The Moray Eels eat the Holy Modal Rounders and the Velvet Underground & Nico for dessert
In 2013 I wrote a couple of blurbs that I'm still proud of for Spin's "Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s": The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders and The Velvet Underground & Nico. Linked them on my LJ at the time, w/ my critique and commentary, lotsa critique - criticized the cake and ate it too! - here: "Concrete toes and pigeons' feet."
Since then, as far as I can tell, my two blurbs and the 98 others, and the list itself, have disappeared from the Spin site.* Fortunately, I'd downloaded my blurbs and the entire list, though none of the other blurbs. This March when repairing old posts I added my blurbs to the post as an update, and stuck the list in the comments. Reposting here, now, too.**
"Mobile Line"
#37
The Holy Modal Rounders - The Moray Eels Eat the Holy Modal Rounders (Elektra, 1968)
Part of New York City's urban folk bohemia, the Rounders heard in rockabilly and old rural string bands a vision of new music. On this, their fourth album, the styles were still mostly from the rural south of the 1920s, with added garage blues and scraps and bits from rags and barrelhouse and the American songbook (such as the melody but not the words to "Three cheers for the red, white, and blue"). But each instrument played its own accents and unique curlicues, not in direct support of the main melody or the singer (whose mic is always set to "soft"). Imagine a number of people wandering into a room and simultaneously telling their individually varied stories, while never losing touch with what the others are saying. The effect isn't dreamy or diffuse but slightly crazed, as everyone seems to be listening to notes just out of earshot, and every sound can potentially drive the wagon off various cliffs in any direction. FRANK KOGAN
#3
The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve, 1967)
It's a convention of drug songs as much as love songs that if you say you don't care, you do care. But a line like, "When the smack begins to flow and I really don't care anymore" does glorify self-destruction, as a rebuke to senators and society, to niceness and complacency. Choose to choose, choose to go. While Simon & Garfunkel hit big with similarly death-obsessed lyrics, the Velvets brought the conversation to eye level, skillfully precise ("up three flights of stairs," "twenty-six dollars in my hand"). The music matches, feels as sick and dirty as the protagonists. But the drones and unison pounding are a frame for cascades of notes and syllables that are as virtuoso as Diddley and doo-wop without announcing themselves as such. So the whole thing's got a lilt and a dance, solace for the broken people. F.K.
"Heroin"
Spin: The Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s (in ascending order):
Marshall McLuhan - The Medium Is the Massage (Columbia, 1968)
Cromagnon - Orgasm (ESP-Disk, 1969)
Mulatu Astatke - Afro-Latin Soul, Vol. 1 (Worthy, 1966)
Brigitte Fontaine - Comme À la Radio (Saravah, 1969)
Alan Watts - OM: The Sound of Hinduism (Warner Bros., 1967)
Conlon Nancarrow - Studies for Player Piano (Columbia Masterworks, 1969)
Pärson Sound - Pärson Sound (Subliminal Sounds, 2001)
Pearls Before Swine - One Nation Underground (ESP-Disk)
The Monkees - Head (Colgems, 1968)
Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes (Polydor, 1968)
Harry Partch - The World of Harry Partch (Columbia, 1969)
Babatunde Olatunji - Drums of Passion (Columbia, 1960)
Ornette Coleman - Town Hall 1962 (ESP-Disk, 1965)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono - Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With the Lions (Zapple, 1969)
Sun Ra and His Solar Arkestra - Other Planes of There (Saturn, 1966)
Joe Cuba Sextet - Wanted Dead or Alive (Bang! Bang! Push, Push, Push) (Fania, 1967)
Kim Fowley - Outrageous (Imperial, 1968)
The Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble - Congliptious (Nessa, 1968)
The Electric Prunes - Release of an Oath (Reprise, 1968)
The United States of America - The United States of America (Columbia, 1968)
Cecil Taylor - Unit Structures (Blue Note, 1966)
Tod Dockstader - Eight Electronic Pieces (Folkways, 1961)
Nihilist Spasm Band - No Record (Allied Record Corporation, 1968)
Various Artists - Back From the Grave Volume One (Crypt, 1983)
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Gorilla (Liberty, 1967)
Brigitte Bardot et Serge Gainsbourg - Bonnie and Clyde (Fontana, 1968)
Pentangle - Basket of Light (Transatlantic, 1969)
Amon Düül II - Phallus Dei (Liberty, 1969)
The Seeds - The Seeds (GNP Crescendo, 1966)
Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch! (Blue Note, 1964)
Karen Dalton - It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best (Capitol, 1969)
The Roland Kirk Quartet - Rip, Rig & Panic (Limelight, 1965)
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Gruppen / Carré (Deutsche Grammophon, 1968)
Caetano Veloso - Caetano Veloso (Philips, 1969)
Various Artists - The Balinese Gamelan: Music From the Morning of the World (Nonesuch, 1967)
Spontaneous Music Ensemble - Karyobin (Island, 1968)
David Axelrod - Songs of Innocence (Capitol, 1968)
Moondog - Moondog (Columbia Masterworks, 1969)
Dick Hyman - MOOG: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman (Command, 1969)
Pharoah Sanders - Tauhid (Impulse!, 1967)
Pauline Oliveros - Reverberations: Tape & Electronic Music 1961-1970 (Important, 2012)
Pierre Henry - Messe Pour Le Temps Présent (Philips, 1967)
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - BBC Radiophonic Music - (BBC, 1968)
The Red Crayola - The Parable of Arable Land (International Artists, 1967)
Morton Subotnick - Silver Apples of the Moon (Nonesuch, 1967)
Perrey-Kingsley - The In Sound From Way Out! (Vanguard, 1966)
AMM - AMMMusic (Elektra, 1966)
The Incredible String Band - The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (Elektra, 1968)
Scott Walker - Scott 2 (Smash, 1968)
The Mothers of Invention - We're Only in It for the Money (Verve, 1968)
Françoise Hardy - Françoise Hardy (Disques Vogue, 1962)
Rotary Connection - Rotary Connection (Cadet Concept, 1968)
The Watts Prophets - The Black Voices: On the Streets in Watts (FFRR, 1969)
Terry Riley - A Rainbow in Curved Air (CBS, 1969)
Ray Barretto - Acid (Fania, 1968)
The Monks - Black Monk Time (International Polydor Production, 1965)
Townes Van Zandt - For the Sake of the Song (Poppy, 1968)
Nico - Chelsea Girl (Verve, 1967)
Anthony Braxton - For Alto (Delmark, 1969)
Alexander Spence - Oar (Columbia, 1969)
The Godz - Contact High With the Godz (ESP-Disk)
Sonny Sharrock - Black Woman (Vortex, 1969)
Desmond Dekker - This Is Desmond Dekker (Trojan, 1969)
The Holy Modal Rounders - The Moray Eels Eat the Holy Modal Rounders (Elektra, 1968)
The Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun (BRÖ, 1968)
Fairport Convention - Liege & Lief (Island, 1969)
The Sonics - Here Are the Sonics (Etiquette, 1965)
White Noise - An Electric Storm (Island, 1969)
The Meters - The Meters (Josie, 1969)
John Coltrane - Ascension (Impulse!, 1966)
Steve Reich - Early Works (Nonesuch, 1987)
Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum (1968)
John Fahey - Vol. 3: The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites (Takoma, 1964)
Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left (Island, 1969)
Love - Forever Changes (Elektra, 1967)
Silver Apples - Silver Apples (Kapp, 1968)
The Fugs - The Fugs First Album (Folkways, 1965)
Van Dyke Parks - Song Cycle (Warner Bros., 1968)
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground (MGM, 1969)
Pink Floyd - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Columbia, 1967)
The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out! (1966)
Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity (ESP-Disk, 1964)
The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle (CBS, 1968)
MC5 - Kick Out the Jams (Elektra, 1969)
The Shaggs - Philosophy of the World (Third World, 1969)
Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia, 1967)
Nico - The Marble Index (Elektra, 1968)
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte (WERGO, 1964)
The 13th Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (International Artists, 1966)
Various Artists - Tropicália ou Panis et Circensis (Phillips, 1968)
Can - Monster Movie (United Artists, 1969)
Sun Ra - The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 1 & 2 (ESP-Disk, 1965)
Terry Riley - In C (Columbia, 1968)
Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz (Atlantic, 1960)
Various Artists - Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (Elektra, 1972)
The Flying Burrito Brothers - The Gilded Palace of Sin (A&M, 1969)
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica (Straight, 1969)
The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve, 1967)
The Stooges - The Stooges (Elektra, 1969)
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat (Verve, 1968)
*Wrote Spin via their Web email asking if there was a way to access the blurbs or if they were all gone. Heard nada.
**[EDIT EDIT EDIT: skyecaptain has found all the blurbs in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. He says to apply this URL format but in reverse numerical order; so Oliver Wang's blurb for Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is The Massage, which is number 100 on the Spin list but is their first slide, is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150310090636/http://spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list/?slide=1
And Mike Powell's blurb for The Incredible String Band's Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (no. 53) is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150310090636/http://spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list/?slide=48
So my two blurbs are here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150310090636/http://spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list/?slide=64
https://web.archive.org/web/20130401055230/http://www.spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list?slide=98
(I know, the bottom one is a different URL at the start, not sure why. Wayback Machine is cranky, I guess. I don't really get it, but once you're into one of these blurbs, you can probably find your way to the rest.) END OF EDIT]
This entry was originally posted at https://koganbot.dreamwidth.org/385634.html. Comments still welcome here, there, and anywhere.
Since then, as far as I can tell, my two blurbs and the 98 others, and the list itself, have disappeared from the Spin site.* Fortunately, I'd downloaded my blurbs and the entire list, though none of the other blurbs. This March when repairing old posts I added my blurbs to the post as an update, and stuck the list in the comments. Reposting here, now, too.**
"Mobile Line"
Click to view#37
The Holy Modal Rounders - The Moray Eels Eat the Holy Modal Rounders (Elektra, 1968)
Part of New York City's urban folk bohemia, the Rounders heard in rockabilly and old rural string bands a vision of new music. On this, their fourth album, the styles were still mostly from the rural south of the 1920s, with added garage blues and scraps and bits from rags and barrelhouse and the American songbook (such as the melody but not the words to "Three cheers for the red, white, and blue"). But each instrument played its own accents and unique curlicues, not in direct support of the main melody or the singer (whose mic is always set to "soft"). Imagine a number of people wandering into a room and simultaneously telling their individually varied stories, while never losing touch with what the others are saying. The effect isn't dreamy or diffuse but slightly crazed, as everyone seems to be listening to notes just out of earshot, and every sound can potentially drive the wagon off various cliffs in any direction. FRANK KOGAN
#3
The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve, 1967)
It's a convention of drug songs as much as love songs that if you say you don't care, you do care. But a line like, "When the smack begins to flow and I really don't care anymore" does glorify self-destruction, as a rebuke to senators and society, to niceness and complacency. Choose to choose, choose to go. While Simon & Garfunkel hit big with similarly death-obsessed lyrics, the Velvets brought the conversation to eye level, skillfully precise ("up three flights of stairs," "twenty-six dollars in my hand"). The music matches, feels as sick and dirty as the protagonists. But the drones and unison pounding are a frame for cascades of notes and syllables that are as virtuoso as Diddley and doo-wop without announcing themselves as such. So the whole thing's got a lilt and a dance, solace for the broken people. F.K.
"Heroin"
Spin: The Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s (in ascending order):
Marshall McLuhan - The Medium Is the Massage (Columbia, 1968)
Cromagnon - Orgasm (ESP-Disk, 1969)
Mulatu Astatke - Afro-Latin Soul, Vol. 1 (Worthy, 1966)
Brigitte Fontaine - Comme À la Radio (Saravah, 1969)
Alan Watts - OM: The Sound of Hinduism (Warner Bros., 1967)
Conlon Nancarrow - Studies for Player Piano (Columbia Masterworks, 1969)
Pärson Sound - Pärson Sound (Subliminal Sounds, 2001)
Pearls Before Swine - One Nation Underground (ESP-Disk)
The Monkees - Head (Colgems, 1968)
Os Mutantes - Os Mutantes (Polydor, 1968)
Harry Partch - The World of Harry Partch (Columbia, 1969)
Babatunde Olatunji - Drums of Passion (Columbia, 1960)
Ornette Coleman - Town Hall 1962 (ESP-Disk, 1965)
John Lennon and Yoko Ono - Unfinished Music No. 2: Life With the Lions (Zapple, 1969)
Sun Ra and His Solar Arkestra - Other Planes of There (Saturn, 1966)
Joe Cuba Sextet - Wanted Dead or Alive (Bang! Bang! Push, Push, Push) (Fania, 1967)
Kim Fowley - Outrageous (Imperial, 1968)
The Roscoe Mitchell Art Ensemble - Congliptious (Nessa, 1968)
The Electric Prunes - Release of an Oath (Reprise, 1968)
The United States of America - The United States of America (Columbia, 1968)
Cecil Taylor - Unit Structures (Blue Note, 1966)
Tod Dockstader - Eight Electronic Pieces (Folkways, 1961)
Nihilist Spasm Band - No Record (Allied Record Corporation, 1968)
Various Artists - Back From the Grave Volume One (Crypt, 1983)
Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band - Gorilla (Liberty, 1967)
Brigitte Bardot et Serge Gainsbourg - Bonnie and Clyde (Fontana, 1968)
Pentangle - Basket of Light (Transatlantic, 1969)
Amon Düül II - Phallus Dei (Liberty, 1969)
The Seeds - The Seeds (GNP Crescendo, 1966)
Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch! (Blue Note, 1964)
Karen Dalton - It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best (Capitol, 1969)
The Roland Kirk Quartet - Rip, Rig & Panic (Limelight, 1965)
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Gruppen / Carré (Deutsche Grammophon, 1968)
Caetano Veloso - Caetano Veloso (Philips, 1969)
Various Artists - The Balinese Gamelan: Music From the Morning of the World (Nonesuch, 1967)
Spontaneous Music Ensemble - Karyobin (Island, 1968)
David Axelrod - Songs of Innocence (Capitol, 1968)
Moondog - Moondog (Columbia Masterworks, 1969)
Dick Hyman - MOOG: The Electric Eclectics of Dick Hyman (Command, 1969)
Pharoah Sanders - Tauhid (Impulse!, 1967)
Pauline Oliveros - Reverberations: Tape & Electronic Music 1961-1970 (Important, 2012)
Pierre Henry - Messe Pour Le Temps Présent (Philips, 1967)
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop - BBC Radiophonic Music - (BBC, 1968)
The Red Crayola - The Parable of Arable Land (International Artists, 1967)
Morton Subotnick - Silver Apples of the Moon (Nonesuch, 1967)
Perrey-Kingsley - The In Sound From Way Out! (Vanguard, 1966)
AMM - AMMMusic (Elektra, 1966)
The Incredible String Band - The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (Elektra, 1968)
Scott Walker - Scott 2 (Smash, 1968)
The Mothers of Invention - We're Only in It for the Money (Verve, 1968)
Françoise Hardy - Françoise Hardy (Disques Vogue, 1962)
Rotary Connection - Rotary Connection (Cadet Concept, 1968)
The Watts Prophets - The Black Voices: On the Streets in Watts (FFRR, 1969)
Terry Riley - A Rainbow in Curved Air (CBS, 1969)
Ray Barretto - Acid (Fania, 1968)
The Monks - Black Monk Time (International Polydor Production, 1965)
Townes Van Zandt - For the Sake of the Song (Poppy, 1968)
Nico - Chelsea Girl (Verve, 1967)
Anthony Braxton - For Alto (Delmark, 1969)
Alexander Spence - Oar (Columbia, 1969)
The Godz - Contact High With the Godz (ESP-Disk)
Sonny Sharrock - Black Woman (Vortex, 1969)
Desmond Dekker - This Is Desmond Dekker (Trojan, 1969)
The Holy Modal Rounders - The Moray Eels Eat the Holy Modal Rounders (Elektra, 1968)
The Peter Brötzmann Octet - Machine Gun (BRÖ, 1968)
Fairport Convention - Liege & Lief (Island, 1969)
The Sonics - Here Are the Sonics (Etiquette, 1965)
White Noise - An Electric Storm (Island, 1969)
The Meters - The Meters (Josie, 1969)
John Coltrane - Ascension (Impulse!, 1966)
Steve Reich - Early Works (Nonesuch, 1987)
Blue Cheer - Vincebus Eruptum (1968)
John Fahey - Vol. 3: The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites (Takoma, 1964)
Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left (Island, 1969)
Love - Forever Changes (Elektra, 1967)
Silver Apples - Silver Apples (Kapp, 1968)
The Fugs - The Fugs First Album (Folkways, 1965)
Van Dyke Parks - Song Cycle (Warner Bros., 1968)
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground (MGM, 1969)
Pink Floyd - The Piper at the Gates of Dawn (Columbia, 1967)
The Mothers of Invention - Freak Out! (1966)
Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity (ESP-Disk, 1964)
The Zombies - Odessey and Oracle (CBS, 1968)
MC5 - Kick Out the Jams (Elektra, 1969)
The Shaggs - Philosophy of the World (Third World, 1969)
Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen (Columbia, 1967)
Nico - The Marble Index (Elektra, 1968)
Karlheinz Stockhausen - Kontakte (WERGO, 1964)
The 13th Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators (International Artists, 1966)
Various Artists - Tropicália ou Panis et Circensis (Phillips, 1968)
Can - Monster Movie (United Artists, 1969)
Sun Ra - The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, Vol. 1 & 2 (ESP-Disk, 1965)
Terry Riley - In C (Columbia, 1968)
Ornette Coleman - Free Jazz (Atlantic, 1960)
Various Artists - Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era (Elektra, 1972)
The Flying Burrito Brothers - The Gilded Palace of Sin (A&M, 1969)
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Trout Mask Replica (Straight, 1969)
The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve, 1967)
The Stooges - The Stooges (Elektra, 1969)
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat (Verve, 1968)
*Wrote Spin via their Web email asking if there was a way to access the blurbs or if they were all gone. Heard nada.
**[EDIT EDIT EDIT: skyecaptain has found all the blurbs in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. He says to apply this URL format but in reverse numerical order; so Oliver Wang's blurb for Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is The Massage, which is number 100 on the Spin list but is their first slide, is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150310090636/http://spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list/?slide=1
And Mike Powell's blurb for The Incredible String Band's Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (no. 53) is here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150310090636/http://spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list/?slide=48
So my two blurbs are here:
https://web.archive.org/web/20150310090636/http://spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list/?slide=64
https://web.archive.org/web/20130401055230/http://www.spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list?slide=98
(I know, the bottom one is a different URL at the start, not sure why. Wayback Machine is cranky, I guess. I don't really get it, but once you're into one of these blurbs, you can probably find your way to the rest.) END OF EDIT]
This entry was originally posted at https://koganbot.dreamwidth.org/385634.html. Comments still welcome here, there, and anywhere.