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Salient. Victoria University Student Newspaper. Volume 36, Number 23. 23rd September 1973

Records

Records

Records header

Carmina Burana:

This doesn't sound too promising. So who really needs 700 year old poems set to music in 1937 by a German music teacher? You'd be surprised, this is one of the most exciting, colourful works in the classical repetoire. Its so strong, rhythmically, and this together with Orff's dissonant counterpoint effects make it immediately accessible to a rock audience. All too often traditional orchestral music sounds bland to ears raised on rock dissonances; the string sections especially often seem just too full and mushy. It doesn't happen with "Carmina Burana", as anyone lucky enough to catch the Town Hall performance a few months back would agree.

The lyrics are pretty interesting too. They were written in the 12th century by the "gollards", bands of wandering dropout monks and students who had taken to the life of the tavern and open road. The songs begin and end on the theme that life is short, morality and justice arbitrary conventions, with death the only certainty. So these medieval yippies advocated that you ramble round, booze and screw as much as you can while waiting for the end.

This version is the only one currently available, though Delta plans to release Orff's official-ly endorsed version fairly soon. But like some of the other good things on Polyphone this version is a real bargain at $3.99. Check it out if you're sick of your rock collection and want something a little different.

Anthology Album:

Fabian is by now about the only fifties rock performer who hasn't somehow turned out to have been significant. At least not yet. Its Andy Warhol in reverse. He figured that at the current turnover rate in celebrities everyone soon would have a chance to be world famous — for fifteen minutes. Finding out that schmucks like Jan and Dean were really socially significant is kind of a similar experience.

Drawing an open-mouther woman

According to the liner notes, Jimi Hendrix needn't have been so snotty about surf music. It was all a put-on, an excuse to put rock and roll back on its feet after the deaths of Buddy Holly and Ritchie Valens. They say surf music and hot rod music cut to the heart of rock which afterwards got lost by all those "namby-pamby folksingers and their nasal whines about their incipient neuroses".

So Jan and Dean just maybe were the fathers of the Turtles and the Mothers of Invention, the first in that style of" sending themselves up as they put everyone else on.

Remember "Surf City"? Where there are "two girls for every boy"? Or what about the absolute cruncher "Dead Man's Curve" that was banned by the NZBC and is alone worth the price of this whole album; the ultimate challenge: I'll go ya one better if you got the nerve/ Let's race all the way to Dead Man's Curve. And we know what that sort of thing leads to: Well the last thing I remember Doc/ I started to swerve/And then I saw the Jag go into the curve. What a saga! What liner notes! Yeah, Jan and Dean were all right. And there are 32 tracks of them on this record. So hang tough, don't be no ho-dad.

The Best of Status Quo:

I reckon if you asked these guys about John McLaughlin, they'd just shake their heads and boogie on. See, they don't want to know about white clap-trap like short-hair-for-God and 25 and yer heartfelt Brautigan.

This lp ain't really the BEST of Status Quo but its half an hour of fucking good bang. Like one song played 11 times and nothing you're going to actually listen to. You won't want to listen to it cos there's nothing there except some dumb lyrics and a ton of riffs.

It isn't good music cos boogie's never good music. Boogie just trots and if you aren't a snob you've got to trot with it.

Best boogie 'n bullshit Ip in 1973.

White Witch:

Silverhead:

Now if Cashbox was giving this White Witch and Silverhead the run-down, they'd be nice and succinct: "Young group from WB/Purple records wear make-up but the music's staid and fairly obvious". And if Jan Wenner was doing it, he'd write four thousand words about how it's time to get the make-up remover out and cut the cackle.

OK you've bin had before but who wants to get taken by a bunch of teenage yanks with blue tear-drops and star stud eyes who sound alternately like The Rascals circa 1969 and a low-down Deep Purple?

White Witch is American and the cover looks edible. They do the right thing and start with a nervous piece of Moog ("Parabrahm Greeting"). Then Pop and its not even contrived —just three minute groggy soporifics and worst of all they swing like The Rascals and that's calumny. If I tell you there's a song here called "It's So Nice to be Stoned", will you understand?

Silverhead look queerer than White Witch but they're just heavier and not much better for it. If you want to buy, wait half a year and you'll get it for two bucks in the Bin.

And we're still waiting for a band that'll teach us something about how mascara makes them better.

Paris 1919:

Paris 1919 is the best Gracious Rock Album since I don't know when and that's no lie. Nor do I know if its brilliance or plagiarised Procol Harum but that doesn't matter.

Lou Reed knew John Cale in 1966 and that's how he got (sort of) famous with a band called The Velvet Underground. Now they were "the darlings of the New York underground" and they did vicious songs like "heroin" and they had a German chick called Nico. And this Nico was the weirdest you ever heard.

Paris 1919 is far removed from all that. The cover's delicately camp and inside you'll find a lytic sheet that'd have Keith Reid confused, and a record. Like A Salty Dog should have been without the bum tracks or Grand Hotel's sister,

You're having tea with Graham Greene/In a coloured costume of your own choice/And you'll be held in high esteem/If you're seen in between/Stiffly holding umbrellas.....

A spiffing lp. It's also beautiful and zany as half a dozen Lou Reeds in the other direction. Music for tea-drinkers who don't dunk their gingernuts.