Love and Surgery: Victor Lovera sampler

I tried to pare this down, I really did, but it couldn't be done with a clean conscience. So here you have a 10-song sampler of the work of Victor Lovera, a Nashville-based songwriter and muse/sometime creative partner of R. Stevie Moore, who, as anybody who is familiar with this WEBPAGE or its author will know, is by far my favourite one-man musical tornado.
Lovera was, from the evidence on this Moore-compiled double album of his songs, an arch-druid of mostly contemplative and personal minor-chord songs; at least in his later recordings chronicled here - he began with Moore in possibly Nashville's only hard rock/glam/Zappa-influenced group Ethos and could do a mean power pop.
I have never truly been a connoisseur of singer-songwriters, so it takes something really special to get me hooked (here the awkward, uninformed attempt at musical analysis); and Victor had a great ear for a satisfying chord change and a calming voice, paired with a feel for classic, universal lovesong lyrics and, yes, a goddamned sense of humour.

His more playful uptempo numbers are good fun, whipping out the assisted high harmonies, but for me these home recordings will always recall a sense of kinship, sorrow and mystery; seen, as Lovera is by the limited Youtube audience, as a disheveled and peripheral figure in the RSM lifelense - a streaming artistic audiovisual feed of sorts stretching back some 35 years. This feeling can be summarised neatly in the multi-part camcorder document of Lovera's visit to Moore's New Jersey home in 1991 - it was the song 'Gleason', below, which first caught my attention.

I believe that these days, amongst all the web-paradigms, they'd call this user-generated content. But there is something sincere and candid in the almost unselfconscious home tapes of the pre-spiderwebs generations.
Lovera's maudlin demeanour, which I am speculatively romanticizing, is no doubt partially explained by the unfortunate fact that he was a sufferer from Crohn's disease, which tragically claimed his life in '98. In place of any sense of injustice at the non-exposure of thousands of such worthy artists (LoveraMoore foremost), I merely count myself fortunate to have encountered these people and their music in my virtual travels. Could VicLo ever have imagined that people as far flung as the grey skies of Norwich UK would be shuffling around with his songs on their iSplod on an autumn's day?

The songs included are taken from 'Love Lovera, Last Victor', available for $$$coppage here and only here (near the bottom). They are mostly home recordings from the mid-80s to the mid-90s. Amongst them, 'It Sparkles' is 1996's latter-day classic (RSM rearrangement here); 'Jackie' reminds me of the intro to Love's 'Laughing Stock'... what can I say about the rest, they are just heart-rending and whimsical songs by a ''real down-to-earth cat''. Enjoy!

http://www.mediafire.com/?1s1h6goxwo9m7ji

Additional and essential material

Mice paces:

http://www.myspace.com/victorlovera (links through to dozens more)

http://www.myspace.com/victorlovera2

http://www.myspace.com/stethos Ethos (Lovera & Moore)

The compilation sampled here constitutes just a small part of Victor's output; he was in many other bands and it's all chronicled and sold through Steviehub. Here is the main page from which you can navigate through a plethora of info http://www.angelfire.com/nj2/cdrsmclub/3/vl/victor1.html

Can’t recommend this enough, one of those real delights you'd rarely unearth on purpose. The compilation consists of recordings from the 1930s golden age of rebetika/rembetika - urban underground music. This was the music disaffected Greek refugees from Asia Minor brought back with them, and boy… True to its origins, the Byzantine modes and unresolved structures give the style a strong Middle Eastern feel, but that doesn’t really cover it. The musicianship is impressive, intricate, often deceptively simple, and it still feels very Balkan, i.e. wistful as a troupe of wand'ring gypsies. These songs are ethereal when excised from worldly distractions and, as it turns out, made for stoners by stoners; which goes some way to explaining the disorientating side effects - even by today’s 'ethnic music' standards, where obscure and alien sounds issued from the dusty vaults are a dime a dozen.

Rebetiko is a folk style, and thus the tracks range from what I am informed are laments of woe to vital celebrations that make you want to dance badly, smash a few plates and drink copiously at a Mediterranean wedding reception... Ironically, my Greek ladyfriend hates it (too Turkish). She adds: ''rembetika originates from the verb 'remvazo', which means be lost in thoughts/absent-minded''. How apt!

Opa!

Below is a stonking BBC documentary on rebetiko, vintage: 1988.

Янка Дягилева 'Стыд и срам' (1991)

Link

The definition of a 'lost' classic. Russian 'punk poet' Yanka Dyagileva's sorrow is beautiful and heartbreaking. The dissonant rumblings of cheap electric guitar introduced here on some tracks makes this, like all 'final statements', prophetically unhinged and disturbing. The foreknowledge of her spiralling depression, alcoholism and the increasing bleakness of her lyrics haunt the listener throughout.

This short album is bookended by painful exorcisms, 'Выше ноги от земли' and 'Придет вода'; both are lengthy songs with more than one passage, and both transmit an indescribable angst (especially if you don't speak Russian), although these titles should give you some idea: 'The Water Is Coming', 'Higher Than My Feet Above the Ground', 'Of Devils'...
Cracked lullabies, a recurring broken music box and an endearingly shambolic delivery reflect an innocence lost, never to be regained, and the sort of fatalistic, self-destructive philosophy that permeates the art of those under the Mighty Red Boot. We are even treated to a minute or so of Yanka's *swoon* spoken word and *gasp* an organ solo!

The title translates as Styd i Sram, or Shame and Reproach, and is Yanka's final self-released record before her suicide in Siberia, in 1991, within months of recording these songs.
In Soviet Russia you were simply not allowed access to studio facilities unless you were bland, state-authorised un-music. Yanka's vagrant lifestyle, travelling around Russia in collectives playing to the counterculture crowd, was the only means by which a dissenting artist could make themselves heard - at grassroots level. As such the Russian political folk underground was largely inspired by Bob Dylan and other Western minstrels, as well as rock 'n' roll and other impassioned forms of music that were frowned upon. Indeed, many of Yanka's contemporaries faced arrest without trial (and in some cases even torture) for their stance.

To those in the know, Стыд и срам is a punk-folk classic, although parallels could be drawn with the concurrent grunge and lo-fi scenes emerging in America. However none of those artists knew anything of the true tyranny, cultural suppression and hardship that Yanka did; and the melodies bear no resemblence to anything Western.

It's such a shame there has been no comprehensive translation of this bohemian heroine's lyricbook, as the folk-poet element is lost on non-Russian speakers... But if you are interested there are dribs and drabs of information, and all her home-recorded albums and bootlegs are free to download here: http://store.yanka.lenin.ru/mp3/Prodano!_89/

Shout to Proskynesis for introducing me to this a while ago.

Groundhogs 'Thank Christ For the Bomb' (1970)

I say this often, but this time I've really got something special for yuz.
Once upon a time, albums like this got to number 9 in the pop charts. I suspect it had something to do with the fading 60's counterculture - that era of cultural identity crisis, political activism and constant fear of nuclear holocaust... And the stoned white-blues pretenders that helped to herald heavy metal, of course.
But Cream and Led Zeppelin this ain't, in fact Groundhogs were in a league of their own. Aside from the best album cover/title ever for what is first and foremost a leftist, anti-war concept album, stylistically the band were carving their own niche with this record which they would further explore on their next two albums Split and Who Will Save the World?. This very special sound falls somewhere between prog rock, hard rock, psychedelia and an advanced strain of blues, all delivered with the kind of raw production that (combined with the imagery in their artwork) no doubt played a large part in the Groundhogs being looked on today as somewhat 'proto-punk' - for their acknowledged influence on many first generation UK punk luminaries in this decade. A young Mark E. Smith was particularly smitten, and the Fall have covered the first track here 'Strangetown' (hear below), as well as 'Junkman' from the subsequent LP.

^sound quality's better in upload

So Thank Christ was a turning point for Tony McPhee (jaw-dropping guitar, vox) and co; having been a semi-successful blues band in various forms since '66 and earned their stripes, they were going down a path nairy travelled, opposed the cheesy machismo and studied wankology of their peers. Perhaps this was to their detriment financially (McPhee is conspicuously lacking in phoney Hall of Fame tokens of commercial achievement, when he should be remembered as one of the greats), but ultimately to those in the know, the classic run of albums speak for themselves as some of the most remarkably fresh and emotionally-charged rock albums you'll come across. At their best Groundhogs are not clawing to capture the blues with over-acted guitar solos; a world-weary fatigue just emanates naturally from the songs and playing technique, especially on this album.
I've got time for the rest somewhere, don't get me wrong, but when you hear Groundhogs you'll just wonder what those other groups were playing at...

bandages

the Seatbelts 'Cowboy Bebop' (1998)

Barmy genius OST to what is universally regarded as the best anime of all time and an awe-inspiring, big band jazz eclecto-workout. The Seatbelts were assembled by composer Yoko Kanno to perform and tour this much-loved soundtrack, which is a sublime retrospective of various pre-'65 jazz trends and much more besides. From the big city blues of 'Cosmos' and the Blade Runner-in-Africa synths of 'Space Lion'; to the ostentatious spectaculars 'Tank!' and 'Rush' - there is something for every palette... especially if you dig Charles Mingus. And be sure to hear each song out, they are prone to switching genre mid-jam. Has a big band ever been put through it's paces so much as the Seatbelts?
The ever-critical users of RYM have given it a 4.16 average out of 5 (that's in the top flight of popular votes), putting 'Cowboy Bebop' in eighth place for top albums of 1998. Behind...urgh... Neutral Milk Hotel? I never said they were a tasteful bunch...
As testified by many strangers to the anime show (watch it), the album is an easygoing and accesible standalone classic; but fans of show will also revel in the déjà vu and memories of the show - indubitably to be butchered and flogged for $$ in 2011 of course!

It's all a dream...

Skip James - Complete Recorded Works (1931)

Taken from my dodgy scan of the liner notes:

''Nehemiah Skip James was born in 1902, and raised on the Woodbine Plantation near Bentonia, Mississippi. He became interested in music around 1909, after hearing Green McCloud playing Drunken Spree on the fiddle, backed by guitarists Henry Stuckey and Rich Griffith.
After World War 1, Stuckey and James, together with Jack Owens, developed the Bentonia style. In France, Stuckey had learned an open E minor tuning from some black soldiers (who he believed were Bahamians), and this tuning, picked with three fingers in complex patterns, became the basis of the guitar pieces Skip was to record in 1931. Only Drunken Spree, pattern picked in A, and Special Rider Blues, in open G, are exceptions, and for all its charm, there is a great gulf between Drunken Spree, basically a vocal tune plus accompaniment, and the tightly knit pieces, for voice and guitar are equal expressive partners, that James composed in the new style. In the early 20's, he took up a hobo's life, meeting a whorehouse piano player named Will Crabtree in Arkansas, learning a good deal of piano technique from him. In 1931, James auditioned for H.C. Speir, Paramount's Mississippi talent scout, and was despatched to Grafton, Wisconsin on a two year contract which he hoped would eventually free him from manual work. (Paramount shortly went broke during the Depression, and Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues, composed at the session, became personal as well as topical).

Seldom can there be seen a more impressive start to a recording career than Devil Got My Woman, a seamless pattern of counter-tenor voice and eerie, hollow guitar, each taking up and embellishing the other, to form perhaps the single most poignant blues about failed relationships between men and women.
On Devil, as on most of his songs, James achieved an unrivalled unity between the content of the words and the sounds of the music to which they are set. The generally dour, pessimistic mood was at one with James' own misanthropic philosophy; even the spirituals don't seem very consolatory, and the blues seem intended rather to display and justify James' anger and sorrow than to provide a purgation of them. His guitar playing, always remarkable, reaches a summit of musicianship on I'm So Glad, a lyrically insignificant song used as the basis for a display of sensationally fast and accurate fingerpicking; his thumbwork on the bass strings is especially noteworthy.''

^ I chose this as it will probably be his most familiar tune today, ever since it's
appearance on a certain Coen brothers film, the popular soundtrack to which
revived public interest in bluegrass .

''Just as sensational and even more individual, is James' piano playing which is like no other on record. Staccato and percussive, it functions, like his guitar work, as a response to and elaboration of his vocal lines. Sometimes he contributes additional percussion by stomping on a board placed in front of the piano; the frequent independence of this rhythm from that laid down on the keys will repay attention, and is another indication of James' mastery, alike of musical ideas and their execution. 22-20 Blues, made up in the studio, contains one of the most remarkable piano breaks in blues, with spectacular glissandi, and his transformation of Leroy Carr's How Long How Long into a manic buckdance is almost as extraordinary.

It's not surprising that a musician as individual as Skip James had little stylistic influence on others. Robert Johnson increased the 22-20s calibre to 32-20, and Johnny Temple and Joe McCoy also made covers of songs by him; but their versions owe little to the originals beyond the words. Skip James was simply too much of an individual, too much of a genius, to be easily copied. Relocated in the 60's after years of preaching, strip mining and farmwork, he made a short comeback, dying in 1969. He still retained much of his talent, and all of his suspicion, both of the rest of mankind and of what he called the 'music racket'; but he never equalled the astonishing performances he had recorded in 1931.''

Chris Smith, 1990

Hard
Cheddar

Skip James - Vcls, guitar, piano, foot-tapping
All songs by James, except Hard-Luck Child by unknown