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BLACK DICE: Number
3 10-inch (TROUBLEMAN UNLIMITED)
 Well,
Zero Street got in the Black Dice 10-inch that I said
I was gonna order last ish. It's hilarious, there's about
a foot of snow on the ground right now in Lincoln, and
on the streets where we have to drive there's still about
FIVE inches and it's just totally SHITTY outside, but
we were still out running errands just an hour ago, and
I had my wife drop me off at the record store so I could
run in and buy this. As I got out of the car, she made
it clear that I was to be waiting for her after driving
me around the block, giving me barely sixty seconds to
complete the transaction. We were anxious to get home
and out of the cold, so I behaved and somehow set a personal
record by walking outside, parcel in hand, just as she
was rounding the corner of 14th & O. (I'll admit that
a stray hand did flip through the new arrivals bin, but
it was really more of a reflex action, more due to the
proximity of the bin to the cash register than anything
else.)
We get home and I put it on and out comes this hilarious
squealing, lurching, stumbling noise pattern that DEFINITELY
isn't a song, it's an action, or an event, or a thing,
but not a song at all, and my wife goes "My God!" her
face turning up in near horror. "Why don't you get a record
that's finished next time?" she asks, which is actually
kind of an original putdown of this sort of thing. I just
stared back and played air guitar to the shit, which is
pretty fun, you should try it some time. Then the vocals
by "Eric" started coming in, and they're fantastic - death
metal vocals that aren't even trying to form words and
phrases. He's just standing there with the mic making
scary monster noises that actually are kinda scary. My
wife has always dug the Melvins, but her look still increased
in horror somewhat when she realized that 'that sound'
was the lead singer singing. "How much did you spend on
this?" was her next question. I said "nine bucks" and
she actually seemed to think that was a pretty good deal.
I think
so too, even if Side One isn't even over yet. I mean,
it's nice just to hold and look at, coming as it does
in a cool pink-and-white cover, with an included mondo
artsy 10-page full-color-covered booklet featuring abstract
doodlings that are actually Black Dice scores, many psychedelic
collages, and even a thanks list. Oops, side one just
got done and even though it looks like it's broken up
into a bunch of short tracks (and I just saw on the Wherehouse
website that the CD version also begins with 6-7 consecutive
30 second tracks), don't let it fool ya; at least it sounds
to me like one continuous performance of that one thing/event/action-that-definitely-isn't-a-song
that I described above. Immediate reflections: about two
minutes into the side, a big low-end hum came in underneath
the boxing/spitting/lurching/belching that made me think
for a second that I needed to re-ground my turntable,
and even after I realized it was just the band making
the sound and not my equipment it was still pretty easy
to imagine Black Dice, all four of 'em and their instruments,
inside my stereo trying to beat their way out, fucking
up the circuitry and wiring by randomly jamming their
guitar necks into circuit boards while the drummer smashed
his floor tom against the inside walls.
Side
Two is probably even better, it actually has what sound
like three separate 'movements,' and the first and third
are actually 'songs' this time, not unlike the 30-second
death-belches on the 7-inch released by Vermin Scum (reviewed
last ish). Even more out there, though -- the last track
is definitely a song, but the mixing and recording of
it are bizarre. (Eric can be heard screaming away, lyrics
even, but it sounds like he isn't even in the room, or
maybe not even in the house, and is in fact probably being
phoned in from the bottom of some Arctic ocean. If you're
familiar with the last five minutes or so of Alvin Lucier's
"I Am Sitting in a Room," that's actually what
his voice sounds like, decayed and ghostly, like sound
coming not from inside a room but from behind the funhouse
mirror on its wall. The second might be a song too in
some kind of damaged This Heat sense -- the drums repeat
a crude fill while a few sharp broken-amp electronic tones
take near-serialist turns ringing against each other.
Who knows, if This Heat had been ugly Americans, or if
Side Two of The Operation of the Sonne would've
been about 10 minutes longer, we might've already heard
something like this, but things being as they are I think
Black Dice are tunneling deeper into a mine that is 99.9%
their very own. Buy this record for snapshots from the
trip.
LINKS:
A
STORY ABOUT BLACK DICE
A
BLACK DICE SHOW REVIEW
TROUBLEMAN
UNLIMITED
FRED NEIL: The Many
Sides of Fred Neil 2CD (COLLECTOR'S CHOICE MUSIC)
 I’m
finally jumping on the Fred Neil bandwagon, and though
it’s bound to be a rocky ride with a driver as obtuse
and anti-commercial as Mr. Neil, I can’t say I regret
doing it. This double-disc compiles three of the four
albums he released, along with six unreleased tracks.
I’ve barely even played those yet ‘cause I’m still fathoming
the deep, deep first disc, which is alone worth the price
of admission. What I’m really getting stuck on is the
last half of Disc One, which is Fred’s second full-length
LP, Sessions.
Released in 1967, Sessions was considered a commercially
unadvisable followup to his already slow-selling Fred
Neil LP, as it was a barely-edited document of a late-night
party in some L.A. studio, with songs given loose and
totally live arrangments, with much of the obscure party-talk
between the songs included. Of course, commercially unadvisable
moves have almost NEVER equalled bad music, and indeed
these Sessions are very heady…folk tunes that quickly
turn into extrapolative boogie-shuffles that quickly turn
into raga-shuffles as a total of five acoustic
guitars…and a stand-up bass!…intertwine in and out of
each other’s rhythm and melody patterns, mercifully buoyed
only by the lovely late-night studio reverb instead of
the ‘tight’ groove of some hack studio drummer…Fred mumbles,
shouts, and sings his way through loose verses and choruses,
which come and go kind of randomly within the bubbling
hillbilly raga-scapes the stoned gang sets up with glee.
Stoned? Well, in between the last two zoned-out tracks,
"Looks Like Rain" and "Roll on Rosie"
there is this exchange: "[much laughter] Fred:
Wee! Voice: [breath sucking in, then slight coughing]
That’s such a pleasure, man… Fred: Oh! Fly united!
2nd Voice: Why stop now? Fred:
Mm! I don’t know! Is everything alright? Can we get into
somethin’?…You’re somethin’ else, man…you don’t drink,
I don’t think, either, do ya? Do ya drink? Oh, now ya
spoiled yer image, man!" (Ironically,
here Neil is spoiling his own image as a pained incommunicative
hermit, ‘cause he's having a good time and sounds downright
effusive.)
Another highlight is "Look Over Yonder," an
impossibly slow ballad with Fred groaning and moaning
out some extremely deep notes that speak of some serious
melancholy. It’s also notable how the album begins with
fairly tight song readings but by the end has almost completely
evolved into free music, probably in direct proportion
to the rounds the alluded-to joint was making. If the
first couple tracks are, if not perfunctory, maybe a little
stiff, by the time the last track "Roll on Rosie"
has come to its feverishly swaggering/chanting/pulsating
finish, Fred and the boys are definitely 'somewhere else.'
The
album called Fred Neil, more traditionally thought
of as a masterpiece, makes up the first ten tracks of
Disc One. It's definitely good too, with reverbed-out
tremelo guitar immediately highlighting the opener, "The
Dolphins." This is Fred’s most legendary tune, and
as such, maybe a slight disappointment. I’ve listened
to it five or six times and I still can’t remember how
it goes. Then again, it’s hard to remember how any of
these tunes really go, as Fred is such a laid-back shadowy
song-presenter. (In the words of John "Lovin’ Spoonful"
Sebastian: "Fred was a concealer.")
I prefer the sloooww country-Fred Neil-blues way the melody
unwinds on "Ba-De-Da," or the sexy sad way he
asks "Didn’t we shake, sugaree?"during "I’ve
Got a Secret," or "Faretheewell (Fred’s Tune),"
a hushed, haunting ballad. And, if you didn’t know, Fred
Neil wrote "Everybody’s Talkin’," the Harry
Nilsson hit from Midnight Cowboy, and his original
version is on here. I know I’m probably not supposed to,
but I think I actually prefer the Harry Nilsson version,
a punchy pop gem that managed to be both sad and soaring
at the same time. Hearing it done by Neil is fine for
giving credit where it's due, but his langurous/dolorous
delivery is just not what I’m used to. (There is a cool
live version of it on Disc Two here...it originally appeared
on the odds-and-sods album The Other Side of This Life,
and has surprising, extended Coltrane-McGuinn-ist accompaniment
by one Monte Dunn.) After these and a few other laid-back
sad mystic cowboy folk-going-on-raga songs, Fred Neil
ends by breaking out and going all the way into raga with
a pretty glorious 8-minute jam called "Cynicrustpetefredjohn
Raga." This is late 60s free music of the highest
order – it’s no coincidence that Neil was backed for a
time by a band that became The Seventh Sons, who recorded
for ESP-Disk.
This
is where I have a gripe with Richie Unterberger’s liner
notes, or maybe, more accurately, his aesthetic. He’s
a good factual writer and offers several excellent descriptions,
like this: "It’s also fair to say that no singers
of any kind, from any era, caressed the bottom end of
the vocal register as deftly as Neil did; his lo-o-o-w
phrases seemed to pluck blue notes from the very bottom
of his shoes, so far down did he reach into his guts and
soul." That’s great, and I’ve heard good things about
Unterberger's book Unsung Heroes of Rock and Roll,
but I’ve never read it, and now I don’t think I’m going
to because he obviously has no affinity for free music,
or even rock music if its tarnished by the slightest hint
of an extrapolation that might go on longer than the shortest
verse, chorus, or bridge. He probably hates late-period
John Coltrane. And while I’m sure he loves the Byrds,
he’s probably still breathing a sigh of relief that the
guitar solo in "Eight Miles High" wasn’t five
notes longer, which would have qualified it as "lengthy"
and "rambling," which is how he describes "Cynicrustpetefredjohn
Raga." In fact, he calls it "nearly interminable"
and adds that it "would nonetheless foreshadow the
more experimental tone of [Sessions]," which
is a putdown because Unterberger doesn’t seem to like
Sessions at all, filling a couple paragraphs with
prose like this: "'Fools Are A Long Time Comin’,
while not as lethargic as 'Look Over Yonder', might well
have benefited from a more electric production and a more
structured approach, and disintegrates into doodling ragas;
indeed, a more focused take of the song does exist."
Well shoot, Rich, you can keep on collectin’ alternate
takes in your search for a focused Fred Neil, but I don't
think focus was ever really part of Fred Neil’s life nor
his langurous/dolorous/free-form folk art. And besides,
ragas are focused in their own way, and I hear that focus
in Fred Neil music. By the end of "Roll on Rosie,"
these guys are of one and only one late-night altered
state of mind. In fact, sometimes during Fred Neil recordings
I hear all the tones from American folk and soul musics
given an extended zen forum to intermix and color each
other that even the Grateful Dead didn’t quite get to…but
that's just me. And, hey, sorry to keep ya anyway, Mr.
Unterberger, putcher headphones on and go back to yer
beanbag...
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