June 6, 2004 by A.S. Van Dorston

Now and then you gotta take a break from absorbing the new releases and dig back into old favorites. But sometimes you crave something you haven’t heard. For some of us obsessives who’ve heard almost everything, this is a dilemma. Obviously no one can hear “everything,” but when you dedicate a significant part of your life to tracking down candidates for all-time favorites, it gets harder to dig up something amazing, beautiful, strange or powerful that you’ve never heard.

I focused on albums released before 1987, the year my access to music increased exponentially. Before that I have plenty of gaps left in my collection. I mainly used the 911 page MOJO Greatest Albums of All Time book. The editors certainly suffer from lapses in taste, like Moody Blues, Wings, Bread and Elton John, but there’s plenty of albums I hadn’t heard. Surely there’s a couple gems hiding in there. I also scanned the web, bulletin boards and stores for reissues.

With about 85% of the albums, I’ve heard at least one track, so they’re not entirely unfamiliar. Many I’ve consciously avoided over the years because I held a strong suspicion that they sucked, or at least would sound pretty dated. Like, say, Country Joe & the Fish. I may not find a new Brian Eno, but if you ever come across a copy of The Winkies (Chrysalis) 75, a band that once backed Eno in a tour, let me know!

My discoveries are listed roughly in the order of what made me geek out with maximum spastic music-fiend gusto.

Cedric IM Brooks * The Light Of Saba (Honest Jon’s) 75-78
What if Sun Ra were dubwise? Fela Kuti a rasta? Curtis Mayfield, well, Curtis influenced countless Jamaican artists already…Who knew Sir Coxsone Dodd (RIP) had harbored such an adventurous spirit all those years? Since the early 60s, Brooks was one of Jamaica’s premier instrumentalists, playing on many of Sir Coxsone Dodd’s Studio One hits. His passion for jazz and African rhythms led him to Rastafarian drummer Count Ossie, with whom he formed Count Ossie And His Mystic Revelation Of Rastafari.

At the end of the decade Brooks went to Philadelphia to go to music college. He ended up meeting saxophonist Sonny Rollins and Sun Ra. Ra’s communal-based approach of living and practicing together was not a far stretch from the dreads at home, and he was on the verge of joining the band when the birth of his daughter called him back.

He formed The Light Of Saba, and recorded four albums in the seventies that built upon The Mystic Revelation’s brass and nyabinghi Rasta hand drumming, adding reggae guitars, dub effects, his own sax and wooden flute, and a wide variety of rhythms, from local Mento/calypso/rocksteady/reggae to Cuban, American funk and African burru, poco and kumina. Like Fela Kuti, he started with his native culture and expanded the influences to create something new and truly ahead of its time.

Honest Jons pulled 19 tracks from the four albums and 7″ singes and released it last fall. It sounds incredible. The bass is deep, and the sound surpasses any of the early 70s reggae remasters I’ve heard lately. The instrumentals are hypnotic, there’s occasional shouts and chanting that preclude African Head Charge, and even some soulful Curtis Mayfield inspired singing. Brooks went on to play with the Congos and the Skatalites. I’d say a reunion of this group is in order. Let’s hope the full albums see the light of day too.

Lizzy Mercier Descloux * Press Color (Ze)79
Lizzy Mercier Descloux * Mambo Nassau (Ze) 81
How did this stay under my radar until now? It’s always nice to be surprised by ghosts of the past at least. French expatriate and one-time roommate with Patti Smith, Descloux sounds like the art-funk soulmate of The Slits and Poly Styrene, and an answer to The Contortions in Press Color. It features attention-grabbing remakes of Arthur Brown’s “Fire,” Lalo Schifrin’s “Mission: Impossible” theme, and “Fever.” This is more full-bodied and complex than the more celebrated scene favorites ESG and Kid Creole & the Coconuts. The next album was a great leap forward. Influenced by the African music that was being recorded in Paris, she imported several African musicians from France to Compass Point, just before the Tom Tom Club were taking their post-Remain In Light recording vacation, and Grace Jones was producing her reggae-tinged post-punk disco. Mambo Nassau was closest to the adventurous spirit of Remain In Light, with its complex web of rhythms, guitar shards and hiccupped vocals. Truly a lost classic.

Euphoria * A Gift From Euphoria (Seecd) 69
Brilliant, weird, beautiful, sad and mysterious. I love it. First cut was totally over-the-top symphonic — Spiritualized’s Jason Pierce has this album I’m sure. Teh second cut sounded like Flying Burrito Brothers. The rest is an eclectic mix of psychedelia (the duo used to play with 13th Floor Elevators and Sir Douglas Quintet in Austin, and all the San Francisco bands. Despite the quirky sound affects, the album has a melancholy feel similar to Astral Weeks, with many references to death and suicide. But it’s real purty! No one knows what came of William D. Lincoln and Hamilton Wesley Watt, Jr. since, though there is rumor that one went through a sex change operation…

The Passage * Degenerates (Cherry Red/ltd) 82
The Passage * Enflame (Cherry Red/ltd) 83
The Passage were a Manchester-based post-punk band that somehow slipped through the cracks. Simon Reynolds revived interest in them in a teaser article for his upcoming definitive history on post-punk. Their four albums were remastered and reissued in 2003. The first two (Pindrop ’80 and For All & None ’81) hint at their roots in the prickly prog of Van Der Graaf Generator and Soft Machine, with an original sound somewhere between The Fall and The Pop Group, but even more difficult listening if you can imagine. The last two are even more interesting, revealing a startling evolution into finely polished art rock like Wire’s154, Japan’s Tin Drum, The Associates and New Order, with tribal drumming influenced by Adam & the Ants, and geometrically mapped themes in their design (triangles), music (semitones, minor thirds, major thirds) and lyrics (fear, power, love). This is challenging stuff that rewards deep listening but doesn’t play so well with others in mixes.

The Boys (Nems/Captain Oi) 77
The Boys * Alternative Chartbusters (Nems/Captain Oi) 78
The Boys * To Hell With The Boys (Nems/Captain Oi) 79
The Boys are a classic case of an excellent band being in the wrong place at the wrong time, completely missing out on their deserved audience. Formed in 1976 by ex-London S.S. (whose members would go on to The Clash, The Damned and Generation X) member Matt Dangerfield, The Boys were influenced by The Ramones and played in the punk scene, though their music was essentially what would be popularly known in the U.S. as power pop. While they were less influential than most of their tourmates, they made up for it with a prolific catalog of great, raw rock songs, with highlights like “Sick On You,” “I Don’t Care,” “First Time” and “Brickfield Nights.” The third album, recorded in a Norwegian town called Hell, blows their simple template wide open, with the gothically powerful “Rue Morgue,” a rewrite of Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door,” and “You Can’t Hurt A Memory,” a ballad that could have easily fit in with Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band.

The Only Ones (Columbia) 78
The Only Ones * Even Serpents Shine (Columbia) 79
The Only Ones * Baby’s Got A Gun (Columbia) 80
These were reissued by Columbia Rewind in the UK a few years ago, and were just recently reissued on Demon as Why Don’t You Kill Yourself “: The CBS Recordings. If you’ve ever wondered what Television would have sounded like with the jammy Grateful Dead solos replaced by concise mod-influenced love songs, look no further. The result is tortured romanticism topped perhaps only by The Buzzcocks. While early single “Another Girl, Another Planet” towers over everything, there’s much to love here, including “The Whole Of The Law,” later covered by Yo La Tengo, “No Peace For the Wicked,” the creeping menace of “The Beast” and the riveting “Miles From Nowhere.”

Kalo Kawongolo & Seke Molenga * From The Heart of the Congo (Runn) 77
Not to be confused with the similarly titled Congos album, also recorded that year by Lee Perry, Kawongolo & Molenga were Zaireans lured to Jamaica by a would-be French manager and abandoned. Penniless and with no knowledge of English, they wandered the ghetto streets of Kingston. A rasta brought them to Black Ark, where Perry believed Jah brought them to him for a reason, and proceeded to record this groundbreaking album with members of the Upsetters. Sung mostly in their native Lingala, this fusion of African rhythms and a dubwise sensibility predates and transcends all the world fusion music that would become popular over a decade later. The sound is rough and trebly and could benefit from a Blood & Fire caliber remastering job.

Brian Eno/John Cale * Wrong Way Up (Opal/WB) 90
Musical giants who blessed each others? work with appearances since the early 70s, they also had plenty of personal and creative friction, spelled out by the daggers and lightning on the cover art. Surprisingly, the result is fairly upbeat, extremely tuneful synth pop that’s probably Cale’s best work since the Velvet Underground, or at least Paris 1919, and at nearly the equal of Eno’s four brilliant art-rock vocal albums.

The Fall * Live At The Witch Trials (Step Forward/Cog Sinister) 79
How much Fall can a sane human take? I cut myself off at the late eighties, though I may be missing out. Any fan of their early, barbed post-punk rockabilly must hear their first album. Somehow It’s eluded me over the years. Shoddy reissues mastered from a scratchy record didn’t seem worth it. Finally It’s been reissued properly with bonus tracks, and it was worth the wait. What sets this apart from their subsequent albums is it was co-written by Martin Bramah, who went on to form the scintillating Blue Orchids. Slightly more musical and less abrasive than Dragnet or Grotesque, the sound is fuller and just as brutal. Mark E. Smith’s deliciously sarcastic vitriol, Krautrock-inspired repetition, It’s all here, the blueprint and benchmark for the band’s subsequent 150 albums.

Roy Harper * Valentine (Harvest) 74
I’ve had this downloaded for a while, and finally got around to absorbing it. Harper sounds deceptively simple, but takes a bit of effort to get. He’s worth it. A former folkie who was pals with Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin (who paid tribute to him on “Hats Off To Harper” on III), he put out a string of stunning albums, includingStormcock (1971), Lifemask (1973), and HQ (1975), that were unknown to the mainstream audiences of both bands, and is just now are starting to show influences on people like Jim O’Rourke.

The Rich Kids * Best Of (EMI) 78
It’s actually Ghosts Of Princes In Towers in its entirety, remastered and reissued last year, with a half dozen bonus tracks. This was the band Glen Matlock formed after being kicked out of the Pistols for liking the Beatles, with future Visage and Ultravox singer Midge Ure. The album stiffed because of the muddy production by Mick Ronson and the fact that the band had already broken up by the time it was released. It sounds like the remastering cleaned it up a bit, and many of the songs sound great. Some of the riffs sound pretty similar to those used by the Pistols, settling who was the musical force behind them. It’s a mix of Small Faces inspired mod rock and glam, which wasn’t fashionable at the time but sounds great now — particularly for those who cream their shorts for all that is power-pop (you know who you are). Standouts are “Rich Kids,” “Put You In The Picture,” “Ghosts Of Princes In Towers,” “Cheap Emotions.” I’d call this a lost gem if not a classic. I can hear their influence in the early Boys Next Door (pre-Birthday Party) and Scientists.

The following albums I decided did not quite merit classic status. Others near the bottom failed miserably at being classics,

Icicle Works (Beggars Banquet) 84
Popularized by their hit “Birds Fly (Whisper To A Scream),” Icicle Works were unjustly pegged as a one hit wonder, when the rest of their music was just as strong or better than the single and has aged better than anything by contemporaries like The Simple Minds, Modern English, Big Country and U2. The exquisitely wintery, crystalline production suits the band’s name (produced by Hugh Jones — Echo, Teardrop Explodes, Undertones, The Damned), this is great British guitar rock “Chop The Tree” is a most impressive statement of purpose that should have been heard as their definitive statement, mapping out a clear antecedent to The Divine Comedy.

Donovan * Sunshine Superman (Pye) 66
Donovan’s early folk stuff isn’t Dylan, but It’s not bad either. The clever, literate wordplay far outweighs the stooped hippy-dippy lyrics. And on this album, he was actually ahead of his time., with spare production and inventive time signatures that remind me of some Serge Gainsbourg from that era. In addition to the catchy title track, “The Trip” is just as great, and the brooding “Season of the Witch ” is even better, which is why there’s so many covers of it, most notably Luna.

John Martyn * Solid Air (Island) 73
The title track was dedicated to his friend Nick Drake, which gives some indication of the mood behind this gentle British folk. There’s a bunch of influences underneath the surface, including jazz and ethnic folk music from around the world. At times I’m reminded of Popol Vuh and Flying Saucer Attack, though the breeziness is almost too New Agey.

The Scientists (SFTRI) 81
This is a lot different than the later Scientists I’m accustomed to, who sound more like The Birthday Party and The Cramps. Recorded just as the first version of The Scientists were breaking up, It’s a time capsule of their seventies sound, when they were first influenced by the New York Dolls, Heartbreakers, Ramones and sixties freakbeat. It’s similar to Flamin’ Groovies in that It’s a bit retro, but certainly some great, fun rock n’ roll. Unsurprisingly, the bulk of the original band went on to form the fun, goofy Hoodoo Gurus.

The Real Kids (Red Star/Norton) 77
Boston’s The Real Kids was founded by John Felice, an original Modern Lover who was kicked out because Jonathan Richman didn’t approve of his hard partying ways. Often gigging in the New York scene surrounding CBGB’s, they shared Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers’ affinity for sloppy covers of Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran and Carl Perkins, along with the Troggs, Seeds, Stones, VU and MC5. Felice’s originals contained kernels of perfect power-pop, though the band didn’t stick around to fulfill that potential.

Wishbone Ash * Argus (MCA) 72
When I was ten years old I bought the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Rock. One of the album covers prominently featured was Argus, which looked strikingly like someone wearing a Darth Vader helmet. I imagined some sort of powerful hybrid of Viking metal and prog rock. Surprisingly, they’re more like a Britsh Crosby Stills & Nash, with slightly heavier prog structures. Not normally my cup of tea, but there’s something about this album that draws you in.

Queen, Queen II (EMI/Hollywood) 73-74
It’s funny how I grew up listening to Queen, but only starting with 1977’s News of The World (“It’s Late” was my favorite). My assumption was the older stuff wasn’t as good. Turns out that Sheer Heart Attack and Night At the Opera are undoubtably their peak. After reading a recent MOJO feature, I was inspired to check out Queen II, which was nearly as great. Who knew? All the elements were already there. “Ogre Battle” is fucking awesome. I also learned that the band spent over a year and a half on their first album, and their sound was already fully formed. Fewer standout tracks, but it sounds pretty cool for 1973!

The Flamin’ Groovies * Teenage Head (Big Beat) 71
I was always skeptical that this band was anything more than a nostalgia act. Aside from a few ace singles stretched over the years, that’s not off the mark. Utterly unoriginal, but at least they’ve absorbed some of the Detroit MC5 energy, for a nicely rockin’ party album (and surprisingly bluesy too).

The Waterboys * This Is The Sea (Ensign) 85
The supposed mix of Van Morrison with U2 intruiged me in the 80s, but I never got around to hearing a whole album. It’s about what I expect, including that annoying 80s drum sound. “The Whole of the Moon” doesn’t grab me like it seems to others, but “This Is The Sea” is really lovely, and I can see why it was used as a standard come-down tonic to wrap up raves.

The Wild Swans * Incadescent (Zoo/Renascent) 81-86
Here’s a band so obscure, they only officially released one single before breaking up. Renascent, the label that lovingly reissued The Sound jewels, compiled all their demos and live recordings onto a double CD package. While it isn’t quite The Modern Lovers of the psychedelic post-punk scene, there’s a handful of tunes that measure up to anything by Echo & The Bunnymen, Wah!, Teardrops Explode and Sad Lovers & Giants.

Konk * The Sound Of Konk (Soul Jazz) 81-88
Like A Certain Ratio, Liquid Liquid and ESG, it gives me a more of a sense that I had to be there to really appreciate it, but it’s nice to hear the source of so many samples. Not meant for album-length listening, choice cuts sound great in a mix with Tom Tom Club and Afrika Bambaataa.

Focus * Focus III (Polydor) 72
The mp3s I have sound pretty muddy, so I can’t get a good grip on this one. Instrumental Dutch prog could go either way. The AMG got me pretty excited when it said “To be frank, this LP has it all: diverse songs, astounding musicianship, one of the finest singles ever released? Focus III should unquestionably be ranked alongside the likes of Revolver and Dark Side of the Moon and any others of rock’s greatest? But to be honest it sounds like noodling New Age drivel. And I always did think Dark Side was crap.

Grateful Dead * American Beauty (WB) 70
I hadn’t listened to this in 13 years. It’s pretty obvious that bands like The Jayhawks and Uncle Tupelo listened to this. Problem is, I can’t really pick out any songs that I actually like. It sounds okay, but I . . . just . . . can’t like the dead.

The Bee Gees * Odessa (Polydor) 69
This is included in the MOJO greatest albums guide, but I was reluctant to dive in. Euphoria thanked them on their sleeve and this album was compared to A Gift From Euphoria, so I gave it a go. This doesn’t hold a candle to Euphoria. I don’t care how exquisite their harmonies are supposed to be, they’re worse than the Moody Blues. Mewly, meandering, dorky songs.

Blue Oyster Cult * Secret Treaties (Columbia) 74
With smarties like Richard Meltzer and later Patti Smith contributing lyrics, this band has some hipster cred. Their smarmy heavy metal posturing and tongue-in-cheek lyrics seemed to knowingly set the blueprint for Spinal Tap. I never got into their first album because it totally sounded like ass. This is better, but I still don’t think they rock.

Boz Scaggs * Silk Degrees (Columbia) 76
Okay I was expecting some sort of mix of Van Morrison and Isaac Hayes, and all I hear is Christopher Cross. Remember him? Soundtrack to Arthur? “Sailing,” “Ride Like the Wind”? I remember a few of the songs from AM radio when I was a kid. It’s not horrible, but I certainly don’t like it.

Donald Fagen * The Nightfly (Warners) 82
I like bits and pieces of Steely Dan, but this is way too soft rock for me. I’m familiar with many of the songs from the radio, and I still don’t like ’em.

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