Rock’n’Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution [Mixtapes]

Voodoo Child!

Hey there, cyber wanderers, here’s a bunch of compilations I’ve put together, High Fidelity style, which gathers in digital musical boxes some of my favorite Rock’n’Roll songs ever. Pump up the volume and enjoy these several proofs that AC/DC was damn right by shouting, at the end of Back in Black, that rock’n’roll ain’t noise pollution! I’ve mixed together oldies/classics and contemporary stuff, both for the sake of diversity and to highlight how alive and kicking rock music, in its panoply of forms, still is nowadays. For more than 60 cyber-selections of music I cherish and usually play around with – including Jazz, Blues, Classical, Brazilian and so on and so forth… – check my 8 tracks profile. Cheers!

01) LED ZEPPELIN, “Communication Breakdown”
02) THE BEATLES, “Revolution”
03) BUFFALO SPRINGFIELD, “For What It’s Worth”
04) RIVAL SONS, “All The Way”
05) TREAT HER RIGHT, “I Think She Likes Me”
06) RANCID, “The 11th Hour”
07) TEENAGE FANCLUB, “I Don’t Want Control Of You”
08) JANIS JOPLIN, “Me and Bobby McGee”
09) THE WALLFLOWERS, “Passenger”
10) THE DISTILLERS, “The Hunger”

01. THE BEATLES, “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End”
02. THE WHO, “The Seeker”
03. LED ZEPPELIN, “Gallows Pole”
04. THE KNICKERBOXERS, “Lies”
05. THE SONICS, “Strychnine”
06. THE REMAINS, “Don’t Look Back”
07. CHOCOLATE WATCHBAND, “Are You Gonna Be There”
08. THE STANDELLS, “Dirty Water”
09. THE COUNT FIVE, “Psychotic Reactions”
10. LOVE, “7 and 7 Is”
11. ELECTRIC PRUNES, “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Nite”
12. THE STRANGELOVES, “Night Time”
13. JIMI HENDRIX, “Foxy Lady”

01) BLACK CROWES, “Hard to Handle”
02) SUSAN TEDESCHI & DOUBLE TROUBLE, “Rock and Roll” (Led Zeppelin Cover)
03) AC/DC, “Shot Down in Flames”
04) THE CLASH, “Brand New Cadillac”
05) DEEP PURPLE, “Strange Kind of Woman”
06) BIG STAR, “Don’t Lie to Me”
07) PATTI SMITH, “Rock and Roll Nigger”
08) BLACK MOUNTAIN, “Hair Song”
09) THE BEATLES, “Can’t Buy Me Love”
10) WILCO, “Casino Queen”
11) STROKES, “Reptilia”
12) T REX, “Rock On”

01) THEM CROOKED VULTURES, “New Fang”
02) JAPANDROIDS, “The Nights of Wine and Roses”
03) BEN HARPER, “Black Rain”
04) BLACK MOUNTAIN, “Rollercoaster”
05) JULIETTE & THE LICKS, “Hot Kiss”
06) PEARL JAM, “State of Love and Trust”
07) ARCADE FIRE, “Keep the Car Running”
08) BLITZEN TRAPPER, “Gold for Bread”
09) BORIS, “Dyna-Soar”
10) YEAH YEAH YEAHS, “Date With The Night”

George Harrison visits Frisco’s Summer of Love #1967

In 1967, the Summer of Love was blossoming. North American counterculture was at its peak, with beatnik writers, folk singers and psychedelic rockers trippin’ with their doors of percepton wide open and producing awesome art. In 1967 were born, to quote just a few era-defining masterspieces, The Beatles’ Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band, Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced?, Velvet Underground’s V.U. & Nico, Cream’s Disraeli Gears, Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow, Love’s Forever Changes, The Door’s self-titled debut, Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.

Amidst this creative effervescence, a British lad, one of the Fabulous Four From Liverpool, decided to go visit Haight-Ashbury, San Francisco, the epicenter of Hippieland, the shrine of Merry Pranksterism. This was in August 7, 1967, and this is how George’s girlfriend Patti Boyd tells the tale:

“…we thought it would be fun to go and have a look at Haight-Ashbury, the district that had been taken over by hippies. Musicians like Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead and Janis Joplin lived there, and it was the LSD capital of America. On the way, Derek produced a tab. Would we like some? Since we were going to Haight-Ashbury, it seemed silly not to.

The area is named after the intersection of two streets, Haight and Ashbury, and as we approached, the driver said he wouldn’t drive down the street itself, he’d park among the side-streets. It seemed a little odd but we didn’t argue. We got out of the car, the acid kicked in and everything was just whoah, psychedelic and very… I mean, it was just completely fine. We went into a shop and noticed that all these people were following us. They had recognised George as we walked past them in the street, then turned to follow us. One minute there were five, then ten, twenty, thirty and forty people behind us. I could hear them saying, ‘The Beatles are here, the Beatles are in town!’

We were expecting Haight-Ashbury to be special, a creative and artistic place, filled with Beautiful People, but it was horrible – full of ghastly drop-outs, bums and spotty youths, all out of their brains. Everybody looked stoned – even mothers and babies – and they were so close behind us they were treading on the backs of our heels. It got to the point where we couldn’t stop for fear of being trampled. Then somebody said, ‘Let’s go to Hippie Hill,’ and we crossed the grass, our retinue facing us, as if we were on stage. They looked as us expectantly – as if George was some kind of Messiah.

We were so high, and then the inevitable happened: a guitar emerged from the crowd and I could see it being passed to the front by outstretched arms. I thought, Oh, God, poor George, this is a nightmare. Finally the guitar was handed to him. I had the feeling that they’d listened to the Beatles’ records, analysed them, learnt what they’d thought they should learn, and taken every drug they’d thought the Beatles were singing about. Now they wanted to know where to go next. And George was there, obviously, to give them the answer. Pressure.

George was so cool. He said, ‘This is G, this is E, this is D,’ and showed them a few chords, then handed back the guitar and said, ‘Sorry, man, we’ve got to go now.’ He didn’t sing – he couldn’t have: he was flying. We all were. I was surprised he could even do that.

Anyway, we got up and walked back towards our limo, at which point I heard a little voice say, ‘Hey, George, do you want some STP?’

George turned around and said, ‘No, thanks, I’m cool, man.’

Then the bloke turned round and said to the others, ‘George Harrison turned me down.’

And they went, ‘No!’

And then the crowd became faintly hostile. We sensed it because when you’re that high you’re very aware of vibes, and we were walking faster and faster, and they were following.

When we saw the limo, we ran across the road and jumped in, and they ran after us and started to rock the car, and the windows were full of these faces, flattened against the glass, looking at us.”

Pattie Boyd, Wonderful Tonight

Lennon: “Gimme Some Truth!”

John Lennon (1940 – 1980) and Yoko Ono pose on the steps of the Apple building in London, holding one of the posters that they distributed to the world’s major cities as part of a peace campaign protesting against the Vietnam War. ‘War Is Over, If You Want It’. (Photo by Frank Barratt/Getty Images)

“I’m sick and tired of hearing things
From uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocritics.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth!

I’ve had enough of reading things
By neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth!

No short-haired, yellow-bellied, son of tricky dicky
Is gonna mother hubbard soft soap me
With just a pocketful of hope
Money for dope
Money for rope.

I’m sick to death of seeing things
From tight-lipped, condescending, mama’s little chauvinists.
All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth now!

I’ve had enough of watching scenes
Of schizophrenic, ego-centric, paranoiac, prima-donnas.
All I want is the truth now
Just gimme some truth!

All I want is the truth
Just gimme some truth!”

NUGGETS: Original Artyfacts of the 1st Psychedelic Era (1965-1968) – One of the greatest compilations of 1960s’s rock

“Turn on, tune in, and drop out”: Timothy Leary’s famous slogan may serve as a good motto to keep in mind while listening to this box of precious artyfacts from the first psychedelic era. So turn on the volume, tune in to the music coming out of your headphones or speakers, and drop-out for a while from the square-world’s grayness – because with Nuggets we are taken on a trip through the sounds of the 1960s in all their exuberance. Compiled by Lenny Kaye, music critic and guitar player in Patti Smith’s Group, this 1972 compilation does an excellent job offering a condensed experience of some the greatest underground rock songs recorded between 1965 and 1968.  Listening to these 4 CDs is similar to embarking on a train down memory lane, to a journey through the 1960s musical landscape, especially all that happened below the surface, in the underground currents of an age that was being massively inspired and shaped by the music of The Beatles, The Stones, Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, The Who, The Kinks, Cream, Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, The Doors – and many others.

Kaye’s collection offers an historical document of some of the best music being made by then. Most of these bands didn’t quite make it to the top, or ended up being just one-hit-wonders. But, in the efervescent years leading up to Woodstock and the Summer of Love, when hippies and LSD became widespread cultural phenomena, many of these groups were pioneering fields later to be fully explored by future artists: The Sonics and The 13th Floor Elevators, for example, were somewhat proto-punk and also precursors of what will emerge decades later, the garage rock à la The Cramps and Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Many bands in the mid-sixties are already doing what the Stooges or the MC5 will soon start attempting: kicking out the jams with raw power. But here there’s also a lot of pop-inclined and melody-ridden groups trying to sound like The Beach Boys; trippy and hippy folk-rock sounding like electrified-Dylan; and some examples of noisy experimentalism with no particular regard for commercial interests. Influential and cult figures – like Love or Captain Beefheart – contribute with great tracks to this amazing collection. I’ve been listening to it for years and keep coming back to this fountain of the 1960s exuberant lyricism and enthusiastic rock’n’rolling. 

Enjoy the music! You can listen to three quarters of the whole collection in the videos below, or download HERE the whole bunch (torrent at Pirate Bay).

Rock’n’Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution! [MIXTAPE – 13 tracks]

01. THE BEATLES, “Golden Slumbers/Carry That Weight/The End”
02. THE WHO, “The Seeker”
03. LED ZEPPELIN, “Gallows Pole”
04. THE KNICKERBOXERS, “Lies”
05. THE SONICS, “Strychnine”
06. THE REMAINS, “Don’t Look Back”
07. CHOCOLATE WATCHBAND, “Are You Gonna Be There”
08. THE STANDELLS, “Dirty Water”
09. THE COUNT FIVE, “Psychotic Reactions”
10. LOVE, “7 and 7 Is”
11. ELECTRIC PRUNES, “I Had Too Much To Dream Last Nite”
12. THE STRANGELOVES, “Night Time”
13. JIMI HENDRIX, “Foxy Lady”

“The U.S. vs John Lennon”, article about the astonishing documentary…

JOHN LENNON AS PUBLIC ENEMY

How the Beatle became a menace to the U.S. Establishment
as revealed by Leaf’s and Scheinfield’s pulsating documentary

After the Beatles broke-up, John Lennon certainly wasn’t willing to simply let things be. Even tough he remained faithful to the pacifist creed once stated in “Revolution” (“If you talk about destruction / don’t you know that you can count me out?”), he was ready to enlist as a warrior in the growing armies of hippies and beatniks protesting against the genocidal war in Vietnam. Adding his voice to this choir of discontent, John Lennon was bound to clash with the American authorities.

After the Fab Four had disbanded, George Harrisson sought his peace of mind and spiritual serenity in Hare Krishna and Eastern religion, while McCartney went on a solo-career that would consolidate his stardom. But Lennon had other plans in mind than singing mantras or writing silly love songs. The “rebel Beatle” was about to throw himself head-on in the social and political struggles of his times and would soon become one of the most outspoken cultural icons campaigning for love, peace, freedom – in synthesis, for the “brotherhood of man” utopia “Imagine” told us about.

Details of this exciting and turbulent saga can be found in The U.S. Against John Lennon, a documentary by David Leaf and John Scheinfield which chronicles how Lennon and Yoko got so deeply involved in the most urgent political turmoils at the dawn of the 70s. Some of the songs composed during that period were hymns for the pacifist movement, such as “Give Peace a Chance”, while protest-songs like “Power to the People” reached wide-spread acceptance amongst the American citizens who were flooding the streets for mass demonstrations that helped re-shape the Cold-War era.

Lennon, in the Sixties, was no stranger to rebellion and had been seduced more than once by the counter-cultural magnet, speaking up against the stablishment. He had, for example, embarked on LSD trips, becoming one of the enthusiasts of Albert Hoffman’s potion, siding with other gurus such as Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey. Much of the historical importance of the band lays in their amazing capacity to innovate and evolve: they went from being a naive yeah-yeah-yeah pop-band and transformed into an astonishing psychedelic cosmic trip, kick-started with albums like Revolver and Sgt. Peppers. The world knew well from those days the capacity that Lennon and his peers had of being pioneers.

In 1968, in the White Album era, the Beatles had already deviated a lot from the mainstream currents of pop music and were now experimenting with extravagant instruments and journeying in India in order to gather wisdom first-hand from the Maharishi. Some years before, Lennon had raised a lot of controversy when he stated that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus Christ. This statement was far from a sociological lie, given the dimensions of mass hysteria raised by the Beatlemania. But Lennon’s phrase wasn’t swallowed smoothly by some Christians who, offended by this claim, went on to burn the records and posters of the herectical Liverpool quartet. In the mid sixties, Lennon was already some sort of a troublemaker, with a tongue behaving like a viper. However, nothing prepared the world for what he would stand-up for in the 70s.

In his solo-career, Lennon showed no signs of slowing down on his path to religious and political criticism, as we can hear in songs such as “God”, “Working Class Hero”, “Gimme Some Truth” or the era-defining “Imagine”, arguably one of the most unforgetable pieces 20th century popular music. Politically, he became more and more out-spoken against the ills he perceived in the world, and perhaps considered himself as someone who could inspire the masses muh in the way leaders such as Gandhi or Che Guevara did.

When he chose to live in America, Lennon was due to become, in the eyes of authorities, a dangerous rebel to be closely watched and whose wings should be quickly clipped. His involvement with people who were deemed by the FBI and the CIA as “radicals” – such as John Sinclair or Black Panthers activists – ended up turning Lennon into some kind of public menace to the mainstream political establishment. Soon the U.S. would be anxiously spying on Lennon and just looking for an excuse to kick him out of the country. A couple of joints found in his possession would be enough. His powerful voice of dissent had become a great nuisance for the warmongers who whished he kept his mouth shut about foreign policy matters. But Lennon wasn’t willing to shut up. He stood up in the face of danger, thus inspiring a whole generation to shake-off its letargy and “take the power back”, as decades later the hard-rockers Rage Against the Machine would enshrine in an earth-shaking protest song.

The documentary The U.S. Against John Lennon is truly an impressive dive into this historical context of the early 70s, a film bursting with great images from the archives and scenes from a country in turmoil. Inspired both by Gandhi’s pacifism and by the Hippie-era Flower Power ideas, Lennon provided fuel to the fire of love and peace. History would never forget the mottos: “make love, not war!” and “war is over (if you want it”). For these and many other reasons, The U.S. Against John Lennon is a deeply inspiring film, a testament to the courage and far-sighted-vision of one of the greatest cultural icons of the 20th century. When the film ends, we can’t avoid the feelings of gratitude and admiration towards this artist and warrior who enlightned us so much in our path to empowerment.

Article by Eduardo Carli de Moraes
Toronto, Ontario
416 271 2852
educmoraes@hotmail.com