40 Year Itch: The World Is A Ghetto

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"The World is a Ghetto" may have sounded like one of the most political statements of the years, especially coming from a band whose members had still vivid memories of the Watts riots. But War's 1972 album, which would go on to be one of the best selling albums of 1973, is a celebration of ghetto life. To mark the 40th anniversary of The World Is a Ghetto, here's an interview with one of the band's founders, the harmonica wizard Lee Oskar

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Lee Oskar, a founding member of the 70's pop-funk-jam band War, grew up in Denmark where he was given his first harmonica on his sixth birthday.

Lee:
I remember the first time I breathed on it it would literally play me.
It would sound just like a symphony
I got hooked and that's where it all started

At 17, virtually pennyless, Lee moved to the US where his virtuosity on the harmonica and his easy-going nature eventually led to his friendship with Eric Burdon. Burdon had recently left The Animals and wanted to find a new band.

They drove around LA until they found a funk band in a dive bar. Together they would all form War. A strange name in the age of peace signs and flower power.






Lee:
Everybody walks around saying "Peace!" and I always said "Peace? Nobody is at peace within themselves. The war within ourselves is what makes us be creative" and somebody pulled that out of my conversation and said "Hey let's call it WAR!" and that's how I remember it coming about.

From the very beginning War discovered the songs that worked best were the ones that came out of long improvisational jams. That suited Burdon just fine.

Lee:
We would get on stage and we would basically improvise.
Eric might even set up a scenario "Ok guys, we're gonna go on a rocket ship and we're gonna fly to the moon and you're gonna be the captain"

In 1970, One of those jams landed at #3 on the U-S pop charts. It was called "Spill the Wine" and its chorus is one of those classics nobody knows the real words to.



Lee:
You spill the wine and you take the pearl.
Not girl.
Pearl. --which was acid back in those days so he was talking about spill the wine.Take the pearl.


After Burdon left, the band played on. War scored more Top Ten hits. Among them, "Why Can't We Be Friends?", "Low Rider",The Cisco Kid, and "Slippin' Into Darkness". All of them emerging from jam sessions.






Lee:
We were never successful when we tried to tell anybody what to play.
There would be an argument or fight or something.

The music stayed fresh even as the question the press asked Lee grew stale.He couldn't avoid being asked what was it like being the only white guy in a band of brothers.

Lee:
I didn't have a hang up about stuff that I noticed a lot of people had
I remember one time somebody yelled "Hey Brother!" like that and then comes up close to look at me and asks "Are you a brother?"
So there were all these clichés between white and black and all that and I hated that frankly.I thought it was pretty arrogant or whatever.



That wasn't his only frustration.
Lee had trouble finding good harmonicas.

Lee:
I would literally take every dime I had and buy every harmonica.
Hopefully I would find one out of ten that was good or something.
That was my passion: to be surrounded by my tools.

So Lee teamed up with a Japanese company to make Lee Oskar harmonicas.
How good are they?
Bluesman Junior Wells was buried with a tray of Oskar harmonicas.
Magic Dick of J Geils Band says "I just think, as a musical tool, they're a great musical tool so I can't think of a better endorsement to give them than that."

To listen to Lee play today is quite astonishing if you've never heard a harmonica played as a jazz instrument. He has, in his lifetime, expanded the possibilities of what conventional harmonicas can do.




But Lee isn't all business. He's always looking for a chance to play. Especially with other War veterans, who for legal reasons have to call themselves The Low Rider Band.

Lee:
The integrity of the music and the jam band that we've always been
That's still there
That's the real deal
That's what The Low Rider Band is.
Nothing homogenized.

Lee can even be found jamming around Seattle these days.
That six year old who got a magical harmonica for his birthday still needs to find a way...to play.

Lee:
I get grouchy if I don't eat.
I get grouchy if I don't play music.

40 Year Itch : Whole Oats

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Daryl Hall and John Oates, the #1 charting duo in rock and roll history, released their debut album Whole Oats on November 12, 1972. It didn't attract a whole lot of attention then but, in retrospect, maybe it should have. Produced by Arif Mardin ( who helmed great albums by The Rascals and Dusty Springfield), Whole Oats fills out the folksy sound these favorite sons of Philadelphia had created by plugging in funky guitars, horns and other instruments.

 "Fall In Philadelphia" sounds exactly like what Elton John was recording in his honky chateau on the other side of the Atlantic. The album opener, "I'm Sorry", is a bouncy pop tune that would have sounded right at home on AM radio. Overall, the album is a bit of a light weight. It would be followed up with Abandoned Luncheonette ( featuring the then flop single "She's Gone"). The third album, the Todd Rundgren produced War Babies, nearly killed their career. Then Atlantic Records re-released the single "She's Gone" in 1976...it hit the Top Ten...and the rest, as they say,  is history.

40 Year Itch: A Song for Syd Barrett

40 years ago this month ex-Soft Machine guitarist Kevin Ayers released as a single "Oh! Wot A Dream", a song about his eccentric friend Syd Barrett:
 You are the most extraordinary person /
 You write the most peculiar kind of tunes /
 I met you floating as I was boating /
 One Afternoon”.

 

 The song appeared on Ayers's 1973 album Bananamour, his follow up to 1971's acclaimed Whatevershebringswesing which featured the memorable single "Stranger in Blue Suede Shoes.

 

More Krautrock From 1972

Popol Vuh

  1972 was an exceptional year for Krautrock and for German rock and roll. And there is a difference. Krautrock is that experimental form of rock n roll based on the work of minimalists and mad scientist composers like Karlheinz Stockhausen. Bands like Can ( see yesterday's post) , NEU!, Popl Vuh, Faust, Kraftwerk, and Cluster are clearly Krautrock. The great Twenty Sixty Six And Then is probably just German  rock and roll ( as is Grobschnitt). Bands like Amon Duul, Embryo  and Guru Guru straddle the two. So if we can in the time we have left, we'll deal with the others later. This is just an overview of Krautrock circa 1972.

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For their debut album, former Kraftwerk members Klaus Dinger ( drums) and Michael Rother ( guitar) knocked out this influential album of experimental sounds and lyrics in just four days with the help of Can producer Conrad Plank. You can hear the future sounds of Bowie, Eno and Thom Yorke over the 4/4 Motorik beat that became one of Krautrock's trademarks. Fair warning: not everything is as enjoyable as "Negativland". Some of the stuff on this album will clear the room.



This is far more interesting than the drummerless sophmore effort Kraftwerk 2 despite the latter's astonishing 17 minute epic dronefest "Klingklang" which anticipates the sidelong title cut on 1974's Autobahn.

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After experimenting with ambient sounds, Florian Fricke shelved his synthesizers and created an album inspired by sacred music using organic instruments. There's an East meets West vibe here but for the most part Hosianna Mantra is as lovely and ethereal an album as you'll ever find.

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Faust has a notorious aversion to anything even slightly conventional. That holds true on the second album, So Far. After all, the most memorable English lyrics on the album are "Daddy, take the banana! Tomorrow is Sunday!" ( If you have a twitter account I dare you to tweet this line). I played the opening cut "It's a Rainy Day, Sunshine Girl" to my 10 and 7 year old kids and they loved it.

Years before collaborating with Brian Eno, Cluster was a trio of German experimenters using electronic sounds to create ambient atmospheres. With their second album, you can drone out in your noise reduction headphones and try lip reading your children telling you how hungry they are. Or you can just close your eyes and float up into a psonic stratosphere in your own mind.

40 Year Itch: Ege Bamyasi

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This was the first Can LP I bought brand new (Torquay 1972) and it is still my favourite. 

-Julian Cope

There is probably no better introduction to the sonically trance-inducing, highly experimental world of Krautrock than Can's approachable fourth album. That's despite its fairly unapproachable name Ege Bamyasi --which means Aegean Okra in Turkish.

Thanks to a hit single, "Spoon", which hit #6 in the German charts and sold 300,000 copies, Can had enough money to rent out a large cinema in Weilerswist. They nailed 1,500 army surplus mattresses to the walls for soundproofing and began work on the album that would accompany "Spoon".

It wasn't an easy session. Guitarist Michael Karoli was falling ill to what would turn out to be a perforated ulcer. And keyboardist Irmin Schidt and vocalist Damo Suzuki were obsessively playing chess. Getting the album finished involved some chaotic, last minute recordings which may explain some of Suzuki's slap dash lyrics like "Hey you, you're losing, you're losing, you're losing, your Vitamin C".

For his part Suzuki says nobody should be looking for wisdom in his lyrics:

"I can't sing, so I use the voice as an instrument, " he told Mojo Magazine." I'm not interested in anything in particular, that's why I sing about nothing. I improvise melody and texture too...Sometimes it sounds like English, French or German, but really it is the language of the Stone Age."

The album did get finished on time. Ege Bamyasi to much critical acclaim at the time. Melody Maker called Can "the most talented and most consistent experimental rock band in Europe. England included." The album remains highly though of with even the vaunted hipsters of Pitchfork giving it a 9.8 out of 10.

CAN tells their own story--including how Damo first took the stage without ever rehearsing with Can-- here

Curt Smith of Tears For Fears Picks His Top Ten

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To promote their singles "Pale Shelter" and "Mad World" ( then climbing to #3 on the UK charts) , Tears For Fears vocalist, bass player and keyboardist Curt Smith offered this art rock Top 10 list to the October 28th issue of Smash Hits which comes courtesy of Brian at Like Punk Never Happened.

40 Year Itch: A Good Place Now

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For those who think J J Cale is just too feisty, there's the 1972 album Bobby Charles recorded with members of The Band. Charles was just 17 when he wrote the Bill Haley and The Comets hit "See You Later Alligator" in 1955. He also penned the great Fats Domino tune "Walking To New Orleans".

 What did he do in the 60's? Nobody knows but he showed up in Woodstock NY in 1971 and recorded an album of down home laid back songs for Bearsville Records with Rick Danko, Levon Helm, Garth Hudson, and Dr John, Mac Rebennac. There's at least a half of a great album here including the single "Small Town Talk" ( with Dr John's keyboards piping in beautifully) , "Tennessee Blues" and his masterpiece "I Must Be In a Good Place Now". Bobby Charles came out in November of 1972 and has remai9ned one of the great obscure albums of the 70's until it's recent re-release. Bobby Charles played on The Band's Last Waltz Show but it wasn't filmed. And then , once again, he vanished. Bobby Charles passed away in January of 2010.