OVER THE TOP. COMPLETELY.

Modesty be damned and banished! We're shooting the moon on this one. We're gonna start with a little keyboard vamp. Bring in the band and now let's get comfortable in a tight, swinging jazz rock groove. Enter nifty guitar solo. And electric piano solo. Band keep vamping. Now, horns!, hit it and take us to the verse. Bring it down, all quiet. Spotlight on vocalist, stage-center, sounding like he was recruited from the house band at Caesar's Palace. Bring the waka-waka guitars, strings, horns, AND oohh-aahhhs from a female choir. Now it's the band's turn again, a little harder this time than the first time around. The jamming begins, horns leading the charge. Strings swirl, guitars twirl, horns wail into a mild cacophany and silence. Lone spotlight again on stage-center as Mr. Vegas comes out again and takes us back to the three-ring circus of horns on one side, strings on the other, waka guitars bicycling around, and the female choir flying back and forth on their trapeze. All goes quiet and the juggler enters in the shape of a short, tight drum solo that sets up the finale by first inviting the bass to get the ball rolling. Everyone else joins in the fun. Electric piano. Backing vocals. Horns. MOOG! only now has the party truly started. And we fade out as the Big Top tea party spins into the distance.

Quick, concluding note. Around four years earlier, Lucifer's Friend had recorded one of the top-10 tracks of early metal: "Ride In The Sky." Led Zeppelin may or may not have ripped-off the horn's war charge for Plant's howl in "Immigrant Song." I just found a very cool "live" clip of that track on YouTube. Check it out.

LUCIFER'S FRIEND -- Spanish Galleon (Banquet, 1974)
Yes, it's over the top but so unabashedly so, so unironically, so sincerely. I don't know if music like this is made any more. Is this kind of thing is even possible without quotation marks?

THE HYPERSPACE ROCK SOUND

Pink Floyd was my first concert. Momentary Lapse Of Reason "reunion" tour. 1987. Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands. It was my first concert and, therefore, an important life event and one of my favorite music-related experiences. Any number of Crash Worship events, with its atavistic wine, milk, fruit, nudity, and drums were all intensely involving, lived experiences and some of my favorite music-related experiences.

Another of my favorites was Blind Idiot God at CBGB, around 1994/95. If Floyd was my favorite for its life event status and Crash Worship was my favorite for the lived experience, BIG might have been my favorite for tangible, musical force. It was simply awesome, in the classic sense.

The first thing that anyone in the room would have noticed was the wall to wall spread of futuristic, state-of-the-art-looking, five-foot tall speakers. Who the hell uses that much amplification? Why? And what are they possibly going to do with it? Next, your eyes went to the front and center of the stage where there stood the biggest drum set I have ever seen at a New York club show. This massive, double-bass edifice with maybe five rack toms, three floor toms and innumerable cymbals would have been perfectly at home on stage with Dave Lombardo or even Journey, if you added a orchestral gong behind the kit. Who the hell plays on a kit like that? In CBs? Why? And what is he possibly going to do with it?

The short answer to the above questions is that Blind Idiot God made me feel what it might be like to fly in the Millenium Falcon while inside one of its engines....and enjoy it. And I don't mean it in the masochistic "can you take the pain" or "how exteeeme can you go" senses. I mean that this was the most supersonic, levitationally massive (the band's guitarist, Andy Hawkins prefers "symphonically loud"), monolithically hyperspace musical performance I have heard.

The band’s sound is entirely instrumental and is based around harmonically complex guitar chording and throttling drumming (though the band also incongruously plays dub). Hawkins’s guitar sounds as though he has amassed several legions of guitarists, each playing its own esoteric chord on top of each other at such speeds that it isn’t clear where one chord ends and another begins. It’s as if he has condensed all of Glenn Branca’s guitar symphonies into one person and one guitar.

Yet BIG’s best stuff hits harder than any Branca piece. That’s where drummer Ted Epstein comes in. Simply put, you’d have to look far and wide to find a drummer that is doing so much and doing it with so much power and invention. Usually, the most athletic drummers (Lombardo, Mick Harris, etc) sacrifice some composition for their power and might even lighten-up as they speed-up while inventive, finesse drummers (Bill Bruford, etc) often sacrifice some wallop for their niftiness. Epstein doesn’t fall prey to either. He is constantly putting all sorts of cymbals in all sorts of unusual places, adding brilliant shading and tone to what he’s playing at any speed, even while he’s pummeling his huge set into utter oblivion.

It's when the two coordinate that BIG pulls off its most interesting trademark: the sudden acceleration/deceleration effect. Hawkins somehow bends his chords in such a way that sounds like his guitar's batteries are running low while Epstein and bass player, Gabe Katz, suddenly drop into a woozy, slow tempo to simulate the feeling of winding down, only to have Hawkins quickly strum some tight, higher chords as the rhythm section follows with thrash beats to bring everything from 15-150mph in one second. This is the Millenium Falcon "hyperspace" effect I was talking about, though I could see how it could just as easily be interepreted as whiplash.

But hyperspace does a better job of describing the physical exhilaration that this music can induce. The feeling of being compressed and expanded at the same time. Being sucked into a black hole and shot out into the infinite at the same time.

Did I mention the band also plays dub?

Last thing. BIG are playing the Knitting Factory on Friday night (July 21st) with Don Caballero. This is, I think, BIG's first concert in New York in around a decade. Word is, they may even have a new release coming out later this year. Either way, just go. Go. And make sure you're strapped in.

BLIND IDIOT GOD -- Thunderhead (from Cyclotron, 1992)

BLIND IDIOT GOD -- 747 (from Cyclotron, 1992)

BLIND IDIOT GOD -- Roller Coaster (from Undertow, 1988)

WAR BABIES IN THE ABANDONED LUNCHEONETTE

Nelly Furtado's talent-free music continues to be played over the course of this summer. Usually, it's the track "Promiscuous," but I've also been unfortunate enough to encounter another of her tracks, "Maneater." As more than a few writers have pointed out, this may be intended as a direct reference to the Hall & Oates track of the same name. I don't hear it. In fact, I'd say that any similarity or connection of Furtado's "Maneater" to the concept of music is purely coincidental.

I think to myself that mentioning Furtado and Hall & Oates in the same sentence is ludicrous. On second refelction, it only becomes more so. H&O obviously wrote tons of great pop that still holds up very well (in revisionist hipster circles, H&O holds up even better than that). I'd say that H&O wrote more good songs in the single "I Can't Go For That" than Furtado has in her career.

OK, enough snarkiness. What I want to play are some earlier H&O tracks. Of particular interest is their 1974 album, War Babies, produced by Todd Rundgren. It's their first rock album, after a few somewhat tentative stabs at folk-soul type material. And it's a piece of work. The amount of cocaine that must have been in the studio is palpable but so is the group's sense of adventure and willingness to let rip some funky ideas. Frankly, it doesn't all work, but it's fun to see them try it out. The album, still stands as some of their most interesting, if not most pop-perfect material.

Hall & Oates -- Is It A Star?
The basic chords are almost identical to Steely Dan's "Pretzel Logic." H&O add their own great, Philly-style harmonies but the kicker is the weird rhythm break and guitar solo that comes in at around 1:40. It's like prog rock, soul, blues, jazz-rock fusion.

Hall & Oates -- Beanie G & The Rose Tattoo
What was I saying before about mounds of cocaine in the studio?

Hall & Oates -- Screaming Through December
"Quasar! Quasar! Were the first words I heard from Faustus all day." Say what? Not exactly a great track, per se, but it shows Hall & Oates going a little "out there." Strong vocals from Daryl and a bizarre, prog rock/fusion middle section starting at around 3:30. "70s Scenario," elsewhere on War Babies, is a better song about a certain kind of disillusionment. But this one might be more unusual and (melo)dramatic and still packs all the mid-70s malaise you could ask for.

Hall & Oates -- Had I Known You Better
Great track from their second album, Abandoned Luncheonette, from 1973. This one is actually by the relatively infrequently heard John Oates and is one of the best examples of the soul-folk that these guys were coming from. It reminds me a little of "Everybody's Talkin'" and could be a decent secondary song in a movie soundtrack.

SWEET BRAZILIAN PHILLY SOUL

It was Milton Nascimento that got me into Brazilian pop music. Jobim and Gilberto were closer to cool jazz. Caetano and Gil were OK but also a little too messy sometimes. Jorge Ben and Tim Maia would come later. But Milton's sense of melody -- up and down the scales and octaves, often with profound, sensuous melancholy, and with a rich low end and angelic falsetto -- just slayed me.

Cassiano never had Milton's career in terms of success or longevity and it would be hard for most anyone to match Milton's talent. However, Cassiano did have his own magic, based on a similarly heart-rending melodic and on a deep appreciation for American soul and r&b, especially the Philly style. Maybe Donny Hathaway and his combination of groove and sweetness would be a good comparison. Here are a couple of tracks:

CASSIANO -- Nao Fique Triste
This is that melodic sense I'm talking about. Also check out the backing harmonies and understated orchestrations.

CASSIANO -- (I don't have the title)
Here's a groovy hustle that was given to me by my friend, Greg Caz, who is the biggest authority I know on Brazilian pop of the 60s/70s. This is a track he spins at his all-Brazilian dance night, Brazilian Beat, at Black Betty in Brooklyn.

MILTON NASCIMENTO -- Tudo Que Voce Podia Ser
So this might be an obvious choice. This is the song that did it for me (though I believe it is actually sung by Milton's musical partner at the time, Lo Borges). And it's as good as music gets.

MARY MARGARET O'HARA

Recording one album and a movie soundtrack over 20 years is sure-fire way to avoid public acclaim and welcome obscurity. With Mary Margaret O'Hara's Miss America, from 1988, it doesn't really matter. It's as individual of a singer/songwriter album as you're going to find. It's sparseness suggests folk and even abstracted country influences that fade in and out of the more atmospheric, jazzy, and arty ambiance that fans of Jane Siberry and Victoria Williams would affectionately recognize. O'Hara's voice is clear without being overly studied but just "off" enough to raise questions about her emotional stability. What's not at question is her intensity of feeling and her personal immersion within each song. O'Hara's frayed edges and unexpected flights in, out, and around the coloring lines were never universally welcomed but they are one reason why, for a strong sliver of those who hear her, she becomes an adored favorite.



Mary Margaret O'Hara -- Help Me Lift You Up (Miss America, 1988)

My favorite track of hers. Indelible. Conveys strength, despair, and salvation. Probably intended as much for herself as for the ostensible "you" of the song. Check out the little lost balloons of vocal sighs she releases throughout.

This Mortal Coil -- Help Me Lift You Up (Blood, 1991)

Wonderful cover, increasing the lushness and atmospheric qualities of the song. Featuring Caroline Crawley of Shellyann Orphan and Deirdre Rutkowski on vocals.