“I always say that Nick was born with a skin too few,” Gabrielle Drake on her brother.
 
It took a ‘99, Pink Moon-accompanied Volkswagen commercial to jumpstart the posthumous career of the great Nick Drake.  The following year, Dutch director Jeroen Berkvens came out with a documentary on the tortured British singer-songwriter, A Skin Too Few: The Days of Nick Drake.

Featuring interviews with Drake’s sister Gabrielle, producer Joe Boyd, and principal arranger, Robert Kirby (who died last October), A Skin Too Few’s a fascinating look at Drake, who, sadly, took his own life at the age of 26.  It’s been floating around in pieces on YouTube, but the below video’s in one high-quality piece. 

 
Bonus: Nick Drake’s Blues Run The Game

 
Thanks, Marc Campbell!

 
Seeing as how I name-checked the man in my Rick Grossman post yesterday I thought I’d share this lovely 1972 clip by Soft Machine founder Kevin Ayers. He’s surrounded here by a rogues gallery of prog luminaries : Mike Oldfield on bass, Lol Coxhill on soprano sax, Mike Bedford on accordion, etc. This song, from his Shooting at the Moon LP, seems to sum up his breezily casual, pleasantly stoned approach rather nicely. Goes down smooth.

 
An appropriately mad new video for a very jammy tune from the legendary Squarepusher off his last LP Just a Souvenir.  I normally prefer his more obviously micro-programmed sounding stuff to his more fusion like workouts such as this, but I can really get behind the lone hippy-weirdo-freak-out-in-the-home-studio vibe of the video. And how.

 
thx Dave Madden !

 
Despite the fact that I found this private press gem on the derogatorily named blog Glorify The Turd, and the cover art is a masterpiece of mid 70’s delusional douchebaggery, I can’t get this damn song out of my head ! Sure, dude can’t really sing and the show-offy guitar licks are wildly out of place with the wobbly rhythm section but this really puts me in the mind of the breezily casual messed up tunes of Kevin Ayers or even the Kinks. Plus: The song is called Mellow Heaven Clout, which must be one of the hippest song titles I’ve ever heard. And those spring reverb hand claps ! Play on repeat until happy.
 

 
Over the weekend, I picked up a copy of the 5:1 surround mix of King Crimson’s classic 1974 album, Red, but I didn’t have a chance to listen to it properly until this afternoon. And when I say properly, I mean loudly, as Red happens to be one of the heaviest rock albums of all time. Crank it up loud enough—as I did today—and it feels like a jumbo jet is taking off inside your skull. The sonic power of that album can blow you away like a feather in the wind at top volume. Most King Crimson albums I find to be a bit spotty (some of them are really spotty, in fact) but when they lock into a serious groove, like on Red’s title cut, it’s an awe inspiring thing to listen to.

This new surround version, mixed from the original multi-source mixdown tapes by Porcupine Tree’s Steve WIlson (with Robert Fripp’s participation) tends to put the listener in the middle of the mix, that is to say, it sounds like you are standing in the room as they are playing. I find that this approach worked great on Wilson’s redo of In the Court of the Crimson King in 5:1, but with Red, the violent onslaught of Fripp’s buzzsaw guitar riffs sounds emasculated somewhat (when compared to the familiar stereo version) unless the album is played at an almost ear-splitting volume. Me, I’m happy to oblige. Listen to it as loud as fuck and it sounds wonderful. I suppose that was the point. Who’s going slap on Red to listen at a background volume anyway?

There’s not much by way of film footage of pre-80s incarnation of King Crimson. As in nearly none. I did find two amazing clips, though. First an intense run-through of Lark’s Tongue in Aspic on what appears to be Germany’s Beat Club show.
 

 
Below, a 1973 performance in New York’s Central Park of Easy Money:
 

 
(Incidentally, the new leaked Kanye West single, Power, samples King Crimson’s 21st Century Schizoid Man)

 
Ummm… Err….

 
Mr. Laner’s Krautrock post from earlier this week put me in a Can kind of mood (although it takes very little).  What follows below is a kinda wonderful fan-made video for Future Days, the epically dreamy title track from the final Can album to feature the vocal stylings of former street busker, Damo Suzuki.  The vid’s creator cribbed its imagery from banned films from the 20’s and 30’s.  Trippy visuals aside, as we ease into what should be a sunny Memorial Day weekend here in LA, make Future Days part of your soundtrack!

 
Wolfgang Riechmann‘s sole solo LP is a minor masterpiece of late 70’s German electronica, very much of a piece with Kraftwerk’s concurrent LPs but a bit more lush and psychedelic. In fact, Riechmann played with future Kraftwerk member Wolgang Flür and Neu’s Michael Rother in Spirits of Sound in the 1960s. What’s not so wunderbar is that Riechmann was stabbed to death in a bar brawl just three weeks before the release of this LP.

 
Head Heritage: WOLFGANG RIECHMANN—WUNDERBAR
KRAFTWERK AND THE ELECTRONIC REVOLUTION

 
Or something like that… Mind rot at its finest!

Thanks, Bill Meehan!