There’s a big bucket of everything going on in this record. Carlos uses up to 48 “Dolbyized” tracks (including electronic/quasi-classical/ambient music composed and performed by Carlos along with environmental recordings including surf, birds, frogs, lightning, wind, rain, and anything else Mother Nature can cook up) at any given point in this monstrous psychoacoustic experiment. The whole effect simultaneously soothes and challenges the old noggin’ in the most curious way.
Here’s a simple way to describe it. Take one of Walter Carlos’ traditional early-electronic Moog pieces and mix it with one or two discs from the Environments series. Make sure they’re smooshed together nicely then board ‘em on Willy Wonka’s Psychedelic Boat Trip.
Only attempt in the company of a responsible adult. Or a frog bong.
Sonic Seasonings is a Double LP with four different “songs”, which are as follows:
I couple of nights ago I went out to a few bars in Over-The-Rhine with my girlfriend. Before we went out I decided it was a good idea to drink a Four Loko. After all, I didn’t have to work the next day and I still had two left from the stockpile I bought the day the company announced they were pulling supplies from corner stores and bodegas nationwide. Yes, they pulled them for safety concerns but, hey, I figure a Four Loko is the closest I can get to a cocaine high for $2 and life is short.
During the hyperactive buzz that followed I confessed to my boo the following things: Aretha Franklin is a strong, sexy black woman. Her voice exudes nothing but powerful, hypnotic confidence. Her eyes blaze with an honest sexuality that Dr. Ruth would find arousing yet sobering. And, most importantly, her music just fucking owns.
At least I’m pretty sure I said these things. Four Loko changed the password to my hidden files but my boo assures me I most definitely confessed these things using a deep, lustrous baritone. And I have no reason to doubt her.
Peep the following video to see why Aretha is one sexy ass black woman. What you’ll find is a clip from the classic film Blues Brothers, featuring Aretha performing her song “Think”, which is also on this greatest hits comp.
Update 1/4/11: Gerry Rafferty died today at the age of 63. He passed on peacefully at home with family. Thanks for the music, Gerry.
If you’re not familiar with Gerry Rafferty or with his song “Baker Street” you should first take a look-see at this video.
Please, allow your saxophone-induced erection to subside before reading the remainder of this post.
While researching this album I came across a couple of interesting pieces of information about Gerry Rafferty. First, Rafferty just recently suffered liver failure due to acute alcoholism and is in critical condition. Amazingly this isn’t the first time he’s suffered liver failure from overindulgence. Additionally, alcoholism has driven Rafferty to a life of seclusion; and perhaps made him a fan of George Thorogood. There have even been reports of him completely disappearing from time to time. All of this leads one to believe that, despite becoming a popular musician and selling over 5.5 million copies of City To City, Rafferty’s a lonely, depressed soul. Evidence of this is found in the lyrics of “Baker Street”.
Winding your way down on Baker Street
Light in your head, and dead on your feet
Well another crazy day
You drink the night away
And forget about everything
This city desert makes you feel so cold,
Its got so many people but its got no soul
And it’s taken you so long to find out you were wrong
When you thought it held everything
Baker Street, London, England
You used to think that it was so easy
You used to say that it was so easy
But you’re tryin’, you’re tryin’ now
Another year and then you’d be happy
Just one more year and then you’d be happy
But you’re cryin’, you’re cryin’ now
Second, some people credit the sexophone solo in “Baker Street” with inciting the stampede of screaming reeds that ran rampant throughout 80′s pop. Music critic and historian Richard Ingham termed Rafferty’s sax influence the “Baker Street Phenomenon” in The Cambridge Companion To The Saxophone. Below is an excerpt from the book:
The year 1978 saw the appearance of what can only be described as the Baker Street phenomenon. An attractive but seemingly innocuous rock ballad, a hit for singer/composer Gerry Rafferty, was decorated by a handful of notes turned into an eight-bar phrase at the beginning and between verses.
No one really knows why, but following the success (and consequent air-play) of this number, it seemed that every self-respecting band had to include a saxophone.
Soon after that an enormous percentage of TV advertisements had a sultry tenor or wailing alto taking prominence, and in the mid 1980s the saxophone became the most popular instrument for youngsters starting out. Rafael Ravenscroft, the player in question, can thus be said to have initiated the biggest boom in saxophone sales since the craze of the 1920s.
This [testifies] to the power of the mass media, as well as the music itself, and follows in a direct line Acker Bilk, whose Stranger on the Shore was responsible for a generation of clarinet players, and later James Galway with Annie’s Song, similarly providing flute players.
It seemed that Baker Street legitimised (sic) the saxophone in mainstream pop, instead of being an extra instrument on loan from jazz. Almost the best part of this whole story is the fact, like many inventions, it appeared quite by chance.
The band were recording the number, and Rafael Ravenscroft was booked to do a session on soprano (heard briefly in the introduction). Having completed this, they were still waiting for the guitarist to arrive, who was due to record the now famous opening phrases. Time passed and Ravenscroft mentioned that he had an alto in the car if that would do as a substitute for the guitar. It was found to be satisfactory.
It’s hard to imagine the 80s without all the gratuitous sax. Hard, but somewhat cathartic. Here’s a good list of the best of the worst saxual songs from the cocaine decade.
Finally, Gerry Rafferty is a total hipster.
Beard...check. Big glasses...check. Forlorn stare into nothingness...check. Systems check complete: Hipster is a go.
Acoustic Guitar [Acoustic] – Gerry*
Backing Vocals – Gary Taylor (4) , John McBurnie , Rab Noakes , Roger Brown (3) , Vivian McAuliff*
Fiddle – Graham*
Harmonica – Paul Jones
Tambourine – Hugh Murphy
Accordion – Willy Ray
Drums – Glen Le Fleur*
Saxophone [Sax] – Raphael*
10
Waiting For The Day
5:45
Bass – Gary Taylor (4)
Drums – Henry Spinnetti*
Electric Guitar [Electric Rhythm] – Andy Fairweather-Low
Electric Piano, Organ, Arranged By [Bass Arrangements] – Tommy Eyre
Fiddle – Graham Preskett
Lead Guitar, Rhythm Guitar – Hugh Burns
Percussion – Glen Le Fleur*
Piano, Vocals – Gerry Rafferty
Tonight I had the privilege of attending karaoke night at Mason Pub in Mason, OH. Mason is one of the newly-blossomed suburbs outside of Cincinnati which serves as a safe haven for the nouveau riche. At nearly 25 miles outside of the heart of downtown its location puts the township just close enough for MBAs to commute down I-71 to the Chiquita headquarters in Cincy.
This distance also puts Mason clear outside bullet reach of Cincinnati’s infamous Over-The-Rhine, which last year was declared the most dangerous neighborhood in the entire United States. That’s a pretty impressive title for the 24th most populous city in the country.
Standard issue for Chiquita's middle management.
So Mason is a pretty comfy, money-soaked little township. So much so that it’s been the host a few years running for Cincinnati’s Home-A-Rama, which is a disgusting exhibition of the “creative” limits of McMansionry.
Ok, so back to my original point. Tonight at karaoke I heard songs that you could have heard screeched and bellowed by anyone in any city at any shitty wannabee UFC fighter haunt. I heard some Evanescence, some Journey, some *gag* *spit* *eyes watering* *hurl* Nickelback sung by girls in too-tight pants and dudes in highly-embroidered Tapout t-shirts.
It wasn’t so much that the music was terrible, because it was. So terribly awful. It’s just that it’s all so unoriginal. There really isn’t anything left that a city can call its own. Especially music because most radio stations are owned by national or international parent companies. And even worse many people still get their music from…the MTV.
"I tried so hard, and got so far...."
What I’m getting at is that nearly 40 years ago, when this album came out, Mason was an entirely different place. Mentioning the word “subdivision” to the locals would have been akin to speaking Chinese. It was all farms and state routes as far as the eye could see. There weren’t any Applebee’s, there weren’t any Wal-Marts, no internets and certainly no Jap shit called a Kerry Okey. There were locally owned businesses and locally grown music ripe for the pickin’.
When people got together at local watering holes they’d rock a jukebox loaded 45s or, perhaps during post-harvest celebrations, had a DJ playing singles with the occasional LP request. It would’ve been music that ‘d been picked specifically because it meshed with the locals’ (farmers and laborers) taste of music. I imagine their jukebox would have been packed with Elvis, some Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, Hank Williams, and perhaps this new band out of Cincinnati called Pure Prairie League that had this bitchin’ new song “Amie”.
When I’m at places like Mason Pub I like to try and transport myself into the past and think what it would have been like listening to yesteryear’s new music while getting sloshed. Instead of listening to LMFAO’s “Shots” I would be raising my glass and voice to “Amie”. I wouldn’t be wearing jeans and a T but work boots and overalls. The tread of those boots would be filled with a hard-days-worth of manure and my hands rough from wrastling all types of domestic mammals. Shoulders bronzed, hair sunkissed, and neglected teeth which would glimmer dully as the chorus escaped from their huge gaps:
I had big plans for the write-up on this album. It entailed all sorts of fun facts I unearthed from an oak chest I purchased at some antique shop in Waynesville, OH. These ideas were brewing while I assumed, fool-heartedly, that I’d be able to rip this album in one try. It’s fairly unplayed and, weighing in at a tubby 200 grams, is one of the highest quality pressings I own. So, good record, quality sound, easy money, right? Boy, was I wrong.
This album is supposed to be played loud. I mean fix-your-neighbor’s-lazy-eye loud. So, to make it even louder, I upped the volume on the feed to my CPU for the first rip to levels that would leave the population within a 7 mile radius sterile for 7 generations. Once I realized these rock volumes would also affect my fragile man-sack I reconsidered posting the first take.
On the second rip the levels were toned down to sane-enough-for-capital-punishment levels. And all was good in the world. Until I realized that there was a repeating skip on the second side…after I had split the tracks and started tagging.
So I recorded a third time. And it sounds good, it sounds really good. However, it doesn’t sound perfect. There are one or two blurbs which are not really big enough to be considered true skips. I hope you don’t notice them, but if you do don’t blame me. I’m certain this record knew it was trying to be digitized and fought every effort to be tamed by this MP3 wrangler. It bucked and bucked…and I can only brush off my chaps so many times!
>>>BUT what I really want to say about this record is that it’s the perfect entrance into the world of Led Zeppelin for the disbeliever. For a long time I hated, or thought I hated, the group because of the tracks I heard on the radio. “God, this Janis Joplin song is really annoying,” I would always say. And then I heard this album.
III is the album that every rocksy, folksy indie band crawling and slinking on the scene today wants to make. But they never, ever will. Now, I’m not saying that the new stuff isn’t good. It’s just not the real thing.
Let me put it this way. I new Camaro SS is probably a fun car to drive. It’s fast, it looks OK and you can probably get any chick at a sports bar to bone you if you’re driving one. But you could never compare it to a 1969 Yenko Super Camaro. It just doesn’t have the balls out attitude toward, well, going balls out.
Balls...
OUT!
Now, forget “Stairway To Heaven” and take a listen to what Jack White wishes he could be.
