Tranzam Pt 2, August 9th: 1975

Sadly this album, although shortly temporally after, doesn't quite hit the heights of the previous installment, the ST album, but perhaps this track (Rose-Coloured Days) comes close:





Or perhaps not.  You can decide now.

Quick addendum from my friend:

 Tranzam started in 1974 with the ex-members of Flower Travelin Band  & The Happenings Four.
 This 1st album is very rare (never released as CD).   They formed this band to create original Japanese rock in Japanese language . But after releasing this 1st album, they faced a huge wall and some original members left this band (only Chito Kawachi remained as original member).
 But the band continued until 1981 and released a lot of hit pop singles.

Didn't know that connection, there's one for Tom Hayes... he should be pretty sad right about now he stopped collectin' them rarities... well I guess lucky for us there's one fewer person in the competition.

Transfusion Cat Call from Germany 1984

I was reminded of this one after listening to all that violin fusion.  The band, highly proficient, unfortunately never made another album.  The primary composer was Matz Claus, who also doesn't appear much further.  Matthias Buck is the brilliant violinist, again with relatively little to his credit.

Highly recommended though, and with not so much 80s influence as one would expect in the George Orwell year.

Gerardo Bátiz ‎En Concierto 1985, finally

I posted most of his material in the past, from Cristal, Isla, Arlequin, to Azul con Leche, and this one was missing.  Technically it's the album that came after what is certainly his masterpiece, Arlequin, which really should also stand as, in general, a masterpiece of the whole genre of chamber (classical) progressive fusion no matter where you are who you are or what species you may happen to belong to.  Needless to state we have a slight diminution in creative conflagration by this time, perhaps the track called Oasis most recalls the earlier brilliance of his undeniable genius:





But again the commercial devil in the left ear whispering money, success, power, seems to have overpowered the angel of uncompromising beauty in the right ear, with an onslaught of latin by-the-numbers tracks including steel drums on the Trinidadian entry...  a bit too bad.

Don Sebesky does classical music in 1979

I knew him from the 2-LP fusion masterpiece Giant Box and was surprised I never listened to this one before since it's right up my alley, more than that, it's the very alley I made my home in, for many years, under a cardboard shack.

On Giant Box, the song about flying with vocals by Don pretending he's Chet Baker, and doing a convincing job of it at that, is simply stunning:






In fact, the whole record for me is an exemplar of great progressive fusion.  Those were certainly the days...
Then, after a disappointing "Rape of El Morro," in 1979 Sebesky made this beautiful classical-jazz 'third stream' type record.

The Rite of Spring, a piece of music I could never get tired of hearing:





How wonderful to hear what the warmth of jazz piano can bring to the cold chemical sterility of classical composition!

The full information for these arrangement / compositions can be found here.  Notice they are amalgams of Bartok, Stravinsky (obviously) and Bach, written by Sebesky.  The long symphonic work based on Bartok has the impressive full title of "Bird And Belá In B Flat - A Musical Account Of An Imaginary Meeting Between Charlie "Bird" Parker And Belá Bartók In The Form Of A Concerto For Jazz Quintet And Orchestra In B Flat."  Wow.  Yes indeed those were the days.
For those who are interested, few as they are, the orchestra is the (London) Royal Philharmonic directed by one Harry Rabinowitz.

The album closes out with one of those incredibly beautiful 70s melodies, the kind of melody one can only hear from this period in fact, pensively melancholy and classically gentle, like Colombier's Emmanuel:





You can see that it's credited to co-composers Sebesky and Bach.  I don't remember which composition it is by Johann Sebastian but I remember playing it once long ago on the piano.

Stunning Japanese band Tranzam, Pt 1

You can see that these guys, currently unknown, were highly prolific in the 70s, starting from funky rock reinterpretations of classical music favourites a la Sound Creation (but superior in my opinion) in their debut called Funky Steps and a brilliant pop-rock-progressive self-titled record for number two, which are the 2 presented today.  Gotta dig the cover photo with the dark cloudy backdrop on the bottom album.

So, from the first record, a stunningly performed excerpt from tired old classic Peer Gynt:





Mellotron fans will jump out of their seats or perhaps wheelchairs when they listen to this one: these boys actually use the heaven-sent mello for their string section on top of the funkiest possible rendition of this classical trash.  It doesn't get any better than this folks.  Except when they returned the next year for a ST record.

So on this second album there is tons of good material that overall reminds me a lot of the School Band.  Obviously the Japanese were not just excellent at progressive fusion but could do original progressive pop seventies songwriting absolutely perfectly.  The fact that this enjoyable material was totally shut out of FM radio in that time period is tragic to say the least, the fact it's completely unknown today on for example satellite radio, is criminal.

Listen to Mr. Minomushi:





Let's see, what is it that makes this track an absolute top-40 stunner? There's the lovely guitar solo intro, the funkiness of the choppy electric piano sound, combined with slapped electric guitar, the refrain that goes 'oh-oh' (perhaps too similar to the Rolling Stones' Can't You Hear me Knocking?) the sheer grooviness of it all, the progression from seemingly talking to high-pitched chorus on the fourth chord above (i.e. key of A), the two breaks in the song-- to me, these are all ingredients of a successful pop song.  What can I say, other than that it breaks the heart to think the human population has missed this kind of genius for so many years.  And obviously will continue to do so.

I think personally this is the best track, but there's at least a handful more that are quite delectable.  Let's keep those Japanese lost rarities coming because boy do they ever beat the old tired garbage they play every day on the radio at my workplace... 'cuz she's buying a stairway to heaven...
And many thanks to my friends for helping to discover this one!!  I bow before you....


Interested note from my friend:

 Tranzam started in 1974 with the ex-members of Flower Travelin Band  & The Happenings Four.
 This 1st album is very rare (never released as CD)
 They formed this band to create original Japanese rock in Japanese language .
 But after releasing this 1st album, they faced the huge wall and some original members left this band,(only Chito Kawachi remained as the original member)
 But the band continued until 1981 and released a lot of hit pop singles.