A Guy with Kaleidescope Pipes

I bought this album for its cover. Look at it: It comes in colors, everywhere. It’s like a rainbow. In fact, it’s a bright psychedelic lovefest of colors, a cross between the Kinks’ Face to Face and the Chocolate Watch Band’s No Way Out. And check out Virgil Fox: He has pipes sprouting from his head. And that bow tie, might it have belonged to the Electric Prunes? While Into the Classics: Meditations and Sonic Spectaculars may have psychedelic connotations in the title, this is no psychedelic record. It wasn’t even released in the ’60s, during the psychedelic era, but the early ’70s. Virgil Fox plays the Aeolian-Skinner Organ—without accompaniment. And he’s not guiding you on a wild magic carpet ride into new sonic and sensory realms; he's taking you to church. Yep, Virgil was letting the flowers of his imagination sprout not in some incense-clouded harem, but in some incense-clouded cathedral. On this album, he sticks to the classics, working his dizzy fingers through Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Bohm. Psychedelic or not, his choice of material is inspired, his performance superlative. Just imagine yourself seated alone one lazy summer afternoon in the cool comfort of a gothic cathedral, the sun gleaming through stained-glass windows, letting dusty rays of beautiful colors shower down on you as you take in Virgil’s virtuosity. This record may venture down some well-trodden paths, but with a little imagination, you can set your sights for the center of the sun.

I wrote this piece a few years back. I pulled it out of mothballs (and gave it an editorial bath) after listening to Fox’s record on my hi-fi last week.

Journey Through the Past

The following interview originally appeared in The Rocket 11 years ago. Lately, I've been rummaging through my archives in an effort to rehabilitate old stories in need of a good edit. It's been an interesting, if sometimes painful exercise: revisiting the past, seeing the flaws you were once blind to, and then attempting to correct them. The writings that can be salvaged will be salvaged. The ones that can't will be chucked. In the end, I hope to self-publish a collection of my music writing—it would just be a small run, maybe 20 copies. I'm not sure the piece you're about to read makes the grade; it's at least in better shape than the original. The other reason you're reading it: relevance. Soundgarden has reconvened after a 13-year hiatus, and The Rocket page on Facebook has attracted a decent following.


Conspiracy Revealed!
Inside the Mysterious World of the Wellwater Conspiracy

Music journalists love to shine some light on new or previously obscure bands. Their paltry paychecks depend on it. After all, it’s a trend-driven business and if music writers are to stay ahead of the curve, they must constantly seek out ripening talent.

But what if the band isn’t so eager for the exposure?

Such could be said for Seattle’s modern psych-healers Wellwater Conspiracy, who have long been among the Northwest’s most promising bands, but have also been one of its most invisible. Since forming in 1992, the troupe's movements have been more covert than that of an intelligence spook. Very little evidence of their existence can be traced: Wellwater Conspiracy’s public performances can be literally counted on one hand; their early 7-inches are out of print (though they sometimes surface on eBay), and their 1997 debut album, Declaration of Conformity (Third Gear/Super Electro), is nearly impossible to find. And until just recently, with release of their latest album, Brotherhood of Electric: Operational Directives (released two months ago), the band's members had concealed their identities.

Well Water Conspiracy had just cause for staying underground. Co-conspirators Matt Cameron and Ben Shepherd constituted the rhythm section of Soundgarden and guitarist John McBain was an alumnus of Monster Magnet. Lest they be marginalized as a side-project curiosity or over-hyped as a “super group,” WWC wanted people to focus on the music—not the personnel. There was also a legal reason to stay low-key: until 1997 Cameron and Shepherd were under contract with Soundgarden’s label A&M. The fact that none of the band's initial recordings appeared on A&M could have caused legal complications.

But now, in 1999, having struck a deal with the major label-distributed Time Bomb Records, Wellwater Conspiracy, presently a duo of Cameron (vocals, guitars, drums) and McBain (guitars), appear more willing to reveal themselves to a wider audience. And so should they. Their sophomore album, Brotherhood of Electric, is an involving, at times magnificent, work.

By comparison, Wellwater Conspiracy share little with Soundgarden or Monster Magnet, or even Pearl Jam, for whom Cameron now plays drums, beyond a taste for guitar-based songs and classic rock. Wellwater sources its inspiration from low-fidelity basement musings, 4-track experiments and obscure psychedelic voyagers of the 1960s. If all this sounds like a fruitless exercise in self-indulgence it’s not. The proof is in the new record.

Like the great psych records of the cosmic past, Brotherhood of Electric is an absorbing experience, a fantastic voyage of sound and song that navigates the scorched earth of terra firma and the hazy, dusk-shaded heavens above. And it’s Cameron and McBain’s brotherhood, their sonic union, that makes the record such fun. Cameron, who sings most of the albums songs, alternates his vocals between the evocative and dreamy, his drumming both grounding and propulsive, while McBain rewrites the laws of physics with his guitar work—he floats atmospheric melodies that drift like lost cosmonauts in space, or strike the surface with meteoric force. Together, and with the help of some friends like Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age and Cameron’s wife, April on violin, they offer a sprawling, somewhat disjointed, but ultimately satisfying collection of songs (highlights being “Compellor,” “Born with a Tail,” and “Red Light Green Light”) augmented by all kinds of hallucinatory surprises, synthetic weirdness, disorienting sojourns and curious discoveries.

Brotherhood of Electric is an album worth celebrating, and on the eve of its release, The Rocket managed to talk Cameron and McBain out of hiding and sit down for an interview, and some drinks, at a now-defunct Belltown café and night spot.

How did Wellwater Conspiracy start?
John McBain: I met Matt on the road when [Monster Magnet] toured with Soundgarden in 1992.
Matt Cameron: We started 4-tracking together at my house in ’92. We’d write things, record them, just mess around. Lo and behold, we amassed a collection of songs that sounded like something that resembled a record.
McBain: It was after I had moved from New Jersey. It actually started with a single. I gave a tape to Steve Turner [of Mudhoney and Super Electro Records] and I must have pressured him in some way to put it out because he was kind of wary about it. But it did well.

The resulting Declaration of Conformity just kind of turned up with no fanfare. Did anyone even know about it, much less buy it?
Cameron: Yeah, it did all right. It sold between 4,000 and 5,000 copies.

Was releasing your first album independently a much more inviting proposition than shopping it to big labels?
Cameron: It’s not a shop-able record at all. It’s got tons of 4-track cassette noise. It sounds really bad.
McBain: The fact that it came out sounding so bad made it authentic in a way.

It sounds like a lo-fi garage/psychedelic record. It sounds the way it ought to.
McBain: We did it in what, a half-hour in your [Cameron’s] basement?
Cameron: Pretty much. I didn’t know how to work my soundboard [at the time], so the mixes ended up being in mono.

Who was involved in the making of Declaration?
Cameron: John pretty much recorded everything. I sang on some of the stuff. And then we gave Ben some cassettes so that he could do it on his 4-track. That was pretty much it. It was just the three of us.

Matt, could you always sing?
Cameron: Yeah, I guess so. I never sang lead in a band other than like cover bands when I lived in San Diego. I guess I’ve always sang, just for the hell of it. I sang “The Sound of Silence” in high school. It was a duet with this girl I had a crush on. And then she saw me at a party later on and I was really stoned, and she had nothing to do with me after that. Yeah, I guess I’ve always kind of crooned.
McBain: Someone’s got to. Lord knows I won’t.

When you started this band, was it your M.O. to have this loose, pseudo-experimental nature about the band?
McBain: Yeah, totally.
Cameron: We got wider tape now to use—we just got a 24-track machine. We try to record fast to get the essence of the songs on tape. A lot of times, when you make records … like, over there [Cameron points across the street to the vacant building that once housed Bad Animals studio, where Soundgarden recorded their breakout 1994 album Superunknown], you gotta have a producer, you have to do demos, you have to work the songs to where there’s no life left in the recordings.

So is Well Water Conspiracy your reaction to that process?
Cameron: No, it’s not a reaction, it’s just a different way of approaching it.
McBain: It’s not wanting to do it the usual way. I think the secret goal is to avoid getting caught in that hamster wheel and going through that process.
Cameron: When we did Superunknown over there, it was that whole process of like a big-time producer. We did rehearsals. We did demos. We went through all this rigmarole. For some bands, you gotta do that. For me and John, we know how to play our instruments, we know how to write and arrange. We can forgo that whole process.
McBain: I remember when I used to visit you guys [at Bad Animals]—it seemed like there was nothing being done. Everybody was sitting around playing video games.
Cameron: And our engineer would be sitting on the couch, belching. And I was like, “So this is how a record’s done.” Hundreds of thousands of dollars later…

In contrast, how much did the first Wellwater Conspiracy album cost?
Cameron: My 4-track cost about $1,000.
McBain: It cost us about the price of half-inch tape and a DAT—a couple hundred dollars.

With Wellwater Conspiracy, are you able to express yourselves in ways you couldn’t in other/previous music endeavors? And who’s the garage rock fan?
McBain: I’m the garage geek. So I kind of brought that to the band. All my songs have that kind of feel to it.
Cameron: And I’ve just always 4-tracked, since 1984. I do it because it’s fun. I like to write songs. I’m able to play guitar. It seemed like a good pairing of songwriting and recording styles. That’s a big part of it. We like to record it ourselves.
McBain: There’s no egos. There’s no frontman. It’s the way to go.

But you are the lead singer, Matt.
Cameron: Sort of. I don’t really look at it that way.
McBain: If you listen to the way we mix the vocals, they’re [mixed into the music so that they’re] just another part of the song. I like that approach.
Cameron: Most of the time they’re in the music—as opposed to being all you hear and then there’s this background music. But on Brotherhood of Electric, we also have Josh [Homme] singing and my friend, Luke [St. Kimble], sang on one song. It’s kind of the same approach as the last one—we had two singers. But Josh’s vocals and my vocals are a little more similar than Ben and myself. Ben just has this unique, singular style that I haven’t heard in a long time.

Why wasn’t Ben part of Brotherhood?
Cameron: I don’t think it was the kind of project that he was really into. He likes to have control of the whole environment. He’s got a lot of his own songs and a lot of talent. We just kind of started out on our own and we had no problems doing it ourselves.

Will Wellwater Conspiracy ever play live?
Cameron: We’re working on that right now. We’ve had some offers for summer and fall to play Europe, so we’re trying to get a band together.
McBain: We just want to be careful about not getting into that overkill situation. It seems like bands who come out of Seattle or the area plaster themselves everywhere. We don’t want that.

So you prefer to remain anonymous?
McBain: Exactly. That’s what we want.

Even if no one pays attention? The first album wasn’t on anyone’s radar.
Cameron: We had a lot of interest in Detroit, Chicago, New York and the U.K. But here, if you don’t play live, people don’t really connect with you.
McBain: Not that it’s bad, but it;s the baggage that we brought with the band. We don;t want people to look at it and go, “Oh, those guys and that guy—whatever.” I’m sure that’s why people brushed aside that first record, because they had other ideas of what it would be like. That’s why leaving it anonymous has really helped.

Your record company prefers that you not be anonymous. The bio explicitly says “Matt Cameron formerly of Soundgarden” and “John McBain formerly of Monster Magnet.” The label makes it a selling point.
McBain: Well, it’s not a sticker on the CD.
Cameron: We definitely want this one to get noticed a little bit more, and that’s a way to get people to take notice.

How did you link up with Time Bomb?
Cameron: It was through knowing Jim Guerinot, who is head of Time Bomb. He was with A&M and worked with Soundgarden. We sort of shopped [Brotherhood] to a couple different labels and no one was really interested. We had a few people telling us, “You should try shopping it at a major, man.” And I’m glad we didn’t, because it would have been lost. A&M passed on it anyway.
McBain: At one point, before we signed to Time Bomb, we realized that no one wanted this record.... When [Guerinot] first got it, he didn’t really know what to do with it. I don’t think he really understood. But I think as it started to get around, they got a little more excited about it.
Cameron: We like that fact that there’s a good Internet buzz about it.
McBain: We get a lot of messages.

So Wellwater Conspiracy has some fanatics?
Cameron: All 19 of them, to be exact.

Originally published in The Rocket, May 12, 1999.

My 2009 Hit List (part 1)

So this year is as good as over. That’s all right by me. It wasn’t my favorite year. It wouldn’t even rate on my Top 10. Speaking of Top 10's, if you haven’t already had your fill of year-end top-10 lists, then I’ve got a little something for you to snack on. Over the next couple posts, I’m gonna share my favorite things of 2009 in good ol’ list form. For today’s post, I give you The Top 10 Best Records/CDs/MP3s I Heard This Year (That You May or May Not Have) That Weren’t Necessarily Released This Year (Oh, and I Only Have Five to Share Right Now).

1. Flaming Lips Embryonic (Warner Bros. LP)
The Flaming Lips have been making commercial music in recent years (I’ve seen at least four different TV ads using their music), but there’s nothing commercial about this effort. Most of Embryonic's 18 songs came together through spontaneous jams. And it shows—there are some solid grooves here that are immediate, raw, alive. But this is the Flaming Lips, remember—and as such their grooves are strange and contorted, as well as shaded with all kinds of weird noises and sounds. I love this record—because it’s so unexpected and gutsy.

2. Larry Young Lawrence of Newark (Perception LP)
This album was originally released in 1973, but it’s relatively new to my ears. Ever since having my aural cavities delighted by the trippy “Khalid of Space, Welcome Pt. 2,” I’ve been on the lookout for this album. So when I flipped to the LP in the jazz section of Portland’s Jackpot Records in November, I was elated. Lawrence of Newark is another one of those mind-blowing jazz records that came at a time when acoustic instruments were fornicating with electric ones and making sweet interstellar magic. This is psychedelic jazz on the cusp of fusion. But this one's more Sun Ra and Pharaoh Sanders than Headhunters or Weather Report.

3. Bellywipe Jello Tree Rough Mixes (unreleased demo)
This demo was recorded in 1994, but was finally disseminated to the Internets this year when my old friend David Hayes posted it on his Very Small Records Blog. Only one of these songs was released; the rest existed on but a precious few cassettes doled out by the band (I lost mine more than a decade ago). Bellywipe had a sound all its own: gritty, quirky, ragged, involved, smart. Back when I had a record label I wanted to put out a 7-inch for this band, but it never came to pass—Bellywipe broke up before I could come up with the money to pay for a record pressing. Give these songs a listen—the production quality ain’t the greatest; these are rough mixes of songs made digital from an old, low-bias cassette tape. If you can only listen to one song, point your clicker to “The Fucking Song That Made Us Famous.” Fifteen years later, I still want to engrave this thing into vinyl! (Download the entire demo here.)

4. Om God Is Good (Drag City LP)
God Is Good is Om mark 2, the first album sans original drummer Chris Haikus. Joining founder bassist and vocalist Al Cisneros is Grails drummer Emil Amos. But you won’t mistake this as the work of any other band—it’s pure Om. Brooding, undulating bass lines, vigorous, syncopated drumming and chanting vocals coalesce into repetitive, mantra-like grooves which wander a godforsaken scorched topography on an epic search for revelation. It’s spiritual drone music—as enchanting as it is entrancing. What’s different about God Is Good, however, is the inclusion of hand drums, piano, cello and sitar (the latter’s presence may sound like a cliché for drone music, but its addition is not unwelcome), further enhancing the music’s moody ambiance. (Download the God Is Good track “Cremation Ghat II” here.)

5. Obits I Blame You (Sub Pop LP) b/w One Cross Apiece (Stint 7-inch)
Rick Froberg’s adenoidal voice hasn’t aged much even if middle age makes itself right at home on his weathered face. His righteous scream does indignation and discontent better than most. I Blame You is relatively straightforward and less abrasive than Froberg’s ’90s work with Drive Like Jehu, and it’s not quite as frenetic and angry as early ’00s Hot Snakes. But it’s a satisfying and enjoyable collection from one of the leading voices in my record collection. The 7-inch single that preceded the album is pretty good, too, especially the ringing “Put It in Writing.” (Download three I Blame You tracks from here.)

Next time: albums by Mastodon, Donald Byrd, Cedric Im Brooks and more.

Another Love Story

Love Forever Changes Collector’s Edition

(Rhino 2 CDs, 2008)

Did we truly need another reissue of Love’s Forever Changes? Rhino Records—liberator of castoff sounds consigned to the music dustbins of time—thought so, obviously recognizing that Love fanatics (such as me) will lap up anything related to the best rock album of all time (if you disagree with such a hyperbolic assessment, you haven’t heard album—enough). Hence Forever Changes, the 2-CD “Collector’s Edition.” Or Forever Changes Redux Ad Nauseum. Honestly, this latest retelling of the classic 1967 Love story adds very little, despite the wealth of material presented across the two CDs (43 tracks in all). Love’s 11-song masterpiece was perfect to begin with. The new edition doesn’t change that. And it’s no more essential than the 2001 reissue of the album (it features same remastered album, the same added outtake and demo, the same inclusion of a 1968 single and B-side, the same session highlights—all quite good). But this iteration has a whole second CD to fill, netting the listener a few more session highlights and remixes (all unremarkable) and, in the absence of newly uncovered “lost” songs, an alternate, rawer mix of the entire album (as if the original mix was flawed or inferior ?). But, lest I forget, this is a collector’s album—it’s for fanatics (and suckers for extras and et ceteras, which is why I forked over the dough for its $25 price tag).

I love Forever Changes. It’s one of the few records that I keep going back to. And, yes, it really is as good as everyone says (everyone being us dorky record collectors and music “critics”). It’s also aged a lot better than most of what emerged from the psychedelic era (of which I’m a big fan): Instead of getting eight miles high like the rest of their dope-smoking, acid-dropping cohorts, Love, chiefly mastermind vocalist/guitarist Arthur Lee and guitarist/vocalist Bryan MacLean (who wrote and sang two of the album’s classic songs, “Alone Again Or” and “Old Man”), peered through the hazy, phony optimism of peace and love, and saw a world—their world—in turmoil. They wrote of longing, melancholy, death and decay (serious bad vibrations, man!), casting long shadows with their evocative, mournful tenors over a sweeping soundscape of beautifully conceived and masterfully realized psychedelic folk. It was (and still is) a gorgeous, heart-breaking work, a major creative feat more coherent than Sgt. Pepper’s, more poignant than Pet Sounds. It was also a commercial flop, ultimately spelling doom for the band.

A year ago when my own life was in upheaval, I turned to my old vinyl copy of Forever Changes. I placed it on the turntable, dropped the needle and turned up the volume, before settling back on the couch in my empty room. As the opening notes of “Alone Again Or” emerged from the crackles and pops of my well-worn LP, I set my mind adrift and let the ghosts of Love sweep me into their current. For 42 minutes I surfed atop the undulating swells and found some much-needed solace. I doubt the Collector’s Edition will have the same effect.

Loony Tunes: Songs from the Rubber Room

I wrote the following piece for the Seattle alternative weekly The Stranger in 2002. At the time, I was obsessed with musical outsiders, lunatics and eccentric oddballs--almost anyone who had a slippery grasp on reality but the wherewithal to shout into a microphone or concoct mind-boggling symphonies to God. Perhaps in a future posting, I'll expand the list: Loose screws are everywhere.

Hearing Voices
Music by the Ill and the Eccentric

Boredom drove me to the lunatic fringe. New music had gotten stale, the cutting-edge, dull. Eager to explore new frontiers, I immersed myself in the fascinating world of music made by artists with varying degrees of mental illness or eccentric behavior, music truly on the edge (and often, a few steps over). Whether they're crazy, troubled, or confused, these artists produce songs, no matter how crude, that are heartfelt, soulful, unpredictable, and often unaffected by outside influence. What follows is a short list of artists who rock my record collection.

Syd Barrett
The Madcap Laughs
(Capitol)
Barrett was the genius behind Pink Floyd until his Herculean intake of acid had him tripping right out of reality, never to return. In and out of lucidity, Barrett made this fantastic document of someone dangling over the threshold of sanity. As brilliant as it is, it's also upsetting when considering the future that Barrett dosed away.

Hasil Adkins
Poultry in Motion
(Norton)
The boogieman of Boone County, West Virginia, Adkins has been knocking out primitive rockabilly records from a shack since the '50s. Among his muses: chicken. Be it a dance craze ("Chicken Walk") or a culinary delight ("Cookin' Chicken 1999"), Adkins has built an impressive body of work clucking in the chicken coop.

Larry "Wild Man" Fischer
"Music Business Shark," The Fischer King
(Rhino Handmade)
A true raving loony, Wild Man Fischer was discovered by Frank Zappa, who produced Fischer's debut in 1968 (but apparently never paid him). Fischer could neither sing nor play an instrument, but he could improvise lyrics (with varying degrees of success) and bark them (like an angry, horny sea lion), which is what earned him people's pocket change on L.A.'s streets. This 1980s recording broaches a recurring theme in the life of Fischer: Having felt he was robbed by "music business sharks" (Zappa), he was ever paranoid of not getting paid for his "talents."

Daniel Johnston
"Walking the Cow," Continued Story
(Homestead)
The most heartbreaking and sublimely melodic pop song ever put to tape. Johnston, an obese manic-depressive man-child, penned this number in 1985 and it's still his best.

Crispin Hellion Glover
"These Boots Are Made for Walkin'," The Big Problem
(Restless)
Everyone saw this actor lose it on Letterman when he demonstrated his martial artistry and nearly grazed Dave with a kick. On Nancy Sinatra's "Boots," he totally unhinged. Glover doesn't sing the lyrics as Nancy would; rather, he sobs, wails, and screams them like one whose boots are marching straight toward a padded cell.

Wesley Willis
Greatest Hits Vol. 2
(Alternative Tentacles)
A chronic schizophrenic, Willis uses a canned synth track as the foundation of his songs. Predictable as the music is, what spills out of his mouth is anything but. Greatest Hits Vol. 2 is, so far, the definitive Willis collection, featuring a wealth of songs highlighting the tuneless singer's social commentary on street violence ("Birdman Kicked My Ass"), fashion ("Cut the Mullet"), and thuggery ("I Broke out Your Windshield").

T. Valentine
"Hello Lucille, Are You a Lesbian?"
Hello Lucille, Are You a Lesbian?
(Norton)
If a bloodline could be traced from Wesley Willis, it would lead straight to this R&B catastrophe, who in 1982 dedicated this song to his wife after she came out of the closet. "I hate all lesbians," T. Valentine emotes with a pronounced lisp (hmmm).

Beach Boys
"Fall Breaks and Back to Winter,"
Smiley Smile
(Capitol)
One can only wonder what was coursing through the troubled, drug-addled mind of Brian Wilson when he composed this strange instrumental. Alternating between haunted (the ghostly Beach Boys harmonies) and downright cuckoo (when "The Woody Woodpecker Song" chimes in), "Fall Breaks" was derived from the spooky Smile number "Fire."

Richard Peterson
"New Young Fresh Fellows Theme"
(PopLlama, 7-inch single)
You've probably seen the large-statured Peterson around town, blowing his trumpet with one hand, shaking a bucket of change with the other. Peterson, who should have played the lead in Sling Blade, has recorded four albums of off-kilter easy listening, as well as this 1992 single, in which he wrote and arranged a new theme for YFF (which is musically brilliant), insisting in the lyrics that YFF should add Peterson to the fold.

Joe Meek
It's Hard to Believe: The Amazing World of Joe Meek
(Razor & Tie)
Meek was the British equivalent of Phil Spector in the '50s and '60s, a producer who crammed more into a four-track than just a meager wall of sound. Sadly, the sexually frustrated creator of "Telstar" ended his brilliant career by shooting his landlord and himself in 1967.

Honorable mentions: Jandek, Tiny Tim, Lucia Pamela, Kids of Widney High, Roky Erickson, Skip Spence, Congresswoman Malinda Jackson Parker, Legendary Stardust Cowboy.

From the Nov 21 – Nov 27, 2002 issue of The Stranger

All You Need Is Love

I have to be honest: there's no reason to post this dusty old record review of a CD reissue I wrote for a defunct magazine six years ago other than the fact that I just love this album and have been spinning it quite a lot lately. The thing about Love's Forever Changes is that it's one of those rare albums you could call timeless. Forever Changes is often held in the same esteem as the great psychedelic albums that captivated the young ears and minds in 1966 and 1967: The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced?, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Pink Floyd's Piper at the Gates of Dawn. But to me, it's more than just a pinnacle of psych rock. To me, Forever Changes transcends genre--as well as time and space Tell me Sgt. Pepper's doesn't sound a bit dated. No, like Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited or Bringing It All Back Home, Nick Drake's Pink Moon, Marvin Gaye's What's Goin' On or Miles Davis' Kind of Blue and Bitches Brew (among many others), Forever Changes is a true classic. But unlike those records, which were all critical and commercial successes, Forever Changes struggled to an audience. But find an audience it did; it just took aI'm glad its troubled creator Arthur Lee, who succumbed to Leukemia a couple years ago, lived to see his master work get its well-deserved recognition.

Love
Forever Changes
(Elektra/Rhino CD)

When Love entered the studio in 1967, they would summon all their strengths, talents, even demons for what would be their third album for Elektra Records. On the back of the proto-punk hit "Seven and Seven Is,"from the band's 1966 album, Da Capo, Love had enjoyed minor commercial success, and there were high hopes that this new LP would be their breakthough. And when the band finally emerged with an album titled Forever Changes, they managed to produce one of the great innovative records of not only 1967 (the year which brought radical rock from Pink Floyd with Piper at the Gates of Dawn, the Beatles with Sgt. Pepper’s, the Mothers of Invention with We’re Only in It for the Money, and Tim Buckley with Goodbye and Hello, among others), but the entire 1960s. It was an album that would forever change not just the band itself, but everyone who got tangled in its web of splendor and sorrows. A blockbuster release it was not.

Love's road to Forever Changes was rocky. When the psychedelic folk band convened at an L.A. studio to record it, it was just waking from a long stint of dormancy. The band -- composed of vocalist/guitarist Arthur Lee, guitarist Johnny Echols, guitarist/vocalist Bryan Maclean, bassist Ken Forssi and drummer Michael Stewart -- were lethargic, rusty, out-of-sync -- hardly up to the task of making record, much less a masterpiece. Lee, seemingly the only glue keeping Love together, wasn’t about to let his project crumble. He took control of the sessions (much like Brian Wilson) and became a relentless taskmaster, whipping the band into shape, coaxing some truly amazing work from his mates and thus realizing the brilliance to which this album and its songs aspired.

But there’s a darkness that haunts Forever Changes. The album radiates with beautiful, mostly acoustic instrumentation, glorious string arrangements and evocative vocal stylings, but ominous shadows loom over songs, like big black clouds threatening grassy meadows on a spring day.

Much of the gloom stemmed from Lee, whose existential dread in a climate fraught with socio-political and racial tensions and empty hippie idealism forced him into seclusion deep in the Hollywood Hills. And while Lee was a youthful 22 when he began working on the album, he had already resolved that he would be dead by 26. (It never happened, of course.) Naturally, sadness, longing, dread, paranoia, heartache, madness and death infect his songs like a deadly virus. This is particularly felt on the hauntingly gorgeous “The Red Telephone” whose lyrics read: “Sitting on the hillside, watching all the people die, I’ll feel much better when I’m on the other side.” It’s a bad trip, all right, and there are more bad vibes ahead on this compelling work. Other black beauties include “A House Is Not a Motel,” “The Daily Planet,” “Bummer in the Summer” and “Live and Let Live.”

Lee wasn’t the album’s sole visionary. Brian Maclean, Love's most underrated member, brought two of his own songs to the sessions, “Alone Again Or” and “Old Man.” He sang both, casting them in fragile, evocative tenor, rendering sublime melancholy to an album that was already spectacularly sad and emotionally sweeping.

Considering the circumstances into which Forever Changes was born, it’s amazing just how together Love sounds on this album. It’s a stunning document created by the most unheralded band of the 1960s, and it perfectly captures the mood of the times, while offering a portrait of a band on the verge of collapse.

--Joe Ehrbar
Originally published in Backfire, July 2001

Where There's Smoke There's Flaming Lips

Flaming Lips, Paramount Theatre, Seattle, September 20, 2007

Prior to tonight's show, I never would have guessed that I was allergic to smoke. Not cannabis or tobacco smoke. No, smoke exhaled by the Flaming Lips' mighty arsenal of smoke machines (Fog Hogs). Never in my 15 years of covering music have I ever been subjected to such an onslaught. So thick was the haze that it swallowed up the band's entire spectacle. Not even the laser lights could penetrate the vaporous wall of fog. As soon as the fog enveloped the Paramount's balcony section, my eyes began to water and itch, my nose started to twitch and drip. On several occasions, when the veil dissipated, ringleader Wayne Coyne hoisted his hand-held smoker and filled the holes. My nose wept with snot.

The night wasn't about smoke and tears, though. There were also dozens of giant balloons launched into audience, massive explosions of confetti, an enormous video screen projecting strange films and close-ups of Wayne's nostrils, dancing Santas and aliens and giant inflatables. It was as if some crazed psychedelic band had joyously ransacked the local party supply shop.

As for the music? Well it was pretty great, transcendental even, in that the Flaming Lips didn't need the big-top spectacle. Nor did they need Wayne's folksy, aw-shucks between-song banter. All those balloons, all that confetti, all that gimmickry—totally unnecessary (though enormously amusing). The music stands on its own two feet, and that's what's important. It's also something that couldn't be said about a Flaming Lips performance a few years ago—back when they opted for a drum machine instead of real-life drummer machine named Kliph. Back when they were unable to render live the greatness and splendor of their recorded psychedelic suites. Back when they were transitioning from a madcap noise-rock band to a psymphonic tour de force. Not so anymore. Initially, Wayne's vocals were a little rough, not quite hitting the high notes in the opening song, "Race for the Prize" (thank God for confetti and balloons). But that wasn't all that surprising considering he sings well above his natural register. What's more, instead of warming up backstage, Wayne spent the half-hour prior to the band's set actually on stage, preparing the set and testing equipment right alongside the roadies. (His hands-on approach—uncharacteristic of shows at this level—was as mind-blowing as any of the Lips' songs.)

Back to the music. The Flaming Lips seek to deliver their audience from all that ails it. They offer an uplifting experience that is part religious revival, part carnival, part arena rock revue. And on this night, you had to be pretty jaded not to feel touched by the cosmic joy and energy projected by their music. Sure, songs like "The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" and "Free Radicals" focal points of the band's latest album, At War with the Mystics, are bogged down by trite political rants. And yet, live these songs radiated with undeniable immediacy and conviction—you couldn't help shaking your ass and singing along. (Honestly, I changed my tune about "Yeah Yeah Yeah" and "Radicals" after experiencing them live.) The highlight of the show was the closer, "Do You Realize," the catchy, bittersweet anthem about savoring the moment, loving one another, enjoying small triumphs—celebrating life. It served as a poignant reminder: Before we know it, the surprise party of death will greet us, and we don't know if we'll be showered with confetti or swallowed into a smoky abyss.