high time
so yeah, brock, i usedta be all about the stooges and mc5...as a snotnose way back ca. '70-'71 and then again as an adult internet obsessive, um, almost 30 yrs later. now i've even got a band that plays stoogesongs with a little bit of what made the five's kick out the jams the best one-sided alb evah (noise, feedback, yelling...well, we gotta work on the yelling part a bit). so it was prolly inevitable that i'd eventually score the sundazed vinyl reish of the five's high time. me-thinks will gifted ray back in the u.s.a. at last yr's mustachio party, but i still prefer the sounds 'n' toonage on thisun, even tho it sounds like it was recorded thru layers of cotton wool. (a sympathetic 'n' enthusiastic recordist geoffrey haslam mighta been, but to be true, the cat had a cloth ear. ever heard the velvets' loaded?)
in some ways, this alb is the anti-raw power. where thatun is all shrieking high end (the engineer didn't even get _levels_ on the bass 'n' drums, and the lead gtr sounds like a switchblade in the ear), high time has plenty riddim section (with the bass curiously mixed way up front) but the gtrs sound itty bitty 'n' kinda muffled. below a certain volume, it just sounds like a bad transistor radio, so you gotta PLAY IT LOUD. all the berryesque rawkers are on side one (conceptual continuity note: dig the fact that all the fred smith songs fall at the beginning and end of the program), but the real _interesting_ shit is on side two: rob tyner's "future now," which mirrors both the stooges' "1969" and "no fun" in its chord progression and fleetwood mac's "oh well" structurally, and features the best stickwork ever waxed by dennis "machine gun" thompson; the churning vat of political dissafection that is wayne kramer's "poison;" fred's "over and over," which lyrically covers the same turf as the temptations' "ball of confusion" and the 'oo's "won't get fooled again," beautifully sung by rob, the verses bisected by a tortuous yet lyrical sonic smith gtr solo; and "skunk (sonically speaking)," which weds rawk 'n' free jazz in a very different way than, say, "starship" on kotj did.
i look fwd to listening to this music for _another_ 30+ yrs.
in some ways, this alb is the anti-raw power. where thatun is all shrieking high end (the engineer didn't even get _levels_ on the bass 'n' drums, and the lead gtr sounds like a switchblade in the ear), high time has plenty riddim section (with the bass curiously mixed way up front) but the gtrs sound itty bitty 'n' kinda muffled. below a certain volume, it just sounds like a bad transistor radio, so you gotta PLAY IT LOUD. all the berryesque rawkers are on side one (conceptual continuity note: dig the fact that all the fred smith songs fall at the beginning and end of the program), but the real _interesting_ shit is on side two: rob tyner's "future now," which mirrors both the stooges' "1969" and "no fun" in its chord progression and fleetwood mac's "oh well" structurally, and features the best stickwork ever waxed by dennis "machine gun" thompson; the churning vat of political dissafection that is wayne kramer's "poison;" fred's "over and over," which lyrically covers the same turf as the temptations' "ball of confusion" and the 'oo's "won't get fooled again," beautifully sung by rob, the verses bisected by a tortuous yet lyrical sonic smith gtr solo; and "skunk (sonically speaking)," which weds rawk 'n' free jazz in a very different way than, say, "starship" on kotj did.
i look fwd to listening to this music for _another_ 30+ yrs.
posted by stashdauber at 9:27 PM
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your blog is like ... a ramblin' rose!
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