John Compton is a name you should know, if you don't already, because it connects a string of superb albums; timeless music that defies categorisation.
Appaloosa (1969) was an Al Kooper discovery - he got them a deal with Columbia, produced and played on the album, added top-flight studio support, and wrote the slevenotes. John Compton wrote the songs, with Robin Batteau adding harmonies and string arrangements. It's a beautiful, unique album, but rock n' roll it ain't. This is haunted, creaky American Gothic, to be filed alongside Antecedently FoamFeatured© albums from Papa Nebo and Maxfield Parrish (which you maybe missed, ya doofus).
In California (1970) features Compton & Batteau backed by First National Banders John London and John Ware. The melancholic atmosphere lingers like a haze (again, the cover gets it perfectly right), but a weirdly unsettling edge is still there - it's not like anyone was struggling for radio play.
To Luna (1973) was Compton flying solo. His most accessible music yet, but only 600 copies limped out on the two-album Ageless label. A lot of sweet acoustic guitar with Harvey Brooks and Billy Mundi doing their awesome rhythm section thing. Things loosen up into funky jams on the worthwhile bonus cuts, pointing the way to a future that never arrived.
Batteaux (1973 according to Discogs, '71 to Wiki) doesn't feature Compton at all, but the two Batteau brothers (hence the plural
x - college education, folks!) and sessioners including John Guerin, Milt Holland and Tom Scott. The ghosts of Appaloosa are laid to rest in a summery, relaxed vibe and memorable hooks that set the brothers up for successful careers in music, although not, unfortunately, more albums as a duo. The folky feel lingers, but the lightness of mood is a long way from American Gothic. Just don't dismiss it, as some lazy critics have, as "Yacht Rock", that fakest of genres. Intelligence, artistry, and above all an uncompromising musicality, runs through all these albums like DNA.
A search for Papa Nebo and Maxfield Parrish may prove advantageous. That's the search box up over there ☞
Yeaux! Babs!
ReplyDeleteWhat songs take you back to a particular moment in your life?
ReplyDeleteIn My Room - Beach Boys - mixed up Brit teeanager period.
ReplyDeleteA perticular MOMENT? ... hmm ... good question. One would have to be Trout Mask Replica, which I listened to for the first time in my room (in my room ...) in my parents' house. I have never been so impacted by a mere record before or since. Examining the sleeve (cripplingly expensive import), sitting on the floor by my pitiful fiber-board portable record player, swept away to a startlingly new universe where I felt instinctively at home.
ReplyDeleteAnother would be Holland, a few years later, on the same record player round at my girlfriend's house while her mother was away, listening to it in bed together, sunlight coming through yellow curtains.
And another time, soon after we married, the first IABD album and Son Of Spirit in a tiny cottage in the Welsh mountains, misty misterious.
And another, earlier, crawling in through my friend Jim's window with the new Shawn Phillips album. Luckily he had his own record player.
Oh - and hearing The Wild The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle for the first time round at Pet's house, played through his guitar amplifier hooked to a Marshall cab. Blown away, Bunch of us lying on the floor. It's fair to say Bruce changed our lives.
Wait! Another! Listening to Atom Heart Mother round at Phil's place, late at night after his parents had gone to bed, smoking a joint and watching the static on the T.V.
There are others ...
i found the sue 45 of ike and tina's a fool in love in a used record bin. i slapped it on the big family motorola console stereo,i have never recovered.
ReplyDelete1976 - KISS - Dressed to Kill - 5th Grade an album I got for my birthday and played to death on my Sears stereo in my room
ReplyDelete1978 - Black Sabbath - "Never Say Die" - 7th Grade listening to one of my friend's older brother's albums whose Trans Am we took out joy riding, driving through some neighbor's yard if I recall.
1980 - Black Flag - Jealous Again EP - 8th Grade listening to another friend's older brother's record collection who was our pied piper from hard rock to punk rock in the 70s (not incidentally he also gave us our first pot in 7th grade to smoke at the KISS concert at the LA Forum)
1983 - Beatle's White Album - 11th Grade - in my room out of my mind on lsd. I was reading Helter Skelter and had a the small Manson infatuation at the time due to my favorite band's (Red Cross) cover of his "Cease to Exist" and their tongue-in-cheek tribute song "Charlie" so that album is always imbued with all of those extra layers of (horrible but fascinating) madness for me
So many memories tied to music -- I could go on forever.
Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden, first play, listening to it on my own, not sure if it was awful or great. After four or five plays it was definitely great. It became a favorite with most of my friends too at my after the pub weekend listening sessions.
ReplyDeleteAnd just to pick up on the production, though released in 1988 by then the 80's sound had gone for anyone with any sense, the first two Talk Talk albums suffer a bit from 80's production.
Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden is an album, not a song. Babs did ask for song, but there are just too many of those.
ReplyDeleteDylan - The Times They Are a Changin' - 1965. I was listening to my transistor radio while having a bath. Radio Caroline - a pirate station - as the BBC wasn't playing that sort of stuff then. I just loved the guy's voice, and still do, even in its ragged present-day state. It also showed me you didn't need a band to sound powerful.
ReplyDeleteI find that a song will trigger a location -- where I was when I first heard it. Often this might have been over the car radio. Or while travelling. I remember an afternoon in Portobello Road in 1972 and "Homelovin' Man" was wafting out of shops and kiosk stalls.
ReplyDeleteAny single released in the 60s by The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and The Doors, takes me right back to the year they were released, what I was doing, boyfriends, clothes I was wearing, schools, drugs etc. etc..
ReplyDeleteThe one song, though, is “Gloria’s Step” the Scott LaFaro composition on Bill Evan’s album “Live At the Village Vanguard”. During the idyllic summer of 1969, Jerry (my future husband), and I spent our days surfing, smoking Michoacán, drinking Olympia beer and dropping “Orange Sunshine” on Hermosa Beach in Los Angeles. Our evenings were spent in an L.A. cocktail lounge, where Jerry was the bartender, and I played piano. Every night, the first song I played was “Gloria’s Step”.
That's a time & place I'd like to be! :)
DeleteLive at the Village Vanguard for me is lazy Sunday mornings in our rustic college duplex a street up from the cliffs of Isla Vista (UCSB seaside college town) after playing at open carports the night before with my band at the time. A magical and transporting album for sure!
i first heard bill evans about 6 or seven years ago. now i listen to anything he does. i am going mad because i don't have enough lifetime left to discover and appreciate all the incredible music that has escaped me. i don't need a thousand years, just give me a thousand ears before the silence.
DeleteSlow dancing with my chicana girlfriend at the El Monte Legion Stadium ca. 1963 to The Five Satins singing "In the Still of the Night. " That was more than enough to get a young stud to cream his jeans.
ReplyDeleteMy oldest bro was a huge Tull fan in the early to late 70s, and I, not even a teen at the start of that period, yet already a critic, took great pleasure at slagging them. Then, one night, for reasons I can't recall (I slept on the porch, while my four(!) other brothers all shared a room, I spent the night in the communal brother room and in the middle of that night, said brother got up and put Thick As A Brick (both an album and a song!) on, very quietly. And in that liminal half-awake state it hit me how effin' great that album and music is. It's still one of my all-time fave albums. I maintained my outward disdain for the band for my brother's benefit -- if it ain't broke, don't fix it -- but eventually he knew the jig was up when I got the run of albums leading up the TAAB (Post-TAAB was closer to the dreck I falsely made fun of Tull for before my midnight epiphany).
ReplyDeleteC in California (home to many of FTIII's memorable listens)
HAHAHAHA I can so relate to this! Me and my friends were total dicks in elementary & middle school and thought we knew everything. In fifth grade we were certain KISS was the greatest band in the world and slagged on the older neighborhood kid who was into Blue Oyster Cult. When we moved onto Van Halen in sixth grade we argued with the eighth grader who thought the Kinks version of "You Really Got Me" was better. I'd like to go back and slap myself!
DeleteVirgin Forest - The Fugs. Mid-summer late night 1966 - Bob Fass - WBAI - Radio Unnameable show.
ReplyDeleteRadio Unnameable, was the best radio, ever!
DeleteThe one that springs to mind is -
ReplyDeleteI was up a set of step ladders painting the ceiling of my first student bedsit in late 1977, listening to the John Peel show. In amidst the many new punk singles he was playing he suddenly dropped this in.
June Tabor : The Band Played Waltzing Mattilda
Now unaccompanied folk singing was not a big thing for me at the time, but I just stopped what I was doing and listened to it all the way through on the top of my ladders in dead silence and next day bought the lp.
Not sure if all you foamites are familiar with it, but if not, then give it a listen (with no distractions, but step ladders are optional) and tell me if it doesn't give you goose bumps.
It's about Australian soldiers at Gallipoli in the First World War, written by a scotsman, Eric Bogle, as a comment on Vietnam.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEMcLcGJ79s
The Pogues do an excellent version on Rum, Sodomy & The Lash.
DeleteC in California
They do indeed, but this is the one for me by a country mile. I've also got eric bogle's but that don't come close either.
DeleteHowever, is it just that the first version you hear of a song can never be beaten? E.g. for me Born to be wild and Darlin' be home soon on Slade Alive!
DeleteYes I have a couple of those 'first heard versions', aged 8 or 9 David Cassidy How Can I Be Sure, was a big favorite, it was years later I discovered the earlier versions, still rate Davids version though.
Deleteugh.......i hate standing up in front of class, but where are the links?
ReplyDeleteNobody's axed for them yet.
DeletePerhaps they should........
DeleteI discovered and enjoyed Batteaux a little while back and just recently (last week) discovered the John Compton To Luna which sounds great. Turns out I had the Batteaux and Compton album without realizing it or the connection between the other two. I'd love the add Appaloosa to the collection and I'm sure one of the other 4-5 guys would enjoy the whole bindle. Thanks for the schooling on how these are all related.
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ReplyDeletePleasure!
ReplyDeleteColtrane live at the village vanguard at the tender age of seven or so, from my father's collection. This and Zappa horrified my Mother ( a Beatles fan) but I could'nt stop playing them.
ReplyDeleteBeatles I could never stand.
There was never a "Coltrane for toddlers" as far as I know. Maybe coming soon...
Cheers. Diego
Diggin the John Compton "to Luna" LP, has a few more out there, time to investigates!
ReplyDelete