Fog Dance, My Moth Kingdom by Worrytrain.

This is a very good album. Thanks to the wonderful world of blogs I discovered this via a download and was so impressed I ordered it at great expense from Europe. Joshua Neil Geissler is Worrytrain. Joshua probably wonders why he sold one album in Brisbane Australia as in this day and age who buys CD's. This would probably be tagged as Neo Classical by some and I have no issue with that. The first track, prelude for piano and malaria, is a minimalist piano piece that screams to me Reich and Nyman but then over the top of his beautiful piano on celestial police Joshua adds screaming electronic noises that resemble strings and oboes. Hence the VU influence. "But is that it for VU influence" one may ask. Well no. The neo classical style carries on with for aushwitz, very sad and appealing is this and but then KAPOW we are smashed with thundertrance interlude that is white noise in it's extreme. Blinding and ear shattering that lasts for 3.05 minutes this kind of Noise music is an acquired taste and this is a long 3 minutes for those that may not have expected it. But for me it works. After the initial shock of this with now scores of plays I have come to "expect" this ear shattering experience. I mean it has to end, it is not Metal Machine Music after all and we get back to immediate neo classical sounds. I could chat away track by track but there is not much point in that. One should get the idea.

Here is the cover.




















Listen to this.



Here is another Youtube



After these tragic beauties you now get smashed.



Without The Velvet Underground and their drones via the work of Reed and Cale I imagine that someone would have put together something like this somehow somewhere but they get the credit of influence from me.

The Velvet Underground And Nico

allmusic wrote "One would be hard pressed to name a rock album whose influence has been as broad and pervasive as The Velvet Underground and Nico." Who am I to argue!

So a bit of my history. As a youngster in the early 70's I first heard of Lou Reed via his major hit single Walk On The Wildside. When reading music magazines I found that he was connected with a band with a very exotic name called The Velvet Underground but to a teen such as I it was the fact that David Bowie was working with Reed that was the initial attraction. My 2nd memory of Reed was live in the late 70's at Brisbane's now demolished Festival Hall and he did not leave that great an impression. I put this down to 2 things. My at the time less than mature tastes and the fact that the previous night I had seen Afro Rock specialists Osibisa and, to be blunt, they were so good he was never going to follow their sensational performance.

As the years passed I heard a few Velvet Underground songs such as Sweet Jane and Rock And Roll but as much as I liked them placing them into an historical perspective was difficult. They were after all only Rock songs. The moment of revelation came when I discovered The Velvet Underground and Nico. There was a certain raw experimental atmosphere to the album that demanded attention. For a start it was the release date. January 1967. So this must have been recorded in 1966 when all others where heading in a vastly different direction. Peace and love and all that was the order of the times but this gave us street grit with tales of drugs and transvestites among other things. The surprise to me was the opening track Sunday Morning. On initial hearing it was not the start I expected. 60's Dream pop. With time and knowledge though it now fits the album perfectly.
I will not bore anyone with details of each song. Plenty has been written elsewhere. What I will do is recommend a little book called The Velvet Underground And Nico by Joe Harvard.







This is part of a series of books about specific albums that are of influence to their authors and Joe Harvard has written a light and easy to read revue. More Later.

An Introduction

This will be a sporadic blog. I trawl music blog world and do indeed enjoy a good read of some of the better blogs. I have always thought that it would be a nice thing to have my own blog. But there are certainly some out there that are fantastic and after being in awe of them I am convinced that I would not be able to do justice to my own with my limited intellect and short attention span.

So why have I bothered? I think that my fully fledged discovery of The Velvet Underground has been the catalyst. This is going to be a blog in that I will occasionally post some of my musings on VU and also other music that catches my attention. If you read this that is all well and good and nice comments will be well received. If no one reads it never mind! It was always for my benefit in the first place. Peace!