applied to the guitars and drums or recorded separately. Quite what these effects are and how they're achieved is unclear, but I don't think they're coming from synths. They sound too organic for that. The track is mainly about textures, although melodic figures do creep in almost subliminally from time to time as snatches of tunes which are no sooner heard than gone forever. Are those sounds waves at the very end? 

"Spitzenqualität" ("Top Quality") follows. This is mainly Dinger with his Motorik beat again, merged with strange rushing sounds that sound like fast traffic on a distant Autobahn. It gradually slows down in fits and starts with increasing reverb on the drums.

The next track - "Gedenkminute (für A + K)" ("Minute's Silence (For A + K)") - is two (!) minutes of wind like noise relieved only by a bell tolling in the second half.

Back to the Motorik beat for side one's closer - "Lila Engel" ("Lilac Angel") - with Rother playing repeated guitar chords and distorted drones, and wordless chanting over the top of everything. It gradually builds up to a crescendo with Rother's guitar getting louder and dirtier until it all collapses with more chanting and guitar feedback.

Somehow it all hangs together with the unifying drumming of Dinger and the strange rushing Autobhan/waves/wind effects that seems to pervade much of the first side. 

However much I enjoyed the strangeness of side one, nothing could have prepared me for side two... 

The year before "NEU! 2" was released, the duo put out a single - "Super"/"Neuschnee". This flopped after receiving minimal promotion but Dinger and Rother decided to put the tracks on side two of "NEU 2". How they capitalised on the failed single to then produce side two is a different story depending on who you listen to.

According to Dinger, the duo had spent all their recording budget for the album on new instruments and the recording of side one:

When the money ran out, I got the idea of taking the single, play around with it and put the results on side 2 of the album.

Rother, on the other hand, claimed that side 2 was a bit of a poke at their record label for not promoting them with sufficient enthusiasm.

So, what exactly was so divisive about the second side? Well, it contains the two sides of the single - fair enough, I suppose. However, the remaining five tracks are versions of the single sides at different speeds, as a mangled tape version, or with wow and flutter. They're not remixes, but ready-made tracks that have been crudely manipulated to be very different from the originals.

So, artistic innovation or musical protest? Either way, opinion was divided - amongst fans, critics and between Dinger and Rother themselves. I have to say that I rarely play side two - it's side one and "Fur Immer" forever for me, although I sometimes continue onto side two if I'm in the right mood.

As you'd expect, virtually no video footage of NEU! exists, but here's some from 1974...

Neu made one more studio album - "NEU! '75" -  before splitting in 1975. Many fans and critics seem to prefer it to its predecessor, but I like the rough and ready experimentation of "NEU! 2", its overall organic vibe and the sound of the duo finding a way to sound like themselves. Regardless of their albums' respective merits, plenty of people like Bowie, punk in general and Gary Numan owe much to NEU!'s pioneering work, and the band's significance has grown over the years.

Although the duo collaborated from time to time, personal differences continued to get in the way and nothing further of note was achieved. Dinger died in 2008, but Rother continues to perform.

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