{"id":2268,"date":"2021-06-19T05:06:15","date_gmt":"2021-06-19T05:06:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/joeviglione.com\/?p=2268"},"modified":"2021-06-19T05:17:52","modified_gmt":"2021-06-19T05:17:52","slug":"101-am-esoteric-diary-for-saturday-june-19th","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/?p=2268","title":{"rendered":"1:01 am Esoteric Diary for Saturday June 19th"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I promise you the plethora of record albums on this site day after day after day are purely from the subconscious. It wasn’t my intent to have pages and pages of vinyl LP reviews, they just started proliferating again; that’s just a big part of my life so here it is:<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

You might say “this guy’s totally insane” but I did get a good deal for about $6.50 tonight for a bunch more vinyl – Petula Clark, Bette Midler, Olivia Newton John, Al Martino (with some interesting liner notes,) too good to pass up….excuse me as I mix drinks….my icewater and Cranberry juice at 1:08 am…<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

…Not only do I OWN vinyl records, I review them as well! Found my old Manhole CD\/LP review (I reviewed it off the vinyl all those years ago) …so many eBay dealers using my thoughts on the music!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\nProduct Description<\/strong>
\nOriginally released on Grunt Records.
Personnel includes: Grace Slick, Paul Kantner, David Crosby, Pete Sears, Jack Casady, John Barbata, David Freiberg, Gary Duncan.
Producers includes: Paul Kantner.
Liner Note Author: Jeff Tamarkin.
Recording information: Wally Heider’s, San Francisco.
Manhole\n was the last of the experimental Jefferson Airplane, and Grace Slick’s \nfirst official solo album. While Bark and Long John Silver, the final \nstages of the original Airplane, displayed the excessive psychedelic \nnature of the musicians within the confines of their group format, Blows\n Against the Empire, Sunfighter, and Baron Von Tollbooth and the Chrome \nNun allowed for total artistic expression. Manhole concluded this phase \nwith 1974’s other release, the Jefferson Starship’s Dragonfly. By taking\n the name from Paul Kantner’s Blows Against the Empire solo project, \nDragonfly began the renewed focus on commercial FM which would turn into\n Top 40 airplay. Manhole is the antithesis of that aim, but is itself a \nstriking picture of Grace Slick as the debutante turned hippy being as \nmusically radical as possible. To the kids who think she’s the cool \nsinger on the mechanical Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now, Manhole is an \nalien concoction, but it works on many levels as great head music. The \ntitle track itself is almost 15-and-a-half minutes of orchestrated \nunderground rock with Craig Chaquico on lead guitar; Jack Casady on \nbass, along with Ron Carter; voices from David Crosby, David Freiberg, \nSlick and Paul Kantner; mandolin by Peter Kaukonen; and a 42-piece \norchestra (51, if you include the fragments of the Airplane\/Starship \nonboard). It’s fun stuff, but looking back one wonders how they \nmaintained a distribution deal for Grunt records with R.C.A., the \nmaterial being so far from commercial. The title track has a left-hand \npiano part which “was stolen from an improvisation by Ivan Wing,” \nSlick’s father, and the epic is rife with Spanish\/English by the singer,\n translated in the booklet with Slick’s “phonetic Spanish spelling.” \nAgain, this is total underground excess, but it is actually more than \nlistenable than it looks on paper, and for fans, it has the \nserious\/eccentric nature of this woman who emerged as a big, big star \ndue to her quirky personality having the talent to back it up. Attacks \non the government and Clive Davis in the elaborate booklet only prove \nall involved were not out to make friends, but songs like “Come Again? \nToucan” are compelling and intriguing, more so than some of what would \nconstitute 1981’s Welcome to the Wrecking Ball, which contained more \nelements of guitarist Scott Zito than the star. On Manhole, the music is\n wonderfully dense, macabre, exhilarating, and totally out there. This \nis a great portion of music from the lead singer of one of America’s \ngreat music groups. Maybe David Freiberg’s “It’s Only Music” deserved to\n be on an Airplane project or solo LP of his own, but it sounds great \nand works. “Better Lying Down” is Grace Slick and Pete Sears re-writing \nJanis Joplin’s “Turtle Blues,” a nice change of pace from the heavy \ninstrumental backing of the other tracks. Slick is in great voice, and \nreflecting on the album years after it was recorded, the conclusion is \nthat Manhole has much to offer fans. Compare this to Deep Space — \nrecorded live at the Hollywood House of Blues in the 1990s to see the \ndifference between capturing the time and trying to recapture the magic.\n Despite the eye toward success and the more serious nature of that \nlater project, it just doesn’t have the charm of this artifact from the \nglory days. It’s also a far cry from the 1980s, when Slick returned with\n three more solo outings: Dreams, Welcome to the Wrecking Ball, and \nSoftware, projects which differ vastly from Manhole. The hard rock of \nWrecking Ball and the synths and post-Kantner Starship feel of producer \nPeter Wolf’s collaborations on Software show a woman dabbling with other\n rock formats. Put those three discs in a boxed set with Manhole, and \nyou have true culture shock from a major counterculture figure. Manhole \nis orchestrated psychedelia at its finest with the voice from “White \nRabbit” stretching that concept across two sides. ~ Joe Viglione\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"\"


Title<\/strong>
The Sutherland Brothers And Quiver \u2013 Dream Kid\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0
Track Listing<\/strong>\u00a0
1. You and Me
2. I Hear Thunder
3. Flying Down To Rio
4. Seagull\/Lonely Love
5. Champian the Underdog
6. Bluesy World
7. Bad Loser
8. Dream Kid
9. Maker
10. Rollin’ Away\/Rocky Road\/Saved By the Angel
Bonus Tracks<\/strong>
11. Silver Sister
12. Don\u2019t Mess Up
Details
Number of CDs:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 1
Recording Type:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Studio
EAN:\u00a0\u00a0 5028479022823
\u00a0
Album Notes
An artists conception of The Dream Kid looking out into a blue universe, standing in a clear cube with clouds and seagulls in his line of sight, is a colorful and good visual equivalent to the music inside this team-up of two musical forces. Songwriters Ian Sutherland and his brother Gavin Sutherland recruit three members of the Warner Bros. group Quiver — drummer Willie Wilson, guitarist Tim Renwick, and bassist Bruce Thomas — and come up with a smooth and very satisfying product. Gone is Quiver songwriter vocalist Cal Batchelor, and it is a unique transition concept. Where Chris Thomas produced 1972’s Gone in the Morning album for Quiver, Muff Winwood is enlisted to guide the rhythm section and guitarist behind the singing and playing Sutherland Brothers. Interestingly enough, they’ve retained Quiver engineer Bill Price and cover artist Barney Bubbles from the Warner Bros. days and issue the newer sounds on Island. The album’s history lesson aside, the music is an excellent early- to mid-’70s hybrid of folk-rock and pop, with more emphasis on the clever pop side of things. This is Eric Carmen’s Raspberries gone underground with less of the jangle guitar — sounds more borrowed from early Beatles’ hits by way of latter day Traffic, and that comfortable silky vocal sound, especially on the five-minute-55-second suite which ends the album, track ten, comprised of three titles, “Rollin’ Away,” “Rocky Road,” and “Saved By the Angel.” These Ian Sutherland titles all melt into one another and are easy on the ears, good listening music, though there is nothing on this album as extraordinary as their minor hit “You Got Me Anyway” or the song Rod Stewart picked up from them, “Sailing.” Like labelmates Traffic, this is an adult rock endeavor, meant for those who want to hear the lyrics as they take in the solid melodies. “Seagull” is a song that embodies what the band is all about, ebbing and flowing with hooks and pauses, not your typical rock outfit, which might explain why they slipped through the cracks without making a bigger noise. Peter Noone, like Stewart, was smart enough to cover their music, and it is a pity that “Flying Down to Rio” and “You and Me” didn’t get more time on FM radio. “I Hear Thunder” and “Lonely Love” are standouts, precursors to AAA radio like Barclay James Harvest and Matthew’s Southern Comfort. The strong lyrics are included on the album sleeve, and enough good things can’t be said about this album: bouncy guitars and spirited rock which producer Muff Winwood squeezes into the grooves. You’ve got to spin it three or four times before it catches you; it’s one of those special discs that doesn’t grab the listener first time around, but when it does, it gets you good. ~ Joe Viglione <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I promise you the plethora of record albums on this site day after day after day are purely from the subconscious. It wasn’t my intent to have pages and pages of vinyl LP reviews, they just started proliferating again; that’s just a big part of my life so here it is: You might say “this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2268"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2282,"href":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions\/2282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joeviglione.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}