* So round to another Box Of Vibes, Tuesdays seem to come round quicker every week. Well Andy kicks off number 19 with his selections from track 1 to track 8. Concha's tracks are in the middle section with tracks 9 through to 16. And me (Reb) close this edition with my selections from track 17 to the final track 24. *
* Box Of Vibes 19 is the usual mix of genres, music from many decades, alternative and cover versions *
* We hope you all enjoy these home made compilations, please leave a comment if you do or if you don't any feedback is always good to hear!! *
* Diane Catherine Sealy aka Dee C. Lee was born on the 6th June 1961 in Balham, South London, England, UK. She's a British soul, R&B and pop singer. Early in her career, she was a backing singer for Wham!, and then became a member of The Style Council, as well as also performing as a solo artist. Lee was married to her fellow Style Council member, band founder Paul Weller from 1987 until their divorce in 1998. They have two children, daughter Leah Weller, and son Nathaniel (Natt Weller). *
On The Spotlight Kid, Captain Beefheart took over full production duties. Rather than returning to the artistic aggro of Trout Mask/Decals days, Spotlight takes things lower and looser, with a lot of typical Beefheart fun crawling around in weird, strange ways. Consider the ominous opening cut "I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby" -- it isn't just the title and Beefheart's breathy growl, but Rockette Morton's purring bass, Zoot Horn Rollo's snarling guitar, Ed Marimba's brisk fade on the cymbals again and again, and more. The overall atmosphere is definitely relaxed and fun, maybe one step up from a jam. Marimba's vibes and other percussion work -- including, of course, the marimba itself -- stand out quite a bit here as a result, perhaps, brought out from behind the drums and the more straightforward work on Clear Spot. Consider "When It Blows Its Stacks," with its unexpected breaks into more playful parts, or "Alice in Blunderland"'s admittedly more aimless approach, but vibing along well nonetheless. Sometimes things do sound maybe just a little too blasé, but Beefheart at his worst still has something more than most groups at their best. Spotlight does have one stone-cold Beefheart classic -- "Grow Fins," an understated number with fine harmonica and a brilliant lyric about getting so tired of his woman that the best option is to take to the sea and fall in love with a mermaid. Another song, though, does have an all-time great title -- "There Ain't No Santa Claus on the Evenin' Stage." Definite fun touch -- the cover photo of Beefheart looking great in a classic Nudie suit, outlined in yellow light to boot. (IsrBox)
* Another that's been waiting to be posted from my to post folder, their second album, make sense to post the two albums on the same day *
* OK I knew I had the 2CD version of this but I couldn't find it, but while clean in an external HD, I found it hiding in the wrong folder. Well as CD1 is the same as what I shared in the link, I will add a second link to the post for CD2. Some times these thing happen!! was in the folder next to the Earl Brutus folder within the E folder. Well you now have the double CD version from 2016 *
* This fine Reggae box set was in my in box this morning, it was submitted to Vibes by Patrick, who runs a fine Jazz blog called "Music Memories" which I have been intending to add to the site blog roll. Well have now edited the roll and added the site. Go and visit the site, you may discover something new!!
LINER NOTES FOR PHIL OCHS'S PLEASURES OF THE HARBOR
By Richie Unterberger
If ever a record by a major 1960s artist was a "transitional" album, Phil Ochs’ Pleasures of the Harbor was it. The LP was his first recording to use full band arrangements; his first to almost entirely depart from the topical protest folk songs with which he had made his reputation; his first to be recorded for a then-young A&M label; and his first to be recorded in Los Angeles, the city to which he moved from New York in the late 1960s. It is undoubtedly his most sonically ambitious work, and if the almost ludicrously huge scope of his ambitions guaranteed an uneven album, it nevertheless contained some of his most enduring and successful songs and performances.
When Ochs began working on Pleasures of the Harbor in August 1967, he was among the last of the major American folk singer-songwriters of the early-to-mid-1960s who had yet to make the leap from folk to rock. With the exception of a (very good) electric version of "I Ain’t Marchin’ Anymore" on a 1966 single, all of his prior recordings-including three full albums for Elektra-had featured plain acoustic guitar-and-voice arrangements. In fact he had not done any recording at all since the sessions (actually a mixture of live and studio taping) in early 1966 that had been issued as Phil Ochs in Concert. In the interim (and even by early 1966), acoustic folk music had been totally overtaken by the folk-rock of his chief rival Bob Dylan and the likes of the Byrds, Simon & Garfunkel, and the Mamas & the Papas. By the summer of 1967, even folk-rock was passing its peak as the psychedelia of Sgt. Pepper, the Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, and the Doors’ debut album shook the top of the charts. Ochs continued to write songs at a good clip, but recording-wise sat on the sidelines during these crucial 18 months, in part due to prolonged business machinations that saw him switch both managers and record companies.
Pleasures of the Harbor may have been the first Ochs album to use electric instruments and elaborate arrangements, but it would not be folk-rock, exactly. Influenced by rock’n’roll, jazz, soundtrack music, classical composition, and even the electronic avant-garde, Ochs sought elaborate, sometimes orchestral settings that would complement the progressively complex poetry of his lyrics. Moreover, he wanted each song to be strikingly different from each other in mood and production, and yet wished the album to flow together well as a whole. Instrumental collaborators in this process would be producer Larry Marks, arranger Ian Freebairn-Smith (responsible for translating Ochs’ countermelodies into finished products utilizing numerous instruments), and pianist Lincoln Mayorga, who gave classical, ragtime, and lounge jazz spices when needed.
Baroque pop-rock production-and, perhaps, over-production-was fully in evidence on the opening track, "Cross My Heart," with its drums, harpsichord, flutes, strings, orchestral horns, and vocal overdubs. The song served notice that Ochs was largely abandoning explicit social comment for more abstract statements whose lyrics demanded multiple listenings to absorb all the nuances. Ochs was beginning to write long songs at this point, and in fact Phil might have gotten carried away with "Cross My Heart," as he cut several verses from the number after the album was finished (one of those verses appears on the demo version of the tune on Rhino’s Farewells & Fantasies box set). Nothing in the six minutes of "Flower Lady" was a waste, however, the track-with strings, oboe, and piano-standing as the best of the several pseudo-chamber classical arrangements that Ochs and Marks would attempt in the late 1960s. The moving, just-this-side-of-maudlin composition, with its almost cinematic narrative of a flower lady all but ignored amongst the bustle of numerous contrasting characters, also boasted one of Ochs’ best melodies. Even before Pleasures of the Harbor, cover versions had already appeared by British Invasion stars Peter & Gordon and folk-rock duo Jim & Jean; the Byrds, unfortunately, declined to record it although they had considered doing so.
"Outside of a Small Circle of Friends" is perhaps Ochs’ best-known song, and certainly the most celebrated track from his post-acoustic folk recording career. Inspired by the murder of Kitty Genovese in New York, during which several witnesses did nothing to stop the killing for fear of getting involved, it was also Ochs’ most imaginative arrangement. The appalling apathy of idle bystanders doing nothing to stop a woman getting stabbed, and several other similar situations laid out by the subsequent verses, was juxtaposed with a jaunty Dixieland-style backup (with Mayorga on tack piano) and Ochs’ splendidly deadpan vocal. Where most songwriters would have let the statement boil over into self-righteous rage, Ochs shrewdly realized that the message would hit home with a far more chilling punch via understatement and gallows humor. This should have been a hit single, and in fact did become popular in Los Angeles and Seattle. Its chart prospects, however, were scotched by a reference to marijuana. No less than three separate releases of the cut on 45-an unedited one, a version which took out the verse containing the offending word, and another that simply removed the word "marijuana"-were to no avail, as the single failed to break nationally.
"I’ve Had Her," a song of bitter romance with a devastating (and heartless) putdown line, had one of the album’s more lugubrious arrangements, highlighting Mayorga’s classical-style piano. It was back to lighthearted Dixieland jazz, however, for "Miranda," one of the few songs from this period of Ochs’ development that could be fairly characterized as fun, though it didn’t dispense with acute narrative detail. Certainly Ochs’ eye for savage yet witty character sketches reached an apex in the eight-minute "The Party," which like "Outside of a Small Circle of Friends" was a perfect match of lyric and arrangement. Ochs took the (singing, not playing) role of the pianist at a party of upper-class snobs, though he didn’t exclude himself from criticism either. Lincoln Mayorga played the role of lounge lizard to the hilt, mimicking the styles of Bach, Beethoven, and Schumann, and purposefully misquoting standards such as "Stardust" to lounge jazz backing. The title cut returned to rich, somewhat overblown orchestration, however, with its bittersweet tales of sailors seeking escape on shore leave, though this was probably a metaphor for escapes of all sorts by everyone, not just sailors.
No track in the Phil Ochs canon is more controversial than "Crucifixion," not so much for its lyrics-although those were plenty controversial-as its musique concrete-like arrangement. Its ten verses of martyred heroes couldn’t help but be interpreted as a comment on the still-fresh assassination of President Kennedy. In fact it did bring tears to the soon-to-be-slain Robert Kennedy when Ochs sang it to him. In keeping with the eclectic experimentalism of Pleasures of the Harbor, however, Ochs decided to set his vocal against an eerie morass of loops, electric harpsichord, and washes of electronic distortion, arranged by Joseph Byrd (leader of the excellent late-1960s experimental electronic rock group the United States of America). This made him sound for all the world like a lone voice drowning in an avant-garde thunderstorm, which in the eyes of many fans obscured the terrible beauty of the song as heard when played solo, on acoustic guitar, in concert. The point is now moot as live acoustic versions of the song were eventually released, from 1968 (on There and Now: Live in Vancouver, 1968) and 1970 (on the Chords of Fame anthology and the Farewells & Fantasies box).
Pleasures of the Harbor, clocking in at more than 50 minutes, was an outrageously long album for 1967, with most of songs exceeding five minutes and some approaching the ten-minute mark. It was also not terribly successful, peaking at #168 in the charts. While Ochs would not retreat to acoustic folk for his subsequent A&M LPs, and would continue to write songs as unusual (and often lengthy) in construction throughout the rest of the 1960s, he would never again employ textures as recklessly varied as those heard on Pleasures of the Harbor
