Computer Age

As we did with Townes Van Zandt, and the video of "Waiting Around To Die" here you get a unique document on which the musician protagonist of our forthcoming review by way of introduction.

This is Roky Erickson with the 13th Floor Elevators in this video from 1966 where it was interpreted his greatest success: "You're Gonna Miss Me" in a recording that, despite its quality, is worth its price in gold as a document historic.

You're Gonna Miss Me

Oh yeah!
Ahh!
You're gonna wake up one morning as the sun Greets the dawn.
You're gonna wake up one morning as the sun Greets the dawn.
You're gonna look around in your mind, girl, you're gonna find that
I'm gone.
You did not realize,
You did not realize,
You did not realize,
You did not realize,
You did not realize.
Oh! you're gonna miss me, baby.
Oh! you're gonna miss me, baby.
Oh! you're gonna miss me, child, yeah, yeah.
I gave you the warning,
But you never heeded it.
How can you say you miss my lovin,
When you never needed it?
Yeah! Yeah! Ow!
You're gonna wake up wonderin ',
Find yourself all alone,
But what's gonna stop me, baby?
I'm not comin 'home.
I'm not comin 'home.
I'm not comin 'home.
Oh, oh, oh, yeah!

The truth is that the phrase "perfect songs" seems designed to define the music of the Kinks, there is no other group in the world with such density "temazos" per square meter, and you desmintáis to challenge this assertion.
And that "Music Jukebox" and not another song? Well, here is the thing most neighborhoods. While it is true that in the sixties Ray Davies and Cia reached its own right was the category of myths in the seventies, for my taste, where the wheels of the machine operating at full capacity, to the extent that any of the songs included in one of the "Preservation Acts", "Sleepwalker," "Misfits" and "Schoolboys In Disgrace" simply frightening.

"Music Jukebox" is the fifth cut of "Sleepwalker" (1977), a record that was special for many reasons. It was the first album from The Kinks to Arista and the first to be recorded in their own studies, the mythical studies Konka. With this record, Ray Davies seemed to leave behind the conceptual albums (for relief of his brother Dave) and the entire disc breathes a refreshing aroma of Rock without complications. But with the Kinks nothing is as simple as it seems because the texts of the album will contain a good dose of irony and bad milk served by the matchless compositional talent of Mr. Davies and depth is still a conceptual thread between songs difficult to guess at a glance: somnambulism and thus the nightlife.
And focusing on "Music Jukebox", the theme spoke of the effect of music on people, specifically the impact on a girl who sits night after night in a dark bar listening to sad songs on the machine music and he believes in all I heard, that let the music lead their feelings and prefers to be alone with his songs to relate to anyone. Ray Davies returns between lines (I did in "A Rock and Roll Fantasy") to the theme of the big lie of the Rock, the big lie that supposed to believe that some songs can save your life, the big lie in his final own life.
The song starts with a few simple bongos, who joins a battery reece quickly and accurately. Enter a guitar riff, comes another sound below, other than electric guitar, bass, the voice. Every millimeter measured with a precision overwhelming. In the part of stanzas is only the voice and a Rhodes until the new chorus in which he re-enters Dave with his memorable riffs and the rest of the band, ending a memorable one with another savage Jam Dave.

It is often underestimated the ability of interpretative Ray Davies, and maybe is not the time to come here in sterile polemics, the truth is that in this song so sings sublime, always controlling the tempo of a song that has now truly frenetic, a veritable "Tour De Force" to the limit for a band that does not touch a single note out of tune. Dave Davies here again in your sauce, a rock song that comes as the ring finger and delivering a collection of riffs Demolition and totally alone. The youngest of the brothers Davies was a guitarist who was less than, but at this time reached a considerable level of excellence.
It may sound like a cliché, but we do not do songs like that.

Following the articles on the post-Beach Boys Pet Sounds that are appearing these days on In Search Of The Lost Vinyl opportunity to present this video, which many of you already know thanks to this post in Pepsounds, Brian Wilson interprentando "Surf's Up "at the piano at her home in Bel Air in 1966.

As is well known "Surf's Up" was originally published on the disc namesake of the Beach Boys 1971 although the concept, the idea and much of the membership coming from before, just during the sessions of "Smile", that mythical lost disk.

This video shows one of the earliest versions of this spectacular theme and we can see without the filter of any kind compositional and interpretive immeasurable talent of one of the greatest geniuses of popular music. Brian Wilson and his piano in the song of a tremendous complexity and an unmatched beauty. You enjoy it:

Surf's Up

A diamond necklace played the Pawn
Hand in hand along some drummer, oh
To a handsome man and Baton
A blind class aristocracy
Back through the glass you see op'ra
The Pit and the Pendulum drawn
Colonnade ruins domino

Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping?

Hung velvet overtaken me
Dim chandelier AWAKEN me
Dissolved to a song in the dawn
The music hall a costly bow
The music all is lost for now
To a muted swan trumperter
Colonnade ruins domino

Canvass the town and brush the backdrop
Are you sleeping, Brother John?

Dove nested towers the hour was
Strike the street quicksilver moon
Carriage across the fog
Two-Step to Lamplighter cellar tune
The laughs come hard in Auld Lang Syne

The glass was raised, the fired rose
The Fullness of the wine, toasting the last dim
While at port, adieu or die

A choke of grief hardened I HEART
Beyond belief a broken man too tough to cry

Surf's Up
Aboard a tidal wave
Come about hard and join
The young and often spring you gave
I heard the word
Wonderful thing
A children's song

Child, child, child, child, child
A child is the father of the man
Child, child, child, child, child
A child is the father of the man
A children's song
Have you Listened as they played
Their song is love
And the children know the way
That's why the child is the father to the man
Child, child, child, child, child
Child, child, child, child, child
Na na na na na na na na
Child, child, child, child, child
That's why the child is the father to the man
Child, child, child, child, child