One of my greatest favourite seventies rock-prog albums, by famous brainbox singer Kaz Lux, who also did the amazing Eli album with Akkerman (their second collaboration Transparental was more disappointing)
Since my posts are quite repetitive in content and I assume almost no one reads them through I will simply summarize as 'bullet' point form in powerpoint style the usual commentary and then segue into the usual doom and gloom discourse unrelated to musical content in the classic teutonic style of writing (e.g. Nietzsche, Kant, Schopenhauer, etc.)
-this kind of 70s songwriting is a 'lost art' (cf. Memo Kurt album from earlier)
-skill comes from extensive musical education which is rare today (i.e. classical music education)
-this record is better than 90 % of what you can hear on so-called 'top 40' radio today
-I cannot fathom why albums like this are so unknown, so rare, they certainly don't deserve to be, therefore,
-the 'artistic test of time' whereby great works endure and lesser ones die, is complete and utter rubbish when it comes to music today
-the combination of rock, classical, jazz created a style in the seventies that has never been emulated, in terms of quality, imagination, inventiveness (not applicable to this album)
-covers of prog albums in this period were incredibly beautiful works: paintings, photos, drawings as in this case, deserving almost of being shown in museums of art, definitely this album applies, check out that outrageous Max Ernst-like Boschian graphite (?) surreal image, artist -- ?
-all my apologies for poor bitrate on this album, not my fault, I've stolen all these rips and have gotten plenty of flak for this, not that I lose sleep over it
-if this has been posted before, shoot me-- or to quote from the great Robert Plant, 'suck my lemon till the juice runs down my leg' [The Lemon Song]
-this blogging about prog is a thankless and time-consuming job so please no negative comments, this is truly a labour of love and I would just as soon not do it, instead go cook some spicy spaghetti sauce
-my children are crazy, and my wife and I are exhausted and close to death, and finally,
-humanity is probably doomed, due to peak oil, and accelerating climate change.
-when I first read about Brendan Carter's doomsday argument [1986] many years ago I felt like I was hit on the head by a hammer, I couldn't sleep for several nights. How was this possible? Coming from a science-math background it seemed to be relatively unassailable. I had been brought up in the 70s when it was pretty much taken for granted that humanity would travel to the most distant galaxies, we were invincible now... But it wasn't until years later when I learned more about these issues such as resource depletion and climate change that I realized it was telling us something profound, that there was a good chance we were fated for extinction too, like so many other animals we have doomed by our hands, appropriately enough.
In short the argument boils down to this-- why were we born in this time? Why now, why not in the 1800s say, or more cogently, why not in the 3000s or 4000s when humanity supposedly will colonize the stars and galaxies, and develop into a species of many trillions or more individuals? Wouldn't it be more likely to be born then?? Why are we here now in the pathetic 20th-21st centuries?
Could it be we are born in this time-- because it's the likeliest time for a given human to be born? In other words, we are in the middle of the bell curve-- the population will crash quite soon--? (bear in mind that since we evolved 70-100,000 years ago 'soon' means in the next few thousand years! not tomorrow) Well, calculations show that 6-10 percent or so of all homo sapiens who EVER LIVED are alive now. Well when you look at the problems we face this doesn't seem to be too unlikely after all. This is Brendan Carter's doomsday argument, which can be made statistically rigorous with Bayes' Theorem, which used to be controversial in statistics but is no longer so. Of course the theorem depends on the idea of expert interpretation and prior probability. Is the prob. of humanity going extinct very small or very high?? Anyone can give reasons for either one this is a matter of judgement. All the argument can do is amplify the risk-- if you think it's likely then you should be very worried, because it sure looks like we are in the middle of a bell curve of population. Statistically the argument is quite unassailable, be aware that a lot of physicists and mathematicians have taken a close look at it and there is no really good refutation other than to say, it is impossible for humanity to go extinct. But then, this is a bio-sociological opinion, no longer mathematical. And in biology, unfortunately, all species go extinct sooner or later!!
Why couldn't a group of lemmings, say, at the start of their population explosion, say the same thing, not knowing the explosion will last a long long time? Well this is where it matters that we can say to ourselves self-reflectively, why are we here now. Because the lemmings cannot do this. Nor could our 5000 year old ancestors, they didn't have the insight into math and population dynamics to ask themselves this question. They didn't know their population was rising, very slowly. They would never even have thought this, they assumed they lived in a steady-state equilibrium. Everything is different for us, now. This is the curse of self-awareness again.
They aren't here now -- but we are, and we are asking ourselves this, why are we born today in this time? The reason is : Because it's the likeliest time for a self-reflecting, intelligent (math-educated) human to be born. Not in the year 1000, nor in the year 4000, but now.
[From rateyourmusic vinyl review, thank you to the user who wrote this great note:]
What I have here is: the CD version of CS (with the whole 'Distance' as bonus or vice -versa.)
I play Kazimierz already over 35 years...I still love it.
Don't expect an amatourish [sic] album...oh no...this is a warm quiet melancholic album, with excellent jammin' rock, some 'country and folk rock' and brought with Kaz unique high soulish voice.
.....momento.. go upstairs to find the original vinyl cover ...coz' no info here.....and I need something to have in my hands...
...I'm back...didn't knew I have all his vinyl albums twice..
Just what I thought: Kaz is only singing on this and the cast is the old 'Brainbox' without Jan Akkerman.
Favourite tracks:
'Graveyard'..this one reminds me very much to the better Janis Joplin tracks (also the vocal part)...Summertime....
'Delayed Panic' a simple warm 'country rock' track.
'Brown Chrystal': A good progressive track...but as 'single' an unevitable flop....this is not commercial.
'The Change'the track I like the most...it's simple and gives Kaz voice the chance to develop in it's own way:this has to be the single !
But also the tracks I didn't mention are above average.
This one is for real album lovers from 'Blind Faith' over 'Janis Joplin' to 'Neil Young, Byrds, Gram Parsons'
Spooner Oldham-Dann Penn compositions would sound great with this voice.
[end quote]
Personally this reminds me of the otger dice I posted a long time ago here, classic rock with melancholy tinges, basic rock with a lot of soul singing in the old seventies style, as you all know Kaz Lux had a fantastic voice, really beautiful deep stoned stones-ish baritone, with a lot of feeling. I really love also his singing on Eli, with Akkerman. I'm just repeating myself here, why in hell are this album's songs not on the radio, on satellite radio every morning I drive to work??????? Will I ever live to hear this happen? I doubt it.
Graveyard...
Delayed Panic...
