International DESTITUTION ROW


The Canadian folk-rockers who infiltrated the San Francisco ballroom scene and ended up at Monterey. By JON ‘MOJO’ MILLS.


THE PAUPERS Magic People Ellis Island Both Pacemaker CDs www.pacemaker.cd


Canada. More British than America. More American than Britain. A rather sweeping statement I know, but when it comes to ’60s music it is somewhat true. Take The Paupers, a Canadian band on the cusp of


making it worldwide under Albert Grossman’s management –a group that played The Monterey Pop festival (largely due to Grossman’s influence it must be said) and went on to release two fine albums on Verve that, as the story ends, did not make them successful. The Paupers liked a bit of folk-rock and country-rock as much as their American cousins, but when they pulled some


psychedelic moves it was all oh-so-English. Debut Magic People (1967) weaves delicate folk-rock tapestries around psychedelia,


sounding not unlike The Byrds, The Blue Things or The Beau Brummels, but ‘Tudor Impressions’ is so Celtic it sounds like it could have been written in 18th Century Cornwall. Ellis Island (’68) takes things further into psychedelia, loses some of the straight ahead pop,


embraces a harder Cream/Hendrix blues-rock tone and displays an H P Lovecraft-meets- Jefferson Airplane flavour when the band are wigging out. This fuzzier, freakier approach works well when combined with the West Coast styled harmonies and richly introspective orchestrated material, which is quite often almost Bee Gees-like. If there was one band who’d have been comfortable in Greenwich Village, the San Francisco Ballrooms and London’s Middle Earth Club it was these boys.


1970s


CAPTAIN BEEFHEART & HIS MAGIC BANDS Magneticism: The Best Of Captain Beefheart & His Magic Bands Live 72-81 Viper CD www.the-viper-label.co.uk


No need for introduction here when it comes to the Shindig! in-crowd, but here’s a quote for newcomers as appropriate as any, coming from the


liners by Viper’s in-house scribe Bernie Connor: “beautiful, strangled mass of dischord and hardcore blues which in reality had nothing to do with rock, but more to do with the avant- garde jazz ramblings of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman, smattering some already estabilished art forms in free jazz and delta blues, and twisting them and contorting them into a brand new art form, so alien that the purists just refused to see the beauty”. This is a collection of live recordings, mostly


from UK and USA, with the exception of one entry from each Toronto and Paris. All of these make pretty clear why Don Van Vliet has been considered for both one of the most important and least comprehensible recording artists in whatever you consider to be called rock ‘n’ roll. If you think that the studio recordings sound far out, these will blow your mind! Goran Obradovic


CHRIS BELL I Am The Cosmos (Deluxe Edition) Rhino 2-CD www.rhino.com


Cosmic: Chris Bell.


BLONDE ON BLONDE Rebirth Future Noise CD www.futurenoisemusic.com


Our fave Welsh progressive pop/psych group Blonde On Blonde get a welcome reissue of their follow up album to Contrasts. 1970’s


While Alex Chilton unwittingly became the curmudgeonly elder statesman of edgy, alternative rock –almost completely disowning the shimmering pop music that characterised most of Big Star’s best work –his original sparring partner and creative foil Chris Bell never enjoyed such luxuries. He died in 1978, leaving him frozen in time at some point in the mid-70s and forever in Big Star’s shadow. When these recordings first saw the light of


The Paupers enjoy lunch at Monterey.


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day in ’92 they did little to dispel that myth. Cuts like ‘Make A Scene’ and ‘I Got Kinda Lost’ (the latter also cut with Big Star before his departure in ’72) rarely deviate from the kind of sucker-punch melancholic guitar moves of his BS signature tunes ‘Feel’ and ‘Don’t Lie To Me’ and it’s not hard to imagine them snuggled in with ‘O My Soul’ and ‘Back Of A Car’, were Bell to have hung around for Radio City. Despite the addition of an entirely new


second disc of alternate versions and early outtakes, the aces here remain ‘I Am The Cosmos’ and ‘You And Your Sister’, both sides of the 45 released in ’78 just prior to his death and the only solo record to appear in his lifetime. Bell and Chilton’s harmonies and Bill Cunningham’s string arrangement on the impossibly pretty and poignant ‘You And Your Sister’ match Big Star’s best. Andy Morten


Rebirth features the dreamlike ‘Castles In The Sky’ and a number of near equals, all of which feature a sharp and tight production. This is music that has barely dated at all. Indeed ‘Heart Without A Home’ sounds more like a new psych act than an actual new psych act! This reissue also adds some rather


excellent photos of the band in their psychedelic splendour all culled from the archive. Jon ‘Mojo’ Mills


CAPTAIN BEYOND Captain Beyond/Sufficiently Breathless Raven CD www.ravenrecords.com.au


In 1971 Iron Butterfly’s bassist Lee Dorman and lead guitarist Larry ‘Rhino’ Reinhart split off and picked up Johnny’s Winter’s drummer Bobby


Caldwell and Brit vocalist Rod Evans, recently of Deep Purple. The resulting heavy metal supergroup released these two stellar albums in ‘72 and ’73, respectively. Progressive hard rock that combines


barroom guitar riffs with a jazz-based, exploratory yearning in the lyrics and overall


65


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