edgar froese RIP

The sad news of Edgar Froese's death in January seemed to slip by quite unnoticed, sorry to say by us anyway. The founder, supremo and only constant member of Tangerine Dream died suddenly of a pulmonary embolism in Vienna on the 20th.
Froese was one of the renowned names of the late 60's and early 70's. Tangerine Dreams 1973 album 'Atem' was named as Album of the Year by British DJ John Peel and heard regularly on his night shows in the UK and which consequently led to them being one of Virgins Records early signings. Under Froese's direction the Tangerine Dream career path eventually produced an eye watering 100 plus albums, a number few artists can ever have reached in their lives.

'Phaedra', the second album and first for Virgin Records was a UK top 20 album hit and one of the first commercial albums to feature sequencers which came to define not only the band's own sound but a new era in music, not only for the record company, but what could be heard as the beginnings of Krautrock, also helped define the Berlin School of electronic music, and in later years what was to become new-age and electronic dance.
They were one of the first real world recognised names pioneering the use of the Moog synth and various electronic instruments, and Froese one of the few people who've have had such an influence on one particular genre of music and the many musicians who followed. (Steven Wilson, stated that Tangerine Dream was one of his influences to make his music, and often cites Zeit as his all-time favourite album).
"Since the 90s, Tangerine Dream have also recorded cover versions of Jimi Hendrix' Purple Haze (first on 220 Volt Live) and The Beatles' Eleanor Rigby, Back in the U.S.S.R., Tomorrow Never Knows, and Norwegian Wood. (The band name inspired by the line "tangerine trees and marmalade skies" from The Beatles' track "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds".
WIKI ARTICLE).
All being prominent influences on the young Edgar Froese at the very start of his life in music and of which his legacy goes on to this day.
Here is "Zeit" (1972 ) and 16 minutes of another world.
So long Edgar.

nick nicely and the space of a second

nick nicely (always spell lower case by the way), is an enigma. He's spent decades making psychedelic music in one form or another yet it wasn't until 2008 he made his first live performance. Wearing a sheet over his head naturally. His occasional live performances have continued that fine tradition.
His strange tale of nearly success commercially began back in the 70's and continued into the 80's until he found himself pretty much at the apex of the acid house/rave movement of the early 90's with friend also DJ producing a mix of house beats and psychedelia.

It was also a period which might be seen as when the esoteric needs of many outweighed the needs of the few left doing last decades thing. Rock musicians, new agers, acid house DJ's, acid jazz groups, the rise of Madchester rock and roll all had a common thread comparable to it being seen as a second resurgence of psychedelic influences. It had a similar vibrancy and feel, chemically induced or otherwise, with an open freedom in sound making that should have lasted a lot longer than it actually did. But as ever, when there's a sniff of something different from a fast growing underground in pile a whole load of major labels with their self styled producers all with an eye for the next big thing. Which inevitably means the end of the dream.
Once commercialised or branded by the production team the resulting debris from the talent search is suitably demoralised and the artists usually go and do something different anyway or else the new scene quickly becomes the old scene and just fades away. It's happened to every new phase in popular music culture. Probably everything else too. Change is inevitable.. so is exploitation.

When the time came for the exploitation business to arrive at nick nicely in the 90's maelstrom he turned his back on it screwing up another chance of commercial success. Who knows though, there is nothing certain about giving your music up to someone elses vision, especially when the vision is financial.
Having dropped out of sight for a few years the resurfacing of nicely in the 2000's has been with compilation albums and these occasional solo performances with the mention of a forthcoming album which in 2011 was duly delivered in eccentric nicely form... on cassette. It sold out,
In 2012 Fruits De Mer, having not forgotten about the nicely back catalogue, released a limited 7" vinyl single of a new version of one of his successful recordings "Hilly Fields", marking it's 30th anniversary. That sold out too.

And now at last this September has seen the release of nick nicely's only second full length album 'Space of a Second', and this time it gets the works on vinyl, cd and download.
It's an album that is full of psychedelic surprises, twists, turns, songs, songs which are just snatches of melody, instruments layered then isolated, super phased vocals that come and go, it's a mosaic of psychedelic sound that has nothing to do with the 60's or any other era. It's defined only by a man that has spent most of his life playing with sound and evolving from each decade.
It's impossible to say even when these tracks were recorded. How did the song or part of the song evolve in the first place. An album of restless curiosity. This is psychedelic music of the 21st century. An outstanding piece of work.

Hear these 4 tracks he's posted on soundcloud. Buy it on all formats from normanrecords.com or roughtrade.com

turn on, tune in, to 'the united states of america'

Esoteric Records have recently put out a re-release of one of the 60's real cult obscurities. This short lived band, if that's what you could call them in the conventional sense, were better known here in the UK for a track on a CBS sampler "Rock Machine Turns You On" from 1968. The track "I Won't Leave My Wooden Wife For You, Sugar" by the equally oddly named 'The United States of America'.

The only album they ever released, and subsequently failed to sell, was the self titled "The United States of America" has now steadily gained wider recognition over the years and acknowledgement for it's importance in the left field world of psychedelic and avant garde rock of the 60's. That and the highly collectable price that always goes with these rarities. An original and even rarer copy in it's plain manilla sleeve which wrapped the cover preferred by CBS (pic below) is now hundreds of dollars as most owners of the album at the time tore that off to get at the record inside.
And if today's 68,000 YouTube hits on one of their songs had been transferred to sales at the time the story might have been different. As it was this group of like minded musicians and vocalist Dorothy Moskowitz very soon found they were rather more of unlike minds and they folded after a failed attempt to tour and promote their debut album. The gigs had a rough start with equipment failures due to the amount of gear, there were all ready power plays in the band for leadership and to top that lot off they were all busted for Mary Jane during the tour.
The performances they did actually produce were best described as more performance art than all out rock.
But what this lot did leave behind is something of a unique experience in music of the day.

"...at a time when there was a receptive audience for “underground music” which combined musical experimentalism with radical social and/or political lyrics – other examples, in their very different ways, including the Velvet Underground (who shared a common background in the New York experimental music scene; according to Moskowitz, Nico at one point tried to join the USA), Frank Zappa (whom Byrd considered a niche-marketer "subsumed in a self-referential loop", Love's Forever Changes, Country Joe and the Fish, and Jefferson Airplane".
WIKI ARTICLE

This album is completely uncompromising. You'll lock into the goings on in one track and then find yourself thrown in a collage of distortion, hard rock, avant garde electronic the next. One minute marching bands colliding with fuzz keyboards and delicate singing. And unusually for the day not an electric guitar in sight apart from the fretless bass.

Here's a short track called "The Garden of Earthly Delights" and possibly the most conventional in terms of psychedelic rock on the record. Below that is the full album.
The remastered re-release on Esoteric (part of Cherry Red Records) has extra tracks and various printed ephemera. Get it from here

john cale and terry riley's disowned masterpiece

It was one of the most unlikely collaborations of the early 70's when The Velvet Underground luminary John Cale met up with minimalist master Terry Riley and recorded the album 'Church Of Anthrax.' (1971)
Maybe the title had foretold the pair ending up disowning the thing after it had been recorded, Riley walking out at the mixing session and Cale declaring dislike and later damning with faint praise as "a jam with Terry".
Yet you can see how the concept would be more than intriguing at the time. How would Terry Riley's precise almost mathematical approach to notation and his fast keyboard arpeggios work with Cale's raw intense textures of rock and avant garde instrumental experimentation.
Whatever their personal or musical experiences at the time led them to think badly of 'Church Of Anthrax', hearing these recordings 43 years later proves that this monster of an album was worth every moment they shared in its making.
This dangerous and powerful sound has just been reissued on the Esoteric label.
"..the music's kinetic fury and unsettling charge still soars". Gavin Martin. Uncut
Available from Amazon.com

the mystery of the webdriver torso

This is not exactly the usual remit here but it does have sound and visuals and it is bizarre enough to include this post into the occasional avant garde series.

So this bit of jiggery pokery is a channel on youtube called Webdriver Torso.
What or whoever started this channel began on March 7, 2013. Since then some 77,389 videos (and rising) have been uploaded, each of which lasts just a few seconds, usually anything between 6 and 11 seconds seems to be the average.
Each video is a sequence of abstract slides in red and blue squares against a white background lasting a second or less each before it changes to the next arrangement of shapes . As they run through the sequence each one is numbered, eg. slide 001 etc etc. With each slide in the sequence there is a tone. The tone varies in pitch as the sequence runs. The uploaded file is always called Aqua.flv but given an abstract title for identification on upload in upper and lower case letters, like a secure password would have.
And that's it.

Due to the shear volume of these videos people have been trying to figure out what the dickens are they're actually for, if anything. Some say it might be to "test the performance of an upload" (in other words it belongs to YouTube).
Likewise "it's plausible that this is the very tool used to automate the uploading of the videos to YouTube".
Some say it looks curiously like a modern counterpart to the mysterious "numbers stations" of the cold war, (transmitted by spies).
And others have said "tmpAjbadK is the best one so far". And "I prefer tmp6iw RA". (ha)

So is it a network passing information? Is it an artists installation? Is it a new concept album? Is it here because it's here?

Here's The Webdriver Torso channel with all it's red and blue squares. Go and have a look and guess for yourself.
Now, here for your delight and contemplation is the rock and roll of "tmpwxm2CP ".

ronald shannon jackson RIP

It's not often we post on a jazz musician but this weekend (October 19th) saw the passing of one of the worlds great drummers, Ronald Shannon Jackson. Regardless of the music genre he inhabited and whether you may be familiar or not with his name it's important that the mans life does not go unnoticed here.
From his early days Shannon Jackson had been been in the drum chair alongside some of the most uncompromising and creative musicians of their time, Cecil Taylor and Ornette Coleman.
Then from the mid-80's with his own group The Decoding Society, Shannon Jackson kicked down the boundaries between jazz and rock and in collaboration with musicians like James “Blood” Ulmer, Vernon Reid and Bill Frisell created a hybrid sound completely unique.
Yesterday Vernon Reid posted on his Facebook page -

"I just got the news that my most important teacher & mentor Ronald Shannon Jackson passed away this morning. I am undone."

His presence on stage had a tangible warmth and spirituality, his visual appearance was striking and instantly recognisable, he powered an extraordinary drum kit as if part tribal and part martial art. The man was life. He was driven of spirit.

Here's a performance of him with The Decoding Society from October 1991at the Skopje Jazz Festival, Poland, and that he posted on YouTube himself 2 years ago. The piece is titled, aptly for today - "Sunday's Bells". A particularity good clip as it films him introducing the group and then beginning the set by playing a flute, he was known to play several instruments outside of the drums, before taking his position behind the kit to end with one of his amazing drum solos. And what a kit it is. Decorated in tribal or abstracted motifs it represents the ethnic nature of the composition perfectly.
(mono audio: left channel only)

do you want to eat with yoko ono

In a similar fashion to David Bowie's re-emergence, without much fuss or bother Paul McCartney slipped his new forthcoming single and remarkably Beatle like 'New' onto his You Tube Channel. You couldn't help but think apart from the slight waver in his voice betraying his 71 years age it was uncanny how the passing years have done little to change his shear enthusiasm for making music. In fact as we all know, and like it or hate it, McCartney unlike Bowie has kept a continual stream of music flowing since.. well it seems for ever.
The opposite could be said of the often hidden activities of Yoko Ono. Obviously not a songwriter in the conventional sense because first and foremost Yoko is an artist, an avante garde artist to be precise but also with many diversions, alongside music, performance art, film making, and activism. Peace activism that is, as we all know. Along with that she's recently been curator of the Meltdown Festival in the UK, and took that with pride and all seriousness. An extraordinary enough thing alone for someone just entering their 9th decade. She turned 80 this year.

Now she presents her own work with that familiarly named Plastic Ono Band as if the years had never been. Even the name provokes images and sounds of another time from another world.
The recent preview of her new album scheduled for September 17 release, is the single 'Tabetai', and as McCartney's YouTube hits hit the 6 figure mark in a week the worlds viewers barely notice Yoko and her song. A lowly 700 have listened in some days. Yet here in this short, under 3 minute song lies a voice of a young woman still making a stand against the norm, the average, the obvious commercialisation of the world.
This diminutive figure of Yoko appears to have a voice blessed without age. Not just formed by a trick of modern recording but performed with what sounds like the genuine passion and enthusiasm of a teenager.
Remember when you hear this, the woman could not just be your grandmother but your great grandmother. And here she is in a collage of her own world music joined by her son Sean Ono Lennon playing Guitar, Synth and Piano. Merrill Garbus - Drums, Bottle, Percussion, Voice, Nate Brenner - Bass, Bottle, Percussion, Yuka C. Honda - Synth and Kevin Harper - Bottle.
Yes, it really looks like the Bottle figures big in the current Plastic Ono Band. A cheery return contribution to contemporary music.
"Tabetai", which by the way means "do you want to eat".
Is that a metaphor for our modern day consumerism? The last two lines are somewhat chilling.
The track is also on Soundcloud here, where you can also hear other tracks by Yoko. You'll notice the hits on her Soundcloud page are well up in the thousands, which might say much about where the real underground music lovers are visiting these days. You might know Yoko would find that a more likely environment.
Yes you got to love Yoko. This girl ain't finished by a long way.
Here are the words to "Tabetai" in full. The album's released on Chimera

Tabetai, oh....
Tabetai, ah....
Tabetai, um, um, um.
Gimme juicy steak
Gimme sweet pancakes
Gimme Gimme
Tabetai,
Fried Chicken
Chocolate Pudding
Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme
Tabetai,
As human race
Let's keep our trace
This is our place where we made love
Tabetai, um um um.
Pass me the ...
For my...
Gimme Gimme Gimme Gimme
Tabetai,
Tabetai um um um.
There's nothing to eat
Let's go to another country
Tabetai

here comes the sun flare

Mind blowing NASA video of the recent two powerful X-class solar flares erupting off the upper left side of the sun with a soundtrack by German ambient composer Lars Leonhard.

boards of canada

After an 8 year silence 90s electronic duo 'Boards of Canada' have resumed work with the release of a new album 'Tomorrow’s Harvest' on June 10th .
If you find the clip below confusing yet have an inquiring mind you might like to visit their website to learn about the Record Store Day Incident > here, where you will be further challenged and enlightened by Hint 1 ------ / ------ / ------ / 936557 / ------ / ------, and other inventive game play.
The static at the beginning is intentional.

zappa and beefheart - bongo fury

This years Frank Zappa's epic reissue series has reached Bongo Fury this month. The concert recorded in Austin,Texas in 1975 saw Zappa and Captain Beefheart meeting up for the first time since the monster Hot Rats album in 1969.
By 1975, Don Van Vliet (Beefheart) had managed himself into somewhat of a financial disaster by a series of appalling contractual decisions and record company screw ups. He'd actually got himself into a position where he couldn't tour and couldn't record under his own name.
Frank Zappa, an old school friend of Van Vliet's had seemed a sort of nemesis to him in many ways, maybe it was his commercial success, maybe it was the musical methods. Zappa was a methodical, rigorous and intense band leader, you needed real stamina to rehearse with his bands. Beefheart more like an inspired authoritarian with his. It's easy to see how that partnership could be highly infllamable.
But being their history was long and Zappa had seen Van Vliet's talent before, he'd produced rocks groundbreaking Trout Mask Replica back in 1969 with The Magic Band and Beefheart, Frank had wanted to see Van Vliet survive his present depression.
The two stories of exactly how the liaison actually came about are unsurprisingly conflicting but it had started just before the tour with Beefheart guesting on Zappa's 'One Size Fits All' album in June 75.
Despite the inevitable difficulties of getting Beefheart in the right frame of mind and musical discipline Zappa eventually got the balance right for the forthcoming tour. Beefheart was to do the main vocals on 6 or so numbers, plus soprano and harmonica.when needed.
The moment the tour began it was fraught. Ego, obstinacy, frustration from Zappa. Alloofness, cynisism, obstinacy from Van Vliet.
By the time the tour got to El Paso neither were talking. Zappa wouldn't have anymore to do with him, and Van Vliet was spending his time with the ever present sketch book and continually producing drawings of Frank with horns, as in the devil. A fine mess.
But they did get that recording that night in Texas. There never was a studio CD but on May 20th in Austin there was Bongo Fury
From the moment the roar of 'Debra Kadabra' starts the set off to the final voice of Zappa closing the concert at the end of 'Muffin Man' there is a sense you'll never hear anything quite like them again.
Here is Muffin Man.

tuning in to the grateful dead tuning up

Grateful Dead's reputation for playing extended live performances are legend, they became marathon tests of stamina for the musicians and their legion of dedicated and near obsessed audiences.
So this "audio supercut" will come as a truly joyous thing as Michael Murphy has edited an entire year of the 'Dead' tuning up. Yes tuning up!
As he describes the project "chronologically sequenced, this remix incorporates every publicly available recording from 1977, examining the divide between audience expectation and performance anxiety".
The source of all the material comes from the extensive Grateful Dead collection at the internet archive and you can download the whole 3 hours via the embedded player below. Click the icon to access the page.
The audio here is is just half of the marathon and it's a strangely hypnotic experience. True Dead fans will not be tested by its length.
So now who can spot the altered tunings.

evan caminiti

One half of the avant garde guitar duo Barn Owl, Evan Caminiti's solo album has moved away from the metallic drones of an alian spaghetti western which he was exploring with fellow San Franciscan Jon Porras.
His new album Dreamless Sleep adds the synth and keyboard sounds to the synthesized guitar layers that Fripp and Eno first explored some time ago.
"consider the Hindu concept of Sushupti (which translates as dreamless sleep) – a mental state enabling communion with spiritual beings, providing means by which the forces of good may overcome the dominions of evil" Spencer Grady
Well that may not exactly describe the sounds of the album but it's clear from the music that Evan Caminiti is asking us to explore the inner path of our downloads. The water is obviously very inspiring in San Francisco, but then Scott McKenzie new that.
Here is a track from the Dreamless Sleep released in August. Good to see it appearing on Souncloud.

supersilent

The last time we saw John Paul Jones the ex-Zeppelin bassist on a major tour was with Them Crooked Vultures a couple of years back. The power trio with Josh Homme and Dave Grohl was probably the first super-group of the 21st Century and had a pretty big impact at several festivals in Europe with a CD to follow before disappearing as quickly as they'd arrived.
2012 and now Jones appears again with an equally unexpected project. Supersilent. The Norwegian avant-garde/improvisational music group formed in Bergen in 1997 have been touring Europe with John Paul Jones.
Supersilent use electronic instrumentation such as synthesizers, theremin, loop pedals, and tape loops, are a completely improvising group, beyond any free jazz structures they veer more towards John Cage landscapes of music. For anyone expecting a break out group of Zeppelin or the Vultures it's a shock and judging by some concerts in Europe it's been just that for some of the audience and they've been going home early. As one commenter said "check the group on YouTube and it would show you what to expect".
In these times of over contrived popular music the chance of Supersilent playing to an open minded audience would be slim but they don't care about that, and Jones certainly wouldn't being doing this to have universal acceptance from an audience. He is his own man and a creative musician who is not just prepared to be a relic of the past dragged up to play yet another Zeppelin hit of 40 years ago like some one trick pony.
Supersilent are touring the UK in November. One shudders at the expectation his name brings in his own country, disappointment will surely follow for some.
In the meantime just to prove how eclectic the man is he'll be playing a one off gig at the Albert Hall on 16th September with Bruce Dickinson, Ian Paice and Brian May amongst others. No doubt that will be more acceptable for the majority.

So here's Supersilent with really a soundtrack to the Würzburger Hafensommer 2012 festival put together by the YouTube uploader. Don't expect to hear this again. Remember they'll show up and just play what they feel like on the night executed with no preparation or rehearsals. That is the way of the improvisers.

lucifer rising sessions

This month Jimmy Page released the completed 'Lucifer Rising' soundtrack, first recorded in 1972 for the Kenneth Anger film (of the same name). The original piece had been hidden away for years until people started calling it rather hopefully the missing Zeppelin album.
Although Anger had originally asked Page to write the soundtrack he made it quite clear at the time of release he didn't want to use it because he claimed Page "took three years to deliver the music, and the final product was only 23 minutes of droning".
Naturally the whole thing blew up with Page insisting he'd fulfilled his obligation, and you assume Page feeling pretty damned insulted at the same time.
So now some 40 years later he decides to complete a full length release including the original 23 minutes.
It's currently only available through his web site.
But not exactly available, unless you login to the site in the usual way (another tiresome user/password set up) you don't get to see a thing. In fact not only don't you get to buy the vinyl only release but you don't get to see anything else of the site either. Just the splash screen and a utility page where you can learn that Jimmy 'produced' the site.
Ah ha.. so it's a concept from the "Zoso" one.
Not sure what Jimmy is developing here.. maybe some exclusive cult of Pageness or a mystical carrot of desire now you know it's impossible to obtain the precious vinyl unless you sign up to the club, but no doubt Jimmy will be as unamused as he was with Kenneth Anger when he discovers that doing a search for the album reveals that second only to his own site is the BitTorrent download of the album.
Anyway to make your own decision as to whether it's all worthwhile here's 10 minutes of the original soundtrack. Be aware though, it is not the missing Zeppelin album.

pere ubu

When John Peel's first punk show was broadcast in November 1976 he included a single by an unknown Cleveland group Pere Ubu. It had to be one of the strangest and dark records heard at the time.
Probably comparable with one of Velvet Underground's shadowy moments yet Pere Ubu's lead singer/director David Thomas sang with an unnerving sense of desperation that separated them entirely from anything gone before. A similar American desperation at the time came over in bands like Television, Richard Hell and Patti Smith,
The title of the song 'Final Solution' was of course taken completely out of context to the lyrics and a lot of lower life forms assumed it had anti-Semitic connotations. This was nonsense of course especially when the lyrics are plainly not inflammatory and not about the holocaust, but the damage had been done and Thomas refused to perform the song live for many years.
Befitting a band who were best described as experimental rock they had produced a great rock and roll moment in Final Solution, and in true John Cage fashion it was a second of silence bang in the middle of the track. In 1976 that silence hit exactly the right note!
Pere Ubu were underground rock, and had a far reaching influence to groups who would be more widely recognised. "To define their music, Pere Ubu coined the term avant-garage.."
David Thomas always had a wry sense of humour. Here's "Final Solution"...

robert fripp

In 1977, King Crimson founder Robert Fripp—who left the world of music in 1974 when he dissolved the group—moved to NYC’s Hell’s Kitchen (later the Bowery) and immersed himself in the city’s punk and “new wave” music scene. Inspired by New York’s frantic energy and wanting to combine the new sounds he was hearing with “Frippertronics,” the droning tape loop system he had developed with Eno, the final product was his solo record, Exposure. 
The video is a promotiona for Exposure. Not a lot happens here, but in the context of 1979, this was absolutely futuristic.
via dangerousminds
Actually it still stands pretty much on the edge in 2012. Fripp went on to perform and record more of the Frippertronic soundscapes and continues to do so. Recently two albums and tours with Theo Travis (see Steve Wilson post) who also used a similar loop system with saxophone and flutes.

revolution no.9

December 28th 1968, and The Beatles had gone to No.1 on the US album chart again with the 'White Album'. It was the group's 12th US No.1 album.
This time the group had recorded much more as individuals and their own separate compositions had produced some unexpected results.
McCartney's 'Why Don't We Do It In The Road', Harrison's 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' etc. etc. but Lennon's 'Revolution No.9', assisted and encouraged by Harrison, was something no one had been prepared for.
The sound collage effects in two previous Lennon songs, 'Tomorrow Never Knows' and 'I Am The Walrus' (see all posts for 'Lennon's sound collages') had reached it's zenith when the entire side 4 of the White Album was included (apart from one short track 'Goodnight' at the end of the side).
Now the sound collage had become not just an integral part of the song it was now a piece in itself and replaced the song. A daring and controversial statement in itself.
Lennon having been an art student in his early days and now with the influence of Yoko Ono, an avant garde New York artist in her own right, he must have been reveling in the opportunity to express himself in sound just as an abstract painter or sculpture would. He'd even been seen on the fringes of free jazz in a very small London venue experimenting with the guitar.
Revolution No.9, recorded in Abbey Road, June 1968, had been prepared with a mix of loops and tape edits arranged in random or intentional order as writer William Burroughs had previously done with words, and if works like Stockhausen and John Cage were familiar to the classical listener of the day it certainly wasn't the case for a young audience and pop music. This was a complete shock of the new into their ears.
No other mainstream pop artist has attempted anything as avant garde or commercially suicidal before or since. It was abused by some and still is, but also understood and appreciated by many others.
Over the years of rock and roll and pop, Lennon had found himself in a new world of sound. 'Revolution No.9' was the last of his experiments and use of the sound collage.
It stands today just as convincing and carefully prepared as any of the songs he'd written. It's as much a challenge to the listener and musician as ever it was.
For Lennon there was no where else to go except back to the songs.

zappa

Frank Zappa.. outrageous.. controversial.. hilarious.. showman.. hugely entertaining.. a prolific composer and producer. To his fans a genius.
His guitar playing has divided opinion amongst purists but Frank had what all guitar players search for - a unique and instantly recognisable technique and style. In full flow his guitar solo's could cut it with the best.
No sufferer of fools in or out of the band his groups consisted of some of the most highly drilled and skilled musicians of the 1960's to the 1990's era. His knowledge of pop and rock and roll was extensive. He was experimental and calculating at the same time. A total enigma.
When he died on 4th December 1993 it left a hole in contemporary pop and rock that has never been be filled. Frank Zappa fans had a right to feel cheated. His early death robbed them of many more years of his presence and amazing vision in music.

Here are The Mothers Of Invention. Los Angeles. August 27, 1974
with Frank is Napoleon Murphy Brock, George Duke, Tom Fowler, Chester Thompson, Ruth Underwood.

can

The roots of Can can be traced back to Irmin Schmidt (keyboards) and a trip that he made to New York City in 1968. While Schmidt initially spent his time with avant-garde or minimilaist musicians such as Steve Reich, and Terry Riley, his eventual meeting with Andy Warhol and then The Velvet Underground had a big influence.
Can were really the first rock band to be known later as "krautrock",  their psychedelic sound went beyond mainstream influences and took in much more of an experimental approach. They had a strong influence to the future of avant-garde, experimental, underground, ambient, punk, post-punk, new wave and electronic music. The young Johnny Rotten was to make Can's 'Tago Mago' one of his most played back in 1977 when talking about his favoured music. That influence could be heard more easily in his later band PIL. Tago Mago has been re-released this month.
Here's the track 'Halleluhwah' from Tago Mago (originally released 1971) still sounding fresh today.

steven wilson

Steven Wilson is touring his latest album 'Grace for Drowning'.
It's Steven's first solo tour (as opposed to a Porcupine Tree or Blackfield or No Man tour) and this band have the pedigree for something really special
Along with Steve Wilson is -
Theo Travis, flutes, saxes, clarinet and keyboards. (Robert Fripp, Soft Machine Legacy, Gong)
Aziz Ibrahim, guitarist (Stone Roses, Ian Brown and Paul Weller)
Adam Holzman, keyboards (Miles Davis group, New York electric jazz scene).
Nick Beggs, bass (John Paul Jones, Steve Hackett, Kim Wilde)
Marco Minnemann, drums (Terry Bozzio, Eddie Jobson, Kreator).
The European then American tour starts 21 October. click here for dates

Here's Steve recording one of the tracks for the album and below the finished track.

Steven Wilson - Raider II (Recording at Angel Studios) from Kscope on Vimeo.

Steven Wilson - Raider (edit) (full track from Grace for Drowning) by Kscope