John Baldry- It Ain't Easy

Let's see- a 6 foot 7 long blond-haired gay man delivers a mostly blues-based cover album with Rod Stewart producing side 1 and Elton John twiddling knobs on the flip. Sounds like a soundtrack for a Tiburon hoedown when all those fleshy fiftysomethings get out the Hawaiian shirts and the floppy hats and the bottles of expensive wine and have themselves a Saturday afternoon. Except it's not. It's actually pretty good, and even a recipe for certain disaster- a white man trying Willie Dixon's "I'm Ready"- is shockingly strong.  Remember that tune on Ziggy Stardust, "It Ain't Easy"? That was a cover by someone named Ron Davies (no relation) and I didn't know that either, and Baldry not only cops it for the album's title but delivers a better version than Bowie's.  Not everything works- his shot at The Faces' "Flying" stinks, but it's the last song of the album so you can lift the needle without fumbling to find the next groove. It's a buck- why wouldn't you want to own a record by a man named Long John Baldry with photos of a pensive Stewart with headphones staring wistfully into the distance and a cowboy-hatted Reginald Dwight looking yearningly toward what one can only assume is a, well, I'm not going to make that joke.

Zabriskie Point- Sail On, Hippie Lovers

Just look at that picture for a minute. Maybe it's a Rorshach test, but what I once saw as silly and dangerous stupidity being celebrated as social revolution I now see as something more murky. It's easy to forget the drug experimentation and feelings of godliness said trips brought on and poo poo them all as moments of passing youthful chemical fancy. These days, I'm not so sure.  Leave politics out of it, and the search for personal illumination via chemical transformation remains a viable alternative to church.  I've never felt a sense of the divine in a pew, but I was overwhelmed by a sense of oneness with all things living while frying on a jetty in Newport.  Are these just ephemeral illusory states delivered by Hoffman that connects and then opens neural pathways one can't access when the 12 hours are up?  I've never met a single acid devotee who buys that line, and I don't buy it either. The memories and, more importantly, the feelings, linger. Why is the acid head's pure belief in the divine while frying less legitimate than the knee-bending wafer receiver at Sunday mass?   Most acid music meanders into places that send you reaching for the remote and all things secular, but this soundtrack of an unwatchable movie delivers mostly quiet, acoustic sounds that play gentle on morning ears.  I flip it back and forth and putter about my day.  John Fahey's "Dance of Death" is a particular standout, and even Pink Floyd surprises here, producing the backdrop for the bad side of that desert trip. Jerry Garcia's guitar sounds- dare I say it- lovely. Two minutes on your  knees in the dollar soundtrack bin will probably produce this sucker. I say glide toward the numinous...

So Hot You Could Smoke It!

Kajun SS

Think how much better Leaving Las Vegas would have been if KajunSS had provided the soundtrack. With Nick Cage weaving down I-15 with two bottles of Smirnoff between his legs and "Bored of Life" then "Shit City" blasting from his stereo, every motherfucker in that audience would leave the theater on the thanatos train.  Sadly, Figgis chose the treacly jazz deathtones of Sting, and the world lost one hell of an opportunity to say hello to King Louie at his angry best.  Louie's greatest vocal asset is that he repeats a few key phrases and by the end of the one-minute blast of loathing, you fully believe him. "I got psychological problems," for instance, in that voice, is compelling evidence for the statement. "You can eat my ass" sounds more like a command than a metaphoric putdown. Even "Eat me alive" is ambiguous.  Perhaps my favorite line comes from "Back in the Ring" when, after several unintelligible verses, we get, "Get back in the limo, you fucking whore." Without an ounce of context, that stands as a defining statement.  Darn catchy, too.  The closer is, naturally, "I Got a Drug Problem," which brings to mind the great Derelicts' anthem, "My Dad's a Fuckin' Alcoholic," clearly one of the great musical testaments to the age-old question:  alcoholism: nature or nurture? I'm not sure Louie is pushing the boundaries of psychological inquiry, but I sure do dig his song. Hey, I really would like to own this masterful EP on vinyl, so if you're holding, I'm holding something of wondrous value that you simply must have.

Sailors

The Aarght record fest continues with the Sailors' single, "Guilty Please Blues b/w Lets Go Chromin."

It sez on the back of this 45 that "Guilty Pleasure Blues" was recorded in Taiwan. I've been listening to punk and garage for decades and have NEVER heard of anything coming from Taiwan. The flip is the sloppy loud "Let's Go Cromin," which I'm sure is code for doing something bad. That hit was recorded at the "Bakehouse." Uh huh.

I'm getting bored with the high quality of music from Australia. This single ain't no exception. "Guilty Pleasure" has a vocal that sounds a lot like Johnny Thunders (!) to my ears. The guitar is some sort of weird thing with effects. Quite cool. "Let's go Chromin" is a sing-a-long rant that barely holds it together. I'm working on my second dirty martini as I write this and I'm guessing this tune is going to sound even better in about 3 more. Solid.

I have one more lp from Memphis that could disappoint. Certainly this Australian generation has its share of shitty bands? Somewhere there has to be another Midnight Oil, right?

Country Joe and the Fish- Electric Music for the Mind and Body

This is how groovy ought to sound. Like you, I wildly presume, I assumed that Country Joe was just that "Fixin' to Die Rag" song you see on every documentary ever made about the 60s. Ho hum another Berkeley wannabe radical denouncing the man and protesting the war in the most direct way possible. And that's fine. But I had no idea that the band actually made some tremendously interesting music before it was delivering the hippie-rap for a generation. A few folks had mumbled things to me in the past that these guys were actually quite good, but who can get past those images? Well, the old one dollar purchase, that cheapskate's window into previously closed worlds, confirmed those mumbles.  Much of this is gorgeous, some of it has the rich psychedelic glow of a good porch buzz at dusk, and a bit meanders in that too much acid in the studio kinda way.  No matter. If you see this cheap, snatch it. You might just be surprised, and can the aging vinyl hound hope for much more than that?

Bill Fay- Time of the Last Persecution

Bill Fay channels damaged folk that hits most of the right dark spots, but he might make you a tad uncomfortable with that whiff of crazy coming from the lyrics and the maddest guitar solos this side of Lou Reed's on "The Blue Mask." Easy listening for the apocalypse, as Sr. Fay seems obsessed with the Second Coming, whether that's Jesus or Hitler. But those melodies, that's the thing in the end, right? What's a synonym for haunting? Plug that in. I actually enjoy this more than Skip Spence's "Oar," which is probably sacrilege in some back room of an English pub where wild-eyed goateed men debate the relative merits of insane folkers. Me, I'm just a lurker on the fringes, searching for late-night sounds to make the hootch go down gently. This helps.