Various ‎Artists - Live Im Sudhaus Stuttgart (3xLP Box Set, 1978) and Li Garattoni in Find out what I'm dreaming

This kind of big thick heavy box set of LPs reminds me a lot of early childhood when I would randomly pull out some of my father's opera or classical boxes and listen to the music, mostly unnecessarily mono, on his ancient phonograph, excited to find out what sounds were concealed on the big black discs, like that dog in the ancient RCA photo-ad.  And I think that over the following years I must have spent the majority of my time either listening to music or playing it, in fact, all the way to the present.

Back to today's piece.  There's a lot of content in here to digest, and not all good.  You might want to skip the digestion part of it even.  When I say not all good, I mean there is a tiny bit of worthwhile music, especially if you were to look at the artists, because these do include such luminaries as Fred Rabold, Peter Garattoni, and Syncrisis.

In the beginning there is dixieland jazz.  In other words, darkness on the edge of the deep.  Chaos on the face of nothingness.  And hell on snowball earth.  All mixed together in one infernal musical concoction.  Now I'm more than a little flummoxed that of all the things to copy from Stateside, these German artists would think dixieland jazz is a worthwhile endeavour.   It's kind of like copying a ghetto crack cocaine habit or, today, crystal methamphetamine for white trash lowlifes living in Trump country in their monster trucks with a six-packs o' buck-a-beers and shotguns on the passenger seat-- oops sorry to insult y'all-- semi-automatic assault rifles.  It's kind of like saying kool-aid is a great drink. And has a fantastic reputation, too.  Don't forget it was the favored music of Woody, who married his step-daughter, Soon-Ye get charged...  Just as surprising to me is the number of dixieland bands in Germany, one would of course only have expected one or 2, at the most, in the same way one would have expected only one or two record mass shootings or serial killers, or middle-aged men sustaining for years a dungeon full of female sex slaves in their basements chained to the ceilings, or men who invited a willing date to come over to be cannibalized.  In short, I really don't recommend you listen to the first LP.

Nor do I recommend you listen to the second one, which is more traditional American jazz circa 1940s to 1950s.  Apparently it took Germany a long time to catch up, given this was released in the late 1970s.  It's very much like the summertime jazz festival they have in my city which is mostly attended by great-grandfathers and great-grandmothers mobilized either via scooters or walkers who despite decubitus ulcers try to get up and dance to the Ellington swing music and, as I watch with a combination of sheer disgust and amused horror, start singing out of tune as I quickly look around for the defibrillators or EMS personnel standing by.  I'll never forget one time when one white-haired lady who probably had osteoporosis knocked over the beer I had in the usual small plastic cup with the horn on her scooter straight into my lap and as I yelled 'Hey, watch it!' and got up to try to restrain her, the old geriatric cases began to rough me up with their canes, whereupon a denture fell to the ground.  Then my old nemesis appears on side c, I refer to the jazz standard Body and Soul, my nemesis who has caused me untold grief and torture throughout this long dreary life of mine spent looking for beautiful new sounds instead of the old garbage dump of old stinking shit full of the usual circling seagulls, made all the worse here by being performed on solo piano, a bit of an affront to those legendary pianists like Teddy Wilson or Art Tatum (who is I think the one being imitated here, or rather ripped off).

By the time we get to side E1 with Mr. Garattoni it's safe to turn on the volume again.  Unfortunately Peter's track is mostly a percussion solo, not the most praiseworthy tribute to Li I can imagine, unless he was some sort of wifebeater.  Btw I've often mentioned her in these pages, if you've never heard her only album, please have a listen to it, it's one of my favourite records of all time.  How often I've wished she made another one.  I remember one reviewer saying something along the lines of 'this is everything Kate Bush's music should have been' and I think that really describes it well.  As good as Kate was at times, she still dwelt in the art rock / pop rock categorization.  Instead, Li worked more in the progressive rock style, combined with the most surprisingly poetic lyrics, and as a result the music is absolutely breathtaking.

We continue with the famous fusion band Syncrisis, which I always thought was inferior to other similar contemporaneous bands like Chameleon, Virgin's Dream, Train, in our pages we had Katamaran, the royal Nimbus etc., there's so much in that genre from Germany.  Too many, really.  Here the band pulls out the standard flamenco chord progression--another hated bugbear of mine (I think, Cminor, Dflat, Eflat this time)-- and does absolutely nothing with it.  So disappointment all around there.  Including disappointment with me on the part of the band, for being so critical.  Sorry guys.  Then we have Fred Rabold, who is generally pretty hit and miss.  On this outing he doesn't even try to hit, just misses badly, doesn't bother to pick up the bat, misses the ball, losing the game, abandoning the championship actually, screwing up the post-game interview by grabbing the female reporter's buttocks, and crashing his Porsche on the way home to his Swedish wife who was about to kick him out permanently.  Are you ready Freddy.

Not until the very last side, having crossed through 5/6 of the thing, do we get a good track with the one-off band Baobab's "no number:"





Seems appropriate then that there follows some more ho-hum music to close it out with a whimper.
As I said, it's a lot of music to indigest today.

I'll post the Li G. album here below, so you don't have to go looking for it.  Everyone should be familiar with this one.  Note that the music (so far as I understand) was written by Ulli Buhl, who also played in the Fred Rabold Crew (before his wife kicked him out, for having sex with Li presumably) and was in a band called Matter of Taste which made a great album in 1979, genre, light but well-written fusion mixed with pop, which I recommend too.

And now it's time to shut up before I get sued, once again.