mo' crate-diggin'

besides the murray octet rec, i was also happy to see that no one else had copped cecil taylor's nefertiti, the beautiful one has come (the double elpee on arista freedom) before i made it back to doc's. i had this when it was new (along with the solo piano silent tongues, another arista freedom fave). half of the material was released on debut/fantasy as live at the cafe montmartre; i understand revenant added even more when they released nefertiti on cd. basically, this '62 sesh (with jimmy lyons on alto and sunny murray on drums) represents the birth of c.t.'s mature style. even though he does play one "standard" here (burke and van heusen's "what's new"), it's rendered unrecognizable by the pianist's signature force-of-nature attack. to these feedback-scorched ears, this set has the same open-ended quality as 1978's one too many salty swift and not goodbye, with a smaller group giving lyons and the leader more space to elaborate and murray's mercurial sprung rhythm in place of shannon jackson's thunderous backbeat.

also in the racks was the sire reish of lenny kaye's original '72 nuggets, which i got shit for buying from the older guys in the hipi rekkid store where i usedta work when it appeared in '76. this set opened the floodgates for what eventually became the "garage revivals" of the '80s and '90s -- the latter of which included a rhino reish which expanded kaye's double elpee into a four-cd behemoth -- but i still like hearing these toons in the form in which i first discovered 'em. compared to later releases of this ilk (my faves being larry harrison and david campbell's three-volume fort worth teen scene on norton, the obscuro '90s michigan mayhem! vol. 1 and the swedish searchin' for shakes), the selection seems pretty spotty (the fey, twee studio pop that's clustered on side four, f'rinstance), but side one's pretty much immaculate (the electric prunes! the standells! the knickerbockers! the vagrants! the blues project!) and all the other sides include songs that i played over and over (the nazz's "open my eyes") and bands i came to appreciate more in other forms (the remains' "don't look back" still can't hold a candle to a session with the remains, which was still just a rumor in '76; i actually liked the count five album that i bought after reading lester bangs' frothings over them in creem). my sweetie's take: "cursed hipi music!"

ADDENDUM: listen to any '60s garage comp and you can't help but conclude that "i'm a man" by the yardbirds was _the_ most influential record of the era. that rave-up raga pops up _everywhere_.