Peter Harris' Ruby from down under 1975

What I'm going to do for the next few weeks, as mentioned earlier, is present a few big in-demand records, after which, in about a month I will be on holidays and will only put up no-download reviews (that are worth seeking out).  Those will at least feature uploaded songs you can stream-- so do, please listen!!  Eventually everything will be available, so it's just a matter of patience in my opinion, if it's not me, someone else will open Pandora's box...

Then in early July I will be back with more wonderful new music for everyone to hear-- and that's a promise.  This searching for old gems just never gets tiresome for me.  For those who are only interesting in hearing what I'm talking about, they will have to wait a bit while I am away.  But before this, some more big LPs: folk, progressive, fusion, etc., will blow your socks off--
Stay Tuned!!


First up a magically, gorgeously beautiful folk album that stunned me when I heard it.  There is some basic information in a few places with a google search, the following is very helpful and informative as initial:

It was a river scene depicting waterbirds, big trees and a paddle steamer painted in bright hues of blue, green, orange and pink. The cover art for Peter Harris’s 1975 LP Ruby inspired Jordie Kilby to pick up a copy in a coastal town second-hand shop a few years back. It started a journey to track Peter down and discover more about his inspiration for the album and the other recordings he made.

Peter Harris studied piano and bassoon at the Sydney Conservatory before heading bush to Cooma, where he spent time working on travelling theatre shows for the workers on the Snowy Hydro. He moved back to Sydney in the early '70s and began teaching and making music. One of his more adventurous guitar students was Dave Madden and they soon teamed up and eventually recorded a single (Remember Me) and an LP (Fools Paradise) together both of which are highly sought-after today for their adventurous song writing and production.  After the two parted ways, Harris moved back to rural NSW and there, inspired by the town of Wentworth and the rivers around it, he wrote the songs that he later recorded on Ruby. Unfortunately he wasn’t in a position to promote the LP from where he was living out bush and the record sank with little trace until collectors began championing its merits in more recent years. 

These days he is involved with children’s theatre and puppetry as well as playing with his Celtic band, Welder's Dog.


From rateyourmusic:

A beautiful companion piece to Madden & Harris's "Fools Paradise", one of the rarest and most sought after Australian Folk LP's. Harris's songwriting shines through with some wonderful timeless and thoughtful tunes, very much English Folk in style, delicate and well produced. Quite a few tracks could easily slot straight onto Fools Paradise, and you'd be none the wiser. "Legend" is one of his finest pieces imho. There's a few moogy bits which probably could have done without, but that's just nitpicking. Side 2 is the better of the two, to my ears, actually tracks 4 to 11 are simply superb. I can see how Madden & Harris, or Peter Harris may not be to everyone's taste, if you love the Acid Folk/Psych/Chaos of Comus...but dislike Tudor Lodge, this maybe not be your bag...but if you appreciate both for what they offer, i'm sure you'll also enjoy this as well. A great shame he slipped under the radar, and well worth tracking down a copy.


This review is right on the money in my opinion.  And speaking of money-- It's not cheap!

Check:

http://www.popsike.com/PETER-HARRIS-RUBY-LP-AUST-PSYCH-FOLK-75-MADDEN-HARRIS/300362647864.html

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/PETER-HARRIS-Ruby-Lp-Oz-70s-FOLK-PROG-Madden-Harris-Fantastic-Album-/370744466913

Luckily we are more interested in the music than the vinyl circle so we can enjoy it as it should indeed be enjoyed.

My favourite song, delicate, light, melancholy and oh so achingly beautiful, is called Second Hand Dreams:






What heart and soul the songwriter put into this piece.  Let's treasure the effort.

The amazing Sailor [Band] from the US 1974 [mono only]

There is no adequate cover available for this rarity which usually sells for the hundreds of USD on ebay.  My copy is derived from an illegal CD reissue that lacked proper scanning technology tragically I was thus left without images but the music more than makes up for that deficiency.

A masterpiece if ever I heard one in the progressive fusion vein, once ripped long ago by the indomitable osurec and high priced if ever you seek it out--  some more information albeit sparse here.

Incidentally it's easy to confuse this band with another from 1976 which is west coast singer songwriter material, but also highly enjoyable and expensively rare.  If anyone wants I have a decent rip of the latter, later Sailor to share, but I am not permitted to share a good copy of this one.


First of all, from Tom:

Sometimes known as The Sailor Band, due to a few copies having a stamp. From Minnesota and surprisingly sophisticated for such a private release. Most albums from 1974 have a strong hard rock element, and there's little of that here with this jazz and classical inspired album. Plenty of jazz guitar and piano as well as amp'd up electric guitar and Hammond organ. Almost all instrumental except the final track. A nice surprise.

For me it most recalls the Natural Life LPs I posted so long ago with its mix of classical compositions and fusion with a strong electric guitar basis.

Here's a great little track full of progressive ideas, that I've always loved due to its unusual chromatic guitar chords combined with equally unusual chromatic phrases by both organ and guitar (but going in the opposite direction) evoking The Waterfall:





Another called Evergreen:





I love the Earth Day message too.

Claude Perraudin's Rumeurs (Patchwork MC 82) by request

Hard on the heels of the last library entry that was so popular here's another famous name and another marvelous little album that I take it was missing.  An unusual feature is the musique concrete or real-life sounds that begin each track.  Mercifully these noisy interludes are quickly over (on the order of 65 seconds) so we can focus on enjoying the music.

All compositions are by Claude, obviously.  More information can be found in discogs.  For those unlucky souls not familiar with this artist, here is his extensive discography with his masterpiece, universally acknowledged, being Mutations 24 -- a work that I have listened to hundreds of times and could listen again the same number of times.  If you haven't heard it, please do so!

The first track called Cities is described as Heavy-repetitive:





As indeed it is.  Whilst notice the synthesizer sounds evoking locomotives on the Train track (pun obviously intended though as is customary, categorically denied):





Some tracks, of course, are simple throwaway, as might be expected on any library album, the song called "Vagues" or waves sounds like something Jean-Michel Jarre would have done but never released as it was too inferior to the rest of his admittedly poor work.  And the last track referring to "Foules" or crowds could easily have been the Hollywood soundtrack to a Pinocchio remake starring Jean-Claude Van Damme as the title character action hero wooden puppet with the hardest arms ever and Angelina Jolie as the old professor, with the whale created by CGI animation out of an old sardines can.   Needless to say when he gets down to the children's hell he beats up all the bad kids and even closes hell down by the deputy sheriff, along with real life authority and friend Steven Seagal.  Cameo by Megan Fox as the love interest: a living barbie doll called Malisa with plastic breasts.  You go, Jean-Claude!

Teddy Lasry's Tutti Fluti (Patchwork PW 22) by Request

A relatively average library album, in my opinion with none of the fire of the later Lasry.
Here's a more progressive composition called Monomotapa:





Then on the second side we get a little more of the trademark Teddy flights of fancy in synthesizer artwork with a funky jazzier track called Noir Ébène:

US West Coast Sand's 1976 effort Head in the Sand

Who could ever, ever get tired of that wonderful, classic, fantastic US late-seventies rock sound? It will surely take me a long time, because I've listened to some of these tracks dozens and dozens of times and I hope to hear them as many times again and more in the future both near and in the far astronomical distance...

Let me present to you this awesome Steely-Dan-like songwriting effort from this large group of slightly gay-looking individuals (apologies to the artists, but that was fashion back then) with, to boot, a very easy-on-the-eyes cover painting.

Here are some samples to give you a taste, a soft but beautiful little ballad called "Painted Eyes":





Thanks to my friend included is the lyrics sheet as well as some near-perfect scans of the gatefold and inside.  Notice how the group attempted to also write some clever lyrics, much like Steely.  I say they ' attempted ' to write-- of course we're not talking poetry here, just an above-average attempt at going beyond " I love you baby, you're such a fine lady, etc."   On this song note as well the duelling guitar and synthesizer solos towards the end, always a wonderful effect (and masterfully played I might add), especially when you get one instrument in each channel as in this case.  Alternate phrases in fact are played on right and left at one point (by the same guitarist).  Obviously we have here, with the slide guitar and solos played by two guitars a third interval apart, a very competent and worthy Eagles imitation.

Now why did the Eagles' Greatest Hits sell hundreds of billions of copies and become the best-selling album of all time, for a brief moment, when these guys languished in obscurity?  Simple, there is no justice when it comes to the art of music, not in the late twentieth / early twenty-first centuries.  The test of time for art has been reversed so that now the worst efforts are guaranteed immortality as I observe each time I am forced to hear Celine Dion's My Heart will go on for the millionth time in my life or Shania Twain's Man, I Feel like a Woman...

For a more progressive structure for our jaded ears consider the following song with its awesome hook, "Ballad of the Dead Man ":





This song, in G minor, has that awesome falsetto high-D note that just kills me each time.  Does it evoke a soul ascending to heaven to you too?  Also make note of how well the singer does those bluesy flourishes (going from fifth to seventh for ex. in the middle of a melody).   How, but how, could that song not have been a number-one hit on the charts back in 1976, that beautiful bicentennial year I remember so well, with all those festivities and then all that wonderful rock music we thought the beautiful songs would just never end...  but they did, come the eighties...


At the bottom of the lyrics sheet the following poignant comment:

"All proceeds from the sale of this album go towards the next one.."   was there ever a next one?  Not that I can see from this discogs information:

Very interesting psych-folk band from the early '70s who've been compared to everyone from the Grateful Dead to The Eagles, to early Steely Dan. The band was formed in Portland, Oregon; eight sides were cut in Los Angeles in October of 1972; for Andy Williams' Barnaby Records. The first album, released in '73 and distributed by MGM, featured two single-sided Lps in a gatefold cover with a sticker that read "One Record Album on Two Discs For Continuous Flowing SAND", with the intention that both discs could be put on a turntable with a changer and played straight through without having to flip an Lp. 

Although it was an excellent effort, the combination of the wrong label (Barnaby was not a "rock" label, being otherwise occupied with Everly Brothers reissues and Ray Stevens Lps, and didn't know how to promote them) and the wrong distributor (MGM was in the midst of its infamous artist purge and in preliminary sale talks with PolyGram) caused the record to sink.  After a followup album in 1973 (? - Editor), the band went their separate ways, but Rich Gooch [producer and bassist] and Jack Charles [guitarist and vocalist] went on to some fame after joining Quarterflash.

[It was another band member however, also credited as guitarist and vocalist, who wrote the compositions, Dan Ross, and he disappears from view at this point.]


Bonus, the first album from 1973, which is also a wonderful slice of Southern rock dripping with juicy, oily, goodness like the best pepperoni pizza from the cheapest little hole in the wall strip mall you ever saw...  god bless 1970s America...

Notice the oddity to this one: There were two records pressed, each with only one side, so you didn't have to make that annoying trip to the gramophone to flip the vinyl over!  That surely didn't catch on...

And of course, I and yourself must thank the wonderful friend who not only introduced me to this unforgettable music but was gracious enough to share the record with me and you and everyone else who is interested in preserving this music hopefully for as long as humans have ears that discriminate in the direction of beauty...


Long live US prog...  or at least, for a few more years, with any luck?