The best album of the year—as far as I’m concerned there’s no competition, nothing else even comes close—is Jonathan Wilson’s Fanfare, the follow-up to 2011’s critically acclaimed Gentle Spirit. It’s a brilliantly sculpted, painstakingly-crafted album by an artist operating at the height of his powers as a musician, songwriter, guitarist, pianist and producer—and the guy’s just getting started.

It’s like an epic novel.

Fanfare isn’t just the best album of 2013, it the year’s most important album as well. As in artistically important. As in “heavyweight” talent. Seriously, folks, it’s a motherfucker. If you’re not hip to Jonathan Wilson’s work, well, you should be. If you’re reading this, there’s no good excuse… so read on. Or better yet, forget about what I have to say and scroll down, hit play and turn it up loud.

Fanfare moves away from the “CSNY jamming with Pink Floyd” comparisons the earlier album was saddled with—this despite the contribution of some stunning vocals from David Crosby and Graham Nash, I should probably mention—into multi-layered rock symphony territory that calls to mind Beach Boy Dennis Wilson’s rock snob touchstone Pacific Ocean Blue. 

“‘Fanfare,’ as a word, represents a fanciful showing, a bodacious movement of energy, a celebration of sound,” Wilson explains. “Something to signify an arrival, a special occasion.  A fanfare follows no rules. In this case, it’s also the opening song, it’s the gateway for the rest of the record.”
 

 
Fanfare’s seven-minute-long title track opener begins with the sound of baby chicks being fed through an Echoplex tape delay unit and builds into a tubular bell-laden, multi-layered tone poem from the artist meant to channel the perfect love song through his piano. As a declaration of intent, it’s a powerful statement. Plus the rest of the album has to live up to this. Talk about setting the bar high for yourself.

“From the initial idea of the record, I knew I wanted a concert Steinway piano to be the centerpiece—the beating heart—of Fanfare, Wilson told me. “So naturally we found a guy on Craigslist with one for sale and bargained with him to let us rent it for the entire session.”

“I was going for this sort of ‘widescreen’ sound, a blown out vista. I wanted strings, horns, bells, vibes, voices, solos, improvisation and a full orchestra on some of the tunes… I didn’t just want ‘a’ drum sound, I wanted it to sound like Thor’s snare sound, stuff like that. Having that 9-foot Steinway was central to achieving the sound that I wanted.” Fanfare was recorded to 2” analog tape and then mixed down to ½ inch tape at Jackson’s Browne’s Groove Masters studio in Santa Monica through a Neve 8078 analog console. The recording used a live echo chamber extensively.
 

 
“Dear Friend”: It starts off like a lilting folkie sing-song and then it gets sinister. The cynical lyrics and slashing psychedelic soloing on this mind-crushing six-string duel with band member Omar Velasco would make it the perfect soundtrack to something going seriously wrong in the climactic scene of a darkly intense Hollywood thriller.
 

 
“Cecil Taylor”: This one just kills me. The guitar picking is simply stunning, but when David Crosby and Graham Nash come in, you’re listening to something truly miraculous.
 

 
“New Mexico”

Wilson told me that Brazilian artist Milton Nascimento was another major influence on Fanfare. At various times I can also hear echos of Traffic, the Dead, Laura Nyro, Atlanta Rhythm Section, Gene Clark and Tom Petty—Heartbreakers Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench guest on Fanfare, as do Jackson Browne, Josh Tillman (aka “Father John Misty”), Dawes’ Taylor Goldsmith and Wilco’s Patrick Sansone who did the incredible string arrangements of the title number. Folk legend Roy Harper contributed lyrics. It’s wide-vista, super Cinemascope music. Not too many artists have really attempted as complex an album as this one is in a long time—Kate Bush would be an obvious exception, so as you can see Wilson’s operating in rarefied company—where there’s like 64 tracks going at once. Fanfare, I predict, will become THE hi fi salesman’s go-to demo disc for the next decade.

Jonathan Wilson’s Fanfare is out through Bella Union in the UK/Europe and Downtown in the US. It’s worth mentioning that if you are a vinyl aficionado, Wilson’s records are made to exacting standards and are quite heavy things to hold in your hand. Listen to the entire album on SoundCloud:
 

 
Below, a scorching hot cover of Fleetwood Mac’s “Angel” performed at the Festival des Vieilles Charrues in Carhaix on July 20th, 2013.

 
Another live cover, Happy Traum’s “Trials of Jonathan” in Carhaix

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
If you haven’t heard of Jonathan Wilson yet, you will

Why isn’t Jonathan Wilson on the cover of Guitar Player magazine? A rock snob rants

I want this hoodie so bad….
 
Noisey has a marvelous post up right now I would urge Nirvana fans to go check out. The post is by Sub Pop co-founder Bruce Pavitt, and it features a bunch of photos from Nirvana’s first European tour with Mudhoney and Tad that have never been published before.
 

Kurt Cobain, holding his coat. Presumably, that’s Tad Doyle on the right.
 
These photos really bring me back. First, a word on Tad. Nobody talks about them any more, but in some ways Tad was the ultimate Seattle grunge band, fronted by Tad Doyle, who everybody always said was “this 300-pound dentist, man!” That element was always the same, “this 300-pound dentist.” I was very fond of their album God’s Balls, and especially the song “Behemoth,” which I’ve included below. After Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson and who knows who else, “Behemoth” doesn’t sound that exceptional any more, but at the time, it went to a dark, angry, intimidating place very few “pop” songs had gone. 

In the post, Pavitt emphasizes the drama of touring with the emotionally and physically fragile Kurt Cobain. Here’s Pavitt on the Rome show:
 

Nirvana’s turn was next… Ten songs into their set, Kurt, frustrated with his guitar, smashed it completely and climbed a tall stack of speakers. The crowd looked on, with many drunk spectators yelling “Jump!” It was a dramatic moment, potentially harmful. I witnessed the event from the club floor, stunned, while Jon and Tad looked down from the artists’ area on the second floor. Everyone was holding their breath, not sure if Kurt would actually jump. We were panicked, and extremely concerned for Kurt’s well-being.

“Hello, we’re one of the three official representatives of the Seattle Sub Pop scene from Washington State!” Kurt Cobain screeched into the microphone. Nirvana then tore into their typical opener, the riff-heavy “School.” Rocking hard, Kurt immediately broke a string. Frustrated, he hustled off stage to replace it while Krist and Chad starting pounding out a Stooges cover, “I Wanna Be Your Dog.” In the confusion, some of the crowd climbed onstage and began diving off.

 
Pavitt’s post addresses a question I’ve been wondering about since late 1991, when Nirvana took over the world, or actually slightly even earlier, when Nirvana’s Bleach was wearing out my CD player in the summer of 1990—that being what Mudhoney made of all the hoopla about Nirvana.

People forget, but there was a couple years there where Mudhoney, not Nirvana, were the darlings of the Seattle grunge scene. Mudhoney had been around a little longer, and they had toured the UK well before Nevermind came out, and they were the toast of the UK press for a good stretch. Even after the buzz about Nirvana started, you would often hear Mudhoney and Nirvana mentioned in about equal terms. “Touch Me, I’m Sick” was Seattle’s anthem for a while. After Nevermind, of course, that stopped being the case.
 

Mark Arm and Dan Peters of Mudhoney and Steve Double
 
One of the greatest gigs I ever saw was seeing Mudhoney play Vienna’s U4 venue in the summer of 1990. I was stuck in Vienna for the summer, staying at my grandparents’ empty apartment for a few weeks while I took a German course. I was lonely and my German wasn’t very good and I didn’t really have any clue, in an unfamiliar foreign city, how to connect with anything that was going on that was appropriate for my age, which was 20. It was a little depressing, to be honest. Somehow I figured out that Mudhoney was coming to town and I scored a ticket. That show was incredibly intense, the mosh pit (mosh pits were crossing over around then) was insane, and that show supplied a necessary release when I most needed it.

I got ahold of Mudhoney’s self-titled debut album a little before Nirvana’s Bleach. For a long time—even after Nirvana went huge—I professed Mudhoney to be my favorite band. In fact, I can remember buying Nevermind and Mudhoney’s Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge on the same day at Rhino Records in New Paltz, New York, and while Nevermind had the undeniable allure of a massively successful album, it was EGBDF that remained closer to my heart in many ways. EGBDF hasn’t aged very well, and in retrospect my stubborn refusal to acknowledge Nirvana’s superiority over Mudhoney seems like a piece of fandom reminiscent of the love one has for a sports team.

Anyway, in Pavitt’s account of that Rome show, he adds, “Mark Arm from Mudhoney looked on, speechless, at the band that was about to dethrone his own.”

So there we have it—the moment, well before Nevermind was even a thing—when, according to Pavitt, Mark Arm realized that his days of ruling Seattle were about to come to an end. The truth is that the willfully sludge-y and perverse Mudhoney were never going to be a huge act for the long haul—check out their Piece of Cake to hear an album that is going out of its way to alienate its listeners.
 

Matt Lukin of Mudhoney and Kurt Cobain
 
According to the post, the pictures are a taste of Pavitt’s new book about that tour, Experiencing Nirvana: Grunge in Europe, 1989, which is available in hardback in December (pre-order), but you can apparently buy the Kindle version right now. I really hope Pavitt discusses the legendary “troll village” show Nirvana played in Austria, which I remember reading about in Gina Arnold’s Route 666: On the Road to Nirvana.

Tad, “Behemoth”:

 
After the jump, more of Pavitt’s pics….

 
Dangerous Minds pal Syd Garon sent us this most disturbing video from Los Angeles-based DJ, musician, producer Baron von Luxxury with the following note:

I don’t know anything about this other than my buddy’s neighbor made it. It’s got “Happy Monday” post written all over it.

It kinda does, doesn’t it? Now you have to go about your day trying to scrub this out of your mind.

On a side note, I once heard a story about a model that gave Terry Richardson a blow job while wearing a Joan Rivers mask. As I write these words I realize I am not 100% sure who was wearing the mask.

A new petition on Change.org calls for industry insiders to stop hiring “alleged sex offender” Richardson.

The video was directed by Ari Gold and Vadim N.
 

 
We’ve all surely heard by now the very sad news that Lou Reed is no longer with us. His work with and after the Velvet Underground has shaped a lot of our lives. Hearing the news of his loss transported me back to age 20, when I lived in the tiny, unfinished attic of a shithole house for $47 a month because it was close to school and the train, listening to The Velvet Underground & Nico OVER AND OVER CONSTANTLY on a shitty Sears CD boombox, transfixed by John Cale’s viola stabs in “Venus in Furs,” absorbing the lessons imparted by the beauty and clamor of the band’s adventurous musical sensibility and Reed’s mesmerizing lyrical celebrations of low-life much more eagerly than anything I was supposed to be getting out of school. Lou Reed is as much a part of me as he is a part of everyone whose mind was molded, inspired, liberated, and warped by his artistry.

And because my young, forming mind was partly shaped by Lou Reed, I’m a guy who likes to laugh at funerals.

In 1987, filmmaker David Markey, best known for Desperate Teenage Lovedolls, Lovedolls Superstar, and 1991: The Year Punk Broke, made a short film called Lou Believers, featuring “Lou Reed” (actually Joe Cole with a copy of the Lou Reed cover of BAM stuck to his face) running around Los Angeles with Thurston Moore, accosting and terrorizing random strangers in efforts to score heroin and see the James Woods film The Boost. Kim Gordon appears as well. It’s goofy, hammy, less than unscripted, several miles past utterly fucking stupid, and often really, really funny.

OK, it has jack shit to actually do with Lou Reed. Still, maybe give that well-worn copy of Transformer that you broke out for mourning purposes a little break and enjoy this tangentially Reed-related bit of amusing inanity. A little levity can only help, right?
 

 
Previous David Markey on DM

 
Fan of obscure horror? If so, the names Fabio Frizzi and Lucio Fulci should need little introduction. 

But if not, here goes… For fans of niche horror, very little comes close to the cult reverence held for the Italian “giallo” genre of bawdy, gory, hyper-stylized, pseudo-slasher films from the 60s, 70s and 80s. Typified by the likes of Dario Argento’s Suspiria and Mario Bava’s Blood And Black Lace, the best of the giallo genre eschews tight plotting and believable set-ups for overwhelmingly dark moods and unsettling technical brilliance.

Although the two directors mentioned above deserve credit for a) inventing (Bava) and b) expertly honing (Argento) the genre, for many the ultimate director of giallo schlock is Lucio Fulci. The mastermind behind classics like The Beyond, Zombie Flesh Eaters (aka Zombi 2), City Of The Living Dead, The New York Ripper and many, many more, his scenes of underwater battles between sharks and zombies, of nipples being sliced open by crazed psychopaths, of faces devoured by cannibalistic fake spiders, not to mention his literally eye popping special effects, are the stuff of horror legend.

Behind every cult horror auteur, there’s usually an unsung soundtrack supremo, and in this case, that man is Fabio Frizzi. Although perhaps not as well known as fellow countrymen Goblin, who set the bar for giallo soundtracks very high with their work with Dario Argento, Fabio Frizzi has still racked up some of the best loved movie themes within the genre. From the intricate, brilliant choral-jazz-funk of The Beyond to the droning, doomy synths of Zombie Flesh Eaters (which, for me at least, is THE definitive zombie film theme of all time) Fulci commands just as much fan respect and admiration as Claudio Simonetti and co.

Which is why I was blowled over to find out that this Thursday, on Halloween night, Fabio Frizzi will be performing live in London at a special concert called Frizzi To Fulci, celebrating his numerous themes for Fulci with the help of a large live group called the F2F Orchestra. For horror soundtrack buffs like myself, this gig is the holy grail, possibly even moreso than the recent Goblin live shows, as the chance of seeing Frizzi perform live seemed even more remote.

Unfortunately, what with Halloween being Gay Christmas an’ all, I won’t be able to make the show (ironically, we’re hosting a triple bill of giallo classics, including The Beyond) but I jumped at the chance to interview Fabio Frizzi; to find out more about his background, his inspirations, and, of course, his work with Lucio Fulci. Frizzi To Fulci is sold out (there are limited VIP tickets available) so for those of us who can’t make what promises to be a very special evening, here is my interview with the soundtrack maestro himself:

Dangerous Minds: When did you first start writing and playing music and what was the inspiration?

Fabio Frizzi: I was attracted to music from a very young age, my father used to sing in a very big choir in Bologna, which is where we lived. When I was 2 or 3 my friends and family used to meet and sing together. When I was about 6 I was part of a small choir at school.

But then something strange happened when I was a teenager. I was still in love with music, but I wanted to do other things. I was a swimmer, and while it wasn’t a career, I was pretty good. At 14 I started to have problems with asthma and my doctor told me it would be better to stop swimming for a while. It was a tragedy for me, because, you know, at 14 you are still a baby! But my father had a great idea, he asked a guitar teacher to give me lessons, because he knew I still liked music. So I began and, day by day, I got better, This was at the same time that The Beatles were gaining popularity, so we were all listening to that.

At 15 I had my first group, which was classical, but after a while I moved from classical guitar to acoustic and electric, you know how guys are! But I kept going and it became my real love. I always say that my first girlfriends, when I was about 17, they had to come with us to the rehearsals, because for us Saturday and Sunday was dedicated to the music!

When I finished school my dad wanted me to become a lawyer, and I started studying that, but it was always secondary. I met a very big Italian publisher called Carlo Bixio, he believed in my talent and helped me as I put together my first group, Bixio-Frizzi-Tempera when I was about 23. But you have to remember that my father was already working in the cinema field. So it was easier for me than it would be for other people; I knew Italian actors, I would go to premieres and screenings, so it was easier, yes, but I was passionate. I studied, because, after all, it takes a while to get good at making music!
 

 
Read the full interview after the jump…

 
While the very idea of an ornament dangling from a gun is absurdly dangerous, the holidays are right around the corner, and I thought these might make a good key-chain for the most discerning of my misandrist comrades (perhaps with a copy of the SCUM Manifesto included?)!

Unfortunately, it looks as if Gun Nutz have gone belly-up, meaning either someone suffered a Gun Nutz-related firearm mishap, or perhaps there’s simply no market for completely superfluous, totally unsafe, and embarrassingly compensatory plastic pink testicles to adorn your AK-47.

$20 says a gun nut lost their gun nuts to a misadventure of Gun Nutz.
 

 

 

 

 
The influence of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground reaches far into the soft and yielding heart of rock and roll. I’ve compiled a short mix of songs by artists that -according to my very subjective take on the matter - have absorbed some of that Velvet energy. These groups may not have consciously set out to write or play a song in the spirit of Lou and the Velvets, but they certainly seem to have fallen under the spell of those magic beams that stream from the halls of the Akashic Record where recordings marked V.U. and L.R. rotate like gleaming Saturnian rings in the infinitesimal blackness of absolute reality. (Might be a little not safe for work.)

01. I’m Going Out Of My Way - Stereolab
02. Failures - Joy Division
03. Bad Vibrations - Black Angels
04. She Cracked - Modern Lovers
05. The Modern Age - The Strokes
06. Down 42nd St. To The Light - East River Pipe
07. Tell Me When It’s Over - Dream Syndicate
08. Blue Flower - Mazzy Star
09. Always The Sun - The Stranglers
10. Leif Erikson - Interpol
11. Hanging Out And Hung Up On The Line - Julian Cope
12. Looking For A Way In - Cornershop
13. Shine A Light - Wolf Parade
14. The Moon - Cat Power
15. Sleepin’ Around - Sonic Youth
 

 
I was 16 years old and living in Fairfax, Virginia when I first heard The Velvet Underground’s debut album. It was 1967 and I was ready for something, anything, to slough off the teenage suburban blues that encased me like dead skin. I had no exact idea of what I was listening to when I listened to that album but whatever wild form of rock and roll it was it dug down deep into me and altered something very essential in my nature.

The Velvet Underground’s music was literally electrifying. Their songs were like subatomic particles saturating my cells and transforming me into some kind of new being. For 18 hours straight I listened to that album while eating bennies (benzedrine). Sitting and spinning in circles on a smooth wooden floor while the music hummed, droned, surged and sparked all around and within me. 

The electronic equivalent of one of William Burroughs word viruses or Rimbaud’s poetry as a “derangement of the senses,” the music of The Velvet Underground infected me and scrambled my brain forever.

I was indoctrinated into the splendid darkness, muttering the Warholian oath of Doctor Frankenstein: “To know death, Otto, you have to fuck life in the gall bladder.” Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker and Nico were turning me into a teenage Frankenstein and I was ready to thrust myself into the “meat pit of mortal desire” with a monstrous passion. I was only 16 but I knew how to nasty.

A year earlier, The Fugs had prepped me for the surgery performed by The Velvet Underground and now the transformation was well on its way. I left the comfort and deadly dullness of suburbia for the untamed streets of New York City, landing in an apartment on West Houston street that I shared with a drag queen and a runaway friend of mine that had left the ‘burbs months before me. The streets were teeming with young hippies, rockers and weirdos and I felt immediately at home. This was a world in which we were all waiting for our man, whether he was a drug dealer, guru or lover….or all three. There was a jittery anticipation in the air like when you were about to cop something that would get you high or get you by or just make you thrilled to be alive. And that anticipation was its own high and very much like a song by The Velvet Underground.

Hey baby, don’t you holler, don’t you ball and shout
I’m feeling good, I’m gonna work it on out
I’m feeling good, feeling so fine
until tomorrow, but that’s just some other time
I’m waiting for my man
I’m waiting for my man
I’m waiting for my man
man-man-man-man-man-man-man

As much as I was formed and inspired by The Velvet Underground as an artist, it was Lou Reed specifically that made me want to become a songwriter. The title of his album “Transformer” was truth in advertising, it encouraged me to become something I wanted but never thought I could be: a rock singer.

Lou wasn’t a great singer and neither am I. So what. He made songwriting appear simple. It ain’t. But Lou made the art of song attainable by taking everyday reality and finding within it the riff that made it extraordinary. Like Warhol did with soup cans. The shape, the color, the essential “itness” of it. There is nothing in life that is artless. At certain angles, even shit shines.

Lou wrote about stuff, the stuff of life, the stuff I wanted to write about. The unspeakable stuff, the real stuff. I wasn’t interested in music that soothed the savage breast, I wanted to write savage music about breasts…and cocks and city streets and dark tunnels winding their way underneath those streets. Lou Reed made it all seem possible. You could write about your life while dancing to it. You could be both profane and divine. Lou found the spiritual in the dirty boulevards, Coney Island, hookers, junkies, and the whole of the wild side. Poetry was everywhere, under the mattress with a bag of dope and a blood-stained tee-shirt, in the shadow of the Berlin wall and inside the tenement where

Caroline says
while biting her lip
Life is meant to be more than this
and this is a bum trip

Lou Reed, more than any creative being on the planet, let me know it was possible I could become a rock and roller. And he did that for a lot of people. It has been said that The Velvet Underground spawned more bands than it sold albums. It’s true. Lou opened up the field for millions of us. There are few modern singer/songwriters that haven’t been influenced by his direct way of telling a story in song without hyped-up sentiment or maudlin platitudes. His hard-edged, cynical style, shot through with harsh beauty and tenderness, created a new level of sophistication and adultness in rock that hadn’t much been heard before him. He cut through the cute shit and talked about the raw side of city life like Cole Porter on a cocktail of crystal meth and Seconal. And yet for all the tough guy stance, here was a cat that could write lines like:

Thought of you as my mountain top,
Thought of you as my peak.
Thought of you as everything,
I’ve had but couldn’t keep.
I’ve had but couldn’t keep.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.

If I could make the world as pure and strange as what I see,
I’d put you in the mirror,
I put in front of me.
I put in front of me.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.
Linger on, your pale blue eyes.

Beneath the black leather veneer and dismissive smirk of Lou Reed there was something vulnerable and fragile. It was covered up out of necessity. The shit he wrote about, the shit he lived, could kill you. But you can’t write with the insight he did about the darker side of life, the lost souls and broken hearts, without having an incredible sense of empathy and love. On the surface, Reed was a badass. But somewhere a satellite of love was beaming down signals and Reed was there to catch them….and to beam them out to other satellites, of which I was one.
 

 
Lou Reed is dead at the age of 71. He’d gotten a liver transplant in Cleveland back in May, but the cause of his death has not been disclosed.

Reed’s wife, Laurie Anderson told the Times of London earlier this year regarding the transplant: “It’s as serious as it gets. He was dying. You don’t get it for fun.”

Below,  Andy Warhol’s “Symphony in Sound,” one of the only known sync sound film recordings of The Velvet Underground:
 

Sylvie Vartan

France’s cheerful early ‘60s yé-yé bubblegum pop music didn’t feature only young female singers (there was, for example, Claude François), but girls were certainly the majority, first on the radio show Salut les copains (Hello Friends!), named after a Gilbert Bécaud song, and the subsequent spin-off music magazine of the same name. Any song featured as the week’s favorite pick on the show was guaranteed to be a hit, just like titles from Oprah’s book club. Feral House has published a grand tribute to these glamorous singers, Yé-Yé Girls of ‘60s French Pop, by French music writer Jean-Emmanuel Deluxe, with the first of many accompanying playlists.

 
The best known yé-yé (derived from “yeah yeah,” coined three years or so before “She Loves You”) singers were Sylvie Vartan (long-time wife of French rocker Johnny Hallyday), France Gall, Sheila, Jacqueline Taïeb, and the stunning Françoise Hardy, whom Mick Jagger once called his “ideal woman.”

Sylvie Vartan with The Beatles

Chantal Goya

Gillian Hills

Françoise Hardy

France Gall

Serge Gainsbourg, then in his thirties, wrote the hit “Poupée de cire, poupée de son” for the schoolgirl singer France Gall, whom he called “the French Lolita.” He then wrote “Les Sucettes” (“Lollipops”) for her, a thinly veiled paean to oral sex, which greatly embarrassed her when she eventually learned the song’s true meaning. (Note the dancing penises in the video.)

Yé-yé, like the vast majority of Francophone music, didn’t receive a lot of attention in the U.S. when it was first released, although Susan Sontag did mention it in passing in “Notes on Camp” in 1964: “Sometimes whole art forms become saturated with Camp. Classical ballet, opera, movies have seemed so for a long time. In the last two years, popular music (post rock-‘n’-roll, what the French call yé yé) has been annexed.” Fifty years later yé-yé has enjoyed a new wave of interest, thanks to Quentin Tarantino and Mad Men.

Feral House’s Yé-Yé Girls of ‘60s French Pop:

Jacqueline Taïeb, “7 heure du matin,” with lyrics fantasizing about Paul McCartney:

More after the jump…