Disc of the day
Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
Features Disc of the day
Neil Young
On The Beach
(Reprise, 1975)
Hey! These '60s aren't dead enough yet! Let's stamp on the dregs!
Some records you feel in your skin, in your hair, in your teeth even. This is one of those for me: a collection not of songs so much as creeping things. Neil is in subterranean mode, a lost man in a dark hole, under the influence of insalubrious guitarist/fiddler-for-hire Rusty Kershaw, a code-red drug monster in permanently rank dungarees.
Kershaw, argues this indispensable volume, was the eminence grise of On The Beach, packing LA's Sunset Sound studio with second-hand furniture to loosen the vibe while his wife Julie cooked up "honey slides", a muddy concoction of honey and griddled marijuana. Deeper and weirder than a hash-cake high, it helped the music achieve an aura of fugged detachment not a million miles from that of Sly Stone's There's A Riot Goin' On.
Honey slides would certainly explain the title track, where Young's band journey so far into the zone you wonder if they'll ever return: Graham Nash pedals the wobbly Wurlitzer piano way down low, Ben Keith paddles his hand drum in an aural representation of background anxiety and Young's guitar solo would kill itself if it could. Motion Pictures is dedicated to Young's hell-raising actress partner (and mother of first son Zeke) Carrie Snodgress, but if anyone wrote anything so enervated and mean for you you'd dump them in a second.
This is the genius of On The Beach. There's no window-dressing, neither musically nor sentimentally. Ambulance Blues may sound harsh - "You're all just pissing in the wind / You don't know it but you are" - but it's addictive rather than depressing. Then there's Revolution Blues. Working up a threatening ambience, Kershaw broke furniture and slithered over the studio floor in imitation of a python. Inspired, Young sang the song in the guise of Charles Manson, wreaking lyrical vengeance on self-satisfied celebrity LA. As he concludes, with the astonishing couplet "Well I hear that Laurel Canyon is full of famous stars / I hate them worse than lepers and I'll kill them in their cars" you can almost see David Crosby, playing rhythm guitar on the track, shudder. Riding Rick Danko and Levon Helm's thrusting, knife-fight groove, it's as great a piece of ensemble rock music as has ever been recorded.
Danny Eccleston
Posted by Ross_Bennett at 6:00 AM GMT 14/05/2009
Further Listening
Neil Young – Tonight’s The Night (Reprise, 1975)
Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue (Caribou, 1977)
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Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
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Great album that one, one of my top 5.
Posted by Max at 11:34 AM GMT 18/05/2009 Report Abuse
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