Aye!

Named after the Glasgow suburb of Battlefield, Battlefield Band have been a constant presence throughout the revival in Scottish music over the past 30 years. Playing a creative mixture of old and new songs performed in the Scottish tradition, they have not allowed themselves to be pigeon-holed into a traditional musical landscape. Bagpipes, fiddle, synthesiser, guitar, flutes, bodhran and accordion are all a part of their musical repertoire and do not distract from the inherent traditional sound they create- much to the listeners' surprise and joy.

There will be a small US tour in October of 2007 and then again in March of 2008. If you're in the States during that time period, they would be a worthwhile band to seek out. Of course, they tour pretty regularly throughout the UK. Check out their website for more tour dates around the world. Those with a penchant for the Celtic will be in for a treat.

Listen to The Story So Far...

Creative Collective

The Revolutionary Ensemble was a music cooperative of three individuals who sought to combine the most unlikely of elements within their musical approach. Shying away from the overused jazz instrumentation that required a saxophone, they consisted of merely a violin, stand up bass, and a percussionist. Replacing a mere beat with that of a pulse displayed a group schooled in the classical; there was a playful interaction that occurred between the violin and the bass that left plenty of wangling room for the improvisational sense of Jenkins' violin-playing.

The band was quite popular in the 1970s and considered to be an indispensible element within the free jazz continuum. Leroy Jenkins had once performed with Anthony Braxton and this past association led him to experiment with new textures of sound in instrumentation used in the jazz context. He was considered to be the father of the free jazz violin. Sirone had performed with Pharoah Sanders and Gato Barbieri. While Jerome Cooper had recently played with Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

They got back together again in 2004 and their first performance was still staggering to behold. For an account of the performance, click here. Unfortunately, the death of Jenkins in February 2007 prevented any further work from being recorded. The last album released was recorded in 2004. Check it out here.



Listen to the first LP.

Listen to Fresh Air's review of the Revolutionary Ensemble.

Ouf of Print= Out of Luck

However, this time you're actually IN LUCK!

When Corrosion Of Conformity hit the alternative music scene, they ended up taking the same route that DRI did by signing on with Metal Blade Records and becoming harbingers of the "crossover" mold of metal or hardcore.

Whether this was a good or a bad thing was debatable. True, their presence in both scenes helped put North Carolina on the musical map but, once again, one has to address that if a band is part of a counter-cultural movement, should they aspire to become rock stars? And, if they do, will their ethics stay intact?

Yeah, COC still plays small dives across the US and they don't really fit into the rock star mold as much as one would think. But who cares? Lots of bands do that and they're a helluva lot more interesting than these guys are now. Their last gig in Austin was the absolute worst gig when it came to generating some sense of interest in what they were doing on stage. Lots of people who were in the scene and actually saw them gig in the mid-'80s were there and were pretty disappointed. Not that they were expected to live out some silly nostalgic punk rock trip but when you watch Woody (now calling himself Woodroe) play a guitar solo like he's stroking his dick on stage, how the fuck can you take it seriously? Actually, watching him stroke his dick on stage would have been preferable to watching him pretend to be some glam-rock dipshit.

Yeah, they're metal and everybody in the audience was banging their heads and flashing that silly Hawaiian hand gesture that so many kids do these days. But the show made one long for the days when they couldn't play their fucking guitars and recorded tracks in the garage, hell, the toilet, even...

Here's a bootleg recording of their first record. The original printing of this was kick ass because it came with a lyric sheet and three stickers. Needless to say, this bootleg has none of the perks that the original pressing of the record had at all. Still, the recording is quite difficult to come by and the last time it was for sale on COC's website, it was going for $85 and it was the CD with the Mike Singing EP added to it. Now there are no copies of the CD left, either. Maybe they're embarrassed of their earlier efforts...

Happy?

You'll hear an edge to this recording that will be reminiscent of the Big Boys and that would be because the legendary Spot put together this rough mix as the Kamikaze Refrigerators were one of his favorite bands.








Dixon (of Austin fanzine Idle Time) also thought they were the greatest and described their music as "Real 'shake your booty or I'll bite it off' sort of stuff."

Album cover artwork by Frank Kozik. For the uninitiated, here's his website.

Included are the LP and the liner notes. Enjoy!

You Can't Hide from the Psychedelic Sounds of...

This was the first single that Roky Erickson's second band The Thirteenth Floor Elevators released under International Artists, a Houston-based psychedelic record label. There was an earlier attempt recorded by his first band (The Spades) but the second session shot the band into the psychedelic scene's lime light. The single made it to #2 on the local music charts in Austin and #55 on the national charts after being featured on the first Nuggets compilation. This particular copy of this single was found in a record store along with several other IA releases that had been discovered untouched as back catalog in a warehouse somewhere in Houston; i.e., virgin vinyl.

The name of the band came from the superstition that led many buildings to be devoid of a 13th floor.

Part of the unusual sound was generated by the use of the electric jug-playing of Tommy Hall. The auditory fingerprint it leaves is unlike that of traditional jug-playing you might hear in an old blues or string band from the earlier part of the 20th century. This unique sound became the band's trademark. The most interesting review read thus far about this band's aural presence is Piero Scaruffi's comparison of their rhythmic style in this song to that of the rhythms felt when one listens to music with a Tex-Mex bent.

Give it a listen and see if you hear what he's talking about.

Check out the trailer for the documentary about Roky Erickson here.

I'm Lookin' Fer...

Rolling Stone ranked The Crickets' That'll Be The Day as the #39 best song of all time. The song itself was written in 1956; named after an oft-quoted phrase by John Wayne in the movie The Searchers.

The original recording of this song occurred in Decca Studios in Nashville, Tennessee, however, it is considered to be of inferior quality to the rock and roll version of the song that was released later under Brunswick Records, a Decca subsidiary. The default release under this smaller label occurred as a result of Roulette liking the songs better than the band who played them. The label wanted the exclusive rights to have Roulette musicians, Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen, record the songs instead. Buddy Holly wouldn't budge on his position to record the songs himself with his own band. Since Decca had the original, would-be country version of this title, Bob Thiele (head of Brunswick Records) decided to issue the songs under the band name The Crickets.

A month later, the song became one of the best selling records in both the rock and roll and rhythm and blues markets.

Listen to the 45.

Watch a television screening of The Crickets performing the song.

Just a Little Bit

This 7-inch was released as a part of the Big "D" Jamboree series issued by Dragon Records. The tracks on this EP were recordings that had been shelved due to publishing rights not being obtained in a timely fashion. This occurred despite the fact that Sherry Davis toured with Elvis and recorded with The Crickets.

The Big "D" Jamboree was a weekly three hour radio show broadcast from Dallas' Sportatorium and showcased the likes of Elvis, Johnny Cash, and Carl Perkins. People all over Texas tuned into the broadcast that aired between the years of 1946 and sometime in the mid-1960s. The first year of broadcast, it was being billed as the Lone Star Barn Dance. For .65 cents, you could see musicians of this sort play live at the Sportatorium between 8 PM and midnight.

The song Broken Promises (which appears on this record) is backed by Buddy Holly and The Crickets and was recorded just two months after the single That'll Be The Day was recorded in the very same studio. Holly was crashing in a little apartment in the back of the owner's studio and was approached purely off-the-cuff to back Davis on the recording of one track. You can tell in the backing vocals immediately. Davis had no idea that this was Buddy Holly that was recording with her until after the fact. It took two years to find a publisher for the work but by that time, there was no longer any interest in the song so it just sat in publisher's limbo until very recently.

Davis decided to retire from show business in 1971 after having a daughter. She had been told for the previous four years that she would never be able to have children, so parenthood ended up taking precedence. Sherry Davis lives in Dallas again and is very active in her church. Although, she's not a big fan of rock and roll, she was thrilled to discover that people were interested in her music after all these many years.




Now you can enjoy it!