Kendra Smith - Alle Morgens Parties

I'm still here.

I recently got a request to re-up Kendra Smith's German language version of "All Tomorrow's Parties," which I originally posted long ago. It's worth hearing again, but I thought I would also take the opportunity to re-record the track, and apply some of what I've learned about digitizing vinyl in between time. This was taken from a flexi disc given away with The BOB Magazine. It's never going to sound like the kind of recording audiophiles use to demo interconnect cables, but I think it sounds a lot better than the first time I did it. (Long time readers who downloaded this back in 2006, let me know what you think).

I don't have a lot to add to what I said originally, which wasn't much to begin with. It's uncanny how fully Kendra Smith and Steve Wynn were channeling The Velvet Underground when they recorded this track back in 1981. If I didn't already know better and someone told me this was an alternate take from the Velvets' session that produced the Norman Dolph acetate, I would believe it. Slavish imitation? Sure, but also great.

I'd like to apologize to my regular readers for not posting in a while. I've been suffering from a case of what might charitably be called writer's block. But I'm going to keep posting, if not necessarily at the rapid pace I once did.

Alle Morgens Parties (click to download)

Opal - Hear The Wind Blow

It's a fine line between dreamy and narcoleptic.

Maybe it's the difference between Hope Seconal Sandoval and Kendra Smith's voices, but while I always found Opal's music beautiful and hypnotic, I thought Mazzy Star (essentially the same band with a different singer) were pretty dull.

Actually, truth be told, Opal's lone LP, Happy Nightmare Baby, was a little too "weird scenes inside the goldmine" for my taste. It has some good tracks to be sure, but much of it meanders. In my opinion, the band's really killer stuff can be found on the Early Recordings LP that was released by Rough Trade after they broke up. Some of the key tracks on the album had previously been released on singles and EPs, but they were all new to me when the LP was released in 1989.

I recently picked up a couple used Mazzy Star CDs (unlike Opal's albums, which are rarer than hen's teeth, Mazzy Star CDs can be found cheap). I thought I might find more about them to appreciate now. Not really. "Fade Into You" and "Five String Serenade" are nice enough, but I still find them hard to take on the whole. Something about their music brings the lingering stench of patchouli and incense to my mind. Those are smells I would prefer to forget. I could never stand those and other odors associated with hippies, which is one of many reasons I was never a Deadhead. That's just not my trip, man.

But for some reason, despite being concocted from the same essential ingredients, Opal are a different story for me. The lovely "Hear The Wind Blow" was covered to great effect by Dean & Britta, and was originally released as a bonus-track on the CD issue of Early Recordings. I have feeling there are a lot more potential "bonus-tracks" that could have been included. Hopefully on some future reissue they will be.

Rainy Day

I'll be the first to admit that not everything I feature here is some lost masterpiece. And I don't know if this 1984 album by the one-off "Paisley Underground" super-group Rainy Day is a masterpiece either. Masterpiece seems like too pompous a word to describe something so unaffected and charming.

Rainy Day was a project headed by David Roback (Rain Parade, Opal) with contributions from Kendra Smith (Dream Syndicate, Opal), Michael Quercio (The Three O'Clock), Susanna Hoffs (The Bangles) and other Paisley Underground luminaries. Much like the more recent Hoffs/Matthew Sweet collaboration, Under The Covers, it's an unpretentious, heartfelt tribute to the music of the 60s that had the most obvious impact on these musicians. Buffalo Springfield, The Velvet Underground, The Byrds, The Beach Boys, The Who, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix and Big Star are all covered.

As Kendra Smith's minimalist cover art suggests, in creating this album the group seems to have followed Einstein's dictum that "things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler." Most of the songs sound like they were done in one take, the arrangements are sparse, and the instrumentation is mostly acoustic. But a few subtle touches keep things from getting too simple: some violin or viola by Will Glenn on "I'll Keep It With Mine," "John Riley," and "Holacaust," some reverb around the vocals on "Flying On The Ground Is Wrong." Only the lengthy cover of Hendrix's "Rainy Day, Dream Away" that ends the album falls relatively flat.

It's appropriate that Buffalo Springfield would get two tracks dedicated to them, because it's clear they were a huge influence on the Paisley Underground scene in general, and on Roback in particular. I've been mesmerized by "Flying On The Ground Is Wrong" since I first heard Buffalo Springfield's version on the radio when I was in high school. It's possible I find the song intriguing because I've never been certain precisely what it is about. Is it a love song? A drug song? It's probably both, and possibly neither. But both the lyrics and the melody are haunting and evocative, and Kendra Smith brings those qualities to the fore with her languid vocals. "On Your Way Home" is the simplest song on the album, with just Roback accompanying his vocals on acoustic guitar. But the simplicity allows the beauty of the melody to shine through in a way that it doesn't on the possibly over-arranged original version from Last Time Around. Maybe masterpiece is not too pompous to describe this low-key gem of an album after all.

Judging by the prices the CD fetches, Rainy Day is crying out for a proper reissue. Dare we hope for bonus tracks, or might they break the album's considerable spell?

Sky "Sunlight" Saxon

While Roky Erickson is enjoying some rightly deserved revitalization in the wake of the 2005 career spanning documentary You're Gonna Miss Me, playing to capacity crowds at London's Royal Festival Hall and reportedly working with ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons on a new record, another 60s psychedelic pioneer has yet to enjoy such renewed fame.

Sky Saxon's contributions to garage rock and psychedelia are arguably just as important and influential as his Texas counterpart, and his band The Seeds produced some great albums from the psychedelic era. Singles such as "Can’t Seem to Make You Mine", "Mr. Farmer" and the classic "Pushin’ Too Hard" combined garage punk with a slightly off kilter and at times almost childlike sound that distinguished them from the typical 1966 fare. Keyboardist Daryl Hooper played a huge role in creating their unique sound as well, which favored the use of organ over an electric bass, which would be part of the formula that would propel another L.A. act--The Doors--up the charts during the same time period.

Much of this period of The Seeds career has been well documented. However, not much attention has been given to Saxon's post-Seeds career, including his time in the Ya Ho Wha 13 music collective during the 70s, most likely due to the absence of a cohesive story line. The Ya Ho Wha 13 have garnered considerable interest as of late and are now regarded by some as the greatest American psychedelic band that just so happened to go virtually unacknowledged during their time. I suppose stranger things have happened.

For those interested in the Father Yod story, you could check out this informative site here or this excellent interview here or go whole hog, no, sorry whole vegetable and dive right into the massive 13 disc document of the entire Ya Ho Wha recorded output from the Japanese label Captain Tripp. It's not entirely clear which of these recordings Sky Saxon appears on but he did lead the Ya Ho Wha 13 on the album Golden Sunrise after leader Father Yod passed away following a hang gliding accident. There is also a book and a DVD documentary on the 140+ member family, which looks interesting, to say the least.

This is the period that found Sky adding "Sunlight" to his name, but it's just one more chapter in the career of Richard Marsh, which began in the early 60s. He continued recording throughout the 80s and 90s, and recently released a new record offering fans distribution rights for a select number of CDs, so long as they create the artwork, and promise NOT to use jewel cases. I’m down with that.

The paisley underground of the 80s saw Sky emerge on the L.A. scene once again and recording with some of the mainstay groups of the time such as The Dream Syndicate, The Church, The Three O'Clock, The Rain Parade and The Plimsouls. He recorded a live album with members of Redd Kross and The Primates for the Voxx label called Private Party. One of my all time favorite psychedelic tracks by any artist has to be "The Flower Lady and Her Assistant" from the 1967 LP Future (which I remember made Rick Rubin’s top 10 list years ago) and here is covered by the band with plenty of overdriven guitars and Sky's impassioned vocals. It takes just three lines before he starts improvising and singing about the grim reaper and something or other that’s in 126 countries. "I smell the perfuuuahhhhoooohhh...." Yeah.

Masters of Psychedelia released on New Rose in 1985 seems to be from sessions dating from an earlier period, but there's just not much information available on this record. "Silver Leaves" is the standout track for me, even though I freely admit that I'm not sure exactly what he's singing about. But that doesn't stop it from being a great slice psychedelia. Listen and see if silver leaves are falling down where you live.

And hey, how about a Sky Sunlight Saxon documentary already?

Opal - Happy Nightmare Baby

I've kind of danced around posting something by Opal, having featured a couple things by Kendra Smith, and a cover of "Fell From the Sun" by The Pale Saints. Despite a slender--and it has to be said, spotty--discography, Opal is a band that casts a long shadow due to the exceptionally high quality of their good material. Nothing by the band is in print at the moment.

David Roback (formerly of The Rain Parade) and Kendra Smith (formerly of The Dream Syndicate) and drummer Keith Mitchell formed Clay Allison and released the spectacular single "Fell From The Sun" in 1983. The band soon changed its name to Opal and released two EPs, before releasing their sole LP, Happy Nightmare Baby on the SST label in 1987. Rough Trade later compiled the contents of the single and EPs on the Early Recordings LP.

Happy Nightmare Baby is a somewhat uneven album compared to the uniformly excellent material the group released previous to it. The album kicks off with a nice T-Rex tribute, "Rocket Machine," but things quickly get a little too "weird scenes inside the goldmine" for my taste on the awful second track, "Magick Power." Lyrics like "I'm a vampire, so is she" may have some appeal to Anne Rice fans, but I find their conjunction with the Ray Manzarek styled organ playing extremely off-putting. With such a wretched second track the temptation to lift the needle from the groove before the third track even starts is strong.

It would be unfortunate to do that however, because despite the slightly too-evident Doors influence that pervades the album, most of the rest of it is quite good. Especially strong is the title tune, "Happy Nightmare Baby," a psychedelic update of the Appalachian murder ballad. The song brings to mind such traditional fare as "Knoxville Girl" with a woman tripping on LSD as the deranged protagonist.

Kendra Smith left the band and recommended Hope Sandoval as her replacement, and the band either broke up or changed its name to Mazzy Star depending on how you look at it. And just as David St. Hubbins once observed that there is "a fine line between stupid and clever," Mazzy Star proved there is a fine line between drowsy and narcoleptic.

Died Pretty

Here is a band that I really lost track of. A little research indicates that they only recently broke up, but I mostly stopped following them after their first album. I'm not sure why honestly. When Free Dirt was first released in 1986 it seemed similar what was coming out of the so-called "Paisley Undergroud" in California, although I think Died Pretty were a bit less blatantly revisionist. I liked this album a lot at the time, but I never bought another one by the band.

This is the lead off track from Free Dirt, and I think it holds up quite nicely against similar retro-flavored indie music from that era. So does most of the rest of the album.

All Tomorrow's Parties (In German)

German language appreciation week concludes with this version of "All Tomorrow's Parties" recorded by Kendra Smith with Steve Wynn back in 1981. German is such a natural choice for this song it makes you wonder why Lou Reed didn't think to have Nico sing an alternate version in German. German also comes naturally to Smith because she spent part of her childhood in Germany. This was recorded around the same time as the sessions for the first Dream Syndicate EP. It was probably a good idea not to release it at the time as the band was being obvious enough about its primary influence without actually covering them.

The Spinning Wig Hats

When I first heard this song on a flexi 7" that came free with a 1986 issue of The BOB Magazine, I thought The Spinning Wig Hats were a real band. I had no idea this was actually The Long Ryders in disguise due to contractual issues. I also had no idea this was a Flamin' Groovies cover. Anyway, it's really nice. Long ride the Spinning Wig Hats!

The Dream Syndicate

I vividly remember the first time I heard the Dream Syndicate. It was junior year in High School and a buddy and I had driven 45 minutes to visit a mall where Bert and Ernie were appearing (yeah, don't ask). My buddy bought a cassette tape of The Days of Wine and Roses and we played it on the ride back. The music blew me away. Sure it was obviously derivative, but here was a band making the kind of music I really liked in the here and now instead of in some far off time before I was born. And it beat the heck out of Starship or whatever was getting played on the radio at that point in time.

Rhino released an expanded edition of the The Days of Wine and Roses with their first EP included as a bonus. This is a live version of a song that originally appeared on the EP. It's taken from a Rough Trade 12" of "Tell Me When It's Over." It's a quieter, but no less intense, version of "Some Kinda Itch."

Kendra Smith

Kendra Smith is probably best known as a founding member of the Dream Syndicate and as the voice behind Opal. In 1992, five years after the release Opal's last album, a cryptically packaged 10" EP of mysteriously beautiful songs called Kendra Smith Presents The Guild of Temporal Adventurers seemed to magically appear and quickly disappear from a select few record stores. A better distributed full length on 4AD, the appropriately titled Five Ways of Disappearing, followed in 1995. Since that release, to my knowledge, there has been no new music from Kendra Smith, and that's a shame. It's also a shame that both Opal albums and this EP are out-of-print and difficult to find.

"Wheel of the Law" is one of my favorite songs from the 1992 EP. Jonah Corey sings on this cut with Kendra.