The Dark Prince inspires a very dark Bitches Brew

12/30/10

beeradvocate.com rating- A-

Dogfish Ale Bitches Brew Russian Imperial Stout- Community Beverage, Queens, NY- 25.6 oz. bomber into Pub Glass- 9.0% ABV- First batch of Dogfish Ale Bitches Brew Russian Imperial Stout brewed in conjunction with the 40th Anniversary of Mile Davis' Bitches Brew album. Bought approximately 3 months ago. My first Imperial Stout so I have no reference other than a regular stout for taste comparison. Poured super black, like motor oil or Coca Cola with no light penetrating the brew. About a fingers worth of head which receded pretty rapidly. Head was a dark, burn butterscotch color. Not much lacing. Medium bodied mouth feel, which is less than I expected with modest carbonation. Smells like dark chocolate and possibly even black licorice. After the brew warmed up a bit it smelled kind of boozy. Taste is like a rich complex stout with a definite fruity characteristic which I have never tasted in a stout before. Honey and Gesho as the bottle advertises? Definitely a possibility, especially the honey. Its a pleasant surprise. A bit of alcohol detected at the end. Not a beer I would drink regularly but certainly a well crafted "off-center" beer in tribute to an off beat , classic album. I have to say, well done.

On the turntable is Miles Davis- Bitches Brew- Recorded in 1969 for Columbia Records. I am listening to this as a counterpart/tribute to this brew. I am a fan of the album but this album needs no further discussion from me and its not exactly what I would choose to listen to on an average Thursday night. I actually spent quite a bit of time listening to both Miles Davis' acoustic and electric albums and have a majority of them on CD but my cousin lent me this LP because I didn't have it on vinyl myself. My favorite electric album is probably Dark Magus: Live At Carnegie Hall with the guitar stylings of Peter Cosey with his extremely funky, evil wah-wah guitar providing searing rhythms. Compared with alot of "hard rock" or "heavy metal" albums I have listened to this actually has a way more evil quality to it which can be unnerving. I wonder what I would have thought of this album if I first heard it as a teenager or in my early twenties as opposed to hearing it for the first time when I was about 30 yrs old. I am certain I would have liked it even more than I did at 30. Davis was searching in a way that many of his contemporaries chose not to do and it left him open to criticism. Davis had the last laugh because his electric albums have proven to be very influential for a wide variety of artists and continue to inspire to this day.


Bob Dylan and Davis were label mates on Columbia when they both managed to enrage and ostracize the more conservative elements in their audience by going "electric" in the mid to late 1960's. Especially Davis, whose career was much longer than Dylan's at this point, who was universally revered by the critics for the majority of his career and saw little if any criticism towards his various incarnations until his electric period. Where Dylan was merely taking what were essentially his songs, at the time, to a new level by adding an electric backing band Miles Davis music became fundamentally unrecognizable in comparison to his prior albums. The shift from his "cool" period and his early to mid 1960's albums, largely conceived and orchestrated with the arranging skills of Gil Evans, left most of his fans and critics unhappy.

Frank Zappa would be 70 today....RIP...aka "Guitar Notes That Irritate"

12/21/10

beeradvocate.com rating- B

Blue Point Winter Lager- Euro Market, 31 St. Astoria, NY- 12 oz. Bottle into Pub Glass- 5.5% ABV- Poured with a nice 1 1/2 finger head which dissipated pretty quickly and left a thin web of lacing on the glass. Clear reddish brown color. Nice mouth feel a little on the light side of medium but has a creaminess to it. Average carbonation. I smell malts, grapes and maybe some raisins in here. This is not a bad beer, i'd say it is very drinkable if I don't focus on the "grape" aroma which is reminding me a bit of wine. This is pretty low in the ABV but I do sense a bit of alcohol warmth from this one in a not unpleasant way. I think I like this beer an would try it on tap I definitely like it better than the Magic Hat winter lager I had last week.

On the turntable is double LP Bootleg (unofficial release) called Fred Zappaelin- Frank Zappa- Recorded in multiple venues from Europe and the USA in 1980 by Zappa and his current band of the time distributed by the Mudshark Label.



Bootleg info provided by www.lukpac.org:

Issued in December 1980 with a black & white paper insert. The original edition was 2000 copies, but a re-press of 500 copies came in a deluxe color sleeve, and another 500 copies were pressed on colored vinyl.
This boot was made from a soundboard tape stolen from Carlos Santana's luggage at a hotel in New Haven, Connecticut, where Carlos was staying after a concert at the "New Haven Coliseum" [?]. Crazy but true. (A "friend of the thief" has been in touch, reporting that he also came by some Santana tapes of the same time period, as "both Frank and Santana were touring Europe at the same time".)

Frank Zappa would have been 70 yrs old today so I am listening to this as a tribute to him. Ironically Zappa's cohort Captain Beefheart passed away at age 69 a few days ago. I have a large Zappa collection which started about 5-6 yrs ago after reading Zappa by Barry Miles which was given to me for my birthday on December 19 as a gift from my mom. I subsequently got really into Zappa through his studio albums which I mostly have on CD. I chose this bootleg instead of a studio album as a reminder of how much the music industry has changed. These type of illicit bootlegs are basically extinct today because they are unnecessary in the advent of the internet. They are an interesting indicator of the dedication to artists that fans no longer have for current day artists. To produce these bootlegs one had to actively participate in criminal activity and in the case of the Mudshark Label founder he eventually served time in prison. One can argue the fact that these bootleggers were stealing from the musicians who created this music but one also must take into account who was the audience for these bootlegs, the hardcore fans. It is fairly safe to assume that no one was going to simply buy these bootlegs and not the studio albums. Most bootleg consumers were fans so infatuated with their favorite groups or artists and were willing to buy "more" than what was commercially available through mail order and under the counter transactions in brick and mortar record stores. In the case of Zappa he openly condemned bootleggers, but I theorize, he was most unhappy with the bootleggers making money of his fans. In one case Zappa openly encouraged fans to tape record his music off the radio when he broadcast his "Lather" acetates after they became caught up in legal limbo with Warner Bros. There is something special about these bootleg LP's. In the case of this LP the cover is handmade with Xeroxed pictures and setlists and the record labels themselves are all different with individual titles. This was obviously prepared by someone who was not "in it for the money." This type of product borders on folk art in my opinion.

A few years later I read Cosmic Debris: The Collected History & Improvisations of Frank Zappa by Greg Russo and started getting hardcore into Zappa bootlegs i.e. live concert recordings via the peer sharing website zappateers.com. The live recordings were what really hooked me on Zappa especially those which included his prodigious guitar workouts enhanced by his use of a wah-wah pedal which he used in a more refined sense as a tone controller. I currently have about 125 live recordings ranging from the late sixties up until the late 1980's. In addition I acquired about 40 or so hours of interviews culled and compiled from radio stations, magazine interviews, television which are fantastic and fascinating. For about a year that is all I listened to when I got on the subway at 5:30am. My sweet spot for Zappa is 1969-1974 give or take a year or two.

The Cosmic Debris book really opened my eyes to the culture and mythology surrounding Zappa's life and work. Conceptual Continuity, Los Angeles, Doo Wop, Stravinsky and Edgar Varese were some of the influences and ideas described in the book, as well as analysis of his studio albums, which helped me understand Zappa more than I would have. The vast amount of recorded output and the array of themes explored over the course of his lifetime as a musician is hard to get your head around at first especially when you are starting from scratch. I encountered a similar problem when I first started listening to John Coltrane. Not only was I a complete novice as far as jazz experience goes but his musical phases were very different. From his early years as a sideman to the avante garde of his Impulse! catalog I was pretty lost on where to begin and it took me a while to fully appreciate his immense catalog. I think Zappa is genuinely misunderstood by the general public and one of the few true geniuses in rock n' roll. That is not to say I agree with all his methods or opinions because he actually spent alot of time disparaging artists that I enjoy.

"Well, the conceptual continuity is this: everything, even this interview, is part of what I do for, let's call it, my entertainment work. And there's a big difference between sitting here and talking about this kind of stuff, and writing a song like 'Titties and Beer'. But as far as I'm concerned, it's all part of the same continuity. It's all one piece. It all relates in some weird way back to the focal point of what's going on." — Frank Zappa, Interview by Bob Marshall, October 22, 1988.

provided from wiki.killuglyradio.com

I am often asking myself the question."Does humor belong in music?" which in fact Zappa named one of his live compilation albums. In some ways it does and some ways it doesn't. Minstrel show artists, hillbilly singers and blues guys incorporated comic elements in their music. The Beastie Boys certainly included humor in there music. After listening to Paul's Boutique for the last few days I was wondering if there was any way to apply the idea of "conceptual continuity" to their work. Primus, a direct descendant of Zappa, was a really funny group lyrically and musically. Winonna's Big Brown Beaver, Nature Boy and Those Damned Blue Collar Tweaker's to name a few songs used to make me and my friends laugh out loud. Country and Western and R&B artists from the beginning of the genres all had comical songs in their repertoire. Music certainly does take itself to seriously sometimes. Music also is unintentionally funny. Check out Will Smith's daughters single "Whip My Hair Around". It would be fun to see what Zappa thought of that song. Howard Stern certainly had some fun with it on his show a few weeks back.

"What's cooler than getting sued by the Beatles?" quote from Mike D. of the Beastie Boys

12/16/10

beeradvocate.com rating- B

Magic Hat Howl Winter Lager- Key Food, Forest Hills Queens-12oz bottle into Brandy Snifter- 4.6% ABV- Poured a dark brown with hints of red around the edges when held to the light. Pretty nice dense head yellowish in color. Medium carbonation with a medium to light mouthfeel. Poured like a stout but has more of a lager feel in the mouth. Taste and aroma have bits of coffee and dark chocolate. This was a good beer but I would like less of a lager feel, with more body in the mouth. Also the coffee qualities make this a beer I wouldn't really reach for under normal circumstances but not bad for a winter night which this is designed for. Was a little more pleasant when it warmed up a bit.

On the turntable is Paul’s Boutique- Beastie Boys- Released by Capitol Records in 1989- I looked up on the wall at one of my regular record stores buying some LP's to give as gifts and there it was! I was momentarily speechless, I had some reservation this may have been a reissue when I first saw it. But upon further inspection it proved to be the real deal, a first pressing Paul’s Boutique LP by the Beastie Boys. This was definitely a cool find and for under $20 it was no doubt a steal. I don't really understand why it was less than $20 condition wise the record had no real imperfections but there was some schmegma on the sleeve but nothing that really took away from its presentation. I have never seen this record in any store or at any show and even on Ebay I haven’t seen it to many times for a reasonable price. The Twentieth Anniversary reissue on LP and CD were out two years ago and I actually bought the CD (which was sadly lack in extras, but I needed a new copy anyway. This record unfortunately will not be staying in my collection it is definitely going to be gifted to my friend who gave me my first record player and records and to my knowledge does not have an original pressing of this LP despite having all the other original Beastie Boys LP’s. However since it is temporarily in my possession I figured why not do a blog about it since I don't expect to see this one again anytime soon.




This is record without much comparison. It could have been the Sgt. Pepper’s of my generation, but not enough people heard it the first time around. After the runaway success of Licensed To Ill the Beastie Boys went west and landed in Los Angeles and with the help of the production team known as the Dust Brothers brewed up this masterpiece of modern music. Dense layers of samples and swinging lyrics created an unparalleled record that begs to be listened to from beginning to end. With one song blending into the next sometimes seamlessly occasionally abruptly these songs were connected through a series of samples, guitar riffs, sound effects (i.e. drumbreaks, bonghits, etc.) and in one instance Johnny Cash. When I first heard this record it was shortly before Check Your Head was issued in 1992 and I was a bit taken a back. I certainly had known of the Beastie Boys from Licensed to Ill as a grade school kid but I didn't buy this album till my friend showed it to me in the spring of 1992. I have to say it took me a few listens to really get my head around it since I had never heard anything like it before. But soon enough Egg Man, High Plains Drifter and Looking Down The Barrel of A Gun captured my attention and I was hooked. Alot of the cultural references were a bit lost on me as a 17 year old and the music sampled therein was for the most part foreign to me. Frankly I don't know if I could have named any of the songs or the artists who sung them when I first heard this album. In the end it didn't matter, it was music that captured my imagination and probably in someway steered me towards a life in New York City. The Beastie Boys are also in part responsible for me becoming a bit of a record/music fiend. I always loved music but the diversity that was going on on the Beastie Boys records really opened my ears to the variety of music out there. The Beastie Boys also don't get enough credit for their "musical" influence on a whole generation of music fans who were unwittingly exposed to a wide range of music and artists who had been largely ignored in the era of MTV and corporate radio. Some of my favorite records which I found early on when I started buying records were records sampled by the Beastie Boys and I didn't know it until I heard them (i.e. Johnny Hammond, Sly Stone to name a few). This was in the days before the internet. Now all their samples are compiled on websites, a good one being, for those interested is http://miscreant-productions.blogspot.com. I love their lyrics but more importantly I loved the music that supported the lyrics. Not just the heavy stuff, which I was accustomed to, like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin but more unfamiliar genres like jazz, funk and dare I say the Eagles. The only way to find some of that music at the time was to go out and look for the records which I did, and restlessly in a sense, continue to do.

If only Elvis could have played "Freeborn Man" circa 1970...

"Freeborn Man" MP3



beeradvocate.com rating- A-

Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale- Community Beverage, Queens, NY- 24 OZ. bomber into Pub Glass- 6.8% ABV- Yes another Sierra Beer but it is the winter version of their Celebration Ale and it was on sale for $3 and change at my local store so I decided to try it. Poured a hazy orange with reddish highlights. Again like the last Sierra beer this has a nice rich frothy head, cratered with good retention. Very piney aroma, damn, it reminds me of one of those pine tree air fresheners. Wow, I don't think I've ever had a beer so piney, even last beer weeks was not as strong as this. Pretty nice mouth feel, on the lighter side of medium bodied. Moderate carbonation. Taste, is well, piney and bitter and a tad malty. Not as well balanced as the previous week's beer and I don't think this is for me. But I do get a bit more alcohol warmth from this which is nice on a cold night like tonight. I would have preferred some more spices in this to round out the pine qualities.

On the turntable is Games People Play/ These Are Not My People- Freddy Weller- Recorded in 1969 for Columbia presumably in California but the jacket does not indicate. This record is a lesson in digging in the crates. When you go out record shopping any respectable record store there should be crates of cheap records on the floor, at least that is my opinion. Problem is I don't always feel like getting down on my knees and going through the effort of digging through the dregs in the hopes of finding at least one gem. Sometimes though you just suck it up and do it. Recently I was crouched underneath some large shelves of records digging through hundreds of records when I came across the above record. I recognized the name Freddy Weller and had a faint suspicion Clarence White had played with him at some point but wasn't sure when or on which record. I turned over the back and this is what I saw:



Jackpot!!! Clarence White (of the Byrds) on guitar, Red Rhodes on steel guitar and Glen D. Hardin on Piano. I was psyched and for $2 I was even more happy. This is what digging is all about and keeps me going because you really never know what you will find and when you find something like this in an unexpected place it definitely gets your blood pumping. The fact that Clarence White was on this record was good enough. The realization one of my favorite steel guitar players was on here and one of my new favorite musicians Glen Hardin from Elvis Presley's TCB band was really cool. I got hip to Glen Hardin after watching That's The Way It Is the concert film made about Elvis' first shows in Las Vegas and subsequently hunting down bootlegs of shows from that period. He's a great piano player and in addition to Elvis has played on classic albums with Merle haggard, Emmylou Harris and others. Where did these guys find the time. Red Rhodes was a West Coast based steel guitar player. Additionally he developed a guitar pickup called the Velvet Hammer used by Clarence White, James Burton and even Joan Jett. He was a country player no doubt but hooked with the country rock crowd which was brewing up in Los Angeles in the late sixties through the mid seventies. Some excellent examples of his playing can be found on former Monkee Mike Nesmith's First National Band records, Bert Jansch's L.A. Turnaround LP recently reissued on CD as well as dozens of others. I really like his style of steel playing which is versatile in its elegance, percussive attack and phrasing. It has elements shared with Hawaiian steel guitar where the instrument developed but also has ethereal qualities, reminiscent of Sneaky Pete Kleinow. These ethereal qualities are not always found in country players but are really evident in the First National Band recordings and with Bert Jansch and probably helped Rhodes crossover to less traditional artists.

As for Freddy Weller, the subject of the post to begin with, he was a one time member of Paul Revere and the Raiders a slightly ill conceived mid sixties "garage rock" group who actually dressed as Revolutionary War era soldiers. The music however was popular and in the vein of the British invasion groups popular at the time. From videos I have seen on youtube Mr. Weller was an accomplished guitar player and a fine singer as evidenced on this album. This album has some excellent guitar and steel guitar breaks on it. The song Birmingham has some particularly fleet fingered runs which compliment one other in a wiry haze. A smoking version of Freeborn Man was included, a song written by Keith Allison and Mark Lindsay from Paul Revere and the Raiders, and could have been a perfect song for Elvis Presley circa 1970-1972 with the TCB Band.