FBO: 'Astral Week: Thankfully Ends Prisoner-Free'

On Lou Reed's fascinating Take No Prisoners double-live LP from 1978, 'Walk on the Wild Side' fills a side of the vinyl LP, lasting nearly 17 minutes, and never getting anywhere. He starts with a diatribe about why he's no longer bored with the song, and finally makes it to the opening verse ('Holly came from Miami, FLA') then immediately interrupts himself to riff on all sorts of things -- brontasauruses, 'I do Lou Reed better than anybody,' 'enough attitude to kill every person in New Jersey' -- then finishes the first chorus and breaks out to rant again -- why Springsteen is 'groovy,' liner notes in rock criticism, name-dropping New York Times opera critics, why critics shouldn't get free tickets -- then turns into the second verse about Candy -- pausing to explain each lyric ('this is true,' 'I really miss Candy', 'go write a Bible') -- and finally when the supreme back-up singers finally start the water-in-the-desert 'doo doo-doo' refrains, he quickly cuts them off, for a four-minute, pop-culture-psychedelic ramble on how the song got made, at the same time losing the small New York audience who had played along for eight minutes, laughing and yelling back, but eventually lose interest.

It's a mesmerizing self-destruction. On full view of the stage at the (now closed) Bottom Line -- and memorialized in vinyl. It finally ends after 17 minutes, with an open-chord fade: in the end, we don't actually know how long he kept it going that night.

It reminds me, in a way, of Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, which, we're told, is one of the great albums of all time. To me it seems like listening in on a loner sprawled on a dog-food-scattered floor and wailing about his agonies, pain, lost loves and plain ol' confusion. Songs stem from tinkly acoustic guitars, often building off two chords. Most build up indiscriminately -- with flutes and strings -- sometimes six or seven minutes, apparently depending on the whim of the plump Irishman with a Florentine nose. He repeats lyrics over and over -- and the lyrics ARE frequently excellent. The band, jazz sessions players I hear, don't really know what's next -- just following as they can in a rushed, three-day recording session.

Many bond with it. FBO Observer Tom Caw recommends we all read Lester Bang's take, which is compelling. But, unlike other 1968 albums ('White Album,' Beggars Banquet), it seems like a long-since sailed ship to me. And I can't get past the overly soulful bursts from Van every third or fourth line.

FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Astral Week: Message for Kings, Na-Na-Na-Na, Hey-Hey'

Yes, it's still 'Astral Week' at the FBO, and we really are trying to sit through and say something on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks by tomorrow. Meanwhile, we couldn't resist -- after many many years -- a return to Rush's 1977, seven-song epic A Farewell to Kings.

Here, Rush matured on 2112's juvenile futuristic concept -- 'what is this? a guitar?' -- without completely abandoning the Dungeons & Dragons crowd: in particular 'Madrigal's dragon slaying, and 'Cygnus X-1: Book One's overworked black-hole itinerary.

The album doesn't always work. 'Madrigal' -- even at just 2:34 -- is unbearable, while the disappointing opening title track telegraphs the pass, by introducing the feudalistic subject with Shakespearean guitar picking on a classical guitar. But the 37-minute album did produce the band's most enduring 'chick-friendly' song -- and most accessible song between 1975's 'Fly By Night' and 1982's 'New World Man' (their only Top 40 song) -- with 'Closer to the Heart.'

It also gave us one of their most underrated epics, with gorgeous segways connecting the dots of the 11-minute 'Xanadu.' Lyrically, Neil Peart once again looks way backward for inspiration, reworking Samuel T-Dog Coleridge's hit poem from 1797 'Kubla Khan': more or less a journey for immortality in Mongolia. (Yes, it's the same Sam who directed Iron Maiden to 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner.')

'Xanadu' was Rush's first serious show-off, multi-instrumental platform -- everyone does double duty in the musical sea of synths, wood blocks, bells, tom fills, double-necked guitars syncopating accents with staccato cymbal splashes.

It starts, mercifully, vocal free for a breathless five-minute musical trip that pulls us into the domain of Mr Khan. For two minutes, we wake into a meandering landscape of tapped guitars and birdsong, before the Ontarian trio lead us into a triumphant spider-crawl, King Crimson-esque riff backed by wind effects and big Neil Peart accents and tom fills. It then erupts into an upbeat, charging, faintly 'The Song Remains the Same' riff (with Alex Lifeson's open chords and superb Geddy Lee bass lines). Much is guitar driven, yet Lifeson shows restraint in allowing no solos in the 11 minutes.

You can almost dance to 'Xanadu' till it finally winds down to Lee's vocals ('to seek the sacred river Alph'), which plod over burpy synths, then shifting into a syncopated guitar/cymbal/bass accents in a harder chorus ('from an ancient book, I took a clue!'). Most of the vocals color dream-like, slower melodies -- an area best suited to Geddy's shaky voice, which gets irritating at higher levels (like the unlistenable wails towards the end of 'Freewill').

Conjuring Mongolian emperors in an 11-minute song at the same time stop/start punk rock and coked-up disco dominated radiowaves and livehouses? Not bad.

--> Sadly, it's a song that can't be downloaded as an individual song, necessitating a full $7.99 purchase of the album on both Amazon.com and iTunes.


FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY

FBO: 'Astral Week: How the Van Morrison Interview Happened'

Last week we discussed Van Morrison's diss of failed (and non-failed) bands that had the tenacity to form in the years following 1966. We asked for an apology.

Tonight, by sheer coincidence -- a benefit from being semi-permanently based in New York City -- we met the author of the piece, The New Yorker's Ben Greenman, and asked him about how the piece was made, whether Van was a jerky as he sounded.

Greenman, who just finished a novel on a fictionalized version of Sly Stone (out in May), knows a bit of music. His favorite Stone song is an 'out of the way' 45-second piece that's 'not really a song' -- it's scary, about Sly floating or falling and looking to himself. Have to hear that.

He says that when Morrison's people contacted the New Yorker to have some sort of profile, the weekly rejected any idea of a Q&A type piece. 'Well, because we're the New Yorker, we could do that.' He and his editor came up with the idea of having him meet up at an East Village bar called Lakeside Lounge with a huge jukebox filled with 50s and 60s R&B songs -- the jukebox is on their website. Greenman picked the songs in advance -- songs he thought would get some comments from Van -- and they met.

Van's people had mentioned that they'd be documenting the whole thing -- that they are making a sort of 'short documentary' on the publicity campaign. 'At first we refused, then we let them because it wasn't that contentious of an interview.'

Greenman said he had about sixty or seventy quotes from him, but had to boil it down to a few for the 800-word piece. That he wasn't trying to diss the Beatles per se, and that he's not seeing new bands, but that 'not many 65-year-olds are watching many new bands.'

'The one about the Beatles being meaningless is the one that's gotten the most comments.'

We still want an apology.


FBO Admin
Mobile/Semi-Permanent HQ -- Brooklyn, NY