Some say that he is a madman, others a genius. I personally prefer the latter, viewing Copernicus as one of those great eccentrics that rock ‘n’ roll has a tendency to spawn and nurture, a crazed artist working on a plane distinctly above our own. It’s up to us to rise to his level, not expect him to lower himself to ours.
“Few men have imagination enough for reality,” is the quote from Goethe which graces the back cover of No Borderline, the fifth, and possibly the most oblique and confusing Copernicus album yet. Copernicus chants poetry like some tribal shaman, his deep baritone voice delivering mesmerizing stream-of-consciousness-styled lyrics that are backed by an amazingly diverse combination of musical styles, from progressive rock to avant-garde jazz. The ten cuts presented here aren’t so much songs, as one would expect them, but rather the many separate glimmering facets of the same musical gem.
They are best taken as a whole, the experience anything but passive as the listener is pulled into a fantasy world of Copernicus’ creation. I’ll leave it up to each individual to reach a sort of understanding as to the underlying message of No Borderline. Suffice it to say that Copernicus is that rarest of creatures, a true visionary, playing by rules of his own making on a field of his own imagination. (Nevermore Records, released 1993)
Review originally published by R.A.D! zine, October 1993
Classically-trained violinist Don “Sugar Cane” Harris was one of the most interesting characters in rock music. Harris formed the mid-50s rock duo Don and Dewey with his childhood friend Dewey Terry, playing guitar on a number of period R&B recordings for Art Rupe’s Specialty Records. Although none of the band’s singles became hits, songs like “Farmer John” and “Justine,” written by Harris and Terry, were hits for other artists and subsequently became garage-rock standards.
Switching over exclusively to violin, Harris became an in-demand sideman during the ‘60s, performing alongside R&B, blues and rock heavyweights like Johnny Otis (who gave Harris his “Sugar Cane” nickname), John Mayall, John Lee Hooker, and Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention, appearing on the Hot Rats and Weasels Ripped My Flesh albums. During the ‘70s, the talented violin-mangler recorded a number of albums of brilliant jazz-rock fusion, mixing jazzy instrumentals with soulful R&B, blues and progressive rock.
Don “Sugar Cane” Harris’ Sugar Cane’s Got the Blues
The albums that Harris recorded for the long-defunct BASF label were particularly influential and ground-breaking works, efforts like 1973’s Keyzop and 1974’s Cup Full of Dreams sadly long out-of-print. In between solo albums, Harris formed the critically- acclaimed rock band Pure Food and Drug Act with some friends from Mayall’s band. PDFA recorded a single album, Choice Cuts, in 1972 with guitarist Harvey Mandel. Originally released in 1973 by BASF, the scorching, white-hot Harris live set Sugar Cane’s Got the Blues was recently reissued by European label Promising Music. All I can say is that it’s about time, ‘cause this is one roller-coaster ride of an album, leaving blood on the bricks in its wake. The high point of Harris’ acclaimed but sometimes erratic career, Sugar Cane’s Got the Blues captures a 1971 performance at the Berlin Jazz Festival.
Harris was backed for this performance by a skilled rhythm section that included Soft Machine drummer Robert Wyatt, his high-flying violin complimented by talentedNorwegian guitarist Terje Rypdal and a previous Harris collaborator, German axeman Volker Kriegel. The band line-up for the festival was rounded out by keyboardist/electronic wizard Wolfgang Dauner. This deluxe Promising Music reissue has been provided 24-bit/88.2kHz digital remastering, a gatefold cardboard digipak that approximates the artwork of the 1973 vinyl release, and a booklet with the original liner notes along with new notes from avant-garde musician Eugene Chadbourne. The CD itself is black, looking like a record album, and is slipped into a paper sleeve. Too freakin’ cool…
The album derived from the live performance is divided into four lengthy songs, ranging in time from ten-anna-half, to as long as fifteen minutes plus. Sugar Cane’s Got the Blues kicks off with the energetic “Liz Pineapple Wonderful,” the song cautiously introducing the assembled band's enormous chops before lurching headfirst into the chasm. Above a crashing wave of jazzy instrumentation, Harris spits out a few soulful vocals before launching into a madman’s dance with his electric…and electrifying…violin. Notes fly off the strings like sparks from a burning battery as the band improvises a funky and sometimes cacophonic soundtrack behind Harris. The song circles back around to Harris’ vocals before fading out with a screech of catgut and semi-psychedelic guitar.
Song For My Father
The album’s title track kicks off with a virtuoso violin mugging courtesy of Harris, his instrument sounding at once both melancholy and hopeful as the band fills in behind him with scattershot solar flares of drum, cymbals, and oddly disjointed piano. The song’s dark vibe devolves into a mere whisper of silence before swelling upwards with crescendos of fluttering violin and shattered piano as brushes hit the cymbals with zeal. The last half of the song drops the atmospheric angst and rocks into an improvised jazz-fusion romp before sliding into a bittersweet...almost pastoral...chording similar to its first notes, ending on a strangled high note with Harris’ plaintive vocals moaning “Sugar Cane’s got the blues.”
“Song For My Father" opens with chiming percussion and Wyatt’s fanciful drum-play, the violin kicking in above a Latin-tinged minor-key soundtrack. As Harris scrapes the strings with fierce imagination and focus, the band brings a sense of muted whimsy to the performance. The song is one of the best showcases of Harris’ talents, the string-bender burning up the bow with the speed of a Formula One racecar, the song's many twists and turns providing an exhilarating thrill-ride. The guitar here is sublime, the bass lines fluid, and the rhythmic drumwork at once both bombastic and subdued. The song reminds me of an extended Santana jam at times, and of one of Zappa’s lengthy ‘70s-era jazz-based compositions at other times.
Sugar Cane’s Got the Blues closes with the twelve-and-a-half-minute-plus “Where’s My Sunshine,” which places the spotlight on the talents of the entire band. Above a jagged musical undercurrent, Harris introduces the song by saying, “this song is about a girl, called her Sunshine…and every word of it is true!” before pleading “where’s my Sunshine?” A lonesome, fractured piano blast comes in beneath Harris’ R&B styled vocals, joined by the artist’s screaming violin and a throbbing bass line. Nimble-fingered fretwork punctures the soundtrack, leading back around to Harris’ rhetorical question, the song walking off in a flurry of stiletto-like violin jabs and a rapid storm of lightning piano and thundering percussion.
The Reverend’s Bottom Line
Harris would go on to be a contributing member of the experimental rock band Tupelo Chain Sex during the early ‘80s, recording a couple of albums with them. However, his substance abuse problems allowed him to record only sporadically during the ensuing years, and his personal demons made Harris an unreliable live performer; he later reunited with Terry during the late ‘90s as a revived Don and Dewey. Sadly, Harris died in 1999 from heart disease at the still-young age of 61. This truly gifted musician left behind a significant, if too often overlooked, body of work, the pinnacle of which was Sugar Cane’s Got the Blues. (Promising Music, released February 1, 2008)
Review originally published by Trademark of Quality (TMQ) blog, 2008
More musically adventurous than his Roxy Music bandmates, Brian Eno left that successful British band and struck out on his own in 1973 to follow his own unique musical vision. Although he would later build a significant body of solo work, become the superstar producer of bands like U2 and the Talking Heads, and record groundbreaking collaborations with artists like Robert Fripp, David Bowie and David Byrne, one of Eno's first stops along the road to fame and fortune was in Germany.
Cluster & Eno
Fascinated by the conceptual possibilities of ambient music – one of many logical endpoints for the fledgling art form of electronic music during the mid-70s – Eno would team up with the duo of Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius for a series of albums that, while not earthshaking in their scope and ambition at the time, have nevertheless crept into the shared consciousness of popular music over time to become influential pieces of the puzzle that is Eno's wonderfully enchanting canon of work.
Eno's first collaboration with the two members of Cluster would be released in 1977 as Cluster & Eno. By the time of the album's release, Eno had already made his first forays into creating ambient music with the release of 1975's Discreet Music and the recording of Before and After Science, which included Cluster in the studio. His first album with Moebius and Roedelius, however, an entirely instrumental affair, would serve to define the boundaries of ambient music and then shatter them. Utilizing a series of set pieces – loosely-structured songs, really – the three visionary artists experimented with various found sounds and instrumentation, studio wizardry and the electronic synthesis of sound. The resulting mix of musical styles, instrumentation and sonic manipulation flows from your speakers like watercolors on a canvas. Cluster & Eno is a challenging and invigorating listen, with fragments of the album's compositions blending, chameleonlike, into the background (Eno's vision of ambience) while others jump up from the grooves to grab you by the ears and demand your attention.
The Reverend's Bottom Line
Although the trailblazing electronic experimentation by Eno, Moebius and Roedelius, as well as other fellow travelers like Klaus Schulze would later become the foundation of prog-rock and, much to our dismay, the keystones of both techno and new age music, at the time of this recording, this was revolutionary work, weird in both its ambition and its execution. Recently reissued on CD for the first time, Cluster & Eno deserves a listen by any music lover interested in this essential touchstone in the evolution of electronic music. (Water Music, reissued 2005)
Review originally published by Alt.Culture.Guide™, 2005
Among the handful of elite underground artists toiling away on the fringes of rock ‘n’ roll, perhaps only the legendary R. Stevie Moore has proven to be more prolific than the master of the “electric rake,” multi-instrumental talent Dr. Eugene Chadbourne. How many records has Chadbourne released over a career that now spans five decades? “I stopped counting them a long time ago,” Eugene told me in a 2019 interview for the Rock and Roll Globe website, “one could probably throw out any number above 200 and basically be right.”
Chadbourne’s Solo Guitar, Volume 4-1/3 is another worthy addition to Chadbourne’s still-growing catalog, which offers music as entertaining, challenging, and eclectic as any artist in rock’s checkered 60+ year history. Released by the Massachusetts-based independent Feeding Tube Records, which specializes in reissues of subterranean music that refuses to fit into the mainstream pop culture straitjacket, this is the fourth and final volume in a series of live recordings made during the late ‘70s when Chadbourne was in exile in Canada as a conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. Each album has been released in a limited edition of 400 vinyl records, and all four albums in the series were “programmed” by the good Doctor himself and each promises a reckless joyride of musical experimentation.
After a few years in Canada spent playing and recording, Chadbourne returned to the states under President Carter’s amnesty program in 1976 and formed seminal 1980s underground rockers Shockabilly (with fellow sonic terrorists Mark Kramer and David Licht). The trio released a handful of now-legendary albums throughout the decade but once Shockabilly drifted apart, Eugene once again focused on his solo career. He would build a loyal cult following across the U.S. and Europe by constantly touring and releasing a metric shit-ton of records, many for dodgy “fly by night” indie labels. Chadbourne also operated his own basement-based mail order label, selling live recordings, all while developing a following among fellow musicians. He would later record with members of the Violent Femmes and Camper Van Beethoven as well as John Zorn, Evan Johns, and the Mothers of Invention’s Jimmy Carl Black (“the Indian in the group”).
Chadbourne’s Solo Guitar, Volume 4-1/3
Featuring but four (mostly lengthy) songs, Chadbourne’s Solo Guitar, Volume 4-1/3 is nevertheless the most ambitious of the four albums. Although each performance was primarily recorded on solo guitar, in reality you never know what sort of odd sonic gremlin that Chadbourne is going to yank out of the ether and slap into the grooves. The album-opening “Bow” is somewhat subdued, with Eugene making use of light and dark passages to create an aural ambiance, the quietude punctuated when the listener least expects it by flashes of nimble-fingered fretwork. Flurries of jagged notes fly by your ears like jet-powered ninja stars and, when it’s all over (almost eight minutes later), you’re really not sure what you just heard…so cue it up again!
The shortest tune on the LP, “The Bird” is a jazzy treatise that displays Chadbourne’s musical dexterity and knowledge of the form. Sounding like the mutant love child of Charlie Christian and Al Di Meola, Eugene’s lightning-quick fretboard runs are accompanied by a secondary stream of lower, bassy notes that create an unusual (and fascinating) depth to the performance. “Be,” which closes out the album’s first side, is a chaotic roller-coaster ride of unusual sounds, aggressive syncopated rhythms, tortured guitar strings, and scary sound affects akin to what a UFO abduction probably sounds like. After politely applauding the previous song, the audience is shocked into silence by the randomness of Chadbourne’s performance here, its creative cacophony, and the obvious enthusiasm the guitarist brings to his craft.
Side two of Chadbourne’s Solo Guitar, Volume 4-1/3 is comprised of one long performance with the inventive (and on-the-nose) title of “Meo Tse Tung Did Not Have To Deal With People Who Were Watching Seven Hours of Television Every Day.” Eugene introduces the song with its title, a gong-like percussion opening the door of perception to all sorts of howling, growling string-play and a menacing croaking noise that sounds like a bullfrog on LSD. A torn-off riff on the bass strings builds a blueprint for a generation of stoner-metal bands to follow. The song creaks and moans under the weight of its own staggering construction, a truly brilliant composition built like a funhouse mirror – you’re never quite sure what your reflection is going to look like when it’s staring back at you.
The Reverend's Bottom Line
Chadbourne, a true American underground icon, possesses an extensive knowledge of rock, blues, folk, and country music. But he is also an unusually-curious instrumentalist that has shown a willingness to push beyond any boundaries and into the unexpected in search of one or two shining cosmic notes. In this aspect, he’s a lot like fellow avant garde musical explorers like Sun Ra, James Blood Ulmer, and Captain Beefheart (without sounding like any of ‘em). Solo Guitar, Volume 4-1/3 is Muzak® for the hard of hearing, challenging and creative music with seemingly endless depths and boundless imagination. Deep into a storied career spent on the outer fringes of pop music, Eugene Chadbourne remains a visionary talent always looking for new ways to challenge himself and his audience. (Feeding Tube Records, released February 21, 2020)
Once upon a time, oh, say a decade ago, in the land of the expanded consciousness, there roamed a merry band of surrealistic music-makers led by a strange, tormented soul known as David. These troubadours, dubbed Pere Ubu by their followers, created a unique hybrid of rock ‘n’ roll, jazz, classical, and avant-garde electronic experimentation which enthralled any listener and served to fire off more than a few lazy nerve synapses. Before they disappeared into total obscurity, they left behind a handful of recordings, modern musical masterworks which illustrated their combined talents and created an artistic legacy of near-mythical proportion.
After several years of meditation, inner reflection, and personal projects Pere Ubu has re-formed to record and release The Tenement Year, an artistic tour de force of major proportions. The band, led by vocalist, songwriter, and poet David Thomas and included the multi-talented Chris Cutler (ex-Art Bears), soars and glides through eleven new, original songs like Icarus triumphant. Aiming for the sun and hotter than a solar flare, Ubu takes conventional musical tradition and turns it on its pointy lil’ head, moshing up a cacophonic blend of strange instrumentation, white noise, and industrial rhythms fronted by the tortured, howling vocals of the frantic Mr. Thomas.
The end result is aural excitement, an album unlike anything you’ve ever heard, sheer mind-expanding vinyl poetry that takes rock ‘n’ roll to a netherland that it’s never before witnessed. Find out for yourself why Pere Ubu’s early works influenced the creations of Joy Division, Throbbing Gristle, Psychic TV, and Devo, among others. The Tenement Year is certain to be every bit as influential. (Enigma Records, 1988)
Review originally published by The Metro (Nashville), 1988
