Happily, it is not the responsibility of this review to address in detail the train wreck that was the 1979 film adaptation of the stage musical Hair. A complete misfire conceived by a screenwriter, Michael Weller, and a director, Czech expatriate Milos Forman, who did not seem to have the slightest familiarity with hippies, the '60s, America, or even Broadway, the movie was miscast with supposedly bankable young film stars of the day (Treat Williams, John Savage, Beverly d'Angelo), and the essentially plotless libretto of the stage version was replaced by a contrived Hollywood script in a textbook example of how not to do an adaptation.
The cast list is a dream come true. The diversity of the players and pieces is what makes this album special to me. The album structure could be labelled Prog before there was Prog. Split this into the written piece "Hair in a G-String" (about 46 minutes) & "Songs not in G" (About 36 minutes) and you'd have a prog album and a melodic rock album I guess. We didn't do that. We mixed it up. See it as musical interludes between the main action.
2017 two CD set inspired by Lux And Ivy's record collection, a veritable stash of cool and super groovy sounds. Featuring 60 super strange songs originally released on vinyl back in the late '50s and early '60s. Including demented doo-wop, insane instrumentals, monsters and cavemen, canned laughter, loungecore weirdness, raucous rockabilly and out-there beatnik anthems. Jam packed with no hit wonders that fetch maximum dollars on vinyl. Selected from The Cramps' gargantuan record collection, radio shows and interviews over the years, it's a hi-octane romp through the best in obscure and magnificent wax from the greatest period of American music. Remastered from the original sound sources.
2017 two CD set inspired by Lux And Ivy's record collection, a veritable stash of cool and super groovy sounds. Featuring 60 super strange songs originally released on vinyl back in the late '50s and early '60s. Including demented doo-wop, insane instrumentals, monsters and cavemen, canned laughter, loungecore weirdness, raucous rockabilly and out-there beatnik anthems. Jam packed with no hit wonders that fetch maximum dollars on vinyl. Selected from The Cramps' gargantuan record collection, radio shows and interviews over the years, it's a hi-octane romp through the best in obscure and magnificent wax from the greatest period of American music. Remastered from the original sound sources.
In the liner notes the band tells us the significance of the name KOLLEKTIV. We "share the same aims and values, not just with regard to music. We do not seperate into soloist and accompanist (rhythm slave). Each musician and each instrument has the same rights. Our pieces aren't individual compositions; they are born out of and grow through creative collaboration. After all, our name is saying : we are our own roadies, manager, technicians, bus driver, record producers and article writers, and three of us share the same birthday." Another important revelation in their liner notes is : "The structure of our music is more simple than usual jazz, instead we pay more attention to sounds and moods. We mainly do improvisations. Even the themes and arranged parts were once improvised."
Shore-to-shore etheric dub techno bliss by Italian pioneer Gigi Masin and Detroit’s Rod Modell of DeepChord, beautifully consolidating their respective aesthetics on two durational trips.
For many listeners of a sanguine disposition, ‘Red Hair Girl At Lighthouse Beach’ is a marriage made in ambient heaven. The two pieces find them at a certain position in their career arcs where both are particularly porous to collaborative energies, and are now understandably brought together by Silentes’ 13 series. With Gigi beaming from the shores of the Venetian lagoon, and Modell transmitting from the lakes of Michigan, they arrive at a sympathetic union of floating choral castles in the sky buoyed by systolic subbass thrum and bathed in moonlight…